The peasants of Russia were already real actual communists living on communes. They made communal decisions via patriarchal direct democracy and their communal assemblies. The Narudnik socialists, the populist socialists, believed that all the peasants needed was to be taught about socialism by middle class and aristocratic socialist kids.
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The leaders of the Russian Revolutions of February and October 1917 sought to establish socialism: a deeply democratic economic and political system where the employee/employer relationship is abolished, and where workers control their workplaces, the means of production and the government via the “free association of the producers”.
Instead the revolutions resulted in the establishment of the Soviet Union: an authoritarian state where the government became the sole employer and the state controlled the workers instead of the other way around.This then became the model for “communist” countries around the world.
Why did the Soviet Union fail at socialism?
What can we learn about this failure to apply to our political struggles in the present and future?
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