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The Great October Revolution: A Nightmare Dressed Like a Daydream?
The legacy of the Russian Revolution obliges, 107 years later, neither celebration nor mourning. Dreams are surely renewable, and a new world is still waiting to be born.
Oct 25, 2024
This year marks the 107th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. In the evening of October 25, 1917, the Winter Palace in Petrograd (today’s St. Petersburg) was stormed. This event marked the beginning of the Great October Revolution, one of the most significant political events of the twentieth century that shaped the course of history for decades ahead.
Leading up to the events of October 25 was another revolution in late February 1917, which brought to power a group of leaders from bourgeois political parties that formed a provisional government headed initially by Georgy Lvov, a liberal reformer, and then by Aleksander Kerensky, a social democrat who as Prime Minister from July to October 1917 continued Russia's involvement in World War I despite that being very unpopular among the soldiers and with the masses in general. In early March of that year Tsar Nicholas II, who had ruled imperial Russia since 1894 but had managed to make autocracy the most unpopular it had ever been, abdicated. Five months later, Russia was pronounced a republic.
Although the provisional government did introduce some reforms on the political front, prompting even Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin to declare Russia in April 1917 “the freest country in the world”, it was the Red October Revolution that turned the old order completely upside down by inaugurating a socialist regime and making Soviet-style communism a global ideological and political force that lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991.
Still, more than one hundred years later, the rise of the Bolsheviks to power continues to divide scholars, the chattering classes and even the educated public. There are several issues that are particularly divisive, such as whether the October Revolution was a popular insurgency or essentially a coup, and whether Stalinism evolved naturally from the basic principles and political strategies of Lenin or was an unexpected development.
Likewise, there is still a great deal of ambiguity, disagreement and confusion over the nature of the regime that flourished in the Soviet Union after Lenin’s death in 1924. For example, did the Soviet Union represent an “actual socialist society”, a “degenerated workers’ state”, or simply a “totalitarian state economy” in which the communist ideology functioned as a mere instrument of political legitimization and imperial rule?
When it happened, the Great October Revolution produced global hysteria, untamed enthusiasm and hope about the possibility of the creation of heaven on earth (a new utopia) in equal measures. For the bourgeois classes everywhere, the inauguration of the Soviet regime was anathema to core values of the “western civilization”, while for radicals and communists it signified a natural culmination of the inevitable march of history towards human freedom and a social order devoid of exploitation.
However, an objective evaluation on socialism and the legacy of Soviet communism gives no room for mourning or celebration. It was essentially the epic story of an impossible dream that turned in due time into a political and historical nightmare because of the interplay of a vast array of factors that included “backward” socioeconomic conditions, outside intervention, an absence of democratic traditions, and misconceived notions about socialism and democracy. Hence, while one can easily romanticize about the October Revolution, the cold reality of history smacks you in the face.
For starters, the Great October Revolution was unlike the February Revolution which erupted as a result of spontaneous action by hundreds of thousands of hungry and angry men and women workers and militant troops. What happened in October 1917 was the outcome of a well-designed strategy on the part of the leader (Lenin) of a minority party (the Bolsheviks) to wrest control from the provisional government because of a strong ideological aversion to “bourgeois democracy” and desire for power. Unsurprisingly Lenin’s call for “all power to the Soviets” ended up being something entirely different: all power went to the party and its politburo.
The October Revolution was not a coup in itself, but neither was it a popular uprising that enjoyed the kind of mass support that the February Revolution had. In fact, it was not until the autumn of 1917 that Lenin’s “land, peace, bread” slogan had been embraced by some workers in St Petersburg and Moscow.
Yet, even this does not mean that the Bolshevik program and Lenin’s ideas of rule were accepted by the majority of the Russian people: In the November 1917 elections, the first truly free election in Russian history, Lenin’s party received only one quarter of the vote, while the Social Revolutionaries managed to receive over 60 percent.
Lenin had stomach neither for parliamentary democracy nor for sharing power with any other political organization. His unwavering intent to establish socialism in Russia, regardless of the ripeness of the social and economic conditions, and his firm conviction that only the Bolsheviks represented the true interests of the workers, would compel him to adopt strategies and policies that would soon deprive the Revolution of whatever potential it had originally had for the establishment of a new social order based on workers’ control of the means of production and democracy (which Lenin, sadly enough, associated with the “dictatorship of the proletariat”).
Indeed, not long after the November elections, Lenin would ban several opposition newspapers and unleash a campaign of “Red Terror” against all class enemies (with the Social Revolutionaries being the first victims following their uprising in Moscow in early July 1918). The orchestration of the “Red Terror,” which lasted until the end of the Russian civil war, was assigned to Cheka (a Bolshevik police organization that reported to Lenin himself on all anti-communist activities), thereby laying the foundations for the emergence of a full-fledged police state under Stalinism.
The clearest illustration of how far to the “right” the Bolsheviks had moved following the outbreak of the October Revolution is the brutal repression of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921 by Red Army troops. Disheartened by the Bolsheviks’ dictatorial tendencies, a garrison of the key fortress of Kronstadt revolted in March 1921 against the communist government and the ideas of “war communism” – even though the Kronstadt sailors had been, back in 1917, among the strongest supporters of the October Revolution and the idea of “Soviet power”. To be sure, they were, until then, in Lev Trotsky’s own words, “the pride and joy of the revolution”.
With the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, it became clear that Lenin’s concept of the “vanguard party” and his understanding of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” did not permit dissent of any kind and that a socialist political order was to be based on one-party rule.
As for the policy of “war communism”, it ended a complete disaster. Lenin himself admitted as much in a speech on October 17, 1921, when he said, “we made the mistake of deciding to go over directly to communist production and distribution”.
But this did not mean that all Bolsheviks shared Lenin’s views on “war communism” or that they embraced the policy that was followed in the 1920s by a partial return to the market system of production and distribution. The soon-to-be “new Tzar” Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, regarded the New Economic Policy as the betrayal of the October Revolution. His “revolution from above”, launched in 1928 with the policy of collectivization and dekulakization (a campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of the more “well-to-do” peasants) reopened the gates of hell and converted Soviet socialism once and for all into a barbarous and murderous regime.
Stalinism did not merely formalize the worst aspects of Leninism but became, in reality, an actual stumbling block for the transition into socialism both inside the Soviet Union and throughout the rest of the world where the ideas of social justice and equality continued to move the minds and hearts of millions of decent people.
Hence, the end of Stalinism and the collapse of Soviet communism (which in the course of its 74 years did manage to turn a “backward” country into an industrialized nation that was able to defeat Nazism and make undeniable advances on several economic, cultural, and social fronts) mark simply the end of a dream turned into a nightmare.
In this context, the legacy of the Russian Revolution obliges, 107 years later, neither celebration nor mourning. Dreams are surely renewable, and a new world is waiting to be born as neoliberalism, militarism, and the climate crisis are wreaking havoc on the planet, but the possibilities available to create an egalitarian, socially just, ecologically friendly, and decent society lie today outside the ideas, practices and policies of the October Revolution.
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The Armageddon Agenda:Harris, Trump, and the Race to Oblivion
After nearly 80 years we face the very real danger that, for the first time since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, nuclear weapons will again be detonated on this planet.
Sep 13, 2024
The next president of the United States, whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, will face many contentious domestic issues that have long divided this country, including abortion rights, immigration, racial discord, and economic inequality. In the foreign policy realm, she or he will face vexing decisions over Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, and China/Taiwan. But one issue that few of us are even thinking about could pose a far greater quandary for the next president and even deeper peril for the rest of us: nuclear weapons policy.
Consider this: For the past three decades, we’ve been living through a period in which the risk of nuclear war has been far lower than at any time since the Nuclear Age began — so low, in fact, that the danger of such a holocaust has been largely invisible to most people. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the signing of agreements that substantially reduced the U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles eliminated the most extreme risk of thermonuclear conflict, allowing us to push thoughts of nuclear Armageddon aside (and focus on other worries). But those quiescent days should now be considered over. Relations among the major powers have deteriorated in recent years and progress on disarmament has stalled. The United States and Russia are, in fact, upgrading their nuclear arsenals with new and more powerful weapons, while China — previously an outlier in the nuclear threat equation — has begun a major expansion of its own arsenal.
The altered nuclear equation is also evident in the renewed talk of possible nuclear weapons use by leaders of the major nuclear-armed powers. Such public discussion largely ceased after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when it became evident that any thermonuclear exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would result in their mutual annihilation. However, that fear has diminished in recent years and we’re again hearing talk of nuclear weapons use. Since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to employ nuclear munitions in response to unspecified future actions of the U.S. and NATO in support of Ukrainian forces. Citing those very threats, along with China’s growing military might, Congress has authorized a program to develop more “lower-yield” nuclear munitions supposedly meant (however madly) to provide a president with further “options” in the event of a future regional conflict with Russia or China.
Thanks to those and related developments, the world is now closer to an actual nuclear conflagration than at any time since the end of the Cold War. And while popular anxiety about a nuclear exchange may have diminished, keep in mind that the explosive power of existing arsenals has not. Imagine this, for instance: even a “limited” nuclear war — involving the use of just a dozen or so of the hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) possessed by China, Russia, and the United States — would cause enough planetary destruction to ensure civilization’s collapse and the death of billions of people.
And consider all of that as just the backdrop against which the next president will undoubtedly face fateful decisions regarding the production and possible use of such weaponry, whether in the bilateral nuclear relationship between the U.S. and Russia or the trilateral one that incorporates China.
The U.S.-Russia Nuclear Equation
The first nuclear quandary facing the next president has an actual timeline. In approximately 500 days, on February 5, 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last remaining nuclear accord between the U.S. and Russia limiting the size of their arsenals, will expire. That treaty, signed in 2010, limits each side to a maximum of 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads along with 700 delivery systems, whether ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), or nuclear-capable heavy bombers. (That treaty only covers strategic warheads, or those intended for attacks on each other’s homeland; it does not include the potentially devastating stockpiles of “tactical” nuclear munitions possessed by the two countries that are intended for use in regional conflicts.)
At present, the treaty is on life support. On February 21, 2023, Vladimir Putin ominously announced that Russia had “suspended” its formal participation in New START, although claiming it would continue to abide by its warhead and delivery limits as long as the U.S. did so. The Biden administration then agreed that it, too, would continue to abide by the treaty limits. It has also signaled to Moscow that it’s willing to discuss the terms of a replacement treaty for New START when that agreement expires in 2026. The Russians have, however, declined to engage in such conversations as long as the U.S. continues its military support for Ukraine.
Accordingly, among the first major decisions the next president has to make in January 2025 will be what stance to take regarding the future status of New START (or its replacement). With the treaty’s extinction barely more than a year away, little time will remain for careful deliberation as a new administration chooses among several potentially fateful and contentious possibilities.
Its first option, of course, would be to preserve the status quo, agreeing that the U.S. will abide by that treaty’s numerical limits as long as Russia does, even in the absence of a treaty obliging it to do so. Count on one thing, though: such a decision would almost certainly be challenged and tested by nuclear hawks in both Washington and Moscow.
Of course, President Harris or Trump could decide to launch a diplomatic drive to persuade Moscow to agree to a new version of New START, a distinctly demanding undertaking, given the time remaining. Ideally, such an agreement would entail further reductions in the U.S. and Russian strategic arsenals or at least include caps on the number of tactical weapons on each side. And remember, even if such an agreement were indeed to be reached, it would also require Senate approval and undoubtedly encounter fierce resistance from the hawkish members of that body. Despite such obstacles, this probably represents the best possible outcome imaginable.
The worst — and yet most likely — would be a decision to abandon the New START limits and begin adding yet more weapons to the American nuclear arsenal, reversing a bipartisan arms control policy that goes back to the administration of President Richard Nixon. Sadly, there are too many members of Congress who favor just such a shift and are already proposing measures to initiate it.
In June, for example, in its version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2025, the Senate Armed Services Committee instructed the Department of Defense to begin devising plans for an increase in the number of deployed ICBMs from 400 of the existing Minuteman-IIIs to 450 of its replacement, the future Sentinel ICBM. The House Armed Services Committee version of that measure does not contain that provision but includes separate plans for ICBM force expansion. (The consolidated text of the bill has yet to be finalized.)
Should the U.S. and/or Russia abandon the New START limits and begin adding to its atomic arsenal after February 5, 2026, a new nuclear arms race would almost certainly be ignited, with no foreseeable limits. No matter which side announced such a move first, the other would undoubtedly feel compelled to follow suit and so, for the first time since the Nixon era, both nuclear powers would be expanding rather than reducing their deployed nuclear forces — only increasing, of course, the potential for mutual annihilation. And if Cold War history is any guide, such an arms-building contest would result in increased suspicion and hostility, adding a greater danger of nuclear escalation to any crisis that might arise between them.
The Three-Way Arms Race
Scary as that might prove, a two-way nuclear arms race isn’t the greatest peril we face. After all, should Moscow and Washington prove unable to agree on a successor to New START and begin expanding their arsenals, any trilateral nuclear agreement including China that might slow that country’s present nuclear buildup becomes essentially unimaginable.
Ever since it acquired nuclear weapons in 1964, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) pursued a minimalist stance when it came to deploying such weaponry, insisting that it would never initiate a nuclear conflict but would only use nuclear weapons in a second-strike retaliatory fashion following a nuclear attack on the PRC. In accordance with that policy, China long maintained a relatively small arsenal, only 200 or so nuclear warheads and a small fleet of ICBMs and SLBMs. In the past few years, however, China has launched a significant nuclear build-up, adding another 300 warheads and producing more missiles and missile-launching silos — all while insisting its no-first-use policy remains unchanged and that it is only maintaining a retaliatory force to deter potential aggression by other nuclear-armed states.
Some Western analysts believe that Xi Jinping, China’s nationalistic and authoritarian leader, considers a larger arsenal necessary to boost his country’s status in a highly competitive, multipolar world. Others argue that China fears improvements in U.S. defensive capabilities, especially the installation of anti-ballistic missile systems, that could endanger its relatively small retaliatory force and so rob it of a deterrent to any future American first strike.
Given the Chinese construction of several hundred new missile silos, Pentagon analysts contend that the country plans to deploy as many as 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035 — roughly equivalent to deployed Russian and American stockpiles under the New START guidelines. At present, there is no way to confirm such predictions, which are based on extrapolations from the recent growth of the Chinese arsenal from perhaps 200 to 500 warheads. Nonetheless, many Washington officials, especially in the Republican Party, have begun to argue that, given such a buildup, the New START limits must be abandoned in 2026 and yet more weapons added to the deployed U.S. nuclear stockpile to counter both Russia and China.
As Franklin Miller of the Washington-based Scowcroft Group and a former director of nuclear targeting in the office of the secretary of defense put it, “Deterring China and Russia simultaneously [requires] an increased level of U.S. strategic warheads.” Miller was one of 12 members of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, a bipartisan group convened in 2022 to reconsider America’s nuclear policies in light of China’s growing arsenal, Putin’s nuclear threats, and other developments. In its final October 2023 report, that commission recommended numerous alterations and additions to the American arsenal, including installing multiple warheads (instead of single ones) on the Sentinel missiles being built to replace the Minuteman ICBM and increasing the number of B-21 nuclear bombers and Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines to be produced under the Pentagon’s $1.5 trillion nuclear “modernization” program.
The Biden administration has yet to endorse the recommendations in that report. It has, however, signaled that it’s considering the steps a future administration might take to address an expanded Chinese arsenal. In March, the White House approved a new version of a top-secret document, the Nuclear Employment Guidance, which for the first time reportedly focused as much on countering China as Russia. According to the few public comments made by administration officials about that document, it, too, sets out contingency plans for increasing the number of deployed strategic weapons in the years ahead if Russia breaks out of the current New START limits and no arms restraints have been negotiated with China.
“We have begun exploring options to increase future launcher capacity or additional deployed warheads on the land, sea, and air legs [of the nuclear delivery “triad” of ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers] that could offer national leadership increased flexibility, if desired, and executed,” said acting Assistant Secretary of Defense Policy Vipin Narang on August 1st. While none of those options are likely to be implemented in President Biden’s remaining months, the next administration will be confronted with distinctly ominous decisions about the future composition of that already monstrous nuclear arsenal.
Whether it is kept as is or expanded, the one option you won’t hear much about in Washington is finding ways to reduce it. And count on one thing: even a decision simply to preserve the status quo in the context of today’s increasingly antagonistic international environment poses an increased risk of nuclear conflict. Any decision to expand it, along with comparable moves by Russia and China, will undoubtedly create an even greater risk of instability and potentially suicidal nuclear escalation.
The Need for Citizen Advocacy
For all too many of us, nuclear weapons policy seems like a difficult issue that should be left to the experts. This wasn’t always so. During the Cold War years, nuclear war seemed like an ever-present possibility and millions of Americans familiarized themselves with nuclear issues, participating in ban-the-bomb protests or the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign of the 1980s. But with the Cold War’s end and a diminished sense of nuclear doom, most of us turned to other issues and concerns. Yet the nuclear danger is growing rapidly and so decisions regarding the U.S. arsenal could have life-or-death repercussions on a global scale.
And one thing should be made clear: adding more weaponry to the U.S. arsenal will not make us one bit safer. Given the invulnerability of this country’s missile-bearing nuclear submarines and the multitude of other weapons in our nuclear arsenal, no foreign leader could conceivably mount a first strike on this country and not expect catastrophic retaliation, which in turn would devastate the planet. Acquiring more nuclear weapons would not alter any of this in the slightest. All it could possibly do is add to international tensions and increase the risk of global annihilation.
As Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan research and advocacy outfit, put it recently: “Significant increases in the U.S. deployed nuclear arsenal would undermine mutual and global security by making the existing balance of nuclear terror more unpredictable and would set into motion a counterproductive, costly action-reaction cycle of nuclear competition.”
A decision to pursue such a reckless path could occur just months from now. In early 2025, the next president, whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, will be making critical decisions regarding the future of the New START Treaty and the composition of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Given the vital stakes involved, such decisions should not be left to the president and a small coterie of her or his close advisers. Rather, it should be the concern of every citizen, ensuring vigorous debate on alternative options, including steps aimed at reducing and eventually eliminating the world’s nuclear arsenals. Without such public advocacy, we face the very real danger that, for the first time since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, nuclear weapons will again be detonated on this planet, with billions of us finding ourselves in almost unimaginable peril.
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Finland vs. Stalin and a Possible Endgame for Ukraine
As with Finland in 1939, national unity alongside a clear-eyed view of worst-case scenarios and the limited military options present the best hope for Ukrainian independence.
Dec 24, 2023
As public support for Ukraine has waned over time, and Washington’s policy elites are shifting their focus more toward the conflict in Gaza, an endgame for Ukraine is desperately needed. U.S. and European officials have reportedly broached the issue of possible peace negotiations with their Ukrainian counterparts. This begs the question: What could a peace treaty between Kyiv and Moscow look like? One historical instance stands out among many as a potential model for how the Russo-Ukrainian War could end.
The “Winter War,” or the Soviet-Finnish War that took place from November 1939 to March 1940 (and was renewed by the Finns as allies of Germany between June 1941 and September 1944), has drawn some comparisons with the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia. After Finland rejected an ultimatum to concede a considerable portion of its territory and the Soviet signing of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Joseph Stalin’s Red Army invaded Finland to install a puppet Communist Finnish government and eliminate a potentially hostile presence near the Soviet Union’s second city and only Baltic port of Leningrad.
Similar to the initial phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Soviet officials predicted that Helsinki would fall to Soviet troops in as little as three days. However, despite the Soviets outnumbering the Finns in soldiers by three to one, Helsinki succeeded in holding off the Red Army for more than three months, inflicting extremely heavy casualties on the invading forces.
Though Finland was eventually defeated and forced to concede about 11 percent of its territory, the Finns scored a moral victory. It is widely considered that the grit and courage of Finland’s resistance convinced Stalin that incorporating Finland into the Soviet Union or turning it into a Communist client state like Poland would be more trouble than it was worth. This also contributed to Stalin’s eventual agreement to sign a peace treaty with Finland in 1944 in return for a small amount of additional territory and a commitment on Helsinki’s part to neutrality. Finland thus became the only part of the former Russian Empire that was not reincorporated into the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin.
Thereafter, Finland implemented the Paasikivi-Kekkonen doctrine, which aimed to preserve Finland’s survival as an independent country by maintaining a neutral foreign policy stance, while Finnish nationalism became a central ideological and political driving force in Finnish society. The Soviet Union stuck to the terms of the treaty with Finland, and during the Cold War Finland developed as a remarkably prosperous and successful Western democracy. On this basis, after the Cold War ended, Finland was able to join the European Union in 1995 and then NATO in 2023.
While “Finlandization” was considered a pejorative suggestive of accommodation, if not appeasement among Western geopoliticians during the Cold War, it turned out to be a diplomatic triumph. Finland has long had one of the world’s highest per capita GDPs, scores 100% on Freedom House’s Democracy Index (the United States scores 83), and Finns have long ranked as the world’s happiest people. The Austrian State Treaty of 1955, which guaranteed Austrian neutrality, by which Soviet and NATO troops withdrew from the country, also ensured that Austria developed as a successful and prosperous Western democracy.
Kyiv might learn from the Finnish example that surrendering some territory, though deeply painful, is still worth it if the greater part of the country thereby secures its independence and capacity for economic and political development. Hopefully, the strength of Ukrainian nationalism and the tough and united resistance of Ukrainians to Russia’s invasion have also persuaded Putin, as Stalin was persuaded by Finnish resistance, that his goal of turning the whole of Ukraine into a Russian client state is impossible.
This is already a great victory for Ukraine, not just in terms of Russia’s initial goals but the history of the past 300 years during which Russia has dominated Ukraine.
The government of Ukraine currently remains steadfast in its maximalist aims of recovering all of its internationally recognized territory, including Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. Military reality, however, suggests that this goal is extremely unlikely to be achieved and that an agreement freezing the existing battle lines may well be the best that Kyiv can hope for, at least for the present.
On the other hand, if the war continues, Russia’s massive advantages in manpower, industry, and weapons production could lead to far more significant Ukrainian losses — just as Finland would likely have suffered complete disaster if it had continued to fight after March 1940 or September 1944.
Washington can do its part by not encouraging unrealistic war goals and thereby possibly exposing Ukraine to future disaster.
Ukraine has already won in key respects. Vladimir Putin has no hope of subjugating the whole of Ukraine as a vassal state in the foreseeable future. Kyiv is moving closer to the West and could be integrated into the European Union (EU) in the future. Moreover, Moscow’s actions have actually reinforced Ukrainian nationalism.
As with Finland, this national unity presents the best hope for Ukrainian independence.
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