Review of Louise Bryant's "Six Red Months in Russia."

A while ago I finished my facsimile of Louise Bryant's "Six Red Months in Russia." It covers the 3 months preceding the October Revolution, and the 3months following it. While she admits it is a piece of propaganda, it's worth noting it's the only surviving published work that discusses the immediate aftermath of the revolution before the civil war started in earnest. She also admits to the developments in her own thinking, as she initially supports the Mensheviks, but comes around to the Bolsheviks after seeing the Mensheviks sell out to the Kadets (capitalists).

A few things to note from this book are that she dispells the myth that the October Revolution, and subsequent Soviet Government, were purely the work of the Bolsheviks. She identifies that the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, a Peasant Party initially aligned with the Mensheviks, were a major support base for the revolution (and in fact had representatives in the Soviet government). She also recalls the process by which the Mensheviks lost popular support, starting with the support (and then backflip on) the Kornilov Coup, and them their support for undemocratic (specifically unelected) representation of the Kadets in the future Russian Parliament.

She then goes on to discuss the personalities at the heart of the Bolsheviks. Unable to speak much with Lenin, she talks of Trotsky and Kollontai, and their unwavering support for the lower classes. She counterposes this to the attitude of Countess Panina, Kadets Minister of Welfare for the Provisional Government. She had such a loathing of the poor that she stole a large sum of rubles from her former department after the October Revolution.

She also recalls the democratic nature of the early Soviet Government. What minimal Censorship was aimed at preventing complete misinformation being spread, such there were some outright bourgeois papers legally in circulation prior to the civil war (and their distributors where respected by the revolutionary courts). Compare that the the White Terror that was beginning to unfold as the Elite Junker troops routinely fired upon civilians in the hopes of destabilising the Soviet Government.

 

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