Abstract
This chapter offers a broad overview of the ideological structure, politics and strengths of the Russian Revolution particularly in the context of the Global South, also understood as the Third World. The major contribution of Lenin and the Bolsheviks to the colonized South was to link anti-imperialism with nationalism and colonialism to the national question. Both in theory and in policy, the new Russian Soviet Federal Republic that emerged after the Bolshevik October Revolution showed willingness to accord recognition to the secession of dependent people of European, Tsarist and Asiatic empires. The liberation from the yoke of colonialism was integral to the theory of revolutionary emancipation. Lenin, both in his writings and also in his practice of foreign policy, advocated that the outcome of the revolutionary struggle would be determined by the nature of liberation movements in India, China and other colonized nations. A notable characteristic of the Soviet state was its support to the many small, medium and big nationalities both within and outside the Soviet Union. What is particularly significant about the Russian Revolution is the fact that it was not just a historical event and country-specific process, rather at an ideological level it interacted and engaged with the rest of the world and thus was an international event.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The April Theses was a document of ten points presented to the April Conference of Bolsheviks by Lenin in 1917. The key focus of the Theses was to work towards the promotion of a socialist revolution by opposing the provisional government and creating the groundwork for a proletariat-led government.
- 2.
Zinoviev and Kamenev were among the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution. Within the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, they were the two members to vote against an armed revolt.
- 3.
The classification of nations into worldly segments emerged during and after the Cold War. Characterized by relatively inferior economic statistics, the term Third World referred to the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America .
- 4.
Founded in 1919, the Comintern or the Communist International was an association of national communist parties. Though its stated objective was the promotion of world revolution, the Comintern primarily functioned as an organ of Soviet control over the international communist movement.
- 5.
The Civil War in Spain was fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans loyal to the left-leaning Second Spanish Republic, against the Nationalists, led by a military group. The war had multiple facets and was viewed as class struggle, a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, between fascism and communism and also as a religious war. The Nationalists won the war.
- 6.
Zinoviev, at the Third Comintern Congress, 1921.
- 7.
The hegemonic ‘agreement’ issued by British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon, to the Persian government in August 1919, involved Great Britain and Persia and centered on the drilling rights of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Through the treaty, Curzon hoped to make Iran a client state. The treaty, however, was never ratified by the Iranian parliament (Majlis).
- 8.
Saferov’s statement, at the First Congress of Toilers of the Far East (1922). Cited in the Documents of the Ist Congress of Toilers of Far East, January 27, 1922, Moscow.
- 9.
Proposed by development theorists from socialist bloc countries, the “non-capitalist path of development” is a political economy alternative to capitalist and populist development strategies.
- 10.
Signed on August 23, 1939, by foreign ministers Ribbentrop and Molotov, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was the non-aggression treaty between Germany and the USSR. It was a neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the USSR.
- 11.
M.N. Roy was an Indian revolutionary, political theorist and noted philosopher in the twentieth century. He was a founder of the Mexican Communist Party and the Communist Party of India and also a delegate to the congresses of the Communist International.
- 12.
Formed during the Cold War, the NAM was an organization of states that did not seek to formally align themselves with either the United States or the Soviet Union and wished to remain independent or neutral.
- 13.
Between 1936 and 1938, three very large Moscow Trials of former senior Communist Party leaders were held, against Trotskyists and members of the Right Opposition of the CPSU on charges of conspiring with fascist and capitalist powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders.
- 14.
In July 1988, the CPSU posthumously restored the party membership of Bukharin, the leading Bolshevik economist and theoretician executed by Stalin 50 years ago on charges of leading a rightist assault on socialism.
- 15.
In the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU held on February 24–25, 1956, Khrushchev delivered a secret speech in which he denounced Stalin’s crimes and the “cult of personality”.
- 16.
Purges denote the climate of terror in the USSR between 1929 and 1953, resulting in the execution of millions of people from all social classes charged for political crimes.
- 17.
China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping presented his famous “Cat Theory” to propagate his introduction of a new brand of thinking that combined socialist ideology with free enterprise.
- 18.
Wallerstein , a noted American sociologist and economic historian, is credited of having developed the world-systems analysis which is a macro-historical approach to understanding capitalism. World-systems theory is significantly influenced by dependency theory, a neo-Marxist explanation of the development processes.
References
Adamson, W. L. (1980). Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political and Cultural Theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Carr, E. H. (1953). The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923, Volume 3. London: Penguin.
Carr, E. H. (1979). The Russian Revolution from Lenin to Stalin, 1917–1929. London: Macmillan.
Chicherin, G. V. (1920 December). Report to the Special Session of the Communist Faction of the Eighth Congress of Soviets.
Clarkson, S. (1978). The Soviet Theory of Development: India and the Third World in Marxist-Leninist Scholarship. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Cohen, S. P. (2006). Nikolai Bukharin: The Prison Manuscripts (pp. vii–xxii). Kolkata: Seagull Books.
Degras, J. (Ed.). (1951). Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, 1917–1924. London: Oxford University Press.
Eudin, X. J., & North, R. (1957). Soviet Russia and the East, 1920–27. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ghosal, J. K. (2017, May 27). Tagore and the October Revolution. Mainstream, LV(23), x.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers.
Lenczowski, G. (1949). Russia and the West in Iran, 1918–1948. New York: Cornell University Press.
Lenin, V. I. (1930). The War and the Second International. New York: International Publishers.
Lenin, V. I. (1964). Collected Works, Volume 23 (pp. 295–342). Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Lenin, V. I. (1967). Selected Works (Rev. ed.). Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Lenin, V. I. (1977). Address to the Second All Russia Congress of Communist Organisations of the Peoples of the East, 22 November, 1919. Reprinted in V. I. Lenin. On the Foreign Policy of the Soviet State. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Smuts, L. T. J. C. (1918). The League of Nations: A Practical Guide. London: Hodder and Stroughten.
Spalding, H. A. (1977). Organized Labour Movements in Latin America. New York: New York University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chenoy, K.M. (2021). Russian Revolution and the Global South. In: Chenoy, A.M., Upadhyay, A. (eds) Hundred Years of the Russian Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4785-4_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4785-4_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-33-4784-7
Online ISBN: 978-981-33-4785-4
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)