Russian servicemen dressed in second world war uniforms mark Revolution Day on 7 November by helping turn it into a historical parade. Photograph: Stanislav Krasilnikov/TASS
The Guardian: Tragedy or triumph? Russians agonise over how to mark 1917 revolutions
The February uprising sparked a brief period of democratic rule before the Bolsheviks seized power – and the legacy of 1917 still divides the country.
On a recent evening at Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery, Vladimir Lenin paced back and forth, debating the finer points of Marxist theory, Vladimir Mayakovsky thundered staccato lines of poetry from atop a pedestal, and the monk Grigory Rasputin mused ominously on the future of Russia.
The event, in which hundreds of modern Moscow’s artistic and creative elite dressed as tsarist-era aristocrats, ate black caviar by the spoonful and drank champagne, was the launch party for an ambitious new project designed to bring the events of 1917 to life for modern Russians 100 years later.
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WNU Editor: Modern day Russia has never properly dealt with the legacy of the 1917 revolutions .... lord knows I have tried to put my two cents to have at least a public discussion. At the moment this legacy is confined within families .... every family has a story on what happened in 1917 .... and every family definitely has a story on what happened after .... and none of it is good. And while I do not expect any celebrations of the 1917 revolutions .... there will be an acknowledgement that it is the 100th anniversary .... and a few extra parades and speeches will be the end result. On a bright note .... there is a revisionist history happening right now on what was life before the revolution. The common theme is that life was hard, the Russian population were treated as serfs by an uncaring nobility, famine and secret police ruled the day .... a view of history that was pushed and advocated by the Bolsheviks who took over in 1917 .... and continued by the Soviet state. The truth .... when stripped away from Communist propaganda .... appears to be different. Many Russian historians and academics are discovering a different Russia .... and while it is true that life was hard, that the Tsars secret police were brutal, and that people did sometimes did go hungry .... it is not to the degree that the Communists said it was .... to put it bluntly .... far from it. I know in my own personal case .... when I look at the pictures of my grandparents and great grandparents before the revolution .... I definitely do not see the dark and dismal picture that many like to paint was the situation at the time. And talking to everyone else .... especially the older generation who do remember what their parents and grandparents said life was like during this time .... their version certainly does not reflect what many on the left say life was like during this time. My prediction .... Russia will come to terms to what the past 100 years has done to the country and its people .... but not now. I give it another two or three generations, and what these kids will be taught will be radically different from what Soviet/Russian children have been taught for the past century.
9 comments:
So, WNU Editor that is communist propaganda.
And yours is not anti-communist propaganda, right?
That epoch is not the cheap "selfie time" we are today, and the people try often to appear in their best. If it's possible.
Even I see the photo of my great grandparents, but outside the dignity show by men and women, the reality is of misery.
Maybe you know already that photographer, by the way look at this: color pictures of Russia before the Revolution.
http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2014/03/11/foto/prima_della_rivoluzion_e_la_russia_degli_zar_a_colori-80727248/1/#1
Count the smiles in the faces of the peoples depicted, is not hard.
The tzars and their ministries failed to modernize the empire, raise the taxes and foreign debt and force Russia into a disastrous war that count over 6 millions of losses among the army only to lose and set famine spread among farmers communities.
"force Russia into a disastrous war that count over 6 millions of losses among the army only to lose and set famine spread among farmers communities."
Good post YC.
And that's before the disastrous Russo-Japanese war and the subsequent revolution of 1905.
Like the late era Soviet Government, the Russian Tsarist/bourgeois did a great job of beating themselves.
And life was hard before the revolution, especially for workers. Even anti communist historians like Figes and Kotkin have said so.
If anything, the October Revolution should be a warning to elites and their enforcers that a day of reckoning can and will come.
Goodbye WNU and gang,
RRH has formally retired from posting.
Young Communist. If you bothered to read my commentary you will see that I said that life was not easy .... but it was not to the degree that Communists like to paint it as. The Great War changed everything .... and in that vacuum others came and did worse .... correction .... far far worse. That debate is now happening in Russia right now .... and I for one am happy to see it happen even though Communist dogma says we should not.
Smiles in photograph's are a mid century "invention", that came about with the proliferation of public cameras.
Prior to that, and photograph was a "serious" business requiring that one stayed perfectly still for several seconds to minutes.
Check out any photo archive covering the 19th to 20 Century and count the smiles.
http://petapixel.com/2012/11/04/say-prunes-not-cheese-the-history-of-smiling-in-photographs/
Ancedotal experience greatly varies. Social strata greatly influences perceptions, more so given the social divisions that rendered the serf and the lower classes "invisible" to their betters.
One of my Grandfathers was a Czech, from the AustroHungarian Empire, who wound up being an orphan and war refugee. When he landed in Montreal in 1919, and as he traveled across Canada to Alberta, he was amazed by the wealth and prosperity compared to the village he grew up in before the war. In later years, he always compared his wonderment to that of the Russian soldiers who occupied their village one year, who were amazed that the village houses had windows and wood floors, stoves and curtains.
Jay. My father was amazed by the toilets that he saw in Berlin.
The ones piled up in the rubble?
Or the few that were intact and still working?
RRH,
We may not have agreed on much, but I'm sorry that you've decided to go.
Definitely.
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