90 Years of the October Revolution

[fredbergen]

The Russian October Revolution of 1917 was the seminal event of the 20th century. The workers’ conquest of power led by the Bolshevik Party of V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky put an end to World War I and shook the old order from the imperial centers of Europe to the farthest reaches of their colonial “possessions.” The revolution continued to be key to world events for the next three-quarters of a century, long after Stalin and his bureaucratic henchmen had seized power and betrayed the internationalist program of Red October. The counterrevolution that destroyed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics along with the Soviet-bloc bureaucratically deformed workers states during the period 1989-92 represented a world-historic defeat for the proletariat of the entire planet. Yet contrary to the imperialist ideologues, communism is not dead, we have not entered a “new world order” of peace and prosperity, and we have not reached the “end of history” – far from it. Nor, as a host of self-proclaimed socialists declare, have we been thrown back to the period before October. On the contrary, basing ourselves on the program and analyses of Lenin and Trotsky, in order to lead the revolution to victory, this time on world scale, a central task facing revolutionaries today is to draw the lessons both of the victory of 1917 and of the defeat that opened the post-Soviet period. 90 Years of the October Revolution (http://www.internationalist.org/90yearsoctoberrevolution0711.html)