Revolution Follow

"How long before there’s a revolution?" This question was asked by the journalist Robert Fisk in the Independent last week as he considered the implications for the Arab world of the turmoil in Lebanon.

Ted Grant, who died last week, was one of the last survivors of the generation of Trotskyists who inherited the movement after the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s murder in 1940.

Our commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Revolution starts with Fighting the fascists, creating a new world by Andy Durgan, historical advisor on Ken Loach's Land and Freedom, examining the politics of the cilvil war.

September 1923King Alfonso XIII scraps parliamentary monarchy, installs a military dictatorship under General Miguel Primo de Rivera.January 1930Faced with rising opposition, Primo de Rivera is replaced.April 1931The left wins local elections. The king flees Spain. Crowds enthusiastically proclaim the new Republic.October 1934Right wing government takes office. Armed miners rise and create the Asturian Commune.

Many people today are interested in a revolutionary alternative to capitalism. But they often worry that socialism is associated with the brutality of Stalinism, a system which dominated Russia and Eastern Europe for much of the 20th century and that was no better than Western capitalism.

Kandinsky: The Path To AbstractionTate Modern, central London until 1 Octoberwww.tate.org.uk A new exhibition follows the journey of Russian revolutionary artist Wassily Kandinsky from a figurative landscape painter to one of the founders of modern art. Kandinsky’s artistic revolution was heavily influenced by the Russian revolutionary movement and the revolution that occurred in Russia in 1917. This is an inspirational exhibition, with paintings conveying political turmoil and the birth of a new hope.

James Connolly, the Irish revolutionary socialist executed for his part in the 1916 rising, said that partition of Ireland would produce a "carnival of reaction North and South".

It is a powerful and romantic idea about past artists that they were visionaries starving in garrets, in some ways outside society. This image – deliberately created in part by artists themselves – can, if unpicked, tell us a great deal about how individuals responded to a rapidly changing world during the 19th century, and something about that world itself.

The Poznan uprising of June 1956 sparked a mass movement in Poland and set in train the events leading towards the revolution in Hungary later in the year.

Karol Modzelewski was a student and political activist in 1956. He went on to co-write the Open Letter to the Party, which challenged Stalinism from the left and was key to setting up the Solidarity union. Karol answered questions from Socialist Worker

The Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR) held its national conference last weekend. The main item discussed was the policy of the organisation towards the 2007 presidential election.

The handsome face with the far away gaze stares down from posters on streets and bedroom walls all over the world, more recognisable perhaps than fellow beardie Jesus Christ.