Filling «blank pages». New questions and answers on the Russian revolution.

Journal title PASSATO E PRESENTE
Author/s Aldo Agosti
Publishing Year 2017 Issue 2017/102
Language Italian Pages 28 P. 19-46 File size 204 KB
DOI 10.3280/PASS2017-102002
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How has scholarly understanding of Russian Revolution and of revolution in general changed over the last three decades? How the new source-material which became available since the fall of the Soviet Union has changed the basic interpretations of this event and its aftermaths? Has it affected some pivotal questions such as the possible alternatives existing to the the revolutionary outburst of 1917, the degree of violence and coercion inherent to the original spirit of Bolshevism, the continuity or discontinuity between Bolshevism and Stalinism? Three well known scholars, Laura Engelstein, Silvio Pons and Stephen A. Smith answer these and other questions.

Keywords: Russian Revolution, Bolshevism, Stalinism, Violence, Historiography

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  13. Le storie generali del comunismo pubblicate nell’ultimo decennio hanno contribuito a delineare una visione globale, sebbene quasi esclusivamente incentrata sul comunismo al potere e sulle sue dinamiche: cfr. R. Service, Comrades. Communism. A World History, Macmillan, London 2007; A. Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism, Harper&Collins, New York 2009; D. Priestland, The Red Flag. A History of Communism, Grove Press, New York 2009. Un’ottica rivolta anche al di fuori della storia dell’Urss, della Cina e del “campo socialista” è adottata da S.A. Smith (ed. by), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, Oxford UP, Oxford-New York 2014; S. Pons (ed. by), The Cambridge History of Communism, 3 voll., Cambridge UP, Cambridge 2017.
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  19. Tra i contributi più recenti cfr. S. Dullin-B. Studer (sous la direction de), Communisme Transnational, «Monde(s) histoire espaces relations», novembre 2016, n. 10.
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  24. Smith, Russia in Revolution cit., p. 383.
  25. 25 D. Beyrau, Der Erste Weltkrieg als Bewährungsprobe: Bolschewistische Lernprozesse aus dem “imperialistischen” Krieg, «Journal of Modern European History», 2003, n. 1, pp. 96-124; D. Beyrau, Brutalization Revisited: The Case of Russia, «Journal of Contemporary History», 50 (2015), n. 1, pp. 15-37.
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  27. F. Schnell, Der Sinn der Gewalt: Der Ataman Volynec und der Dauerpogrom von Gajsin im Russischen Bürgerkrieg 1919, ivi, p. 23; F. Schnell, Räume des Schreckens: Gewalt und Gruppen militanz in der Ukraine 1905-1933, Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2012, p. 15. Vladimir Buldakov sees «violence» and «chaos» as fundamental characterizations of the revolution and Civil War: Id., Krasnaia smuta: Priroda i posledstviia revoliutsionnogo nasiliia, ROSSPEN, Moskva 1997 (rev. ed. ROSSPEN, 2010).
  28. J. Baberowski, Scorched Earth cit., p. 49.
  29. P. Holquist, Making War cit., p. 3; Id., Violent Russia, Deadly Marxism: Russia in the Epoch of Violence, «Kritika», 4 (2003), n. 3, pp. 627-52.
  30. Id., Making War cit., p. 7.
  31. On the broader context: J. Böhler-W. Borodziej-J. von Puttkamer (eds. by), Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe’s First World War, Oldenbourg, Munich 2014; R. Gerwarth-J. Horne (eds. by), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence after the Great War, Oxford UP, Oxford 2012; W.G. Rosenberg, Paramilitary Violence in Russia’s Civil Wars, 1918-1920, ivi, pp. 21-39.
  32. R. Gerwarth, The Vanquished cit., p. 10.
  33. J.D. Smele, The “Russian” Civil Wars, 1916-1926 cit., pp. 1-2.
  34. Ivi, p. 8.
  35. S. Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution (1982), Oxford UP, New York 2008; S.A. Smith, Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 cit.
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  37. P. Holquist, Making War cit.
  38. M. David-Fox, The Implications of Transnationalism, «Kritika», 12 (2011), n. 4, pp. 885-904; Id., Crossing Borders. Modernity, Ideology, and Culture in Russia and the Soviet Union, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh 2015.
  39. A.J. Rieber, Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia, Cambridge UP, Cambridge 2015, p. 66.
  40. S. Kotkin, Stalin cit., pp. 407-8.
  41. Tra le storie generali del comunismo, il tema del rapporto tra ideologia, mobilitazione dall’alto e modernizzazione è stato soprattutto affrontato da D. Priestland, The Red Flag cit.

Aldo Agosti, Riempire le «pagine bianche». Nuovi interrogativi e nuove risposte sulla rivoluzione russa in "PASSATO E PRESENTE" 102/2017, pp 19-46, DOI: 10.3280/PASS2017-102002