Global Learning
  • Home
  • Defenders of Cuban Socialism
    • UN Charter
    • Declaration of Human Rights
    • Bandung
    • New International Economic Order
    • Non-Aligned Movement
  • Substack editorial column
  • New Cold War articles
  • Friends of Socialist China articles
  • Global Research articles
  • Counterpunch articles
  • Cuba and the world-system
    • Table of Contents and chapter summaries
    • About the author
    • Endorsements
    • Obtaining your copy
  • Blog ¨The View from the South¨
    • Blog Index
    • Posts in reverse chronological order
  • The Voice of Third World Leaders
    • Asia >
      • Ho Chi Minh
      • Xi Jinping, President of China
    • Africa >
      • Kwame Nkrumah
      • Julius Nyerere
    • Latin America >
      • Fidel Castro
      • Hugo Chávez
      • Raúl Castro >
        • 55th anniversary speech, January 1, 1914
        • Opening Speech, CELAC
        • Address at G-77, June 15, 2014
        • Address to National Assembly, July 5, 2014
        • Address to National Assembly, December 20, 2014
        • Speech on Venezuela at ALBA, 3-17-2015
        • Declaration of December 18, 2015 on USA-Cuba relations
        • Speech at ALBA, March 5, 2018
      • Miguel Díaz-Canel >
        • UN address, September 26, 2018
        • 100th annivesary, CP of China
      • Evo Morales >
        • About Evo Morales
        • Address to G-77 plus China, January 8, 2014
        • Address to UN General Assembly, September 24, 2014
      • Rafael Correa >
        • About Rafael Correa
        • Speech at CELAC 1/29/2015
        • Speech at Summit of the Americas 2015
      • Nicolás Maduro
      • Cristina Fernández
      • Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations >
        • Statement at re-opening of Cuban Embassy in USA, June 20, 2015
        • The visit of Barack Obama to Cuba
        • Declaration on parliamentary coup in Brazil, August 31, 2016
        • Declaration of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba on Venezuela, April 13, 2019
      • ALBA >
        • Declaration of ALBA Political Council, May 21, 2019
        • Declaration on Venezuela, March 17, 2015
        • Declaration on Venezuela, April 10, 2017
      • Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) >
        • Havana Declaration 2014
        • Declaration on Venezuela, March 26
    • Martin Luther King, Jr.
    • International >
      • Peoples’ Summit 2015
      • The Group of 77 >
        • Declaration on a New World Order 2014
        • Declaration on Venezuela 3/26/2015
      • BRICS
      • Non-Aligned Movement
  • Readings
    • Charles McKelvey, Cuba in Global Context
    • Piero Gleijeses, Cuba and Africa
    • Charles McKelvey, Chávez and the Revolution in Venezuela
    • Charles McKelvey, The unfinished agenda of race in USA
    • Charles McKelvey, Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist Revolutionary
  • Recommended Books
  • Contact

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Recommended books on Amazon.com; click on image of book to connect

The Russian Revolution (February)

1/22/2014

0 Comments

 
       Beginning on February 23, 1917, two-thirds of the industrial workers, some 240,000 in number, participated in strikes and mass demonstrations in Petrograd, then the capital of Russia.  They began to win the soldiers, most of whom were peasants, to their side, with the result that by February 27 the Petrograd garrison of 150,000 troops disintegrated and disappeared.  During the evening of February 27, soldiers, workers, students, and miscellaneous people streamed to the Tauride Palace, which became a temporary field headquarters, governmental center, arsenal, and prison of the revolution.  From these headquarters orders were issued for the guarding of railway stations and the arrest of government officials and policemen.  These orders were carried out by the soldiers without hesitation.  With a minimum of bloodshed, authority had been transferred from the government of the tsar to the February Revolution.  This scenario was repeated in Moscow and in the rest of the country (Trotsky 2008:75-102).

     On February 27, the revolutionary leaders formed a “Provisional Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies,” summoning the workers to elect delegates to this Executive Committee.  The Soviet Executive Committee immediately began to function as a government, emitting orders to occupy the state bank, the treasury, the mint, and the printing press with a revolutionary guard (Trotksy 2008:115-16). 

     The formation of soviets represented the initial step in the formation of a structure of government that is an alternative to the feudal monarchy or the bourgeois democratic parliament.   The soviets were workers’ and soldiers’ councils, composed of workers’ and soldiers’ delegates elected in the factories, shops, and garrisons.  The need for the formation of soviets as an alternative structure of power had been ingrained in workers’ consciousness since the earlier formation of soviets during the Russian Revolution of 1905.  And the Russian soviets were following the example of the Paris Commune of 1871, which, as described by Marx, consisted of municipal councils elected by universal suffrage in the various districts of the city (Trotsky 2008:10, 115-16; Lenin 1997:64).

     However, the Soviet Executive Committee surrendered power to the bourgeoisie, rather than proceeding to govern the country with the power that it held in its hands.  In a March 1 meeting, representatives of the Executive Committee of the Soviet met with representatives of a Provisional Committee of the Duma (or Parliament) that had been formed on February 27.  It was agreed that a government should be formed by the Provisional Committee of the Duma; and a Provisional Government, consisting of ministers who were members of the bourgeoisie and the landowning class, was formed (Trotsky 2008:116-20, 125-26, 132-33, 138-41). 

      The leaders who turned power over to the bourgeoisie were from two socialist parties: the Social Revolutionary Party, a party led by urban intellectuals with a social base among peasants, which advocated the redistribution of the land and the formation of peasant cooperatives; and the Menshevik party, an urban based party supported by the left wing of the bourgeois intelligentsia and the middle class and by the moderate upper strata of workers.  They were driven toward accommodation with the bourgeoisie because they believed that the February Revolution was a bourgeois revolution and that the time of the proletarian revolution had not yet come (Trotsky 2008:160-67).

     In spite of the surrender of power by the Soviet Executive Committee, workers, soldiers, and soon peasants, continued to identify with and place their hopes in the alternative soviet structure of power.  Soviet structures spread rapidly among workers, soldiers, and peasants.  Soviets were formed in the principal cities and towns in early March, throughout the country in the next few weeks, and in the villages and towns in April and May.  Layers of soviets were developed, as neighborhood soviets in large cities elected delegates to a city-wide soviet; localities, towns, and cities elected delegates to provincial soviets; and a central soviet representing the workers, soldiers, and peasants from many regions of the country was elected.  This formation of a system of soviets by workers, soldiers, and peasants established a situation of dual power: soviet structures of popular democracy alongside bourgeois government (Trotsky 2008:116-18,159). 

      The leaders of the Bolshevik Party had been in exile, and they began to arrive in Petrograd in March.  Most supported the cooperative relation of the Social Revolutionary-Menshevik bloc with the bourgeoisie.  But when Lenin, the principal leader of the Bolshevik Party and a symbol of the revolution in the minds of many workers, arrived on April 3, he took the party and the revolution in a different direction (Trotsky 2008:163, 206-17).


References

Lenin, V.I.  1997.  El Estado y La Revolución.  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels.

Trotsky, Leon.  2008.  History of the Russian Revolution.  Translated by Max Eastman.  Chicago: Haymarket Books.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Russian Revolution, February Revolution, Lenin, Trotsky
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author: Charles McKelvey

    Retired professor, writer,  and Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist revolutionary

    Categories

    All
    American Revolution
    Blog Index
    Bolivia
    Charismatic Leaders
    China
    Critique Of The Left
    Cuban History
    Cuba Today
    Ecuador
    Environment
    French Revolution
    Gay Rights
    Haitian Revolution
    Knowledge
    Latin American History
    Latin American Right
    Latin American Unity
    Marx
    Marxism-Leninism
    Mexican Revolution
    Miscellaneous
    Neocolonialism
    Neoliberalism
    Nicaragua
    North-South Cooperation
    Presidential Elections 2016
    Press
    Public Debate In USA
    Race
    Religion And Revolution
    Revolution
    Russian Revolution
    South-South Cooperation
    Third World
    Trump
    US Ascent
    US Imperialism
    Vanguard
    Venezuela
    Vietnam
    Wallerstein
    Women And Revolution
    World History
    World-System
    World-System Crisis

    Archives

    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    January 2013

    RSS Feed

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

More Ads


website by Sierra Creation