October Revolution

October Revolution
Part of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War
Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which took power in the October Revolution
Date 25 October 1917 (Julian calendar) Location Petrograd, Russia Result Bolshevik victory Creation of Soviet Russia End of Russian Provisional Government of the Republic of Russia. Start of the Russian Civil War
Belligerents
Bolshevik Party Left SRs Red Guards 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets Petrograd Soviet Russian Soviet Republic (from November 7)	Russian Republic Russian Provisional Government (to Oct 26, Julian calendar)
Commanders and leaders
Vladimir Lenin Leon Trotsky Pavel Dybenko	Alexander Kerensky
Strength
10,000 red sailors, 20,000-30,000 red guard soldiers	500-1,000 volunteer soldiers, 1,000 soldiers of women's battalion
Casualties and losses
Few wounded red guard soldiers	All deserted

The October Revolution (Russian: Октябрьская революция, Oktyabrskaya revolyutsiya), is also known as the Bolshevik Revolution. The coup d'état began with an armed bolshevist insurrection or coup d'état in Saint Petersburg traditionally dated October 25, 1917 (Julian calendar; November 7 Gregorian calendar). It was the second phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, following the February Revolution earlier that year.

Background

Bolsheviks armed with guns ride in a truck in Vladivostok, Russia, in 1920. Led by Vladimir Lenin, the left-wing terrorist Bolshevik regime sought to silence its enemies through a state-sanctioned policy of mass killings and detainments known as the "Red Terror".

The February Revolution was an almost spontaneous affair brought about by war-weariness, corruption, and starvation. It is said to have come as a surprise to Lenin, who was in Zurich at the time. Lenin returned to Russia, first crossing Germany in the infamous sealed train and then across the Baltic; others went by sea.

The October revolution was the Bolshevik seizure of power, the destruction of democracy and the Russian Provisional Government. Their armed gangs attacked and occupied all strategic government buildings on October 24 & 25. The new Bolshevik regime, the Russian Civil War (1917–1922), the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922, and the massacre of millions followed.

Leading Bolsheviks of the October Revolution

Leading Bolshevik hierarchy members in 1917: Vladimir Lenin and the following men were amongst those elected at the all-Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (of which the Bolsheviks were a wing) Conference in April 1917 as the new Central Committee:

• Lev Kamenev (Jewish; Trotsky’s brother-in-law)
• Vladimir Milyutin, (People's Commissar for Agriculture in the first Bolshevik government).
• Viktor Pavlovich Nogin (Jewish, Chairman of the Moscow Military-Revolutionary Committee.)
• Ivan Smilga (Latvian, Chairman, Northern Regional Congress)
• Josef Stalin (Georgian criminal)
• Yakov Sverdlov (Jewish revolutionary; First Chairman of Central Committee who authorised the murder of the Imperial Family)
• Grigori Zinoviev (Jewish; President of Executive Committee of 3rd International)

Other leading Bolsheviks included:

• Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko (Ukrainian Commissar for Military Affairs; arrested the Provisional Government.)
• S. Ia. Bogdanov (Commissar of Proletarian Culture)
• Gleb Ivanovich Bokii (Ukrainian Deputy Head of Petrograd Cheka)
• Nikolai Bucharin (Theoretician. Lifelong friend of Ilya Ehrenburg a prominent member of Soviet-sponsored Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the originator of the holocaust-"Six Million" dead.)
• Nikolai Chkheidze, (Georgian, President of the Petrograd Soviet).
• Felix Dzerzhinski (Polish Head of the Cheka)
• Adolph Abramovich Joffe (Jewish; Member of the Central Committee & on editorial board of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda; head of the Bolshevik delegation at Brest-Litovsk to negotiate an Armistice with the Central Powers.
• Lazar Kaganovitch (Jewish, from Ukraine. During the October Revolution of 1917 he led the Bolshevik takeover Gomel. In 1918 he was appointed Commissar of the propaganda department of the Red Army.)
• Mikhail Kalinin (Bolshevik Chief of City of St. Petersburg)
• Alexandra Kollantai (Finnish/Ukrainian, Commissar for Social Welfare)
• Maxim Litvinov (Jewish; real name: Meir Walach (Diplomat)
• Anatoli Lunacharsky (a Humanist, Commissar for Enlightenment)
• Ivan Maisky (Jewish, born Jan Lachowiecki) (joined the 1918 provincial government in Samara. In 1921, he officially joined the Bolshevik All-Russian Communist Party.)
• Yuli Martov (Jewish, from Vilna, former editor of Iskra and Lenin's link man with the Jewish Bund.)
• Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (real surname: Skryabin)(Commissar for Provinces)
• Jakob Peters (Latvian Cheka Deputy)
• Nicholai Podvoisky (Chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and one of the 'troika' who led the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917. Immediately following he served as the first Commissar for the Defence of Russia.)
• Karl Radek (Jewish; real name: Karl Sobelsohn from Lemberg and a 'Left-Communist' staunch advocate of revolutionary warfare. Co-editor with Uritsky of the journal Kommunist.
• Grigori Sokolnikov (Jewish, born Girsh Yankelevich. Member of the first Politburo and who signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918 on behalf of the Bolshevik government of Russia.)
• Isaac Steinberg (Jewish, from Latvia; People's Commissar for Justice.)
• Yuri Mikhailovich Steklov(editor of Izvestiya and a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee.)
• Leon Trotsky (Jewish; Commissar for Foreign Affairs)
• Moisei Solomonovich Uritsky (Jewish; elected onto the Bolshevik Central Committee in July 1917 and was made head of the Petrograd Cheka. In this position Uritsky coordinated the pursuit and prosecution of members of the nobility, military officers and ranking Russian Orthodox Church clerics who opposed the Bolsheviks. With Karl Radek he was co-editor of the journal Kommunist. He was assassinated by another Jew on 17 August 1918.

Quotes

Under the revolutionary regimes of Lenin and the early Stalin the former majority population of Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, White Russians) in their own country were dispossessed and put under the jurisdiction of the prerevolutionary minority peoples (Jews, Georgians, Latvians, Poles, and Armenians). The October Revolution differed substantially from earlier Western revolutions as, for example, when Frenchmen were pitted against Frenchmen in the French Revolution or when Englishmen fought against fellow Englishmen in the American Revolution for the purpose of improving conditions for the less fortunate. In Russia in 1917, international misfits provided much of the leadership for that revolution as part of a world conspiracy to bring down all other governments that did not accept the dictatorial teaching of Karl Marx and his disciples.

—Sergei Semanov, 2012, The Russian Club: Why the Jews Will Not Win.

The Bolshevik Revolution and some of its aftermath represented, from one perspective, Jewish revenge. During the heyday of the Cold War, American Jewish publicists spent a lot of time denying that—as 1930s anti-Semites claimed—Jews played a disproportionately important role in Soviet and world Communism. The truth is until the early 1950s Jews did play such a role, and there is nothing to be ashamed of. In time Jews will learn to take pride in the record of the Jewish Communists in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. It was a species of striking back.

—Jewish Historain Norman Cantor

Tyrkova-Williams

Ariadna Vladimirovna Tyrkova-Williams (1869–1962) was a Russian-born politician and writer, who organised anti-Bolshevik resistance in Southern Russia. After emigrating to Britain in 1918, she published From Liberty to Brest- Litovsk: The First Year of the Russian Revolution, in which she commented:

Besides obvious foreigners, Bolshevism recruited many adherents from among émigrés, who had spent many years abroad. Some of them had never been to Russia before. They especially numbered a great many Jews. They spoke Russian badly. The nation over which they had seized power was a stranger to them, and besides, they behaved as invaders in a conquered country. Throughout the Revolution generally and Bolshevism in particular the Jews occupied a very influential position. This phenomenon is both curious and complex. But the fact remains that such was the case in the primarily elected Soviet (the famous trio—Lieber, Dahn, Gotz), and all the more so in the second one. In the Tsarist Government the Jews were excluded from all posts. Schools or Government service were closed to them. In the Soviet Republic all the committees and commissaries were filled with Jews. They often changed their Jewish name for a Russian one—Trotsky-Bronstein, Kamenev-Rozenfeld, Zinoviev-Apfelbaum, Steklov-Nakhamkes, and so on. But such a masquerade deceived no one, while the very pseudonyms of the commissaries only emphasised the international or rather the alien character of Bolshevist rule. This Jewish predominance among Soviet authorities caused the despair of those Russian Jews who, despite the cruel injustice of the Tsarist régime, looked upon Russia as their motherland, who lived the common life of the Russian intelligentsia and refused in common with them all collaboration with the Bolsheviks.

Further reading

• Lenin. Vladimir I., What is to be Done?, 1st English language edition 1962/1989 Penguin reprint, U.K., ISBN: 0-14-018126-1
• Carr, Edward Hallett, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917 - 1923, London, 1950.
• Seth, Ronald, The Russian Terrorists, London, 1966.
• Trotsky, Leon, Leon Trotsky Speaks, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1972.
• Melgunov, S. P., & Pushkarev, Sergei G., The Bolshevik Seizure of Power, Centre-Clio Press, Oxford, England, 1972. ISBN: 0-87436-084-6.
• Sutton, Professor Antony C., Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, Veritas, W.A., 1981, ISBN: 0-9594631
• Bradley, John, The Russian Revolution, Bison Books, London, 1988, ISBN: 0-86124-454-0
• Figes, Orlando, A People's Tragedy - The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, London, 1996, ISBN 0-224-04162-2

External links

• Wall Street & the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution
• The World Significance of the Russian Revolution by George Pitt-Rivers (1920)