On the October Revolution

November 7th is the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. 105 years ago, the workers of Petrograd, led by Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik Party, seized political power, overthrowing the bourgeois Russian Republic and giving all power to the Soviets. The revolution itself was quick and fairly bloodless, but the civil war following it was extremely deadly. The young workers’ state, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), had to fight the powerful reactionary army of old Russia, 14 invading countries, deal with more than 20 independence movements, and even left-opportunist “socialists” causing chaos in the country, and yet it prevailed; the workers’ state had the support of the laboring masses, so it could face any enemy, foreign or domestic. Following its victory in the civil war and its unification with neighboring Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR)—forming the USSR—the country did what it could to develop socialism and build its productive forces.

This revolution inspired many revolutions for the years to come in Europe and Asia, and it continues to inspire the ongoing revolutions in India, the Philippines, Turkey, and Peru. While Soviet socialism was illegally overthrown in the 1950s, and Chinese socialism in the 1970s, the international proletariat can look at the October Revolution positively, as the first example of what it can do when it overthrows the bourgeoisie in all of the countries of the world. We workers can learn from the experiences of socialism in the USSR and other countries, and we can build new socialism and hopefully bring about full communism; however, doing this requires good knowledge of Marxist theory, history from a proletarian perspective, and serious practice by organizing the workers into the vanguard party, people’s army, and united front of mass organizations.

Happy 105th anniversary of the October Revolution! All power to the working class!