98th anniversary of the Great October Revolution

Prepare for the coming revolutionary storms!

The entire world, including India, is a seething volcano waiting to erupt.

For 25 years and more, the capitalists and imperialists have been repeatedly declaring that there is no alternative to the capitalist system. In India and in all other countries of the capitalist imperialist world, the working class and broad masses of people are groaning under the weight of unbearable, ever intensifying exploitation and oppression. The rights that the working class has won through immense struggle and sacrifice in the course of the twentieth century are under attack. In our country as well as world over, intensified fascist attacks have been launched on the broad masses of people, in the name of “war against terrorism”, “national security” and “defending national unity and territorial integrity”.

Prepare for the coming revolutionary storms!

The entire world, including India, is a seething volcano waiting to erupt.

For 25 years and more, the capitalists and imperialists have been repeatedly declaring that there is no alternative to the capitalist system. In India and in all other countries of the capitalist imperialist world, the working class and broad masses of people are groaning under the weight of unbearable, ever intensifying exploitation and oppression. The rights that the working class has won through immense struggle and sacrifice in the course of the twentieth century are under attack. In our country as well as world over, intensified fascist attacks have been launched on the broad masses of people, in the name of “war against terrorism”, “national security” and “defending national unity and territorial integrity”.

The most powerful imperialist states are forcibly transferring the burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of weaker states, unmindful of its disastrous consequences for their people. US imperialism is unleashing civil wars, organizing, arming and financing terrorist groups, and carrying out direct military interventions in various countries of the world. It is single-mindedly pursuing the course of trying to establish its unrivaled domination over the whole world by weakening any challenge to its supremacy.

Seething under the surface is the anger of the working class and broad masses at their intolerable conditions. Workers in India and across the world have been participating in massive protest actions against intensified capitalist exploitation, against the violation of national sovereignty, against fascism and imperialist wars. These protest actions have failed to stop the imperialists and capitalists from relentlessly pursuing their course. Workers are seeing that no matter which party is in charge of the government, the agenda is set by the capitalists and imperialists, and the attacks on the working class and toiling masses only intensify.

Workers and broad masses of people in our country are seeking an alternative. That alternative is a proletarian revolution that will put an end to capitalism, the remnants of feudalism, colonialism and imperialism and build a modern socialist India free from all forms of exploitation of persons by persons.

Ninety eight years ago, the working class of Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Lenin carried out precisely such a revolution in Russia. In the conditions of unbearable capitalist exploitation, and an inter imperialist world war wherein the working class was organized to slaughter their brothers of other countries for the sake of the profits of the capitalists, the workers of Russia declared— “Enough is enough”. They rose in a revolution first to overthrow the hated rule of the Tsar, and then once again, to overthrow the rule of the capitalists and landlords of Russia. On November 7, 1917, the revolutionary committees of workers, peasants and soldiers (known as Soviets) took over political power. They established a new state on the foundation of these revolutionary committees.

The new state was a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat — that is, the rule of the working class in alliance with the toiling peasantry. It was a rule of the vast majority of people over the minority of exploiters. Even as the revolutionary workers and soldiers were fighting the forces of the capitalists and landlords, their revolutionary state issued a series of decrees which showed that finally, it was possible to create the kingdom of heaven on this very earth by the act of the workers and peasants. The revolutionary government liberated the peasantry from all vestiges of feudal bondage. It declared that the nations formerly oppressed by Tsarist Russia were free to decide their own destiny. They could either decide to go their own way, or join a new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, retaining the right to self determination, upto and including secession.

Fourteen imperialist powers combined their forces to crush the revolution of workers and peasants by sending their armies to support the armies of the capitalists and landlords. In the end, after a bloody civil war that lasted four years, the imperialists and the capitalists and landlords were defeated. All the exploited and oppressed peoples of Tsarist Russia joined hands under the leadership of the working class, under the guiding role of the Bolshevik Party, to defend the new revolutionary state they had established.

The new state immediately took measures to reorient the economy to fulfil the needs of the workers and peasants. All the big factories, the mines, banks and railways were nationalized. The principle means of production and exchange were taken over by the state, and placed under social control. Foreign trade and wholesale internal trade was nationalized.

The Soviet state guaranteed human conditions of life to the toiling masses of people. A public distribution system was created to ensure in those conditions that workers did not have to go hungry. School education was made universal and compulsory, and conditions created so that all children could attend school. The new State of workers and peasants not only gave women the right to formal equality, including the right to vote, it took measures to ensure their actualization. Children born out of wedlock were guaranteed the same rights as other children. Crèches were established for children so that their mothers could go to work. Public eating places were established in factories and workplaces. The housing problem was addressed and solved.

The right to conscience was guaranteed under Soviet law. The citizens of the Soviet Union had the right to freedom of speech, of organizing public meetings, of press. Only the “right” of capitalists to exploit the labour of workers was abolished. The nations of Russia, which voluntarily joined the Soviet Union, had their own constitutions, their own armies and administration, their own flags, in addition to the flag of the Soviet Union. The languages and cultures of the numerous peoples of the Soviet Union developed at a rapid pace. So did the fraternal friendship of the peoples of the Soviet Union.

After organizing the recovery of the economy from the devastation of the war, the Soviet state took up the task of encouraging the peasantry to collectivize. The workers and peasants’ state gave generous assistance to the collective farms in the form of inputs such as tractors and other machinery, fertilizers, electricity, and other necessities. In return the Collective farms handed over a portion of what they produced to the workers and peasants state. Just as in industry, what and how much was to be produced in terms of crops was carried out according to a state plan, worked out with the aim of constantly increasing the material conditions of the workers and peasants. By 1935, a socialist society had been constructed in town and country. It entailed enormous struggle and sacrifice, as the internal and external enemies of the workers and peasants never gave up their dreams of restoring capitalism and the exploitation and robbery of workers and peasants.

In 1936, the Soviet Union gave itself a new constitution. The whole of the Soviet Union participated in the discussion on the draft constitution before it was finally approved. The 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union remains the most advanced Constitution ever written anywhere in the world.

It not only guaranteed universal adult franchise, it established mechanisms to ensure that sovereignty would actually vest in the people. People could select candidates before one of them was elected, they could recall those representatives who did not do their work. People also retained the right to initiate legislation.

While the entire capitalist world was in crisis in the 1930’s, the Soviet Union marched from strength to strength. The immense internal unity of the Soviet peoples was shown during the Second World War. The Soviet Union played the decisive role in leading the world’s peoples in defeating Nazi fascism. Following this victory, numerous countries of the world began to march on the road charted by the October Revolution.

Today, it is about 25 years since the Soviet Union disintegrated, signaling the period of retreat of revolution on the world scale. The collapse of the Soviet Union was the result of the refusal of the leadership of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU), headed by Khrushchev to address the new problems confronting socialist society after the initial stage of its construction had been completed.

Using the fact that exploiting classes no longer existed as classes in Soviet society, CPSU declared at its 20th Congress in 1956 that class struggle was no longer the basis of development. Instead of strengthening proletarian leadership to bring about the empowerment of the people, as envisaged when the 1936 Constitution was adopted, CPSU headed by Khrushchev came up with the concepts of “party of the whole people” and “state of the whole people”. These slogans served to lull the working people to sleep while giving rise to a new privileged stratum of politicians, opening the way to the restoration of capitalism.  In place of respecting and guaranteeing the right of nations to self-determination, the Soviet leadership promoted Russian chauvinism within the country and the concept of “limited sovereignty” of other member states of the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union was transformed over the following decades into an imperialist superpower with a socialist mask, competing with US imperialism for world domination.

The lessons from the Great October Revolution are extremely important to uphold, as we prepare for the coming revolutionary storms. The key to the successes achieved in the initial stage of socialist construction was the vesting of all power in the hands of the soviets of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ deputies, under the leadership of the consistently revolutionary party of the working class. The path along which further progress had to be made was clear when the 1936 Constitution was adopted. It was in the direction of enhancing the vanguard role of the party of the working class, on the one hand, and increasing the role of the working people in governance, on the other hand, so as to achieve the ultimate aim where the people govern themselves. However, what happened after 1956 was the concentration of all decision-making power in the hands of the Party and its politburo, giving rise to new privileged strata, reappearance of unemployment and other ills of capitalism and increasing alienation of the working people from the State, culminating in the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself.

Today, the situation is crying out for a second round of proletarian revolutions to save the world from the disastrous course on which the capitalist-imperialist powers are dragging it. Let us march together under the banner of Marxism-Leninism in order to open the path of socialism for Indian society through revolution. Let us work to restore the unity of communists and build the unified vanguard party of the Indian working class as an instrument for the empowerment of the people.

Long live the Great October Revolution!

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