Rosa Luxemburg, “The Russian Revolution”

The essay concerns the highly controversial pamphlet of Rosa Luxemburg The Russian Revolution (1918/1922), in which Luxemburg criticizes Lenin’s post-revolutionary policies, in particular his dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, an elected body. The essay reviews the history of the text’s publication and the intense debate, which continues to this day, over whether or not Luxemburg changed her mind on its central critique. At stake in the argument is not only Luxemburg’s evaluation of Lenin’s actions but also the correct weighting to be given to the two components in the central Marxist–Leninist dialectic of revolution: spontaneity and consciousness. In elaborating this point the essay brings in examples from the writings of Lukács and Stalin, and also discusses the dialectic’s centrality in socialist realism.