Harry Targ
Taken from a paper printed in Duncan
McFarland ed. The Russian Revolution and
the Soviet Union: Seeds of 21st Century Socialism, Changemaker
Publications. http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/chsngemaker
Social scientists have contributed to the discussion
of revolutionary processes by studying political organizations, leadership,
ideology, mass-based support, regime types, and external interventions. Left
critics of the Russian Revolution and the former Soviet Union, provide useful
analyses of weaknesses in efforts to build socialism in the former Soviet
Union. At the same time there is a danger in these intellectual traditions in
that they underestimate the extraordinary contributions the Russian Revolution
and the Soviet Union made to the advance of socialism as a world historic
project. And by marginalizing this history, millennial activists lack the tools
to learn from the twentieth century about theory and practice, finding
themselves groping for an understanding of where modern exploitation and
oppression have come from and thinking about ways to challenge them.
First, the Russian Revolution was the singular event
in modern history where a radical overthrow of a reactionary regime occurred,
in which the new leadership represented the interests and perspectives of the
working class. Its leaders embraced an anti-capitalist agenda and articulated a
vision of building socialism, in both Russia and the entire international
system.
Second, for oppressed people around the world (Lenin
estimated that 1/7 of the world’s population lived under colonialism) the
Russian Revolution stood for the overthrow of rule by the small number of
capitalist powers. Within a decade of the solidification of the Revolution,
anti-colonial activists from every continent began to dialogue about developing
a common struggle against the great colonial empires of the first half of the
twentieth century. And Third World revolutionary and anti-colonial activists,
such as Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, looked to the Russian experience as a guide
and source of support for their struggles.
Third, the experience of the Russian workers,
paralleled by workers movements in the United States and other countries, gave
impetus and inspiration to class struggles. Leaders of the Industrial Workers
of the World (IWW) for example and many Debsian Socialists saw the Russian
Revolution as a stepping-stone for the overthrow of capitalist exploitation of
the working class in the United States.
Fourth, the Bolshevik Revolution stimulated new
currents in struggles of people of color, particularly in the United States. Black Nationalist leaders of the African Blood
Brotherhood and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance began to see a
connection between racism and capitalist exploitation. Cyril Briggs, Harry
Haywood, and others of the ABB were early founders of the Communist Party USA.
Many saw in the evolving Soviet experience a commitment to oppose all forms of
national oppression, including anti-Semitism, and over the decades prominent
artists, intellectuals, and activists such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. DuBois
spoke to the connections between capitalist exploitation, national oppression
and colonialism, racism, and war. In each
of these cases the image of the Russian Revolution, if not the reality,
contributed mightily to global struggles against capitalism, imperialism, and
racism.
Fifth, International Women’s Day was first celebrated
by the newly created Russian government on March 8, 1917, and it became a
national holiday in the Soviet Union after the Bolsheviks seized power in
November, 1917. As in reference to marginalized people, workers, people of
color, ethnic minorities, the Russian Revolution sent a message that human
liberation for all was possible. In the case of women, the new regime declared
its commitment to women at a time when struggles for women’s suffrage were
occurring in Great Britain and the
United States.
Sixth, the
first decade of the Russian Revolution was a time of experimentation in the
arts and culture. Poster art, literature, music, alternative theories of
pedagogy were stimulated by the revolutionary atmosphere. The support for
cultural experimentation was stifled in the 1930s with the rise of the fascist
threat and Stalinism at home but the linking of political revolution and
cultural liberation became etched in the consciousness of revolutionaries
everywhere. The literacy campaigns in Cuba and Nicaragua many years later may
have been inspired by cultural dimensions of revolution inspired by the Russian
Revolution.
Seventh, the rise of fascism in Europe and Asia
created the necessity of anti-fascist states mobilizing for war. The Soviet
Union assumed a major burden and thus became a leader in the anti-fascist
struggles that engulfed the world by the late 1930s. Sensing impending German
aggression, the creativity of the revolution was transformed into a mass
mobilization of workers to rapid industrialization in preparation for German
aggression. Germany invaded Poland in 1938 and the former Soviet Union in 1941.
From the onset of World War II until its end, vast stretches of the Soviet homeland
were laid waste and over 27 million Russians died in war. Without the Soviet
sacrifice, fascism would have engulfed Europe.
Eighth, in the Cold War period, the Soviet Union and
its allies were confronted with an anti-Soviet, anti-communist coalition of
nations committed to the “rollback” of International Communism. What began as
the first step down the path to socialism became a great power battle between
the east and the west. And despite the enormity of resources the Soviets
committed to their side of the arms race, they still supported virtually every
anti-colonial, anti-imperial campaign around the world; from Asia, to Africa,
to the Middle East, and Latin America. They gave Vietnam and Cuba as lifeline;
they supported the African National Congress and South African Communist Party;
the MPLA in Angola; and they supported nationalists leaders such as Gamal Abdul
Nasser in Egypt.
Ninth, until the Sino/Soviet split rent asunder the
socialist camp, the Soviet Union provided a check on the unbridled advances of
western capitalism. After the split in international communism in the 1960s,
Soviet influence in the world began to decline. This split had much to do with
the dramatic weakening of socialism as a world force in the 1990s. One can only speculate what the twenty-first
century would have looked like if the Soviet Union had survived? Would the wars
on Afghanistan and Iraq have occurred? Would the Libyan regime have been
overthrown? Would the countries of the Global South have had larger political
space in world politics inside and outside the United Nations?
Lessons
Learned: Assessing the Revolutionary Project
It is important, one hundred years after the Russian
Revolution, to think about its contribution to human history, (and for many of
us to twenty-first century socialism). First, it is important to conceptualize
revolution as a multi-dimensional historical process, a process which sets off
numerous collateral responses, positive and negative. This means that all the
variables articulated by social scientists are part of an explanation of what
revolution means. Also the history of shortcomings and the historical contexts
are part of this process.
Second, when we revisit the Russian Revolution (and
the Soviet Union which has to be seen as an extension of the revolutionary
project) several features, often ignored, need to be stressed. The Russian
Revolution planted the seeds for workers struggles everywhere. The Russian
Revolution inspired anti-racist campaigns, particularly developing the links
between class and race. The Russian Revolution provided a modest dimension to
the historic process of women’s liberation. And putting all this together the
Russian Revolution, and the material support of the former Soviet Union, gave
impetus to the anti-colonial movements of the last half of the twentieth
century. And we must remember that virtually all these dimensions were actively
opposed by western imperialism, particularly the United States.
Having recognized all this, and other contributions as
well, twenty-first century advocates of socialism need to revisit the history
of socialism, of revolution, to find the roots of today’s struggles. The
intellectual formulations of today, as well as debates about them, go back at
least one hundred years. The intellectual connections revolutionaries today
make with their past can be liberating in that they suggest continuity with
common historic struggles. And they provide an opportunity to relive, study,
critique, embrace or reject, ideas, strategies, tactics, and organizational
forms of the past.
As a former leader of the Chinese Communist movement,
Zhou Enlai is alleged to have said in response to a journalist’s request for an
evaluation of the French Revolution, Zhou said, “it’s too early to say.”
