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+++