This post will be a bit more on the short side as its being
written on the fly, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity of celebrating
the October Revolution, on its one hundred and second birthday.
The October Revolution was a decisive moment in socialist history
in which the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, overthrew Kerensky’s provisional
government and seized control of Petrograd (St. Petersburg). It was this
uprising that proved decisive in the rise of the Bolsheviks to power, and the
spark that ignited the Russian Civil War that was to follow.
Preceding the October Revolution was the February
Revolution, in which populist uprising against Tsar Nicholas II led to his
abdication, and the establishment of a provisional government. This new
government, while a liberal democracy rather than a monarchy, was still
nonetheless bourgeoisie, and therefore sought only to keep the bourgeoisie in
power, rather than transfer that power to the Russian workers and peasants.
The October Revolution, then, completed that transference of
power, seizing it from the bourgeoisie and placing it into the hands of the
soviets. This is the start of Soviet Russia, which in the civil war would grow
into the Soviet Union, proving itself to stand strong against imperialist
invaders. Today, the revolution is remembered as the first successful socialist
revolution in history, and a reminder of what the revolutionary spirit may
accomplish. The Bolsheviks’ taking of Petrograd was a shot, so to speak, heard
by all the oppressed of the world, and inspiration for those who were to
follow. In China, in Cuba, in Vietnam, in Korea. Now more than ever, as the
parasite that is capitalism bleeds the world dry of its very lifeforce, the
October Revolution should stand as inspiration for us too.
Вся власть советам!
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