IN SEARCH FOR A SOCIETAL HISTORY OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
IN SEARCH FOR A SOCIETAL HISTORY OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

Summary/Abstract: I will argue that the October Revolution cannot be an exception to Carr's Pugachev Thesis. More specifically, historians must restructure their interpretation of the October Revolution as a societal dialogue between political and social forces. The October Revolution was a societal phenomenon because it was a product of a robust dialogic process in which workers and peasants autonomously participated by adapting revolutionary rhetoric in factories and villages to support Lenin and his Communism. Only by blending traditionally neglected subaltern and elite voices can historians attain a more integrative understanding of how the October Revolution was a collective expression of Marxist liberation. In other words, it was not solely due to Lenin's genius for conceptualizing such "Democracy" that the October Revolution laid the seed of the world's first Communist empire. Workers and peasants willingly planted the seed because they embraced Lenin's belief that overthrowing Kerensky's bourgeois government was the founding cornerstone for a genuine people's Democracy. In short, the Soviet Union's founding was not a purely political phenomenon dictated exclusively by elites, but a complex societal dialogic product resulting from workers' and peasants' active support of the penultimate Leninist aspiration for a people's revolution.

• Details
• Contents