All are not cooks that walk with long knives

-Russian proverb

The Top 5: reasons why we haven't been posting!
1. We are no longer required to study the amazing Russian revolution, and although that is a little sad, it's really more of a cause for celebration.
2. The exam of previously mentioned study was, well, not as good as expected. And thus, this just brings back memories of how bad I did.
3. Inspiration is hard to come by when you no longer need to spend hours filling your head with pointless facts about the Kulaks (when it's not even on the f***ing exam!) and can instead, be outside enjoying the weather, shopping or getting wasted.
4. I went way overboard during the October Revolution, averaging one-post a day for 4 days. That's too much.
5. I don't think anyone is reading this...

...But it can appear as such only in retrospect. Lenin himself thought it an extremely chancy undertaking

-Pipes

So, the rest of the October revolution, lets face it, was pretty dull. It's pretty much just anti-Bolshevik this, pro-Tsarist that and so on, vice versa, etc.
Which is why I really can't be bothered explaining to you the events of day 4 or day 5,6,7,8,9 or 10. I have better things to do, and I'm pretty sure you do. Well, you probably don't and in which case, you should just go out and buy a book on the Russian revolution (but still read this blog!) because that would probably be more insightful (but far less humorous and pro-Trotsky-est) and probably be slightly more educational. Or just go on wiki, that ones free.

So leave me alone; I have to study like a maniac. Hmm, not really, being a maniac is what I did when I found out the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are doing all ages sideshows this December. FUCKING AMAZING. But this isn't a music blog, so go read pitchfork or something.

The ease with which the Bolsheviks toppled the Provisional Government has persuaded many historians that the October coup was "inevitable"

-Richard Pipes (Lenin/Trotsky hating historian)

Wow time flies. Just goes right by us. Today is DAY 3 of the October Revolution (or coup as Pipes like to call it).
After yesterdays excitement, day 3 is pretty boring. Not much happened really, except:
-The Bolsheviks announce their official government title and name Lenin as their leader
-Some strong anti-Bolshevik opposition WITHIN Petrograd

Thats pretty much it. It kinda goes down hill from now, and doesn't really pick up until the NEP (a betrayal of the original ideals of the party I might add) is introduced. Which kinda sucks.

But a shout out to my sisters so-far-right-wing-that-I-can't-see-him-from-my-left-wing-stance-boyfriend who, luckily enough, celebrates his birthday on this historic day. Boy, I bet that makes him proud!

Our rising has been victorious

-Trotsky

Hallelujah! Wikipedia FINALLY caught on, so if you were to read their "on this day" list TODAY you would find yourself informed about the events of this very day in 1917. Of course, you needn't visit wiki for all the information you need is right HERE. And it's more in-depth. Wiki has like a sentence on it (and it's incorrect, it said the revolution started today. WRONG, it started YESTERDAY!). Pretty disappointing really, I mean it is one of the biggest events ever to happen in the history of man kind. They may as well have just left it out completely.

So, as its November the 7th (25 October in the Julian calender) it was day 2 of the October revolution. Here's the low-down:
-Red Guard storm the Winter Palace at 2.10 am
-Kerensky escapes, however, and is protected by the American Embassy
-The Provisional Government is arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress (cool name right) and the ministers resigned to 'fate' and surrendered without a fight, and the PG was officially overthrown
-Trotsky dismisses Menshevik and SR opposition from congress
-Petrograd Soviet now in control of Government, garrison and proletariat

And to think, Wikipedia didn't think this more important than "The London Gazette, the oldest surviving English language newspaper, was first published as the Oxford Gazette." What a cop out.

The amazing feat that was the October revolution is something that we all should recognize, if not celebrate. Whether or not what became of the Bolsheviks after 1917, and their impact on Russian society is irrelevant. Barack Obama got a Nobel peace prize because of his ideas (practically...) but he hasn't done anything yet, and neither had Lenin. But he had envisaged a Utopian society of peace and equality. It is for this reason alone why we should be educated about the October revolution and so that all of us can know that there are some who realise our class-based, capitalist-money-grabbing-orphan-creating society is not idealistic.

Oh, it's also free slurpee day.

History will not forgive us if we do not assume power

-Lenin



Look back young ones, look back 92 years. 92 years to this VERY day. What do you see? Is it perhaps, one of the most historically significant events in the modern world? Why yes it is.

This day, 92 years ago, the October Revolution began. "But", you say, "it's the OCTOBER revolution, we are currently in NOVEMBER. You MUST be wrong." Huh! YOU, my dear, are wrong. See, it was October in Russia but for the rest of us it was November simply because Russia was still using the Julian calendar, whilst the rest of the world was using the updated Gregorian calendar. Russia was a little behind, as it was in most other areas.

Anyway, this was DAY 1, of 10 days of Bolshevik takeover. This is what happened:
-Trotsky distributes arms to Red Guard
-Petrograd Garrison rebels against the Provisional Government claiming that it is a "tool of the enemies of the people"
-Systematic capture of key communication, installations and vantage points
The significance?
Kerensky was powerless to stop armed uprising by the Bolsheviks.

Yep, the beginning of the most important events in our history (OK, one of the most important ones...jeez) and it's not even on the Wikipedia "on this day" list. WHAT GIVES WIKI?

Anyway, check this space (I've always wanted to say that) to find out what happens next!

(Also, I'm pretty sure that cartoon is mocking communism AND The Age, seriously is it just me or is that The Age logo on the top? Ten buck says it was in the Herald Sun...pfft!)

"Trotsky IS a fox!" - Elizabeth

"Despite its complexities, the Russian Revolution is one of the best revolutions to learn about - which is why it is by far the most popular in the VCE course (more than 40 percent of all students study it). Unlike the American and French revolutions, as a 20th-century event its ideas and events still resonate today (echoing in the Chinese Revolution). It had a doomed old-regime emperor, blinded by religion and tradition, a figure of pathos and misfortune. He was led by a domineering wife, who herself succumbed to the charms of a dubious holy-man with a liking for prostitutes and cheap wine. The lead revolutionary was obsessive, determined to the extreme, a figure who would stop at nothing to secure power and then to hold onto it. One-hundred million Russians would be led through a generation of isolation, starvation, war, civil war and politically-motivated brutality in which countless millions would die. Little wonder that one contemporary historian would call his Russian Revolution book "A People's Tragedy".
Though most of the causes of revolution are reasonably easy to understand and appreciate, what complicates study of Russia between 1905 and 1924 is that there were actually three separate revolutions. Each revolution and the phase which followed can be viewed as a new opportunity for change; each subsequent revolution would topple a government that could not or would not bring about change. Three men stand like pillars through this period, almost as manifestations of the political regimes they led: Tsar Nicholas II, Alexander Kerensky and Vladimir Lenin - and each would fail, for various reasons. Only when a usurper called Stalin took control would there be someone determined enough, resilient enough and brutal enough to impose change, though this would come at enormous human cost.*
The Russian Revolution can be a multiplicity of things, depending on what you read or who you listen or talk to. To those who led it, it was the long-awaited but inevitable rise to power of the long-exploited working classes. To most who lived through it, it was a year of great hope followed by a generation of darkness, misery and tyranny. To people of today, shaped and informed by Cold War values and rhetoric, it implemented an unworkable political and economic system that descended into evil. To socialists and communists, it represented a brief moment where the promise of equality was snuffed out by deceit, thievery and opposition, both inside and outside Russia. There are few historical events that have divided opinion like this one has done for the past 90 years, which is why the historiography of the Russian Revolution is so rich and so diverse."

I rest my case. Thanks to Thompson for his eloquent wording of my exact feelings.

- Isabella

P.S
It has come to my attention that Abbe Sieyes (author of revolutionary pamphlet "Qu est- ce que le tiers etat?") is a Silver Fox. Consider:

Delicious, non? Mr. Darcy-esque I thought. Ill leave y'all with sweety Abbe to ponder.

A plus tard,

Bisous.