Revolution Deferred: What Lessons Can We Learn From October 1917?
NOVANEWS
By Joe Macaré
Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)
"Stalin, of course, was not yet Stalin."
This sentence, appearing less than one hundred pages into China Miéville's October: The Story of the Russian Revolution, sums up the biggest challenge of writing a fresh history of the events of 1917. As Miéville writes, "any account of the revolution is haunted by a ghost from the future" -- and not just the ghost of Joseph Stalin.
When we first encounter them in this book, Lenin is not yet Lenin in that sense, Trotsky is not yet Trotsky, even if they were already going by those names. October is, in one sense, an origin story for the "heroes and villains" who have been rendered such by a century of revolutions inspired by them, internal socialist ...