Gramsci's View On Russian Revolution On Socio-Economic Perspective
Antonio Gramsci passed away on April 27, 1937, after spending his final ten years in a fascist prison. Gramsci's political contributions began during the Great War when he was a young linguistic student at the University of Turin, and he was later recognized for the theoretical work in his prison notes. Even then, he criticized Italian liberal, nationalist, and Catholic culture in his essays for the socialist press, in addition to the war.
Beginning in 1917, Gramsci was employed as a journalist by the Piedmont edition of Avanti! (Forward! ), as well as by the local socialist newspaper Il Grido del Popolo in Turin. News of the February Revolution in Russia was still hard to come by in Italy during the early months after it. They mostly consisted of reprinting news pieces from Parisian and London news organizations. Some coverage of Russia used to appear in Avanti! under the alias "Junior," which was used by Socialist Revolutionary Russian exile Vasilij Vasilevich Suchomlin.
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The leadership of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) requested Deputy Oddino Morgan, who was in Hague, to travel to Petrograd and make contact with the revolutionaries in order to provide the Italian Socialists with trustworthy information. Morgan returned to Italy in July after the trip was a failure. The congressman's attempt to travel was discussed in a note by Gramsci that was published by Avanti! on April 20. He was referred to as the "red ambassador." He was clearly excited about what was happening in Russia. At this moment, Gramsci believed that there was a clear correlation between the proletarian power in Russia and the ability of the Italian working class to win the war. He believed that the Russian revolution would profoundly alter all world ties.
The military mobilization had a significant impact on the Italian people as the world war entered its most intense phases. Gramsci's friends and comrades, Angelo Tasca, Umberto Terracini, and Palmiro Togliatti, were called to the front, but Gramsci was excused owing to his deteriorating health. That's how his "front" in journalism developed. A declaration by the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries that was published in Italy by Corriere della Sera and urged all European governments to forgo military offensives in favor of defensive actions against the German assault was referenced positively by Gramsci in the article about Morgari. At the Pan-Russian Soviets Conference in April, a sizable majority of attendees adopted the stance known as "revolutionary defensism." A few days later, Avanti! would publish Junior's translation of the conference's resolution.
However, as more information came in, Gramsci started to form his own opinion about what was happening in Russia. He wrote an article titled "Notes on the Russian Revolution" and published it in Il Grido del Popolo at the end of April 1917. Gramsci described the Russian events as a "proletarian deed" that would lead to socialism, in contrast to the majority of Socialists of the time who saw them as a second French Revolution.
The Russian Revolution, which Gramsci viewed as a purely "bourgeois revolution," was fundamentally different from the Jacobin paradigm. In his analysis of the Petrograd events, Gramsci revealed a future political agenda. The Jacobin paradigm, which is here characterized by the repeated use of violence and by a lack of cultural engagement, should unquestionably be abandoned by Russian socialists if they are to continue the movement and advance toward a workers' revolution.
Gramsci rapidly allied himself with the Bolsheviks in the months that followed 1917, a move that also demonstrated his allegiance to the PSI's more radical and antiwar groups. Gramsci proclaimed his complete support for Lenin and what he called the "maximalist" principles in an article titled "I massimalisti russi" (translated as "Russian maximalists") on July 28. According to him, this symbolized "the rhythm of the revolution, the continuation of the revolution, and so the revolution itself." The "limited idea of socialism," which had no ties to the past, was personified by the maximalists.
Gramsci insisted that the revolution should triumph over the bourgeois world and that it could not be stopped. The growth of the idea that the process had come to an end was, in the opinion of the journalist for Il Grido del Popolo, the greatest risk of all revolutions, particularly the Russian. The maximalists were the group opposed to this break in the revolution and were seen as the "final logical link of the revolutionary process" as a result. According to Gramsci's theory, the entire revolutionary process was linked together and driven by a movement in which the most powerful and resolute individuals were able to push the most helpless and bewildered.
On August 5, a group of Soviet-affiliated Russians, including Josif Goldemberg and Aleksandr Smirnov, arrived in Turin. Italian military hopes that the new Russian government would join the war against Germany led to the authorization of the trip. The Italian socialists expressed their confusion at the ideologies that were still prevalent among the Russian soviets after their discussion with the Russian delegates. On August 11, Il Grido del Popolo's editor posed the following query:
Instead, we eagerly inquire: Wouldn't this mean accepting or even wishing the war to continue in order to defend the interests of Russian capitalist supremacy against proletarian advances? when we hear the representatives of the Russian soviet defend continuing the war in the name of the revolution.
Despite this, the Italian socialists took advantage of the soviet delegates' presence as a chance to spread the word about the revolution. The delegation traveled back to Turin via Rome, Florence, Bologna, and Milan. The first public gathering in the city since the start of the Great War, forty thousand people greeted the Russian Revolution in front of the Casa del Popolo. Giacinto Menotti Serrati, the then-leader of the maximalist side of the party and a steadfast opponent of the war, translated Goldemberg's statement on the home's balcony. Serrati completed the "translation" by exclaiming "Viva the Italian revolution!" when the delegate stated that the Russians wanted the war to stop immediately. The crowd then sang "Long live the Russian Revolution! Lenin, long live!
At Il Grido del Popolo, Gramsci passionately recounted this rally with the Russian revolutionaries. According to him, the demonstration supported a genuine "spectacle of the proletariat and socialist forces in solidarity with revolutionary Russia." A few days later, the streets of Turin will once more be the scene of this spectacle.
Due to a protracted supply shortage brought on by the war, there was no more bread in Turin as of the morning of August 22. The workers in the city's factories started to leave their jobs at noon. When the factories had all but stopped operating at five o'clock, the mob started to march through the city robbing bakeries and warehouses. The uncalled-for, spontaneous uprising spread and engulfed the city. The movement continued despite the bread supply being restored, and it soon developed into a political one.
