Gray Zone Research

How the Bolshevik Party Was Built

Mike Shelby's avatar
Mike Shelby
Jun 12, 2024
∙ Paid

I continue my note-taking of the Revolutionary Communist International conference. This presentation is entitled, “How the Bolshevik Party Was Built”.

I'm posting these panel notes independently, and also adding them to the full-length thread which is available to subscribers here: https://grayzoneresearch.substack.com/p/the-new-revolutionary-communist-international

Key Highlights:

  • At the outbreak of the 1917 February Revolution, Bolsheviks numbered 8,000 in a country of 160 million, or one out of every 20,000 inhabitants. Within eight months, Bolsheviks grew to 2.4 million.

  • The presenter also stresses the importance of having this cadre or vanguard, who study history, warfare, and politics, and are capable of leading a political revolution.

  • “That force, that thing that the Narodniks felt inside, that the Bolsheviks felt, history is producing that again… A generation of people that say, ‘There is nothing more important in my life than to be a participant in the end of capitalism’… We’ll create a new generation of Bolsheviks,” he says.

Full length notes follow below:

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