[R-G] An October for Us, for Russia, and for the Whole World

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/russia041107.html>
An October for Us, for Russia, and for the Whole World
Appeal of 17 Russian Intellectuals and Artists

It is no surprise that the imminent ninetieth anniversary of the
October Revolution in Russia has become the object of widespread
attention.  The events of October 1917 were, indeed, an earthquake
that shook the world, altering its economic, social and cultural
foundations.

Many media sources depict this world-historic phenomenon as a mere
coup d'état, carried out by a handful of conspirators and adventurists
with the help of Western security services.  All sorts of things are
circulated -- outright lies, distortion of the facts, and malicious
slanders about the participants in and leaders of this mighty event.
The old fables to the effect that the "October coup" was provoked by
the "German agent" Lenin and the "Anglo-American spy" Trotsky are
still being repeated, despite having been rejected by distinguished
scholars from various countries.  Meanwhile, the Russian people are
portrayed as unwitting toys in the hands of "revolutionary
extremists", even though the revolution could neither have begun nor
triumphed without the population playing a decisive role.

Not a Conspiracy, But a Social Revolution

The October Revolution was not sparked by conspirators or by agents of
foreign powers.  It was a social earthquake, a hurricane, a tsunami,
which no-one could ever have called forth by mere appeals.  The
revolution arose out of the internal logic of events, when a multitude
of sources of popular discontent converged into a single, all-powerful
stream.  To interpret it as the product of a conspiracy is strange, to
say the least.  If this were true, why was a new governing authority
set up in place of the old in a gigantic country and in a short time,
and why did the Russian people not only support this government, but
defend it with arms in hand during the Civil War?

For some reason, the critics of the "October coup" forget the profound
crisis into which Russia had been plunged by the tsarist monarchy and
the Provisional Government which succeeded it.  Mesmerised by the
slogan, "War until Final Victory!", the authorities refused to take
account of the real needs of the population.  Critics also forget the
spontaneous disintegration of the monarchy on the eve of the
revolution, despite the direct evidence in the form of the endless
intrigues and conflicts within the tsar's court, the military defeats
at the front, and finally, the outright abdication of Nikolai II, the
autocrat and commander-in-chief of the Russian army.  The bourgeois
government that replaced the monarchy also proved impotent, failing to
meet the great challenges of the time -- stopping the war and giving
land to the peasants.

October 1917 marked the culmination of the great Russian social
revolution of the twentieth century.  It was led by revolutionary
social democrats who earlier than others, had recognised the needs and
hopes of ordinary people -- the pressing problems to which the Russian
society of the time required solutions.  Among the leaders, it was of
course Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin and his closest collaborators who played
the key roles.

None of the leaders of the October revolution were flawless, but it is
just as wrong to demonise as to idolise them.  The calumnies that are
heaped on them nowadays have no real basis.  They were not in the
service of anyone, only of their revolutionary ideals.  None of the
earthly temptations, such as money or the other accompaniments of a
philistine prosperity, had any meaning for them.  They measured their
lives against the supreme standard of selfless service to the freedom
and happiness of the oppressed and dispossessed.

Revolutions Cannot be Reduced to Violence

The October Revolution is often termed a "violent overthrow".  Yet the
actual "overthrow" in Petrograd passed off almost without human
victims.  While we are not advocates of violence, we recognise that it
is inevitable at particular stages of historical development, when it
is bound up with the presence of class and national antagonisms.
Revolution is indeed associated in many respects with violence, as was
clearly evident, for example, in the bourgeois revolutions in the
Netherlands, England, France and so forth.  The ending of slavery in
the United States was accompanied by the bloodiest conflict of the
nineteenth century, the American Civil War.  In Russia, the ending of
feudalism was also accompanied by wars and revolutions.

These developments, meanwhile, were not called forth by the
machinations of political intriguers, but by the crisis of the old
system and by the impossibility of solving age-old problems by
evolutionary methods.  People resort to revolutionary violence in
specific circumstances, when the ruling classes, blinded by thirst for
their own enrichment and for the maintenance of their privileges,
neglect the well-being of the population.  The dispossessed classes
then have no choice except to take their fates in their own hands.
This is the main lesson of the Russian Revolution of the twentieth
century.

At the same time, social revolution cannot be reduced to violence, and
especially armed violence.  Its ultimate goal is to lay the basis for
a new world, to create better conditions of life for everyone, not
just the social elites.  In this sense, such revolutions really are
the locomotives of history, accelerating its progress.

What the October Revolution Yielded

The history of different countries has always included numerous
struggles by workers against capitalism.  Only in Russia, however,
have these actions taken on so far-reaching a character.  This made
twentieth-century Russia the epicentre of world development, where all
the main questions of the contemporary world intersected, and where
the fundamental sickness of capitalism, the conflict between labour
and capital, was resolved.  It was only the Russian workers who had
the will and decisiveness to find a way out of this conflict, not only
overthrowing capitalism, but also beginning the transition to a more
progressive social system -- socialism.

Like the Paris Commune before it, the October Revolution placed power
in the hands of the lower orders of society -- the workers and
peasants, and those elements of the intelligentsia that reflected
their interests.  The revolution affirmed the soviets as the most
democratic form of political power, granting the war-weary population
the long-awaited peace and land, along with the opportunity for
national self-determination.  By raising millions of workers to the
point where they could exercise social creativity, the revolution
showed clearly that it is not only the "elites" that are capable of
being the subject and demiurge of history.

As a result of the October Revolution two socially counterposed
systems appeared in the world, a circumstance which did much to
determine the subsequent development of humanity.  Thanks to the
influence of October, national liberation movements arose, and reforms
began in the capitalist system itself.  Under the impact of the
Russian Revolution the colonial empires disintegrated, while
long-outdated monarchical regimes suffered total collapse.

The October Revolution set in motion a supra-national and
supra-confessional unifying idea, the idea of social liberation and
justice.  On the basis of this idea, there arose for the first time in
history a voluntary union of peoples with equal rights, the USSR.  The
ideas and initiatives of October were in accord with the goals and
vital purpose of many titans of science and the arts -- of Timiryazev
and Vernadsky, Platonov and Mayakovsky, Sholokhov and Eisenstein. The
progress toward the socialist future that was instigated by the
October Revolution was actively supported by such outstanding
twentieth-century figures as George Bernard Shaw, Picasso, Einstein
and Tsiolkovsky.

Soviet History Was Diverse

The October Revolution marked the beginning of Soviet history, which
did not take the form of advancing along a smooth Nevsky Prospekt.
Soviet history included both great achievements and appalling
tragedies.  We know very well that after the peaceful transfer of
power to the workers in most of the provinces of Russia, a bloody
civil war began, accompanied by foreign intervention and by White and
Red terror.

Lacking the relevant historical experience, the Soviet authorities
naturally made many mistakes.  One particular error was the policy of
"war communism", a product of the general national crisis.  To their
credit, the Bolsheviks decisively rejected it, and made a deliberate
shift to the New Economic Policy -- the first historical model in
which the principles of socialism and capitalism were successfully
combined.  Many features of NEP were later reproduced in the context
of the development of several European countries and of modern China.
NEP also allowed the wounds of war to be rapidly healed, and
production in the Russian economy to be raised to its pre-war level.

Relying on the experience of the New Economic Policy, Lenin worked out
a plan for the further development of the Soviet state, a plan which
included radical economic and political changes.  These
transformations were aimed above all at achieving breakthroughs in the
development of energy generation, culture and education -- areas which
were decisive in the twentieth century and which remain so in the
twenty-first.  These changes presupposed democratising the political
system through drawing workers into running the state, and through the
renovation of the party.  Here, one of the moves which Lenin projected
was removing Josef Stalin from the post of general secretary.  Even
then, Stalin was manifesting his traits of disloyalty, boorishness and
the abuse of power.

These plans, however, were fated to go unrealised.  While declaring
socialism to be its goal, the authoritarian regime which consolidated
itself after Lenin's death did a great deal that was incompatible with
socialism.  The political liberties of citizens that had been
proclaimed by the revolution were comprehensively violated.  The price
paid for industrialisation and forced collectivisation was exorbitant.
 In sum, the popular power of the initial years of the revolution
degenerated into rule by the bureaucracy and its leader Stalin.  We
consider the massive Stalinist repressions, along with the violation
of the rights of the individual and of whole nationalities in the
USSR, to have been a crime.  All this discredited the ideals of the
revolution and of socialism.

While acknowledging these facts, we do not accept scholarly-sounding
lies and stupefyingly one-sided propaganda with regard to the whole of
Soviet history.  This history was diverse; within it, democratic and
bureaucratic tendencies engaged in conflict with and replaced one
another.  Hence, the freedoms of the NEP years were replaced by
Stalinist totalitarianism, which in turn gave way to the Khrushchev
"thaw".  Later, the Brezhnev authoritarianism was replaced by
perestroika, which proclaimed as its goal the creation of a humane,
democratic socialism.

The history of every country is subject to argument and debate.  The
cruelties of the British and French colonial wars, and of slavery in
the US, were scarcely better than the Soviet gulag.  However, this did
not negate the social and cultural achievements of these countries.
Why then should such achievements be denied in the case of the Soviet
people, who achieved a great victory over fascism, created an
inimitable culture and literature, set up a broadly accessible system
of social welfare for the population, and were the pioneers of space
travel?  It must not be forgotten that October unleashed an
unprecedented creative energy.  It set in train the founding by masses
of people of a new society; it brought to realisation many of the
ideas of internationalism; and it acquainted the formerly most
oppressed layers of Russian society with the heights of national and
world culture.  Nor should one strike out from Soviet history the
enthusiasm of the masses that was demonstrated in the mastering of the
newest achievements of science and technology.  The revolutionary
romanticism and heroism of millions of Soviet citizens was clearly
manifested here.

Why the Soviet Model Collapsed

It should be noted that we have a range of views on the nature of the
social system that existed in the USSR.  We are agreed, however, that
neglect or rejection of the principles of popular power,
internationalism, justice and humanism that were born out of the
October Revolution will sooner or later result in catastrophe for a
society that is building socialism.  This is what happened in the
Soviet Union.

The fetters placed on the creative initiative of the population under
the totalitarian regime dramatically restricted the opportunities for
the growth of the Soviet economy.  A shortage of consumer goods was
one of its characteristic features.  As a result, we did not manage to
raise the level of well-being of the working people to that found in
the world's developed countries, and this served as one of the causes
of the downfall of the Soviet system.  Another vital cause was the
lack of real economic and political democracy, which became especially
intolerable when technological and information revolution was
unfolding in the world.  One of the consequences of this was the
complete alienation of the bureaucratic authorities and the ruling
party from the workers.  The attempt to overcome this alienation
during perestroika did not yield the required result.  In sum, the
collapse of the USSR and of the Soviet government became a reality.
This was seized upon by the political forces which dissolved the USSR
and directed Russia along the road of installing a savage oligarchic
capitalism, marked by mass joblessness, falling living standards for
the population, profound social stratification, rampant nationalism
and growing crime.

The failure of the Soviet model of society does not signify that the
ideals of October were false.  Just as the ideas of Christianity were
not to blame for the practices of the Inquisition, Stalinist
totalitarianism could not destroy the ideals of the revolution.
Socialism as a historic cause cannot be brought to realisation all at
once.  A new generation of young people is now appearing, people who
do not accept capitalism as a system. There is every reason to hope
that this generation will be able to breathe new life into the ideals
of the October Revolution.

What the Greatness of Modern Russia Depends on

The ideas of the October Revolution united not only proletarian
internationalists, but also supporters of strengthening and developing
the Russian state.  These ideas opened the way for people who wanted
to bring the national culture of Russia to the country's borderlands
and to other countries -- for people who shared in patriotic
sentiments and who were prepared to defend the Soviet homeland from
potential aggressors.  The strength of this feeling was shown clearly
during the Great Patriotic War, when the sovereignty of the USSR and
the conquests of October were defended.

The October Revolution showed the greatness of spirit of the Russian
people, who proposed an alternative, non-capitalist road to national
development.  To view the revolution as a conspiracy by extremist
forces is also dangerous because it provides grist to the mill of the
anti-Russian interpretation of history according to which Russia,
because of its unpredictability, is said to pose a constant threat to
the world.  From Russia, adherents of this view maintain, only
unfavourable developments are to be expected; hence, the country has
to be kept under tight rein, and its natural wealth, its energy
potential and intellectual resources, have to be controlled and
exploited.

Modern-day Russia needs to soberly assess such provocative statements,
and to hold firmly to its own course.  Russia's greatness does not lie
in the blind copying of foreign examples, still less in national
conceit with regard to other peoples, but in relying on the talents
and creative strengths of its own population, as well as in the
thorough assimilation of the knowledge and experience developed by
world civilisation and culture.

Russia is capable of once again becoming a great power, whose
adversaries will be forced to take it into account.  But this will
only happen if the country overcomes the poverty and deep social
stratification of its population, qualitatively improves the lives of
its citizens, broadens their social and democratic rights, and retains
everything that is best from its historic past.

* * *

The historic importance of the October Revolution is difficult to
overestimate.  Its positive consequences are obvious.  A third of
humanity travelled part of the way along the road which the revolution
opened up.  Many countries are continuing this progress today, drawing
lessons from the defeats and tragedies of the past.  October proved
that another, more just world is possible.  A range of social and
political forces, countries and peoples, are now striving for this new
world.  This is shown by a new wave of revolutionary transformations,
manifesting itself with particular force in a number of countries of
Latin America and Asia.

The October Revolution was and remains our fate, and we cannot reject
this crucially important part of Russian history.  Always and
everywhere there have been mistakes, and the great revolutions of the
past did not avoid them either.  Nevertheless, the anniversaries of
these revolutions are celebrated in all countries, including at the
state level.  Only in Russia is this not the case.  In Russia, the
denigration of the country's revolutionary past continues.

On the eve of the ninetieth anniversary of the October Revolution, we
raise our voices against this practice.  The people must have their
revolutionary holiday and the truth about October returned to them.
It must not be forgotten that we belong to a country whose history
includes its own great revolution.  We can and should be proud of it.

1.  Arslanov V., Dr. of art, professor, Russian Academy of Education

2.  Bagaturiya G. Dr. of philosophy, professor, Lomonosov Moscow State
University

3.  Buzgalin A., Dr. of economics, professor, Lomonosov Moscow State University

4.  Dzarasov S., Dr. of economics, Russian Academy of Science

5.  Galkin A., Dr. of history, professor, Russian Academy of Science
Istyagin L., Dr. of history, Russian Academy of Science

6.  Kelle V. Dr. of philosophy, Russian Academy of Science

7.  Kolganov A., Dr. of economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University

8.  Loginov V., Dr. of history, professor, Russian Academy of Education

9.  Medvedev R., Dr. of history

10.  Rudyk E., Dr. of economics, Russian Academy of Labor

11.  Serebrykova Z., Dr. of history

12.  Shatrov M., writer

13.  Slavin B., Dr. of philosophy, professor, Moscow State Pedagogical
University

14.  Smolin O., Dr. of philosophy, professor, MP

15.  Voeikov M., Dr. of economics, Russian Academy of Science

16.  Vorobiev A., academician, Russian Academy of Science

This article was first published in Альтернативы on 7 October 2007.

--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>