Russian Revolution, 1917-1921

The Russian Revolution - 90 years on.

The Russian Revolution remains one of the most significant events of revolutionary history. The depth of expropriation of capital and working class self-organisation, it's long-term effects on the twentieth century via Stalinism and the Cold War, and it's context within the period 1905-1926 when revolution appeared to be on the cards internationally remains one of the very high points of class struggle. An understanding of the Russian Revolution, and the many questions it raises about the role of revolutionary organisations, workers' control, the development of state capitalism and counter-revolution is essential to an understanding of the dynamics of revolution and class conflict for any who are remotely interested in these subjects.

As a result of it's significance, the history of the Russian Revolution has been a site of massive ideological conflict, between anti-Communist and Communist; anarchist and Leninist; Trotskyist and Stalinist; with a whole range of differing interpretations and outright mis-representations of events. At libcom.org, although we have sympathy with the anarchist and "ultra left" positions on the revolution we have attempted to present articles which cut through many of the traditional cliches, instead focusing on the the self-activity of the working class and peasantry in seizing control of production and an analysis of the role of both Bolshevik, anarchist and other political groups; in other words attempting to avoid the common trap of picking a side and sticking with it. The failure of the Russian Revolution revolution cannot be put down simplistically to the personalities of Lenin and Trotsky (or Marx), nor the 'material conditions' of civil war and 'backwardness' relied on by Leninist interpretations, but must be situated within Bolshevism's origins in Social Democracy and the inability of anarchist and grass-roots workers' organisations to defend themselves ideologically and physically from the Bolsheviks' incorporation into a new repressive state capitalist apparatus.

Although we are presenting this feature close to the anniversary of the October Revolution, you will notice very little on this site dealing with October itself. The Russian Revolution is best understood as a process which began with mass class struggle and the fall of Tsarism in February along with an upsurge in working class self-organisation with the development of the soviets, militias and factory committees across Russia and the Ukraine, then the internal counter-revolution which the Bolsheviks launched almost immediately after October, repressing workers' organisation and political opposition, and culminating in the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising and the development of Stalinism in the '20s.

As well as the Russian Revolution itself, libcom.org also has articles dealing with the strikes and uprisings against Stalinism during the first and second Five Year Plans, the Gulag and East German uprisings of 1953, Hungary and Poland 1956, Novocherkassk 1962, Czechoslovakia 1968 and Poland 1976-82 in which the 'real movement' present in 1917 was echoed against those who claimed its name later on. We have also developed a feature on the more general Revolutionary Wave during this period, dealing with the tendencies towards revolution in Europe, North America, Asia and South America that at the time seemed to call the entirety of class society into question.

More information
Russian revolution and Civil War, 1917-21
WARNING: No work takes a more ideological and manufactured quality than histories of the Russian Revolution. Among the academics, Rosenberg, McAuley, Rabinowitch, Malle, Smith, Carr and Rigby have significant sympathies with the Bolsheviks; Medvedev, Fitzpatrick, Sirianni, Avrich, Sakwa, Remington, Aves, Lincoln, and Service are more critical, while Leggett, Figes and Shkliarevsky are openly right-wing. This is just a rough ideological guide for the unwary.)

:> 10 Days That Shook the World - Reed
:> Year One of the Russian Revolution - Serge
:> History of the Russian Revolution - Trotsky
:> *The Unknown Revolution : 1917-1921 - Voline
:> *The Russian Revolution – Luxemburg
:> *Kronstadt 1917-1921 : The Fate of a Soviet Democracy - Israel Getzler
:> The Makhnovist Movement - libcom.org history
:> Forced Labour and Economic Development - S. Swianiewicz's
:> *Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present - Mikhail Heller/Aleksandr Nekrich
:> Lessons of October - Trotsky
:> The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921 - R. Kowalski
:> The Bolshevik Party in Conflict: The Left Communist Opposition of 1918 - R. Kowalski
:> The Russian Revolution - Marcel Liebman
:> Leninism Under Lenin – M. Liebman
:> The ABC's of Communism - Bukharin/Preobrazhensky
:> All Volumes for 1917 in Lenin's Collected Works
:> *The Petrograd Workers and The Fall of The Old Regime - D. Mandel
:> *The Petrograd Workers and The Soviet Seizure of Power - D. Mandel
:> *The Bolshevik Revolution, Vol. 1-3 - E.H. Carr
:> *The Workers Revolution in Russia - S. Smith
:> *Red Petrograd: Revolution in The Factories, 1917-18 - S. Smith
:> Russian Factory Committees in 1917 - Paul H. Avrich
:> Factory Committees and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat - Chris Goodey (Critique 3, 1974)
:> The February Revolution: Petrograd, 1917 – T. Hasegawa
:> The Workers’ Revolution in Russia in 1917 – Kaiser, Ed.
:> Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution – D. Koenker
:> The Bolsheviks Come To Power - Rabinowich
:> Kronstadt and Petrograd - Raskolnikov
:> Lenin, 3 Vols. - T. Cliff
:> The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: Minutes of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks), August 1917-February 1918 – A. Bonn, Ed.
:> Red Guards and Workers’ Militias in the Russian Revolution – R. Wade
:> Class Struggles in the USSR, 1917-1923 - Bettelheim
:> Red Victory - Lincoln
:> The Red Army - Wollenberg
:> The Bolsheviks in Power - Ilyin-Zhenevsky
:> Lenin's Moscow - Rosmer
:> Leninism Under Lenin - Marcel Liebman
:> The Russian Anarchists - Avrich
:> The Anarchism of Nestor Makhno - M. Palij
:> Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War - M. Malet
:> Civil War in Russia – D. Footman
:> Liberty Under the Soviets – R. Baldwin
:> The Bolshevik Revolution - R. Medvedev
:> Workers' Control and Socialist Democracy: The Soviet Experience - C. Sirianni
:> Economic and Industrial Democracy - Sirianni
:> Building Socialism in Soviet Russia - T. Remington
:> Party, State and Society in the Russian Civil War - Koenker
:> Labour in the Russian Revolution - G. Shkliarevsky
:> Lenin: A Political Life, 3 Vols. - R. Service
:> The Economic Organisation of War Communism - Malle
:> Bread and Justice; State and Society in Petrograd 1917-22 - M. McAuley
:> The Russian Revolution - R. Pipes
:> Resolutions and Decisions of the CPSU - R. McNeal
:> The Bolshevik Party in Conflict - R. Kowalski
:> Lenin's Government - T. Rigby
:> The Birth of the Propaganda State - P. Kenez
:> Red Guards and Workers' Militia - R. Wade
:> The Mensheviks after October - V. Brovkin
:> Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War - V. Brovkin
:> Soviet Communists in Power, a Study of Moscow - R. Sakwa
:> Bolshevik Festivals - J. Von Gelderen
:> Peasant Russia, Civil War - O. Figes
:> State within a State - E. Albats
:> The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police - G. Leggett
:> Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-21 - Lih
:> Trotsky Reappraisal - T.Brotherstone
:> Workers against Lenin - J. Aves
:> Lenin and the Mensheviks - V. Broido
:> How the Revolution was Armed - B. Pearce
:> Our Own People - E. Poretsky
:> The Origins of the Gulag - M. Jakobson
:> The Origin of Forced Labour in the Soviet State - J. Bunyan
:> The Russian Revolution - S. Fitzpatrick
:> Russia in the Era of the NEP - Fitzpatrick
:> The Making of the Georgian Nation - G.Suny
:> Culture and Power in Revolutionary Russia - C. Read
:> Workers, Soviets - W. Chase
:> Collected Works - Lenin
:> The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky - Lenin
:> Terrorism and Communism - Trotsky
:> Social Democracy and the Wars of Intervention, 1918-1921 - Trotsky
:> Military Writings (5 Vols.) - Trotsky
:> Military Writings - Trotsky
:> Kronstadt - Lenin/Trotsky
:> Before Stalinism - Farber
:> The 1917 Revolution in Latvia - Andrew Ezergailis
:> Toward Soviet Power in Tashkent - Richard A. Pierce
:> Revolution in the Volga: 1917 in Saratov - Donald J. Raleigh
:> Revolutionary Politics in Provincial Russia: the Tsaritsyn 'Republic' in 1917 - Donald J. Raleigh
:> The Bolsheviks in Siberia, 1917-1918 - Russell E. Snow
:> The Baku Commune, 1917-1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution - Ronald Grigor Suny
:> Red Guards and Workers Militias in the Russian Revolution - Rex Wade

Counter-revolution from Within
:> *The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control - M. Brinton
:> *The Experience of the Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution - Jones
:> *The Kronstadt Rebellion - libcom.org history
:> *The Kronstadt Uprising of 1921 - Ida Mett
:> *The Strategy and Nature of Bolshevism - Daniel and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit
:> From Lenin to Stalin - Serge
:> The New Course - Trotsky
:> Revolution Betrayed - Trotsky
:> *State Capitalism and World Revolution – James
:> *The Marxist-Humanist Theory of State Capitalism - Dunayevskaya
:> The Workers' State, Thermidor, and Bonapartism - Trotsky's Writings, 1934-35
:> In Defense of Marxism - Trotsky
:> The Interregnum - E.H. Carr
:> Socialism in One Country, Vol. 1, 2, 3a, & 3b - E.H. Carr
:> Lenin: All Volumes from 1922-23 (Collected Works)
:> Lenin's Last Struggle – Lewin
:> Twenty Years After - Serge
:> The Third International After Lenin - Trotsky
:> Memoirs of A Revolutionary - Serge
:> Selected Writings on The Opposition in The USSR - Christian Rakovsky
:> Challenge of the Left Opposition, Vol. 1-3 - Trotsky
:> Documents of The 1923 Opposition
:> Platform of the Joint Opposition, 1927
:> Stalin School of Falsification - Trotsky
:> The Case of Leon Trotsky
:> Soviet Russia Masters The Comintern - Gruber
:> Foundations of a Planned Economy, Vol. 1-2 - E.H. Carr
:> Twilight of The Comintern - E.H. Carr
:> Class Struggles in The USSR, Vol. 1 & 2 - Bettelheim
:> Russian Peasants and Soviet Power - Lewin
:> Workers, Society and the Soviet State - W. J. Chase
:> Lenin, Vol. 4 - T. Cliff
:> Stalin - Trotsky
:> Stalin - Deutscher
:> The Time of Stalin - Antonov-Ovsyenko
:> The Fate of The Russian Revolution: Lost Texts of Critical Marxism, Vol. 1 – Matgamna, Ed.
:> State Capitalism in Russia - Tony Cliff
:> The Bureaucratic Revolution - Max Shactman

Forum discussions
This is a short list of some of the more detailed discussions, browsing our history forum or using the searchfunction will find you more.
:> Kronstadt book recommendations (2007)
:> Kronstadt (October 2006)
:> Kronstadt again (December 2006)
:> Culture of the Future - the Proletkult Movement (2007)
:> Lenin's alleged crimes (December 2005)