Russian Revolution

 

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 100 YEAR

CENTENARY

By Stephen Wilson

 

The 100th centenary of the Russian revolution has

neither been officially commemorated ,condoned

or condemned. Instead of red banned parades,

the emphasis has been put on the 76th

anniversary of the 1941 military parade on Red

square where Stalin gave a stirring speech to

soldiers sent off to the front to help win the Battle

of Moscow. Reenactment parades involving as

many as 5000 military men and women were

performed. In deed, a few billboards promoted

the event depicting a young child giving flowers to

an old war veteran. Being comparatively

uncontroversial , the events of the Great Patriotic

War have overshadowed and displaced the

events of the Russian revolution. Other more

widespread billboards show a letter of the last

tsar expressing his love to his wife. The letter is

attempt to defend the tsar's reputation against a

bizarre dispute surrounding the recent film

Matilda which dramatizes the tsar's affair with

a ballet dancer.

Memories of the Russian revolution still polarise

and divide Russia. What might astonish outsiders

is how much support the revolution still retains

despite overwhelming evidence from the archives

and endless eyewitness accounts of mass

atrocities. The proponents of the revolution claim

without the revolution Russia would not have

emerged as a great Industrial society, would

never have established a free medical and

educational system and attained massive

literacy. The Russian revolution put the first

man into space. Lenin was a great sponsor of

Russian rocket science.

However, many Russians I spoke to thought that

the Russian revolution was a disaster. An

estimated half a million were killed in 3 years

following the initial period of the Red terror and

9 million died in the civil war from a combination

of typhus , starvation, and drought. It is not

surprising that when a Dutch teacher on an

exchange visit to a Russian school stated

he wanted to discuss the revolution most Russian

teachers did not want to speak about those

events. They regarded it as a huge disaster !

It is worth citing a 2016 survey from the All

Russian study of Adult Opinions. When

respondents were asked : 'Do you agree that

the Russian revolution expressed the will of

people throughout the Russian empire : 45%

agreed , 43 % disagreed and 12% stated it

was difficult to say. This may indicate sharp

differences in the opinions of Russians.When

respondents were asked : "What were the main

causes which led to the Russian revolution ?"

45 % stated difficult conditions of the people,

20% a weak government and 12 % a conspiracy.

It is striking to note that a lot of Russians still

blame the west for causing the Russian revolution

and not themselves. A common belief is that the

Germans sponsored and aided Lenin's seizure of

power.

It is often forgotten that even the Bolsheviks

themselves never referred to the events of

the takeover as a revolution but an uprising or

perevorot. I asked Alexei Aleshin , a chief editor

what he thought of this uprising. He stated :

'It was unavoidable. This is because the

monarchy had lost any power base within and

had no mechanism for exercising control. The

Bolsheviks took control because they were very

crafty and outwitted everyone else. But they were

also the most ruthless and in those times using

the strong rod proved the most effective. Many

Russians don't know much about those events

because they were brainwashed by state

propaganda. I would say that Russians who fled

abroad from the revolution are more aware of

what happened than local people. We are still

arguing about what actually happened ".

I asked an artist Natalia Miroshnik what she

thought about the revolution .She succinctly

declared : 'It was terrible ! I blame the

intelligentsia. They have all those impractical

ideas and to put them into practice. I think

that before the revolution things were better

because even though you had a hierarchy people

had more chance of earning a living or not being

starved. I painted the portrait of an old blind man

who told me that he was much better off before

the revolution. Everybody in his home town

were treated kindly by the baron . When the

baron was made homeless by the revolution

all the local people would secretly help him.

Lenin made a revolution because he could not

forgive the tsar for executing his older brother.

He wanted revenge !

It would be a grave mistake if people tried to

bury Lenin. It would provoke a civil war. I think

we should let sleeping dogs lie".

One of the legacies of the uprising is that events

have left most Russians with a distaste for

revolutions or in deed profound changes. A

survey found that 92% of Russians don't see

the need for a revolution while only 5% would

welcome one.

 

Russian Repression

REMEMBERING REPRESSION

By Stephen Wilson

 

Russians would rather forget the revolution

 

The weather was dismal. Relentlessly and remorse

-lessly raining for 3 days without end. No reprieve

was in sight and I noticed more students coughing

and teachers taking sick leave requiring me to act

as a substitute. "When will this rotten rain cease?"'

I asked myself. Halloween was imminent and the

engulfing and encircling impenetrable darkness

rendering everything vague seemed fitting . I was

asked about Halloween but my mind was more

focused on commemorating ; 'The Day of the

Victims of Repression ' held every 30th October.

On this very day I found myself rushing off

to another student through the old First World

War Memorial park within the vicinity of a church

next to the metro station of Sokol.

 

As I cut through the park I noticed a candle-lit

ceremony where Russians were all queuing up

to take turns in reading out the details of victims

of the repression. Each person would read out the

name, profession , age and last residence of the

victim and then say a prayer for them. It reminded

me of an Orthodox Litany for the Dead. Then it

dawned on me it actually was. I noticed one young

woman read out the details of her great

grandfather. She also read out : "Mutinv Vladimir

Ivanovich , aged 42 , Director of State Bolshoi

Theatre , shot on the 26th November 1937."

This ceremony, held in pitch darkness, sounded

more chilling than any ghosts or phantoms from

Halloween. I recall a Russian joking to me :

"Ghosts would be too scared to haunt Russia ! "

My curiosity caught the attention of a kindly

woman called Margarita who explained what was

going on. " We are hear to remember the victims

of the repression so that it does not happen again

and to teach people about how terrible this was."

I asked her : " Aren't you afraid that this can

happen again? " Margarita retorted : " No we are

not afraid of anyone and we will continue to try

and make people aware of this tragedy. A lot of

Russians are unaware of their own history so our

job is to teach and remind them". She handed me

a badge from her Orthodox Brotherhood and

insisted that I too , should join in the ceremony by

reading out the names of the victims of the

ceremony. While waiting in the queue I

encountered a young woman who informed me

her husband's great grandfather had been a victim

of the repression and : "He had great difficulty

getting access to the archives which explained his

fate." The group were handing out leaflets stating:

'Millions of our innocent citizens perished in the

years of Soviet terror. This tragedy touched every

family. We ask you to light a candle in memory of

the victims of the repressed '.

According to some sources , as many as 700,000

victims were shot over the two years 1936 -1937.

However, the years of repression can't be confined

to those years and began in 1918 . According to

one historian Lucia Lyagushkina as many as

250,000 people were arrested on charges of

espionage. The absurdity of those allegations

comes across when you examine the archives

claiming this cleaner or teacher was a Japanese

spy or a Russian English teacher was working for

the British. Lucy claims that as many as 12

million people were victims of the repression.

Although a new memorial was opened in Moscow

where President Putin made a speech condemning

the repression, the recently poisoned atmosphere

suggests a return to some form of increased

repression is no longer a remote or distant

perspective. For instance, why is Memorial been

labelled : 'A Foreign Agent '? Why have directors

of the theater been put under house arrest ? Why

are opposition leaders constantly demonized and

attacked by thugs ? Why is a historian still in prison

on trumped up charges ? If the state really felt

sorrow for the victims of repression they would

release Yuri Dmitriev who has done so much to

recover and give a proper burial to the victims of

repression. Yet he still languishes in prison a year

after his arrest ! There has been almost silence

in Russia over his case.

An indication of the rising paranoiac atmosphere

in Moscow was indicated by a neighbor who

accused me of "Being an American agent" just

for speaking over the phone in English.