Revolution, Counterrevolution and the Working Class in Russia: Reflections on the Eighty-Second Anniversary of the October Revolution (Notebook/Carnet‪)‬

The Paradox DESPITE THE THREE QUARTERS of a century that separate the October Revolution from the collapse of the Soviet system and capitalist restoration, the two events are part of the same socio-historical epoch: the soviets seizure of power in 1917 inaugurated asocial revolution; the fall of the bureaucratic regime and the restoration are the final chapter of the counterrevolution begun under Stalin in the 1920s. The intervening 75 years were a period of co-existence and struggle of revolution and counterrevolution, a period whose complexity does not lend itself to any simple formulation.