Author: Sprenger, Rudolf [ pseudonym of Helmut Wagner (1904-1989) ]
Title: Bolshevism : Its Roots, Role, Class View and Methods
Description: New York, International Review, n.d. [ca. 1939]. orig. wrappers. 22x14cm, 48 pp.. Some minor rubbing. VG. ¶ A Council Communist interpretation of the Bolshevik Revolution [ Wagner a "Left Social-Democratic journalist and teacher, member of the German Rote Kä mpfer network (influenced by council communism) in the 30's. Wrote under the pseudonym Rudolf Sprenger...For the first time in English as a series of articles in 1937 and 1938 in the International Review produced in New York by "Integer" (Herman Jenson) and later, in 1939, as a separate pamphlet" - Marxist Internet Archive] ["It is an important analyses of the Russian Revolution from a Marxist perspective. Outlining the historical background and supporting his case with extensive quotations from the works of Lenin and other Bolsheviks, Sprenger cogently argues that the Russian Revolution was a bourgeois rather than a proletarian revolution, albeit with wide support from the Russian proletariat. The subsequent evolution of the Soviet Union and its eventual transformation into full- blooded free-market capitalism lends support to Sprenger's thesis. It was one of the first works not written in Russian which brought out the full significance of the views expressed by Lenin in "What Is To Be Done?" on the inability of the working class movement to reach a socialist understanding without leadership and guidance from members of the ' intelligentsia' " - from the introduction to the Redline Publications re- issue of Sprenger's pamphlet].

Keywords: Russian Political History, Russian Revolution, Communist, Political History, Soviet Union, Left Politics, Marxism, Council, Communism