Marking the 1917 October Revolution

(Quote of the Week)

Addressing the Sixth All-Russia Congress of Soviets one year after the workers, under Bolshevik leadership, had seized power in Russia, V.I. Lenin reaffirmed the revolutionary internationalism that animated the 1917 October Revolution. In particular, he stressed the vital necessity of the extension of proletarian revolution to the advanced capitalist countries and throughout the world. This perspective is in flat opposition to the anti-Marxist program later embraced by J.V. Stalin that socialism can be achieved in a single country.

Comrades, from the very beginning of the October Revolution, foreign policy and international relations have been the main questions facing us. Not merely because from now on all the states in the world are being firmly linked by imperialism into a single system, or rather, into one dirty, bloody mass, but because the complete victory of the socialist revolution in one country alone is inconceivable and demands the most active co-operation of at least several advanced countries, which do not include Russia. Hence one of the main problems of the revolution is now the extent to which we succeed in broadening the revolution in other countries too, and the extent to which we succeed meanwhile in warding off imperialism....

Comrades, we have survived a year and have achieved some success, but all this is still insufficient when we consider the powerful enemy bearing down on us. This enemy, Anglo-French imperialism, is world-wide, powerful and has defeated the whole world. We are going to fight it not because we think ourselves economically and technically on a par with the advanced countries of Europe. No, but we do know this enemy is going to topple into the abyss into which Austro-German imperialism once toppled; we know that the enemy, which has now ensnared Turkey, seized Bulgaria and is bent on occupying the whole of Austria-Hungary with the object of establishing a tsarist, gendarme regime, is heading for its doom. We know this as a historical fact, and that is why, while in no way attempting the impossible, we say we can beat off Anglo-French imperialism!

Every step in strengthening our Red Army will be echoed by a dozen steps in the disintegration of and revolutions in this apparently all-powerful enemy. There is therefore no cause whatsoever for despair or pessimism. We know the danger is great. It may be that fate has even heavier sacrifices in store for us. Even if they can crush one country, they can never crush the world proletarian revolution, they will only add more fuel to the flames that will consume them all.

—V. I. Lenin, “Speech on the International Situation” (8 November 1918)