In this video from the 2018 Revolution Festival, Francesco Merli of In Defence of Marxism (www.marxist.com) discusses the events and lessons of the 1968 Prague Spring – a revolt against the Stalinist bureaucracy that was put down by Moscow.

With his latest film, the Death of Stalin, British director and comic writer Armando Iannucci continues with his recurring motif of the cynicism and self-interest of the professional political class. This time, however, the incompetent politicians being lambasted are not those of the Western establishment, but of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

We publish here extracts from Alan Woods’ introduction to the new Wellred Books’ edition of Ted Grant’s Russia: from Revolution to Counter-revolution, republished this year to celebrate the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In this intro, Alan discusses the enormous gains of the revolution – and how they were destroyed by Stalinist degeneration.