ON OCTOBER REVOLUTION ANNIVERSARY

People’s Urge For A Dignified Life Can’t Be Crushed

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

NOVEMBER 7, every year, comes to us as the day when we reaffirm our commitment to the cause of socialism. For, it was the day 87 years ago, in 1917, when the Great Socialist Revolution charted a new path for the whole of mankind. It would be a truism to say that this socialist revolution was fundamentally and qualitatively different from all revolutions of the past ages. As Karl Marx had prophesied on the basis of his analysis, while the past revolutions had only replaced one exploiting class by another, the socialist revolution of the future would end all exploitation of man by man and of nation by nation, thus ushering into a society where there would be no exploiter and no exploited. The glorious socialist revolution of Russia was precisely that.

SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENTS

AS volumes upon volumes have been written for and against that revolution, which is popularly known as the Great October Revolution in view of the old Russian calendar, there is no need to go into its details here. Suffice it to say that, based upon the teachings of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, two of the best minds in human history, the Russian revolution under the leadership of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin epitomised the power of the toiling millions and realised the dreams of an egalitarian society that was nurtured by humankind for thousands of years. It was also a revolution that did not leave the man’s aspirations for equality confined to the spiritual domain but paved the way for their fulfilment in material life itself.

The way the revolution took place was itself in accordance with the Russian people’s deeply felt urge for bread, land and peace --- the three slogans on which the people rose like one man under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party. While one of the three earliest decrees of the revolutionary government transferred all land to the peasantry, another decree withdrew Russia from the first world war. Moreover, the revolutionary government made public all the secret treaties Russia under Czar had entered with the West European countries and this enabled the people all over the world to see how the various imperialist powers had conspired to divide and re-divide the colonial countries among themselves. This exposed the real anti-human nature of imperialism as never before.

Further, as a corollary of its democratic and egalitarian nationality policy, the new Soviet government offered freedom to the nationalities that were under the Czarist thraldom. It was thus that while Poland, Finland and three Baltic nations (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) chose to go free, about a dozen others freely and voluntarily joined the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Nay, faced with the fascist threat from Hitler in the late 1930s, the three Baltic nations also joined the USSR through referendums --- two decades after the Bolshevik government had freed them from the “prison-house of nationalities” as the Czardom was called.

One of the most significant achievements of the October Revolution was that it unleashed the creative energy of the Soviet people, and the mighty process of reconstruction that followed the revolution was amazing to the extreme. The entire length and breadth of the newly created USSR was electrified within ten years of the revolution, and that too without any FDI which our rulers say is indispensable. One five-year plan after another wrote glorious chapters in the fields of industry, agriculture, science and technology, literacy and education, health and sanitation, child welfare, women’s empowerment and many other fields. This shows that the very goals for which our bourgeois-landlord rulers claim to strive, and which always remain elusive for them, were achieved in the USSR in a very short span --- only because of the boundless energy and spirit of sacrifice of the people whom the revolution had made the collective masters of their country and its resources. 

  MIGHTY FILLIP TO LIBERATION WARS

ANOTHER significant achievement of the revolution was that it gave a mighty fillip to the national liberation movements the world over. At a time many pundits were debating whether the revolution would at all be able to sustain itself, Lenin coolly analysed the world situation and came to conclude that the revolution in Russia would gain new allies from among the working class of advanced capitalist countries and from among the oppressed nations of the world who were striving to free themselves from the colonial-imperialist bondage. And, like Lenin’s diagnosis of imperialism being the “eve of a socialist revolution” and Russia being the weakest link in the chain of imperialist exploitation, this prophesy too came true in a very short span when, soon after the end of the second world war, numerous colonial, exploited countries broke free one by one and also received valuable aid from the Soviet Union in their post-independence reconstruction efforts.

Not to go very far, we can take the example of our own country where the national liberation movement got radicalised under the impact of the Russian revolution. It is true that Gandhi became instrumental in drawing the Indian masses into the freedom struggle, but the fact that the masses were drawn into this struggle was no less due to the impact of the revolution. Immediately after the revolution, we see Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a towering figure of our freedom struggle, hailing the revolution in glowing terms. And it was not Tilak alone; Ravindra Nath Tagore, Subhash Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhagat Singh and his comrades, and many others also hailed the event in no less glowing terms. Moreover, eminent Urdu poet and freedom fighter Maulana Hasrat Mohani, who moved the first resolution for complete independence at the Ahmedabad session of Indian National Congress as early as in 1921, was deeply under the influence of the October Revolution.

The impact of the Great Revolution was not confined to the formation of our party at Tashkent in October 1920. It was not accidental that the Muslim youth who migrated out of the country to fight for restoration of the Caliphate in Turkey, got fundamentally transformed after they landed in the Soviet Union. The members of the Ghadar Party who survived the First Lahore Conspiracy Case of 1915-16 also joined the Communist Party, as did many members of the Kabul based provisional Indian government. And so did the comrades of Bhagat Singh who survived the Second Lahore Conspiracy Case of 1929-31, as well as the surviving members of Anushilan, Yugantar and other revolutionary groups.

Nor could the Congress escape the impact of the revolution, and the formation of a left wing in the Congress took place under the direct impact of the revolution. This gave the Congress itself a radical orientation even though the right wing continued to hold sway in its leadership. The formation of the AITUC in 1920 and of the Kisan Sabha, Students Federation, Progressive Writers Association and IPTA later also testified to the power of the revolution’s message. Even before India won its independence, numerous persons and groups prepared the blueprints of a planned economy for the country; even the Congress formed a committee for the purpose. Needless to say, it all was inspired by the roaring successes of the Soviet planning process. More or less the same story was repeated in other colonial countries.

The October Revolution also inspired revolutionary elements in reformist and revisionist parties of the Second International to come out and form communist/ workers parties in their respective countries. This was how the Communist International was born. It was through this forum that Lenin gave valuable guidance to these nascent and inexperienced parties.

  FASCIST WAR MACHINE SMASHED

AND no less momentous was the role the Soviet Union played in freeing the world from the threats of nazism and fascism. The 1930s was a decade when the whole of Europe was trembling with fear in face of Hitlerite Germany and talking of “a thousand years long era of darkness” in case Hitler was not stopped; even the Congress Working Committee’s and All India Congress Committee’s resolutions were talking of a long era of darkness in case Hitler succeeded in his plans. Nay, soon after the second world war began, European countries fell into Hitler’s laps one by one; it did not take more than 11 days for him to subdue a developed country like France. 

But, thanks to its strong economy and the high morale of its people, it was the Soviet Union that withstood the German blitzkrieg for about four years. From Leningrad in the north to Stalingrad in the south, the Soviet people converted every single factory, every single collective farm, every dam and powerhouse, every school and every hospital into a war front --- fighting what several authors have called a “war of the whole people.” The Soviet people suffered indescribable losses in this war --- apart from immense material losses, 20 million Soviet soldiers and civilians sacrificed their lives in this most horrendous war in human history. But yet they earned success in smashing the fascist war machine and ridding the world of the possibility of “a thousand years long era of darkness.” This is something for which the whole world would remain indebted to them.

And not only that, in only seven years after the end of the war, by 1952, the USSR was at its feet again, and that too without anything like a Marshall Plan. Since then till 1991, it continued to extend invaluable help --- material, moral and diplomatic --- to the national liberation movements and the newly liberated countries. India has been one of the main beneficiaries of the Soviet help in numerous fields, and it is the Soviet help, including the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship & Cooperation of 1971, that enabled India to resist the imperialist blackmail.     

A similar “war of the whole people” was waged by the handful of Vietnamese from 1945 to 1975, first against the French and then against US imperialists. And if they inflicted a crushing defeat on the world’s mightiest power, it was no less because they were inspired by the vision put forward by a Marxist-Leninist party.

  MARXISM RETAINS ITS VALIDITY

HOWEVER, it is precisely this very history which the bourgeois-imperialist media wants to wipe out from the world people’s memory.

There is no need here to go into the causes of the USSR’s disintegration and the dismantling of socialism in East European countries; the Madras congress (1992) of the CPI(M) had analysed these causes in depth in its Resolution on Certain Ideological Issues. Here we can only say that we were well aware of the developments in the USSR and East European countries and we did put forth our viewpoint at appropriate forums. More than a decade before the USSR’s demise, late Comrade EMS had already pointed out that while capitalism periodically runs into a crisis because of the very laws of its development, a socialist system runs into a crisis when it violates the laws of its own development. In sum, no matter how much the apostles of the bourgeois-imperialist system gloat over the Soviet Union’s demise, the fact is that this catastrophic event took place because of the serious mistakes that were committed in the course of socialist reconstruction. It does not and cannot obliterate the continuing validity of Marxism-Leninism today.

Be that as it may, the demise of the Soviet Union has undeniably given the US-led imperialist camp a temporary advantage, with a tilting of the global correlation of forces in its favour. And this is what the US in particular has been trying to utilise for the sake of imposing its hegemony the world over. Ever since mid-1991, a high-voltage TINA propaganda is on --- that there is no alternative to capitalism, that there is no alternative to globalisation that in effect is imperialist globalisation. 

The question is: Will this propaganda barrage succeed? If Goebells failed to make people accept an utter falsity like nazism as truth, will his intellectual offspring be able to make the world peoples accept that there is no alternative to capitalism, to imperialist globalisation, to US hegemony?  

The question is: Has the people’s urge for an egalitarian society died down? Have they given up their fight against exploitation and oppression? And if not, then we have every reason to claim that Marxism is as valid today as it ever was. For the simple reason that Marxism is the most potent weapon ever forged for the global fight against inequality, exploitation and oppression.

  THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

AND what has the much touted capitalism, imperialism and globalisation given to the people of the world? A rapid increase in their misery, a rapid decline in employment, a drastic fall in their real incomes, a progressive diminution in their share in the planet’s resources, crises in South East Asian countries and bankruptcy in Argentina. And on top of that, four wars in only 12 years, plus US imperialist intervention in several countries, plus threats to sovereign countries, plus the dangers to humanity in the form of so-called missile defence systems. 

Is it for nothing that imperialist powers are mortally afraid of the rapidly growing economic power of the People’s Republic of China? Is it for nothing that they are afraid of the defiance and resistance which tiny Cuba symbolises?

In sum, there is no gainsaying that the socialist systems of the USSR and East European nations had many shortcomings and drawbacks. But a fact equally undeniable is that capitalism and imperialism have patently failed to solve the burning problems facing the people and hence represent no alternative. They can only benefit tiny sections in various countries at the cost of the people at large, and this is what they have been accomplishing in a most vulgar and unashamed way.

It is in such a situation and with such a realisation that the people’s struggle for a better world, for an exploitation free and oppression free world persistently refuses to die down. Very soon after the demise of the Soviet Union, the Left and democratic forces vigorously forged ahead in Nepal, South Africa, Lithuania and certain other countries. In recent past, these forces have registered impressive victories in Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia and several other countries.

The resistance continues. Mighty protests against Bretton Woods institutions have taken place from Seattle to Prague. Mighty protests have taken place against the US war designs in almost every country of the world. Cuba still holds ground in face of American missiles. DPR Korea refuses to be bullied on the nuclear energy issue. Americans are unable to hold on to Iraq. The people of Venezuela have more than once foiled the US conspiracies to topple the Chavez government. The people of Chile are determined to bring to book Augusto Pinochet whose devilish, US-backed regime butchered more than 60,000 of the Chilean citizens. All the satanic acts of Zionist monsters and their masters abroad have failed to snuff the struggle of Palestinian freedom fighters for a homeland

The protest continues. And will continue. The real need today is that various currents of resistance get coordinated and eventually moulded into a single stream. Also that the Left and democratic forces the world over have to increase their intervention manifold so that divisive and fundamentalist forces are not able to divert the popular discontent into self-destructive channels.