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.