[lbo-talk] Re: Trotsky on Soviet Planning

Turbulo at aol.com Turbulo at aol.com
Sat Jan 8 09:40:50 PST 2005



>--- Turbulo at aol.com wrote:
>While it's no doubt true that most peasant
>participants in the events
>of 1917 had no concept of international revolution,
>this is not the case
>with the workers, sailors and soldiers of Petrograd,
>who were the
>leading revolutionary core in 1917. All contemporary
>accounts testify that
>they were thoroughly inmbued with socialist
>internationalism.
>
>Chris Doss:
>
>What percentage of the population was that?

********

A small one, just as the Paris "mob" of 1792-3 were a small percentage of the French population. But both were nonetheless the leading actors in their respective revolutions. This means that, despite their small numbers, they were able for a time to command the support of a much wider population, and thus to determine the revolution's course of action. When the alliance between the city and country masses broke down, both revolutions regressed. But they didn't vanish without a trace. Napoleon's empire represented aristocratic and royalist/imperial ambitions superimposed upon the legal/social framework of the revolution, as Stalinism was a bastard child of socialist revolution and Russian peasant backwardness. But this was Stalinism, not Leninism, which was was definitely part of the Western-looking wing of Russian political tought.



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