REDS – Die Roten > Russian Revolution | Russische Revolution
International Socialism 76, Autumn 1997
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Russia’s revolution has remained controversial ever since it took place. One central charge made time and time again by right-wing and liberal critics of the revolution is that the peaceful emergence of a parliamentary regime was frustrated by ty teh Bolshevik revolution of October 1917. Mike Hayne’s rebuttal of this argument is unusual taking the options of Russia’s rulers as its starting point. He emphasises the political choices made by the parties of the right and by the socialist supporters of the government. He concludes by demonstrating how these strategies failed to address the most fundamental concerns of the Russian masses and so propelled them towards adopting a revolutionary solution to the crisis.
[Introduction]
Pre-revolutionary Russia
Caught between war and revolution
The trauma of the February Revolution
The missing base of bourgeois democracy
The Constituent Assembly
The imperatives of war
The battle for landed property
The frontier of control in industry
Russia – one and indivisible
The Kornilov coup
Political choices post-Kornilov
The crisis intensifies
The Bolshevik response
The political failure of the SRs and the Mensheviks
The collapse of SR and Menshevik support
The internal divisions and weakening of the SRs
The internal divisions and weakening of the Mensheviks
The issue of power
The popular movement
Compounding the error
Last updated on 21.2.2002