Remembering the revolution

Russia’s academia argue about it and the youth barely know how to make sense of it, writes

THE centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917, one of the turning points in the history of Russia, which some admire as a triumphant victory and others condemn as a terrible tragedy, passed surprisingly uneventfully in Russia. There were no public celebrations, as the authorities are trying to avoid any action that can divide society.

Debates among historians and political scientists clearly show that they have no common view on this mega-event, while young people, who know about the revolution mainly from mediocre school textbooks and films, cannot make any sense out of all this.

The only political force that marked the centenary of the Bolsheviks’ victory was communists, most of whom are members of the older generation.

In 1917, Russia was at war with several central European countries. The war and subsequent events led to the fall of the Tsarist regime in March of that year and brought Lenin’s Bolsheviks to power seven months later.

In 1922, they built a new state, the Soviet Union, on the ruins of the Russian Empire. After Lenin’s death, Joseph Stalin took up the reins of government and ruled brutally but, many think, efficiently.

In Soviet times, October revolution anniversaries were celebrated as a major holiday that dominated political and economic life in the country. I remember from my school and university days how annoying that propaganda was.

But unlike the modern youth, we knew history fairly well and did not mix up the Red and the White. We studied history from a thick textbook written in Stalin’s time, but when the Soviet Union broke up, we learnt new facts that shattered our illusions about revolutionary heroes. Everything turned upside down and heroes became villains.

There were no great festivities this time as the present Russian authorities had simply ignored the occasion.

Unlike in Soviet times, when each October revolution anniversary was celebrated nationwide with a military parade in Moscow’s Red Square, the centenary was generally marked by quiet exhibitions and academic seminars for specialists.

Experts believe that the Kremlin simply did not want to do or say anything that could lead people to believe that a violent change of government was a good example to follow. A revolution “always brings bloodshed, death, devastation, and trouble”, said former Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.

Many Russians are still trying to figure out whether a revolution was a good or a bad thing, but all agree that society should learn a lesson from that tragic era and understand why the state, with a history of several thousand years, fell apart virtually overnight, and why ordinary people and peasants, most of whom were serving in the Tsarist army, suddenly became the driving force of the revolution.

Emperor Alexander II, who was killed when a revolutionary threw a bomb at him, abolished serfdom – essentially slavery – in Russia in 1861. But at the beginning of the 20th century, peasants, who made up 80% of the country’s population, still had no civil rights (for example, police could use violence only against peasants) or land. No wonder the Bolsheviks’ slogans “Land to peasants!” was so popular among them.

However, the new regime eliminated private ownership of land completely and created collective farms instead, cracking down on the kulaks, or hard-working and well-off peasants, and sending them out to Siberia.

Everybody agrees that Russian society was terribly ill in 1917, the Tsarist regime was helpless and the Bolsheviks led by Lenin deftly used the situation.

“Unlike the English or French revolutions, the Russian and other socialist revolutions in the 20th century (in China and Korea, and anti-colonial revolutions in Africa) occurred in countries that had not experienced the aftermath of European bourgeois revolutions.

“Their purpose was not so much to gain political rights as to take the property away from its owners. The actual result was large-scale nationalisation of resources and attempts to overcome backwardness, not through private capital and private initiative as in Europe, but through nationwide state redistribution of wealth and income.

As a result, state violence became the prevailing feature of emerging political institutions,” said political scientist Kirill Rogov.

He believes, however, that those revolutions played a role in the evolution of capitalism by expanding civil and political rights.

Each October, revolution anniversary rekindles the discussion on whether Lenin, whose embalmed body is available for public viewing in a shrine on Red Square, should be buried.

His widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya, strongly opposed Stalin’s decision to put Lenin’s body in the mausoleum specially built next to the Kremlin. The Russian authorities planned to give him a Christian burial in 1999, but feared this would spark communist protests and increase tension in society.

Addressing this issue, which has been re-emerging every year ever since, President Putin has said Lenin could be interred when the majority of people in the country wished so.

But most people are still quite confused about Russia’s past.

“Young people often assess the revolution negatively but say they would have sided with the Bolsheviks,” said Grigory Kertman, a leading analyst of the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM).

“We asked people five years ago whom they would have supported in those days, and 39% could not decide. Now the figure is smaller, 32%, but still it clearly indicates that people are poorly informed and cannot make their choice.”

According to an FOM survey conducted this year, 32% of those polled said they would have fought on the side of the Reds during the Civil War and 4% would have supported them. Only 7% of respondents would have joined the Whites, with 3% offering their support to them.

Fifty-three percent of respondents spoke positively of Emperor Nicholas II, compared to 52% approving of Lenin’s activities, but the latter received negative responses from 26%, while 14% were critical of the last Russian tsar.

Experts say that both persons have been mythologised and the attitude towards them depends on whether the respondents grew up in Soviet times or in modern Russia.

The FOM poll indicates that Russian people have become less aware of the events that happened a century ago. In the past, they took the cue from the official authorities, but there are no clear guidelines any more.

The younger the respondents, the more difficult it is for them to say when the revolution took place. While on the whole 70% named the proper year, there was only 40% of correct answers among people aged 18-30.

Everybody, except the communists, seems to have forgotten the positive changes that occurred in the world because of the Russian revolution. Capitalists in other countries were truly scared and made big concessions to their workers. Many of their social gains were the result of the Russian revolution of 1917, which subsequently inspired similar processes in developing countries.

The revolution gave people real gender and social equality, albeit with modest prosperity, mass literacy, and the state policy of “friendship of peoples” which rejected nationalism and xenophobia. But it is also true that the Soviet state did not spare its citizens to develop the country and defend it from the hostile outside world.

History is not monochrome but, rather, black and white, especially when it comes to revolutions.

It is important to assess the past events unbiasedly and try not to repeat old mistakes. Elena Vanyna is Independent Media’s stringer in Moscow. She also works for ITAR-Tass