Illiterate, starving, war weary, the workers and peasant farmers of Russia and the other lands oppressed by czar ism had stormed the heavens, thrown out the ruling class and set up a workers' state. It was the first time in history this had succeeded. With all its later vicissitudes, the Soviet Union inspired the workers and oppressed all over the world. It help ed other revolutions break the imperialist grip. And it survived until the Yeltsin counterrevolution.
Every revolutionary wants to organize, write about and lead revolutions.
He wrote it during a time when so many experienced Marxists were devastated and paralyzed by the news coming out of the Soviet Union. Others were completely thrown into the bourgeois camp by Gorbachev's capitulation, vainly hoping for something good to come of it. Sam followed events there with concentrated energy, refusing to allow his feelings to interfere with his analytical judgment. Nor would he trivialize the issues involved by reducing the problem to the treachery of leaders, important as leadership is. Sam could look reality in the face without losing his bearings.