On this day November 7th in 1917, the October Revolution began in Russia when the Bolsheviks initiated an armed insurrection in Petrograd, seizing the Winter Palace and dissolving the Provisional Government in a coup with minimal violence. The name “October Revolution” comes from the fact that the revolution began on October 25th in the dating convention of the time.
The October Revolution was the culmination of popular sentiment directed against the provisional government which was achieving little for the majority of people to change Russia from its Tsarist past. In particular, the unelected body continued to participate in the very unpopular First World War opting in July for participation in further military campaigns which provoked outrage amongst soldiers and workers alike.
After the February Revolution which established the Provisional Government, during the period of the Dual Power (February-October 1917), the Bolsheviks gradually gained in strength and influence especially in the soviets and in the army after July. The Bolshevik slogan ‘Peace, Bread and Land’ summarised their programme and was increasingly popular. They established their headquarters in the Smolny Institute. This was a former girls’ convent school which also housed the Petrograd Soviet. The Provisional Government now headed by Kerensky, was still officially in power and under pressure from the nobility and industrialists, Kerensky was persuaded to take decisive action against the Bolsheviks. Thus, on 22nd October he ordered the arrest of the Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC). The government was aware of the unstated purpose of the MRC, established on 12th October and led by Trotsky. The purpose of this committee, created by the Bolsheviks within the Petrograd soviet, was to prepare for armed insurrection against the government. The next day, 23rd October, the government attempted to close down the Bolshevik newspapers and cut off the telephones to the Smolny Institute. However, soldiers and Red Guards ultimately thwarted all Kerensky’s plans.
Following this, a long debate took place at a secret meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee. At this meeting the main issue centred around Lenin’s proposal that the Bolsheviks should take action before the elections for the Constituent Assembly; in other words, the socialist revolution should proceed without delay. Zinoviev and Kamenev dissented, hence the importance of the MRC which had already deployed commissars to all garrison units. In essence this was both a measure of defence and, at the same time, a preparation for attack
Thus, orders were given for the Bolsheviks to occupy the railway stations, the telephone exchange and the State Bank. In the early morning of October 25th, armed workers started occupying key points of Petrograd, in conjunction with pro-Bolshevik sailors pulling into the city’s harbour. Power stations were seized and strategic bridges were held. These instances produced very little resistance and were not met with violence.
A blank shot from the Cruiser Aurora in the evening signalled the siege of the Winter Palace, which was to be the final offensive of the revolution. Crowds of Red Guards and insurgents surrounded the palace and secured entry, leading to the surrender of the remaining government officials in the early hours of the morning. Members of the Provisional Government that had not already fled the capital were imprisoned. Kerensky had managed to escape from the city.
Crowds of Red Guards and insurgents surrounded the palace and secured entry, leading to the surrender of the remaining government officials.
The revolution itself was brief, being almost entirely peaceful in its execution. Posters were distributed across the city declaring that “the Provisional Government is overthrown” and “Long live the Revolution of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants!” Lenin emerged from the revolution as one of its most notable strategists and a potential leader in the new era.
On 26th October 1917, the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets met and handed over power to the Soviet Council of People’s Commissars. Lenin was elected chairman and other appointments included Trotsky (Foreign Affairs). Two decrees were adopted at the first session: the Decree on Peace, which moved to start negotiations to withdraw from the war in order to bring about “a just and democratic peace,” and the Decree on Land, which moved to transfer land away from landowners and the church to peasant committees. ‘Peace, Bread and Land’ was thus transformed from a slogan into a living reality. In addition, the Council of People’s Commissars nationalised the banks and workers control of factory production was introduced. The army was demobilised and in December and the Soviet Government announced that it planned to seek an armistice with Germany. In December 1917, Trotsky led the Russian delegation at Brest-Litovsk to negotiate peace terms with representatives from Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Thus it was that the full Bolshevik programme, as outlined in Lenin’s ‘April Theses’ was implemented within three months of the successful socialist revolution.
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I might go to a “debate night” next week about “muh idpol bad” is there anything i can read that can help me?
Proudhun tried that and went full racist. Honestly reading up on how fascism also has recuperated origins in pre international split socialism will make you more educated than 90 percent of people on where going nativist leads. (Lilly white movement is also something to check)
I mean history of exclusion of black workers and garment unions radicalism in the 1800s-10s, compared to full hogs of afl (or cio, who was the dipshit one before merger?). No universal solidarity
no right to speakyou’ll get divided and conqueredBut, in any case, argument is solidaristic one: if you can throw one minority under the bus, you will throw all of them sooner or later. Struggling racist car mechanic has more in common with struggling trans barista (or whoever they caricature): in rent payments, family health emergencies, police fucking them over, than they do with murdoch. They don’t struggle together for their rights tho and thus can’t see common ground, and perceive reality through media. Sans that struggle it would be eternal problem
And if a person can’t take some image of idealized worker in hard hat, imagine their circumstances, and then substitute whte men for black/roma/trans man/woman, and not see how it becomes even worse, they are idk what.
There’s some thin line in leftist critiques of idpol.
Like, there’s the critique that the point of common intersection is still class. The “moment” of oppression is poverty. I agree with this.
But then you inevitably get the brain worms that therefore identity doesn’t matter, or “merely serves to divide the working class” which is obviously wrong, or only very slightly correct and less correct than it is wrong.
Yea of course the material basis of oppression is poverty and lack of power, the moment of oppression is class, but why are black trans women so heavily overrepresented at the very bottom of that hierarchy?
I assume framework is leftist one from the jump tbh (who would do debate with the right over that), and that’s why i so heavily weigh class in my argument. Class can unite, because they have roughly same material (in baser sense) interests. They don’t have same identity interests, they can’t unite them aside from morality, and there you get torpedo-ed into myriads morality and ethics frameworks.
A point of inner debate for me is how capitalism generates those identity divides.
Like, the modern concept of race emerges from the dialectic of slavery and Christianity, so capitalism produces the identity. Ideology follows material.
A high income liberal who studied at a whatever university isn’t nearly as threatened by mass immigration as a low-skill factory worker and so can afford to not be racist.
But where does it get you? Latinos are being deported, not whites.
Yes the “perfect” answer here is to build worker solidarity between white and Latino workers but that seems like a refusal to own the issue rather than a solution.
Identity is generated by ideology but it’s an example of how ideology manifests as material reality.
I mean, egotistical argument (for racism against migratory workers specifically, trans are too small of a group): if this workers were legal, they couldn’t pay them less than a native worker and/or “so do you agree we should start with hanging bosses hiring and underpaying them to get at the root of the problem. As long as they can underpay them, they will threaten you with them”.
Woman role and identity is more multifaceted, cause it had 10 k years to evolve, with wildly different result in different societies and modes of production.