On the Provisional Revolutionary Government | |
Auhtor: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | |
| Language: english Published: 1917 Genres:political, revolutionary, social historyDownloads: 138 eBook size: 224Kb Review by Daniel G. Lebryk, February 2006 Rating: (****) Copyright: Public Domain in the U.S. Please check the copyright status in your country. | |
Summary of the Book 'On the Provisional Revolutionary Government':
Every revolution begins at the top as the ruling class with no clear way forward split over what course of action to take. In January 1916 a strike wave developed against food shortages and speculators. Feeling the movement building up from below a section of the ruling class favored making limited concessions.
During late 1916 the mystic monk Rasputin was murdered and plots were laid for a palace coup to remove the Tsar and the Tsarina. The signs of splits in the ruling class opened the floodgates of revolution. The tensions brought about by the war of five million dead or wounded of the armys bread ration being cut by a third between December 1916 and February 1917 of the shortages of food in the towns burst to the surface.
The February Revolution began on the 23rd (dates are on the old Russian calendar add 13 days for the modern calendar) with a strike by women textile workers in Petrograd. On International Womens Day 90000 were on strike including many soldiers wives. They marched to the Duma (a truncated parliament) demanding bread which as Trotsky commented was like demanding milk from a he-goat. On the following day half of the industrial workers of Petrograd joined the strike.
As the strikes grew the slogans rapidly changed to directly political challenges to the regime: Down with the aristocracy! Down with the war!
Yet none of the workers organizations initially called for the strikes. Indeed the most brilliant Bolshevik organization the committee in the industrial Vyborg area feeling the tension but not believing the time was right for an insurrection which they saw could develop from the strikes initially opposed the call for strikes on February 23. Thus one of the most oppressed and least organized layers perhaps not as burdened by consideration of where their strike could lead but burning with desire to take action opened the floodgates of revolution.
The police tried to break up the crowds aided by Cossacks (cavalry) some mounted police and occasionally by infantry. The crowds fought the police but tried to neutralize the Cossacks and win over the soldiers in action.
On the 25th cadet officers fired on demonstrating workers killing 16. On the 27th there were further demonstrations and troops were called out to suppress them.
After clashed with the workers the troops began to mutiny. In some places the workers had succeeded in uniting with the soldiers penetrating the barracks and receiving rifles.
Excerpts from the Book 'On the Provisional Revolutionary Government':
... .? Only from Below, or From Above As Well ??As From Below? . ? . ? . ? . ? . ? . ? . ? . . ? . ? . ? . ? . ? . 463 474 NOTES ...
... subject that no one has discussed or is arguing. What this substitution of the question signifies for the whole of Plekhanov's argumentation ...
... begins, we sought to draw up a plan of action in the revolutionary epoch, we should be virtuosi of philistinisrn. This was Vperyod's ...
... No, indeed, it is not a nice thing to criticise Marx . . . but neither is it nice to cite Marx maladroitly. Martynov was unfortunate ...
... the League was considerably slackened. A large part of the members who directly participated in the revolutionary movement believed the time for secret ...
... would * Ansprache der Zentralbehörde an den Bund, von März 1850, K. Marx: Enthüllungen über den Kommunistenprocess ...
... government. He deals exclusively with the concrete situation that prevailed in Germany in 1850. He does not say a word about the participation ...
... They [Marx and Engels after this change] would have formulated the political tasks of the proletariat on the assumption that the ...
... in general terms of the participation of socialists in a petty-bourgeois government, he substitutes the question of the socialist dictatorship for ...
... beyond a reference which has no bearing on the matter, with no attempt even to examine the question posed concretely by Vperyod. Plekhanov seeks to ...
... of the Communist League's participation in a provisional revolutionary government. We shall now proceed to examine the general, fundamental question ...
... reduces itself to the question contained in our subtitle: only from below, or from above as well as from below? Some consider it wrong in principle ...
... Marxist International) negated political activity, participation in elections, etc. On the other hand, they were against participation in a revolution ...
... the utter absurdity of this principle in the epoch of the democratic revolution. It naturally and inevitably leads to the practical conclusion that ...
... seen from the fact that he reproved the Bakuninist labour leaders for having, as members of the revolutionary government, left the political and military ...
... Engels set very great store on the highly active participation of the workers in the struggle for the republic he demanded of the proletariat's ...
... in the first place that the Bakuninists, as soon as they were confronted with a serious revolutionary situation, were compelled to give up their whole ...
... government.[144] NOTES ? [138] Stephan Born (1824-98) - representative of the German labour movement, participant ...
... the... >>read more<