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Author: Lars T. Lih

On the Meaning of ‘All Power to the Soviets!’: Was the October Revolution a Bait-and-Switch Operation?

All Power to the Soviets! (Vsia vlast sovetam!) is one of the most famous political slogans of all time. But what exactly did this slogan mean? What did the Bolsheviks say when they explained and defended the slogan to their mass audience? What meaning did the mass soviet constituency give to this slogan when they expressed their support?

The Dustbin of Historiography: Some Provisional Conclusions

It is perhaps the most dramatic and iconic scene of the October revolution. At the Second Congress in Petrograd, the Bolshevik Trotsky points his finger at the exit and thunders to the Menshevik Martov: ‘Go! You are miserable bankrupts who belong in the dustbin of history.’ And Martov and the Mensheviks leave, with fateful consequences.

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Historical Materialism is a Marxist journal, appearing four times a year, based in London. Founded in 1997 it asserts that, not withstanding the variety of its practical and theoretical articulations, Marxism constitutes the most fertile conceptual framework for analysing social phenomena, with an eye to their overhaul. In our selection of material we do not favour any one tendency, tradition or variant. Marx demanded the ‘Merciless criticism of everything that exists’: for us that includes Marxism itself.

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