The Great October Socialist Revolution
Impact on the World and the Birth of Internationalism
Andre Vltchek
Badak Merah Semesta
2018
The Great October Socialist Revolution: Impact on the World and the Birth of Internationalism
Copyright 2017 by Andre Vltchek
All rights reserved
Cover Photos by: Andre Vltchek
Cover Design by: George Burchett
Layout by: Rossie Indira
First e-book edition, 2018
Published by PT. Badak Merah Semesta
Jl. Madrasah Azziyadah 16, Jakarta
http://badak-merah.weebly.com
email: badak.merah.press@gmail.com
By the same author
Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism
Exposing Lies of the Empire
Fighting Against Western Imperialism
On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare (with Noam Chomsky)
The World Order and Revolution! (with Christopher Black & Peter Koenig)
Western Terror: From Potosi to Baghdad
Indonesia: Archipelago of Fear
Exile (with Pramoedya Ananta Toer & Rossie Indira)
Oceania Neocolonialism, Nukes & Bones
Fiction:
Aurora
Point of No Return
Nalezeny
Plays: Ghosts of Valparaiso and Conversations with James
P erhaps no other single event in modern history brought so much hope for humanity, as the Russian Great October Socialist Revolution.
During those late autumn days of the year 1917, the entire world shook to its core. All previously accepted and incontestable foundations, on which the basic old perceptions of morality, justice, and also hope, faith and love were resting, began trembling, cracking and collapsing.
Tyrannical certitudes of obsolete and oppressive cultures, religions and regimes began collapsing like towers made of clay.
For some, these were completely intoxicating, and long expected moments of joy - true victory of reason and justice. A new dawn was here, and the New World had just been born. Slavery, servitude, humiliation and hopelessness were about to be swept away from the surface of the Earth, almost immediately and irreversibly.
For others, this was nothing less than the bitter end. Old certainties that used to govern over their existence, from religious faith to family values and structures, were suddenly questioned openly and mercilessly; they were criticized, often labeled as absolute and smashed to pieces.
Those who used to govern and rule over millions were all of a sudden uncertain about the future. Tyrannical fathers and husbands became laughing stocks.
A new meaning was given to The International . It was not an abstract tune, anymore; everything was suddenly becoming real and reachable:
No more traditions chains shall bind us
Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall;
The earth shall rise on new foundations
We have been naught we shall be all.
It appeared that the entire world, in fact the entire universe, was suddenly ripe and ready for a spectacular and total reset. What seemed to be permanent and even sacred just at the onset of the previous night, looked suddenly shabby and completely outdated in the morning.
Everything changed: from how people walked, to how they smiled, how they addressed and greeted each other, how they perceived their elders or how they begged for pardons. Songs and rhythms also changed, and the way people danced. Colors and shapes altered and often, in such places that were once covered by an impenetrable darkness, a bright light now appeared suddenly and unexpectedly.
Russia, a deep but oppressed and fatalist giant, suddenly found itself at the epicenter of a grand explosion of colors and sounds, at the vanguard of the outstanding epic struggle against nihilism and backward-ness. For centuries it went through hell and against hell it arose resolutely.
The greatest revolution in human history began.
On 25 October (7 November, New Style) 1917, the day the battleship Aurora fired its symbolic salvo at the Winter Palace in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), the entire world was awakened to an absolutely new reality.
So, with the crash of artillery, in the dark, with hatred, and fear, and reckless daring, new Russia was being born. Wrote John Reed, an American author and journalist, who witnessed first-hand this amazing event that he then almost immediately celebrated in his immortal book Ten Days that Shook the World .
John Reed came to a simple and powerful conclusion:
Imagine this struggle being repeated in every barracks of the city, the district, the whole front, all Russia. Imagine the sleepless Krylenkos, watching the regiments, hurrying from place to place, arguing, threatening, entreating. And then imagine the same in all the locals of every labour union, in the factories, the villages, on the battle-ships of the far-flung Russian fleets; think of the hundreds of thousands of Russian men staring up at speakers all over the vast country, workmen, peasants, soldiers, sailors, trying so hard to understand and to choose, thinking so intensely-and deciding so unanimously at the end. So was the Russian Revolution.
Yes, for those who were oppressed, who struggled and suffered terribly, being shackled by the Old World and its structures, the decision was almost unanimous indeed!
Suddenly, for individuals who clung to backward beliefs in holy Russia or Tsarist fatherland, nothing appeared to be safe, anymore.
Fear spread with the speed of light, far beyond Russias frontiers. Almost intuitively, Western imperialism and capitalism began to panic. They felt threatened, in fact vitally endangered. The revolutionaries were hungry, angry, outraged, and ready to openly defy and then challenge the greatest enemies of human kind: grotesque class divisions, embedded racism, atrocious imperialism and colonialism, as well as archaic family structures, religious beliefs and power structures.
Along with false certitudes, fear also disappeared. All of a sudden, everything seemed to be possible, for Russia and for the entire world.
For the first time in human history, there was a great expectation that the world could improve and soon really belong fully to its people, and that the people would be able to form and re-form it, shape it so it could finally be there mainly in order to serve the long-suffering majority.
"Mankind - that has a proud sound!" wrote the great Soviet writer Maxim Gorky, one of the intellectual fathers of the Bolshevik Revolution.
After centuries and millennia of horror, plunder and misery... Yes, a proud and loud sound, finally!
Day one, year zero, and Russia was beginning to live again, after years and centuries of darkness, of hopelessness. An enormous nation was making its first steps, getting accustomed to an absolutely new reality, new circumstances!
It was not a simple process; nothing was easy at all. There was zeal and optimism, but also sorrow and immense struggle, and loss. There was inertia and several lapses.
But Russian people were used to all sorts of hardship. Throughout history they have struggled against countless (mostly Western) invasions, against extreme weather and other calamities. The war, WWI, was still raging, in the west, northwest and southwest. The new war, the civil war, soon engulfed almost the entire enormous territory of Russia, covering it with agony, and with an excruciating carpet of flames.
The oppressive forces of the previous regime waged continuous and vicious attacks against the new revolutionary state, its government and people. Elites, religious cadres, high-ranking military officers, stubborn landowners and businessmen, almost all of them were united, sparing no resources, doing all in their power to turn the clock of history decisively backwards. For some, particularly for those who used to be actively engaged in plundering old Russia for centuries, it was nothing less than a bitter fight for survival. For the other side, for the revolutionaries and the awoken masses, the civil war became a monumental holy war, an epic struggle for a totally new and better country, as well as for universal justice and egalitarianism.
