Workers' Liberty

[This is part of a polemic about the Stalinist PDP led army coup in Afghanistan, in April 1978, with "J-J" (Jack Conrad/John Bridge/John Chamberlain) of the Weekly Worker Group "CPGB").

It is 20 years since the destruction of the Berlin Wall by the people of then divided Germany signalled that Russia’s control over Eastern Europe was collapsing. Russia had held Eastern Europe in a brutal grip for four and a half decades, since the end of the Second World War.

“But socialism is dead, darling!” This was one response on the street to the front page of Socialist Organiser with the headline: ‘Stand up for socialism’ And there were many similar responses, sad as well as gleeful.

The erstwhile rulers of the Stalinist system — which they said was the realisation of socialism — are now working openly for the restoration of capitalism. So are most of those they rule, and in the first place the working class.

AND WHERE WERE JACOB SVERDLOV'S SONS?

Sverdlov killed the bloody Tsar,
He signed the warrant for it;
So when they struck his statue down
The Tsarists cheered who saw it:

Leon Trotsky's "The New Course" and Max Shachtman's "The Struggle for the New Course".

OCTOBER 1917
Who fears to praise Red Seventeen?
Who quails at Lenin’s name?
When liars jeer at Trotsky's fate
Who adds his, “Theirs the blame”?

PRAGUE, NOVEMBER '89
"It's a pity I'm so old", the woman said,
"But still I'm glad. Oh, I'm glad, I'm glad!"
And sad, like one who knows she'll soon be dead.

Can socialism be built through tyranny? Max Shachtman on Isaac Deutscher's "Trotsky". Download as pdf (see "attachment")

THE CURSE OF TROTSKY

Two things I cursed are gone out of the world

DeValera's sealed green Catholic arcadia,
Small frail redout of revenant Gaels: epigones

COLLAGE FOR A BLEAK APRIL

[The fourth part of this is
also listed separately as:
"What Is To Be Done?"]

SYPHILIS
(After reading Isaac Babel's
story "Guy De Maupassant")

De Maupassaunt died at forty four
Crawling on hands and knees,
Eating his own shit,
His syphyllitic brain raddled,

KARL MARX IN AUGUST
(To the tune of "Joe Hill")

I dreamed I saw Karl Marx last night,
I saw him standing there,
His hair jet black, no longer white,
Fierce eyes, with a bold young stare:

We fight the sea at Kronstadt

Across the frozen, hostile, misted sea

For the whole article online, click here. For part 3 of it published in three parts, read on.

For the whole article online, click here. For part 1 of it published in three parts, read on.

Russian and East European Stalinism collapsed in 1989-91. It was replaced not, as socialist had hoped, by working class rule, but by the capitalism of the state-looting oligarchs.

On the ninetieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution it is important to recognise that it was more than a Russian event. It swept across the entire Russian Empire with the long oppressed nations making their bid for freedom. The most important challenge was in “Russia’s Ireland” – Ukraine. To mark the anniversary of the proclamation of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic ninety years ago on November 22, 1917 this article examines the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-21, which was pivotal in deciding the fate not only of the Russian Revolution but the entire European socialist Revolution.

This is the 90th anniversary of the Russian workers’ revolution of November 1917. Since the fall in 1991 of the Stalinist regime which eventually overwhelmed the workers’ government and made a counter-revolution in the 1920s, more has been available to researchers in the west. Some new books have advanced our understanding of the revolution. None, however, can match the exciting exposition of the course of 1917, in Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution

The Russian revolutionary, Alexandra Kollontai, is best known for her organisational work among Russian working class women prior to, and immediately after, the 1917 revolution and her writings on sexual morality and the family. She has become better known largely as the result of feminist interest in her life and career.

Download whole pamphlet as pdf (12MB). The pamphlet was published in November 1987, on the 70th anniversary of the 1917 revolution.

1. For a timeline of the revolution, click here.

2. For a short summary article from We stand for workers' liberty, click here.

3. For a PDF of the AWL pamphlet 1917: how the workers made a revolution (published in 1987 on the 70th anniversary of the revolution), click here. (Warning: this is quite a large file, 12MB.) 32 pages long, this is an excellent overview, also including articles on less well-known issues connected to the revolution such as the national question, women's liberation and black liberation.

1917

February (March by the western calendar): workers' demonstrations in Russia overthrow the Tsar (king). Prince Lvov leads Provisional Government; Petrograd workers set up a "Soviet" (workers' councils).