I prefer this article to another which provides a summary view of the Russian Revolution after 90 years and posted in 2007. However in the last paragraph Grant tried in 1967 to forecast the future and, of course, it didn't turn out quite that way. The Stalinist ruling class and its bureaucracy came crashing down in 1990 with the collusion of Russian opportunists and Western agents. However, since then Putin and his supporters have taken back much of the stolen national wealth from the opportunists, and is now leading an independent Russia with a mixed economy. Communist parties--actually, there are several--in Russia are still very popular, the accomplishments of the Revolution are still fondly remembered, and some have even been restored partially. Perhaps we have not yet seen the end of the socialist ideas that arose during the Revolution of 1917.
The aims of the revolution were simple and clear. They had been worked out theoretically by Marx. Rule by the working class, as a step towards Socialism. From the beginning, a higher form of democracy than under capitalism. They involved the rule of the Soviets, spontaneously set up the workers during the course of the revolution. These Soviets were committees of factory workers, peasants, housewives, democratically and freely elected. This was to replace the capitalists' state machine. No official was to receive higher pay than that of a skilled worker. In place of a standing army was to come the armed people. Instead of a bureaucratic hierarchy, gradually all jobs in the administration of the state, were to be done by everyone in turn. Thus when everyone was a "bureaucrat" no one could be a bureaucrat. In Lenin's aphorism "every cook should be able to be Prime Minister". These aims were [present at] the beginning of the revolution.
