revolution

A letter to intellectuals who deride revolutions in the name of purity

Revolutions do not happen suddenly, nor do they immediately transform a society. A revolution is a process, which moves at different speeds whose tempo can change rapidly if the motor of history is accelerated by intensified class conflict. But, most of the time, the building of the revolutionary momentum is glacial, and the attempt to transform a state and society can be even more slow. Leon Trotsky, sitting in his Turkish exile in 1930, wrote the most remarkable study of the Russian Revolutio[...]

The Russian Revolution Is Still Relevant Today

Brinda Karat with Aleida Guevara March, veteran of Cuba’s medical brigades and daughter of Che. The upcoming 7th November will mark the 100 years of the Russian Revolution. The Russian Revolution changed the course of history in many ways. In what is remarked as one of the most significant events of the 20th century, the ordinary Russians took control of the stage to overthrow the provisional government and established a rule of the proletariat. Various organizations around the world have o[...]

The Revolution of Ordinary People: Russia, 1917

Lenin did not make the Revolution in 1917. Nor did Stalin. Nor Trotsky. They each provided crucial leadership, with Lenin’s role being essential from April 1917 onwards. But they were part of a tidal wave that had first risen in 1905, crested and then rose again during the Great War. This tidal wave was lifted by ordinary people – factory workers, landless peasants, housewives, soldiers, students and those who barely found the means to survive. It is they who made the Revolution happen in [...]

100th Anniversary of the Working Women’s Day (1917)

Two days before International Women’s Day in 1917, the Petersburg Interdistrict Committee, largely populated by Bolsheviks, sent out a call for the widest participation in the March 8th march. The temperature seemed high. Soldiers on the front wilted in poor morale as the Great War turned out to be anything but for them. Peasants and workers suffered economic chaos, as the Tsarist bureaucracy seemed incapable of solving the basic problems of hunger and insecurity. There was little expectatio[...]

Vas Bien, Fidel.

In 1999, LeftWord Books – only a few months old – decided that one of our early titles must be from Fidel Castro. Castro had delivered two speeches that year, one at the University of Venezuela and the other at a conference on culture and development in Havana. These were incredible speeches – vintage Castro – laying out his assessment of the world through the experiences of Cuba and through the emergence of what he called ‘imperialist globalisation’. One of the key elements of Castr[...]