The dawn of a new era: the Great October Socialist Revolution

Vanguard November 2010 p. 6
Alex M.

The Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 heralded the beginning of a new era for humankind. For the first time in history an avowed working class party not only dared to seize power, it did so with the declared intention of overthrowing the last vestiges of absolutism and building socialism.

The seizure of power in the old Russian capital of Petrograd was undertaken in the name of the Petrograd Soviet. Soviets were bodies of representatives from the working class and peasants, soldiers and sailors, first appearing around the time of the 1905 Russian revolution. Soviets sprang into being because in Tsarist Russia the working class and peasantry were denied any direct political representation.

The crushing of the 1905 revolution did not lead to the disappearance of Soviets, but it did drive leaders of Soviets into exile or imprisonment. Any dissent was crushed during Prime Minister Stolypin’s tenure in office which lasted from 1906 until he was assassinated in 1911. However, the experience of the 1905 Russian revolution and the appearance of Soviets had a profound influence on the thinking of revolutionaries in what were then called the Social Democratic parties (Socialist), throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

Twelve years later, with the dreadful carnage of the First World War seemingly set to drag on, Soviets of workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors once again came to exert a powerful influence in Russian society. The incompetence of Russian generals on the battlefields of the Eastern front against the German and Austro-Hungarian armies combined with the casualties, deprivations and the hunger of the general populace created the conditions for the removal of the Tsar and his replacement by a provisional bourgeois democratic government led by Alexander Kerensky.

The February revolution was the first of three revolutionary waves that shook Petrograd and other cities in Russia during 1917. The next upsurge, in July 1917, resulted in a set-back for the Bolsheviks. By late September, the continuation of the imperialist war by the bourgeois government of Kerensky, waves of mass desertions from the front and continued misery in the cities, mass unrest by the people again reached a head.

By October, Lenin judged that the time was ripe for the overthrow of Kerensky’s Provisional Government. The masses revolted. On the night of October 24th -25th armed detachments of workers arrested Kerensky’s ministers in the Winter Palace. The new era had begun.

Bolshevik leaders, such as Lenin, thought that with the war-weariness of the workers, peasants, soldiers, sailors and citizens of Europe, a spark such as the October uprising would precipitate revolutions in other European countries. There were outbreaks. In Hungary, the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic led by Bela Kun lasted from March to August 1919. In Germany, the period of November 1918 through to the proclamation of the Weimar Republic in August 1919 was the first of three periods of intense social and political unrest which brought Germany to the brink of a successful proletarian revolution.

The revolutionary upsurge in Europe in the immediate aftermath of the First World War really shook the world’s bourgeoisie and remaining aristocracies. It really did appear that worldwide proletarian revolution was a possibility. However, Russia’s history and the social, political and economic conditions at the time were different in revolutionary Russia to other European countries, where all the requirements for a socialist revolution were not fully developed or matured.

Revolution is a mass movement
One of the important features of the Bolshevik led revolution was that it was a mass movement. It was not a mere coup d’état, rather the majority of the people could see that the old order was crumbling and could not and did not represent their interests. There was a crisis of confidence not only in the old autocratic Tsarist regime, but also in the bourgeois Kerensky government which replaced it. Consequently, the majority of the Russian people became politically active, using tribunes like the Soviets to push for change.

A second important feature of the October revolution was the part played by the Bolshevik party. Acting as a directing force, channelling working class, peasant and soldier’s disaffection, the Bolsheviks were able to focus the people’s discontent.

Combining tactical flexibility with party discipline, Lenin’s party outflanked its political rivals such as the Mensheviks, not only offering up slogans that tapped into popular aspirations, but acting on them as well. The slogan ‘Peace, Land and Bread’ reflected the yearnings for peace of the Russian masses, bled white by the war. ‘Land’ represented peasant aspirations for a more equitable distribution of land and ‘Bread’ was the desire for relief from hunger that many were experiencing. The old bourgeois order could no longer continue, and the contradiction between the people, with the working class in the lead, and the bourgeois state, erupted in intense revolutionary conflict that shook the whole world.

Among the first decrees that the new Soviet Government promulgated were those offering peace to Russia’s belligerents, and another abolishing private property and distributing the landed estates amongst the peasants. Not only did this new government reflect the hopes and aspirations of the toiling masses, it strove to implement them, relying on the enthusiasm, energy and creative capacities of the workers and peasants to construct a new society.

Lessons from the 1917 Revolution
Australia’s history and conditions are vastly different to the situation in revolutionary Russia of 1917. For a start we do not face a revolutionary situation in Australia. For a start we do not face a revolutionary situation in Australia. Nor do we have the experience and background of feudalism and autocracy. Our bourgeois liberal democratic traditions provide limitations of social democracy that confine people to bourgeois class rule. There are nominal democratic rights that are confined to bourgeois parliamentarism and giving the illusion of democracy for the people. Our conditions are beyond the scope of what was available in Russia up until February 1917.

Bearing this in mind, it is still possible to highlight some general similarities between revolutionary Russia and contemporary Australia. There was and is disenchantment with the established political order. In Russia of course, the disenchantment reached very high levels. The same cannot be said for popular sentiment in Australia; though this appears to be changing, with more disaffected Labor voters casting about for alternatives.

The key similarity lies in the desire for working people to make a difference in not only their own lives but collectively, in the building of a more just and equitable international order. The Great October Socialist Revolution marked the beginning of real progress in the building of that order and for that reason its significance will not fade.