On Saturday June 21, Alan Woods, editor of Marxist.com
delivered an address in the auditorium of the Trotsky Museum in Coyoacan, Mexico
City on the present world situation. The meeting was packed, with over 150
people in a hall that seats only 80. In order to get everyone in, people sat in
the passages and the staff of the museum had to open the side doors, where
people stood outside, trying to listen.
Between August 9 and 11 in Oventic, Chiapas, the history of "Aguascalientes"
as a rebel territory of the EZLN ended. This has made way for the establishment
of civil administration in the areas where the EZLN has set up
autonomous municipalities. It is a clear sign of the open
intention of the EZLN leadership to go from being a military organization
to being a local or regional political organization.
Since 1993, more than 4,000 women - workers and students - have disappeared in
Ciudad Juarez. According to Amnesty International, 327 of them have been found
tortured, raped, mutilated and murdered, after having been kidnapped in the
centre of the city at the end of their workday in the maquilas [assembly plants
in the US border region], or leaving their computing academies, their bodies
abandoned on vacant land.
Strikes and protests erupt on women's day in Petrograd and develop into a mass movement involving hundreds of thousands of workers; within 5 days the workers win over the army and bring down the hated and seemingly omnipotent Tsarist Monarchy.
Following the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the reformist leaders called a demonstration to show the strength of "democracy". 400,000 people attended, the vast majority carried banners with Bolshevik slogans.
Spontaneous, armed demonstrations against the Provisional Government erupt in Petrograd. The workers and soldiers are suppressed by force, introducing a period of reaction and making the peaceful development of the revolution impossible.
Following the July days, the Bolsheviks were driven underground and the forces of reaction were emboldened. This process culminated in the reactionary forces coalescing around General Kornilov, who attempt to march on Petrograd and crush the revolutionary movement in its entirety.
The Provisional Government is overthrown. State power passes to the Soviets on the morningm of 26th October, after the Bolsheviks’ Military Revolutionary Committee seize the city and the cabinet surrenders.
The February Revolution saw a mass strike develop from below at a furious pace which posed the question of state power within a week of its inception. Workers in Petrograd took to the streets against intolerable bread shortages, the slaughter…
This reading guide contains some of Lenin’s most important writings and speeches made in the April period, accompanied by works which provide further details of events at that stage of the Revolution.
This reading guide informs the May-June period of the Revolution with analysis, accounts of those who were involved and important speeches and writings of the time.
This selection of texts covers the background, events and consequences of the July Days. Next, we will turn our attention to one of those consequences – the Kornilov putsch in late August.
Kornilov’s failed coup brought the direct action of the masses into play again, and proved to them once and for all that they were the only force in society capable of transforming their own living conditions. For the first time,…
The following series of articles provides in-depth analyses and first-hand accounts of the events immediately preceding, during and after the greatest event in human history: the October Revolution, in addition to reflections on its aftermath.