Why the July Uprising Could Not Become an 'October Revolution'

February 22, 1917. The air over Petrograd—then the capital of Russia—was as hard and cold as stone. At minus 15 degrees Celsius, it felt as if the blood in your veins were freezing. Every speck of dust in the city carried the exhaustion and deep sighs of the First World War. Russian losses stood at 1.8 million dead, 2.5 million captured or missing. Outside bread shops, queues stretched past midnight—across Russia, death, disappearances, and the families of war-weary soldiers had piled up an immense mountain of grief and pent-up anger. On the morning of February 23, nature suddenly seemed to relent. The sky cleared, the sun rose, and the temperature abruptly jumped from minus 15 to minus 5 degrees Celsius. But who could have known that this warmth would burn the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty to ashes?

The following day—February 23 in the old Russian calendar (March 8 in the Gregorian calendar)—was International Women's Day. Thousands of female workers poured into the streets of Petrograd. Anna Vasilieva, a woman worker from the Nevskaya factory, tied a piece of red cloth to a pole and raised her voice for the first time on the streets, shouting "Peace and Bread." It was a cry stripped of all theory—just two simple demands. As those slogans rang out, the leading Bolsheviks in Moscow and Petrograd were stunned. They had actually urged the protesters not to hold such a demonstration. The Bolsheviks were planning an armed uprising around May Day and feared that an early movement would derail their carefully laid plans.

Ignoring the Bolsheviks' warnings, Anna Vasilieva called the metalworkers out of the nearby factory. When trams kept moving and blocked the protests, Nadezhda Prusakhova, a brave mechanic and driver from the tram depot, parked the trams across the tracks, removed their parts, and built barricades. That was the first successful act of resistance.

Everything changed when the Tsar's dreaded Cossack cavalry advanced with rifles raised. Under the Tsar's orders, these forces had no hesitation in unleashing rivers of blood; their role in the failed 1905 revolution had been exactly that. But on February 25, the Cossacks did something no one expected.

On Petrograd's main street, a female worker named Maria Privilezova stood unarmed before the mounted Cossacks' horses and shouted: "Our brothers and husbands are dying at the front, and you come here to shoot at our hungry bellies?" This deeply human appeal stirred even those notoriously brutal Cossack soldiers. The fearsome Cossacks lowered their rifles. That day, for the first time, the Tsar's guard lost its moral nerve. When the Tsar's final order came on February 26 for troops to fire again, by February 27 it had turned into outright mutiny. The main garrisons of Petrograd not only refused to shoot—they arrested their own officers in the barracks and joined hands with the insurgents. Thousands of soldiers defied the Tsar's command and handed weapons over to the workers. On March 2, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, and an interim government was formed the same day. The next day, March 3, when his brother Grand Duke Michael refused to accept the throne, the formal rule of the three-century-old Romanov dynasty came to an end.

More than a century later, in July 2024, Bangladesh witnessed something strikingly similar under the scorching summer heat. It started as a student movement demanding reform of the quota system. But the silent fury that had built up under fifteen and a half years of authoritarian rule exploded after the death of Abu Sayed in Rangpur on July 16, spreading from Dhaka across the entire country. This uprising, which was soaked in the blood of countless people under the fierce July sun, included not just students but millions of ordinary working people and non-partisan citizens.

In this life-and-death struggle on the streets of July, we saw in Bangladesh's army a mirror image of Petrograd from 107 years earlier. While state forces were indiscriminately firing on students and civilians, a quiet resistance began to spread within the military itself. Anger spread especially among junior officers. On August 3 and 4, at a high-level military conference, word came from the junior lieutenants, captains, and majors that they would no longer fire on unarmed civilians of their own country. This open defiance by junior officers—rooted in love for their country—forced the top brass to search for a new path. The secret unease inside the army headquarters on August 4, combined with the people's demand for justice and the identification of junior soldiers with the public cause, helped shape the Army Chief's statement on August 5. That act of defiance, along with the sacrifice of Justice Abu Sayed and the self-immolation of rickshaw pullers on the streets, helped remove a monstrous obstacle that had stood for three decades in Bangladesh. The scene of Petrograd's Cossacks lowering their rifles was reenacted in Dhaka's July.

Blood of the Bannerless People and Dr. Yunus's Interim Government

Those who gave their lives for the fall of the Hasina government were, in one sense, "bannerless"—without party flags. The figures tell a striking story: the majority were not aspiring civil servants or BCS candidates; they were rickshaw pullers, shop workers, and garment labourers. Among the nearly 1,000 killed, over 50 percent belonged to these low-income occupations. More than 40 rickshaw pullers died in and around Dhaka. None of them died for quota benefits or BCS posts. They died for a taste of freedom—just as the people of Russia died for bread and peace in February 1917.

But the tragedy of history is that those who give their lives in revolution never get to form the government. After the February Revolution, Russia's Provisional Government came to be dominated by educated liberals drawn largely from the middle and upper classes—the Cadets and Mensheviks—who were the ones who actually seized power after toppling the Tsar. They prioritized political diplomacy over the workers' vital needs. In exactly such a context, a "mad" leader returned from exile aboard the famous sealed train—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. On April 3, he arrived in Petrograd. The following day, he presented the programme that became known worldwide as the April Theses.

The Three Main Points of the April Theses:

Complete rejection of the Provisional Government: Lenin declared that this bourgeois government formed after the February Revolution should not be supported in any way. They were enemies of the workers and merely an unfinished form of revolution. Power must be taken from them and given to the people's councils—the Soviets.

Peace and Bread (immediate end to the war): The First World War was a war of the rich. Lenin demanded that Russia withdraw from the war immediately so that its people could get food.

Nationalization of land and banks: All privately owned arable land and the banks of the wealthy must be confiscated and placed under the control of the peasants and workers, forming a National Bank or people's treasury.

The political leaders of Petrograd called Lenin "a madman" (the ravings of a madman). Even leaders of his own party, such as Kamenev and Stalin, added a disclaimer when publishing the Theses in Pravda, saying it was merely Lenin's "personal opinion." But after three months of struggle, Lenin convinced the grassroots workers that these liberal bourgeois would not satisfy the people's hunger. Ultimately, those "Theses" became the Bolsheviks' guide, and through the October Revolution (November in the Gregorian calendar), the world's first socialist state was born.

Why Did the July Uprising Not Become an October Revolution?

On August 8, 2024, an interim government was formed under the leadership of Dr. Muhammad Yunus. It included only two student representatives. And those who became advisors were neither from the street movement nor representatives of workers and students.

In class terms, Dr. Yunus and a large part of his advisory council are close to Russia's "Cadet" liberal society. They are educated, part of the global elite, and by "reform" they mean conventional liberal democracy. They were appointees favoured by the United States. So while India's hegemonic Sheikh Hasina government was overthrown, the entire country came under the direct control of an even bigger predator—American imperialism.

For those who stood unarmed and died in the July movement—the rickshaw pullers, garment workers, footpath hawkers, small shop employees, poor madrasa students, university youths, and countless unknown people—there was no clear blueprint for any fundamental change in their lives. Rather, the Yunus government entered into such a slavish agreement with the United States that it effectively reduced Bangladesh to an American client state.

After Hasina's fall, Salafist and fanatical extremist reactionary forces emerged on the streets. Within just two days of the fall, a campaign began on social media to strangle the dress, movement, and civil liberties of the very women who had faced bullets at midnight to remove Hasina. From this point onward, the uprising lost its chance to reach the level of an October Revolution. The entire leadership and power of the July uprising became consolidated in the hands of the far-right Islamists. After that, one shrine after another was demolished, a Sufi saint was burned alive, and a Hindu man, Dipu Chandra Das, was burned to death. Across the country, monuments to the Liberation War were attacked. The two major dailies, Prothom Alo and The Daily Star, were set on fire; Udichi and Chhayanaut were subjected to arson and vandalism. Through all this, Bangladesh walked precisely opposite to the path of an October Revolution and began moving towards a failed Syria.

July now stands between "reform of the old system" and "return of darkness."

A large section of our old leftist politicians, forgetting Lenin's teachings, have thrown their weight behind the interim government. The political maturity of young student leaders had not grown strong enough, so they used the entire movement's outcome for their own personal gains.

Lenin showed the way back for the February Revolution with his April Theses. Bangladesh had a similar opportunity after the July uprising, but the left and democratic forces missed that train. History seldom stands still. Another wave of upheaval is already on the horizon. And this time, it could see the far-right surge with even greater momentum, backed by America and Turkey. If that tide engulfs the country, turning Bangladesh into a dysfunctional failed state, there would be nothing surprising. Because we, the progressive left, are nowhere near prepared—we still lack a clear political response.

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*Author: Editor, Dhaka Papers

Email: [email protected]