p The October Socialist Revolution not only ushered in the era of proletarian revolutions, it also initiated a crisis in the colonial system of imperialism, a new period in the history of the nationalliberation movement of the oppressed peoples of the East.

p By putting an end to the national oppression in Russia the Socialist Revolution gave an object-lesson to the whole world. It made the peoples formerly oppressed by tsarism really free and equal. Soviet power not only gave these nations political liberties, political equality and their own statehood but also ensured them the possibility of overcoming their economic and cultural backwardness. As the more advanced and stronger nation, the Russian people rendered them invaluable aid.

p No wonder the October Revolution has served as a mighty source of inspiration for the colonial and dependent peoples in their struggle for liberation from imperialist enslavement. The Russian Revolution showed them the way to win their freedom and national independence. Moreover, the example of the Soviet Union, which routed the armies of the interventionists and defended its socialist gains, showed these peoples that, however apparently stable the rule of the imperialist states over them, their liberation from colonial oppression was actually possible.

p ... Before the October Revolution the Marxist-Leninist teaching was unknown to the peoples of the East.

p “The gun volleys of the October Revolution,” said Mao Tse-tung, "brought us Marxism-Leninism. The October Revolution helped the 329 progressive elements in China and the rest of the world to apply the proletarian world outlook in determining the fate of the country and re-examining their own problems. The conclusion was to follow in the footsteps of the Russians.”^^1^^"

p The Chinese Communist Party came into being in 1921. It followed the advice given by Lenin to the Communists of the East in November 1919 to guide themselves by the general communist theory and practice and "by adapting themselves to peculiar conditions which do not exist in the European countries to be able to apply that theory and practice to conditions in which the bulk of the population are peasants, and in which the task is to wage a struggle not against capitalism, but against medieval survivals".^^170^^

p The first powerful response of the Chinese people to the October Revolution was the "Movement of May 4”, which began in 1919 with a protest against the transfer of the former German concessions in China to Japan and which impelled the Chinese Government to refuse to sign the Versailles Peace Treaty and to remove a number of ministers hated by the people. In this broad national movement, directed primarily against Japanese imperialism and the feudal– militarist government, the Chinese working class acted for the first time as an independent political force. The Chinese Revolution changed from a bourgeois-democratic revolution of the old type led by the bourgeoisie into a democratic revolution developing under the hegemony of the working class.

p In 1919 more than two million Korean people took part in mass actions directed against Japanese rule.

p Revolutionary events, in many places assuming the form of armed uprisings, began in India. Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, writes: "... I had no doubt that the Soviet revolution had advanced human society by a great leap and had lit a bright flame which could not be smothered, and that it had laid the foundations for that ’new civilisation’ toward which the world would advance.”^^171^^ The mass national-liberation movement continued to grow until three decades later it was consummated by the liberation of the country from the British yoke.

p The enormous influence of the October Revolution made itself felt in distant Indonesia. As Dr. Sukarno, the President of the Indonesian Republic, notes, "after the victory of the October Revolution in Russia the struggle of the peoples of Asia for their national independence and against the oppression of the usurpers flared up anew. This struggle became more organised and its aim clear and irreconcilable, namely, immediate independence".^^172^^

The development of the national-liberation struggle showed how profoundly the October Revolution had influenced the oppressed nations of the world, and marked the beginning of the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism.