The "cannon sound" that changed the world

Source: Learning Times

On November 7, 1917, the Second Congress of the All-Russian Soviets was held at the Smolny Palace in St. Petersburg, and at the time of the Congress the Soviet soldiers were attacking the Winter Palace, and finally, victorious through an armed uprising, the Provisional Government of the Russian bourgeoisie was overthrown and all power was transferred to the Soviets, which is the historic event that we call the "October Revolution". Because it is October 25 in the Russian calendar, it is called the October Revolution.

The February Revolution coexisted with both regimes

When World War I broke out in 1914, the Russian Tsarist government quickly entered the war, and the bourgeois parties voted in favor of the state of Dumari. But the Russians lost one after another on the battlefield, losing 3.5 million men in just two years of fighting. The war brought about the collapse of Russia's domestic economy, leading to a series of social, economic and political crises, especially the crisis of upper-class rule, and the contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the tsarist government gradually intensified.

From 1917 onwards, the crisis in Russia became more severe. The Tsarist army has been repeatedly defeated on the front line, military expenditure is huge, the government is still unable to make ends meet after levying various harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, the people's daily necessities are in short supply, and prices have soared. At this time, peace, land and bread became the three urgent demands of the broad masses of the people. On March 10, a general strike of hundreds of thousands of workers in Petrograd was launched, and the Tsarist government used force to control and suppress it, which further angered the workers. Coupled with the fact that the Petrograd garrison fell to the side of the workers under the influence of the Bolsheviks, the workers' strikes and demonstrations eventually turned into armed uprisings dominated by soldiers. This is the "February Revolution" in Russia. The outbreak of the February Revolution led to a split between the bourgeoisie and the Tsarist government, the cabinet collapsed, government functions were paralyzed, the Tsar was forced to abdicate, and the Romanov dynasty, which had ruled Russia for 304 years, was overthrown. The rapid development of the situation shows that the tsarist autocracy has completely deviated from the trend of the times, and the profound crises facing Russia can no longer be solved through the reform of the tsarist system itself.

After the February Revolution, since the Bolshevik Party was relatively weak at that time, with only more than 20,000 people, and Lenin and his comrades-in-arms were either exiled abroad, exiled to Siberia, or imprisoned, the bourgeois Provisional Government formed by Russia was composed of most of the members from the bourgeois parties and bourgeois landlords. However, in addition to the bourgeois Provisional Government, a new regime was born: the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. Thus in Russia a situation of coexistence of two regimes, the Provisional Bourgeois Government and the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.

Although the two regimes coexist, the advantages and disadvantages of the two are still obvious. Although the Bourgeois Provisional Government promulgated a number of reform decrees, it rarely fulfilled its promises to the people, especially the policy of continuing to participate in the world war remained unchanged, and the Russians' urgent desire for "peace, land, bread" was all frustrated. The Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, on the other hand, had hundreds of thousands of workers and soldiers who had been armed during the February Revolution, and the bourgeois Provisional Government was from the outset inferior in popularity and military strength. As Lenin said, Soviet power does not control the organs of state power, but it relies directly on the overwhelming majority of the people.

The October Revolution sounded a cannon

In mid-March 1917, Lenin, after learning in Switzerland of the outbreak of the February Revolution in Russia and the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy, decided to return home as soon as possible. Before returning to China, he wrote several articles comprehensively expounding the revolutionary and tactical principles that the Bolsheviks had to adhere to at this important historical juncture. Lenin believed that the February Revolution was only the first stage of the revolution, and that the Bolsheviks wanted to expose the reactionary nature of the bourgeois Provisional Government, to strive to win over the majority of the workers and peasants, to lead the revolution to the second stage, to achieve the victory of the socialist revolution and to establish a genuine workers' and peasants' government. On the evening of 16 April Lenin returned to Russia, and the next day he gave a report entitled "On the Tasks of the Proletariat in this Revolution", the famous April Theses, at the Bolshevik Congress of the All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. Lenin proposed that the present situation in Russia is characterized by the transition from the democratic revolution to the stage of the socialist revolution, the first stage of which, due to the insufficient consciousness and organization of the proletariat, brings power into the hands of the bourgeoisie, and the second stage brings it back. At this time, Lenin put forward the slogan "All power to the Soviets" and advocated the peaceful transfer of power from the Provisional Government to the socialist revolution.

In July 1917, the Socialist-Revolutionary Kerensky became Prime Minister of the Provisional Government, and immediately ordered the disarming of the workers in the capital, the hunt for demonstrators, and the closure of Bolshevik newspapers. The Bolshevik attempts to take power peacefully failed. In mid-October, Lenin sent a letter to the Bolshevik Central Committee proposing that an immediate armed uprising should be held. The Central Committee of the Party convened a meeting and adopted a draft resolution on armed insurrection, drafted by Lenin. On the afternoon of 6 November, an armed uprising began, with the Workers' Red Guards occupying the Central Telegraph Office and some important bridges. That evening, Lenin came to Smolny Palace in disguise and personally commanded the uprising. From the night of the 6th to the morning of the 7th, the important strongholds in Petrograd were basically occupied by the rebel forces. At 6 p.m. on the 7th, the rebel forces besieged the Winter Palace, the last stronghold of the bourgeois Provisional Government. At 9.40 p.m., the cruiser Aurora, moored on the Neva River, fired its guns against the Winter Palace, at a time when the Second Congress of all-Russian Soviets was being held, declaring that the Provisional Government had been overthrown and that the Petrograd armed uprising had been victorious. News of the collapse of the Provisional Government and the victory of the Petrograd armed uprising spread quickly throughout Russia, and soviets seized power under the leadership of the Bolsheviks. By the spring of 1918, power in most parts of the country had been transferred to the Soviets led by the Bolsheviks, the socialist revolution had triumphed in Russia, and the world's first socialist state was born.

Break the world pattern of capitalist domination

The October Revolution was a milestone in the history of the world and the first successful practice of establishing a socialist system, and its victory verified Lenin's theory that socialism might be the first victory in one or more countries, and provided valuable experience for economically and culturally backward countries to embark on the socialist road, profoundly changing the course of human historical development.

The October Revolution achieved a great leap from theory to reality of socialism, and the first socialist state was born in the world system in which capitalism was still dominant at that time, opening up a new era in which the socialist system and the capitalist system coexisted. Soviet Russia initially established an economic, political, cultural, educational, and other system of a socialist nature, established a socialist state for the first time in human history, and led some countries in Eastern Europe and East Asia to embark on the socialist road one after another. By the end of the 1940s, nearly a third of the world's population was living under a socialist system, and the power of socialism was greatly enhanced, forming a socialist camp that competed with capitalism.

The victory of the October Revolution promoted the rise of the national liberation forces, promoted the national liberation movement in colonial and semi-colonial countries, accelerated the overall disintegration of the imperialist colonial system worldwide, and profoundly changed the international balance of forces and the world pattern. In addition, the development of socialism and the superiority of the socialist system have caused many capitalist countries to constantly adjust their tactics and make use of some measures of the socialist system to repair their own shortcomings and alleviate the increasingly acute basic contradictions of capitalism. It can be said that socialism, as a brand-new social form and social system, still leads the development direction of human society.