ABSTRACT
Simultaneously, socio-economic and political tensions exacerbated by the war provided the context for a period of widespread industrial and political unrest that did much to raise the Bolsheviks’ high hopes. Across Europe, factories were occupied, demonstrations were held and revolutionary organizations formed, as the ‘old order’ convulsed and, in many cases, collapsed. In Germany, for example, a revolution built partly on workers’ and soldiers’ councils brought down the Second Reich, while soviet republics – modelled loosely on the Russian example – formed briefly in Bavaria, Hungary and Slovakia. Less productively, as the war drew to a close and the European map was redrawn, so the influence of the Bolshevik revolution could be gleaned from the splits that ravaged the socialist and labour movement across the continent, and in the fierce – but evidently fearful – response of those ruling elites who survived (and emerged from) the war to even the faintest whiff of socialism. Of course, the internationalist aspirations of the Bolsheviks were
thwarted: the worldwide revolution failed to materialize, political reaction – rather than social revolution – became the dominant creed of the 1920s and 1930s, and the Soviet Union was forced to improvise its own ‘road to socialism’. This, in turn, came at great cost, ushering in the era of Stalin and its associated horrors. Nevertheless, those inspired by the events of 1917 continued to look to Russia for hope and direction throughout the interwar period. Most importantly, they gathered in national communist parties affiliated to the Communist International (Comintern), the world communist party established by the Bolsheviks in 1919 to disseminate revolution. For so long as the inequalities, inequities and repression associated with capitalism and imperialism existed, so the socialism preached and promised in the new Soviet capital of Moscow continued to resonate beyond. This chapter outlines the broad development of communism inside and outside the Soviet system from 1917, looking at the objectives, methods and frustrations of an ideology that helped define the twentieth century.4
