The sui generis Impact of the Russian Revolution on Latin America

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/jglobfaul.4.2.0123
• Pages: 123-137
• Published date: 01 February 2018
• Date: 01 February 2018
• Author: Francisco Dominguez

Journal of Global Faultlines, 2018

Vol. 4, No. 2, 123–137.

123

The sui generis Impact of the Russian

Revolution on Latin America

Francisco Dominguez*

Lenin appears incontestably in our epoch as the most energetic and profound restorer of

Marxist thought, whatever doubts plague the disillusioned author [de Man] of Beyond Marx-

ism. Whether the reformists accept it or not, the Russian revolution constitutes the dominant

accomplishment of contemporary socialism.

(José Carlos Mariátegui, In Defense of Marxism, 1930)

* Dr. Francisco Dominguez is Head of the Latin American Studies Research Group. Middlesex University,

London, UK.

The impact of the Bolshevik Revolution was highly inspiring on the many existing Latin

America socialist and radical political parties. Not only their leaders took the long and haz-

ardous journey to Russia to see with their own eyes their dream of a socialist “republic of

workers, peasants and soldiers,” and in 13 years they established 15 communist parties that

joined the Comintern. The received wisdom within traditional Marxist thought was that

unless capitalism developed the productive forces fully, the objective conditions for a socialist

revolution would not exist. Therefore, the national bourgeoisie would not only lead the “first”

stage of the revolution, but would play a progressive perhaps even a revolutionary role in car-

rying through the national-democratic tasks. The Russian Socialist Revolution demolished