Sometimes people who are new to socialism can’t understand why revolutionaries are so insistent about knowing Russian history. It’s because it was a test case for what the form of socialism should be. To what extent should socialist power be centralized? Do the workers need a vanguard party? How capable are workers of creating socialism by themselves? The story of Gavril Miasnikov is an example of a Bolshevik who supported worker self-organization from factory committees to soviets.
