No source, born digital.
Contributions to Contemporary History is one of the central Slovenian scientific historiographic journals, dedicated to publishing articles from the field of contemporary history (the 19th and 20th century).
The journal is published three times per year in Slovenian and in the following foreign languages: English, German, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Italian, Slovak and Czech. The articles are all published with abstracts in English and Slovenian as well as summaries in English.
Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino je ena osrednjih slovenskih znanstvenih zgodovinopisnih revij, ki objavlja teme s področja novejše zgodovine (19. in 20. stoletje).
Revija izide trikrat letno v slovenskem jeziku in v naslednjih tujih jezikih: angleščina, nemščina, srbščina, hrvaščina, bosanščina, italijanščina, slovaščina in češčina. Članki izhajajo z izvlečki v angleščini in slovenščini ter povzetki v angleščini.
Letos mineva 100 let od ruskih revolucij leta 1917 (februarja
in oktobra), ki so s svojimi daljnosežnimi posledicami pretresle svet. Del
zgodovine revolucije je nedvomno tudi spreminjajoč pogled nanjo, zato si ga
velja podrobneje pogledati, saj bomo le tako bolje razumeli njene globalne
učinke in osmišljali današnja in prihodnja politična stališča. V prispevku
je pregledno predstavljena spreminjajoča se globalna perspektiva ruskih
revolucij v kratkem dvajsetem stoletju, v katero je umeščen slovenski
prostor.
Ključne besede: Oktobrska revolucija, Rusija, stota obletnica,
20. stoletje, Slovenija
This year we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Russian
Revolutions (of February and October), which shook the world with their
far-reaching consequences. The changing outlook on the Revolution by all
means represents a part of its history, and therefore it has to be examined
more closely, as this is the only way to understand the Revolution's global
impact as well as give meaning to the current and future political
standpoints. The contribution presents an overview of the changing global
perspective of the Russian Revolutions in the short 20th century and the
Slovenian space within it.
Keywords: October Revolution, Russia, 100th anniversary, 20 th
century, Slovenia
In 1967 one of the most influential European weekly newspapers – the German Spiegel – published a lengthy article entitled Ein halbes Jahrhundert nach Bronsteins
Geburtstags-Putch. Spiegel,
No. 43 (1967), 153–56.Spiegel's characteristic style: "A German cavalry officer (Rittmeister) lined up the Russian emigrants at the border
with Switzerland. They were counted at the railway platform in Gottmadingen. There
were 32 men. In April 1917 they rode a special train through Germany to Sassnitz and
through Sweden and Finland to Petrograd." In the continuation the article also
presented the now already legendary story of Lenin's journey home as well as the
subsequent events, which had already been put into words countless times by then
(including in the literary form, for example by Stefan Zweig). Zvezdni trenutki človeštva
(Celovec: Mohorjeva, 2004), 187–96. Original: Stefan Zweig, „The Miniature Der
Versiegelte Zug,“
in: Sternstunden der Menscheit.Spiegel wrote: "This was the 'Great Socialist October
Revolution'. In the communist countries – today these amount to one third of
humankind – this implies the birth of a new, better world and a new, better man...
When the Red Army soldiers erected their flag among the ruins of the Berlin
Reichstag, Russia became a global superpower, second to none other but the United
States of America. Nobody followed Karl Marx's teachings. The worker's democracy was
not established, and communism remained utopic. However, what did take shape was a
self-confident and ideologically-convinced industrial nation. The illiteracy and
mass poverty of the tsarist era were overcome. Millions of university graduates
built the new state-founding elite."
The revolution and the development of the Soviet empire at the time were
upsetting... Delo, 29. 10.
1967.New York Times deployed a special group of journalists, who
would travel around the enormous country for weeks and write about the consequences
of October 1917.The New York Times, 19. 2. 1967, 235.
Simultaneously, the Slovenian historiography prepared a large-scale symposium
entitled The 50th Anniversary of the October Revolution and the 30th Anniversary of
the Inaugural Congress of the Communist Party of Slovenia. The event was prominent
and prestigious in terms of its expert as well as political aspects, and the main
lectures were given by Boris Ziherl, Dušan Kermavner, and Janko Pleterski.Prispevki za
zgodovino delavskega gibanja publication [Contributions to the History
of the Workers' Movement] (today Prispevki za novejšo
zgodovino [Contributions to Contemporary History]. Prispevki za zgodovino delavskega gibanja VII, Nr. 1-2 (1967): Zbornik razprav in obravnav znanstvenega posvetovanja Ob 50.
obletnici oktobrske revolucije in ob 30. obletnici ustanovnega kongresa
Komunistične partije Slovenije v Ljubljani od 2. do 4. novembra
1967.no longer feasible."Prispevki
za zgodovino delavskega gibanja VII, Nr. 1-2 (1967): 9-19.
On that occasion, one of the parks in the Slovenian capital of
Ljubljana was named after Lenin, and special honour was paid to the 95
participants of the Russian Revolutions from Slovenia who were still alive at
the time. "Ljubljana je počastila
petdesetletnico Oktobra;" "Sprejem za udeležence Oktobra,"
In 1967, the global outlook on the Russian October definitely varied greatly (understandably depending on the political and bloc structure of the world). However, it had a few important common points: nobody denied or disregarded the significance of the event that had taken place fifty years earlier. The Russian Revolution captured the attention of states, intellectuals, and the public. The conviction that Russia and a part of the world had no longer been the same after October 1917 prevailed: the "old ways" had in fact become untenable.
Let us now first move (almost) fifty years back, to the time (immediately) after the
revolution, and then fifty years forward, to today's time. In these one hundred
years the world has changed thoroughly, also because of the Revolution, and together
with the world the outlook on the Revolution has changed as well. As
it is, the changing outlook on the October Revolution by all means represents a
part of the history of the Revolution, and therefore it has to be examined more
closely, as this is the only way to understand the Revolution's global impact as
well as to give meaning to the current and future political
standpoints.
In 1924 – in the year of Lenin's death – contributions, commentaries, essays, and
discussions on the extraordinary role of this man and even more so on the global
importance of the developments taking place well over six years earlier, which Lenin
had famously organised, kept being published all around the world. The Viennese
newspapersNeue Freie Presse, 23. 1. 1924, 1. "Lenin," Arbeiterwille, 23. 1. 1924, 1.The New York Times, 27. 1. 1924,
XX3.Newspapers.com, accesed 5 July 2017,
https://www.newspapers.com/search/#lnd=1&query=russian+revolution&dr_year=1917-1919&t=395. The press would mostly establish
that "No statesman has ever had such an occasion to become a great benefactor of
his country as Lenin had, yet he left Russia in far worse condition than she was
when he became her absolute dictator."
Peter J. Popoff, "Lenin's Great Experiment; He Failed, and No One Else Is
Likely to Try Again,"
Numerous authors from the Slovenian territory contributed to the
massive collection of assessments as well. None of the political camps (neither
the liberal, Catholic, nor the Marxist side),Monitor ISH XVIII, Nr. 1
(2016): 7-31.
Why this was the case was already explained in the 1920s by one of
the most influential Yugoslav writers (and members of the forbidden Yugoslav
Communist Party), the Croatian Miroslav Krleža, who visited Russia in 1924. As
he deliberated on the importance of the Revolution, he pointed out a simple
fact: "The significance of the Revolution stems from its invaluable practical
importance. From numerous theoretical debates in the context of the First and
Second International and the First of May philistine social democratic
declamations that accompanied a mug of beer, and through the conflicts within
the Party and its fractions, the path towards an organised state government has
been long and hard." However, all these debates and theories suddenly had to
face the USSR as the proof that socialism had transcended theory and had been
put into practice. "On the basis of the speeches in the Assembly, the evening
Marxist school, and the newspaper editorial ... a reality had emerged,
consisting of coins, armoured warships, artillery, modern aviation, and
international diplomatic relations."Izlet u Rusiju (Zagreb: Novi Liber,
2013), 260, 261.
Of the Slovenian authors, Franc Terseglav, a representative of the
Christian socialists, asserted himself with his insightfulness and the synthetic
character of his reasoning. He wrote two lengthy texts about Lenin and the
Revolution. In the conclusion of the second text he presented an assessment
which can be deemed as an approximate common denominator of the Slovenian
opinions about the Russian Revolution. In Terseglav's view, Lenin "hastened the
end of the global massacre with the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty and motto War on
War! ... as well as set the basic guidelines for the future global development
by creating the will to achieve the future republic of all humankind, federation
of free nations, and parliament of all humanity. Without Lenin's powerful
thrust, Asia would never have come forward with the demand for
self-determination of its subjugated nations; Kemal's Turkey would not have
risen; and neither would the white man's slaves from the Pacific Ocean and
Mongolian steppes to the African deserts and American prairies have stood up and
demanded their freedom". He concluded his evaluation of Lenin and the Revolution
extremely optimistically, as he wrote that Lenin's pivotal role was not "to
bring about communism as a system – the embodiment of this German
intellectualist theory is what is in fact the least important: it is the least
durable and is purely experimental. Especially for Russia, Lenin has been most
important as a teacher of an entirely new generation."
At that time the Revolution had nothing to do with communism at all, they would write, but rather involved much more: the alteration (transformation) of humankind. It had opened unprecedented possibilities. In Slovenia, the Revolution was still seen as heralding a better future, while the American as well as many other media had already established that Lenin and his comrades had failed.
Such a position strengthened itself even further in the following
decade. At the tenth anniversary of the Russian October, the Time, 21. 11. 1927, 15–18.
In Slovenia, on the other hand, the following was established: "Under
the ingenious leadership of the diplomat Chicherin, Russia expanded its former
tsarist imperialism. Russia has introduced a novelty in the European diplomacy –
its diplomats are not merely its official representatives, but also
disseminators of Bolshevik ideas and protectors of local supporters. Through
Bolshevism, Russia undermined the world and incited revolutions in Bulgaria,
Hungary, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and partly also in Italy."Slovenec, 8. 11. 1927.
However, only a decade later the assessment of the events taking
place in Russia became much more critical – also in Slovenia. Towards the end of
the 1930s, the press established that communism was "merely utopic" and that the
Marxist doctrine was "unfeasible".Jutro, 9. 11.
1937.Slovenec, 7. 11. 1937.
After World War II, the assessment of the Russian October in Slovenia
and in the rest of Yugoslavia changed significantly. If before 1945 one could
follow numerous critical as well as positive evaluations of the Revolution, the
critical could no longer be found afterwards. The first period after the end of
the war was characterised exclusively by panegyrical praises and uncritical
glorifications. A partial change quite understandably took place after the 1948
Cominform dispute, although this, in its essence, had nothing to do with the
ideological aspects of the Russian October. Namely, the Yugoslav state and Party
ideology did not renounce the October Revolution. Quite the opposite: it
remained one of the fundamental elements of the system; it was presented in the
brightest possible light in the school textbooks;Toti list, 1. 3. 1952, 2.
The Cominform dispute was perhaps most evidently reflected in
historiography, which was not seriously interested in studying the 1917
events.Prispevki za
novejšo zgodovino XXVII, Nr. 1-2 (1987) : 3–6.Revolucionarni idejni preobrat med prvo svetovno vojno.
Lenin v boju za tretjo internacionalo (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva
založba, 1969). Boj za Leninovo dediščino (Ljubljana:
Mladinska knjiga, 1976). Carizem, revolucija, stalinizem.
Družbeni razvoj v Rusiji in perspektive socializma (Ljubljana:
Cankarjeva založba, 1980). Korenine stalinizma in
negativne posledice kulta osebnosti (Ljubljana: Zavod SR Slovenije
za šolstvo,1980). Stalinov termidor (Ljubljana:
Cankarjeva založba, 1984).Delo – Sobotna priloga, 5. 11. 1977.
Naturally, the Yugoslav and Slovenian optics were completely
different from that in the West and in the United States of America, where the
Time, 17. 11. 1947, 33.
We can only guess what opinion the Slovenian people had of the
October Revolution, but judging from the fact that the basic elements of the
Russian October were also ingrained in the narrative of the Yugoslav Revolution
(Slovenija v Jugoslaviji, ed. Zdenko
Čepič (Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2015), 87–104.Slovensko javno mnenje 1968. [datoteka podatkov].
Ljubljana: Univerza v Ljubljani, Visoka šola za politične vede, Center za
raziskovanje javnega mnenja in množičnih komunikacij [izdelava], 1968
(Ljubljana: Univerza v Ljubljani, Fakulteta za družbene vede, Arhiv
družboslovnih podatkov [distribucija], 1999). Available at: Podatki o raziskavi Slovensko javno mnenje 1991/2,
http://www.adp.fdv.uni-lj.si/opisi/sjm912.xml.
Major changes in the attitude towards the Russian October on the global as well as
the Slovenian level took place towards the end of the 1980s, when the bipolar global
system became unstable. At the seventieth anniversary of the Revolution in 1987, a
big parade was organised in Moscow, as always. On this occasion the first man in the
state would traditionally speak, and this time it was the reformist Mikhail
Gorbachev who gave the speech. "The October Revolution is truly the shining hour of
humanity, its radiant dawn," Gorbachev said. "The October Revolution is a revolution
of the people and for the people, for every individual, for his emancipation and
development." However, in the continuation he did not forget to add: "The changes
taking place in the country today probably constitute the biggest step in developing
socialist democracy since the October revolution."The New York Times, 3. 11. 1987.Time, 19.
2. 1990.
It seems that this – the year 1990 – was the last year when the Russian October still enjoyed the reputation of a globally-important and epochal event. Afterwards its provocative power started waning. Today the Russian October thus appears to be "outdated", an ancient event whose consequences have already dissipated. In Slovenia and in the former Yugoslav countries barely anyone researches this event or even has an opinion about it.
How about Russia? At the symposium, organised by the Institute of Contemporary
History on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution on 26
October 2017 in Ljubljana, Alexander Semyonov, the director of the Centre for
Historical Research at St. Petersburg School of Social Sciences and Humanities,
commented mischievously: "Russian Government today is anti-revolutionary". Sam
Greene, the director of the Russia Institute at King's College London, expressed a
similar opinion: "The Russian government won't mark the 100th anniversary," he said.
"They are trying to construct a narrative of uninterrupted power and stability. So
something like 1917 is an uncomfortable fact that doesn't fit in with that."CNN, 18 January 2018, http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/08/europe/russian-revolution-100-years-putin/index.html.The Guardian,
17. 12. 2016,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/17/russia-1917-revolutions-legacy-lenin-putin.
While Europe was capable of coming together in order to commemorate the anniversary of World War II and the beginning of World War I, the 1917 events remain "forgotten". We can establish that the attitude towards the events that took place a century ago is certainly overshadowed by the current political developments, as it has, after all, always been – yet with one crucial difference: until the 1990s, the Revolution was everywhere seen as the beginning of something important (and great). This says a lot about the times we live in – as if the great opportunities, provided by the Revolution in the opinion of many of its observers, were finally exhausted in 1990.
If we were not historians but futurologists instead, we could assume that the time will come when the fascination with the 1989, 1990 and 1991 events will eventually disappear as well. All we have to wait for is the next Year of the People. After all, at the beginning of the 1990s the bipolar global system crumbled, which was something that many people in the West disliked; it was the time when the Soviet empire disintegrated, which was something that many people in the East disliked; and it was also when the Yugoslav socialist experiment came to an end, which is something that many people disliked (and still do) in Slovenia.
On the other hand, in Russia as well as in many places in the Western hemisphere,
historians are still interested in the October Revolution,Tragedija ljudstva. Ruska
revolucija 1891–1924 (Ljubljana: Modrijan, 2013). Original: Misliti o revoluciji: 100
let pozneje / Thinking About the Revolution: 100 Years Later. Povzetki /
Abstracts, ed. Mojca Šorn (Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino,
2017).Deset dni, ki so pretresli svet
(Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1951). Original: Ten Days That
Shook the World.Misliti o revoluciji: 100 let pozneje / Thinking About the Revolution: 100
Years Later. Povzetki / Abstracts, ed. Mojca Šorn (Ljubljana: Inštitut
za novejšo zgodovino, 2017), 7–10.Misliti o revoluciji: 100 let pozneje /
Thinking About the Revolution: 100 Years Later. Povzetki / Abstracts,
ed. Mojca Šorn (Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2017), 11–16.
I prepared this discussion in the early autumn of 2017 in the context of the
preparations for the conference Thinking about the Revolution: 100 Years After,
organised by the Institute of Contemporary History. At that time it appeared that
the anniversary of the Revolution would slip unnoticed by the Slovenian public and
(partly) also historiography, but as it turned out, numerous Slovenian media and
institutions nevertheless brought the anniversary of the Revolution to the public
attention. Quite a few academic events took place – conferences of various scopes
and levels (including the ones organised by the Institute of Contemporary History on
24 October in Ljubljana; by the University Library of Maribor and the Research
Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts on 7 November 2017 in Maribor;
and by Alma Mater Europaea – Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis in cooperation with
the
Russian Centre for Science and Culture on 19 October 2017 in Ljubljana).
Furthermore, in the autumn of 2017 a few discussions (for example by the Study Centre
for National Reconciliation on 6 November 2017) and various round tables (for
example by the Slovenia-Russia Society and the Miran Jarc library in Novo mesto on 8
November 2017) were organised. A new translation of Lenin's work Država in revolucija in drugi spisi iz
leta 1917 (Ljubljana: Studia Humanitatis, 2017). was published, the Institute of Contemporary History digitised John Reed's
book Ten Days That Shook the World,
Perhaps we can thus establish that the Russian October is still capable of attracting people's attention. The number of events and celebrations was actually not negligible at all, especially considering the fact that some anniversaries were completely overlooked in 2017 – for example the 110th anniversary of the universal suffrage in Austria (1907) and the anniversary of the strike in one of the largest Slovenian companies in the socialist period, Litostroj (1987), which played a pivotal role in the contemporaneous democratisation processes and led to the creation of a political party – the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia.
However, if we compare the public events and publications dedicated to the Russian
October with other historiographic subjects, we can confidently claim that the
anniversary was not one of the central historical topics in 2017. More importance
was given to the topics from the recent national history, especially the 100th
anniversary of the May Declaration (the declaration of the Yugoslav parliamentary
group in the Vienna parliament, which contained a demand to establish an independent
state body under the rule of the Habsburg dynasty). At the celebration that followed
the symposium, President of the Republic Borut Pahor gave a speech and Cardinal
Franc Rode held a mass. Furthermore, a documentary film was made about the
declaration and the president of the Yugoslav parliamentary group Anton
Korošec.Sledi časa, 18. 6. 2017, available at:
Other more publicly renowned historical events also included the 100th anniversary of
the death of one of the most prominent Slovenian politicians, thinkers and public
workers Janez Evangelist Krek, who was also called "the red socialist in a black
robe" due to his social programme and actions (the national television dedicated a
lengthy and partly live-action documentary film to him)RTV SLO, 8. 10. 2017, http://4d.rtvslo.si/arhiv/dokumentarni-filmi-in-oddaje-kulturno-umetniski-program/174495515.
Nevertheless it seems that the October Revolution no longer represents such a socially-momentous event as it used to. This fact is confirmed by the contributions of the aforementioned media – some of them merely summarised the events of that period, while others simply emphasised certain selected issues, for example the revolutionary violence. Only academic journals and events were – as expected – capable of offering a more comprehensive reflexion. With a tinge of cynicism we could perhaps conclude that the October Revolution has become a completely ordinary historical topic in Slovenia.
Med letoma 1917 in 1924 so po skoraj vsej zemeljski obli izhajali podlistki in komentarji o svetovnem pomenu dogajanja v Rusiji. Množičnemu ocenjevanju so se pridružili tudi številni pisci s slovenskega ozemlja. Želji, podati svojo oceno, se niso mogli upreti v nobenem političnem taboru (ne liberalnem, ne katoliškem, ne marksističnem), pri nobeni politični skupini. Tedaj sploh ni šlo za komunizem, so pisali, marveč za veliko več, za prekrajanje (preoblikovanje) človeka. Revolucija je odprla neslutene možnosti. Na Slovenskem so nanjo sprva zrli v pričakovanju boljšega (četudi zavedajoč se nevarnosti), konec tridesetih let pa se je ocena zaostrila. Časniki so ugotavljali, da je komunizem "le utopija", v slovenskem katoliškem političnem taboru so zapisali: "Rdeči paradiž na zemlji je v resnici ves rdeč – od prelite človeške krvi."
Po drugi svetovni vojni se je ocenjevanje ruskega oktobra v Sloveniji in nasploh v Jugoslaviji precej spremenilo. Če je pred letom 1945 opazovalec lahko spremljal številne kritične, a tudi pozitivne ocene revolucije, prvih odtlej ni bilo več najti. V prvem obdobju po koncu vojne so prevladovale le panegirične hvalnice in nekritični hvalospevi. Po sporu z Informbirojem leta 1948 je nato razumljivo prišlo do delnega preobrata, ki pa v bistvu ni zadeval idejnih prvin ruskega Oktobra. Jugoslovanska državna in partijska ideologija se namreč oktobrski revoluciji nista odrekli. Ta je ostajala eden od fundamentov sistema.
Do večjih sprememb v odnosu do ruskega Oktobra tako na globalni kot na slovenski ravni je prišlo konec osemdesetih let, ko se je zamajala bipolarna ureditev sveta.
Njegova izzivalna moč je nato začela zginevati. Ruski oktober danes tako deluje "včerajšnje", kot daven dogodek, čigar posledice so se že razblinile. Kakor da so se velike možnosti, ki jih je po mnenju številnih opazovalcev odprla revolucija, z letom 1990 dokončno izčrpale.