 that party dictatorship was an essential aspect of any successful revolution. Zinoviev, for example, was not shy in proclaiming it to the Communist International in 1920 while Trotsky was still wittering away about the “objective necessity” of “the party dictatorship” in 1937! So political ideology played its part, particularly in the vision of socialism (centralised planning), perspectives on the peasantry, the role of the party and the vanguard’s (self-proclaimed) embodiment of proletarian aspirations.
Such discussions are difficult to condense and such issues are somewhat outside the scope of the pamphlet. Given its aim, namely indicating peasant and worker resistance to the Bolsheviks, it does it task well. It gives a taste of popular movements during the Russian Revolution, movements which could have been the base of a socialist alternative to Bolshevik state-capitalism. It leaves you wanting to find out more and that raises an issue, namely that references are not as full as they could be. Given a reference as “in Skirda” makes it difficult to track them down, particularly when it’s the original French edition being pointed to! It would have been helpful to give page numbers to the AK Press translation in such cases.
Still, such issues are minor. As a pamphlet it can be nothing else than an introduction to these revolts. In this it achieves its aim well.
Appeared in Black Flag no. 234 (late 2011)