Russia: From Workers' State to State Capitalism

By Ahmed Shawki, Tony Cliff, Anthony Arnove, et al.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 saw workers take control of a major country for the first time in history. Millions throughout the world were inspired by the new workers' state. But within a decade workers had lost power as a rising bureaucracy slowly strengthened its grip. In the years to come, conservative ideologues would hold up Russia as an example of how revolution only leads to dictatorship. How did Russia go from a beacon of hope for the oppressed to a striling one-party state under Joseph Stalin? The essays in this book show that Stalin's dictatorship was not the inevitable outcomes of the revolution but the product of its isolation and impoverishment in the face of brutal civil war and foreign intervention. The result was a regime socialist in name only, compelled to mirror the logic of international capitalism. The essays in this volume review the revolution itself, the process of its degeneration, Russia's transition to a state-capitalist regime, and Stalinism's collapse in 1990. Book jacket.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1608465454
• ISBN13: 9781608465453
• Release Date: July 2017
• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Length: 174 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 8.9"