Peter Taaffe is a member of the Socialist Party (CWI in England & Wales). Factory and university occupations in France. US civil rights and rage at the Vietnam war. Upheavals in Italy, Pakistan and Northern Ireland. Revolt in Stalinist Czechoslovakia. Repression in Mexico. Events in 1968 sent shockwaves around the world. Some years stand out […]
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Clare Doyle is a member of the Committee for a Workers’ International. In those days, there was a Cold War, but it was one between two very different social systems. The economies of the “West” were capitalist – based on private ownership and profit. In the “East” they were state-owned, bureaucratically-run, claiming to be “socialist” […]
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How can the workers achieve power? Following the overthrow of the Shah in February 1979, a supporter of Militant, the forerunner of the Socialist Party, travelled to Iran. In a number of subsequent articles the revolution’s development and the issues facing the workers’ movement then – and still relevant today – were addressed. We reprint […]
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Peter Taaffe is a member of the Socialist Party (CWI in England & Wales). On 15 January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the finest brains of the German working class and its most heroic figures, were brutally murdered by the bloodthirsty, defeated German military, backed to the hilt by the cowardly social-democratic leaders Noske […]
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This is the final part of our series on the 1917 revolution – this one including some key events in subsequent years. Dates are given in the old style Julian calendar (13 days earlier than the Gregorian calendar) up to the point it was replaced in Russia (1/14 February 1918). December 1917 2: An armistice […]
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Dates are given in the old style Julian calendar used in Russia at the time. This was 13 days earlier than the Gregorian calendar (adopted in Russia in 1918). The world’s first workers’ state had been set up on 25/26 October, when workers and soldiers led by the Bolshevik Party took power – ratified by […]
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Per Olsson is a member of Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (ISA in Sweden). The October socialist Revolution in Russia was met with enthusiasm from workers and the oppressed around the world. Not least in neighbouring Finland which was under Russian control since 1809. It was a large principality of the Tsarist Empire, an empire which the Bolsheviks […]
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Hannah Sell is a member of the Socialist Party (CWI in England & Wales). With monotonous predictability the centenary of the Russian revolution has led to an outpouring of bile – not aimed in the main at the ‘acceptable’ February revolution – but at October. A cacophony of slander is attempting to drown out the […]
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This is the eighth in our series on the events of 1917. Dates are given in the old style Julian calendar used in Russia at the time. This was 13 days earlier than the Gregorian calendar (adopted in Russia in 1918). The working class and poor are on starvation rations. Grain prices rocket, provoking food […]
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Heather Rawling is a member of the Socialist Party (CWI in England & Wales). Women workers launched the Russian revolution in February 1917. And increasing numbers would join the Bolshevik Party in the course of that revolutionary year. HEATHER RAWLING writes about how they forced their way onto the historical stage, an inspirational example to […]
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