Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://ebookmass.com/product/hundred-years-of-the-russian-revolution-its-legacies-i n-perspective-anuradha-mitra-chenoy/
Edited by Anuradha M. Chenoy · Archana Upadhyay
Hundred Years of the Russian Revolution
Its Legacies in Perspective
Editors
Anuradha M. Chenoy
School of International Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi, India
Archana Upadhyay
School of International Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi, Delhi, India
ISBN 978-981-33-4784-7
ISBN 978-981-33-4785-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4785-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore
In memory of Prof. Tulsi Ram, friend, mentor and teacher.
The publication of the volume ‘Hundred Years of the Russian Revolution: Its Legacies in Perspective’ is a result of the collaborative efforts of 17 scholars across different countries—Belarus, Russia, Slovakia and India. We are most grateful to the intellectual contribution of each of them, the quality of their analysis and their positive responses to suggestions for revision and updating their contribution. Every academic endeavor requires enormous support and encouragement, and we greatly appreciate the patience and good humor of our families, friends and colleagues. Special thanks to our friend Khush-Hal Singh Lagdhyan for his consistent support over the years. On behalf of the authors and ourselves, we also wish to thank many others who have directly and indirectly contributed to the publication of this volume, particularly the editorial and production team of the publishing house.
Anuradha M. Chenoy Archana Upadhyay
Tahir Asghar retired as an associate professor from the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research interests include foreign policy analysis and comparative regionalism with special focus on post-Soviet Russia and Central Asia, economic development in Russia and Central Asia, sustainable development and environment and Russian cultural heritage. He has written and lectured extensively on developments in Russia, Central Asia, Eurasia and the Soviet Union.
Anna Bochkovskaya is an associate professor at the Department of South Asian History, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Her research interests include modern and contemporary history of India, Punjab studies, and religious studies. She is the author of chapters on Sikhism and current trends in Hinduism in Russian-language university textbooks, The History of Religions (2019, 4th edition) and Religious Studies: BA Level (2017, 2nd edition); chapters and translations in Death in Maharashtra: Imagination, Perception and Expression (2012), Christianity and Society in Asia: History and Modernity (2019). She is a member of the interdisciplinary research project “Under the Skies of South Asia” launched in 2011 jointly with colleagues from the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russia’s Academy of Sciences. She has vastly contributed to the volumes published under this project: Portrait and Sculpture (2014), Mobility and Space (2015), Censure and Praise (2017), and edited Volume 3 (Under
the Skies of South Asia: Territory and Belonging, 2016). Her most recent publications focus on religion and caste controversies in the Indian Punjab.
Anuradha M. Chenoy retired as a professor from the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She was also the Dean of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has authored several research papers and book chapters on international politics, Soviet/ Russian foreign and security policy, political system and political processes in Russia, Indian foreign policy, human security and gender in international relations. Her books include Re-Emerging Russia: Structures, Institutions and Processes (co-authored, 2017), The BRICS in International Development (edited, 2016); Maoists and Other Armed Conficts (coauthored, 2010), Human Security: Concept and Implications (co-authored, 2006), Militarism and Women in South Asia (2002) and The Making of New Russia (2001).
Kamal Mitra Chenoy retired as a professor and Chair of Group of Comparative Politics and Political Theory in the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has held several positions, including member, Indian Council of Social Science Research; vice president, All India Peace and Solidarity Organization; president of Federation of Central Universities Teachers’ Associations, India. He writes extensively in Indian and foreign journals on contemporary issues of politics and international relations and is a regular political commentator in print and electronic media and has authored several human rights reports. His research interests include political theory, international politics and foreign policy, confict in international system and international security.
Larisa Chereshneva is a professor and Head of Oriental Studies Laboratory, Lipetsk State Pedagogical University P.P. Semenov-TyanShansky University. She is the scientifc director of the master’s and postgraduate programs and the deputy chairman of Dissertation Council. She is also the honorary member of Higher Professional Education of Russia. Her research interests include: political history of modern India, foreign policy, nationalism in the modern world and history of India-Russia relations. She has written fve monographs besides several research papers in research journals in India, Great Britain, Germany and Turkey.
Rashmi Doraiswamy is a professor at the Academy of International Studies (AIS), Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She specializes in Russian language and literature. She is the author of The Post-Soviet Condition: Chingiz Aitmatov in the ‘90s (2005) and Guru Dutt: Through Light and Shade (2008). She is the editor of Cultural Histories of Central Asia (2009), Energy Security: Central Asia, India and the Neighbourhood (2013), Perspectives on Multiculturalism: Pre-Soviet, Soviet and Post-Soviet Central Asia (2013), Central Asia and South Asia: Economic, Developmental and Socio-Cultural Linkages (2017), Central Asia, China and India: Historical, Economic, Political and Cultural Relations (2017), The Russian Factor in Central Asian Culture (2018) and Perspectives on BRICS (2019). She is the co-editor of Being and Becoming: The Cinemas of Asia (2002), Globalisation and the Third World (2009), Asian Film Journeys: Selections from Cinemaya (2010) and Window into Russia: Culture and Society in the XXI Century (2010). She has served on several statutory and non-statutory flm festival and critics juries in India and abroad, and was the recipient of the National Award for the Best Film Critic in 1994.
Rajan Kumar is an associate professor in the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research interests include international relations theory, global governance and regionalism with a strong focus on India, Central Asia and the post-Soviet space. He has co-authored a book Re-emerging Russia: Structures, Institutions and Processes (2017). In addition to Russia, he also writes on Central Asia, the BRICS and India’s foreign policy. His research projects have been funded by the European Union and the Indian Council of Social Science Research, Delhi. He contributes regularly on the emerging issues of international politics in the Financial Express
Sergey Yu. Lepekhov is a principal researcher at the Center of Eastern Manuscripts and Xylographs of the Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Ulan-Ude, Russia). His research interests are Buddhist philosophy; culture and geopolitical problems of Buddhist civilization. He is the author of the monographs: The Philosophy of Madhyamics and Genesis of the Buddhist Civilization (in Russian) and Hermeneutics of Buddhism (in Russian). He is also the author of articles in a number of encyclopedias published in Russia and Sri Lanka. He is a senior professor of Indian Philosophy at the Buryat State University, the Chief Editor of
‘Pax Buddhica’ series, and a full member of the Russian Academy of Social Sciences. He has been awarded the title of honored doctor of the Institute of Philosophy, Sociology and Law, Mongolian Academy of Sciences. He is also a guest professor in the School of Humanities and Social Science of the China University of Petroleum (Huadong).
Viachaslau Menkouski is a professor at the History Department of the Belarusian State University, Republic of Belarus and deputy editor-in-chief of the Journal of Belarusian State University: History, and also deputy chairman of Dissertation Council (History) of Belarusian State University. He was a Visiting Scholar in South Kazakhstan University, National Gumilev University, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (Kazakhstan); South Federal University (Russia); Jawaharlal Nehru University (India); Matej Bel University (Slovakia); Indiana University Bloomington (USA); Central European University (Hungary). He is the editorial board member of foreign proceedings in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia and Ukraine. He has several scientifc publications in research journals in Belarus, Belgium, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine; among them GULAG: Ideology and Economy of Forced Labour in the XX Century (2017), “Socialist City”: Idea and Its Realization in the Soviet Union, 1920’s and 1930’s (2019), Ukrainian Famine of 1932–33 in History, Historiography and Historical Policy
Michaela Moravcíková is a researcher and lecturer at the Law Faculty in Trnava University, Slovak Republic. She is the director of the Institute for Legal Aspects of Religious Freedom. Her research interests focus on issues of law and religion, natural rights, conscientious objection, contractual relations between state and churches, state neutrality, religious freedom, multiculturalism and human rights. She has authored three monographs—Human Rights, Culture and Religion; Church and Human Rights; Caesar’s to Caesar—Economic Support of Churches and Religious Societies—and several research articles. She has headed the project ‘Financing of Churches and Religious Societies (2016–2019)’ and is a member in the national scientifc projects on ‘Labour Law’ and ‘Radicalization of Political Culture’.
Shubhra Nagalia is an assistant professor in the School of Human Studies, Ambedkar University, New Delhi. Her research interests revolve around Russian language and literature, international relations, human
security and gender issues with particular focus on the interface between labor, health and gender. She has contributed several articles in national and international journals and chapters in edited volumes. She has also authored a book on Gender, Ideology and State. Textual Strategies (2009).
Pradeep Nayak is a civil servant attached to the Odisha government. He holds a PhD in Law and Governance Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is a former fellow of IIAS, Shimla. He has authored three books: Land Reforms to Land Tiling: Emerging Paradigms of Land Governance in India (2021), The State and Land Records Modernisation (2015), and Party Politics and Communalism : A Study of Ram Janmabhoomi and Babri Masjid Dispute (1993). He has coedited two books: Land and Livelihood in Neoliberal India (2020) and Communalisation and Tenth Lok Sabha Elections (1993). His current research focuses on party politics, public policy, and governance issues in India.
Sanjay Kumar Pandey has been the director of Russian and Central Asian Area Studies Programme at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He teaches foreign policy of Russia and the Central Asian States. His other areas of interest include political system and processes in Russia and India with special focus on ethnicity, nationalism and comparative federalism. He was L. M. Singhvi Visiting Fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge; Charles Wallace Trust Visiting Fellow, University of Cambridge, and Visiting Fellow at Cambridge Central Asia Forum, Cambridge. As an International Observer for the Parliamentary Election in Uzbekistan in December 2014 and for the presidential election in Uzbekistan in December 2008 and 2016, he has closely followed the politics in that country. He is the editor of the journal Contemporary Central Asia published by the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, JNU, and the book review editor of the journal International Studies published by Sage India.
Ajay Patnaik is a professor at the Centre for Russian & Central Asian Studies and was the Dean of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research interests include: nationality, ethnicity, urbanization and migration, gender roles, stability and security in the Central Asia/Eurasia region He has authored four
books: Central Asia: Geopolitics, Security and Stability (Routledge, 2016), Nations, Minorities and States in Central Asia (2003), Central Asia: Between Modernity and Tradition (1995) and Perestroika and Women Labour Force in Soviet Central Asia (1989), and has edited/co-edited eight books. His latest research work is on ‘Globalisation and Resistance: A Study of the Nature and Forms of Protests in Central Asia’ and ‘BRICS: An Alternative Vision of Trans-regional Cooperation from the Global South’. He has been a visiting faculty at the Faculty of International Studies, Eurasian National University, Astana (2013); Faculty of Oriental Studies (2010) and Faculty of International Relations (2009), in Al Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty. A member on the editorial board of several national and international journals, he was also the Executive Editor of the journal Contemporary Central Asia.
Archana Upadhyay is a professor and chairperson at the Centre for Russian & Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi She has been the recipient of the Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship with affliation to International Policy Institute, King’s College, London, UK. Her research interests include international relations and foreign policy with special focus on South Asian, Russian and Eurasian issues. Her previous publications are: India’s Fragile Borderlands: Dynamics of Terrorism in North-East India (2009), Multiparty System in the Russian Federation: Problems & Prospects (2000) and a monograph Human Rights (co-authored). She was a visiting professor in a European Commission project on Social Performance and Cultural Trauma and Re-establishment of Solid Sovereignties at the University of Tartu, Estonia in 2016; visiting faculty at the University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia and Riga Law College 2015; visiting professor at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University Kazakhstan in 2012. She is a member in the editorial board of the ‘Bulletin of the Irkutsk State University’, Irkutsk, Russia and the Journal of History of the Belarusian State University, Minsk, Belarus. Her most recent research publication is on religion in post-Soviet societies.
Eugenia Vanina is the Head of the History and Culture section at the Centre for Indian Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. She specializes in medieval and early colonial Indian history and has authored seven books, including three in English: Ideas and Society in India Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century (1996
and 2004), Urban Crafts and Craftsmen in India, 13th to 18th Century (2004), Medieval Indian Mindscapes: Place, Time, Society, Man (2012). Her edited/co-edited volumes include Indian History; A Russian Viewpoint (2003) and Mind over Matter. Essays on Mentalities in Medieval India (2009), apart from a few volumes in Russian. She has contributed several research papers and book chapters in research journals and edited volumes.
ABM Anti-Ballistic Missiles
AINC All India National Congress
AIIB Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
ASSRs Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics
BRI Belt and Road Initiative
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China & South Africa
CIS Commonwealth of Independent States
CP Communist Party
CPRF Communist Party of the Russian Federation
CPI Communist Party of India
CPIML Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CSCE Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe
ECCI Executive Committee of the Communist International
EU European Union
FDI Foreign Direct Investment
FSB Federal Security Service
GDP Gross Domestic Product
Glasnost Openness
GNP Gross National Product
INC Indian National Congress
IMF International Monetary Fund
IPOs Initial Public Offering
KGB Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti
KMT Kuomintang
NAM Non Aligned Movement
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
OWS Occupy Wall Street Movement
Perestroika Restructuring
RAS Institute of Russian History
RIC Russia, India, China
RR Russian Revolution
RSFSR Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
RSPP Russian Union of Industrialist and Entrepreneurs
SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty
SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organization
SOEs State-Owned Enterprises
SSRs Soviet Socialist Republics
SRs Socialist-Revolutionaries
START Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
UN United Nations
UNO United Nations Organization
UNSC United Nations Security Council
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WTO World Trade Organization
As one of the seminal events of the twentieth century, the signifcance and political relevance of the Russian Revolution of 1917 is enduring. No other event of the past century can match the far-reaching impact of the Russian Revolution in transforming lives across continents, far beyond the geographical confnes of the actual theater of the revolution. The establishment of the Soviet Union, subsequent to the victory of the socialist revolution in Russia under the leadership of V. I. Lenin, had ramifcations that went far beyond the events of the period. Not only did it politically radicalize the working class throughout the world, it also offered the possibility of an alternative model of development—an alternative to capitalism and imperialism. Unlike other political revolutions in the past that were confned to a single country and resulted in the replacement of one regime with another or at best could strike a chord with a single community and its diaspora, the Russian Revolution was an international revolution in the sense that its impact and reach was truly global. Not only did it resonate internationally, it also set into motion political and social process
A. M. Chenoy (*) • A. Upadhyay School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
A. M. Chenoy, A. Upadhyay (eds.), Hundred Years of the Russian Revolution, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4785-4_1
1
that impacted every aspect of human life. It marked the advent of a new historical era with new political possibilities and thus profoundly changed the way historical processes came to be understood.
However, much like all other tectonic events in history, the Russian Revolution and its far-reaching implications have been understood and viewed through varying prisms both historically and ideologically. Undoubtedly, the events of 1917 changed the course of Russian history and politics forever. The Revolution happened in two distinct stages—one in February and one in October—and it was only after the end of the Civil War in 1922 that the new Soviet State led by Lenin could consolidate its power. The Civil War (November 1917–October 1922) thus was an integral part of the revolution. The series of events prior to 1917 and after October 1917 brought an end to more than a thousand years of dynastic rule in Russia and proved to be one of the most radical turning points in the history of the nation. It affected economics, social structure, culture, international relations and every other benchmark on which a revolution could possibly be evaluated. With the new rulers in the Soviet State being largely drawn from the intellectual and working class, Russia underwent a complete change in direction and character.
Though the Russian Revolution was more in the nature of a sequence of disruptive and violent acts involving multiple actors with differing and even contradictory objectives, its emancipatory message became its most defning and constant feature. It set up standards for a distinct way of thinking that in the political arena created the cult of the ‘Common Man’. In the economic sphere, the concept of economic planning and the idea of a centralized direction of the national economy emerged as a corner stone for an alternative economic narrative. In the words of E. H. Carr: “If we are all planners now, this is largely the result, conscious or unconscious, of the impact of Soviet practice and Soviet achievement” (Carr 1947:20). The ramifcations of the Russian Revolution internationally were also far reaching. While on the one hand it revealed the intimate connections between war, capitalism and what Lenin described as ‘bourgeoise democracy’, on the other hand it altered the character of the nationalist movements in the colonial world by providing an ideological stimulant. These movements acquired new economic and social content as they took their struggle forward. Lenin’s declared commitment to the principle of
national self-determination resonated widely among the oppressed nationalities everywhere in the world especially among the colonized people in Asia and Africa and this powerfully got refected in the ideological trajectory of these movements in their respective theaters. The Bolshevik goals of socio-economic modernization, national self-determination, anticolonialism and woman’s emancipation found global resonance as more and more nations and movements pushed these issues forward. Signifcantly, on account of the interconnections between the Western European colonization of Americas, Africa and Asia, on the one hand, and the Russian domination of the Eurasian landmass, on the other, labor politics and anti-colonial movements of the early twentieth century had begun to coalesce together. It is to Lenin’s credit that he could successfully weave the two currents into an ideological framework. Signifcantly enough, the events of 1917 provided the necessary material support for the merger of the two principal ideological developments of the twentieth century— anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism. Inadvertently, the Russian empire became the fulcrum for the worldwide web of revolutionary relationships. All over the world, the members of the working class, socialist and anticolonialist movements came to be powerfully infuenced by generations of Russian revolutionaries espousing both violent and non-violent resistance to state power (Marks 2003).
Clearly, the Russian Revolution affected the world beyond Russia’s geographical borders in manifold ways. Its invocation of worker and peasant power sent waves across the world. Its immediate inspirational impact was on the French soldiers who set up Soviets in 1917 and on the Polish, German and Hungarian Communists in 1918–1919. With the formation of the Communist International—Comintern or the ‘Third International’—in 1919, a coordinated effort to track, control and debate the international revolution from its international headquarter in Moscow was initiated. The Indian freedom struggle and the developments in British India did not go unnoticed by the Soviet leadership. In June 1918, the Commissariat of Foreign Relations of Soviet Russia released a Blue Book on the situation prevailing in British India. Its editor, K. M. Troyanovski wrote:
There can be no general peace without a free independent India … India is the centre of Western activity in the East. India will, therefore, be the frst fortress of the Revolution on the Eastern Continent. We, Russian Revolutionaries and International Socialists, feel it our duty to rejoice at the
announcement of a revolution in India but also to support this revolution by direct or indirect means and with all our powers.1
It is noteworthy that the Revolution and the accompanying events substantially changed the geo-political and the geographical map of the world. Countries such as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland gained independence. So did Finland, when in December 1917, the Bolshevik government under Lenin recognized Finland’s independence from the Russian empire.
As the Soviet state grew in size, so did its political infuence across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas and this got refected in the way international politics came to be structured. October Revolution provided a model for the Communist movement in China. Post-World War II, the Soviet message of anti-imperialism and emancipation inspired the decolonization movements from South Africa to Indochina. Leftist movements in the Global South, in countries such as Cuba, Chile and Nicaragua, received substantial ideological and material support. The non-aligned nations of the Global South also found favor with the Soviet state. As a leading example of a Communist state, the Soviet model of a one-party state with a centralized economic system profoundly affected global politics by offering a blueprint to transform society through massive state intervention in industry and agriculture. The Russian Revolution also infuenced the direction of popular culture, literary movements, language and international law.
The ramifcations of the events of 1917 and the transformations it brought about continues to be felt and debated till this day—more so after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Russia’s break from its Soviet past became evident in the 1990s when the post-Soviet leadership, in acknowledgment of the country’s imperial past, started reverting back to the original names of cities, towns and streets. Leningrad once again became Saint Petersburg and Sverdlovsk reverted back to its original name Yekaterinburg. The term ‘Bolshevik’, a revered term through much of the twentieth century, acquired negative connotations. The role and contribution of the founding fathers of the Soviet Union came under increased scrutiny. Joseph Stalin’s era came to be described as Russia’s ‘reign of terror’. Paradoxically at a time when Russia appears to be under siege by the West, in the popular perception, Stalin has emerged as the most outstanding historical fgure of Russia in recent Russian history.2 It is signifcant that in post-Soviet Russia, the offcial narrative seeks the
reappraisal of the events of 1917 as a part of the longer historical account of Russia’s ‘thousand-year-history’ that locates Russia in the midst of the gradual process of political evolution. It is apparent that this seemingly neutral offcial stance is driven by a conservative political narrative that abhors the idea of any uprising or any radical system-changing reforms that could result in instability. The Soviet legacy is recognized to the extent to which it can reignite national spirit and serve as a potent unifying social force. It is in this context that the ‘Victory Day’ celebrations, commemorating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, take precedence over the events of 1917. However, the commemorative events in the form of academic conferences and exhibitions dedicated to the revolution in the centenary year did provide a unique opportunity to ordinary Russians to learn and better understand their own history.
The year 2017 marked the centenary of the historical events of 1917. More than a century later, a dispassionate discourse on the pathbreaking events of 1917, which challenged existing beliefs and structures and altered the course of history, is much called for. It goes without saying that the social, political, cultural and institutional genesis of present-day Russia is intrinsically connected to the events of the Russian Revolution and the formation of the Soviet State. Though much has changed since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, yet the Soviet legacies continue to remain alive. The themes and the metaphors of 1917 contribute to contemporary political and foreign policy debates not just in Russia but also elsewhere in the former Soviet space. It is noteworthy that in many of the former communist countries including Russia, the hallmarks of the Communist ideals such as state-sponsored social welfare, gender equality and controlled market fnd wide support among citizens. The collective knowledge of the Russian Revolution, evolved over the course of the century, has multiple shades to its understanding and categorization. The political coding of 1917 is marked by the understanding of the events of that period as an ideological act that resulted in the capture of state power by the Bolshevik party in October 1917, in a country that was already on the verge of a collapse. The October events laid to rest the prospects of the emergence of a liberal constitutional democracy in Russia, an idea articulated by various parties and thinkers intellectually and politically opposed to the Bolsheviks at that time.3 The subsequent Stalinist totalitarianism and the heavy
reliance on coercion that came to characterize the history of the Soviet Union was the direct outcome of the political processes and state practices centering around personalities and machinations within the highest echelons of the Communist Party (Hoffmann 2011).
No less signifcant is the formulation and the understanding of the 1917 events from the perspective of social history that argues that the revolution was as much the making of forces from below, namely, the soldiers, workers and peasants, as by a handful of prominent political actors from the top, primarily operating from the capital cities of Moscow and Petrograd (Mandel 1983; Wildman 1980; Keep 1963). The social and political assertions in the erstwhile imperial provinces during 1917 and the Civil War contributed in no small measure to the political mobilization of ordinary people (Badcock 2007). From the point of view of cultural history, 1917 also proved to be the begetter of artistic, intellectual and cultural forms that manifested through literature, literary theory, poetry, cinema, street festivals and propaganda theater. The ability of the ordinary folks to demonstrate revolutionary fervour in creative ways, despite the humanitarian tragedies of the revolution and the civil war, transformed 1917 as a cultural event of historical magnitude and gave meaning to the revolution beyond leaders, ideologies, political parties and even the state (Stites 1989). From the geo-political point of view, one of the greatest paradoxes of the twentieth century was the transformation of imperial Russia into a vociferous advocate of anti-colonialism under the Soviet rule. Consequently, frontal attacks on capitalism, liberalism and imperialism became the corner stone of the foreign policy of the Soviet state, and with the onset of the Cold War, the ideological faultiness between Russia and the West only further deepened.
Contributors to this volume have shared their refections on the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing developments in Russia, other regions of the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world. The moot questions refected upon include: How have the formal and informal institutional culture inherited from the legacies of the Russian Revolution impacted political systems, ideologies, culture, social and economic structures in Russia and elsewhere? To what extent are the legacies of the Russian Revolution relevant for memory politics, value systems, social institutions and international relations? In what way does an
analysis of 1917 and its legacies contribute to the study of social change and can the liberating potential of popular struggles be harnessed in nonviolent ways for transforming social orders in contemporary times? The 16 essays in the volume have touched upon the major events of 1917 and its impact on the populations, institutions, culture and politics in Russia and beyond. The chapters have been broadly categorized into four themes—1917: Enduring legacies; Socio-cultural transformations post-1917; Memory politics and inherited legacies; and Soviet legacies in Russian foreign policy and governance. The frst part includes fve chapters refecting upon the legacies, impact and the contemporary relevance of the 1917 event in Russia and other regions of the world, notably, Central Asia, the Global South and India. The second part includes four chapters focussing on the socio-cultural transformations and specifc episodes in Soviet history, post the October Revolution. The third part includes three chapters exploring the nature of memory politics, state celebrations and sociopolitical transformations in present-day Russia, Belarus and Central and Eastern Europe. The fourth and the fnal part includes four chapters highlighting embedded Soviet legacies in foreign policy, economic governance and federal arrangements of present-day Russia.
The introductory chapter titled ‘Hundred Years of the Russian Revolution: Its Legacies in Perspective’ gives a broad overview of the political, social, cultural and international signifcance of the events of 1917 that resulted in the Russian Revolution. Chapter 2 titled ‘Recalling October Revolution A Century Later’ by Shubhra Nagalia looks at 1917 as a moment of intense geo-political contest which, unlike in the rest of Europe, resulted in the Bolshevik October Revolution in Russia. It was a revolution which, though contained in one country, had radical reverberations all over the globe and continues to haunt the geo-political contests today albeit in the context of dramatically changed international balance of forces. Ajay Patnaik in Chap. 3 titled ‘October Revolution: The History and Legacy’ highlights the political theorizations of the events that led to the October Revolution. He argues that the Bolshevik Revolution embodied all the creative ideas and revolutionary experiences of the nineteenth century. Highlighting the epistemological and ontological continuities in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the author analyzes the far-reaching implications of the project of building a socialist state in Russia and gives an enlightening account of the enduring legacy of the revolution in Central Asia. In Chap. 4 titled ‘Russian Revolution: Past in the Present’, Pradeep Nayak revisits the historical developments of 1917 and attempts to locate
the relevance of its enduring legacies in the context of the harsh social realities of the contemporary neoliberal political economic arrangements. He explores the prospects of revolutionary politics posing as an alternative to transformative politics in contemporary times. Chapter 5 titled ‘Russian Revolution and the Global South’ by Kamal Mitra Chenoy examines the ideology, politics and strengths of the Russian revolution, in the context of its ideological impact on the Global South also described as the ‘Third World’. In Chap. 6 titled ‘Russian Revolution in Perspective: Refections on its impact on the Indian Freedom Struggle’, Archana Upadhyay highlights the signifcant ideological developments within the Indian freedom movement resulting from the infuence of the Russian Revolution and its impact on the course of Indian politics during the freedom struggle. The author argues that the transformation of the character of the freedom struggle from an elite-driven movement to a movement led and inspired by the concerns of the workers and peasants, can be credited to the ideological infuence of the Russian Revolution.
Chapter 7 titled ‘Religion and Cultural Identity in Russia: Contextualizing the 1917 Events’ by Sergey Yu. Lepekhov examines the factors affecting the formation of cultural and religious identity in multiethnic Russia. The author analyzes the main factors affecting the formation of cultural and religious identity of the people of Russia prior to the event of 1917 and examines the current state of culture and religion in Russia. Chapter 8 titled ‘October Revolution and Its Fruits for Women’ by Eugenia Vanina gives an account of the journey of Russian women from pre-Soviet to contemporary times. Through historical memories, anecdotes and literary sources, the author decodes issues of gender justice and women empowerment in Russia. Larisa Chereshneva in Chap. 9 titled ‘India-Russia Diplomatic Engagement: The Stalin Years’ gives a historical account of the early years of India-Russia diplomatic engagement. Drawing on archival sources the author gives insightful details of the exchanges at the highest level between the governments of Stalin and Nehru. Chapter 10 titled ‘Looking Back at Soviet Cinema’ by Rashmi Doraiswamy attempts to highlight the journey of Soviet flmmaking and the expression of creative freedom in Soviet times through the medium of cinema. The author argues that though the cultural front was a distinct part of the ideological front in Soviet times, the history of Soviet cinema proves that despite the state-created impediments, flmmakers found ways of making flms and getting their views across.
In Chap. 11 titled ‘The Evolution of Commemorations: Reassessing the role of November Festivities in Contemporary Russia’, Anna Bochkovskaya draws on the memory politics theory to evaluate the watering down of the revolutionary signifcance of the November 7 date in post-Soviet Russia, with other connotations being intensively invoked and activated at the offcial level. The author also examines the signifcance of this date in popular perception among people of different age groups.
Viachaslau Menkouski in Chap. 12 titled ‘1917 Revolution in the Historical Policy of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus’ considers the offcial Belarusian and Russian state position in relation to the revolutionary events of 1917 and the reactions of the historical community, political parties and public organizations in Belarus and Russia to the state discourses. In Chap. 13 titled ‘The Russian Revolution and Its Legacies in the Socio-political Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe’, Michaela Moravcíková gives an account of the inheritance of communism in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The chapter primarily seeks to focus on the experiences of Hungary and Slovakia while also offering possible generalizations for the whole region.
Rajan Kumar in Chap. 14 titled ‘Soviet Legacy and Russia’s Foreign Policy’ provides a broad overview of Russian foreign policy in the last three decades, highlighting aspects that are strikingly reminiscent of the Soviet past and are a pointer to the continuation of Soviet thinking and practice in contemporary foreign policy making in Russia. Chapter 15 titled ‘Soviet Legacy and Russian-Chinese Relations’ by Anuradha Chenoy highlights the emergent variations in Russia-China re-coupling across post-communist settings. Contextualizing the role reversal of RussiaChina ties against the legacies of the Soviet past particularly in the context of foreign policy choices, the chapter attempts to evaluate the complexities of the international situation and the response of Russia and China to each other and to the world at large. Chapter 16 by Tahir Ashgar titled ‘Soviet Legacies and Economic Governance in Contemporary Russia’ analyzes the nature, structure and functioning of economic governance in contemporary Russia. The structural challenges, primarily on account of the legacies of the Soviet command economy, and the policies adopted by the political leadership to deal with the same have also been examined. Sanjay Pandey in Chap. 17 titled ‘Legacies of Soviet Federalism in PostSoviet Federal Arrangement’ traces the development of federal institutions and processes in Russia amidst the complex legacies of its Soviet/socialist past. Russia’s distinctive federal experience has been viewed and analyzed
within the larger context of the political and economic transition the country underwent post the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Drawn upon the expertise of scholars from various disciplines, the volume offers keen insights into the Russian Revolution from the perspective of history, political science, culture and international relations.
1. For details see Mary Senterla, ‘Indo-Soviet relations 1971–1980: a study of the impact of the treaty of peace, friendship and co-operation on bi-lateral relations’, PhD thesis, Mahatma Gandhi University, 2010. Retrieved August 15, 2018, from http://shodhganga.infibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/396/ 7/07_chapter%201.pdf
2. Joseph Stalin: Why so many Russian’s like the Soviet Dictator. BBC News, April 18, 2019. Retrieved December 1, 2019, from https://www.bbc.com/ news/world-europe-47975704.
3. Other than the Bolsheviks, political parties such as the Constitutional Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, anarchists, Mensheviks and the Workers’ Opposition were ver y active during this period.
Badcock, S. (2007). Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carr, E. H. (1947). The Soviet Impact on the Western World. New York: Macmillan Company.
Hoffmann, D. L. (2011). Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Keep, J. H. L. (1963). The Rise of Social Democracy in Russia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Mandel, D. (1983). Petrograd Workers and the Fall of the Old Regime. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Marks, S. G. (2003). How Russia Shaped the Modern World: From Art to AntiSemitism, Ballet to Bolshevism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Stites, R. (1989). Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University.
Wildman, A. K. (1980). The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Old Army and the Soldiers’ Revolt (March–April 1917). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
The centenary year of the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution invited refections on the legacies, impact and the contemporary desire to recall the 1917 event all over the world. The fact that these refections are marked by passionate discussions and generate multiple meanings is a testament to the intense ideological contestations at stake that this epochal event inspired then and continues to do so even a century later. This chapter focuses on the expressions of recall of 1917, more than a century later and attempts to decode the underlying meanings, contestations and investments. What relevance do these meanings and their deployments have for our contemporary times?
In the frst section, the chapter looks at 1917 as a moment of intense geo-political contest which, unlike in the rest of Europe, resulted in the Bolshevik October Revolution in Russia. A revolution which, though contained in one country, had radical reverberations all over the globe and continues to haunt the geo-political contests today albeit in the context of dramatically changed international balance of forces. The contemporary
S. Nagalia (*)
Ambedkar University, New Delhi, Delhi, India
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
A. M. Chenoy, A. Upadhyay (eds.), Hundred Years of the Russian Revolution, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4785-4_2
relations between Russia and the West, confgured by the traces of the specter of 1917, form the background to ways in which October Revolution is remembered. This section focuses on the ways in which Russia selectively appropriates her historical revolutionary legacies, in an attempt to deploy a suspicious history in the face of growing domestic and global strife. Some of the responses in western press and popular opinion suggest that a similar gesture of deployment of the Russian past is being secured as an index of Russia’s ability to be integrated and acknowledged as a power in the world’s geo-political arena.
The second section underlines the far-reaching and lasting legacy of the Revolution in the Third World, with a focus on India. It briefy looks at the circulation of ideas and information reaching India about the Revolution; political theorizations and transformation of Marxist formulations that were actively happening in the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial freedom struggle. This includes the impact on nationalist leaders and Left parties underscoring the anti-imperialist character of the freedom struggle. The contemporary recall of October Revolution by the Indian Left, stakes a claim to the legitimacy of the socialist dream and its struggles against predatory capitalism in the face of a global discourse of the death of the very idea of an alternative to the invincibility of capitalism and liberal democracy.
Europe in 1917 was an arena of explosive geo-political contest with no less than the fate of liberal democracy and capitalist economy at stake. The key questions that emerged was if Europe would be engulfed in the revolutionary discontent that was sweeping France, Italy, Germany and Russia and would thus decisively reset the template of social order towards socialism or would the forces of capital (industrial capitalists and landowners) prevail? World War I was the response to not only sharpening imperialist rivalry but even more so a decisive turn for the future of Europe. With the peasantry and working class split into nationalist war camps, the moment for a revolutionary turn was lost. In this setting then, it was all the more remarkable that the energy unleashed by the February Revolution in Russia did not dissipate into a capitalist correction but could be consolidated into the Bolshevik October Revolution which had as Luxemburg put it “imperishable historic distinction of having for the frst time
proclaimed the fnal aim of socialism as the direct program of practical politics” (Luxemburg 1918).
The signifcance of the Bolshevik October Revolution has been analyzed and underlined by many towering intellectuals not only from the progressive left spectrum of scholarship but also by the revolutionary actors of the time including Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. World War I was presented to the toiling people as a patriotic duty towards defending the borders of one’s own mother/fatherland. Only a few revolutionary fgures such as Lenin and Luxemburg meticulously analyzed and asserted that the world war was nothing but an ‘imperialist mass slaughter’, resulting from the geo-political impetus to divide the world into colonies for imperialist industrial expansion. We know from our experience in India of brutal colonial exploitation that young recruits from a colonized population were thrown and killed into a war, not of our but of our colonizer’s making and for their proft. While this violently dramatic response of capitalist crisis, supported by social democracy prevalent in the leadership of the working classes all over Europe, successfully averted a revolutionary possibility in Europe, it created a precipice in an already turbulent and rebellious hungry population in Russia.
It is useful to remind ourselves of the key insight brought home by the October Revolution. That the political demands of ‘peace, land and bread’ were neither being met nor could have been met in the aftermath of the heady explosion of mass revolt by the people that led to the February Revolution and the overthrow of monarchy and the formation of the provincial government. The very forces that took over the leadership of the revolutionary energy after the February Revolution, increasingly sought reasons to push back the radical potential unleashed by the people’s revolution. As Luxemburg (1918) noted:
Thus, on the very day after the frst victories of the revolution, there began an inner struggle within it over the two burning questions—peace and land. The liberal bourgeoisie entered upon the tactics of dragging out things and evading them. The labouring masses, the army, the peasantry, pressed forward ever more impetuously. There can be no doubt that with the questions of peace and land, the fate of the political democracy of the republic was linked up. The bourgeois classes, carried away by the frst stormy wave of the revolution, had permitted themselves to be dragged along to the point of republican government. Now they began to seek a base of support in the rear and silently to organize a counter-revolution.
The promise of a democratic political system by establishing and formulating the Constitution, the task of the Constituent Assembly, was eternally postponed. Analyzing the suppression and the fnal closing down of ‘Pravda’ by the provincial government, Lenin insightfully pointed out in the ‘Constitutional Illusions’ that this was no mere procrastination but the inability of liberal political democracy to ensure the creation and granting of actual democratic and political rights to its people. It was only a revolutionary resolve that could take up, “burning questions of peace and land, for which there was no solution within the framework of bourgeois revolution” (Lenin 1917). It was either moving forward in this direction or being pulled back either into monarchy or a version of capitalist correction.
The geo-political arrangement and division of the world in 1917 was also highly signifcant. The imperialist western nations and Japan were overtly active in the fate of the Bolshevik October Revolution. It has been extensively documented how they supplied arms, aid and shelter to the counter-revolutionary white armed forces that dragged the vital energies of a hungry and exhausted nation into a prolonged and bloody civil war. The price of withdrawing from the World War, for the revolutionary government, was to cede large parts of the erstwhile Russian territory to the warring imperialist powers. As noted by a scholar:
The Brest-Litovsk Treaty of 1917 forced Russia to give up Finland, Estonia, Livonia and the Ukraine and turned over districts around the Caspian to the Turks. In fact, Russia lost one fourth of her population, one-fourth of her arable land, one-third of her manufacture, and three-fourths of her coal and iron felds. (Joseph 1950: 23–24)
It was a price only a new government that had a non-expansionist revolutionary political will could pay for pulling out of a war for proft and spoils.
The hostility and political threat posed by the October Revolution found its sharpest expression during World War II in which western capitalist democracy rested its hopes, briefy but surely, on the possibility of fascist takeover and destruction of the Soviet Union (SU). The Stalinist excesses and breach of basic democratic aspirations of the Soviet people, was prolifcally advertized and presented to the world by the West championing the cause of democracy. It was astutely understood by the leaders of capitalism that the threat lay in the daring gesture, in a moment of utter catastrophe, of the October Revolution to open up a ‘liberated territory’,
space controlled by emancipatory forces outside the global capitalist system (Zizek 2017b). The threat was the gesture itself of seizing the moment of utter hopelessness and crisis and proclaiming that it was possible to imagine a world outside the liberal capitalist imaginary whereby as Neil Harding pointed (as cited in Zizek 2005) “the vocabulary and grammar of the Western tradition of politics was abruptly dispensed with”.
It was the profoundly utopian vision of the Bolshevik October Revolution which was drawing the contours of a revolutionary and socialist conception of democracy, presenting a serious critique and challenge to the concept of democracy under capitalism. Aijaz Ahmad says:
Lenin himself thought that the Bolshevik Revolution was an expression of the same dynamic that produced the Paris Commune in 1871 as well as the Russian revolutions of 1905 and February 1917. Some 40,000 Communards had lost their lives … for the political form he envisioned for the revolutionary reorganization of power that would emerge after the revolution: a profoundly, radically democratic form but not a liberal democratic one. (Ahmad 2017)
The reverberations of this moment in world history, even though contained in one nation, could be heard far and wide in anti-colonial, antirace and working-class movements across the corners of the globe. The impetus provided by the possibility of imagining a world outside the exploitative rapacious colonial imperialist greed was like an electrical charge to the struggling people all over the world. Even though capitalist liberal democracies prevailed in the outcome of most of these struggles, some versions of the socialist emancipatory ideas found their way into the foundational texts and policies of constitutional democracies in the making.
Therefore, the ideological-political contest in 1917 was a fguration of the geo-political goals appended to the outcome of division of world territories crucial to, on the one hand, to the survival of socialist economy and, on the other, to the expansion, recovery (after the crippling great depression effects) and consolidation of the capitalist political economy.
The geo-political map changed dramatically after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of Cold War. Bassin has drawn attention to the “geopolitical challenges which crystallized out of the revolutionary transformation and have persisted since then”. He underscores the “geopolitical salience of ideology—a factor which played a central role in the revolutionary Soviet and post-Soviet projects” (Bassin et al. 2017: 666).