Mieville's October: What is to be Done?

This is the year we look back.

It’s a nice round number, and long enough ago that we have some distance.

The state that sprung up from the revolution is long enough ago that we can have discussions of what it meant without the baiting of the reds. Or we can for the most part.

Mieville does a good job here as a storyteller. I myself only knew the broad strokes of the timeline, not realizing how much time passed from the initial phases of the revolution to the place where the Bolsheviks took power. 

What really struck me was how much Lenin was in the background – hiding but providing the argument and not really at the physical front. 

Structurally, I like that the story doesn’t end at the storming of the palace, and there is the list of the major figures. We can see both the promise of the revolution and how much was lost in the purges.

It just forces the questions – can it happen again? Can it happen here?