LAW ANIMATED WORLD, November 15-30 October Revolution Special Issue, Editorial, FIRST IN MANY RESPECTS

FIRST IN MANY RESPECTS

The Great October Socialist Revolution certainly was – especially in guiding the oppressed people of the world in the glorious struggles to end the ‘exploitation of man by man’. Whatever be the changed circumstances since the collapse of the state socialisms created in its wake, and however much may its detractors gloat about the ‘end of history’, ‘victory of the free market’ and ‘march of capitalist globalization’ in the world today, the fact remains that socialism, a scare-word in the beginning of the 20^th century, has now become an acceptable honorific for a desirable alternative societal system – may be an utopia, but one to dream of and strive for. The daring and dashing Bolsheviks under Lenin’s leadership as if stormed the ‘heavens’ to bring the heat and light of socio-economic and political justice to people pining in the darkness of poverty and deprivation. À la Pablo Neruda – “They said ‘comrade’ to the world – They made the carpenter king – No camel shall pass through this needle’s eye – They cleansed the villages – Divided the land – Elevated the serf – Eliminated the beggar – Annihilated the cruel – Brought light into the deep night.” True, the negative aspects of the course and consequences of this revolution cannot also be overlooked but can anyone disparage its transformation of a backward imperialist country groaning under Czarist autocracy, feudal servitude and capitalist oppression into a highly developed military industrial complex - into one of the two superpowers in the world. Especially its achievements in education, public health, space sciences and military-industrial technology, etc. can never be forgotten. And “the first satellite, the first probe into the Moon, the first man in space, the first woman, …” (Jed Mercurio: ‘Ascent’) etc. – so many firsts stand to its credit; above all, how can we forget the immortal Battle of Stalingrad and the death-defying fight against fascim leading to the victory of democratic forces and eventual forging of the United Nations. The Revolution and its creatures served as an immense bulwark for the freedom and dignity of the oppressed third world peoples in their fight for liberation. True, now in Russia itself things are turned upside down, with capitalism restored, the notorious Czar Nicholas rehabilitated, etc., but that in no way deters us progressive democrats nostalgically acknowledging in the immortal words of Nerurda, “Soviet Union, if we could gather up all the blood spilled in your struggles, all you gave as a mother to the world so that freedom, dying, might live, we would have a new ocean larger than any other / deeper than any other / vibrant as all rivers / active as the fire of Araucanian volcanoes…” §§§