Dr. Beryl Williams: The Bolsheviks & The Building of Socialism 1917-1921

Dr. Beryl Williams: The Bolsheviks & The Building of Socialism 1917-1921

The Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917 promising to build socialism. All factions within the party and its followers agreed with this; but what was socialism and how did you build it? This lecture will look at the debates within the party on this question before and during the revolution and the Civil War. It will concentrate on the ideas of Lenin and those of the so-called Left Bolsheviks, chiefly Bogdanov, Lunacharsky and Kollantai, and will examine the differences between them over what socialism entailed and the methods to be used for achieving it.

Beryl Williams is Emeritus Reader in History at the University of Sussex. Her publications include “The Russian Revolution” (1987) and “Lenin” (Longman’s Profiles in Power,2000) and various articles on Russian and Soviet history. She is currently working on a book on Late Tsarist Russia.