Workers' Power in Revolutionary Russia

Socialism 2017

August 15, 2017

This talk will look at the way workers, particularly in Petrograd, organized for struggle and for power during the 1917 Revolution. Often caricatured as a coup, the Russian Revolution represents the pinnacle of worker self-organization. Drawing on the work of S.A. Smith, this presentation will cover the creation of factory committees and unions that facilitated the class struggle; the dynamic of spontaneity, organization, and bureaucracy; and the interplay of the economic and political struggles to better understand how the Bolsheviks rose to prominence and fulfilled the demand of “All Power to the Soviets.”

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