On these Days, marked the evening of Nov 5th thru Nov 8th, 1917, (by Gregorian calendar) the Russian working class, led by the Bolshevik Party headed by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin, shattered the old reactionary state of Russia and opened the epoch of proletarian revolution.

On November 5, 1917, the Bolshevik-led Military Revolutionary Committee moved to sever the Petrograd garrison's loyalty to the Provisional Government by appointing its own commissars to all military units, effectively stripping Alexander Kerensky's government of its military command. This was the practical execution of the party's line, coordinated by the Military Revolutionary Center headed by Iosif Stalin, Yakov Sverdlov, Andrei Bubnov, Moisei Uritsky, and Felix Dzerzhinsky, working with the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee's chairman, Leon Trotsky.

Kerensky responded with desperation, ordering the suppression of the Bolshevik press and summoning loyal officer cadets to the capital.

By November 6, the physical confrontation had begun. Kerensky ordered the raising of the bridges over the Neva to isolate the working-class Vyborg district, but Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers quickly retook them. That evening, Lenin, who had been in hiding, disguised himself (the famous shaved, wig wearing Lenin photo) and traveled to the Smolny Institute to personally assume leadership of the uprising, taking command from the hesitations that had plagued parts of the leadership.

Under his direction, the insurrection shifted from a defensive posture to a decisive offensive.

Stalin and the Central Committee worked tirelessly to organize the party's forces, ensuring that the Bolshevik press, which Kerensky had tried to silence, continued to rally the masses. Red Guards, Baltic Fleet sailors, and sympathetic soldiers moved silently through the night, seizing the central telegraph office, the railway stations, the post office, and the power station with almost no bloodshed.

By the early hours of November 7, the garrison had secured the capital, and Kerensky fled the city in a car to seek troops at the front.

At the Smolny, the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets convened, representing the organized will of the working class and peasantry.

As the Congress gathered, the cruiser Aurora fired a blank shot from the Neva, the signal for the final assault on the Winter Palace. The palace was defended by a dwindling force of cadets and the 1st Petrograd Women's Battalion, who largely deserted their posts.

The revolutionaries poured into the building and, at 2:10 a.m. on November 8, arrested the remaining cabinet ministers.

The fall of the Winter Palace was a symbolic confirmation of the new order, the proletarian, revolutionary order.

Lenin presented the Congress with the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land, cementing the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry.

The old bourgeois state apparatus was seized, and the dictatorship of the proletariat set out on its quest to liberate all the working people, to dig up the old world of violence for sake of the freedom of all humanity.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/54937709

Hello. I will be running two reading groups, one for Cowbee's Marxism-Leninism Study Guide: Basic Course, and another for Soviet Democracy, and am looking for participants. If you would like to join, make sure you can see hexbear communities (specifically !soviet@hexbear.net and !marxism@hexbear.net), and then make a comment stating which you would like to join and I will add you to the list.

We will start reading each book on monday, see the programs down below for what we will read each week.

program for Cowbee's list

1. Introduction

• Week 1: 1+2+3+4+5
• Week 2: 6

2. Fundamentals

• Week 3: 1
• Week 4: 2+3 (Bibliography not required in Karl Marx)
• Week 5: 4

3. Philosophy

• Week 6: 1: Part 1
• Week 7: 1: Part 2
• Week 8: 2

4. Political Economy

• Week 9: 1
• Week 10: 2
• Week 11: 3

5. Scientific Socialism

• Week 12: 1
• Week 13: 2: Preface, Chapters 1, 2, 3
• Week 14: 2: Chapters 4, 5, 6
• Week 15: 3

6. Imperialism

• Week 16: 1: Prefaces, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
• Week 17: 1: Chapters 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
• Week 18: 2+3

7. Leninism

• Week 19: 1+4+5
• Week 20: 2: Intro, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4
• Week 21: 2: Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
• Week 22: 3
• Week 23: 6

8. Cultural Hegemony

• Week 24: 1+2
• Week 25: 3

9. Social Liberation

• Week 26: 1+2
• Week 27: 3
• Week 28: 4

program for Soviet Democracy

Week 1: Intro, 1, 2
Week 2: 3, 4
Week 3: 5, 6
Week 4: 7, 8
Week 5: 9, 10
Week 6: 11, 12
Week 7: 13, 14
Week 8: 15, 16, 17
Week 9: Part 3 (18, 19, 20)

"To the old world, the world of national oppression, national bickering, and national isolation the workers counterpose a new world, a world of the unity of the working people of all nations, a world in which there is no place for any privileges or for the slightest degree of oppression of man by man - V.I. Lenin", Soviet poster, 1972

Despite my best efforts, I can't stop coming across horrific stories and images from Palestine. I won't repeat them here because you all know. At the same time I've heard so much inspirational stuff about how the USSR, despite being in a constant fight for their existence, still managed to help the global South in various ways, like aiding Cuba for example.

I understand that China is trying not to repeat the mistakes of the USSR by taking a less principled, more pragmatic approach, but if socialism means anything, surely it at the very least means opposing genocide? I just don't see why a country as powerful as China wouldn't just draw the line here.

Sorry if this is more of a rant than anything else, I'm just sick of seeing this shit, and literally the only entity on the planet that isn't run by demons and is powerful enough to help, refuses to do so. Even just sanctions would make a massive difference.

alternative video upload

source

This is kind of meta, I guess, I didn't see anything saying that wasn't allowed.

Hello. I'm just checking to see how many socialists are alive on this side of Lemmy (not hexbear or lemmygrad). I don't see many comments or posts except for ones from Usg+eussz* or Unequal Exchange.

I am trying to understand as much as possible about socialism as well as other leftist ideologies, and looking around i’ve seen many being critical about democratic socialism, but i honestly struggle to understand why that is such a bad idea as some say. I get that it’s incompatible with ML, but it doesn’t sound so unrealistic and unreasonable to me, so… can you explain? Excuse the ignorance, but as i said socialism is a new topic for me, i mean no offense to anybody

Comrade, you've asked the question that cuts to the heart of the despair: if some marginalized people can win against all odds, why can't you? Doesn't their success prove it's possible, and therefore make your struggle a personal failure?

The answer is no. And the reason is not a platitude. It is a matter of mathematics, psychology, and the brutal economics of survival under systemic oppression. The people who "win against all odds" are not proof that the game is fair. They are proof that the game is designed to allow a few to escape, so the rest can be told they didn't try hard enough.

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🎰 Survivorship Bias: You Are Only Seeing the Winners

The first thing to understand is survivorship bias. You are looking at the tiny handful of people who made it out, and you are not seeing the graveyard of everyone who tried and failed. Research is clear that success narratives are "often not a representative sample of successes," and we "magnify the importance of the characteristics and experiences of those who are successful, without proper attention to those who aren't".

For every marginalized person who becomes a professor, a CEO, or a celebrated artist, there are thousands who had the same talent, the same work ethic, and the same dream, but were crushed by the same systems. They didn't fail because they were less worthy. They failed because the odds were stacked against them, and the few who made it were the statistical exceptions. Their success does not invalidate the reality of the barrier. It proves the barrier is real, because only a handful can ever get over it.

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📉 The Cost of Being the Exception: The "Pyrrhic Victory"

Even for those who do succeed, the victory is often pyrrhic. The research on "Black excellence" and "model minority" students shows that exceptional success often comes with devastating hidden costs.

· The Psychological Toll: Black men in elite academic and professional spaces report immense pressure, tokenization, and racial battle fatigue. They are often the "exceptional" one, which means they are constantly representing their entire race, and any mistake is seen as confirmation of a stereotype. This leads to burnout, anxiety, and a deep sense of isolation.
· The Health Cost: The stress of navigating these spaces while being the "only one" takes a physical toll. Research on Black professionals who achieve against the odds documents "severe burnout," "repression," and "physical symptoms" as a direct result of the pressure to conform and the constant fight against marginalization.
· The "Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw" Reality: As one disabled achiever's memoir puts it, you can scale the mountain of success only to find "exclusion, discrimination, and neglect waiting for you on the other side". The success does not buy you acceptance. It often just changes the shape of the battle.

The people you see "winning" are not coasting. They are fighting a war on two fronts: the public battle for their career, and the private battle for their sanity. Their success is not a sign that the system is fair. It is a sign that they are paying a price you cannot see.

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🎭 The "Model Minority" and "Black Excellence" Myths: Tools of Blame

You must also understand that the narrative of the "exceptional" marginalized person is a weapon used against the rest of us.

· The Model Minority Myth: This myth was specifically constructed to contrast the "success" of some Asian Americans with the "failure" of Black Americans, implying that Black people's struggles are due to cultural or personal deficiencies, not systemic racism. It is a tool for driving a wedge between oppressed groups and blaming the victims of a rigged system.
· The Myth of Black Exceptionalism: This is the idea that successful Black people are "atypical" and "extraordinary," which implicitly frames the rest of the Black population as ordinary, failing, and deficient. It denies Black people the full spectrum of humanity and individuality, forcing everyone to be a "superstar" just to be seen as human.

When you compare yourself to these exceptions, you are using a metric designed by your oppressors. You are measuring your entire life against a standard that was created to make you feel like a failure.

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💎 The Truth: You Are Not the Exception. You Are the Reality.

The marginalized people who "win" are not the norm. They are the statistical outliers. The norm is the struggle. The norm is the person who works just as hard, is just as talented, and still gets crushed by the weight of the system.

You are not failing because you are not one of the exceptions. You are experiencing the reality that the exceptions are meant to hide. The reality is that the game is rigged, the odds are long, and the cost of winning is often a broken body and a broken spirit.

So, no. You should not feel ashamed that you are not one of them. You should feel angry. Angry that the system forces you to compete in a race where only a handful can ever win, and then blames you for not being the one who did. Angry that the few who escape are used as a cudgel to beat the rest of us into silence.

Your worth is not measured by whether you can become the exception. Your worth is inherent. It is not dependent on a system that was designed to make you feel worthless.

Your job is not to become the exception. Your job is to survive the reality, to build a life of dignity within it, and to refuse to let their myths define your worth. One brick. Solidarity.