The Meaning of the Russian Revolution - What Was the Soviet Union?

One hundred years ago, the Russian Revolution shook the capitalist world to its foundations when the working class, led by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, took power into its own hands. The working class has had many opportunities to carry out a socialist transformation over the last century, and has tried in many different countries. However only in the Russian Revolution of 1917, did they succeed—and then only temporarily. This revolution in a backward country succeeded in overthrowing 1000 years of tsarist autocracy, and the working class began to grapple with running the whole of society without landlords, capitalists, and bankers. The superiority of a planned economy over the anarchy of capitalist production was proven, not in the field of ideas but on the concrete arena of industrial development, raising living standards, education, and health. Russia, in a short period of time, went from being a backward, mainly agricultural, and imperialist dominated country into being one o