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100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolutions(s)

Idris2002 said:
Did you really do the jokes for that one, DaveCinzano ?

More Russian Revo themed fun:

Who are you in 1917 Russia? | Arzamas

A political compass we can all get behind. Take the test and find out who you are in Russia '17 (I'm a Left SR, apparently).
Click to expand...

I was hoping to be Rodchenko or El Lissitzky, but apparently I’m a ‘Menshevik internationalist’.

No idea what that is, I hope it's nothing to do with Louise.
 
Appaz I am a Left SR. The last time I took a similar test I got Leninist and "correct line". I fear I may be degenerating.
 
I listened to a couple of the podcasts on this last night:

Sean's Russia Blog

One was Lars T. Lih, who seems to be more of a Lenin fanboy than a historian. He seems to be intent on replacing a caricature of Lenin as the root of all evil with an equally caricatured position which seems to me to dodge all the really hard questions like the terror, and the subordination of the Soviets to the party, both of which went unmentioned in his otherwise interesting chat with the presenter.

(What think ye of Lars T. Lih, Master butchersapron? I fain would know)

The other was a (much better) guy called Steinberg, who gushed on a bit, but did evoke the complexity of the revolution in terms of what it meant to ordinary people, and what it meant to groups like women or the Imperial minorities who are not often the focus of discussion (at least that's the impression I got from him).
 
Idris2002 said:
I listened to a couple of the podcasts on this last night:

Sean's Russia Blog

One was Lars T. Lih, who seems to be more of a Lenin fanboy than a historian. He seems to be intent on replacing a caricature of Lenin as the root of all evil with an equally caricatured position which seems to me to dodge all the really hard questions like the terror, and the subordination of the Soviets to the party, both of which went unmentioned in his otherwise interesting chat with the presenter.

(What think ye of Lars T. Lih, Master butchersapron? I fain would know)

The other was a (much better) guy called Steinberg, who gushed on a bit, but did evoke the complexity of the revolution in terms of what it meant to ordinary people, and what it meant to groups like women or the Imperial minorities who are not often the focus of discussion (at least that's the impression I got from him).
Click to expand...
Lih's book on What is to be Done? is a brilliant megatome. Largely corrects a rather simplistic reading of said book and shows Lenin as vastly more nuanced than later (effectively Stalinised) readings. He actually places Lenin more within the Kautskyite milieu than most latter day Leninists, so he isn't really a bogstandard defender.
 
Went to see this over the weekend (well put together, absorbing, well for me anyway). On at the British Library right now until August 29th with a programme of talks and workshops:

Top tip: there’s a 2for1 offer on the tickets for those travelling to London by rail (though in my experience no one ever asks to see the rail tickets; just print out the offer voucher which they’ll want to keep).
 
Amazingly stupid and mad piece on the Today Programme about 100th Anniversary. Really has to be heard to be believed, apparently the "abstract theories of communism" inspired the labour movement in this country. Nothing to do with the real material conditions.
 
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redsquirrel said:
Amazingly stupid and mad piece on the Today Programme about 100th Anniversary. Really has to be heard to be believed, apparently the "abstract theories of communism" inspired the labour movement in this country. Nothing to do with the real material conditions.
Click to expand...
its always good to hear bluffers like that making it up on the fly. Helps you to remember thats what most of them are doing most of the time...
 
Unearthing a time capsule buried in Murmansk in 1967 on the 50th anniversary
...On a plane a few days later, I sat next to Evgeny, a fiftysomething photojournalist from Chita, near the Manchurian border. I told him about the time capsule. Suddenly, he said: ‘I regret my part in destroying the USSR.’ Had he been on the barricades in 1991? No, he replied. ‘But at some point in the 1980s, I began to take honest photographs. Empty shop counters, that kind of thing. Please understand, I wasn’t trying to exaggerate anything. But even so, had I known what it would all come to, I’d have kept them locked in my drawer.’

...‘Those people who wrote the time capsule letter believed in something – a bright future, positive changes,’ Grudina said. ‘Maybe it’s for the best that hardly anyone was around to hear it read out – it would have been too upsetting. As a society, we have no more ideals, no big idea.’ Yet she is suspicious of the fashion for all things Soviet. ‘To lift our spirits, the government tries to make us proud of things from the past. It’s a pseudo-patriotism. The only things we have left to be proud of are World War Two and Gagarin in space: that is sad.’

...There’s a scene in Salyut-7 where Vladimir, the lead cosmonaut, tells his wife about a dream he’s had: his re-entry vehicle crash-lands on a remote island whose inhabitants take him for a deity. He tells the islanders about the stars and the planets, and about his life in the USSR. ‘And what sort of life did you have back in the USSR?’ she asks. ‘A daughter, a wife, football, building communism,’ he replies. For my father, building communism was about ‘striving to be the first, to be the best you can be, whether it’s going into space or bringing home the biggest catch’. Imagine, he told me, ‘what it feels like to earn the right to carry the Trawler Fleet banner in the 7 November parade. To this day, I feel that pride. Maybe for some people, Crimea and Syria have taken its place. But for me, nothing has. Nothing ever could.’
Click to expand...
LRB · Vadim Nikitin · Diary
 
marty21 said:
Just started reading this, particularly enjoyed a passage about a printer's strike in 1905, they were paid by letter and demanded payment for punctuation too !!!!!!!!!!!######:cool:
Click to expand...
I also have started this. 'This was Russia's revolution, certainly, but it belonged and belongs to others, too. It could be ours. If its sentences are still unfinished, it is up to us to finish them'
Meivilles always got that romantic flourish
 
DotCommunist said:
I also have started this. 'This was Russia's revolution, certainly, but it belonged and belongs to others, too. It could be ours. If its sentences are still unfinished, it is up to us to finish them'
Meivilles always got that romantic flourish
Click to expand...
Except for those times when he was just your ten a penny sex pest.
 
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