THE IMPACT OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN EUROPE: KARL KAUTSKY AND ANTONIO GRAMSCI

Abstract

The Russian Revolution had an immediate global impact, both as a model for revolutionary processes or intense social mobilizations in several European countries (e.g. Finland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy) and due to its influence on the great debates in the international socialist movement, which was reconfiguring itself, following the divisions of tendencies in the II International, towards a more permanent division —“a great schism” (in the words of historian Carl Schorske)— between organizations and individuals that would seek to reconstruct Social Democracy and those that would seek to build the Communist International.

The period immediately after the Russian Revolution (1917-20) until the consolidation of the Comintern in its II Congress was a fluid moment of debates about the characterization of the Russian Revolution and its political, theoretical and strategic consequences. Through the analysis of the positions of Karl Kautsky and Antonio Gramsci —two intellectuals with great theoretical influence within the international socialist movement—, we seek to shed light on some of the main questions of the debate on these process: the character of the social forces involved; the objectives of the revolution; the role of democracy and dictatorship in the transition to socialism; and the international applicability of the Russian Revolution. The analysis draws on primary sources from each author, placing each of them in the context of their relationship with the socialist movement of their respective countries and the debates that went on within them.