‘‘Revolution that saved Russia’’

Aleksandr Rodgers

In 'the history of mankind there were many many revolutions. But for all written history, only three of them were officially given the prefix "Great" : Great French revolution, Great American revolution, and Great October socialist revolution.

Even the British bourgeois revolution of Cromwell didn't receive such a title, despite its scope and value.

The three listed-above revolutions didn't receive the title "Great" for nothing: each of them marked a fundamental change in the world that existed before them. The great French revolution marked the beginning of the end of the era of absolutism, the Great American revolution laid the foundation of the fight of colonies for independence, and the Great October socialist revolution was the first (but not the last) successful attempt at transitioning the world to socialism.

It is difficult to overestimate the value of the Great October socialist revolution. It led to an industrial jump in the USSR, to the departure of humans to space, to the victory over Nazism, to the emergence of welfare (if it wasn't for the high social standards of the Soviet Union, capitalists would never have done the same), to the acceleration of the arrival of equality for women, the eradication of racial segregation, a ban on child labor, and the general introduction of universal suffrage.

Such greatest minds of the 20th century as Mahatma Gandhi, Bernard Shaw, and Herbert Wells admired the Great October socialist Revolution.

The famous English historian Edward Carr wrote: "The Russian revolution of 1917 was a turning point in the history of mankind, and it is quite probable that historians of the future will call it the greatest event of the 20th century. They will still argue and differ in their estimates, as it was with the Great French revolution at the time. Some will glorify the Russian revolution as a historical milestone in the liberation of mankind from oppression, others will damn it as a crime and a catastrophe".

The existence of the Soviet Union forced the western capitalists to portray a "human face". And when it disappeared [the USSR-ed], they promptly threw off this mask, which led to multiple interventions of imperialists in other countries: to millions of victims, to the disintegration of a whole number of countries, to a crisis with refugees, and also to prompt the disappearance of the middle class in the countries of the West (in the US for the last 26 years the middle class was reduced from 61% in 1991 to 23% in 2016, and continues to disappear).

The Great October socialist revolution stopped :
—  the destruction of Russia by liberals;
—  the growth of external debt (between 1914 and 1917 the national; debt of the Russian Empire grew from 8 to 33 million rubles, and from February to October, 1917, the national debt grew from 33.6 million rubles in gold to 77 million rubles in gold);
—  the disintegration of the army (look at "order No. 1" of the provisional government and the number of deserters, which exceeded one million people);
—  a parade of sovereignties (like the recognition of the legitimacy of the Ukrainian National Republic by the provisional government);
—  the German landing in St Petersburg (here a number of historians argue about reliability, so this point can be considered doubtful).

It is also necessary to note that Bolsheviks overthrew not the legitimate authority, but the usurpers that seized power in Russia like raiders (or, as they could be called today, "maidanists"). As the famous historian Petrov (who is not at all a socialist nor a communist, but rather on the contrary) wrote: "After February, 1917, however we treated the provisional government, and the period of the days of freedom, as Aleksandr Bolk called them, Russia rushed into a financial stupor, and by October, 1917, reached, if it's possible to say, the bottom".

Especially for the "pastry-crunchers" [Tsarists-ed] grieving about "the Russia that we lost", there is the desire to add that "inflation was growing and real purchasing power of the ruble fell. By 1917 it fell to a mark of 27 kopeks in the pre-war time—fourfold. But against the background of the enormous military expenses incurred by Russia, this was more or less acceptable, because the price index for this same time grew sevenfold, i.e. the falling of the purchasing power of the ruble lagged behind the growth of the price index".

Bolsheviks came to power at the moment when the country was at the very bottom—debts were off the scale, hyperinflation, dismantlement of the army, one million armed deserters wandered around the country, there were just a few Industrially-developed cities for the whole country, and in them plants worked only with foreign machines. And many other things.

The situation was aggravated by "whites", on foreign money, and with the support of foreign troops (white-Czechs, white-Poles, French, British, and so on), tried to tear apart the arising Republic.

The Russian Empire of the end the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century was pregnant with the revolution, especially because of the noble privileges that were outdated and became senseless. The main reason for the revolutionary situation was the transition to bourgeois-capitalist relations with the preservation of the feudal superstructure (nobility), which became absolutely useless because the most part of noblemen didn't serve [in the army-ed], and, most importantly, weren't at war.

If in the classic feudal system the principle "service in exchange for land" acted, the mass armies of the post-Napoleonic era actually destroyed the value of the nobility as a main military force. And the noblemen didn't find a new place for themselves in the changed world, having turned by their majority into a parasitic superstructure.

But Whites (as well as foreigners—Germans, French, and British), which their modern fans terribly don't like to recall, supported regional separatism in every possible way and created many different new separatist new formations—the Ural republic, the Siberian republic, the Directorate (the rightful successor of the Ukrainian National Republic), "independent Azerbaijan" "Mountainous Republic and many others.

It is in such very daunting conditions that Lenin and his comrades had to work in the first few years after the revolution.

Despite this, in the autumn of 1917 five, and during the winter of 1918—seventeen research institutes on the basis of the report of the commission of Vernadsky, which started working on one of the most large-scale projects in world history. The young Soviet republic undertook the first-ever attempt to construct an economy on a scientific base (and not in the form of blind belief in "perhaps", i.e. "the invisible hand of the market").

The scale of reforming was impressive. Organizational and administrative forms were actively introduced, analogs of which never existed in history. The elimination of illiteracy and the elimination of homeless children (a huge problem at the time, which today liberals don't like to remember) were carried out in the shortest possible time in those days, and then the industrialization of the country.

The French historian Jules Michelet once said concerning a completely other revolution: "The sensitive people, sobbing over the horrors of revolution, also shed some tears over the horrors that generated it".

As Rustem Vakhitov wrote in the book "Revolution that Saved Russia": "At pre-revolutionary elementary school the following subjects were taught: the law of God, reading, writing, the four actions of arithmetics, church singing, and basic notions from the history of the church and the Russian State, and also always—crafts and needlework".

Of course, all of these are extremely necessary subjects, quite sufficient for prompt industrialization and the transformation of an agricultural country into an advanced modern State. Or not?

The most ridiculous thing is that Tsarist censors allowed to publish Marx without radactions, having written the review "very complicated. Anyway, nobody will understand anything". They underestimated the wisdom of the Russian people.

The professor of medicine Tarasevich at the 10th Pirogovsky congress in 1907 made a speech, in which he stated that "the Russian people are in a state of constant illness from malnutrition, chronic incomplete starvation. As a result of which there is enough of a small deterioration so that all horrors of hunger start". And this is the Russia that we (not we, but you!) lost? You want to return to it?!

Tsarists and liberals very much like to point out the existence of communal flats, but they forget to say that the vast majority of factory workers in pre-revolutionary Russia lived in barracks conditions (at best), in huge many-tier barracks, which were more reminiscent of concentration camps or prisons than the dwelling of skilled workers. Even such a temporary and intermediate decision as the creation of "communal flats" was a huge step towards an improvement of living conditions, and it at least allowed young families to have their own space for reproduction (which, let's agree, is important).

The combine principle of the organization of economy in the conditions of a severe climate and the huge Russian expanses allowed to increase the efficiency of production manyfold and to cut expenses on heating and logistics.

"Stalin's" (I write it in quote marks because many wonderful scientists and managers created it) principles of the organization of economy led to the fact that in two postwar five-year periods the Soviet economy showed rates of development that were so high that nobody nowhere could ever repeat it.

It is precisely during the Soviet period that Russia, for the first time for all its centuries-old history, systemically won against hunger. Thanks to this achievement today’s generation doesn't in general know what this permanent horror hanging over Russians for centuries was.

Even the Swedes and Japanese copied the Soviet education system, recognized as the best in the world. We were the most reading country in the world!

Soviet medicine was the frontline in the prevention of diseases, starting with vaccination and finishing with hygiene, physical culture, and system of a sanatorium recreation.

The Soviet system of sports training allowed to achieve the highest results, and in terms of the mass character of coverage of the population only one country in the world could compete with it—the GDR (which was also socialist).

The achievements of the Soviet Union can be listed for a long time. Its influence (ideological, military, economic) on a planetary scale considerably surpassed the possibilities of the Russian Empire at any moment of its history.

The presence of the Soviet Union was felt in Eastern Europe, in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, in Africa, and even in Latin America. By its scale it was comparable only to the British Empire at the peak of its power and the Post-Soviet US, and it surpassed any other empires in history much more, including Egyptian, Roman, and Macedonian.

The period of the Soviet Union's existence is an unconditionally advanced, outstanding, and glorious period of Russian (and not only) history. It is possible and necessary only to be proud of it (unlike the "Perestroika" and the 90's, when liberals and American puppets governed, which is comparable to the Great Distemper of the beginning of the 17th century).

With huge regrets, in 1991 the degenerated top of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union refused the socialist way of development, and as a result the country for a long time plunged into chaos, poverty, and ruin, an exit from which needed nearly 20 years. And our "lawful" place in the world system was taken by China, which didn't refuse Marx, Stalin, and Mao.

And today in the queue to Lenin's Mausoleum (and near Stalin's monument) it is often possible to see more Chinese than Russians. The wise Chinese respect our history more than many of us do.

Thus, the Chinese, who also endured a period of several revolutionary shocks and civil wars (no less, and perhaps even more bloody than ours), are able to treat equally with respect Sun Yat-sen (the founder of Kuomintang), Chiang Kai-shek (who replaced Sun Yat-sen and who fought against Mao), and Mao Zedong, who defeated him. They consider all of them to be patriots, who simply saw the future of China differently. We should have learned from the Chinese's respectful and reverent attitude towards their own history.

The academician Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky scientifically proved the deadlockness of the pre-revolutionary way of development of Russia and offered a modernization alternative.

Vladimir llyich Ulyanov (Lenin) -one of the greatest thinkers and figures of the 20th century, the genius of tactics and outstanding polemicist—completed Vernadsky's ideas and designed their realization in the practical plane.

Josif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Stalin)—the outstanding organizer, strategist, and the ingenious anti-recessionary manager—managed to realize Vernadsky and Lenin's theoretical and design practices, which allowed to win against the strongest army of the planet (Wehrmacht) and their allies in the Great Patriotic War.

There is a similar chain with Feiorov, Tsiolkovsky and Korolev, which allowed us to be the first to travel to space.

Yes, it was harsh times. Americans, for example, during the same period of time destroyed over 700,000 citizens during "defarmisation" and over half a million more in the labor armies of Roosevelt during the Great Depression, and put all citizens of a Japanese origin in internment camps without the slightest guilt (where many of them died from the intolerable conditions of keeping).

I won't even say anything about the lack of talent of the American and British military command, which showered all beaches during disembarkation in Normandy with corpses, and then set a world record for speed of retreat during the German counterattack in Ardennes. But after all, the US was on another continent, and didn't endure all burdens of the Nazi invasion!

While we, in these severe times, managed not only to survive, but also to become one of two strongest countries of the world, with advanced science and the most powerful industry, sharing with the United States the global zones of influence. As a result, half of the UN spoke Russian.

In general the Great October socialist revolution is one of the greatest events in world history.

Frontier
Vol. 50, No.22, Dec 3 - 9, 2017