Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Contrary to the analyses and predictions of all currents in Russian Marxism, the revolution in Russia survived without the support of victorious revolutions in the West. But it survived in a much distorted form compared to the original project and at a terrible cost that was borne first of all by the revolution's main social support, the urban working class. How can one account for the victory of a revolutionary state that began its existence without any serious armed forces, with no experience in public administration, and which almost at once was confronted with the armed hostility of the propertied classes, who were supported by most of the intelligentsia, the old officer corps, as well as the most powerful capitalist states in the world? Among the domestic factors that favored the Soviet regime, the most important was undoubtedly its working-class base. Workers provided the committed backbone of the mainly peasant Red Army and of the new Soviet state administration (which also retained much of the old state personnel). These workers brought with them qualities they had developed in the struggle against tsarism – political acuity and commitment, solidarity, self-sacrifice, initiative, discipline, and organizational talent. Even the dis illusionment and wavering of the less committed strata of the working class were based more on hunger than on the attraction of the alternatives, ... log in or subscribe to read full text