Who were the true leaders of the October Revolution?

George Lansbury as witness

George Lansbury (1859-1940) was a politician and journalist renowned as a Christian pacifist and left-wing reformist. He led the Labour Party in Britain from 1932 to 1935. [*] In 1911, he was instrumental in founding the Daily Herald newspaper and became its editor in 1913. Through the paper, he opposed the First World War and openly supported the October Revolution of 1917.

Keen to witness the socialist revolution in Russia and the events unfolding in the country at first hand, Lansbury visited Soviet Russia in early 1920, while the civil war was still raging. The trip, which lasted about 25 days, formed the basis of his book What I Saw in Russia (1920), in which he gathered his impressions from the journey. [**]

George Lansbury addressing a rally (1935)

Lansbury, who was deeply sympathetic towards the Bolshevik Revolution and its potential to serve as an example for the world's working class, conveys with sincerity in his book the excitement generated by the revolution, the collective effort for social transformation, and the aspiration to create a "new world". He particularly emphasises this collective spirit, which he observed in factories, in the streets, and at meetings.

Nevertheless, Lansbury was careful to adopt an objective stance: he also portrays frankly in the book the destruction, famine, misery, and the collapse of infrastructure brought about by the civil war and foreign intervention. Starving children in the streets, devastated cities, and the people’s struggle against extraordinary hardships are depicted without any attempt at censorship.

Lansbury particularly admired the radical change in the status of women, and the reorganisation of social life, such as in education, health, and industry. He emphasises that the revolution was not only political and economic, but was also a profound social and cultural transformation, and he draws attention to the efforts to create the "New Soviet Man".

One of the book’s most striking aspects is Lansbury’s account of his meetings with prominent Bolsheviks such as Lenin, Chicherin, Kalinin, Zinovyev, and Kollontai. [Trotsky was absent, having left the city a few days before Lansbury arrived in Moscow, which made any meeting impossible.] These interviews are of great value for providing a direct insight into the thoughts, objectives, and approaches of the Bolshevik Party leaders in the face of the era’s challenges. The interview with Lenin, in particular, stands out as one of the book’s most prominent sections.

In sum, What I Saw in Russia is a passionate, mostly optimistic, at times naive yet, overall, objective testimony to a journey into the very heart of one of the 20th century’s most significant political transformations. Lansbury records the October Revolution through the eyes of a sympathiser with the left-wing social democratic cause. [English editions of the book -the first published in 1920 and subsequent reprints- are available both commercially and online. However, this important work remains unpublished in Turkish.]

Let us turn now to the name frequency statistics, presented systematically at the end of our series titled Who were the true leaders of the October Revolution? -specifically, the data showing how often each Bolshevik leader is mentioned in the book under discussion. In Lansbury’s work, Lenin’s name appears 34 times, Trotsky’s 12, Chicherin’s 5, Zinovyev’s 3, Kamenev’s 3, Kalinin’s 2, and Kollontai’s 2. Strikingly, Stalin’s name does not appear even once among Lansbury’s observations in Russia.

[*] George Lansbury’s leadership of the Labour Party between 1932 and 1935 came to an end as a result of interventions led by the trade union bureaucracy. A Christian pacifist, Lansbury advocated unilateral disarmament at the 1933 Labour Party conference and pledged not to participate in any wars. This stance was sharply criticised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), and under pressure from the union bureaucracy, the policy was withdrawn in 1935. Ernest Bevin, leader of the Transport and General Workers' Union, spearheaded the campaign against Lansbury. Later, as Minister of Labour in the wartime national coalition government (1940-1945), Bevin played a key role in the establishment of NATO as a military–imperialist alliance directed against the Soviet Union.

[**] George Lansbury visited Soviet Russia from February to March 1920. He published his notes on the visit in June of the same year: George Lansbury, What I Saw in Russia, Boni and Liveright, New York, 1920. (Readers of English can access digital copies and transcriptions of the book online.)