This article, which draws the political lessons of the 2014 far-right coup in Kiev, was submitted to the WSWS by a socialist from Ukraine living abroad.
The cult of personality that the Soviet authorities built around Lenin after his death was fully justified. The revolution of November 1917 really was Lenin’s revolution, and the communist system really was Lenin’s creation. Great impersonal forces matter. But so too does individual agency. The life of Vladimir Lenin proves the point. For good or evil, he changed the path of history.
For those who want to end capitalist rule, much can still be learnt from the October Revolution because its experience critically poses key political questions. The first in this two-part series by Jonathan Strauss seeks to respond to the question: Was the October Revolution a coup?