Lenin the Revolution Rapist: How Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks were held off by an anarchist Ukraine
Revolt number 2 (1992), South Africa
Recently, criticism has been levelled at Lenin, a man still regarded as a virtual god. Lenin, with his right hand man Trotsky, led the Bolshevik Socialists to victory in the October revolution in 1917. Once you deconstruct the myth of Lenin, you open a very funky can of worms …
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION
In February 1917, there was a Popular uprising in the Russian empire. The Tsar abdicated the principal political parties – most of them Socialist, and began to set up a crude parliamentary democracy, led by the Mensheviks. But Russia was a big, bleak, backward old empire that sprawled across five time zones, communication was bad; the uprisings continued. Radicals were released from prison, dissidents returned from exile, and ordinary people became increasingly aware of the possibilities of communal power. Peasants chased out the landowners, workers took over the factories and many organized themselves democratically through local mass meetings – Soviets.
Freedom was in the air. Much of the population had tasted it or at least had a whiff of it, it seemed to be out there for the taking. There seemed nothing to fear but the fear of freedom. Lenin (of the minority Bolsheviks) was one of the first politicians to sense the mood of the people. He realized that by adopting the popular slogans of the masses – “land to the peasants,” “‘worker control,” and “all power to the soviets,” the Bolsheviks, under his leadership could seize power and move to the next phase of the “Marxist” revolution – “The dictatorship of the Proletariat. Continue reading “Lenin the Revolution Rapist: How Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks were held off by an anarchist Ukraine – “Revolt” magazine, 1992″