Book review: October, China Mieville (2017)

This year - in fact this month - marks the centenary of the October Revolution. In Wikipedia:

It followed and capitalized on the February Revolution of the same year, which overthrew the Tsarist autocracy and resulted in a provisional government after a transfer of power proclaimed by Grand Duke Michael, brother of Tsar Nicolas II, who declined to take power after the Tsar stepped down.

The book takes the reader through the process of change starting just before the February Revolution and leading up to the October Revolution. It wasn't clear-cut, during this time, that the Bolsheviks would finally grasp power. In fact, because of the way socialism had been theorised by Marx - as a step lying between capitalism and communism - most of the people involved in the political process during these months were hesitant to proceed direct to rule by the proletariat. They wanted the bourgeoisie to first step up and form an interim political settlement first. But of course that could not happen; Russia was very far behind the West in terms of its economic development, let alone its political settlement.

This is why there was so much support in those intervening months for the provisional government, which was made up of politicians from across the spectrum - from left to right (but not the Bolsheviks) - most of whom were trying to make the thing work despite setbacks. Another complicating element at this time was the war against Germany. The Bolsheviks viewed it as a creation of the capitalist class, and wanted to stop it; others had different ideas.

Things came to a head after an attempted coup by forces loyal to a general. Wikipedia summarises the event: "In what became known as the Kornilov affair, Kornilov directed an army under Aleksandr Krymov to march toward Petrograd to restore order to Russia, with Kerensky's agreement." Kerensky was the leader of the provisional government. The result of this was that the left - and the Bolsheviks were on the far left - gained a lot of support within the community, and they gradually moved from this point of strength to instigating the seizure of the Winter Palace, where the provisional government resided.

Mieville's technique is to couch all events in the present tense, in order to increase the sense of drama involved in events. He also shortens things to their acronyms and Russian original words, which makes events hard to follow. I still don't know what the "CC" was, for example, although this acronym appears again and again in the book. Part of the problem is that the backgrounding of the main actors is insufficient to sustain the reader on his or her journey. You are constantly coming across things you don't understand, which is just unnecessary. Better editing would have fixed this defect.

Nevertheless it's a useful book about a seminal event in the 20th century. More people should educate themselves about the events leading up to the October Revolution in order to understand its significance to the average person in the street of Petrograd (now St Petersburg) or Moscow. As the world becomes more and more unequal due to the effects of neoliberal policies of governments worldwide - and due to the effects of capitalism - we will see more and more calls from within communities for change of a kind that mirrors those of people living 100 years ago in Russia. Calls for change to make the world a fairer place.