Revolutionary Socialism - The Russian Revolution of 1917 and After

The Russian Revolution of 1917 and After

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Many revolutionary socialists argue that the Russian revolution of October 1917 led by Lenin and Leon Trotsky follows the revolutionary socialist model of a revolutionary movement of the immense majority. By contrast, the October revolution is popularly portrayed as a putsch or coup d'état along the lines of Blanquism.

Revolutionary socialists, particularly Trotskyists, argue that the Bolsheviks only seized power as the expression of the mass of workers and peasants, whose desires are brought into being by an organised force - the revolutionary party. Marxists such as Trotskyists argue that Lenin did not advocate seizing of power until he felt that the majority of the population, represented in the soviets, demanded revolutionary change and no longer supported the reformist government of Alexander Kerensky established in the earlier revolution of February 1917:

"Lenin, after the experience of the reconnoiter, withdrew the slogan of the immediate overthrow of the Provisional Government. But he did not withdraw it for any set period of time, for so many weeks or months, but strictly in dependence upon how quickly the revolt of the masses against the conciliationists would grow." —Leon Trotsky, Lessons of October, Chapter Four, The April Conference

For these Marxists, the fact that the Bolsheviks won a majority (in alliance with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries) in the second all-Russian congress of Soviets - democratically elected bodies - which convened at the time of the October revolution, shows that they had popular support of the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, the vast majority of Russian society.

In his pamphlet, The Lessons of October, published in 1923, Trotsky argued that military power lay in the hands of the Bolsheviks before the October revolution was carried out but this power was not used against the government until the Bolsheviks gained mass support.

The mass of the soldiers began to be led by the Bolshevik party after the 'July days' of 1917, and followed only the orders of the Military Revolutionary Committee under the leadership of Trotsky in October (also termed the 'Revolutionary Military Committee' in Lenin's collected works). Yet Trotsky only mobilised the Military Revolutionary Committee to seize power on the advent of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which began on 25 October 1917.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 the Third International was founded. This International became widely identified with Communism, but also defined itself in terms of revolutionary socialism. However, in 1938, Trotskyists formed the Fourth International because they thought that the Third International was lost to Stalinism; this latter International became identified with revolutionary socialism.

Emerging from the Communist International, but critical of the post-1924 Soviet Union, the Trotskyist tradition in Western Europe and elsewhere uses the term 'revolutionary socialism'. For instance, in 1932, the first issue of the first Canadian Trotskyist newspaper, The Vanguard, published an editorial, "Revolutionary Socialism vs Reformism". Today, many Trotskyist groups advocate "revolutionary socialism" as opposed to reformism, and are considered, and consider themselves, "revolutionary socialists". Luxemburgism is another revolutionary socialist tradition.