From Paris to Petrograd: State and Revolution in Practice

June 27, 2022
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Parker, James, Rudy and Cliff join for a discussion on the context of Lenin's State and Revolution, and how those ideas were applied in the early years of the Soviet government. We start by discussing the context of the book, especially in relationship with the recent audiobook by Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism. We continue by discussing the debates in the Second International around the Paris Commune, the Immediate Genesis of the Book during the First World War, the text itself and its surrounding context, the ways in which the principles of the book were implemented after 1917, and why the early RSFSR government gave way to the dictatorship of the politburo.

References:Étienne Balibar - On the Dictatorship of the ProletariatLara Douds - Inside Lenin's Government Ideology, Power and Practice in the Early Soviet StateShiela Fitzpatrick - The Russian RevolutionNeil Harding - Lenin's Political ThoughtAlexander Rabinowitch - The Bolsheviks in Power: The first year of Soviet rule in PetrogradS. A. Smith - Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917-1918Mark von Hagen - Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917-1930

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