The apologists of capitalism, and their faithful echoes in the labour movement, try to comfort themselves with the thought that the collapse of the USSR signified the demise of socialism. But what failed in Russia was not socialism but a caricature of socialism. Contrary to the oft-repeated slanders, the Stalinist regime was the antithesis of the democratic regime established by the Bolsheviks in 1917.
Not so long ago I had occasion to witness this kind of ‘objectivity’ when I debated with Orlando Figes, Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London on the topic of ‘The Russian Revolution: Triumph or Tragedy?’ I must confess I had forgotten just how bad these bourgeois academics are. The high point of Figes’ contribution was when he informed me that I was brainwashed and suggested that my defence of the October Revolution was the product of ignorance as opposed to his own academic prowess. About the low point, the less said the better.
The argument that the October Revolution was nothing more than a coup organised by a tiny and unrepresentative group of conspirators led by Lenin and Trotsky is so childish that I find it quite astonishing any intelligent person could repeat it. But repeat it Orlando did. I asked my opponent to provide me with the recipe for such an extraordinary feat, so that I could take power in Britain the following morning. Sadly, to this day I am still waiting for his reply.
I explained in very simple language that the October Revolution was a mass popular movement of millions of workers and peasants coming onto the stage of history, to take their destinies into their own hands. Citing eyewitness accounts, and even Figes’ own book, I showed how the Bolsheviks, by October 1917, were the only party who worked among and were trusted by the masses, and how their struggle for ‘Peace, Bread and Land’ and ‘All Power to the Soviets’ were the slogans that won people to their banner.
Nor is it true, as Orlando Figes and many other detractors of Bolshevism maintain, that Lenin and Trotsky were sanguinary monsters who waded to power through a sea of blood. In fact, the Bolshevik Revolution, at least in Petrograd, was a virtually bloodless affair. Figes himself in his book compares it to a “police operation”. The reason for this is very simple: the regime simply had no one left to defend it. The Bolsheviks won such overwhelming support to their banner that the mass of people swept them to power in a near-peaceful insurrection.
Where there was a sea of blood was in the civil war that followed the insurrection, when 21 foreign armies of intervention invaded Russia to attempt an overthrow of the Bolsheviks. The most reactionary elements of society – the landlords and the old ruling class were mobilised to overthrow the Soviet government. The Bolsheviks had no choice but to fight to defend themselves against the counter-revolution, or allowing themselves and the gains of the revolution to be drowned in blood. The Revolution fought back and won. That is what its enemies cannot forgive or forget.