A COMMEMORATION WITHOUT FANFARE

This month marked the centennial of Red October, the Russian Revolution that ended the czarist empire and laid the groundwork for the Soviet Union. The strange fact that Red October is commemorated in November (November 7^th to be precise) is due to the fact that, up to the time of the revolution, the Russian Empire still used the Gregorian calendar, instead of today’s Julian calendar, resulting in a 13-day gap.

Sparse crowds  view a centennial display in Moscow

Photo by Peter Kovalev/TASS

For those of us who can remember back to the height of the former Soviet Union’s power and what a typical anniversary of the 1917 communist revolution might have looked like back then, this year’s ceremonies marking the 100^th anniversary of the Russian Revolution couldn’t have been more anemic. There were no official events planned to recall—for better or worse—what was clearly a life-changing event in the history of Russia and, indeed, the world. In fact, President Vladimir Putin backed the holding of a somewhat counterrevolutionary military celebration to mark Russia’s victory over Fascism in World War II, purposely dodging any salute to Vladimir Lenin’s 1917 takeover of power—a second stage in a sort of political shell game that started with a popular revolt and ended up replacing a czarist autocracy with a Communist Party model ever run by yet another autocratic elite.

Czar Nicholas II

In point of fact, Czar Nicholas II was overthrown in March of 1917. He had been in power since 1894, and in those twenty-odd years, he had not only brought the Russian Empire to the verge of economic and military disaster but had also become known among his political opponents as “Nicholas the Bloody”. This was not only because of his involving the country in the ill-fated Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)—which cost Russia nearly 90,000 casualties as well as its entire Baltic Fleet—but also because of his penchant for murdering political opponents, for turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic pogroms, and for his regime’s extremely violent crushing of an attempted revolt in 1905.

There are historians who say that he was directly responsible for millions of deaths during his two decades as emperor. Indeed, in World War I alone—a war for which Russia was sorely ill-prepared—1.4 million imperial troops were killed or wounded and nearly another million were taken prisoner by Germany.

This was the beginning of the end for the czar. While Nicholas was away in 1914 and 1915 ineffectively commanding his troops fighting in World War I, chaos erupted at home, where provisions of all kinds were in short supply—as millions of farmers had been drafted into the imperial army. Industrial strikers and mutineers from the armed forces led mini-revolts and riots, while Nicholas remained hidden away at his military headquarters hundreds of miles from the capital, stubbornly refusing to consider any of the reforms that his subjects were calling for. His own imperial court became a major breeding ground for political intrigue as well.

Repression of civilians in Petrograd

Russian winter did the rest. In Petrograd, in February of 1917, the cold was severe and food and fuel were in such short supply that people started looting the stores and warehouses to lay hands on whatever was left. Police were ordered to shoot looters from the rooftops, but this only worsened the fast-deteriorating situation. The czar believed his interior minister who claimed the situation was under control. By the time Nicholas learned the truth—that his own troops, no longer loyal military professionals, but now mostly peasants drafted into service, were joining the revolution in droves—it was too late to turn back the tide. It was even too late to offer to resign.

By March 12, 1917, even the staunchest old guard regiments of the Russian military had mutinied and tens of thousands of troops had joined the revolt. The czar had no choice but to abdicate after his brother refused to take his place. And the rest of the story is history. He and his family were first imprisoned and then summarily executed, as Vladimir Lenin and his so-called Bolsheviks wrested power from the hands of the provisional revolutionary government.   

Soldiers join insurgents and bolster the Revolution

The regimes that would follow would never bear any resemblance to the democratic socialism and equality that Germany’s Karl Marx had envisioned as the goal of his theoretical socialist revolution. Despite being both lauded and criticized by historians on the left and the right, Marx was one of the most influential figures in the modern history of sociology and economics. Indeed, there are those who still today describe him as one of the most influential figures in human history. His work in economics has served as a basis for a great deal of contemporary thinking regarding labor as it relates to capital, and for much of the economic theory that has grown out of these tenets. Intellectuals, labor unionists and diverse political movements worldwide have been influenced by Marx's work. And he is often cited as a principal influence in modern social science.

Karl Marx

But while ostensibly basing its philosophy on Marxist socialist theory, almost from the outset, the Russian model would be a harsh totalitarian system that hardly had more than a nominal connection to true socialism and it would end up being no less repressive and fraught with intrigue than the empire that preceded it had been. In fact, the government of Joseph Stalin, the Georgian revolutionary who consolidated power before, during and after the Bolshevik takeover, and would rule with an iron fist from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, would richly earn his reputation as one of the cruelest and bloodiest dictatorial rulers in world history. Unfortunately, it would be on this brand of “communism” that the Western world would form its broadest opinions of how leftist politics and “socialist systems” worked, when, in fact, this was merely a uniquely Russian perversion of it.  

Vladimir Lenin, leader of the October Revolution

Although the 1917 Revolution is clearly a landmark date in both Russian and world history, it is not hard to understand the ambivalence of the current Russian government with regard to this centennial commemoration. While there is still a small but loudly influential left in that country that has sought to make this a red-letter month and year, the current Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin has good reason to downplay the date. And his attitude clearly plays to his own political ambivalence—which is really not ambivalent at all, merely self-interested.

Putin’s early political career transpired within the stifling atmosphere of the Soviet regime, in which he was a KGB (secret service) officer. When the Berlin Wall came down at the end of the 1980s and Moscow, under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, declared an end to the Soviet Union and opened Russia up to the world, Putin saw his chance to be on the winning side of history and to gain political influence in this new era of Russian and Western cooperation, especially during the premiership of Boris Yeltsin.

Putin during his first presidency in 2000

Once he had risen to the top of the political food chain, however, Putin moved away from any sort of democratic opening and took his inspiration from the major Russian autocrats of the past. His politics have been hard for many analysts to pin down, but he might be described as an oligarchic autocrat with a yearning to return the country to its days of glory at the height of the Soviet regime, but with politics more akin to those of the czars, and yet with an unhealthy admiration for the personal power and style of Stalin.

Indeed, Vladimir Putin makes little secret of his disdain for democratic principles. And he has kept an iron grasp on political power ever since he took over as interim president from the resigning Boris Yeltsin in 1999. He would serve two terms of his own as president from 2000 to 2004 and from 2004 to 2008 before forming a “tandemocracy” with Dimitry Medvedev in which they have passed the presidency and premiership back and forth between the two of them ever since.

Putin has become more aggressively autocratic as his popularity and strength as Russia’s strongman has grown. And on the basis of that strength, he has begun, over the past several years, to flex Russia’s muscles on the international stage, seeking to reestablish the polarity that existed between East and West during the Cold War era, with Russia emerging as the opposite power to Washington and the West. He is currently being aided in this goal by US President Donald Trump, who refuses to recognize Russia as a counterforce to US democracy and, rather, would appear to see the Russian president as a role model for strong (if autocratic) leadership.

In the past year, Putin’s regime has shown itself to not only hold democracy in contempt, but to be actively working to undermine it. This is not a theory but the conclusion of every major intelligence agency in the West. Clearly what is coming is an all new form of Russian power and intervention on the global stage, based entirely on the world view of Vladimir Putin.

One hundred years after the much-heralded revolution that was to usher in an age of social reform, pure democracy and equality for all, Russia has been unable to shake off the political autism of its past and establish a system that promotes freedom of expression, the proper implementation of human and civil rights and a form of government that places nation above political privilege and autocratic elites. If for no other reason, Putin’s government has downplayed the anniversary of Red October in order to prevent a rekindling of revolutionary spirit and to underscore his own popularity as a ruling czar with no plans to leave power anytime soon.