The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect: Interventions in Russian and Soviet History

In a series of probing analytical essays, John Marot tracks the development of Bolshevism through the prism of pre-1917 intra-Russian Social Democratic controversies in politics and philosophy. For 1917, the author presents a critique of social historical interpretation of the Russian Revolution.

Turning to NEP Russia, the author applies Robert Brenner's analysis of pre-capitalist modes of production and concludes that neither Bukharin nor Trotsky's NEP-premised programs of economic transformation and advance toward socialism were feasible. At the same time, he rejects the view that Stalinism was pre-destined to supplant NEP. Instead, he hypothesises that the superior alternative to Stalinism was NEP without collectivization and the Five-Year Plans ― a outcome that would have been possible had Bukharin and Trotsky joined forces to stop Stalin.

John Eric Marot, Ph.D. (1987), University of California, Los Angeles, teaches History at Keimyung University in Korea. He has published many articles on Russian and Soviet History, notably “Class Conflict, Political Competition, and Social Transformation: Critical Perspectives on the Social History of the Russian Revolution” (Revolutionary Russia, 1994) and “Trotsky, the Left Opposition, and the Rise of the Stalinism: Theory and Practice” (Historical Materialism, 2006).