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A review by steve_duffy
October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Miéville
3.0
'October' is one of those books that as soon as you finish the last page, you feel the need to go back to page one.
There are so many meetings, and councils, and factions, and people that it is at times hard to see the wood for the trees. But the author is in a tight spot, does he not mention these meetings etc? No, of course not, to do otherwise as an historian (or at least someone writing about history), would be egregious. In the introduction he acknowledges his partisanship (socialist) but claims that he is fair, and I think that is true. In saying that, I felt it could do perhaps with some footnotes. A few times I was left wondering who the source was.
What lacked at times was context but maybe I’m asking for too much, if the books aim is to only lay out chronologically what went down, then it achieves its goal. It's fair to say that at times the book feels like it is charging towards its end point. It is such an interesting and complex period that regardless, I think the book is worth reading, and could be a good jump off spot for delving into this history.
What I found maybe most interesting was Lenin’s different stances through the months from January to October, leaning ever more toward a libertarian view. I believe he wanted a true socialists society with workers’ control of production and peasant land rights etc. but he also didn’t truly believe it was possible in the Russia of that time. For the socialist utopia to be reality it needed a strong bourgeoisie and a technically advanced society, as his mentor Marx had written. What ends up happening in revolutionary October seems almost like a coup. With all that had happened in February, and the overthrow of the Tsar, he (and Trotsky and the lads) sensed that if not now, when?
With the subsequent civil war, funded in part by the west (via the White army), it seems obvious now that the new government was only ever going to become more entrenched … waiting and increasingly hoping against hope for the socialist wave to sweep the countries that were really ready for it. This never happened of course, and instead of ‘socialism’ it went completely in the opposite direction from its intended aims. Stalinism.
Today, the environment and capitalism is in crisis. The income gap continues to grow and there’s no sign of that stopping. In response, people are electing their Mussolini-next-door. What’s going on? What the hell is going to happen in the next decade or so? It is not partisan or absurd to think that the current way of things cannot sustain (or even that we are currently watching it change). With all this in mind it is quite incredible to think that 100 years ago a group of headers took control and said that the workers’ shall own the production, that peasants should have rights to land, that men and women should have full equal rights, that homosexuals should not be discriminated against, and that education should be universally free.
There are so many meetings, and councils, and factions, and people that it is at times hard to see the wood for the trees. But the author is in a tight spot, does he not mention these meetings etc? No, of course not, to do otherwise as an historian (or at least someone writing about history), would be egregious. In the introduction he acknowledges his partisanship (socialist) but claims that he is fair, and I think that is true. In saying that, I felt it could do perhaps with some footnotes. A few times I was left wondering who the source was.
What lacked at times was context but maybe I’m asking for too much, if the books aim is to only lay out chronologically what went down, then it achieves its goal. It's fair to say that at times the book feels like it is charging towards its end point. It is such an interesting and complex period that regardless, I think the book is worth reading, and could be a good jump off spot for delving into this history.
What I found maybe most interesting was Lenin’s different stances through the months from January to October, leaning ever more toward a libertarian view. I believe he wanted a true socialists society with workers’ control of production and peasant land rights etc. but he also didn’t truly believe it was possible in the Russia of that time. For the socialist utopia to be reality it needed a strong bourgeoisie and a technically advanced society, as his mentor Marx had written. What ends up happening in revolutionary October seems almost like a coup. With all that had happened in February, and the overthrow of the Tsar, he (and Trotsky and the lads) sensed that if not now, when?
With the subsequent civil war, funded in part by the west (via the White army), it seems obvious now that the new government was only ever going to become more entrenched … waiting and increasingly hoping against hope for the socialist wave to sweep the countries that were really ready for it. This never happened of course, and instead of ‘socialism’ it went completely in the opposite direction from its intended aims. Stalinism.
Today, the environment and capitalism is in crisis. The income gap continues to grow and there’s no sign of that stopping. In response, people are electing their Mussolini-next-door. What’s going on? What the hell is going to happen in the next decade or so? It is not partisan or absurd to think that the current way of things cannot sustain (or even that we are currently watching it change). With all this in mind it is quite incredible to think that 100 years ago a group of headers took control and said that the workers’ shall own the production, that peasants should have rights to land, that men and women should have full equal rights, that homosexuals should not be discriminated against, and that education should be universally free.