WW Edit'l: The Russian Revolution Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the November 13, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- EDITORIAL: THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION revolution by its very nature is a great rising up of those who have been held down in society. Russia had not one but three revolutions. The first was in 1905 during the czar's unpopular war with Japan; two more followed in 1917 during an even more murderous conflict, World War I. The 1905 revolution had given birth to councils of workers, peasants and soldiers--known in Russia as Soviets. In a country ruled by feudal autocrats, these democratic organs elected by the masses were new, daring and showed for the first time what a state based on the working people would look like. The Soviets fired the imagination of all who wanted to break Russia free of the backward and repressive rule of czarism. But the 1905 revolution was crushed. Political repression followed. It wasn't until after the imperialist war started in 1914 that the masses were aroused to struggle once again. By early 1917, the aristocrats--who sipped imported champagne while peasants and workers died in the trenches--were overwhelmed by massive strikes started by women garment workers in Petrograd. The czar was toppled in February and a bourgeois regime took power in the name of democracy. The capitalist democrats were weak and afraid of the masses. They had no answers to the most pressing needs of the people: for land, bread and peace. They relied on the army of czarist reaction and demanded that the starving people sacrifice more for the "war effort." By the summer of 1917, Moscow and Petrograd were revolutionary cauldrons again. Strikes were happening everywhere. The Soviets had been revived. Ragged soldiers' deputies were coming from the front, begging the workers to help them end the war. Right-wing generals were preparing a pogrom against the revolutionary leaders. The bourgeois democrats debated everything and did nothing. The Duma--a toothless parliament created under czarism--was just a cover for the brutal rule of the bankers, bosses and landlords. The Bolshevik Party became the leading force in the revolution because it called for all power to the Soviets. When the insurrection finally came in October (Nov. 7 by our Western calendar), it put in power the most democratic institutions ever seen. This was truly a democracy of, by and for the vast majority of the people: the workers and peasants. The third Russian revolution "shook the world," in the words of U.S. journalist John Reed. The ruling classes everywhere were enraged. In New York, London, Paris and Berlin they predicted almost daily that this revolution of illiterate toilers would fall apart, overwhelmed by its own poverty and backwardness. The first workers' uprising--the Paris Commune of 1870--had lasted only a few months before it was crushed by French and German armies. Russia's October revolution, its effort to build socialism, lasted over 70 years and made valiant attempts to build socialism before it was finally torn down. Hitler's armies couldn't defeat the Soviet Union. But isolation, underdevelopment and the unrelenting pressures of imperialism finally demoralized and corrupted enough of the leadership to bring about a counter-revolution from within. The USSR's collapse has plunged all its former republics into unprecedented misery--shattering the myth that capitalism would bring a better life. The Russian Revolution, as analyzed in the writings of its two principal leaders, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, has been studied by political activists throughout this century. Its lessons will be assimilated wherever the opportunity arises for the next great uprising of the oppressed. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://workers.org) ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nyteeu-11.07.97-04:02:51-18430