In 1917, workers, peasants and soldiers rose up in Russia and established the first socialist state in history. The October Revolution of 1917 announced to all oppressed peoples of the world that a new era had begun. When the Soviets were proclaimed, the 1st War of Partition had not yet ended, and the country was suffering from famine, epidemics and unemployment. Industry was underdeveloped compared with other European countries, and many nations within the country were held under oppression.
While imperialist countries were shedding the blood of peoples in wars they launched against each other to expand their networks of exploitation, disregarding human beings and their labour, the Soviet Union was being established on the other side through the struggle for equality and brotherhood. From the moment it was founded, the Soviet Union demonstrated what kind of progress could be achieved for the future of the peoples.
The Soviet government taught millions of people to read and write in a short time. Universities, factories, theatres and libraries were brought to the people. The children of peasants who once suffered from hunger, the children of the people, became some of the world’s best scientists, doctors and artists.
At the same time, imperialism was condemning millions of people in the colonies to hunger and death. In India, British colonial rule caused millions to die from famine and poverty, while the wealth of Africa flowed into the coffers of European monopolies.
In a world ruthlessly exploited by imperialism, the Soviets became a light for oppressed peoples and a nightmare that would bring destruction to imperialism.
In the 21st century, while the deepening crisis of imperialism and wars destroy the future of the world’s peoples, the state system based on private property—necessary for its own interests—has protected, and continues to protect, not the needs of the peoples but the interests of a small parasitic class that controls capital.
Socialism, however, has emerged as the only real alternative for the liberation of the peoples, and remains their only alternative today.
Why socialism is the only alternative can be explained concretely through historical experience.
The Example of the Soviet Union
After the October Revolution of 1917, the backward and agriculture-based economy of Tsarist Russia was rapidly transformed into the world’s second largest industrial power through socialist planning.
Five-year plans turned millions of workers and peasants into the main driving force of production.
Industrialisation was achieved through the Soviet peoples’ own strength. The Soviets did not exploit the peoples of other countries nor use their labour power to develop their own country.
While crises, unemployment and misery became commonplace in capitalist countries, the Soviets gradually expanded their economy through five-year plans. From being a backward agricultural country in the 1920s, it became the world’s second largest industrial power by the 1940s. Its ability to resist the Nazi invasion during the 2nd War of Partition was a result of this planned development.
Unemployment was eliminated.
In the Soviet Union, all children, girls and boys, were given the theoretical and practical foundations of production branches until the age of 17. Students were enabled to study in their own mother tongues and continue their education even while working.
The most fundamental human rights—healthcare, housing, employment and social security—were provided.
The Principle of Equality
All peoples had equal access to education, healthcare and cultural activities.
Equality in healthcare was achieved. During the Tsarist period, healthcare services were almost exclusively reserved for the aristocracy. In the Soviet Union, a free and accessible healthcare system for everyone was established. Through polyclinics, sanatoriums and mobile medical teams reaching villages, millions of people encountered modern medicine for the first time. Epidemics such as malaria and tuberculosis were largely eradicated.
Before the revolution, Tsarist Russia was largely a peasant society with low literacy rates, and most people lived under feudal relations.
The Soviet administration launched literacy campaigns in its earliest years. By the end of the 1930s, literacy rates exceeded 90 per cent. This enabled the entire society to participate in production.
The Soviet Union also quickly became one of the world’s leading centres of science and technology.
The Soviet Union was among the first countries to ensure women’s equal participation in production and social life. Women were granted equal rights in education, administration and working life. Through nurseries and childcare facilities, women could join the workforce. This increased women’s social productivity.
National Liberation and Rights
Tsarist Russia was called the “prison of nations”. During the Soviet period, the Right of Nations to Self-Determination was recognised. This right means that a nation has the right to determine its own destiny without conditions, including the right to establish an independent political state and to secede. This is only possible under socialism. The Soviet Union granted this right to all peoples living within Russian territory.
Socialists reject policies of forcibly keeping nations together. However, defending the right to secede does not mean that separation is obligatory. This is shaped by conditions. In this respect, Marxist-Leninists who defend the right of nations to self-determination oppose fragmentation. Separation is not mandatory. The Soviet Union was founded on this principle and consistently supported voluntary unity free from national oppression.
Imperialism’s perspective is “divide, fragment and rule”. It pits peoples against each other for its own interests, dividing them and provoking wars.
All peoples who lived under the socialist system proved that living together is possible and that peoples are not condemned to hatred, hostility or competition against one another.
International Solidarity and Anti-Colonial Struggles
While building socialism at home, the Soviets also set an example for the peoples of the world. They supported liberation struggles. They backed movements fighting colonialism in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Victory Against Fascism
During the 2nd War of Partition, the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany, liberating not only its own people but also the peoples of the world from fascism.
The Soviet Union paid the greatest price in human history during this war. It lost 27 million people, and its cities were devastated. Yet the Nazi armies, representing the fascist face of imperialism, were defeated by the resistance of the Soviet people. The bloodshed in Stalingrad defended not only Soviet territory but the freedom of the entire world. In all Nazi-occupied countries, “Stalingrad” became a slogan that kept hope for victory alive.
The Soviet Union and the Nuremberg Trials
The idea of prosecuting German fascists emerged when the Soviet Union proposed it to allied countries at the Moscow Conference in 1943. For the first time in history, crimes committed during war would be judged in courts established after the war.
War crimes would not remain confined to battlefields but would be legally prosecuted and punished.
After the 2nd War of Partition, courts were established in 1945. The Soviet Union sent both judges and prosecutors. It presented crucial evidence documenting Nazi war crimes, including:
- Massacres of civilians during the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad
- Executions and mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war
- Mass civilian massacres in Eastern Europe
- Genocide and massacres committed in concentration and extermination camps
At the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi leaders were convicted of crimes against peoples. The Soviet Union ensured that not only crimes committed within its own territory, but crimes committed against all peoples were prosecuted.
Today, imperialism attempts to erase this historical reality while committing crimes comparable to those of Nazi Germany and disregarding international legal frameworks to avoid accountability.
The Establishment of the United Nations
During the 2nd War of Partition, Stalin initiated efforts to establish an international assembly of nations that could defend countries’ rights and independence against imperialist expansion.
Stalin insisted on two issues:
- The veto right in the Security Council, to guarantee the security of socialist countries and prevent imperialist occupations.
- Separate UN membership for Ukraine and Belarus, increasing socialist voting power.
In April–June 1945, the UN Charter was signed in San Francisco with the participation of 50 countries. The Soviet Union became a founding member and one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, gaining veto power.
Until its dissolution, this right prevented imperialism from freely launching wars and expanding markets. During the Cold War beginning in 1946, the veto prevented the United States and other imperialist states from acting as global policemen.
The Soviet Union and the Geneva Conventions
The Geneva Conventions were legal frameworks designed to limit imperialist brutality and protect peoples’ rights. Although created by imperialist states, the Soviet Union introduced new legal approaches in favour of the peoples after 1945.
The Soviet Union evaluated the Geneva Conventions not only legally but also ideologically through socialism. Since socialism was built upon the liberation of peoples and struggle against imperialism, its perspective on war law supported peoples’ independence struggles.
The Soviet Union developed a practice based not on abstract humanitarian law but on liberation struggles.
Previous agreements signed by bourgeois states—including the Geneva Conventions—failed to prevent massacres suffered by Soviet peoples and others murdered by the Nazis. The killing of millions of Soviet prisoners of war, gas chamber executions, forced labour and mass extermination proved the symbolic nature of bourgeois law.
The Soviet Union later became a party to the Geneva Conventions, not to legitimise colonial wars, but to defend peoples’ freedom. It supported the application of the conventions to anti-imperialist struggles and stood with oppressed peoples from Algeria to Vietnam.
For the Soviet Union, the Geneva Conventions were also tools to defend the right of nations to self-determination and oppose imperialist aggression.
Socialists exposed the class character of law and connected it with the liberation struggle of the peoples.
Conclusion
Socialism is the only hope for the peoples of the world.
Because:
Living in an equal and just order is only possible through the people’s own power.
Hunger and poverty created by imperialism are consequences of profit-driven greed. In socialism, planned economies produce not for profit but for the needs of the people.
Therefore, in socialist countries, hunger, poverty, and problems of healthcare and housing do not exist.
The only system in which peoples can live together in brotherhood is socialism. Socialism guarantees the right of peoples to self-determination.
International solidarity is only possible under socialism. The only ideology that treats the problems of oppressed peoples as its own and struggles for them is socialism.
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