An Uncanny Honeymoon: Spanish Anarchism and the Bolshevik Dictatorship of the Proletariat, 1917–22

2018 ◽  
Vol 94 ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Arturo Zoffmann Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
Labor Movement ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
The World

AbstractThe Russian Revolution became a beacon flare for anti-capitalists across the world, including many anarchists. The Spanish anarcho-syndicalists became ardent supporters of Bolshevism, and many endorsed the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Here, I try to arrive at a political and historical understanding of this uncanny honeymoon, and question empirical explanations that present it as a simple misunderstanding. I firstly historicize the evolution of the concept of the workers’ dictatorship in the Spanish labor movement and assess it through the prism of the antagonism between the anarchists and socialists. I then set the reception of the Russian Revolution in the context of social ferment that emerged in Spain after 1917, which generated enormous enthusiasm and clouded theoretical differences. I finally relate the reception of the Soviet dictatorship to the intensification of class violence in these years, which rendered many anarchists hospitable to the authoritarian methods of the Bolsheviks.

Appropriating Hobbes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
The World ◽  
Michael Oakeshott ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

The aim of this book is not to trace the changing fortunes of the interpretation of one of the most sophisticated and famous political philosophers who ever lived, but to glimpse here and there his place in different contexts, and how his interpreters see their own images reflected in him, or how they define themselves in contrast to him. The main claim is that there is no Hobbes independent of the interpretations that arise from his appropriation in these various contexts and which serve to present him to the world. There is no one perfect context that enables us to get at what Hobbes ‘really meant’, despite the numerous claims to the contrary. He is almost indistinguishable from the context in which he is read. This contention is justified with reference to hermeneutics, and particularly the theories of Gadamer, Koselleck, and Ricoeur, contending that through a process of ‘distanciation’ Hobbes’s writings have been appropriated and commandeered to do service in divergent contexts such as philosophical idealism; debates over the philosophical versus historical understanding of texts; and in ideological disputations, and emblematic characterizations of him by various disciplines such as law, politics, and international relations. The book illustrates the capacity of a text to take on the colouration of its surroundings by exploring and explicating the importance of contexts in reading and understanding how and why particular interpretations of Hobbes have emerged, such as those of Carl Schmitt and Michael Oakeshott, or the international jurists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

Weapons of Reform: Gregory VII, Armenia, and the Liturgy

2012 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-347
Author(s):  
Kriston R. Rennie
Keyword(s):  
Vested Interest ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
The World

This paper examines Gregory VII's (1073–85) evolutionary efforts to unite the Armenian Church with Rome in the 1070s and 1080s. The pope's changing attitude towards Armenian liturgical practices, it is argued, illustrates a broader and visionary papal outlook, revealing in turn many social, cultural, political, and doctrinal dynamics at work during his pontificate. As a consequence of this interplay, Gregory's vested interest in the world beyond Latin Christendom becomes manifest, contributing ultimately to a more nuanced portrait of this pope and a broader historical understanding of his papacy and its governance.

scholarly journals Dreams of the Russian Revolution in the Utopias of Alexander Chayanov and Andrei Platonov

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-290
Author(s):  
Alexander Nikulin
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Economic Structure ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

The Russian Revolution is the central theme of both A. Chayanov’s novel The Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia and A. Platonov’s novel Chevengur. The author of this article compares the chronicles and images of the Revolution in the biographies of Chayanov and Platonov as well as the main characters, genres, plots, and structures of the two utopian novels, and questions the very understanding of the history of the Russian Revolution and the possible alternatives of its development. The article focuses not only on the social-economic structure of utopian Moscow and Chevengur but also on the ethical-aesthetic foundations of both utopias. The author argues that the two utopias reconstruct, describe, and criticize the Revolution from different perspectives and positions. In general, Chayanov adheres to a relativistic and pluralistic perception of the Revolution and history, while Platonov, on the contrary, absolutizes the end of humankind history with the eschatological advent of Communism. In Chayanov‘s utopia, the Russian Revolution is presented as a viable alternative to the humanistic-progressive ideals of the metropolitan elites with the moderate populist-socialist ideas of the February Revolution. In Platonov’s utopia, the Revolution is presented as an alternative to the eschatological-ecological transformation of the world by provincial rebels inspired by the October Revolution. Thus, Chayanov’s liberal-cooperative utopia and Platonov’s anarchist-communist utopia contain both an apologia and a criticism of the Russian Revolution in the insights of its past and future victories and defeats, and opens new horizons for alternative interpretations of the Russian Revolution.

Representing the Russian Revolution in Prescribed Russian School History Textbooks

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-71
Author(s):  
Joseph Zajda
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Students ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
Russian School ◽  
Dominant Ideologies ◽  
Senior Secondary

This article offers a new knowledge and insight into understanding the nexus between ideologies, the state, and nation-building—as depicted in transforming images of nation-building and historical understanding of the October 1917 Russian revolution in prescribed history textbooks in the Russian Federation (RF). Using discourse analysis, and historiography, the article examines critically the role of language and ideology in presenting historical narratives in explaining how do representations of the revolution by different historians, from diverse ideological backgrounds, compared to the depiction of the October Revolution of 1917, in Russian school textbooks. Classroom teachers and historians, using historiography, interpret the 1917 October revolution in Russia in different ways. These different interpretations reflect the way in which historical understanding and historical knowledge, influenced by dominant ideologies, are created in history. Current prescribed Russian history textbooks for senior secondary students, which are approved by the Ministry of Education and Science, now regard the Russian Revolution as a significant part of a foundation narrative, representing a re-invented new meta-narrative of nation-building in the RF.

Post-absolutist Transformations in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

2019 ◽  
pp. 243-257
Author(s):  
Raj Kollmorgen
Keyword(s):  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Long Term Outcomes ◽  
Social Models ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Societal Context ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Key Dimensions

Post-absolutist transformations are disruptive, accelerated, radical, and politically controlled modernization projects in Asian and Eastern European societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with reference to successful social models in the context of global hegemonies. After delineating the world-societal context, this chapter deals with the so-called Meiji Ishin, i.e., the social restoration and renewal under Emperor Mutsuhito in Japan (1868–1912), that represents the earliest and in a way paradigmatic case of this historical wave and subtype of imitative societal transformations. Then four further post-absolutist transformation ventures are briefly described and discussed: the Iranian case (1907–41), the Russian Revolution (1905–7), the Turkish transformation (1908–38/46), and the short Chinese upheaval (1911–12). The chapter concludes with a comparative and typological summary discussing key dimensions and factors in shaping post-absolutist transformations and their long-term outcomes.

Lenin, Vladimir (1870–1924)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent P. Pecora
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Communist Manifesto ◽  
Communist State ◽  
The World ◽  
Friedrich Engels ◽  
Proletarian Revolution ◽  
Basic Ideas

Vladimir Lenin (born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) was the most prominent figure in the translation of Marxist political economy and theories of proletarian revolution into successful practice. Marxism-Leninism was the first theoretical program of the first existing revolutionary communist state, put into effect between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Lenin’s death in 1924, and became a model for subsequent communist parties and revolutions around the world. Lenin’s communist ideals were formed as a young man; he participated in earlier failed uprisings in Russia in 1902 and 1905, and lived much of his life in exile. Lenin’s fundamental contributions to Marx’s basic ideas about the inevitable decline of capitalism, as articulated in Das Kapital (1867), and about the development and triumph of a proletarian dictatorship in the service of the destruction of bourgeois state, in The Communist Manifesto (1848) written with Friedrich Engels, were twofold.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Foley
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The World ◽  
American Poet ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Political Radicalism

This introductory chapter proposes that African American poet Jean Toomer's 1923 masterwork (Cane) cannot be understood apart from the upsurge of postwar antiracist political radicalism and its aftermath. Toomer does not enthuse about America as the site of cultural pluralism or future racial amalgamation; rather, it is victory in the class struggle against capitalism and imperialism that will put an end to racial division. The violent class struggles that signaled 1919 as a possible revolutionary conjuncture, coupled with the compensatory ideological paradigms adopted by various political actors and cultural producers as insurgency devolved into quietism, supply not just the context, but the formative matrix, from which Toomer's text emerged. The expectations and desires that were aroused and then quashed in the wake of the Great War and the Russian Revolution constitute a spectre haunting the world of Cane.

A REVOLUÇÃO RUSSA NO BRASIL: o imaginário e cultura polá­tica da imprensa anarquista (1917)

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (27) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
LEANDRO RIBEIRO GOMES
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Socialist Revolution ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
The Media ◽  
Political Imaginary ◽  
Medios De Comunicacion

 O presente artigo tem por objetivo analisar as repercussões da Revolução Russa na imprensa operária anarquista do Brasil. As formas como foram representados os eventos russos em nossa imprensa operária, assim como os aspectos que tomaram o imaginário polá­tico anarquista brasileiro com esta revolução e o comportamento da cultura polá­tica operária a ela vinculada são o foco do nosso artigo. As especificidades dos meios de comunicação do perá­odo e as lutas polá­ticas que ocorriam no paá­s moldaram, de certa maneira, os contornos de como era vista e interpretada a revolução socialista da Rússia nos cá­rculos que mais imediatamente se interessavam por ela: o movimento operário.  Palavras-chave: Revolução Russa. Imprensa operária. Imaginário politico.THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN BRAZIL: the imaginary and political culture of the anarchist press (1917)Abstract: This article aims to analyze the repercussions of the Russian Revolution on the Brazilian anarchist working press. The ways in which the Russian events were represented in our working press, as well as the aspects that took over the Brazilian anarchist political imaginary with this revolution, and the behavior of the workers' political culture linked to it are the focus of our article. The specificities of the media from that period and the political struggles that took place in the country shaped, in a way, the contours of how the socialist revolution of Russia was seen and interpreted in the circles that were most immediately interested by it: the labor movement. Keywords: Russian Revolution. Labor press. Political imaginary.  LA REVOLUCIÓN RUSA EN BRASIL: el imaginario y cultura polá­tica de la prensa anarquista (1917)Resumen:  El presente artá­culo tiene por objetivo analizar las repercusiones de la Revolución Rusa en la prensa obrera anarquista de Brasil. Las formas como fueron representados los eventos rusos en nuestra prensa obrera, asá­ como los aspectos que tomaron el imaginario polá­tico anarquista brasileño con esta revolución y el comportamiento de la cultura polá­tica obrera vinculada a ella son el foco de nuestro artá­culo. Las especificidades de los medios de comunicación del perá­odo y las luchas polá­ticas que ocurrá­an en el paá­s moldearon de cierta manera los contornos de cómo era vista e interpretada la revolución socialista de Rusia en los cá­rculos que más inmediatamente se interesaban por ella: el movimiento obrero.Palabras clave:  Revolución rusa. Prensa obrera. Imaginario polá­tico.    

One Hundred Years, One Hundred Messages

2017 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Tamás Krausz
Keyword(s):  
Russian Revolution ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
The World

The fundamental humanist values of the Russian Revolution still capture the imagination. As an experience of history and a methodology for transforming the world into a community, the revolution's legacy has persisted far beyond the failed experiment of state socialism itself.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

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