No event in human history has stoked as much controversy as the Russian revolution. It’s for good reason. The Russian revolution in 1917 was the first time in history that workers rose up and attempted to supplant capitalist rule with a system based on democratic workers’ councils. It ended the Eastern Front of the First World War, brought independence to national minorities, introduced radical transformations at work and in the home. The revolution electrified the entire European continent, inspiring uprisings in Germany, Italy, Hungary and beyond, as workers fought to join the movement against the system. Subsequently, the real history of the Russian revolution has been buried by both pro-capitalist and Stalinist accounts, which both want to claim that the genuine legacy of the revolution was dictatorship and bureaucratic control of social life. This session will be dedicated to unpacking the radical, democratic history of the revolution, and what socialists can learn from it today.