The decisive factor in the success of the October Revolution was undoubtedly the presence of a Marxist Party – the Bolshevik Party under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky. Such a party did not drop from heaven. Neither could it be improvised on the spur of the moment. It was built with great difficulty over a period of twenty years, mostly in the harsh conditions of underground work.

In the entire history of political parties it is impossible to find a similar example of a party that in the short space of twenty years grew from a tiny handful to a powerful mass party capable of leading millions of workers and peasants to the conquest of power. In writing this book my first aim was to provide an accurate account of the history of Bolshevism with all its successes and failures, its victories and defeats.

That was a necessary antidote to the old Stalinist histories, which present the rise of the Bolshevik Party as a kind of triumphal march, a kind of automatic process that inevitably ended in victory. More than history, these lifeless, mechanical accounts resemble fairy stories, complete with spotless heroes and the blackest of villains. Nowadays nobody takes these books seriously. They are justly regarded with ridicule, if they are regarded at all.

However, I did not intend this book to be just another history – something of merely academic interest to be read for the sake of curiosity or amusement. My aim was to provide the new generation of class fighters with the necessary information as to how a genuine revolutionary party is built. In other words, this book is intended, not as a memorial to the past but as a manual and a guide for the revolutionaries of today and of the future.

Did I succeed in this aim? I will quote just one paragraph from a very favourable review in the highly respected magazine Revolutionary History:

Whatever the reader thinks about the author’s defence of the classic model of a Leninist party, it would be unfair not to recognise the authority of this book. The history of the Bolshevik party contains valuable lessons for today’s struggle for socialism, and Alan Woods has performed a service by making this history accessible to a new generation of militants.

To sum up: Bolshevism is not past history. It is the future of humanity. It is the road to revolution.

London
7 September 2017