The validity and Current Relevance of the October Revolution of 1917 for the 21st century
Brussels, 4-6 May 2007
www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org
Echo of the Great Socialist October Revolution in the XXI-th century
By Giedrius Petruzis
Socialist Party of Lithuania
The Great Socialist October Revolution, whose 90th anniversary the whole progressive humanity will be celebrating this autumn, is a decisively important event in the world's history. All future generations will know this date as a threshold, from which begins the liberation of the working man from the juke of the capital.
As a result of the victory of the Great October socialist revolution a new great state, building socialism, was formed on the territory of the tsarist Russia - the USSR. The whole system of the social, political, economic and international relations in the world came under influence this more progressive social system.
Under the influence of ideas of the Great October, the international workers and trade unions movement grew and gained strength, along with its vanguard, the Communist International. At that time many important leaders and activists of progressive communist (Marxist) parties have received in the USSR a good schooling of the art of political struggle for the liberation of their nations from the juke of the capital. The ideas and the slogans, that were adapted in the USSR, were very attractive not just for the working class or the poorest villagers, but also for many representatives of the intelligentsia, artistic youth in many countries of the world between the two world wars.
But the financial and political élites, the ideologists, servants and protégés of the international imperialism have never resigned themselves to the idea of the peaceful co-existence of different systems of economical and political development of mankind. They understood very well that it would inevitably lead to the world wide defeat of the capitalist system and the triumph of the socialist way of life, where every person is guaranteed free medical care, education including the degree level one, the right to work and to rest.
Immediately after the October revolution revolutionary events took place in Finland, Austro-Hungary, Germany, and a revolutionary situation ripened in Poland and Italy. All of this frightened the pro-imperialist international centres and they put out the revolutionary fires, through some co-ordinated strikes, by bribery, intrigues and provocations, by mutual efforts.
Precisely after the Great October the capital understood the role of the printed word and other mass media for defending its positions, and as a tool of attacks on socialism, on any progressive ideas and plans that go against the capitalist way of development of the society. This lesson was learnt by the servants of the capital, and is important up until these days. If we remember the creation of the right wing Christian trade union movement "Solidarnosc" in Poland in the 1980s, and also the so-called "samizdat" and special bulletins on the territory of former USSR and European countries of people's democracy in the 1990s, and calculate how much money was invested, how many specialists, materials, buildings, modern printing machinery, stockpiles of printing paper, infrastructure and transport for spreading the printed works etc - what do you think, was all that really made possible just by the enthusiasm of the masses, offended by the "communists"? There is plenty of evidence of the opposite, in any post-Soviet state; I think it is well time to study this and to publish the results in a special book, shaming the world's capital and in the first place, the USA, for their undermining anti-progressive international activity in the period of the so-called "liberating" or "singing revolutions".
No matter what political parties have the majority in the national parliaments, as a rule the influence of the media on forming the public opinion and the political situation in these countries, especially in the countries of the young democracy, becomes bigger and bigger. Their well co-ordinated steps in order to impose their conclusions, their own, usually not quite adequate analysis of the past and the current events, sometimes have far reaching consequences. The ideological opponents destroyed the socialist achievements in the post-Soviet countries, pushed the restructuring and privatisation of the former state property forward, including the property of the party, trying in the first place to privatise mass media, to pay off the ideologically strong journalists and to give at the same time full freedom to those, who like to re-write history, as well as to the hardened advocates and preachers of the democratic, free, capitalist way of life.
A good example of such surrender of the free media to one centre is in Lithuania. A young popular democratic politician, R.Paksas, became President, and he became President thanks to his nationalist patriotic position, because while he was prime minister he refused to sign the economically unfavourable long term contract with the oil company "William International" and was fired for that. This standing up to the American capital and to the pro-American course of Lithuania has made him very popular among the electorate and has gained him a victory in the Presidential elections in 2003. But from the very first day of his Presidency his political opponents, who didn't come to terms with their defeat, began to blame the legally elected president in all sorts of sins: that he was elected on Russian money, that the secret services have helped him to get elected and that he surrounded himself with many former KGB men etc. This antipresidential campaign has lasted almost a year, it was even fuelled by the representatives of the diplomatic corps of the main European countries and by the State Department of the US - and all this together finally worked: the President was impeached, the Parliament made him to resign and the "honourable pensioner of the US", 78 years old Valdas Adamcus was re-elected as a president.
The question of control over the media on a local and especially on a global scale is understood and applied well in practice by the pro-imperialist forces. Because of that, I believe, it is important to start thinking about the subject for the next seminar of the communist and workers' parties of the world - because the information war between the opposite ideologies is coming into its highest phase and many things depend on how quickly and how broadly will the word of truth reach the working people - the truth about exploitation by the capital, about international crimes of various capitalist formations, about the corruption and bribery of the ruling elites. The sooner this will happen, the sooner and stronger will international revolutionary movement and the struggle for socialism develop.
The second lesson that the international capital has learnt from the events of the Great October and the whole revolutionary period, is that the vanguard of the working class and peasants and progressive intelligentsia, the communist, workers and socialist parties, should be watched closely.
During the first stage after the Revolution, the politologists and the sovietologists have studied carefully the activity of these parties, the internal party work and the adopted documents of the Russian Communist party (of Bolsheviks) (RCP); they were taking constant steps in order to discredit the leadership of these parties, especially from abroad, because there was no base for such steps within the USSR itself.
The international capital and its political servants understood how effective the principles founded by Lenin and other Marxists in Russia can be for ruling the masses, the principles of the party and Soviet construction, that were adopted already on the VII Congress of the RCP in 1919.
Using the activity of the RCP as an example, the servants of the capital understood that the party building work is really a serious one. Starting with the organisation of the fascist party in Italy, and its victory in 1922, began the period of fake "left" and fake "people's", usually nationalistic, parties that came to power through lies and attractive left-wing slogans in their countries. For example, the success of the German national-socialist party with its Fuhrer A. Hitler in the 1930-1940s has led to the pro-fascist, one party regimes in several European countries, with left-wing slogans, that were sometimes very attractive for working people.
But the inevitable historical developments, the anti-Hitler coalition, the Soviet people led by its Communist party have stopped this, and the whole progressive humanity was temporarily rescued from this false and very dangerous way of development.
After the second world war, the party building work as an applied science, copied in many ways from the CPSU, became an important part of curriculum in many political schools and centres, both in Europe and in America.
It was not a coincidence that, as a first form of "help" for "strengthening of democracy" and "speeding up of development", the Baltic countries, and also other Eastern European countries, were flooded with big numbers of all sorts of experts, advisers, organisers of democratic elections etc.
All of this has had some results. Taking into consideration the lessons of the past and the actuality of today' s events, I think it is necessary to invite the leaders of the communist and workers parties to meet more frequently on a local level, where the problems of practical political work are better seen, especially because often the situations and the problems in the neighbouring countries are similar. It would be an advantage for such regional meetings if they could attract broader party membership, especially the young party members.
Giedrius Petruzis,
chairman of the Socialist Party of Lithuania