100 years of Russian Revolution: Bolsheviks were no ordinary people
The “spectre of Communism is haunting” the world, frightening the ruling classes, businessmen, corporations, capitalists, liberals, conservatives, believers, atheists and petty bourgeoisie leftists, who — for hundred years — did their best to let people ignore the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, as ignorance is one of the biggest weapons in the hands of capitalism. They were, however, unable to remove the year 2017 from the calendar. With no other option at hand, they turned their guns loaded with allegations, slander, slang, abuse and taunts on Bolsheviks, October Revolution and Vladimir Lenin blaming them for ruining Russia.
Now it is a fad, national responsibility and moral duty of the bourgeoisie to not miss a single stone throwing opportunity against Bolsheviks.
In Russia, the battlefield of the Bolshevik Revolution, the newfangled Russian elites seem more frightened than others in the world. Since long, the so-called Victory Parade in Moscow has been conducted on November 7 every year to avoid and ignore the anniversaries of the Bolshevik Revolution.
This extreme flow of criticism proves the Bolshevik ideology is alive as a threat to capitalism, despite a lapse of more than two decades since the disintegration of USSR.
Those who make the most common and fashionable allegations of the Bolshevik Revolution being premature in a backward country, blaming Lenin for the deaths and famines and of bypassing the evolutionary processes, always get enraged upon cross-examination in the light of many issues including the following questions.
1) What was the alternative for the Bolshevik Revolution in the early 20th century when Russians along with Europeans were suffering from the destructions caused by World War I, especially the miseries of hunger, death and collapse of infrastructure?
2) Why did the provisional government continue the war and whose war was it?
3) Why is the aggression of the foreign countries ignored when discussing 1917?
4) Should the Bolshevik ideology or their historic revolution be condemned only because power fell in the hands of alleged autocrats later on?
5) Why is Lenin’s masterpiece blacked out in 2017?
The Congress report of the Communist party of South Africa, released just before Nelson Mandela assumed power, criticised Bolsheviks for being adventurous. The Russian Left other than Bolsheviks too always criticised the "premature revolution". Lenin was termed the head of a sect by Waldemar Gurian in his book Bolshevism, published by the University of Notre Press Indiana 1952 and 1963.
The pages of Russian history from 1855 to 1917 reveal a trend of resistance against tyranny since the abolition of serfdom (slavery of peasants) by Alexander II through Emancipation Reforms. The ruling elite had to bring in the reforms as they were well aware that “it is better to liberate the peasants from above than to wait until they have won their freedom by risings from below”.
But in 1917, the situation was different. The whole system, including the Russian state and the bourgeoisie government, was incapable of formulating and implementing any programme to resolve the issues of mounting differences and destructions.
Practically, the Russian state had collapsed prior to the February Revolution. The millions of helpless army soldiers, being recruited forcibly, fighting on the front without basic needs, had only two options: either face death or plunder the country’s villages and cities.
Russia was rapidly moving towards anarchy while the Russian bourgeoisies had no interest in the Russian people irrespective of their class as had been elaborated by American journalist John Reed. While Russian businessmen and factory owners were hopeful of the advancement of Germans to crush the Bolshevik-led working masses, tragedies were knocking at the doors of every class except those that were benefitting from the war.
Under such a situation there was no option but to forcefully intervene in state affairs by toppling the incapable government and replacing the state machinery with workers, peasants and soldiers already in control of the streets, factories and villages. The same task could be achieved by Bolsheviks alone who were the only force raising slogans to convert the imperialist war into a civil war on the basis of class conflicts.
The study of the question of Marxists' stand towards World War I is essential to realise the historical necessity of the Bolshevik Revolution. On the centenary of WWI in 2014, the causes and characters of WWI were deliberately discounted. No communist party all over the world highlighted the stance of Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin in the Second World Congress of the Communist International. The most important question that should have been answered in 2014 is why a large number of humans was compelled to fight for the vested interests of certain companies.
Renowned leftists and intellectuals opposed Bolsheviks, including the Great Russian Marxist philosopher Georgi Plekhanov, the study of whose writings Lenin termed mandatory for every communist. Similarly, Germany-based Rosa Luxemburg, called Eagle of the Revolution by Lenin, could not realise certain things at the time of the revolution and opposed Bolshevik strikes. The seizure of power in October was not coup d'état but the completion of the working masses’ revolt of February 1917.
But the so-called communists of present times and other Left-wing “sectarian believers” cannot use these personalities to hide their bias against the Bolshevik Revolution. Their bias is due to the cowardly acts they committed with the intent of becoming leaders.
Such left-wing intellectuals used to enamour the working class people with their intellectualism like a priest or magician. But when revolution starts to knock at the doors of the society, they find themselves wary of transferring power and leadership to the masses. So when the time to put their teachings into practice comes, such communists betray the working masses. Lenin rightly called them “impotent”.
According to historical materialism, there could be no evolutionary change without revolution. This is not merely a dogmatic lesson from the books of Marx and Friedrich Engel — history has proved the same time and again.
India is the biggest example of the evolutionary process where caste system still forces the scheduled castes to live like animals in the absence of a revolution to overthrow the system.
The countries of West Asia have ancient civilisations and cultures where, for instance, the liver of a dead enemy is eaten to settle scores. The civilisation of the US is based on 200 years of civil war but there prevails religious extremism, racial hatred and national bias. Majority of the middle classes in the subcontinent are turning to religious delusions. The Russian government’s support for the Orthodox Church in an era of genetics and cloning raises many questions. Recent warnings of renowned scientist Stephen Hawking regarding artificial intelligence and the destruction of the world clearly endorsed Engels’ definition of capitalism as a “system of anarchy”.
After the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin halted offering new membership of the party in order to keep the dishonest opportunists at arm’s length. In his various writings and speeches, he denounced the bureaucratic systems in the government and the party. Lenin forced the members of the old bureaucracy to work under the sharp watch and supervision of the proletariat dictatorship.
This was the time when Bolsheviks were defending their revolution from the attacks and conspiracies of internal counter-revolutionary forces, the bourgeoisie as well as from foreign invasions of dozens of countries. They fought, sacrificed their precious lives and won not only for Russian revolution but for the world revolutionary movements at large.
So how can one condemn them? If they are condemnable for the alleged aftermath, then condemn Albert Einstein for the nuclear bombs that ruined Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Condemn George Stephen for world wars and environmental issues.
Bolsheviks are condemned because they exposed the capitalism in practice. Their government was the first and perhaps the last in modern history to abolish secret diplomacy, publishing all secret and unannounced government documents and agreements in the public. Who could have dared to do so when in power?
The Russian Federation is not celebrating the centenary of the great October Revolution unlike France that, in 1989, celebrated the second centenary of the French Revolution. Many of us are unable to celebrate the day because of the situations imposed by corporates and governments.
But it is a fact that centenaries do not spark revolutions. Revolutions are not festivals of the petty bourgeoisie to be conducted on specific dates.The fate of the world proletariat revolution depends on whether capitalism has escaped from crisis or not. In the presence of miserable lives all around the world, economic crises, wars, hunger, political instabilities and division of the world, only the ignorant and stupid may claim that capitalism is free from crisis.
Bolsheviks were not ordinary people. They were those who stormed the heaven.
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