1910s
1919-1922: The Workers’ Opposition
A short history of a group within the Russian Communist Party that struggled against the increasing party bureaucracy and for trade union control over industry which, by 1922, had been forcibly disbanded by the party.
The Workers Opposition began to form in 1919, as a result of the policies of War Communism, which set a precedence for the domination of the Communist Party over local party branches and trade unions. During the civil war, the Workers Opposition began agitating against the lack of democracy in the Communist Party as a result of the centralising actions of the party’s bureaucracy.
The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia - Ian Bedford
A short critical, but generally sympathetic, assessment of the Australian Wobblies.
From; Labour History no. 13, (Journal of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History), Nov. 1967.
THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD IN AUSTRALIA
IAN BEDFORD
Memoirs of the I.W.W. [Australia] - Bill Beattie
Recollections of struggles in the years around the First World War - by a former Australian Wobbly.
From; Labour History no. 13, (Journal of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History), Nov. 1967.
MEMOIRS OF THE I.W.W. [Australia]
Bill Beattie
1912: The Lena Massacre
A short history of the brutal suppression of a strike by Russian gold miners protesting low wages and inhumane working conditions in 1912.
Situated in the dense forest of south-east Siberia, the massive goldfields that lined the river Lena were, at the turn of the century, amongst the most profitable enterprises in the Russian Empire. The Lena Gold Mining Joint Stock Company (Lenzoloto), the principal owner of the majority of goldfields in the region, was running at profits of 7,000,000 roubles a year.
The Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919: The Forgotten Revolution - Alan Woods
Trotskyist Alan Woods on the Hungarian uprising of 1919. Wood's account suffers from the usual analytical errors by Trotskyists but is included for reference to these little-known events.
November 12, 1979
German Revolution 1918 photo gallery
Images from the German Revolution, including the Wilhelmshaven Revolt.
1918: Rice riots and strikes in Japan
From July-September 1918, Japan was swept with a wave of riots from rural fishing villages to major industrial centres and coal fields, in what was the largest upheaval in Japan to date, and the widest ranging popular disturbances since the unrest during the Meiji restoration of 1868.
1905-1918 in Japan was called the Era of Popular Violence (民衆騒擾期, minshû sôjô ki). This began with the Hibiya Incendiary Incident (日比谷焼討事件, Hibiya Yakiuchi Jiken) - a citywide riot in Tokyo that started with a banned protest in Hibiya park; against the terms of the Portsmouth Treaty which ended the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905.
1917: The Proletariat's Democratic Revolution in Finland
The following is an excerpt from 'The Truce and the Great Retrenchment' - Chapter 6 of Year One of the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge.
Sacrificed by the Bolsheviks at the negotiating table as they agreed the Brest-Litovsk treaty with international capital ("The revolution will not be lost simply because we will be giving the Germans Finland, Latvia and Estonia" - Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp.
1919: The Story of the Limerick Soviet
The Story of the Limerick Soviet, April 1919 By D.R. O'Connor Lysaght (1979)
Introduction
On 21st January, 1919, Dail Eireann held its opening session and the Irish Volunteers drew their first mortal blood since 1916 at Soloheadbeg, Co. Tipperary. These facts have set the seal for subsequent historians of the first months of the year.
1921: Kronstadt: Proletarian spin-off of the Russian Revolution - Cajo Brendel
Cajo Brendel's pamphlet on the Kronstadt rebellion
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