This is the second article on this blog addressing the hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution (see http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2017/10/21/national-liberation-and-bolshevism-reconsidered-a-view-from-the-borderlands/). It suggests that a wider focus should be taken, situating this event in the 1916-21 International Revolutionary Wave. This means and looking carefully at other places, showing how Latvia, Finland and Ukraine contributed to this wave. It looks how decisions taken by the Bolsheviks following the timeline of revolution in Russia sometimes had the effect of thwarting the timelines of revolution elsewhere. This had negative consequences for the international revolution.
This contribution is taken from is taken from Volume 4, Internationalism form Below: Communists, Nation-States and Nationalism during the 1916-21 International Revolutionary Wave, by Allan Armstrong.
THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION AND THE FIRST ATTEMPT TO SET UP A POST-NATIONAL WORLD ORDER
A. DIFFERING TIMELINES OF REVOLUTION
i) April 1916 to March 1921 or ‘October’ 1917 to August 1991?
History records that the key political date of the last century was October 25th, 1917. The consequences of the events, which happened on this day, determined a great deal of world politics for more than seventy years – up until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. Elsewhere, in the Western imperial-dominated world October 25th was marked as November 8th. The last Russian Provisional Government of 1917 was overthrown on this date. Nevertheless, the date became universally characterised as the day the ‘October’ Revolution began. This name stuck despite the fact that the victors, the Bolsheviks, soon changed the Russian calendar from the Old Style (O.S.) used in Tsarist Russia to the New Style (N.S.) used in the rest of the Western world. History also places the location of the key events of this day in Petrograd. This city’s name too has been subject to change, earlier from St. Petersburg to Petrograd, then later to Leningrad, and today back to St. Petersburg. Continue reading “THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION AND THE FIRST ATTEMPT TO SET UP A POST-NATIONAL WORLD ORDER”
Tags: 'Little Russia', 1916-21 International Revolutionary Wave, A. Duva, all-Russian Constituent Assembly, Another World Is Possible, Antonov-Ovseenko, Author: Allan Armstrong, Bolsheviks, Borotbists, Brest-Litovsk, Carl Mannerheim, Central Rada, Christian Rakovsky, COMECON, Comintern, Communist (bolshevik) Party of the Ukraine, Council of Peoples Delegates, Courland, Don Cossacks, Donets, Easter Rising 1916, Eduard Kviring, Eduskunta, Eugenie Bosch, Finland, Finnish Social Democratic Party, Finnish Workers Committee, General Murayev, Grigori Pyatakov, Helsinki, Internationalism From Below, Izkolat, Jager Battalion, Jewish Social Democratic Bund, Kaledin, Karl Kautsky, Katerynoslav, Kharkhov, Kiev, Kronstadt Rising 1921, Kryvoy Rog, Latvia, Latvian Riflemens Soviet, Latvian Social Democratic Party, Left Independents, Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Lev Iurkevich, Livland, Mensheviks, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, October Revolution, Odessa, Oskari Tokoi, Otto Kuusinen, Peter Stucka, Petrograd, Pyatakov, Radical Left, Red Army, Red Guards, Riga, Right Socialist Revolutionaries, Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, Schutzcorps, Serhii Mazlakh, Simon Petliura, Soviet of Landless Peasants, Svinhufvud, Taras Shevchenko, Ten Days That Show The World, Ukraine, Ukrainian Communist Party (borotbists), Ukrainian Democratic Agrarian Party, Ukrainian Party of Social Revolutionaries, Ukrainian Party of Socialist Independists, Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Federalists, Ukrainian Social Democratic Labour Party, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Vasyl Shakhrai, Victor Serge, Viipuri (Vyborg), Vitebsk, Vladimir Lenin, Volodymyr Levynsky, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Volynski Regiment, Warsaw Pact, Yakolev Epshtein
