peasants

This is a most difficult time for revolutionary socialists. The rapid collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union, the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas, the many problems of Cuba, and the demise of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism in Africa all force a serious questioning of basic ideas and strategies. It is a time when global capital seems to rule nearly unchallenged throughout the world.

The political and social upheaval that resulted from the English Civil War in the seventeenth century [effectively two conflicts between 1642 -1646 and 1647/48] led to the development of a set of radical ideas centred around movements known as ‘Diggers’ and ‘Levellers’

Nick Heath on the wave of rebellions and uprisings of rank-and-file Russian workers and peasants across the country in 1919-1921 against the Bolsheviks, who were consolidating their grip on power. Contrary to the Bolsheviks' claims, these rebellions were not reactionary but in fact in support of the original aims of the revolution: socialism, and workers' and peasants' self-management. Taken together they can be referred to as a Third Revolution.

Peasants into Russians - The Utopian Essence of War Communism
Bertrand M Patenaude

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The 1848 uprisings in Germany put Engels in mind of the last great peasant rebellions of of 1500s. As he would later write: "The parallel between the German Revolution of 1525 and that of 1848-49 was too obvious to be altogether ignored at that time."