II. The utter nonsense that Lenin and the Bolsheviks grabbed and tightened power for themselves
Let's look at what the new Soviet power was used for. Immediately, the new revolutionary government issued two historic decrees (or laws). One was to fulfill the mass demand to withdraw Russia from the unjust imperialist world war and to declare peace without conquest of countries or annexation of lands. The other was to empower the bitterly oppressed peasantry to seize the Tsarist lands and the landholdings of the wealthy aristocrats and of the Russian Orthodox Church (which had owned and controlled huge tracts of land).
The imperialists would have none of this--and tried to strangle the revolution in its infancy. But even as the Soviet Union was desperately fighting for its survival, it carried forward a social revolution that crucially involved creating equality among peoples, and working to uproot the subordinate role of women in society.
For example, the revolution abolished the practice of church-sanctioned marriage and the institutionalized authority of the male in the household. Abortion was legalized more than 50 years before Roe v. Wade in the U.S. Patriarchal customs were challenged in the Central Asian republics, where oppressive Islamic laws held sway, like arranged marriages and forced wearing of hijabs or niqabs (that covered women's faces). Never before had an entire society set out to overcome the oppression of women... never before had gender equality and traditional sex roles become such a major social focus. There was much that was changed, much that was inspiring, and weaknesses in understanding and practice as well--to be studied and learned from.
The Bolshevik revolution created the world's first multinational state based on equality of nationalities. Minority nationalities were granted the right to instruction in their native languages in all schools. The Soviet state devoted considerable resources to the mass production of books, journals and newspapers in the minority regions. Books were published in over 40 non-Russian languages. Campaigns were led against great-Russian chauvinism (similar to white racism).
So come again... Lenin and the Bolsheviks were out for themselves?
And, by the way, what was going on in the U.S. at the time? Segregation was the law of the land; racial intermarriage was forbidden in over 30 states; Klan violence and lynching were epidemic in the South; the Supreme Court had ruled that immigrants could be forcibly sterilized.
III. A closing thought. Imperialists have no right to talk about coups and being power hungry... unless they are looking in the mirrorTalk about coups and the "cynical manipulation" of power to topple regimes and to install or preserve cliques. Well, the U.S. imperialists have written the playbook. They've staged dozens of coups across the planet since 1953--working through media, economic destabilization campaigns, paramilitary forces, and senior military officers. They've done it in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, Libya (and the list goes on). They've done it to mass murderous effect. Readers are urged to check out the American Crime series at revcom.us, and William Blum's Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.
A major focus of socialist transformation in the Soviet Union was the liberation of women. One high point: on International Women's Day, 1927, the Communist Party launched a movement to overthrow deeply rooted, brutally oppressive traditions imposed on women in the Central Asian Soviet republics, including marrying young girls to old men, and men having multiple wives. In Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan, women were backed by the revolutionary state to cast off heavy head-to-toe coverings of horsehair and cotton that Muslim women and girls over the age of 9 or 10 were forced to wear in the presence of men outside their families.
Recommended Readings
*THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, Part IV: "The leadership we need," by Bob Avakian, 2016
*You Don't Know What You Think You "Know" About" The Communist Revolution and the REAL Path to Emancipation: Its History and Our Future, an interview with Raymond Lotta, 2014, www.revcom.us and www.thisiscommunism.org
*BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, Chapter 6: "Revolutionary Responsibility and Leadership" and Supplement "The Revolutionary Potential of the Masses and the Responsibility of the Vanguard," by Bob Avakian, 2011
*The 1917 Revolution: How the Bolsheviks Seized Power, November 9, 1997, www.revcom.us
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