“The Comintern was founded on this day in 1919 to carry revolution around the world. We are only now recovering from the legacy of its failure.”
Tag: Russian Revolution
Samuel Farber: “The Russian Revolution Reconsidered”
“S. A. Smith’s book Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis 1890-1928 … sets out to explain how the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, inspired by a radical democratic and egalitarian spirit, degenerated into the Stalinist totalitarian regime.”
Paula Erizanu: “The Revolutionary Sex”
“For one shining moment, being a Russian woman meant sexual freedom and radical equality. Never seen before – or since.”
“October! The Soviet Centenary”
South Atlantic Quarterly 116: 4 (October 2017), Hardt & Mezzadra, eds.
“Revolution Every Day” at Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art
The exhibition “juxtaposes works of Soviet graphic art—primarily posters from the 1920s and 1930s—with works on video and film.”
Stephen Lovell: “The great error”
Yuri Slezkine’s argument in The House of Government: A saga of the Russian Revolution is that ‘the Bolsheviks were not a party but an apocalyptic sect. In an extended essay on comparative religion …, he puts Russia’s victorious revolutionaries in a long line of millenarians extending back to the ancient Israelites; in their “totalitarian” demands…
Bhaskar Sunkara: “The Few who Won”
“Yet both the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks were wrong in 1917. The Mensheviks’ faith in Russian liberals was misplaced, as were the Bolsheviks’ hopes for world revolution and an easy leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. The Bolsheviks, having seen over ten million killed in a capitalist war, and living…
Jonathan Smele: “Russian Revolution Reading List”
5 books, with descriptions
Youssef El-Gingihy: “100 years on from the Russian Revolution, could a 21st century revolt bring about the end of capitalism?”
“Since 1917, countless social movements have taken their cue from this momentous uprising, and its lasting impact on the world may yet to be felt fully.”
Henry Farrell: “Revolutionary Possibility”
“The theme of revolution and what it means runs through China Miéville’s work — especially his Iron Council, which is fantasy, and Embassytown, which is science fiction. With October, these novels form a revolutionary triptych, asking what revolution involves and how one can describe a revolution which would by definition be so radical that its…