Abstract
The centenary year of the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution invited reflections on the legacies, impact and the desire to recall the 1917 event all across the world. The fact that these reflections were marked by passionate discussions and generated multiple meanings is a testament to the intense ideological contestations at stake that this epochal event inspired then and continues to do so even today. What relevance do these meanings and their deployments have for our contemporary times? 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 a dramatically changed international balance of forces. The chapter also underlines the far-reaching and lasting legacy of the Revolution in the third world, with a focus on India. This includes the impact on the nationalist leaders and the Left parties, thereby underscoring the anti-imperialist character of the freedom struggle.
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Notes
- 1.
Naomi Wolfe reporting on the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS) in US revealed the shocking range and nexus between the corporate and banking sector and FBI, Homeland Security and local police agencies which labeled this movement as a ‘terrorist threat’ enabling its brutal repression and violent crackdown. See https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy.
- 2.
The Hindu (Tuesday, January 30, 2018) reported on growing friction between US and European Union in ‘Ready for Trade War, EU Responds to Trump Threat’. Trump had raised the pitch of his election campaign promise of ‘protecting American jobs and going against multilateral trade deals’ detrimental to his ‘America First policies’. The standoff, if it continues, may affect the creation of a massive free trade zone between the two which is expected to yield over $100 billion a year for both sides.
- 3.
Sudha Rajagopalan reports that only a benign and academic form of commemoration was announced by the state. Putin declared that there would be a year-long series of events in which academics would discuss and debate the revolution. It was to be a scholarly preoccupation but the state would not officially mark the centenary.
- 4.
The Guardian reported that “Putin’s main public comments on the anniversary so far have suggested he indeed views the year as a tragedy for the Russian nation. In his address to Russia’s elite earlier this month, Putin spoke about the current migration crisis in Europe and warned of the dangers of uprising”. … “We know well the consequences that these great upheavals can bring. Unfortunately, our country went through many such upheavals and their consequences in the twentieth century … Let’s remember that we are a single people, a united people, and we have only one Russia”, Putin said.
- 5.
Dewan and Tarasova reported that, “Last week, he (Putin) opened a new bronze memorial wall in commemoration of the victims of political repressions. There, he made an unusually forthright condemnation of the crimes of Soviet Russia.” “We cannot erase the terrifying past from our history,” he said. “But nor is there anything we can do to justify it; certainly not in the name of so-called higher national purpose”.
- 6.
Vijay Prashad cites E. Sa. Viswanathan who paraphrased Periyar’s views as (non-Brahman masses) “could improve their social status only by promoting their economic condition and not merely by rejecting Brahmans’ ritual status. The economic interests of non-Brahmans could be improved not by the present democratic system of government dominated by capitalists, but by a socialist government formed by workers themselves”.
- 7.
The archival documents carried in the magazine Liberation give a series of debates that reveal the impact, engagement and inspiration that Lenin and Comintern were giving to early efforts. It also outlines the communist party histories in relation with events that happened in Russia in 1917 and after. Refer to http://cpiml.org/library/communist-movement-in-india/introduction-communist-movement-in-india/comintern-and-the-colonial-question-the-second-congress/; http://cpiml.org/library/communist-movement-in-india/introduction-communist-movement-in-india/impact-of-world-war-i-on-the-alignment-of-class-forces/. The nature of this interaction changed substantially and also became the basis of some of the differences between Indian communist parties and their factions. Refer to http://cpiml.org/library/communist-movement-in-india/introduction-communist-movement-in-india/wpp-vis-a-vis-cpi/.
- 8.
Stephen Kotkin’s three-volume work on the figure of Stalin (published in 2014 and 2017; the last is yet to be published) and late Sukomal Sen’s two volumes on socialist reconstruction under Stalin (published in 2017) supported by vast archival documents have been important contributions in this regard.
- 9.
Elaborating on what he meant by left not being hegemonized by neo-liberalism Patnaik (2017a) said, “The revival of communism in India must start with giving up the hegemony of neoliberalism and therefore even accepting unpopularity in the middle-class intelligentsia circle for the sake of defending the peasantry and petty producers, fisherman and all the rest. That is where the Left constituency lies”.
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Nagalia, S. (2021). Recalling October Revolution a Century Later. In: Chenoy, A.M., Upadhyay, A. (eds) Hundred Years of the Russian Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4785-4_2
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