The following is a reprint of an article published in 2017 when we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. It is one article of an extensive series about the Bolshevik Revolution and the triumphs, as well as the defeats, of the world communist movement of the 20th century.The following illustrates the Bolsheviks’ armed uprising in Petrograd on October 27 / November 7, 1917. It is often called “the Russian Revolution.” In fact, uprisings took place in a great many cities and towns.
In 1917, ordinary people took their lives into their own hands and remade their world. It was the most important event of the 20th century; for the first time in world history, workers seized state power and pioneered a worker-run society. The workers, organized in committees and councils, took over the means of production.
This event shook and influenced the whole world. The Soviet Union was an international beacon of hope for workers’ fighting to destroy the capitalists in their parts of the world.
More than 100 years later, the capitalists of the world are still haunted by what our class was able to accomplish. And so, they slander the achievements of our communist predecessors every chance they get, in every media outlet they own. Progressive Labor Party reflects on the mass heroism of our class on this centennial celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution.
The Uprising
After the overthrow of the monarchy, the Bolsheviks and workers formed the Soviets (meaning “worker councils”) of Workers’ Deputies (Moscow Bolsheviks) and of Soldiers’ Deputies. As in Petrograd, there was sympathy for the moderate socialist parties. But by September 24, the Bolsheviks received an absolute majority of seats in district dumas (359 seats out of 710).
On the night of October 24 to October 25, the Bolshevik uprising began in Petrograd. The Moscow Bolsheviks learned about it at noon on October 25 (November 7 on today's international standard calendar). That same day, the Party Combat Center was set up to lead the insurrection. That afternoon, the Combat Center began fighting.
Parts of the Moscow troops were on alert and ready to execute only orders issued by the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC). The MRC were powerful directing bodies of revolt, installing and securing Soviet power. They stopped the publication of bourgeois newspapers and declared a general strike. Regional MRCs were created, military units that took the side of the Bolsheviks and their allies were put on alert. A provisional revolutionary committee was elected, since the executive committee of the Moscow Soldiers’ Soviet was in the hands of the Bolsheviks’ opponents.
Ten to twelve thousand workers, Red Guards, took to arms. District MRCs sent emissaries to factories and military units. On October 26, the Moscow MRC ordered all units of the Moscow garrison to combat readiness.
However, in Moscow there were perhaps as many as 20,000 Junkers (junior officers), all strongly anti-Bolshevik. The City Duma, headed by the rightwing socialist party, turned into a political center of resistance to the Bolsheviks. It relied mainly on cops and Junkers.
The chief of the Kremlin Arsenal agreed to give weapons to workers. But the Kremlin was blocked by detachments of Junkers. The commander of the Moscow Military District, Ryabtsev, requested loyal front troops while simultaneously entering into negotiations with the MRC.
On October 27, about 300 officers, cadets, and students loyal to the Provisional Government gathered at Moscow University and the Kremlin. The volunteer squad of students was called the “white guards,” the first time this term was used.
At 6 PM, colonel Ryabtsev and the Duma’s anti-revolutionary “Committee of Public Safety” (CPS) learned that troops were being sent from the front. Colonel Ryabtsev declared martial law and ordered the MRC to surrender. They refused. The same day Junkers attacked a detachment of revolutionary soldiers who were trying to break through to the Moscow City Council. Forty-five of the 150 people in the battle were killed or wounded.
Junkers Take the Kremlin
On the morning of October 28, colonel Ryabtsev demanded that the Bolsheviks surrender the Kremlin, claiming that the city was under his control. Not knowing the actual situation, Bolshevik leader Berzin did so. Then two companies of Junkers entered. Surviving soldiers later said that, after the prisoners handed over their weapons, they were shot. The counter-revolutionary forces bayonetted those who tried to flee.
The soldiers fought back. Six cadets and about 200 revolutionary soldiers were killed. Supporters of the CPS gained access to weapons from the Kremlin’s Central Arsenal.
At the call of the Bolshevik Party, the MRC, and city trade unions, a general political strike began. A meeting of soldier committees asked all the military units to support the MRC. By day’s end, the revolutionary forces blocked the city center. From October 28 to October 31, revolutionary soldiers seized the Bryansk railway station and provision warehouses, and stormed the headquarters of the Moscow Military District.
The morning of October 29 (November 11), the red soldiers dug trenches in the streets, built barricades and a stubborn struggle for the center of Moscow began. The Red forces launched an offensive, seizing the city hall. By 9 PM, the revolutionary troops occupied the telephone exchange and began shelling areas occupied by anti-Bolshevik forces, including the Kremlin. A truce was attempted but failed to hold. Anti-Bolshevik forces began to surrender to the forces of the revolutionary MRC.
On October 31 the MRC demanded unconditional surrender from the CPS. The Junkers, along with members of the counter-revolutionary CPS, were forced to move to the Kremlin and the Historical Museum.
On November 2 the shelling of the Kremlin by the Bolsheviks intensified and they occupied the Historical Museum. That night the Junkers left the Kremlin and agreed to disarm. A delegation of the CPS went to the MRC for negotiations. The MRC agreed to free all Junkers, officers and students provided they surrender their weapons.
On November 2, at 5 PM, the counterrevolutionary forces signed a surrender agreement. The MRC ordered a cease-fire, although in some areas the Junkers continued to resist and even attempted an offensive.
Finally, on November 3, the cadets, officers and students left the Kremlin and the building of the Alexander College. Many of them later joined the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer, or “White,” Army. Throughout Moscow, the Junkers were disarmed. A detachment of the Red Guard under the command of Comrade Petrov freed arrested revolutionary soldiers of the 56th regiment, led by the former commandant of the Kremlin’s arsenal, Comrade Berzin. The released prisoners were tortured and hungry. They had been kept without food for five days. Some were sick after all they had experienced as prisoners of the “Whites.” The liberated soldiers immediately grabbed the rifles abandoned by the Junkers and rushed at the colonel who had shot their comrades in the Kremlin, and at the Junkers holding grenades, and shot them on the spot.
On November 3, the manifesto of the MRC proclaimed the power of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. During the uprising, the revolutionary forces suffered between several hundred and 1,000 killed and wounded.
Other Lessons
1. The Mensheviks entered the MRC from a desire “to mitigate the consequences of the insane adventure of the Bolsheviks.” Their participation made the actions of this body less decisive.
2. If the Bolsheviks had not had a very strong and numerous base among the workers and soldiers of Moscow, they could never have beaten the highly motivated military cadets, Junkers, officers, and the regular army soldiers they commanded.
The insurrection in Moscow was a series of hard-fought, bloody battles that took place over a whole week. The armed insurrection in Moscow proves that the Bolsheviks’ support among the workers, peasants, and soldiers, was broad and deep. The Bolsheviks had a strong base, won by years of hard, dedicated work, most of it under difficult, underground conditions.
Migrant workers and all deserve the best: communism
I attended a rally this past in defense of migrants against Trump’s racist deportations plan. Though we were small we were a mighty group of multiracial PL’ers. In addition to handing out hundreds CHALLENGES we distributed a leaflet we made explaining our politics as well as the flyers we’ve been using to solicit donations for a mutual aid effort I’ve been leading in my community at a local migrant shelter with the help of our PLP club. We handed out all the copies we had. Self critically we could have printed out more but we didn’t anticipate such a huge turnout. We figured threats by emboldened Trump supporters would would scare workers, but I was happy that this was not the case. Workers bravely took to the streets and many people were enthusiastic about our mutual aid work, and were interested in joining our efforts.
The DSA members joined the march and had many signs reading. Socialism is better than Fascism. I asked one of them, ‘You know what’s better than socialism?’ No, what? ‘Communism.’ Not surprisingly the response was, ‘You are kidding.’
These DSA are yearning to achieve capitalism with wool mittens by voting. They are not seeking a revolutionary alternative - and those who are have not made the historical analysis that socialism reverts to capitalism. On a more positive note a worker for NY state health care said that the teachers’ union’s rejection of MediCareAdvantage benefitted all workers’ struggles for decent, affordable health care. He gladly took the CHALLENGE and thanked PLP for challenging the ‘Unity’ caucus leadership role in the UFT.
Overall it was a spirited and militant march and we learned valuable political lessons. The first is to have confidence in the working class and working class bravery is a shining beacon that will lead the way. Let’s focus our efforts on building the world we really want to pass on to future generations. Fight for communism!
*****
CHALLENGE in the streets on election day
On election day, four comrades and I organized a CHALLENGE sale by a polling station in a mainly Black Caribbean neighborhood. Here’s how it went.
Nearby, a street vendor sold t-shirts and hats. She had equal amounts of merch of both the klansman Donald Trump and the genocider Kamala Harris. The woman worker lamented that she didn’t print enough Trump merch, for those sold out while many Harris shirts stayed unsold.
I used the backpage of CHALLENGE as a poster. The headline read, “Voting, the Big Con.” To draw attention, I called out generic slogans like,
“Trump and Harris are no friends of the working class!” and “We can’t vote our way to liberation—we need communism!”
This drew some attention. A Black woman took CHALLENGE, and she bemoaned the price of groceries and high inflation. “It’s especially because of these illegal immigrants.”
“I was an illegal immigrant…”
“Oh, well…not you,” she backpedaled. The conversation continued about jobs and the economy. She felt the ever-growing pressure of a system in crisis, and essentially chose a “me first” mindset, which pitted one section of the working class against another. The anti-immigrant racism that people feel compelled to conform to is a reflection of how badly the Democratic Party has failed the working class (see editorial on page 2).
Class consciousness appears low, but because I know it was not always this way, I can trust that it will not always be this way. The period we are in requires patience with the people around us, but it also requires a sense of urgency and boldness. Self-critically, the five of us had a bullhorn, yet only one spoke. We distributed nearly 100 papers, half of what was anticipated.
Next time, I will come prepared with some points to make on the mic. Canvassing the streets is uncomfortable, but the only way to get better is to do it.
These next four years will provide us with many chances to respond to attacks with urgency. Let’s stay ready!
*****
Deport Trump, welcome international solidarity
On November 9th at Noon, workers gathered to protest Trump, and his plans to deport millions of migrants once in office. Trumpsters were said to gather as a counter protest. PL’ers said not without us! Nearly a dozen PL’ers joined the hundreds to show no fear, and to fight back against the racist ideology Trump and his cronies represent.
Together we were loud and high spirited. With loud drums marching down 59th Street and Park Ave while chanting ,”No Trump, no kkk, no fascist usa!” We distributed nearly 100 issues of CHALLLENGE and engaging In interesting conversations. One conversation with a worker watching the march said, “He remembers communism in the Soviet Union but I told him communism was never achieved and it was socialism that reverted the Soviet Union back to a capitalist state. He then said, “I can’t wait until you achieve communism with everything they accomplished”. I feel like that was a form of sarcasm, which is the problem with doing a march in an upper class area like Columbus circle. Which is dominated by the rich and a tourist area.
However, it was great to shut down traffic on behalf of fighting racism.
*****
Fight racist displacement and anti-migrant nationalism
A comrade and I visited friends from past reform struggles we were involved in, in the predominantly Latin neighborhood of Pilsen. We learned the bosses are sowing division in the housing struggle in Pilsen as a result of a new proposal to expand the Tax Increment Financing program (TIF). TIF is associated with racist displacement. The TIF program collects money in a special fund to spend on so-called “blighted” areas. TIF and the money for the fund has come from the property taxes on home price increases. Those who are for TIF are duped by the bosses’ promises. The bosses promote the illusion that TIF would be a transfer from rich to poor, but the capitalist class is the ruling class that dominates the state and they use the TIF fund money for subsidies to Fortune 500 companies and luxury developments. When the capitalist class commands the state, reforms remain their tool.
Many neighbors oppose TIF and are fighting racist displacement, but some are also hostile to the newly arrived migrant workers, mostly from Venezuela who are victims of imperialist displacement. I struggled with them around these contradictions. They brought up the many material hardships they face despite being property owners and operating small businesses. They also pointed out that they have undocumented family members they care for with no assistance from the government. They want to fight with the migrants over a shrinking pile of crumbs. The bosses only deliver these few crumbs because their profit system relies on racist divisions.
It’s possible some of the TIF opponents can be won to our line. But we must counter their racist ideas by fighting alongside them in the struggle. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and residents were able to do this when we mobilized a community defense brigade to watch for Trump’s promised immigration raids in 2020. Workers were won over to antiracist ideas through this struggle. As communists, we must continue to build class conscious communist fightback at the level of local politics by joining more fightbacks against racist and sexist policing.
*****
Check out these red books!
Several comrades are in a leftist book group, in which we’ve read and discussed non-fiction books like A People’s Guide to Capitalism by Hadas Thier, and What Is Anti-Racism and Why It Means Anti-Capitalism? by Arun Kundnani. We’ve just begun to readClass War: A Literary History by Mark Steven.
For our first meeting, we were asked to come with two books or plays that had a positive influence on moving us to the left. Eleven of us met today and recommended the titles below. We think that CHALLENGE readers would enjoy these books. Please send in other titles you think are worthwhile.
Howard Fast (Freedom Road, Spartacus, My Glorious Brothers), Jack London (The Iron Heel), Lorraine Hansbery (A Raisin in the Sun), Alice Walker (The Color Purple), Charles Johnson (The Middle Passage), William Pomeroy (The Forest), Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d’Urbervilles), Truman Nelson (The Surveyor), Myra Page (Moscow Yankee), John dos Passos (USA Trilogy), John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath), Upton Sinclair (The Jungle), Ursula Le Guin (The Dispossessed), Emile Zola (Germinal), Cecilia Bobrovskaya (Twenty Years in Underground Russia), Steve Yarbrough (The Oxygen Man), Ousmane Sembene (God’s Bits of Wood), Anna Seghers (The Seventh Cross), Albert Maltz (The Cross and the Arrow), Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games), Veronica Roth (Divergent).
God’s Bits of Wood was written by Ousmane Sembene, the great African novelist and film director. His home of Senegal was a French colony when Sembene was drafted into the French army during WWII. After the war he returned to Senegal and took part in a long railroad strike against French authorities that began in 1947 and ended in 1948. God’s Bits of Wood tells the exciting story of that strike.
This is what was said about one of these books:
“Stowing away on a ship, Sembene traveled back to France and worked first in an auto factory and then on the docks in Marseille, where he joined the French Communist Party and became a labor militant in the communist-led CGT union. His novel Black Docker is based on these experiences.”
“One of the most satisfying aspects of God’s Bits of Wood is the important role that women take on in resuscitating and leading the strike, reminiscent of the film Salt of the Earth. It really is a terrific novel.”
*****
- Information
Letter: From Minneapolis to Palestine, say their names
- Information
- 15 November 2024 120 hits
This year’s American Public Health Association’s annual meeting was in Minneapolis, the city that burned a police station over the murder of George Floyd. Progressive Labor Party members led rallies outside and inside the convention center to protest the APHA leadership’s unwillingness to entertain a sharper statement against genocide (See page ). This was a continuation of our fights against state violence that included a sharp position paper on police violence as a public health issue that passed in 2018 after three years of persistent struggle with APHA leaders. Of course they were glad to have such a position when George Floyd was killed in 2020 and this year we visited George Floyd Square.
This is a true memorial to his murder and the murders of so many others at the hands of the police which impacts families and communities. Party members and friends saw revolutionary art in real life here. Murals, flower beds, poetry, a “Say Their Names” cemetery and over two blocks of names in the street leading up to the central display. A community “tourist interrupter” shared the history of the neighborhood which had been ignored by city services including trash collection and medical emergency vehicles. Later at the conference we learned of an inspiring 10 year struggle by tenants nearby in East Phillips to displace landlords and gain their own building. The reminder of the ceaseless murders by police in the U.S., the role of Israeli police training U.S. police and the ongoing genocide in Gaza sharpened our struggle against racism. At the conference we kept up the pace and distributed 900 APHA CHALLENGE fliers calling out the APHA for supporting genocide and met many public health workers also willing to join the fight. More work to do!
Realizing that all the bosses’ choices are bad
Al Jazeera, 11/6–As the reality of another Trump presidency set off anger and sorrow from many Democratic commentators, at the Dearborn gathering organized by American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), there was a sense of indifference – if not vindication. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris had ignored the community’s calls for reconsidering the unconditional US support for Israel. The vice president also continued to assert what she calls “Israel’s right to defend itself” despite the brutal atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon…Unlike Trump, Harris did not visit Dearborn, the de-facto seat of Arab American political and financial power, during her campaign…“We had Harris endorsed by neoconservatives like Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney, and she’s openly campaigning with them and talking about how great they are,” [said] Dearborn councilman Mustapha Hammoud…Speaking under a Harris campaign sign last week, former President Bill Clinton claimed that Hamas “forces” Israel to kill Palestinian civilians and suggested that Zionism predates Islam…Bottom line, many Arab Americans say they already survived four years of Trump while many of their relatives in Palestine and Lebanon did not survive the Biden-Harris presidency.
Haitian bosses struggle to find an effective dictator
Reuters, 11/10–Haiti will name entrepreneur and former senate candidate Alix Didier Fils-Aime to replace Prime Minister Garry Conille, who was tapped for the role in May, according to a transitional presidential council draft resolution seen by Reuters. The shakeup is the latest blow to political stability in the country, which has been wracked with worsening violence…Promised international support still lags and nearby nations have deported Haitian migrants back to the country…
Didier Fils-Aime is the son of well-known Haitian activist, Alix Fils-Aime, who was jailed under the regime of dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. Conille, who also briefly led the country over a decade ago, has been prime minister for about six months. He was appointed to the role in May by Haiti's transition council to return to the role as the Caribbean nation works to restore stability. The transition council, named in April, was tasked with choosing a prime minister and wielding certain presidential powers until conditions are considered secure enough for a new election…In recent weeks, Conille embarked on trips abroad to the United Arab Emirates and Kenya to seek security assistance…
As Ukrainian missiles fly over Russia, nukes are now in range
Foreign Affairs, 11/5–Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it has put approximately 30 percent of its estimated 5,580 warheads in an untenably precarious position…the nuclear arsenals it has stored in its west—which are now within striking distance of Ukrainian missiles and drones and even Ukrainian troops—pose a dire risk…Ukraine has begun launching up to hundreds of drones daily at…Russian targets…Ukrainian drone assaults have already reached as far as Moscow…at least 14 Russian nuclear storage sites now fall within range of its drones…At least two of those sites are less than 100 miles from the Ukrainian border, well within striking range of the more damaging missiles Ukraine already possesses, and another five sites lie less than 200 miles from the border, close to or just beyond the range of the advanced Western-provided missiles that Ukraine is seeking permission to use against conventional targets in Russia…
Russian imperialists work to replace French in Africa
BBC, 11/11–Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered what he called "total support" for Africa, including in the struggle against terrorism and extremism. The speech was read out at a summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to his African counterparts. Several African governments have cut ties with traditional Western allies and are looking to Moscow for help in tackling frequent attacks by jihadists. During the summit, Burkina Faso's Foreign Minister Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré said Russia was a more suitable international partner than the former colonial power, France.
It is a view shared by several of France’s former colonies - and was reiterated by Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop, who contrasted the Kremlin's "sincere" partnership to the "neo-colonial" relationship of Western powers…
As the U.S. election circus lurches toward its conclusion, it’s clear that a vote for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump is a vote for more genocide in Gaza, more anti-immigrant racism, climate catastrophe, rising fascism, and world war. We’re told that we need to choose—and it’s true. But for workers worldwide, our only choice is to join and build the international communist Progressive Labor Party. We can’t vote our way out of fascism or war. There are no good bosses. We must crush all of the capitalist parasites, once and for all.
The move toward fascism isn’t a “choice” by any one politician or party. Fascism is a form of capitalism in acute crisis and decay, when the bosses are forced to peel off their mask of liberal democracy and expose the rotting core of their class dictatorship. Fascism relies on hyper-nationalism, open violence and state terror, and extreme racist scapegoating—both to control the working class and to keep the rulers’ own ranks in line.
Two faces of a deadly system: Klansman Trump and Holocaust Harris
Though they represent different groups of bosses with different wells of profit, either Harris or Trump will be compelled to defend a once-dominant U.S. empire now in steep decline. The U.S. is drowning in debt; the future of the U.S. dollar as the globe’s reserve currency is in jeopardy. No matter who wins the election, the next U.S. president will face fierce challenges from their nation’s imperialist rivals in China and Russia—in the Middle East, in Africa and Latin America, in Ukraine, in the South China Sea. No matter who wins, workers everywhere will face even more vicious attacks.
A second Trump presidency is a scary thing—for his divisive gutter racism and attacks on women’s health, for his threat to deport millions of migrating workers, for his open disdain for the climate crisis, for his plan to force Medicaid recipients to work or die. Even so, we believe that Kamala Harris represents a greater danger to our class. If anything, she is a more reliable agent than Trump for the long-term needs of U.S. imperialism. She has shown her true colors in her unflagging support for the Zionist baby-killers and the bloodbath in Ukraine, in her embrace of concentration camps at the Mexican border, in her stated pride that the U.S. is producing more oil and gas than ever before. Like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Joe Biden before her, Harris is a bought-and-paid-for agent of finance capital, of the multinational oil companies and the huge banks that keep them in business. She is ready and willing to sign on the dotted line for World War Three. In her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, she vowed to ensure that “America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” As we’ve witnessed from Southeast Asia to Afghanistan and Iraq, the targets of that force will be millions of our class sisters and brothers.
What makes Harris even more dangerous is her capacity to deceive honest anti-racist, anti-sexist workers. If she wins, her role will be to pacify working-class fighters with the poison of identity politics and liberal lip service to “rights” and “freedoms.” Her campaign is built upon deadly, impossible tradeoffs—for workers to look the other way at the mass slaughter in Palestine, for example, in return for a limited and temporary guarantee of reproductive rights. But communists know that an assault on workers anywhere is an assault on workers everywhere. Harris isn’t a “lesser evil.” Like the billionaires who back her, she’s simply evil.
Communism is an egalitarian society based on science, collectivity, and the needs of the international working class. There is just one way to end the nightmare of capitalism. Don’t vote – revolt! Organize for communist revolution with PLP!
How to fight fascism
Fascism has yet to be defeated at the ballot box. Historically, it has only been smashed by millions committed to class struggle and led by communists. The Soviet communists annihilated Hitler’s Nazi forces; the Chinese communists did the same to the fascists in Japan.
But as the bosses do their worst to mislead and divide us, what is to be done now? Our task is to build a fighting alternative to the bosses’ state in every place we can, from workplaces to neighborhoods to schools and universities. We must rebuild mass multiracial movements led by workers and students to fight exploitation, homelessness, racist police murder, and imperialist war. We must support the ongoing strikes by industrial and service workers. We must elevate the class consciousness of soldiers and sailors to turn the guns around against the imperialist warmakers.
The task before us is tall and carries many risks. But the future is bright if we are willing to fight for it! All over the world, working people perform selfless acts of solidarity each and every day. They embody the principles of a communist world, where society is organized around our commitment to one another. One class, one world, one Party! Fight for this communist future today with PLP!
