reviews In Defence Of The Russian Revolution: a selection of Bolshevik writings 1917-1923 edited by Al Richardson. Porcupine Press, £12.95. THIS BOOK is more about the defence of the Russian Revolution by the Bolsheviks than a de. fence of it against those who oppose it today.
It unites a previously unpublished speech by Lenin on the Bolshevik invasion of Poland with out of print articles by other Bolshvik leaders.
There are better introdutions to the thought of the Bolsheviks: Alan Woods and Ted Grant's excellent £1.50 book Lenin and Trotsky: what they really stood for is a case in point.
So is Trotsky's The First Five Years of the Communist International, a more extensive Collection.
Sadly, Richardson's book lacks the kind of expianatory material that readers unfamiliar with the detail of the debates in the Bolshevik party need.
Nevertheless, this collection gives inspiring echoes of the dreams, aspirations and pressing tasks of the revolution.
Richardson's introduction presents his views on the present day defenders of the Bolshevik tradition and our attempts to understand Stalinism.
Workers' state?
He dismisses the debate between those, like us in the Fourth International, who consider the USSR to have been a degenerated workers' state and those, like the Socialist Workers Party, who consider it to have been a capitalist state since the This debate is crucial for understanding the tasks of revolutionary marxists for the bulk of this century.
Was it right to have defended North Korea against the US - as the Fourth International did - or not - the position of the fore-runners of today's British SWP?
Were the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions, for instance, progressive anti-capitalist struggles, or minor political fights within the capitalist class?
Richardson adds the slanderous suggestion that the United Secretariat of the Fourth International supported the Soviet bureaucracy during the Kruschev-Brezhnev period!
Richardson should know better. The Fl has unswerv- dote to Richardson's tract. ingly advocated anti-bureac- Yeltsin's coup prompted ratic revolution against the the publication of Fallacies stalinist regimes during the of State Capitalism - a vollast 60 years. ume of essays by the Fourth Socialist Outlook can pro- International's Ernest Manvide readers with a vital anti- del and Socialist Worker ediLenin and Trotsky's legacy obscured by a factional intro tor Chris Harman. This 125 page book is now on sale haif-price: just £2.00 plus 50p p&p. Send your cheque, payable to Socialist Outlookto PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 82 April 29 1995, Page 14. tionary rule of capital and