Fifty years after the "Ten Days that shook the World" the Soviet Union presents a mass of contradictions. Fantastic space achievements co-exist with the failure to deal with the "agricultural problem"; despite the fact that the Soviet Union is the second most powerful military and political power its leaders are too frightened to publish Doctor Zhivago; huge amounts of aid are given to capitalist regimes like India yet the Kremlin allows the daily bombing of communist North Vietnam; officially the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is "returning to Lenin" but it espouses the peaceful road to socialism - a theory Lenin spent much of his life combatting. How do we explain these contradictions? Has the entire heritage of the October Revolution been lost? Is it true, as some of Mao's follewers say, that a new class has taken power in Russia? Does the present society in the Soviet Union represent socialism? Is that what the pioneers struggled for? The answers to these questions are vital to all socialists. The basic reason for these contradictions is that the revolution succeeded in a backward country, and that it remained isolated because of the failure of the workers in Germany, and other advanced countries to consummate their revolution. Moreover because of the shortage of commodities inequalities developed and were institutionalised., The privileged strata which benefited from this inequality rationalised a theoretical justification for this isolation. They wanted to build "socialism in one country" and rejected the Bolshevik internationalist heritage which presented dangers to their privileged positions. Just like the bureaucracies of the trade unions and social democrat parties they preferred to try to come to terms with capitalism than to wage a struggle against it. They took political power in the Soviet union against the fierce resistance of those who defended the Bolshevik heritage. This struggle culminated in the "legal" murder of Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, et al, and the assassination of Trotsky. However, the objective conditions which gave rise to this situation have changed beyond recognition: no longer is the Russian working class backward and atomised - it can build sputniks and jet aircraft; no longer is the revolution isolated - it has spread to cover one third of the world surface and population; no longer is Russien industry tragically backward - the essential infra-structure exists to ensure a reasonable standard of living for all. Despite this the encrusted and privileged bureaucracy remains in power. The whole de-Stalinisation process and the continuous crisis in the Soviet Union has its roots in the contradiction between the needs and possibilities of a modern industrial state and the archaic political structure which parasites on it. Above all the present leaders of the Soviet Union fear mass action by the youth, workers and peasants - that is why they have to suppress everything which questions their political domination. Does all this mean that nothing is left of the heritage of the October Revolution? On the contrary: the nationalised property relations survive and prove, despite bureaucratic mismanagement, the overwhelming superiority of socialised ownership of the means of production. Moreover, subjectively, with all its faults, for fifty years now the existence of the Soviet Union has been a source of inspiration for those struggling against imperialism and capitalism. The present rulers of the Soviet Union are no more a class in the classical marxist sense than are other parasitic formations such as the priesthood, legal profession, civil servants, etc. One well-known theoretician claims that they
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