A SLICE OF REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY- THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

BOOK REVIEW

THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION: CENTRAL COMMITTEE MINUTES OF THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC LABOR PARTY, AUGUST 1917-FEBRUARY 1918, PLUTO PRESS, LONDON, 1974

Those readers who have understood the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 through the prism of Stalinism will be surprised to find in this book of the minutes of the leading body of the Bolshevik Party not the monolithic party of Western thought but a lively and contentious party even at the height of the struggle for revolutionary power. And if one really thinks about it all the great revolutions of history display that same dynamic. I would argue that revolutions can not succeed otherwise. That said, this is not a book for beginners but for those who know something about the Russian Revolution. For those who do not Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution- Volume Two can help up until the October Revolution itself. For the period from October 1917 to February 1918 E. H. Carr’s three volume set titled The Bolshevik Revolution is invaluable.

As background, the beginning of the period under review is a time when the Bolshevik’s were just coming out of a period, known in history as the “July Days”, when the major leaders, including Lenin, were in hiding, laying low, or in jail and Bolshevik publications had been suppressed. The period continues through the abortive coup attempt by General Kornilov, the various attempts by the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries to crib some non-Soviet democratic institutions together in order to put off the convening of a Constituent Assembly, the fight for the Bolshevik seizure of power, and in the aftermath the fight to end Russian participation in World War I and make peace with the Germans.

As is to be expected not one of the above-mentioned events was without its effect on Bolshevik policy and led to the creation of different factions and tendencies reflecting different moods, constituencies and personalities within the party. The most famous, and for today’s militant’s the most important, are the fight within the party over the question of the seizure of power and the more intense fight over how to and on what terms to end Russia’s participation in the war. To a great extend these various tendencies in one form or another existed for the next ten years after the revolution until the final Stalinist clampdown. Of course, many of the leading personalities did not have long-term consistent policies. For example, Bukharin a leader of the self-styled Left- Communists in the fight over capitulation to German peace demands argued for revolutionary war but later proved to be a key ally of Stalin on the question on the rightist policy of ‘socialism in one country’. If one wants to get a glance at the way revolutionary policy in the heat of revolution is made here’s a good place to start.