Capitalists like to talk about springs—“arab spring” today, “Prague” spring in 1968,. They forget that the original “springtime of the peoples” was the revolutions of 1848, the year of the Communist Manifesto, where, as Karl Marx noted, the bourgeoisie betrayed what were bourgeois democratic revolutions because they feared that those revolutions for bourgeois democracy would be transformed into revolutions for socialism.
Since it is now December, I thought we would have a Marxist IQ honoring the great Autumn revolutions, the "autumns of the people" more important than any Spring, the Red October by the old Russian caendar of 1917, and the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949.
- The Soviet Revolution faced in its aftermath
a. Support and recognition by the major powers
b. Aid from the League of Nations
c. Invasion by 500,000 foreign troops, including 12,000 Americans to crush the revolution
d. All of the above
- The Soviet Revolution saw the development of
a. The first socialist socialist in history
b. The creation of the Comintern, an organization of revolutionary Marxist parties
c. The establishment of Communist parties in China, India, colonial and semi colonial regions of the world
d. All of the above
- The best known early work in English by an American celebrating the Soviet Revolution was
a. Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises
b. John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook The World
c. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise
d. Boris Pasternak’s Dr.Zhivago
- Mao Tse-tung in leading the Chinese Communist Party to victory
a. Dutifully followed the directions of the Comintern and its advisors
b. Adapted Marxism-Leninism to real Chinese political economy and social conditions
c. Supported alliances with the landlords and the warlords
d. Sought to adapt Chinese Confucianism to Marxism-Leninism
- The best known early work in English by an American celebrating the Chinese Communist parties revolutionary struggle
a. Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth
b. Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China
c. The Memoirs of General Joseph Stillwell
d.Karl Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism
