October Revolution (1917)

The October Revolution of 1917 was the first socialist revolution in history. It was accomplished in October 1917 by the Russian working class in alliance with the poor peasantry under the leadership of the Communist Party (formerly, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik), headed by Vladimir Lenin. The name “October” comes from the date October 25, when the Russian Provisional Government, headed by Alexander Kerensky, was overthrown by the communist forces. Thus, State power was transferred into the hands of the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ Deputies.

The October Revolution was in fact a working-class counter-revolution to the February Revolution of 1917, which had been led by a democratic bourgeoisie political movement. The middle class bourgeoisie wanted a parliamentary democratic government, with a prime minister, depriving the Czar of his absolute powers. However, after the communists, led by Lenin and Trotsky, took full control of the government in Moscow, the power of the bourgeoisie and landlords in Russia was abolished. Then the dictatorship of the proletariat (working class) was established as the Soviet socialist state was created.

The Great October Socialist Revolution represented the triumph of Marxism-Leninism and opened a new era in the history of humanity. It was the transition from capitalism to socialism and communism. The reason for it to succeed was the massive support of both peasants and workers, who lived like medieval serfs, as Russian had been until then a feudal backwater, with extreme poverty and social inequality.

The working-class movement, which was socialist in character, pulled the democratic movement of the peasants along behind it. Until October 1917 there were about 4,250 peasant uprisings against the landlords. In August, 690 peasant actions were recorded, and in September and October more than 1,300. When the Provisional Government sent out punitive detachments it only enraged the peasants. They would burn, seize, or destroy the landlords’ estates and take personal reprisals against the most hated landlords. Millions of soldiers came over to the side of the revolution, especially the garrisons in Petrograd, Moscow, and other cities, the Northern and Western fronts, and the sailors of the Baltic Fleet, who in September openly declared through their elected representative body, the Tsentrobalt, that they did not recognize the authority of the Provisional Government and would not carry out any of its commands.

Only the Leninist Party had a program that could really solve the social inequality and poverty question. The Bolsheviks linked the resolution of that question with the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat and for the republic of soviets. At the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lenin declared: “Let Russia be a union of free republics”. The energetic activities of the Bolshevik organizations in the Baltic region, the Ukraine, Belorussia (Belarus), Moldavia, the Caucasus region, the Volga region, Central Asia, and Siberia guaranteed the unity of the struggle for soviet power being waged by the Russian working class and the proletarian and semi-proletarian masses of the oppressed peoples.