The lessons of 1905

ICC online public meeting

Saturday 27 September 2025,

2pm to 5pm UK time.

 

It is 120 years since the working class in Russia rose up against the Tsarist regime, developing forms of struggle and organisation that announced the proletariat’s response to the approach of a whole new epoch in the life of world capitalism: the mass strike and the soviets (workers’ councils). These forms and methods of struggle were to appear again and again over the following decades, most notably in the international revolutionary wave of 1917-23, which saw the working class in Russia, organised in its councils, seize and hold political power for a brief period.

Thus, the 1905 revolution still contains numerous lessons for the class struggle today and in the future, and it is up to all those who recognise the need for a revolutionary struggle against capitalism to discuss and clarify these lessons in the light of subsequent experience. This is the aim of the forthcoming public meeting, which will be held online in English (together with other meetings on the same theme in different languages).

Given the volatility of the world situation, we will be prepared to devote some time at the meeting to possible major developments.

Please write to [email protected] if you want to take part.

In the meantime, some recommended reading from a dossier of articles on our website:

1905: the mass strike and the workers’ councils first emerge