Abstract
When in 1917 the Russian proletariat made the first socialist revolution in human history and then defeated the exploiting classes in the civil war it set out to build a workers' state, or the dictatorship of the proletariat as a vehicle for socialist transition toward a classless society. Today, seventy nine years later, Russian workers remain a distinct social class and may seem to be farther away than ever before from the world that the workers of 1917 dreamed of. They have suffered a defeat of world-historical significance. The bureaucracy-led counterrevolution has triumphed. Its consequences for the Soviet working class have been disastrous.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.
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