Revolutionary Bureaucracy – Solidarity
An article from Solidarity for Workers’ Power vol. 7, no. 11 on the nature of the bureaucratisation seen in the Russian Revolution.
Ettore Cinnella - The tragedy of the Russian Revolution: promise and default of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries in 1918.
Submitted by Red Marriott on Apr 12 2018 21:07
The unpublished minutes of the three congresses held by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (PLSR) in 1918 are the main source of this article. Its starting point is the crisis the old Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR) suffered during the fall of 1917 and the rise of the Left SRs.
On leaving Russia
Submitted by Steven. on Jul 22 2017 13:34
Russian Jewish anarchist Mollie Steimer, who was deported to Russia, on her being deported from Russia by the Bolsheviks for condemning their persecution of revolutionary workers.
The soviets: the Russian workers, peasants and soldiers councils 1905-1921 - Oskar Anweiler
Submitted by Anonymous on Aug 16 2016 08:09
A detailed study of the workers', soldiers' and peasants' councils which sprung up across Russia in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917.
How Lenin led to Stalin - Workers Solidarity Movement
Submitted by Steven. on Jan 5 2016 11:13
Good short account of how the foundations of Stalinist terror were laid by the policies of Lenin and Trotsky in the early days of the Russian Revolution.
The Russian revolution and the international proletariat - Maria Koszutska
Submitted by Dyjbas on Dec 9 2015 05:33
This collection of articles, published during August 1918 in the newspaper of the PPS-Left, while clearly supportive of the Bolsheviks, discusses many controversial aspects of their rule: the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the peasantry, the terror, as well as the question of democracy. Koszutska encourages the international proletariat to take an active part in the events, and help guide them on the correct path to socialism, rather than remain critics on the outside.
Socialism in the present day - Alexander Bogdanov
In this text from 1911, published in Vpered, Bogdanov outlines his conception of a socialist proletarian culture, providing the theoretical background for the project of Proletkult.
The latest deception - Gabriel Miasnikov
In this essay first published in 1930 in France, the founder of the Workers Group denounces the bureaucracy that he claims seized power in a “coup d’état” in 1920 at the Ninth Congress of the CPSU(b)—its “latest deception” being its fraudulent appeals for “freedom of criticism” and “self-criticism” after a series of revolts by workers and peasants in the early to mid-1920s—and calls for a restoration of proletarian democracy (as exemplified by the Paris Commune) by democratizing the functions exercised by bureaucratic State institutions (production, distribution, oversight) and replacing them with Soviets (“Councils”), cooperatives and trade unions.
Democratic centralism, the Workers Opposition, clandestine opposition movements, the crisis in the party, Kronstadt and the end of the revolutionary period in Russia - Michel Olivier
Submitted by Alias Recluse on Sep 15 2014 22:50
A short essay on the left opposition in the Bolshevik Party in Russia from 1919 to 1927, focusing mostly on the Democratic Centralists and the Workers Opposition.
On the construction of socialism - Nikolai Osinsky (Valerian V. Obolensky)
In this text first published in the journal of the Bolshevik left communists, The Communist, in April 1918, Osinsky attacks Lenin’s economic policies (which he attributes to Lenin’s erroneous support for the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty) from a “left” perspective that champions working class supremacy in the “organization of production” (in the economic councils, etc.), advocates a policy of rigorous nationalization and promotion of “heavy industry” (coal, steel, railroads), and concludes that economic reconstruction cannot be directed towards Russian “self-sufficiency”, but must be oriented towards the goal of the victory of the international proletarian revolution.
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