"1917" is the curiously-named journal of the
Bolshevik Tendency (or International Bolshevik Tendency), a small Trotskyist
group based in the United States. It also has supporters in a few other
countries, including New Zealand and Canada. Of course, 1917 refers to the year
of the October revolution in Russia.
The BT or IBT are defectors from the Spartacist League, a U.S. Trotskyist groups that went haywire circa 1979. The BT believes that their little group represent the original program of the Spartacist League, and their political positions are indeed very similar. The main difference is that the BT lacks the crazy-cultic side which has made the Spartacists so notorious on the far left. Some people jokingly refer to the BT's politics as "Spartacism with a human face". I suppose one could also call them Spartacists without the levity!
This issue (no. 7) of "1917" is dated "Winter 1990", but must have been published in the fall of 1989. It mentions the massacre at Tienanmen Square in Beijing, and the elections in Poland which ushered in a transitional coalition government dominated by Solidarnosc. Both these events took place in the summer of 1989. However, the magazine doesn't mention the subsequent collapse of the Communist regimes in "Eastern" Europe, which took place in the fall and winter of 1989, presumably almost literally after "1917" reached its subscribers. Sometimes, history moves fast.
The lead article is about developments in Poland. Other articles comment on the massacre in China, U.S. protests against the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, and the latest gyrations of the Spartacist League. There is also an interview with Geoff White, a founding member of the Spartacist League in 1966. Before becoming a Trotskyists, White had been a Stalinist, and was at one point arrested by the FBI in Tennessee for Communist activities. He says that the local media considered it the most startling thing to happen in the state since the arrest of Machine Gun Kelly!
Despite its extreme political positions, "1917" is written in a somewhat boring, intellectual style. Most of the articles are pretty extensive. The Bolshevik Tendency is probably of interest only to theoretically-minded Trotskyists. Three stars for White's comment about Kelly.
