The year 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, saw the birth of the world’s first workers state under the guidance of Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolshevik Party.
Firsthand accounts and critical documents from that revolutionary year are drawn from a wide variety of sources representing diverse views on the events, including Bolshevik leaders Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, chairman of the Provisional Government Alexander Kerensky, French military officer Claude Anet, Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai, American journalists John Reed and Louise Bryant, and others.
Moving chronologically, this anthology provides eyewitness accounts of the February Revolution, Lenin’s arrival at the Finland Station, the July Days, the Kornilov Coup, and of course the October Revolution. Particularly noteworthy in this collection are the inclusion of Lenin’s “April Theses” and excerpts from Trotsky’s magisterial History of the Russian Revolution and from Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments and Introduction to 1917
I. The February Revolution
The Storm Bursts
Five Days: Scenes from the February Revolution
II. A Springtime of Dual Power
Political Parties in Russia and the Tasks of the Proletariat
The Provisional Government Prevaricates
Lenin Returns to Russia
Horrible Socialist Jargon
Lenin’s April Theses
Tsereteli’s April Anti-Theses
Kerensky’s First Visit to the Army
June 18 Soviet Demonstration and the Rise of the Bolsheviks
Bolsheviks on Battleships
III. The July Days and the Kornilov Counterrevolution
The July Days
The Kornilov Coup
Fight Kornilov, but Don’t Support Kerensky
Use Kerensky as a Gun-Rest to Shoot at Kornilov
A Peaceful Road to All Power to the Soviets?
Overview of the Situation in September 1917
IV. Debating Insurrection
The Provisional Government and the Soviet
Marxism and Insurrection
The Bolsheviks Vote on Insurrection
Preparing October
V. The October Revolution
Smolny and the Winter Palace
Women Fighters in the October Revolution
The Soviets Take Power
The Intelligentsia Desert
The Mensheviks Walk Out and Split
The October Days
A New Power
VI. Workers’ Power
Kerensky Is Coming!
The Fall of the Constituent Assembly
Radek at Brest-Litovsk
The Far Eastern Soviet in Siberia
The Red Convicts of Cherm
The Origins of Workers’ Control in Russia
Ministry of Social Welfare
The First Woman Commissar
Women Workers and Soviet Russia
VII. By Way of an Assessment
Retrospective
Chronology: The 1917 Russian Revolution
Biographical and Organizational Glossary
Further Reading
Notes
Index
