The Russian Revolution Series No.1 The RUSSIAN TRAGEDY (A Review and An Outlook) by Alexander Berkman FOREWORD We live at a time when two civilizations are struggling for their existence. Present society is at death grips with the New Ideal. The Russian Revolution was but the first serious combat of the two forces, whose struggle must continue till the final triumph of the one or of the other. The Russian Revolution has failed - failed of its ultimate purpose. But that failure is a temporary one. In the point of revolutionizing the thought and feeling of the masses of Russia and of the world, in undermining the fundamental concepts of existing society, and lighting the torch of faith and hope for the Better Day, the Russian Revolution has b... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
(From a Swedish Correspondent.) In an examination into the spread of Socialism in Scandinavia, Denmark must be considered first. This little, but politically active, country has special claims upon our attention, in view of the battle which is being fought with very unequal weapons between the two Socialist parties at present to be found there. In Denmark, Socialism is as little free from schisms as in other countries. There it has reached the stage at which its speakers and writers declare for Reform or for Revolutionary Socialism. The leaders of the reform section, the now notorious "Central Committee" of the Social Democratic labor party, take their stand on the authoritarian Socialism of Marx, and prove themselves believers in despotism... (From : AnarchyArchives.)
Chapter 2. The Birth of the “Soviets” We now arrive at one of the most important aspects of the Russian Revolution: the origin and the initial activity of the “Soviets. “ Another paradoxical fact: this is one of the least understood and most frequently distorted aspects of the Revolution. In all that has been written to this day on the origin of the “Soviets” — I do not only speak of foreign studies, but also of Russian documents — there is a gap which the interested reader cannot fail to notice: no one has yet been able to determine precisely when, where or how the first workers’ “Soviet” was formed. Until today, almost all writers and historians, bourgeois as well as socialist (“Menshevik,” “Bolshevik” or other) dated the origin of the first “Workers’ Soviet” at the end of 1905, at the time of the October gen...