The seizure of state power by Russian social democrats, and the success of their party in developing military and administrative capacities, forced the class-conscious worker the rest of the world over to decide to what extent it was appropriate to accept organizational leadership from the first and only proletarian dictatorship (if one does not count the inspired and brief experiments in Paris 1871). The choice all but made itself, especially if bearing witness to industrial warfare had made it difficult for any worker to desire a return to a past within living memory or, indeed, imagine that the political and economic status quo might persist. If they had heretofore modelled their organization on its German counterpart, the Russian party now served as the living example of successful Marxist revolutionism. Having adopted a new program in the Spring of 1919, what now called itself the Russian Communist Party delegated to Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky the task of expositing its contents. The text they produced, rather wonderfully named The ABC of Communism, remains the most important source for understanding what Communism entailed at its birth.
Beach Read #1: Bukharin's 'Historical Materialism'
'The World According to...' Episode 1
2.02: 'Left-Wing' Communism
2.01: Red Terror
1.11: The World War
Interview: Ben Lewis
1.10: The Agrarian Question
1.09: The Question of the Party
1.08: Dictatorship of the Proletariat
1.07: The Woman Question
1.06: The National Question
1.05: Early Debates on Imperialism
1.04: The Revisionist Controversy
1.03: The Invention of Marxism
1.02: The Many Lives of Marx's Capital
1.01: The New Moment in Marxism
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