Barbara Allen - Leaflets of the Russian Revolution: Socialist Organizing in 1917

Praise for Leaflets of the Russian Revolution

Leaflets of the Russian Revolution offers a street-level view of the unfolding of the Russian Revolution in , especially in Petrograd. These well-translated leaflets are a rich source for understanding how activists brought to life seemingly abstract ideas like democracy, freedom, socialism, power, and revolution itself. The language of these texts is full of emotion, experience, and determination to change the world. The book also contains documents about the mobilization of Red Guards, trade unions, and other organizations. Barbara Allens introduction, annotations, and conclusion put this all in clear and essential context.

Mark Steinberg , author of The Russian Revolution,

Authentic human voices are what we hear in these leaflets from the Russian Revolution of 1917. The leaflets, emanating from different socialist parties and workers organizations, re-create all the vividness and excitement of contemporary debates, while the helpful introduction and notes provide the necessary historical context. Sheila Fitzpatrick , University of Sydney

This fascinating collection of leaflets from revolutionary 1917 permits readers to experience the immediacy and passion of revolutionary actors. As a collection of primary documents from a critical moment in world history, it is sure to be a valuable teaching resource.

Diane P. Koenker , UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies

In this valuable volume, Barbara Allen furnishes all those interested in the Russian Revolution with an important collection of political leaflets reflecting the epoch-defining struggle for power in 1917 Russia. Allens fine translations and insightful introductions add to the value of the collection.

Alexander Rabinowitch , author of The Bolsheviks in Power

An indispensable collection. These texts, and Barbara Allens expert curation and explication, bring to vivid life the astonishing tussles, turns, and transformations of 1917, Russias revolutionary year. China Mi ville

The leaflets, nicely translated, take the reader into the fervent debates between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks during the 1917 Revolution. Allen pays particular attention to Alexander Shlyapnikov, a level-headed Bolshevik metal worker who was involved in party and union organizing. She also provides clear, comprehensive introductions to the materials. The result is a collection that goes beyond the party luminaries and into the ranks of lower-ranking activists. Most of these materials heretofore have been available only in Russian. Barbara Clements

Leaflets were an important means of communication and propaganda in the Russian Revolution. This richly annotated and expertly translated
selection offers a vital and fascinating insight into a range of left outlooks as Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs, and Interdistricters grappled with the major issues of the day, including the war and a deepening economic collapse. It crucially forefronts the aspirations of trades unions and workers, and illustrates how their hopes and dreams were lost in the Revolutions survival. This primary source reader is essential reading for all students of the world historical event that was the Russian Revolution.

Ian D. Thatcher , professor of history, Ulster University, UK

A fine collection of important leaflets from 1917 that present many of the key issues of the day, especially as they affectedand reflectedworkers lives. It outlines the range of views and their evolution. It also focuses on the important, but often forgotten, Bolshevik leader Alexander Shlyapnikov.

Rex A. Wade

Barbara Allen has produced a collection of sources that take us right to the heart of the great Russian political debate of 1917. The lifeblood of this debate was the political pamphlet, produced locally and addressing issues at short notice. They were the predecessors of todays blogs and tweets. This fine selection gives us a penetrating insight into the fundamental fabric of the political and social revolution.

Christopher Read , professor of modern European history,
University of Warwick, UK

Concerns of the streets and shop floors ring out in Barbara Allens illuminating collection of leaflets and appeals from 1917, Russias year of revolution. Newly available source material, chosen or written by Alexander Shlyapnikov, metalworker and first Soviet commissar of labor, portrays revolution as experienced by worker ranks. Allens book will stimulate specialists and open up a new world for the general reader. John Riddell

This short but invaluable book shows us the Russian Revolution not from the top, not from the bottom, but from the middle: from the party activists who wrote leaflets addressed to the workers the Bolsheviks needed to convince. The slogans come alive in these eloquent evocations of the Bolshevik message. Barbara Allen provides us with all we need to know in order to hear the impassioned voices of 1917. Lars T. Lih

Leaflet #1

To the Revolutionary Students of Russia

December 1916

In December 1916, an organizing committee of Bolshevik-influenced students issued this underground proclamation calling on students in Russia who were opposed to the war to come together with workers and peasants to put a provisional revolutionary government in power. The organizing committee linked revolutionary student circles at higher educational institutions in Petrograd, Russia. Its proclamation reflects the impact of the Zimmerwald movement on leading student revolutionary activists in Russia. European socialists had met during a September 1915 conference in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, where they issued a manifesto condemning World War I as an imperialist war pursued for the sake of capitalist profits. The Zimmerwald Left consisted of socialists who actively supported struggling against the war .

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Proletarians of all countries, unite!

To the revolutionary students of Russia.

The glory of victory is given only to the brave,

The fallen in struggle do not know shame...

Youth, our song is sung to you

Eternal glory to you.

Comrades! During the years of reaction, when work was difficult and routine, there were no questions demanding definite actions toward their solution. Therefore, the differentiation which was occurring among our students could not come to light in a sufficiently well-defined way. Vulgar, bourgeois moods grew among students and became stronger in the stinking decay of a bastardized constitution. Only now these moods have been revealed in all their strength. Such moods attest to the complete ideological bankruptcy and reckless opportunism of the general student body.

At one time, they seemed united in their revolutionary democratic mood. Now, given the exacerbation of class contradictions in society, students have split into two opposing groups. First, the bourgeois-opportunist group, which is ideo logically connected to the Russian liberal bourgeoisie, has become much stronger recently. The second group is revolutionary-socialist and possesses the internationalist, class-based ideology of the world proletariat.

With no desire at all to appeal to the former group, we appeal to those comrades who share our convictions but who for some reason still stand on the sidelines of the socialist work of proletarian organizations. In the past, a large part of the student body merely sympathized with this work, but at the present moment the revolutionary worldview obligates one to take corresponding action. Events force upon these students the need either to renounce their sympathy and to completely merge with the bourgeois sector of students and with the Russian bourgeoisie, or to move from thoughts and words toward definite revolutionary action and to connect themselves with the proletariat in the great struggle to overthrow modern-day slavery.