I would like to start a forum topic on the Russian Revolution because I am seriously reading about it for the first time. I have previously read bits and pieces here and there, of course heard versions and perpectives about it and follwed interesting discussions on libcom.org. But finally, I will try and come to some of my own conclusions hopefully with the help of others. I have only just finished reading Reed's Ten Days That Shook The World but plan to read The History Of The Civil War In The U.S.S.R volume 2 The Great Proletarian Revolution and Trotsky's History Of The Russian Revolution. Probably in that order. Where I go from there I am not sure but Victor Serge's account seems to get recommended quite a lot.
The Goverment of the Russian Republic sometimes reads as a representative body (an elite) in the bourgeois sense. What is the difference or connection to the soviets? Especially with regard to decrees. Are they purely of the mind of the members of the government, Lenin in particularly. Or are they the result of discussion and debate within the soviets and class?
Were the soviets mostly Bolshevik and on what scale within Russia?
Apart from programmatic differences what was the main reason for opposition to the Bolsheviks from other socialists etc?
Regarding sabotage and hoarding (bourgeois, middle class etc) versus inefficiency of organisation and individual corruption (soldiers, workers, bolsheviks etc) in relation to supplying the front and beyond. Was there anything genuine in the proclamations or were they outright lies?
Lenin as dictator? Sometimes it comes across as he is using (not manipulating) the masses or directing them. Yes, there were soviets but were they superficial and simply at the command of congress and ultimately Lenin as head of state?
Right of Nations to Self Determination seems to have been a total disaster. Why does this idea and practice exist today?
Lenin tries to get peace via the bourgeoisie. Why doesn't he go directly to the workers, the class to make peace with enemy workers in uniform - though he suggests this only after his former efforts fail. Was it always his plan to go to the workers anyway?
This touches on an earlier question about decrees. Are Lenin's decrees in particular simply of his own mind or are they questions previously debated, discussed etc within the soviets, party or wider class?
Those questions basically came up in order as I was reading the book.
A very good idea for a long term thread - the subject is huge. One small point about your first paragrph. Reed is a very good place to start but I would recommend reading Trotsky's History next. It's his masterpiece.
Some questions of radicalchains (RC) need detailed knowledge of the History of Russian Revolution. I read and re-read in my younger days (when I was in the maoist movement) John Reed's 'Ten Days That Shook The World'.
I'll try to contribute my opinion of some of RC's questions:
"Lenin as dictator?" - I don't think so. John Reed's account was a witness that the Russian proletariat through their soviets were conscious and actively participating in the discussions and debates without waiting directives from the parties involved in the revolution.
After the revolution, espcially in its degeneration, the Bolshevik Party was increasingly became dictatorial, claiming that it was the representative of the entire working class (party = class). But this was not because Lenin was a dictator. However, even in its degeneration, there were tendencies/factions within the party that resisted the degeneration.
Stalin might be dictatorial in real sense but not Lenin. But Lenin made major mistakes is out of the question because while that is true, it does not mean that he was dictatorial.
"Right of Nations to Self Determination seems to have been a total disaster. Why does this idea and practice exist today?" - Nationalism/patriotism is a very strong ideology among the backward countries because it is also real and concrete that foreign capitalists exploit those countries. Though we all know the counter-revolutionary nature of nationalism/patriotism in the era of capitalism's decadence, still many workers in backward countries believe that it is an expression of being "anti-capitalist". Thanks to the left of capital and their alliance with the national bourgeoisie this ideology is still strong in those countries.
In my opinion, the proletariat in Western Europe have a big responsibility to expose this bankrupt ideology among their brothers/sisters in backward countries.
"Right of Nations to Self Determination" - I can see how nationalists would use it as a defence or parrt of their bourgeois ideology. A classic example being the recent IRA in Ireland - they were much more radical with regard to the Limerick Soviet and early Russian Revolution period. But why amongst nearly all left groups (supposedly for working class revolution and internationalism) in this day and age do they rigidly adhere to it? I suppose what I am saying is why is the 'left of capital' the left of capital'.
I was going to read the Soviet History before Trotsky because I could not face over a thousand pages and I wanted to read something which might contradict what I have already read i.e Stalinized version of the revolution? Then read Trotsky to see the difference. It probably doesn't matter either way though.
I came across this excellent film on the Revolution:
Tsar to Lenin (От Царя к Ленину)
http://vimeo.com/49517285
About the soviet government (sovnarkom) and its relations with the soviets etc. I recommend this book:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Lenin_s_Government.html?id=rBEGeXg_HBsC
I think recommending books, films, pieces of music, art exhibitions etc. without adding a comment as to why you think they're good, is a poor substitute for real communication. Just providing links only shows how deeply bourgeois ideology has penetrated the Internet, even this site! It is alienation raised to new heights. It's a way of avoiding genuine communication between human beings. You might have thought that as people at least appearing to be curious about "communism" as a new way of living, we would see being "open" - in so far as bourgeois ideology allows us to understand what being "open" actually is, in a society where everyone in fact appears "closed" and tends to avoid any closeness with anyone else - we would grasp the idea of "openess" as essential to solidarity and the whole communist endeavor.
Surely the great thing about the Russian Revolution was the way it opened everybody to everyone else, specially workers, soldiers, sailors and so on. That was how they were able to join together, to learn from each other, to educate each other, to build the soviets, to see realizable visions and begin to grasp how to get there. This was (is) the movement of communist consciouness. John Reed and Trotsky are ecstatic in their rapturous descriptions of this, aren't they? It is one of the things that struck them most. Previously seemingly dumb and stupid people, repressed and crushed by capitalism, are suddenly gifted with tongues - it was a sort of proletarian version of the Apostles receiving the holy spirit to make a slightly far-fetched analogy - these workers suddenly understood their power, and who they were, and how together, in solidarity, they were about to change world for the better. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Nothing like it has happened since! This is the message of the Russian Revolution.
As for Lenin, as a proletarian revolutionary he was closely in touch with developing proletarian consciousness and grasped what the class was achieving by building the soviets. To announce ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS at a time when many were confused and bewildered, was to point the direction forward for the revolution, both at that time and for all time. Probably! At that moment he was no dictator. Far from it. He had helped open the gates to a new and full democracy, for ever condemning bourgeois forms of it to times' dustbins.
Let's hope we're all going to get another chance at doing this. Otherwise we're toast!
I welcome Fred into the discussion, but like I've already said I really need to do quite a bit of reading before I can discuss too much. Though I would have liked some more discussion on some of my questions which I have asked elsewhere without too much success either. I thank mikail for the recommendation too. I have no problems with 'links' and recommendations. I also recognise that some people have discussed the Revolution nearly to death, over and over again so I am not that dissapointed if too many don't want to go down memory lane once more. Good point about being "open". I imagine revolutionary moments are kind of like being able to see more clearly for the first time - everything 'falling into place', feeling like you are in control and have a strong purpose - feelings and experiences difficult to put into words.
This is well said radicalchains. I like! Feelings and experiences difficult to put into words, are probably some of the very things we must try and put into words: (a) if only to understand them better: (b) in order to share them: and (c) to frustrate the bourgeosie who don't want us to see clearly; nor for us to see things as falling into place (this challenges their ideology); nor for us to acquire a strong sense purpose.
Thanks comrade rc.
Hi Amir, welcome to this forum. We would be very happy to discuss the Russian revolution with you. Do you mean Serge's Year One of the Russian Revolution? It can be bought here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=victor+serge+year+one+of+the+russian+revolution
In the meantime, it would be interesting to ehar what you think about the books you mention, or about the numerous articles the ICC has published on the question (try typing 'Russian revolution' on our search engine)
Perhaps we spend too much time reading and thinking about the Russian Revolution. - the greatest achievement yet of the organized proletariat. But it was a century ago, and things are different now. The working class does not exists on the same terms that it did internationally then, and it is much more difficult now for the working class to recognize itself. We are no longer herded into great factories as before, but more split up into smaller units: more "privatized". We no longer even have the privilege of being forced and bound together in great slums, and having a kind of poverty stricken solidarity forced down our throats. Of course, we have the technically modern slums; the government owned housing estates of tower blocks, misery and crime; and the isolation that is engendered by living on top of each other, rather than next door to each other as in a street. I don't know how much difference this kind of existence makes to the possibilities for neighborliness and class solidarity, or even to being aware of each other as members of suffering humanity. But "fings ain't
wot they used to be" and perhaps we shouldn't get too tied up with the
Russian model for revolution too closely. In fact the lessons of the
revolutionary failure in Germany may be more relevant to us today;
where the failure to have built a communist party was such a disaster.
And modern accounts of proletarian attempts at self-organization, such as those connected to to the Tekel struggles in Turkey two years ago, may have more to teach us now, about the way forward.
For don't we have to move forward? Surely the never-ending argument about whether what happened in Russia was actually a revolution or not can be put behind us now. Have we not moved on? Should we not be moving on? And I like Alf's point where he invites Amir, red bean, radical chains and others, to give us their responses to their readings, and maybe try and connect these to our different situation now, and to movements like the Occupiers, Indignados, and what was done during the Tekel strikes. We have to move on!
From reading about the experience with assemblies of the Occupiers-Indignados I'm strengthened in my doubt that even the soviets were places of clarification. For instance it is a problem that one can't even put it into words what exactly it means that "everything falls into place".
Regarding "moving on", there still could emerge a situation in which there is a revolution intially in a country during war. There is a short interesting text by Kautsky which in advance already warns for failure, without the existence of an International which does its duty; http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1917/11/russian.htm
Trotsky organised blocking units to gun down workers who turned back from the front.
Hawkeye. Does what you say above actually mean that Trotsky had workers fleeing the war front (a sensible thing to do) shot down? When was this? In 1917? And how do we know this? What are your sources? I am not inclined to believe it at all. Is there some confusion here with Kronstadt?
It amazes me that Fred said this, because doesnt it sound rather like what jk and mhou started advocating - the reconstruction of the working class and the importance of sociological change in today's changing circumstances requires changed ideas - which actually I thought I didn't agree with. But it's just another surprise in what is proving to be a very alienating weekend.
Don't worry Fred. I often find I don't agree with myself on some things from day to day. Somehow, its all supposed to even out in the end I suppose. You know, dialectics and all!
Was the Bolshevik party an International party of the working class and if not why not?
I definitely think so, yes. The problems arise after the revolution--- substitutionism , etc.
This might be some help.
Thanks Jamal, that's a very efficient and solid article. But I was asking more in a literal sense. That article argues they were internationalist and working class. Sure they had influence abroad but I am questioning the Bolshevik party as a national party or inter-national. Thinking about it now I can answer my own question. The Bolshevik party did not contain only Russian workers but workers from the many parts of the Tsarist Empire, Ukraine and parts of Asia for example. But there were no Bolshevik members in Britain, France, US or maybe the odd few emigre/exiles? To the extent other parties in the West were affiliates or whatever term you want to use in the pre-Stalinist period is doubtful in my limited view. Of course you could say so and so workers were bolsheviks in so and so a country by the way they acted and their formal positions but they were not in the same international party.
Ah, ok. In that sense, in terms of their organizational structure, no I guess not. The Bolsheviks in contrast we're indeed just a faction within the larger Russian Democratic Social Labor Party, which was closely associated with the Second International and it's affiliates. So they had close ties to international parties.
This is one of the ICC's main positions, that the revolutionary party has to be international in ideology and practice.
Edit: Being an international party is definitely distinct from being an internationalist party.