Revolution, Counter-revolution and Confusion: The legacy of the Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution inspired millions a hundred years ago and many joined organisations seeking to spread the ‘proletarian revolution’ to the four corners of the earth.  But this revolutionary movement soon stood silently by as the original leaders of the Bolshevik Party confessed to unbelievable crimes and were murdered.

A decade later the same people who joined the International Brigade to fight fascism in Spain suspended their critical faculties when Molotov and Ribbentrop signed their non-aggression pact. By the 1960’s peasant guerrillas a la Giap and Guevara held sway and today identity, sexual and minority politics take centre stage on the revolutionary left. What place is there for the proletariat?

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Mike Howgate is a retired geologist and palaeontologist who was for many years a regular speaker at Conway Hall on scientific and political topics.  A life-long Trotskyite, he was personally expelled from the Workers Revolutionary Party by Gerry Healy for, in the words of Vanessa Redgrave, “not accepting the authority of the Party”.  In 1930’s Russia he would no doubt have been shot.