Centennial of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution: Young Comrades Lead

The October Revolution in Russia, led by the Bolshevik (communist) Party, happened a century ago. Maybe that’s why we sometimes think of the revolutionaries as old people. But they weren’t. Most Bolsheviks were in their teens or twenties in 1917. The main leaders were mostly between 20 and 40.

Stepan Shaumyan, for example, joined the party as a teen-age student. At 30 he was a Bolshevik leader in the Caucasus, where he campaigned against nationalism and led the 1914 Baku General Strike.

After the October Revolution, Stepan served on the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party and as the Chair of the Baku Council of People’s Commissars. He died in 1918 during the Civil War, at the age of 40.

Sofia Goncharskaia, a miner’s daughter from the Ukraine, was a 16-year-old activist in the unsuccessful 1905 revolution. Forced to emigrate to the US, she represented the Bolsheviks in the Socialist Party there for six years.

Sofia returned to Russia in 1917 after the February Revolution and led a union of 40,000 women laundry workers in Petrograd.   During the Civil War, she was a political officer with the Red Army in the Urals. At the age of 31 she represented the Bolshevik government in the Far-Eastern Republic of the Soviet Union.

P. Nogin was 16 when he took on responsibility for setting up an illegal Bolshevik organization in Russia in 1910, during a period of severe repression. He soon joined the Bolshevik central committee. During 1917, Nogin resigned from his leading posts in protest against the Bolshevik call for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. By October, however, he had come to support Lenin’s call for insurrection. At the age of 23, he served in the first Soviet government as People’s Commissar for Commerce and Industry. He was only 32 when he died in 1926.

The forerunner of the Bolshevik Party was the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. How old were the future Bolsheviks when they joined? Over a quarter of the women and almost half the men were 15-19 years old. About 42% of the women and 36% of the men were 20-24 years old. Only about 15% of the men and 23% of the women were 25 or over.

Lenin’s October 1917 letter from Finland, urging immediate insurrection, included the charge:

“The most determined elements (our “shock forces” and young workers, as well as the best of the sailors) must be formed into small detachments to occupy all the more important points and to take part everywhere in all important operations.”

And they did.

The Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee was headed by the 23-year-old Pavel Lazimir, though its other members were all older leading comrades.

The Bolshevik leader Lunacharsky described the scene at Smolny on the night of the revolution: “You found yourself surrounded by faces flushed with excitement and hands outstretched to receive some order or some mandate…. In a few minutes some young comrade, happy to have been entrusted with a task, would be racing through the night in a car driven at breakneck speed.”

The US journalist John Reed reported that on November 10, “Up the Nevsky, as we passed, Red Guards were marching, all armed, some with bayonets and some without. … Heads up they tramped in the chill mud, irregular lines of four, without music, without drums. A red flag crudely lettered in gold, “Peace! Land!” floated over them. They were very young.”

There were thousands, tens of thousands of young heroes of the Bolshevik revolution. They were led, mistakenly, to fight for “peace” and “land” instead of for communism. Let’s be inspired by their bravery and commitment. And let’s honor their memory by learning from the mistakes of the pioneering party that led them.

Lenin told the Communist Youth Leagues in 1920: “The generation of those who are now fifteen will see a communist society, and will itself build this society. This generation should know that the entire purpose of their lives is to build a communist society.”

The International Communist Workers’ Party believes that this is true today. We invite you, young or old, to join us in mobilizing masses for a communist world.

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