On the 25h of April, 1974, a group of left-wing military officers conducted a successful coup against the Portuguese military dictatorship which had ruled Portugal with an iron-fist for over four decades and had waged a brutal colonial war against its African colonies in Mozambique, Angola, and Guine-Bissau for years. The coup opened up a revolutionary process which for 2 brief years put socialism and working-class rule on the immediate agenda.Though largely forgotten, even in socialist circles, the experience of the Portuguese Revolution offers deep insights into the nature of socialist revolution, workers' power, and the struggle against imperialism. This talk will analyze the rise and fall of the revolutionary upsurge in Portugal in tandem with the struggle against imperialism in the Portuguese colonies. The study of these concurrent revolutionary processes demonstrates both the real potentials of working people to run society, and the complexities of the struggle for socialism in a national and international system bent on destroying any such challenge.