The Russian Revolution: Still inspiring after 80 years

[Peoples Weekly World]

**The Russian Revolution: Still inspiring after 80 years**

(Reprinted from the November 8, 1997 issue of the People's
Weekly World. May be reprinted or reposted with PWW credit.
For subscription information see below)

By Arthur Perlo

"One of those great, really liberating, really
revolutionary wars" - this was how Vladimir Lenin described
the American Revolution.

But it also describes the Russian Revolution which Lenin
led, 142 years after the "shot heard round the world" in
Lexington, Mass., and exactly 80 years ago Nov. 7. With all
the noise today about the "death" of Communism, we would do
well to remember how truly liberating that revolution was
for the people of the Russian empire, and for the people of
the world.

Looking back

At the time of the Russian Revolution, most of the world's
people - in Africa, Asia, Latin America and parts of Europe
- lived in colonies or semi-colonies. They were forced -
directly or indirectly - to labor for the profits of their
European and North American masters, and any resistance was
brutally suppressed. Europe was in the midst of World War
I, in which millions of workers and peasants were
slaughtered in a contest to decide which European rulers
would get to exploit the colonies and weaker countries.

Russia, the weakest of the "great powers" of World War I,
was known throughout the world as a backward, decaying
empire. Today, Hollywood portrays its ruler, Czar Nicholas,
as a tragic figure. But the Russian royal family, along
with the Russian Orthodox Church, were notorious for their
corruption, brutality and ignorance, ruling an empire of
more than 100 different nationalities, and building grand
palaces out of the blood of impoverished subjects.

More openly than today, all the world's great powers were
ruled by old nobility and rich capitalists who were
contemptuous of ordinary workers and peasants. Then, on
Nov. 7, 1917, Lenin's Bolsheviks took power in Russia.

The Bolshevik Party (later the Communist Party) was the
party of the industrial workers in Russia. Its allies were
the parties representing the peasants, especially the poor
and landless peasants. With virtually all of the other
political parties and classes against them, the new
government turned to the working class to run the
government and the economy.

The new government immediately implemented their
revolutionary program - land to the peasants, an eight-hour
day for the workers, and peace from the bloody slaughter of
WWI. Equality of all nationalities was proclaimed.

Many Russian Jews, including my great-grandparents, had
earlier fled the Russian empire where they were forbidden
to own land, pursue professions or live in cities, and were
victims of the Russian version of the Ku Klux Klan.

After the revolution, all legal restrictions were
abolished, and the first Soviet President was a Jew, Yakov
Sverdlov. This sent a powerful message around the world, at
a time when Jews faced open and widespread discrimination
in the United States, and most African Americans lived in
semi-slavery in the American South.

Setting a new standard

The American Revolution of 1776 shook the world with the
idea that people should govern their own country, although
these governing people were usually rich white men. The
Russian Revolution had an equally profound effect,
proclaiming that working men and women of all nations and
races should both govern and own their country.

)From the start, the world's capitalists feared and hated
the Russian Revolution because it challenged their profits
and destroyed the myth that ordinary workers can't run
things for themselves. Winston Churchill helped organize an
army from fourteen capitalist countries (including the
U.S.) to "strangle the Bolshevik infant in its crib."

But the workers and peasants of Russia supported their
revolution; workers in the United States, Britain, France
and Germany refused to be used as cannon fodder against the
workers of Russia. Churchill's attempt failed, but the new
Soviet Union, formed out of the Russian Revolution, was
left to try to rebuild a country, poor and backward to
start with, devastated by seven years of WWI and then civil
war, and facing continued diplomatic and economic warfare
against it by the leading capitalist countries.

Within two decades, the new country had an amazing list of
accomplishments. Industry and agriculture were able to
supply the country for the first time with its basic needs.
Illiteracy was reduced from over half to almost nothing.
The Soviet Union led the world in social services like
health care, child care and education, and in labor
conditions such as an 8-hour day, paid vacations and
pensions.

By the 1930s, when the rest of the world was in the grip of
the Great Depression's mass misery and desperation, the
Soviet Union had a stable, expanding economy with full
employment.

The Soviet Union guaranteed full political and economic
rights to women, who were employed in all occupations, as
doctors, engineers and political leaders. The many
nationalities, formerly oppressed and "Russified" under the
Czar's empire, for the first time had the opportunity for
education in their own languages and cultures, and produced
their own professionals and leaders to develop their
rapidly growing economies.

At a time when the U.S. government was forcing Native
American children into "English-only" boarding schools to
destroy their culture, the Soviet government was helping
the indigenous peoples of Siberia to develop written
languages, and finding ways for them to blend their
traditional lifestyles with the developing modern economy.

Twenty-four years after the revolution, the Soviet Union
underwent trial by fire when it was attacked by the Nazi
armies. Although the Nazis had triumphed throughout Europe,
the Red Army defeated them.

This was only possible because of the huge advances made
since the Revolution in industry, agriculture, and
education; because of the unity of the many nationalities
formerly oppressed by the Russian Czar, and because of the
support by the people for their country and their socialist
system.

Legacy and inspiration

The Russian Revolution left a rich legacy. Inspired in
part by its achievements, workers in many capitalist
countries won benefits like social security, unemployment
insurance, shorter hours, vacations and health care.

The Soviet Union gave diplomatic, economic and military aid
to colonial people fighting for their freedom. And here in
the United States, the example of the Soviet Union was an
important factor in the federal government's decision in
the late 1950s and 1960s to begin to end segregation.

The Russian Revolution, and the Soviet system built on it,
were far from perfect. Many things have been written about
their failings - some of them are even true. Seventy years
after the revolution, the unremitting diplomatic and
economic warfare waged by the United States and other
capitalist countries, combined with internal weaknesses and
treachery by its leaders, overthrew the Soviet Union.

In Russia and the other former Soviet republics, working
people have seen their living standards slashed, pensions
disappear, and education and health care destroyed. They
are ruled by gangsters who have virtually turned their
country into a colony of foreign capitalists.

This is part of a world capitalist offensive against the
working class. People who never had a kind word about the
Soviet Union are saying that its fall opened the door to
this "New World Order." But the many successes of the
Russian Revolution are a continuing inspiration, and even
its failures will provide lessons to help the Soviet people
to take back their country and rebuild a better socialist
society. And the lessons learned from the Russian
Revolution will also help us, when the time comes to build
our own brand of "Bill of Rights Socialism," of, by, and
for the people.

To me, the best ideals of the Russian Revolution are
expressed in the words of a popular Soviet song of the
1940s, as sung by the great African American artist Paul
Robeson: "To our youth, now every door is open. Everywhere,
our old with honor go. Everywhere throughout our mighty
union, all our people flourish free from strife. Side by
side, the black, the white, the yellow, work to build a
peaceful, better life."

Ideals like this inspired the Soviet people for 70 years.
They still inspire working people throughout the world.
##30##

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