Tony Cliff – författare

When Lenin and the Bolshevik party led the first successful workers revolution in history, they were under no illusions that their work was finished with the overthrow of capitalism in Russia. As the fledgling workers' state was gripped by a civil war, the revolution's leaders remained steadfast in their commitment to spreading their successes across all of Europe

Socialists aim to change the world and have always sought to organize themselves as effectively as possible in order to achieve this goal. But what sort of organization do we need? These essays show why we need something more than single-issue organizations, movement coalitions, or reformist organizations if we are to achieve real change.

In the Russian revolution of 1917, workers took control of a major country for the first time in history. To millions throughout the world, the Russian workers' state offered new hope. People everywhere turned from the grim alternatives of a declining capitalism - unemployment, poverty, the threat of new wars - to place their hopes in the government that the soviets, councils of working people, put into power in Russia. And for a short time, their hopes were realized. Never before had such sweeping changes in society been carried out in so short a time.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the pivotal events in world history, and the Russian Bolshevik Party played a central role in that revolution. This book by British socialist Tony Cliff (1917-2000) traces the building of that party and, in particular, the work of its main architect, Lenin.

Tony Cliff was a lifelong organizer within the international socialist movement. His groundbreaking work established the unique interpretation of the Soviet Union as a bureaucratic, state-centered version of capitalism, rather than a workers' state. His many works include State Capitalism in Russia and the volume that follows-up from this book, All Power to the Soviets, about Lenin's political leadership from 1914 to 1917.