1917: Revolution in Russia and Its Aftermath by Emma Goldman et al., and: The Russian Revolution and Its Global Impact: A Short History with Documents by Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov, and: World Revolution, 1917–1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International by C.L.R. James (review)

What's Left? 1917 and World History

In Russia, where the October Revolution of 1917 remains a "contentious event," and even "something of an embarrassment," its centenary was scarcely commemorated.¹ Outside of Russia, many anniversary reflections explored the event's lasting "global impact."² These reflections suggest a significant reappraisal of the revolution's legacy since the end of the cold war, when historians and political scientists in the West announced the "end of history" and an inevitable "transition to democracy."³ From the perspective of 2017—and perhaps even more, 2019—democracy looks far less resurgent than it did in 1989. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the "transition" in many places is producing not democracy, but authoritarian nationalism. Under these circumstances, the cold war demonization of socialism as synonymous with Bolshevism is losing much of its power, especially among those too young to remember the evil empire. In 2018, in the wake of Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign and the election of Donald Trump, Gallup found that Americans aged 18 to 29 are more positive about socialism than they are about capitalism.⁴

For those eager to reclaim and reimagine alternatives to capitalism for the twenty-first century, the three books under review offer plentiful food for thought, if not inspiration. All three are collections of primary sources that to varying degrees address what historian Stephen Smith has recently identified as a critical shortcoming of scholarship and scholars of the Revolution: the inability to "understand – certainly to empathize with – the aspirations of 1917." The most explicitly classroom-ready of the three, Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov's The Russian Revolution and Its Global Impact: A Short History with Documents, provides the widest range of perspectives on 1917, from Vladimir Lenin to W.E.B. Du Bois. The authors include plenty of "bloodshed and violence," but do not entirely ignore "the idealism, hope, and self-sacrifice that," Smith emphasizes, "were also the revolution's key constituents."⁵ The other books under review are new editions of anarchist and Trotskyist criticisms of the Soviet state and the Communist International (Comintern). Often deeply polemical, the accounts by both the anarchists—notably Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman—and the Trinidadian activist C.L.R. James bear powerful witness to the idealism, anger, and hope of revolutionaries who sought to overthrow both capitalism and Soviet-style socialism.

That Daly and Trofimov are not primarily concerned with generating empathy for the revolution's aspirations becomes immediately clear in the volume's preface. They begin with an account of the gruesome 1918 murder of the tsar and his family: "Blood splattered everywhere. Some were finished off with bayonets" (p. x). The vignette underscores the authors' view of the Russian Revolution as operating "beyond the pale of reasonable justification" as it "adopted dozens" of "surreal" or "unprecedented" policies, including the nationalization of property, "violent campaigns against religion," the legalization of abortion, and the "creation of a worldwide network of subversive organizations" (p. xii). Behind these often violent and purportedly irrational policies, Daly and Trofimov find a desire to "create a new order, liberate humanity, enact justice, bring to life a new human, and make not just Russia, but eventually the whole world a better place" (p. xiii). These global ambitions, and their...