The 1917 revolution in Russia was a complex and tragic event that also opened the possibility of creating a new country, the Soviet Union. Considering its importance to Russian history, it seems curious that the centennial of the revolution was not celebrated in Russia. Indeed, even today, thirty years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russians remain divided in their interpretation of the revolution. Was it inevitable? Was it forced on the people? Was it tragic to the nation? Or rather, was it a generative event? In Revolutionary Aftereffects, editor Megan Swift and her collaborators examine the legacies of 1917 in contemporary Russia.
In the first chapter, Swift deals with the absence of state commemorative practices around the 1917 centennial. To fill up the blank space of memory, left by this controversial yet cornerstone event of Russia’s national past, a complex series of mnemonic substitutions were created, including two state monuments to the victims of Stalinist repression. However, instead of paying tribute to the victims of a mass terror, these memorials present Stalinist repression as a religious persecution of Orthodox believers. In general, the author demonstrates how under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, anniversary celebrations follow the same pattern as mass Soviet-style holiday demonstrations, but also selectively revive the past in order to remodel national history for political and patriotic purposes.
Russian spaces of memory are also addressed in Maria Silina’s chapter. She examines memorialization of the revolution in urban spaces, memorials, and place names that used to be markers of revolutionary memory but have become partly or entirely detached from their origins. These markers still play a significant role in urban development strategies because they are used to glamorize certain renovated neighborhoods and landmarks in order to increase tourist presence and consumption of spaces and symbols of memory. In many cases, the new imagined sites of memory are decontextualized, reshaped, and renuanced to become shrines of a pre-revolutionary aristocratic lifestyle mixed with great Soviet heroism. Silina accurately demonstrates how Russian cities are chaotic and unique spaces of complex, self-contradictory, and often misleading memories.
Urban spaces remain important sites of the Russian avant-garde, an artistic movement tightly linked to the revolution. As Julie Deschepper argues, avant-garde architecture was aesthetically, conceptually, and politically revolutionary. While it remains an important part of the cultural heritage of the revolution and of world architecture, in Russia it is still not considered part of the national heritage worth restoring and preserving because of its close link to a controversial and ambiguous attitude towards the October Revolution. Despite this, in the mid and late 2000s, it became the object of renewed interest from grass-root movements in different hipster and youth communities whose goal is to protect and enhance constructivist heritage in Russia. Deschepper’s study demonstrates how avant-garde architecture can contribute to a better understanding of today’s memorialization of 1917.
The Bolshevik revolution also impacted gender relations and paved the way for gender-progressive legislation and attitudes. However, as Jennifer Utrata argues, this new life retained some of the past traditional norms, such as the expectation that women work a daytime paid job and complete an unpaid “second shift” at home (taking care of the household). A century later, this social contradiction still exists and influences gender relationships, leading to a high rate divorce, normalization of single motherhood, and marginalized fatherhood. Utrata discusses women’s rights and repressed feminism in Putin’s Russia, and ultimately proves that the “stalled gender revolution” has been an ongoing unresolved social legacy in Russia since 1917.
Another contemporary social issue discussed by David G. Anderson is the concept of ethnos. The term was initiated after the revolution and is anchored in a biological definition of a collective identity based on a common language, shared tradition, psychology, and physiognomic attributes (141). This concept is problematic because it legitimates the imperialist perception that Russian culture is superior to others within the federation. As Putin pushes for the militarization of the concept, it also justifies Russia’s military intervention in countries like Ukraine to protect “the very existence of the Russian people […] as an ethnos” (140). Anderson exposes how contemporary nationalist discourse, narratives of power, and Russian ethnic governance remain highly influenced by revolutionary ideology.
Nature can equally serve political and nationalistic agendas. As Michael W. Trip argues, Russia’s natural areas’ protection and support started after 1917. In Putin’s Russia, national parks are still created and enlarged in order to preserve nature. However, the choice of new sites of protected areas near the borders–including four parks in the Arctic, two in Karelia, and one bordering Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China – is used strategically to proclaim territorial hegemony and to reclaim land and maritime territories. Furthermore, this is a way to “proclaim dubious extensions of national sovereignty” (172), as seen in the example of the Tarkhankut National Park in Crimea, created the same year as Russia’s annexation of the peninsula. Trip shows how ideology continues to contribute to shaping landscapes and land use.
Ideology and residues of 1917 tainted art production and literature as well. Elena V. Baraban explores heroism and the revolution in the literary works of bestselling author Grigori Chkhartishvili (b. 1956). She analyses the re-evaluation of the Bolshevik past in the figure of the hero/anti-hero and his actions. Her deep analysis of Chkhartishvili’s detective novels unveils how his most famous character, Erast Fandorin, embodies the contemporary ambivalent and confusing response to 1917. According to Baraban, the books depict the revolution as an opportunity for personal growth.
Finally, the last chapter deals with the representation of revolutionary violence in Russian cinema and television productions from the 1960s until today. Mark Lipovetsky shows that the civil war narrative was reinvented to avoid showing audiences the extent of its violence. For example, on the screen, revolutionary violence became theoretical and only existed in discourses. Then, the civil war was complexified into a struggle between moral and immoral people regardless of their political affiliation. Finally, it was either minimized or glamorized to fit national contemporary discourse about the revolution. Lipovetsky argues that this reconceptualization of 1917 allowed for the emancipation of new generations from the Stalinist past and reflects the traumatic nature of the revolution for Russians.
In the end, Swift provides a well-balanced publication that offers a variety of perspectives on the residues of 1917, and an excellent resource to better understand contemporary Russia. The book sets the basis for grasping the complex interconnections between past and present ideological discourses and how a national past can be shaped and distorted by commemorative practices. By unveiling the changing nature of collective memory, Revolutionary Aftereffects addresses the ambivalent choice of remembering or forgetting the past and how we choose to do so.
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[Review length: 1,111 words • Review posted on October 2, 2023]