The Russian Revolution and the Labour Movements of Australia and New Zealand, 1917–1922

Abstract

The Bolsheviks saw their revolution, not as merely Russian, but as the opening act in a great drama of international socialist revolution. This vision, dazzling in itself, mingled with Russian reality, evoked responses in the Australian and New Zealand labour movements. To these countries, the Russian revolution came as part accomplished fact, part world myth, an astonishing sublimation of the enforced and sordid internationalism of suffering on the battlefields of the world war. As such, it was peculiarly disturbing to labour movements which had been, in the main, traditionally cautious and self-sufficient, resistant to both dreams and doctrines. But even Australian and New Zealand labour could not live by bread alone. Was the Russian revolution relevant? This was the basic question, and, at first, it went to the core of local conflicts and indecisions. At first, this question seemed to mean – were revolutionary concepts relevant to Australian and New Zealand conditions, in a situation of imminent world revolution. Was labour to pursue doctrinaire, militant and revolutionary socialism, or welfare-state reformism? This fundamental alternative was, of course, not absent before the Russian revolution, but that revolution posed it with a realism, bluntness and urgency never experienced before. Yet hardly had Australian and New Zealand labour confronted with this imperative, when its terms began to change as circumstances narrowed the challenge represented by Russia. Was the Russian revolution relevant? By 1920 this question had come to mean – would Australian and New Zealand labour accept Russian methods, theories and direction?