MUST READ
Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, The White Guard: In his book, Bulgakov portrayed his complex, pessimistic view of the revolutionary age. In this loosely autobiographical work, he describes his native city Kiev in the grip of the 1918-1919 Civil War, as experienced by White Guard officers from a cultured family. They try to preserve their old way of life as their familiar world crumbles and they are caught up in wider events. Bulgakov depicts the death of Christian culture and the destruction of the educated social class to which the author and his characters belong. All that can save a world teetering on the edge of the abyss is love: love for your fellow man, family, home and country.
Alexander Blok’s poem, The Twelve: Blok portrays the Russian Revolution as an apocalypse. Petrograd, as St. Petersburg was known in the period 1914-1924, has been half destroyed; devastation and hunger roam its streets, with robberies and shootings commonplace. However, Blok welcomes and justifies the collapse of the old order and the triumph of the “new revolutionary forces”.
Maxim Gorky’s poem, The Song of the Stormy Petrel: Gorky was inspired by the 1905 Revolution but felt that the October Revolution of 1917 was premature. He described it as a dangerous experiment, later describing all its horrors in a series of articles entitled Untimely Thoughts. Gorky emigrated to Europe in 1921, but he returned to the Soviet Union in 1932 at the government’s invitation. On his return, he endorsed Stalin’s policies and wrote enthusiastically about the achievements of the Soviet system while saying nothing of the purges.
Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel, And Quiet Flows the Don: Sholokhov, who grew up on a Cossack farm, describes the tragic consequences of the revolution and civil war for the Don Cossacks as a whole, as well as every individual family caught in the “millstones of history”. Sholokhov himself welcomed Soviet power and espoused rather conservative Communist politics, but he did not shy away from showing the negative sides of the revolutionary years too. He wrote less and less as he got older, eventually moving away from literary work entirely.
MUST SEE
October: Ten Days That Shook the World, 1927: This film is the final part of director Sergei Eisenstein’s trilogy, the title taken from the book by American socialist-journalist John Reed. Eisenstein famously said the revolution had “given him the most precious of all things: It made me an artist.” The revolutionary triptych began with his debut, Strike, and continued with Battleship Potemkin about a sailors’ rebellion in 1905. October is the cinemograph quintessence of the revolution, from the toppling of Tsar Nicholas II to lenin’s speech declaring the victory of the revolution.
Chapaev, 1934: This is an adventure film by the Vasiliev brothers about self-sacrificing Red Army commander Vasily Chapaev, who with his friends Petka and Anka, fought the White Guard. The heroic tale of Chapaev was a sensation, adored by viewers and critics, and received a prize at the first Moscow Film Festival. It was also highly esteemed by Stalin and is wildly popular even today; Russian President Vladimir Putin says it’s his favorite film.
lenin in October, 1937: Shot 20 years after the revolution, Mikhail Romm’s film concentrates on the personality of Vladimir lenin — a funny neurotic before turning out to be the genius of the revolution. In the opinion of his contemporaries, actor Boris Schukin played the revolution’s leader so virtuously that viewers stood up and applauded when he appeared on screen — it was as if they were standing in front of lenin himself.
The Flight, 1970: Having participated in the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, Alexander Alov and Vladimir Naumov’s film depicts the radical rupture of moral and ethical values that occurred during the revolution, as well as the difficulties of immigration and the lost role of the intelligentsia in the Soviet era.
THE FEMAlE PRINCIPlE
Catherine Breshkovsky: Her age no barrier, 73-year-old Breshkovsky managed to play an influential hand in the events leading up to the 1917 uprising. Though she came to be known as the ‘little grandmother (Babushka) of the Revolution’ she actually supported the provisional Government and hated the Bolsheviks, urging the masses to slaughter them like “wild dogs.” Breshkovsky was so upset by the October Revolution that she emigrated from Russia.
Maria Spiridonova: She is remembered as one of the Russian Revolution’s most prominent figures. She belonged to the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party and spent most of her life in exile and prison — under both the Tsarist and Soviet regimes. Due to her unyielding willpower she was known as the ‘Blessed Virgin of SR’. She did not approve of Bolshevik methods but understood people followed them so she supported the alliance between two the parties when the Bolsheviks took power.
Alexandra Kollontai: Kollontai was of noble descent and she was a member of the Bolsheviks from the beginning. She is most famous for her feminist views and as a proponent of free love. She became the first female minister in history; in the Cabinet formed by the Bolsheviks following the overthrow of the provisional government in October 1917 she was given the post of welfare minister. Although she didn’t hold the position for long, she did manage to improve women’s rights in Russia. For her endless energy and passion, she was dubbed the “Valkyrie of the Revolution.”
DATING THE REVOlUTION
The notion of the October Revolution actually taking place in November (and the February Revolution in March) blows people’s minds — and not just foreigners. This was due to a different way of determining dates. Until 1918, Russia used the Julian calendar, which lagged behind the commonly used Gregorian calendar by two weeks. One of the first things the Bolsheviks did after seizing power was to abolish the use of the Julian calendar. Unlike many of their initiatives, this one brought happiness and comfort to all Russians.
THEY AlSO SERVED…
Apart from lenin, there were a lot of other interesting personalities among the Bolsheviks who were a part of the Revolution. leon Trotsky was as important to the party as lenin in 1917. later, he went on to create the Red Army that helped the communists win the Russian Civil War. However, he ended his days in exile after being forced to flee the USSR after losing a power struggle with Stalin and died in 1940 in Mexico from injuries after an attack on him suspected to have been organized by the Stalinist regime.
Nadezhda Krupskaya, lenin’s spouse, was also an important revolutionary. She maintained her loyalty to lenin, and Marxism, through her entire life and helped her husband enormously despite being jealous of his affair with another revolutionary, Inessa Armand.
(Compiled by Shreya Kedia, Senior Assistant Editor, Edit-Oped, The Pioneer)