Hundred years later
What and how will we discuss one hundred years after 1917?
The historical movement which Lenin and his friends decided and staged was first criticised for putschism. Are we going to waste breath to “defend” a revolution that was backed by an organised working class? Does the October Revolution, which founded a brand new order and sustained it for decades, need wasting breath for?
It is utterly nonsense to borrow the rules of seizing the political power from an order that is to be overthrown, that has deserved so for a million times. Yes, the Revolution is an authoritative action and this action gains its legitimacy from the validity of the class struggle. Those who decided to destroy the state of balance that was emerged from the tsarist regime but couldn’t have dared to settle the score with the exploitative regime that designated the tsardom; would they have pursued the balances? They entered the Winter Palace carrying not only guns in their arms but also the public anger on their backs, accumulated against the war, the famine, the exploitation and the poverty.
Hinging on the lively, dynamic, countrywide and promising Soviet power, Bolsheviks abolished the Constituent Assembly which relied on unorganised voters rather than the organised people and by its very structure, was more likely to become home for a counter-revolution rather than resisting it. Are we going to celebrate the hundredth anniversary by prompting the critics with answers?
Can you analyse the civil war through a lens of democracy? Is it possible to say “but you were too authoritarian” to those succeeded another revolution that is the construction of an industry in an ocean of peasants by central planning? They got ready for fascism and war which were blatantly approaching. When they repulsed the enemy that was violently attacking, the way for socialist power was opened in a part of Europe. Will we discuss whether the role of the Red Army in these revolutions was large or not? As if there big or little in overthrowing the exploitative classes and Nazi compradors!
Is it possible to consider criticising the deficiencies in internal democracy of a party that leaded the people under such a heavy siege and attacks even as a joke?
Is it worth dealing with such apolitical and ahistorical critics a hundred years later?
Lenin is the revolution; he is the party that made the revolution. Is it possible to think the Soviet Union without Lenin; is socialism possible without a revolution?
As for Stalin, he is “socialism in one country”, industrialisation and the Great Patriotic War. By thinking the Soviet Union without Stalin, one can only end up with an unindustrialised, unplanned and occupied, dead country…
Elimination within this history cannot be done. There is no other way for socialism than “looking from inside” at the working class power that was founded a hundred years ago. Especially after witnessing during the last juncture of the Soviets that elimination and defamation mean liquidation and counter-revolution…
Throughout this history, private property was eradicated. Poverty was replaced by a world’s leading industrial society. Women were equalised with men. All the compulsory social requirements became accessible for the price of a peanut. Doors of theatre, ballet and opera were opened to the working people. Museums were moved in the Moscow underground. Ignorance was replaced by further education. The peoples freed from the tsarist prison obtained both their mother tongues and the Soviet citizenship. In this country, racism and enmity against socialism were prohibited; it was banned to demand exploitation…
The best thing to do, if you ask me, is to remove those problem-hunters who are chasing gaps and lacks of this great social revolution off the agenda in honour of the hundredth year.
Gorbachev and Yeltsin are registered clowns; let them go. One hundred years later, is it Bukharin whose legacy remains or is it Trotsky? Or what can the humanity learn from Khrushchev and Solzhenitsyn?
As for the Soviet experiment and the October Revolution, they teach us how the exploiters will be overthrown, how can unemployment be “banned” and how science and art rose up the power.
The problem-hunters attempted to despise this history as “20th century socialism” after the Soviet Union had been dissolved. As the world was getting stuck into the darkness of the Middle Ages and the dirt of militarism, what did the liberal leftists of the 21st century find in their circles, where they were looking for root and inspiration for themselves, other than the lie world of neoliberalism and the globalisation ideology? The world has turned into a labour hell and they are babbling on the inefficiency of central planning. As the 21st century is witnessing worldwide gang warfares, theories on the claim that socialist countries too were seeking hegemony and were ambitious for an empire are being blown up.
On the hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution, these should not occupy our agenda.
October Revolution is the actualisation of our history, the working class history of struggle for socialism and revolution, which is equivalent to an exciting thesis, a consistent and highly strong theory and heroic trials. We may feel sorry at the utmost for those who are ignoring this fact, bypassing it, urging people to forget about it or defaming it. The healthy and revolutionary method can only be positioning ourselves within this history and being founded on this legacy.
We wouldn’t create a legend; we don’t need any in the first place. Also, we cannot create a legend; because we sustained a defeat. Apparently, we weren’t strong enough.
However, the ground we are standing on and the value we will protect today is the October Revolution.
October Revolution and those built up on it in the past are a huge source, an informative experience and a unique treasure.
A defeat? Yes, we had one.
What is to be done? We will resume from where we left.