With the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago, it was said that humanity had reached "the end of history": the Cold War was over and capitalism, along with liberal democracy, had won.

Seventy-five years after the Bolsheviks came to power in the October revolution of 1917, the Russian revolution was no longer widely hailed as an international model for workers' activism. More often, it was cited as proof the socialist experiment had failed.

Yet this year Jeremy Corbyn — a self-described modern socialist — led UK Labour to a near victory in the country's general election on a platform of free university tuition and nationalising the railways, with the largest swing to the party since 1945.

And in the US, Bernie Sanders — a 76-year-old Brooklyn-born socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union — offered Hillary Clinton an unexpectedly tough challenge in the Democratic presidential primary.

One hundred years on, the Russian Revolution is still a "live issue" for the far left. ( ABC RN: Tiger Webb )

It was young voters who propelled their candidacies — Sanders beat Barack Obama's 2008 youth vote in many states, while Labour won 60 per cent of the 18-24 vote on the back of higher turnout.

And while neither candidate emerged victorious, both campaigns grew their base on social media platforms like Twitter — where supporters urged their friends to #feelthebern or vote #forthemany, appending the red rose associated with socialist political parties to their usernames.

Socialism losing its stigma

The Bolsheviks' seizure of power from the Russian provisional government 100 years ago, eight months after the overthrow of the tsarist regime, came at a time of food shortages, collapsing infrastructure and disorder.

The revolutionaries' leader, Vladimir Lenin, had built on the communist theories of Karl Marx to offer an alternative to the liberal democracy supported by the Russian middle class.

For Osmond Chiu, a 31-year-old unionist and member of the Australian Labor Party, this possibility of an alternative to accepted economics is the key legacy of 1917.

Osmond Chiu describes himself as a social democrat. ( ABC RN: Tiger Webb )

Mr Chiu is also a member of the Fabian Society, a think tank set up to effect change through influencing political parties, especially the ALP, rather than by fomenting revolution.

"The idea of a hierarchical revolutionary elite leading a violent takeover of the state isn't something that has a lot of relevance to people in Western countries," he says.

"[But] the ideas that Marx expressed in his writing have a lot of resonance today: ideas about automation, about a reserve army of labour, about massive inequality, about capitalism being a system that is prone to crisis.

"And traditional economic explanations don't really work, or people don't find them convincing."

Mr Chiu says the sense that the existing system would deliver for most people, including his generation, was shattered by the global financial crisis (GFC).

Since then, he says, there has been increased interest in socialism among young people, and that thanks to social media and the availability of information on the internet, the term "socialist" is losing some of its Cold War-era stigma.

"For a long time, people's idea of socialism was a bunch of old cranks in their cult-like organisations," he says.

"That idea is changing because people who share socialist and social democratic ideas can engage and talk to each other, discuss things, and you have these publications that aren't so dogmatic."

Finding solidarity through social media

Eleanor Robertson, 27, a writer, editor and "non-denominational communist", also draws a distinction between her generation's politics and that of "older people on the far left".

"Younger people tend to be far more accepting of things like feminism, anti-racism, LGBTI activism, which I think is really good," she says. "It's just taken for granted these days."

Ms Robertson came to socialism through feminism, after being increasingly disillusioned with what she saw as mainstream feminism's obsession with the number of women on boards or in Parliament.

Twitter has allowed Eleanor Robertson to communicate with like-minded young people. ( ABC RN: Tiger Webb )

She sought out political theory online, but initially found it difficult to find like-minded young people who wanted to discuss or debate her ideas.

"Five years ago, there was nobody to talk to about it," she says. "The only people that I could find to talk about it were equally bookish eggheads.

"Now I talk to people on Twitter a lot. I follow many people who have similar politics … When I started on Twitter that wasn't a possibility, and it is now, which is really exciting."

In her assessment, socialist history and theory — including an appraisal of the Russian revolution and the Soviet Union — are still live issues on the left.

"People are still talking about these things and trying to figure out what they mean in their context, and what they mean today. It's still fraught," she says.

'Snake oil salesmanship'

Other millennials worry their generation is being duped, seeing the rise of Mr Corbyn and Mr Sanders as the product of a turn to populism that is also responsible for leaders like Donald Trump.

Satyajeet Marar, a 25-year-old member of the Liberal Party and staffer at the libertarian advocacy group Australian Taxpayers Alliance, is sceptical that socialism has much to offer young people.

"People are dejected and people are cynical. They look for leaders who seem to truly believe in some grand ideal or grand narrative," he says.

"Unfortunately a narrative has been sold to us that the GFC only happened because of capitalism and greed, and that led to horrible outcomes like banks being bailed out. In fact, it was a lot more complicated.

"Ideas of equality and equity, of sticking it to the bastards — those ideas are inherently appealing [but] it's snake oil salesmanship. It's an idea that's quite unrealistic."

Mr Marar says millennial socialists are naive about what life would be like under socialism. The mass murder and political repression of the communist Soviet and Chinese regimes largely happened before they were born, he says, so they don't approach left-wing ideas with the caution they should.

"When you had Soviet communist regimes in the second half of the 20th century, they ultimately ended up collapsing and producing horrible human rights outcomes," he says.

"These sorts of socialist and social democratic politics are most popular in countries that have benefited from the prosperity that capitalism has brought, where people haven't had the chance to see up close what socialism is or how it works in practice."

Mr Chiu, however, considers it an advantage for millennial socialists to be liberated from the baggage of the Soviet Union.

"I was born when the Soviet Union still existed, but I have no memory of it and it doesn't inform my politics at all," he says.

New policies on the table as new jobs take over

While Mr Marar says the naivety of young socialists stems from the "untrammelled prosperity" they've grown up with in Australia, Mr Chiu says it's wrong to stereotype it as a movement for the comfortable.

"If you look at people who are notionally not working class, but middle class — professionals, public servants, people in creative industries and universities — they're often now in situations where they don't have full-time jobs," Mr Chiu says.

"They're on rolling contracts, they don't have good conditions, they can't afford a home, they have high debt. They are, in a sense, a new form of working class; they are a 'precariat'."

Osmond Chiu says capitalism hasn't delivered for millennials. ( ABC RN: Tiger Webb )

The mass strikes by textile workers and metalworkers in early 20th century St Petersburg might bear little relation to the industrial relations landscape of Australia in 2017, but for Ms Robertson, that means the solutions offered by young socialists have to be different as well.

She points to ideas like a universal basic income, in which everyone is paid a living wage by the government regardless of their work situation; a jobs guarantee, in which everyone is guaranteed work; and reduced work hours, as possible policy proposals.

"The decline of industrial employment has to change what socialism means," she says.

"We're not all blue-collar white men working industrial jobs anymore, so of course the socialism we want to be a part of will be different in character."