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mjbellecourt 's review for:
October: The Story of the Russian Revolution
by China Miéville
Oh boy I wish I were good with words.
As a socialist, I often have to deal with the not ENTIRELY unreasonable claim that socialism doesn't work. I usually respond with some flavor of "Leninism doesn't work," then go into some long-winded digression on how capitalism isn't really working either. Over the years these arguments have pushed me away from Marxism to some form of libertarian anarchism, but that's neither here nor there.
Reading October was the first time I've really dove into the history of the Russian Revolutions, and in doing so I've come to better appreciate the decisions of the Bolsheviks and their opposition. They really had no idea what they were doing and I'm sure that most (if not even all) of the major players in the historical narrative were doing what seemed right. Bolshevism does seem more sympathetic in this light. In fact, one of the lines that most struck me wasn't even in the main narrative itself, but a quote from Victor Serge in the Further Readings section:
"It is often said that 'the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning'. Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs, a mass of other germs, and those who live through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse—and which he may have carried with him since his birth—is that very sensible?"
I cannot ignore the authoritarian tendencies of Leninism, but I have to wonder at and bemoan what could have been, had the international revolution proceeded and the Western world not declared their intention to "Kill the Bolshie, kiss the Hun", as Churchill so famously announced.
As a socialist, I often have to deal with the not ENTIRELY unreasonable claim that socialism doesn't work. I usually respond with some flavor of "Leninism doesn't work," then go into some long-winded digression on how capitalism isn't really working either. Over the years these arguments have pushed me away from Marxism to some form of libertarian anarchism, but that's neither here nor there.
Reading October was the first time I've really dove into the history of the Russian Revolutions, and in doing so I've come to better appreciate the decisions of the Bolsheviks and their opposition. They really had no idea what they were doing and I'm sure that most (if not even all) of the major players in the historical narrative were doing what seemed right. Bolshevism does seem more sympathetic in this light. In fact, one of the lines that most struck me wasn't even in the main narrative itself, but a quote from Victor Serge in the Further Readings section:
"It is often said that 'the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning'. Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs, a mass of other germs, and those who live through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse—and which he may have carried with him since his birth—is that very sensible?"
I cannot ignore the authoritarian tendencies of Leninism, but I have to wonder at and bemoan what could have been, had the international revolution proceeded and the Western world not declared their intention to "Kill the Bolshie, kiss the Hun", as Churchill so famously announced.