Overview

An unabridged edition to include: The Present Condition of Russia - What Is Hoped From Bolshevism - General Characteristics - Lenin, Trotsky and Gorky - Art and Education - Communism and the Soviet Constitution - The Failure of Russian Industry - Daily Life in Moscow - Town and Country - International Policy - Bolshevik Theory - The Materialistic Theory of History - Deciding Forces in Politics - Bolshevik Criticism of Democracy - Revolution and Dictatorship - Mechanism and the Individual - Why Russian Communism Has Failed - Conditions for the Success of Communism

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9780851245416

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Russell's 1920 primer on Bolshevism, (re-issued in toto except for the exclusion of a chapter, not written by him anyway), has long been one of those ??eminal studies every Marxist and Russian Revolution expert either dips into or learns about from other experts who have. A curiously luminous heirloom, (just think of the involuted commentaries spawned in the '40's and '50's), its interest remains, however, largely historical, a case of betting on the right horse. For when so many Western apologists, often disingenuously, heralded the New Jerusalem, Russell after a month's stay said- with more sorrow than anger-Nyet. He found the Soviet worker had no sense whatever of having been liberated from a tyranny, that love of power is quite as strong a motive, and quite as great a source of injustice, ?? love of money, and that- forward looking- Kremlinmania would evolve from mere self-preservation, into a policy of imperialism. of course Russell was then and is still a socialist; therefore postures to the effect that the existing capitalist system is doomed are as prevalent as the flaw-spotting vis-a-vis economic determinism, class warfare, the Soviet Constitution and so forth. Essentially Russell ??eared the movement's messianism, its doled-out dogmas, its belief in human transformation through force- in short, the means, not the ends, though even there-in the ??best chapters- he disowns much of Marx's philosophy, really it's Hegelianism, always ??Russell bete noire. Short, suggestive notes on Lenin, Trotsky, Gorki. (Kirkus Reviews)

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