Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution

Lenin’s article commemorating the fourth anniversary of the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution. It was written on October 14, 1921, published in Pravda issue No. 234, October 18, 1921. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 42 of the second edition of the Complete Works of Lenin.

In 1917, the October Socialist Revolution of Russia overthrew the provisional bourgeois government and established the Soviet regime of proletarian dictatorship, which gave birth to the first socialist state in the world. In order to commemorate the approaching fourth anniversary of the victory of the October Revolution, Lenin wrote this article, to evaluate and defend the historical significance and great achievements of the October Revolution. He pointed out that the immediate and urgent task of the Russian Revolution was to thoroughly carry out the bourgeois-democratic revolution. “We tore out the deep-seated roots of the social-estate system, namely, the remnants of feudalism and serfdom in the system of landownership, to the last” removed all the obstacles that seriously hindered the development and progress of Russia.” None of the most advanced countries in the world has completely solved these problems in accordance with the principle of bourgeois democracy.

Lenin said: The October Revolution solved the problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in passing, as a “by-product” of our main and genuinely proletarian -revolutionary, socialist activities. The October Revolution ushered in a new era in world history. It not only defeated the bourgeoisie and established the dictatorship of the proletariat, but also, for the first time, freed mankind from the shackles of capital and the imperialist war through the “Brest Peace Treaty” and “turning the imperialist war into a civil war”. The world historical significance of the October revolution lied in the fact that millions of people were bound to realize a grim truth: without the struggle and the revolution of Bolsheviks, we could not get rid of the imperialist war as well as imperialism world that will inevitably produce such a war. The question of which country’s proletariat will carry out the cause to the end at what time and in what period does not matter. What’s important is that the ice was broken, the path to socialism was opened and made clear. The victory of the October Revolution would not be the final victory. The Bolsheviks should also lay the economic foundation for the new socialist building. Lenin summed up the experience and lessons of Soviet Russia’s economic construction in the past four years, especially the implementation of the New Economic Policy for more than half a year: He said that in this most important and difficult undertaking, we originally planned to rely on the revolutionary enthusiasm of the people and adjust the production and distribution of products according to the communist principles in a small-scale peasant country by means of direct command from the proletarian state. Real life shows that we have made mistakes. But we have also learned to be flexible and be good at changing our own tactics quickly according to the changes in the objective conditions, and now we are using new economic policies to correct these mistakes. Facts have proved that in order to build a socialist edifice in a small-scale peasant and patriarchal country without making serious mistakes, we must make long-term preparations for the transition to communism and go through the transitional stages of state capitalism and socialism. We should not rely merely on enthusiasm but rely on the combination of revolutionary enthusiasm and interests of individuals, rely on economic accounting, and move towards socialism through state capitalism under Soviet power. Lenin specifically planned the goal and direction of the Bolshevik Party’s efforts and proposed that in the period of implementing the New Economic Policy and transition to socialism, the proletarian state must become a cautious, assiduous and shrewd “businessman”, a punctilious wholesale merchant.

Wholesale merchants and other intermediary economic elements seem to be quite different from communism, but wholesale trade can economically unite millions of small farmers, improve production, and guide them from small-scale peasant economy to socialism through state capitalism. This article not only summarized the experience and lessons of Soviet Russia’s economic construction in the past four years, but also further demonstrated the necessity and correctness of the New Economic Policy, which has become another important document to explore the socialist construction path suitable for backward Russia since the October Revolution.