'Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.' (Karl Marx, 1848)
To many of the workers living in societies that had experienced the Industrial Revolution, these words had the appeal of offering release from the grim living and working conditions in which they found themselves.
The Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 seemed to offer the chance to change the world.
The Bolsheviks were a political group devoted to the promotion of Marx's ideas of revolution in the name of the industrial workers.
Their seizure of power in Russia signalled the possibility of overthrowing the rich, powerful classes who exploited the poor, replacing them with a system that put the worker's interests first.
For many workers across Europe this provided an inspiration for the possibilities of the future, yet less than 75 years later the great Soviet experiment was over. The so-called worker's paradise, the Soviet Union, was dead.
The story of the Soviet Union is one of enormous struggle to establish and safeguard a worker's state that, despite immense efforts, ultimately failed.