October (review)
2019-01-02
When I posted my books of the year thing yesterday, there were two
books which I omitted, for different reasons.
The first is China Miéville's October, a non-fiction retelling of
the Russian Revolutions of 1917, starting with the Centrist/Liberal
Revolution of February, and culminating in the heady days of
October.
It is a masterful book. I have read more than my share of books
about the revolutionary period, and this stands alone in terms of
enjoyment. Miéville brings his customary élan to the recounting of
what is (after all) mostly dull plodding procedures, rooms filled
with dark corners and darker ideas. The sections on Lenin's
multiple self-imposed exiles are particularly well related, and it
was almost like reading of these crazy episodes for the first time.
Eschewing the "Great Man" theory of history, Miéville is at pains
to show the key role played through it all by the common workers,
soldiers, civil servants, factory workers and agitators of the
Communist Party. This can itself be a weakness, as the tide of
acronyms grows ever higher and complex, bewilderingly so at times.
Such is the reality of that history, though, these individuals
effected change through those manifold organisations, carefully
laying the foundations for what was to come.
It is important, at this remove, to understand the interactions of
these various agents in the weaving of the whole. It is a
common failing of the reaction to the "Great Man" to fall into
irrelevancies, to describe individuals as just that - atomised and
distinct, with no cohesion or common purpose. This is a danger for
anyone who hopes to effect change, yelling into the vacuum achieves
no more than yelling at clouds. Activists have to understand their
role, and the role of organisation, if ever change is to be
accomplished, then and now.
October doesn't just fixate on the doings of the Bolsheviks or the
revolution in Petrograd; I was delighted to read, in a popular
history, of the All-Russian Muslim Conference of May 1917. This
is a key area of revolutionary history which has been widely
overlooked in common perceptions of the Russian Revolution.
It is in Petrograd, however, that the main thrust of all of
this takes place. The battles, physical and political, between
Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Kadets, Kerensyites, Reactionaries and even
Monarchists are related with style and genuine empathy for the
participants. Not just that, but this book is funny, I caught
myself on an airplane laughing aloud at the telling of the Kornilov
Affair.
Through it all, of course, dance the two figures who have come to
dominate discourse about the Revolution and its aftermath - Ioseb
Jughashvili and Lev Bronstein. The Man of Steel and the Man of
Stealthy Cutting. Miéville makes no secret of his views of both,
but he neither pours unearned scorn on the former nor unalloyed
adulation on the latter, preferring instead to show a portrait of
both men at the time of the revolution, with all their faults.
Stalin as the scarlet pimpernel -- ever present at great deeds,
even if noone can quite remember him being there -- Trotsky as the
latter-day Cicero -- changing his allegiances with the weather,
storing up grievances which will destroy him in the end.
They are present in the story, but they are not its focus, nor are
their competing ideologies of the 1920s or 1930s present in the
narrative of 1917. It is far too convenient for modern Kadets to
force any discussion of 1917 into those pigeon holes marked
"Stalin" and "Trotsky", with all the weight of the later history
like a damp blanket stifling any discourse.
The epilogue, as it must always be in a factual retelling of those
heady days, is a stark recital of the horrors unleashed after Lenin
and Trotsky's hopes of additional revolutions in the western
powers came to naught, the retreat into bureaucracy, the "White
Revolution" of mercenaries bought and paid for by reactionary
forces around the world, the deaths, the purges, the terror.
Miéville does not shirk from these, but this is not the purpose of
this book.
This is a story of Revolution, of hope, of dreams, of bitter
struggle against overwhelming odds and a moment, a brief dizzying
frightening moment, of triumph. The lesson is not that these dreams
are forever unattainable, but rather that we must never stop
trying, never stop reaching, never give in to easy simplicity or
comfortable complicity. The degradation of the hopes in 1917 "was
not a given, was not written in any stars", and the same is true
today.
> Then raise the scarlet standard high.
> Beneath its shade we'll live and die,
> Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
> We'll keep the red flag flying here.
+++ENDS+++