Socialist Appeal
The Marxist voice of Labour and youth
This week marks the 100th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, which took place on the night of 7th November (25th October in the old calendar). To mark this great historic event, we are publishing articles and videos all week looking at different aspects of the Revolution. To begin, we publish here an account of the insurrection as it happened.
This week marks 100 years since the attempted coup by General Kornilov in Russia, the aim of which was to completely crush the revolution. Dejan Kukic examines the events leading up to the Kornilov affair and explains how the working class, headed by the Bolsheviks, was able to defeat this counter-revolutionary putsch.
Continuing our commemorations of the centenary anniversary of the Russian Revolution, we republish here extracts from Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, in which the author explains the events surrounding the attempted - and failed - coup by General Kornilov and the forces of reaction surrounding him.
The "July Days" of 1917 (3-7th July, or 16-20th July in the new calendar) marked a turning point in the Russian Revolution. A series of spontaneous armed demonstrations alarmed the Provisional Government leaders, who acted to repress the Bolsheviks and drive Lenin into hiding. After this point, it was a question of revolution or counter-revolution.
R.H. Bruce Lockhart was a British Government agent in Russia before and after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. His first-hand experiences and lucid observations, published in 1932 as a book entitled Memoirs of a British Agent, provide a fascinating account of the Russian Revolution and its key characters.