On the 90th Anniversary of Great October

By RG

Ninety years ago on Nov. 7, 1917 (Oct. 24 by the old Julian calendar), the Bolshevik party overthrew the Duma and bourgeois government led by Kerensky. All power passed to the Soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers. By the next day the Decree and Peace and the Decree on Land had been passed. Soon followed the nationalization of banks, factories and church properties, the raising of wages, state control of foreign trade and the repudiation of foreign debt.

So auspiciously began the Great October Socialist Revolution that sounded the dawn of the era of socialist revolution and national liberation. It is fitting that with the start of the last decade of the century starting with Great October, we take this opportunity to celebrate the great victories ushered in by the Russian revolution, and remember with great bitterness the betrayals brought on by modern revisionism.

With the victory of the Russian revolution, for the first time in the history of humanity, the downtrodden masses of workers and peasants were able to liberate a whole country from the clutches of bourgeois and feudal exploiters and oppressors. One eighth of the world’s landmass, around 177 million people were spared the agonies and horrors of feudalism and capitalism, free to build the society of their own choosing. Year after year industry and agriculture grew, real wages expanded, previously unreachable goods became commonplace, cultural enrichment, shortening of work time and increased enjoyment of work, and the growth of humane relations between individuals and nations! Needless to say, were the blessings of the Russian revolution left merely to the countries formerly in the Tsarist Russian empire, Great October already would have been one of the greatest events in human history.

But it was more! It was the Soviet Republic of workers and peasants that destroyed German fascism, that destroyed the reserves of the imperial Japanese army, and most importantly brought Marxism from the isolation of Europe to the populous East. Without the victorious Russian revolution, there would have been no victory over fascism! Without the victorious Russian revolution, there would have been no victorious Chinese revolution! Without the victorious Russian and Chinese revolutions, there would have been no decolonization of the billions in oppressed nations. At the highpoint of the era of socialist revolution and national liberation begun by Great October, one third of the world had been liberated from capitalist and feudal exploitation and oppression, with most of the oppressed nations freed from direct colonial rule.

Who can forget those heady days! Worldwide liberation had actually become a real possibility! Free food and free housing had come within sight! Alas we have leaped back into barbarism.

What happened? We are now back to a single capitalist world market, of the oppression of nations, and peoples, of the horrors of starvation, degradation and war. What happened? How could so much have been so lost? Betrayal and subversion I tell you! Modern revisionism, that wolf wrapped in sheep’s clothing, confused, and demobilized the workers and peasants, and step-by-step rolled back all the gains of revolution. The break up of collective farms, the transfer of means of production out of state control, the reintroduction of enterprise profits, the emasculation of the central plan, in sum, the expansion of capitalist relations, though camouflaged as socialist improvements, the bourgeois seizure of power from within the highest reaches of the worker’s party and the reestablishment of capitalism.

The Soviet Union, the People’s democracies, national liberation movements, worker’s parties, all done in by modern revisionism. Proletarian internationalism replaced by bourgeois nationalism; trust in the masses replaced by bureaucratic methods of work; vigour with exhaustion; hope with demoralization. Revolutionary mass movements replaced by reformist sects. All because of modern revisionism.

On this ninetieth anniversary of Great October, let us remember the great victories ushered in by the Russian revolution; but let us most of all bitterly remember the great defeats brought on by modern revisionism. In these next ten years as the century brought on by Great October comes to a close, let us rectify our work and return to the revolutionary principles of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. If we fail to begin a new century, let the proletariat reject us!

FOR THE REBIRTH OF USSR!




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