Memory of the Revolution as a trauma inflicted on contemporary social conscience in Russia

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-229
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Social Conscience ◽  
Video Footage ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historic Memory ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Revolution

AbstractMany painful ideological problems existing in contemporary Russia are determined by the inadequacy of perception of the country's revolutionary past. This misperception stems from both the consequences of the decades-long mythologization of the October Revolution and its leaders and from the more recent attempts to get rid of the dependence on Bolshevik propaganda. Contemporary historic memory in Russia is beset with one major contradiction: the desire to part with the myth, and the inability to do so. Although, traditionally, images of the past are usually adapted in order to suit the needs of modernity, this task has become much easier in contemporary society with its powerful mass media fitted with visual networks. Historic memory, previously shaped by legends, folklore, rites and rituals, now comes under relentless fire from the dilettantes pretending to have discovered some "true" vision of the past, and illustrating this vision by incongruous video footage. As a result, images of the past inevitably lose their former edifying role and become a means of inculcation by propagating political and moral stereotypes advantageous to the authorities. The wave of discussions on the Russian Revolution, which rose in connection with its current anniversary, was yet another indication that today's ideologists, with their inept denunciations, are only aggravating the trauma inflicted on social conscience.

scholarly journals The Meaning of Memory in Bunin and Hippius

Literatūra ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-53
Author(s):  
Svetozar Poštić
Keyword(s):  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Spiritual Orientation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Revolution

This paper illustrates the meaning of memory by the fate and change in spiritual orientation of Ivan Bunin and Zinaida Hippius, two prominent literary figures of the late tsarist Russia and interbellum émigré Paris. Most importantly, it examines the post-revolutionary transformation of values and reconciliation with external circumstances and internal afflictions of these two writers. The significance of memory becomes prominent in Bunin after his realization of the tragic and frightening consequences of the revolution, which results in his turn to the past as the source of tranquility and comfort. Hippius’s diaries and poetry, especially after her husband’s death, also show her turn toward eternal values and away from the hitherto paramount terrestrial, fleeting aspirations. The oeuvres of both writers are placed in the context of pre-revolutionary orientation towards the past that is contrary to the modernist shift to the future, which announced and precipitated the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Teaching a Course in International Terrorism

1982 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 6-7
Author(s):  
Stephen Sloan
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Mass Media ◽  
The Revolution

While the resort to terror is as old as recorded history, the start of the age of modern terrorism may be exemplified by the horrors of the Munich Massacre in 1972. During that tragedy a small dedicated group of terrorists were able through the mass media to seize the world's headlines and spread a message of fear and intimidation to a global audience. The revolution in communications coupled with the introduction of commercial jet aircraft enabled the modern practitioners of terrorism to strike at targets of opportunity on an international basis. This capacity was not shared by even the most committed terrorist of the past.Within the discipline of political science, terrorism until the 70's was largely studied under the areas of war and revolution along with the growing field of comparative political violence, international terrorism was not studied as an individual subject until Munich, when the countless skyjackings, bombings and assassinations served to underscore that contemporary terrorism had indeed become “A New Mode of Conflict.“

Pokrovskii's View of the Russian Revolution

Slavic Review ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-84
Author(s):  
Roman Szporluk
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Coherent Picture ◽  
The Revolution

Pokrovskii never wrote the three final volumes of Russkaia istoriia s drevneishkikh vremen that were to carry his synthesis from the eve of 1905 to October 1917; and his postrevolutionary survey of Russian history failed to include the October Revolution. On the basis of his articles and lectures, however, it is possible to present a coherent picture of his ideas on the roots, significance, and prospects of the Russian Revolution. This article is concerned with the long-range issues involved in Pokrovskii's evaluation of the Revolution, though he also wrote a great deal on the immediate causes and the actual course of events between 1905 and 1917 and on the subsequent civil war.

scholarly journals "What does it have to do with us?" – Rethinking the Russian Revolution in Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-25
Author(s):  
Andreas Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
Russian History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
Full Century ◽  
The Revolution

The author reviews exhibitions and recent publications in Germany which commemorate the centennial of the October Revolution 1917. After a full century of research there is little left of glory and heroism that had been present at the dawn of the »Great Socialist October Revolution«. A de-mystification has taken place which relocates the proclaimed »World Revolution« into the frame of Russian history. But this nationalization of the revolution tends to marginalize the global effects of the Red October, especially when the Bolshevik seizure of power is simply explained as a successful effort to transform anarchy into an organised regime of terror practised by a determined and self-sacrificing Avantgarde. While the totalitarian approach neglects the social origins of the Revolution, recent cultural studies emphasise contingent factors downrating revolutionary uprisings as an escalation of civil war in contaminated »landscapes of violence«. Leaving behind such entire explanations and grand designs, the second part of this paper wants to draw attention to the enduring structural changes which the Russian Revolution caused in post-war Europe. The author concentrates his arguments on three levels, beginning with the political institutions, secondly, the economic and social order, and thirdly, the demographic change.

Imagining Mary Magdalene

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Jodie Eichler-Levine
Keyword(s):  
Comic Books ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
Mary Magdalene ◽  
The Past ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Do So

In this article I analyze how Americans draw upon the authority of both ancient, so-called “hidden” texts and the authority of scholarly discourse, even overtly fictional scholarly discourse, in their imaginings of the “re-discovered” figure of Mary Magdalene. Reading recent treatments of Mary Magdalene provides me with an entrance onto three topics: how Americans see and use the past, how Americans understand knowledge itself, and how Americans construct “religion” and “spirituality.” I do so through close studies of contemporary websites of communities that focus on Mary Magdalene, as well as examinations of relevant books, historical novels, reader reviews, and comic books. Focusing on Mary Magdalene alongside tropes of wisdom also uncovers the gendered dynamics at play in constructions of antiquity, knowledge, and religious accessibility.

Pakistan’s Development: Successes, Failures, and Future Tasks (Presidential Remarks)

1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (4I) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
Sarfraz Khan Qureshi
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
General Meeting ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Golden Jubilee ◽  
Freedom Movement ◽  
Past Half ◽  
Do So

It is an honour for me as President of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists to welcome you to the 13th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Society. I consider it a great privilege to do so as this Meeting coincides with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the state of Pakistan, a state which emerged on the map of the postwar world as a result of the Muslim freedom movement in the Indian Subcontinent. Fifty years to the date, we have been jubilant about it, and both as citizens of Pakistan and professionals in the social sciences we have also been thoughtful about it. We are trying to see what development has meant in Pakistan in the past half century. As there are so many dimensions that the subject has now come to have since its rather simplistic beginnings, we thought the Golden Jubilee of Pakistan to be an appropriate occasion for such stock-taking.

Writing Women into the Russian Revolution of 1917

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 214-231
Author(s):  
Adele Lindenmeyr
Keyword(s):  
Labor Force ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
Participation Of Women ◽  
Women’S History ◽  
The Revolution

Abstract While scholarship on Russian women’s history has flourished in recent decades, the participation of women in the 1917 Revolution continues to be under-researched and poorly understood. This article explores various reasons for the marginalization of women in studies of the revolution. It reviews promising recent research that recovers women’s experiences and voices, including work on women in the wartime labor force and soldiers’ wives, and argues for the usefulness of a feminist and gendered approach to studying 1917.

Performing States-Of-In-Between: Dogs, Parrots, and Other Humans in Recent Austrian Performances

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-310
Author(s):  
Sabine Wilke
Keyword(s):  
Fine Arts ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Dramatic Effect ◽  
The Past ◽  
Violent Content ◽  
The World ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
Recent Developments

Every late spring since 1951, the Wiener Festwochen bring performers from around the world to Vienna for an opportunity to share recent developments in performance styles and present them to a Viennese public that seems to be increasingly open to experimentation. These festival weeks solidify a specific form of Viennese self-understanding and self-representation as a culture that is rooted in performance. This essay seeks to link two recent Austrian performances—one of them was part of the Wiener Festwochen in 2016, the other was staged in downtown Linz during the past few years—to this Austrian and specifically Viennese culture of performance by reading them as contemporary articulations of a tradition of radical performance art that can be traced back to the Viennese Actionism of the sixties and later feminist articulations in the seventies and eighties. They play on the dramatic effect of these actions, specifically their joy in cruelty, chaos, and orgiastic intoxication, by staging regressions and thus making visible what has been dammed up and repressed in contemporary society.1 Just as their historical models, these two performances merge the performing and the fine arts and they highlight provocative, controversial, and, at times, violent content. But they do it in an interspecies context that adds an entire layer of complexity to the project of societal and cultural critique.

Other People's Struggles

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Owen
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
British History ◽  
Original Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Do So

Other People’s Struggles is the first attempt in over forty years to explain the place of “conscience constituents” in social movements. Conscience constituents are people who participate in a movement but do not stand to benefit if it succeeds. Why do such people participate when they do not stand to benefit? Why are they sometimes present and sometimes absent in social movements? Why and when is their participation welcome to those who do stand to benefit, and why and when is it not? The work proposes an original theory to answer these questions, crossing discipline boundaries to draw on the findings of social psychology, philosophy, and normative political theory, in search of explanations of why people act altruistically and what it means to others when they do so. The theory is illustrated by examples from British history, including the antislavery movement, the women’s suffrage and liberation movements, labor and socialist movements, anticolonial movements, antipoverty movements, and movements for global justice. Other People’s Struggles also contributes to new debates concerning the rights and wrongs of “speaking for others.” Debates concerning the limits of solidarity—who can be an “ally” and on what terms—have become very topical in contemporary politics, especially in identity politics and in the new “populist” movements. The book provides a theoretical and empirical account of how these questions have been addressed in the past and how they might be framed today.

‘Higher then to her no bookes doe reach’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Vandrei
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
James I ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
Classical World ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Do So

This chapter and the following both draw the reader into seventeenth-century understandings of the past, and of Boudica in particular, and makes clear that in a time before disciplines, writers of ‘history’ were erudite commentators, immersed in political thought, the classical world, and contemporary ideas, as well as in drama, poetry, and the law. Chapter 1 shows the subtleties of Boudica’s place in history at this early stage by giving sustained attention to the work of Edmund Bolton (1574/5–c.1634), the first person to analyse the written and material evidence for Boudica’s deeds, and the last to do so in depth before the later nineteenth century. Bolton’s distaste for contemporary philosophy and his loyalty to James I were highly influential in determining the way the antiquary approached Boudica and her rebellion; but equally important was Bolton’s deep understanding of historical method and the strictures this placed on his interpretive latitude.

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