THE Russian Revolution of October 1917 was a momentous event which opened a new epoch for the world. As we approach the centenary of the October Revolution, it is possible to look back across the course of the entire 20th century and come to a judgment about its historic significance and contemporary relevance.

While it may take a longer time to arrive at definite conclusions about the historical experience of the 74 years of the Soviet Union, as far as the October Revolution itself is concerned, its historic and world wide significance is well established. The Russian Revolution was the first in human history where the exploited classes overthrew and established a State which was not run by the bourgeoisie and landlords. For the first time, socialism came on the agenda of world history as a concrete alternative to capitalism. It is this character of the October Revolution which has a lasting relevance in the contemporary world.

The October Revolution was not just a revolution against Tsarist autocracy. It heralded a new type of revolution which was anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and socialist in character. This had a universal significance. Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not see the revolution in Russia in purely “national” terms but as the precursor of a world socialist revolution.

STRATEGY AGAINST

IMPERIALISM

The October Revolution cannot be understood divorced from the context of imperialism. The original and most important contribution of Lenin lay in developing the Marxist understanding of imperialism and making it part of the revolutionary strategy. While Marx foresaw capitalism developing as a worldwide system, it was only after his death that capitalism grew to the stage of monopoly capitalism. Lenin's superior grasp of Marxist method enabled him to see how imperialism developed as a world wide system due to the inherent requirement of monopoly capitalism and he related it to the concrete strategy and tactics of the world proletarian revolution. Lenin, with his profound understanding of imperialism, was the first to break away from the conventional Marxist understanding that a socialist revolution is possible only in those societies which had undergone the full-fledged development of capitalism. Lenin noted that uneven development of capitalism during the stage of imperialism would create the possibility of a socialist revolution becoming successful in a country even though it may be backward in terms of capitalist development. With imperialism, the entire world was brought under the purview of the world capitalist system and the weakest link in the chain could be broken. It was Lenin who first pointed out that Tsarist Russia represented the weakest link after the advent of the First World War, created by inter-imperialist rivalries.

SOCIALIST

STAGE

The second important link in the strategy of the October Revolution  was the understanding  that the bourgeois democratic revolution can be carried forward under the leadership of the working class to a socialist revolution.  It was Lenin who first advocated the necessity for the working class to take the leadership of the democratic revolution in order to see that there is an uninterrupted transition to the socialist stage.  As Lenin put it, there is no Chinese wall between the completion of the bourgeois democratic revolution and the socialist revolution. It was this understanding adopted by the Bolshevik Party which enabled it to go ahead to strive for a socialist revolution after the February Revolution which overthrew Tsarism. Lenin, in his famous April Thesis after returning to Russia from exile, argued that the February Revolution marked the completion of the bourgeois democratic stage.  The working class should not accept the bourgeois regime installed after the revolution and go forward to organise the working class and the peasantry to capture State power to pave the way for the socialist stage.

Flowing from this creative strategy of the working class taking the leadership to complete the task of the bourgeois democratic revolution and passing on to the socialist stage, the Bolshevik Party adopted two important strategic tasks: the agrarian programme and the national programme.

THE AGRARIAN

PROGRAMME

The agrarian programme was based on the  strategy of the worker-peasant alliance. It is by raising the basic slogan of abolition of landlordism that the vast mass of the Russian peasantry could be mobilised alongside the workers.  In a semi-feudal country developing capitalism, Lenin based the revolutionary strategy on the worker-peasant alliance.  After the February bourgeois democratic revolution, the Bolsheviks advocated the abolition of landlordism and giving land to the tiller.  The slogans of the October Revolution reflected this –  "Peace, land and bread". It was the resolute programme of the Bolsheviks to put an end to the landlord system and the break up of the big estates which rallied the peasantry to the revolutionary cause and made the worker-peasant alliance a reality by the time the October Revolution took place. Till the February Revolution, the Bolshevik party had been mainly a party based on the industrial workers and the growing number of disaffected soldiers in the Tsarist army.  The soldiers whom Lenin called "peasants in uniform" took the Bolshevik message of land to the tiller to the mass of the peasantry when they deserted the army in large numbers and went to the villages. 

THE NATIONAL

QUESTION

Tsarist Russia was a vast multinational empire.  It had over a hundred nationalities yoked together by the Tsarist autocracy. The national question was a major issue for all those who suffered national oppression under the Tsarist empire.  It was the Bolsheviks who first advocated the right of self-determination for all nationalities as part of the struggle to overthrow Tsarism.  Lenin set out the basic task on the national question as: "Complete freedom of secession, the broadest local and (national) autonomy, and elaborate guidelines for the rights of national minorities – this is the programme of the revolutionary proletariat."  The success of the October Revolution was also due to the tactics adopted by the Bolsheviks before and after the October Revolution in ensuring that the rights of the various nationalities was assured.  The union of these various nationalities led to the foundation of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics.

The strategic understanding which underpinned the national question was not confined to Russia.  It is the same approach which was spelt out by Lenin later on the national and colonial question in 1920 in the Communist International.  The October Revolution blazed a new path in integrating the national and colonial question with the strategy and tactics of world revolution.

STATE AND

REVOLUTION

The October Revolution focussed on the capture of State power as a central issue.  Lenin, in `State and Revolution' written on the eve of the October Revolution, stressed on the necessity for the working class to overthrow the State controlled by the ruling classes and creating a new State. Proceeding from Marx's analysis of the Paris Commune of 1871, Lenin made the capture of the State power central to the revolution. It is by this bold theory that Lenin broke with social democracy which confined itself to advocating reforms within the capitalist system. 

REVOLUTIONARY

PARTY

October Revolution also threw up the theory and practice of revolutionary organisation. It led to the concept of a new type of party.  Under the leadership of Lenin, a struggle was waged within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party for the creation of an organisation which could act as a vanguard of the working class. It was in applying this theory of organisation to the practical task of leading the revolutionary struggle in Russia that Lenin elaborated the principle of democratic centralism – a principle based on inner party democracy, strict discipline, criticism and self-criticism and the entire party acting with a centralised line. 

It is this Leninist concept of party organisation which enabled the Bolshevik party to lead the October Revolution by working out the correct strategy and tactics. All subsequent revolutions led by the working class have adopted the revolutionary form of organisation pioneered by the Russian revolution.

IMPACT OF OCTOBER REVOLUTION

WORLDWIDE

The beginning of the 20th century was still the age of empires at the height of their imperial power. The British, the German, the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Japanese empires dominated and divided the world. There were lesser empires too of the Italians, the Portuguese and so on. The October Revolution heralded the end of this old style of colonialism.  Within fifty years of the overthrow of the Tsarist empire, there was hardly any empire left on the face of the earth.

The message of the October revolution and the revolutionary strategy of the worker-peasant alliance it put forth became a powerful impetus for the national liberation struggles in the colonies and semi-colonies. The national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America drew inspiration from the revolution in Russia and the new Soviet State lent its full support to the anti-imperialist struggles of the peoples of the colonies. In India too the worker-peasant revolution in Russia had a big impact on the freedom fighters within the Indian National Congress and the revolutionary groups.

The October Revolution had a powerful impact on the movement for democracy. Fascism was the biggest enemy of democracy and in the struggle against fascism the greatest sacrifices were made by the Soviet Union and the socialist forces worldwide. 20 to 25 million soldiers and citizens of the Soviet Union laid down their lives in the life and death struggle against Nazism.

In the western capitalist States which practiced parliamentary democracy but protected economic autocracies, the working class movement fought and wrested important gains inspired by the socialist system existing in the Soviet Union. It was the pressure of the example of the Soviet Union that led to the introduction of the welfare system with employment, health and pension benefits for the workers in Western Europe.

Finally, the October Revolution became the progenitor of the revolutionary working class movements and the Communist parties around the world. It provided the ideological underpinning for the strategy and tactics which resulted in the successful revolutions in China, Vietnam and Korea in Asia and later Cuba in the Western hemisphere.

RENEW THE STRUGGLE

FOR SOCIALISM

We are observing the centenary of the October Revolution not to just commemorate it as a historical event, rather it is to assert that the revolutionary content of October 1917 is still relevant. Imperialism and capitalism continue to dominate the world. 1917 showed that it is possible to overthrow the shackles of imperialism and capitalism and advance towards socialism.

The Soviet socialist experiment was conducted in specific historical circumstances. Those conditions are not what exist today in the 21st century. However, drawing on the revolutionary legacy of October Revolution, we should be able to renew the struggle for socialism in contemporary times.