Workers' Liberty

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.

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

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).

“I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence and enjoy it to the full.”
Leon Trotsky, April 1940

A dayschool for new activists

For various reading about the Russian revolution, click here.

For a downloadable leaflet, click here.

12-5.30pm, Saturday 1 September, The Lucas Arms, Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross (Kings Cross rail or tube)

By Larissa Reissner

By Max Shachtman

The 1917 revolution was one of the greatest democratic moments in history.

In defence of the October Revolution: Kabul 1978 and Petrograd 1917. Was the Russian Revolution a 'coup'? By Sean Matgamna (August 2004). Download pdf or read articles in html below.

By Max Shachtman, Hal Draper, C L R James, Leon Trotsky and others, with an introduction by Sean Matgamna. 608 pages. £16.99 post free. Buy online

- or send a cheque for £16.99, payable to AWL, to AWL, PO Box 823, London SE15 4NA.

A collection of articles on solidarity with workers in Eastern Europe before the revolutions of 1989, and on those revolutions and the prospects they opened up

SELDOM does history record the former head of a government, deposed by social revolution, facing up in an open debate 34 years later to a modern representative of the same ideological current which swept him from power. This was the situation in the February 8 [1951] debate at the University of Chicago where Max Shachtman confronted Alexander Kerensky, the head of the régime which was overthrown by the great Russian Revolution.

By Sean Matgamna.

19O5: strikes broke out in December 1904 and January 1905. On 9 January workers marching to the Tsar's palace lo appeal for his help were shot down. The strike wave grew.

An article by Trotsky from 1940

By John O'Mahony

AS noted in the accompanying summary of the debate, Kerensky spent much of his time working over scraps of quotations from Lenin — from different periods, contexts, and articles indiscriminately, — la Boris Shub — under the heading of a discussion of the Russian Revolution and democracy.

By Max Shachtman

THE Independent Socialist League does not subscribe to any doctrine called Leninism. It does not have an official position on the subject and I am pretty certain that nobody could get the League to commit itself officially on a term which has been so varyingly and conflictingly defined as to make discussion of it more often semantic than ideological or political.

THE FATE OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY.

When, after Korniloff’s adventure, the paramount parties on the Soviets made an attempt to make amends for their previous attitude of indulgence towards the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, they demanded the speedy convocation of the Constituent Assembly.