The politics of national history: Russia's ruling elite and the centenary of 1917

Ryan, James ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8296-234X 2024. The politics of national history: Russia's ruling elite and the centenary of 1917. Leonard, Carol S., Orlovsky, Dan and Petrov, Jurej, eds. The Russian Revolution of 1917: Memory and Legacy, BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies, New York and Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 51-72. (10.4324/9780429053122-8) Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

For a ruling elite thoroughly hostile to the very idea of revolution, the centenary of 1917 was not a welcome distraction for Russia’s powerful incumbents. At the same time, it was too significant to ignore. This chapter examines how Russia’s rulers navigated this conundrum, and what we can learn about their approach to historical representation. Was the centenary merely a tricky occasion for Moscow to manage? Or was there any political capital to be gained from it? The argument here is that there was a deliberate ambiguity in the “official” commemoration of the Russian Revolution and the birth of the Soviet state. This ambiguity stemmed not only from the later Soviet triumph over the Nazi invader, or from the post-war geopolitical might of the USSR, but from a confusing combination of imperial fantasy and pride in the historically progressive and global influence of Soviet socialism. Through a reading of the country’s modern history that stresses the importance of a strong state and an overarching historical continuity, both the Russian Revolution and the subsequent course of Soviet power have been integrated into the Putin regime’s preferred national historical narrative.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > History, Archaeology and Religion
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DK Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics
Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	978-0367146917
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	2 March 2023
Last Modified:	20 Oct 2025 16:02
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/155820

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