The two October revolutions and how they shaped our modern world
In October 1949, Mao proclaimed a new state in China. Thirty-two years earlier, Lenin seized power in Russia. The two revolutions, despite their ultimate tragedies, changed what millions believed politically possible.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 and Chinese Revolution of 1949 transformed global politics, reshaping socialism, anti-colonial movements and ideas of state power. (Wikimedia Commons, enhanced using AI) October holds a singular place in the history of the modern world. It is associated with two revolutions that transformed not merely governments but the very language of politics.
On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong stood at Tiananmen in Beijing and proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. Thirty-two years earlier, in October 1917, according to the calendar then used in Russia, the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had seized power in Petrograd.
Between them, the Russian and Chinese Revolutions profoundly shaped the 20th century and the hopes and struggles of millions far beyond their borders.
There is a small calendrical irony here. The Bolshevik seizure of power on October 25-26 under the Julian calendar corresponds to November 7-8 in the Gregorian calendar (the everyday calendar we use). Russia subsequently adopted the latter, but the name ‘October Revolution’ endured. China’s revolution, though, belongs more literally to October, coming after decades of political upheaval, foreign intervention, Japanese invasion and civil war. October 1, 1949 remains China’s National Day.
The two revolutions arose from very different circumstances and should not be regarded as repetitions of one another. Yet an important historical thread connects them. The Russian Revolution established the first durable state founded in the name of Marxist socialism. The Chinese Revolution demonstrated how Marxism could be reshaped to suit the circumstances of a predominantly agrarian Asian society. Together they challenged the assumption that Western Europe alone would determine the direction of modern history.
Russia, 1917: Revolution and a new political imagination
The Russian Revolution cannot be separated from the catastrophe of World War I. Imperial Russia entered the conflict burdened by social inequality, agrarian tensions, an increasingly restless industrial working class and an autocracy that had survived the revolution of 1905 without resolving its underlying problems. Military defeats, casualties, shortages and inflation steadily eroded the authority of Tsar Nicholas II.
Revolutionaries in Petrograd. (Wikimedia Commons)
The February Revolution of 1917 brought down the Romanov dynasty, but the Provisional Government continued the war and postponed land reform. Meanwhile, “soviets” (councils) of workers and soldiers emerged as alternative centres of authority. Lenin returned from exile in April and demanded peace and “all power to the soviets”. By September, the Bolsheviks had majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, and Leon Trotsky headed the Petrograd Soviet.
In October, Bolshevik-led soldiers, sailors and Red Guards occupied strategic points in Petrograd and took the Winter Palace. The new government issued decrees on peace and land. To its supporters, October represented the transfer of power to workers and peasants; to its critics, it was the seizure of power by a disciplined minority that eventually led to one-party rule. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, civil war and, later, the coercive institutions of the Soviet state ensured that this debate would never disappear.
Yet, 1917 changed the world far beyond Russia. Land redistribution, workers’ rights, public ownership, mass education and social welfare suddenly appeared not merely as ideas but as programmes that a state might attempt to realise. Even societies opposed to communism had to respond to the challenge. The expansion of labour rights, social insurance and welfare states had many causes, but occurred in a world where organised labour and socialist alternatives could no longer easily be ignored.
The Revolution also transformed the politics of colonialism. The Bolsheviks denounced imperialism, while the Communist International sought to connect socialist revolution with anti-colonial struggles. Soviet practice did not always correspond to its rhetoric, but the ideological impact was immense. Across Asia, Africa and Latin America, socialism became intertwined in varying ways with movements for national liberation.
China, 1949: Revolution moves East
China followed another road. The Qing dynasty had fallen in 1911, but political fragmentation, warlordism, unequal treaties and foreign intervention continued. The May Fourth Movement of 1919 radicalised a generation of Chinese intellectuals, some of whom turned towards Marxism. The Communist Party of China was founded in 1921, partly under the intellectual impact of the Russian Revolution.
After Chiang Kai-shek turned against the communists in 1927, the movement was driven increasingly into the countryside. Here lay the great Chinese innovation. In a predominantly agrarian society, Mao placed the peasantry at the centre of revolutionary strategy. Rural organisation, land reform and guerrilla warfare became instruments of mobilisation.
Mao Zedong’s Proclamation of The People’s Republic of China during a Speech on October 1, 1949. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Long March of 1934-35 (the retreat of the communist forces) ensured the survival of the movement and strengthened Mao’s leadership. Resistance to Japanese invasion subsequently enhanced the communists’ nationalist credentials, while renewed civil war after 1945 ended with the defeat of the Kuomintang, the nationalist Chinese party, and its retreat to Taiwan.
On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic. A country containing roughly one-fifth of humanity had undergone a revolutionary transformation. China altered the balance of the emerging Cold War, but its importance to the colonial and post-colonial world went further. It appeared to demonstrate that an agrarian Asian society could develop its own path to revolution. The peasant could become as important a revolutionary figure as the industrial worker.
Achievement, tragedy and the colonial world
Commemorating these revolutions does not require romanticising them. The Soviet experiment achieved remarkable advances in literacy, education, science and industrialisation, and the Soviet peoples bore an enormous burden in defeating Nazi Germany. Yet, forced collectivisation, famine, the Great Terror and the Gulag produced immense suffering.
A popular communist poster depicting (from left) Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong. (Wikimedia Commons)
China transformed landholding, education, public health and the legal position of women, and subsequently achieved striking improvements in literacy and life expectancy. Yet, the violence accompanying land reform, the disastrous ‘Great Leap Forward’ (the plan to rapidly industrialise China and collectivise agriculture) and the upheavals of the ‘Cultural Revolution’ (the purge of “capitalist” elements from Chinese society) also form an inseparable part of its history.
Their impact upon colonised societies was nevertheless profound. European imperialism had long presented itself as almost permanent. Russia’s revolution challenged imperialism ideologically, while China showed an Asian civilisation subjected to foreign encroachment reclaiming political sovereignty.
India responded closely to both experiences. M N Roy debated colonial strategy with Lenin, Bhagat Singh read socialist literature, Rabindranath Tagore reflected on Soviet education, and Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1927 visit to the Soviet Union influenced his thinking about planning and development. India recognised the People’s Republic of China soon after its establishment, and the two countries later articulated the Panchsheel principles, although the optimism of those years was shattered by the conflict of 1962. India followed neither the Soviet nor Chinese political model, choosing parliamentary democracy and a mixed economy, but its debates over planning, land reform, public-sector industry, labour and education unfolded within a world transformed by 1917 and 1949.
The continuing meaning of October
Russia and China ultimately represented two different revolutionary paths. Russia placed the industrial worker, soldier and soviet at the centre; China added the peasant, rural mobilisation and protracted struggle. Their later differences culminated in the Sino-Soviet split, demonstrating that communist politics itself contained competing visions.
The Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, while the People’s Republic survives in a form profoundly altered by the economic reforms begun under Deng Xiaoping. Yet the significance of these revolutions extends beyond the states they created. They forced the modern world to confront questions of land, labour, poverty, inequality, education, welfare, imperialism and national sovereignty. They asked who should possess wealth and power, what obligations a state owed its citizens, and whether ordinary people could reshape the societies into which they had been born.
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One need neither romanticise revolution nor overlook its tragedies to recognise its historical power. The revolutions of 1917 and 1949 changed what millions believed politically possible. They helped bring workers, peasants and colonised peoples from the margins towards the centre of modern history.
October, therefore, is more than a coincidence of dates. It commemorates two attempts, sometimes inspiring and sometimes tragic, to remake society itself. The political worlds they created have changed enormously, but the questions they raised about inequality, dignity, exploitation, sovereignty and the right of ordinary people to shape their future remain with us. The revolutions belong to history, but the arguments they opened continue to inhabit the modern world.
The writer is a Mughal historian and teaches at Aligarh Muslim University
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