Madhavan Palat: Utopia and Dystopia in Revolutionary Russia // Dilip Simeon: Closing the Circle - Bolshevism in Retrospect

By Dilip -
Madhavan K. Palat: Utopia and Dystopia in Revolutionary Russia

Tuesday November 7, at 6 pm
Kamla Devi Complex, IIC, New Delhi

The Russian Revolution was set in the midst of maximal utopian creativity and dystopian despair during that exalted and hideous phase of human history from the 1870s to the 1940s. Utopias before the 18th century were edenic dreamlands and good times impossible to achieve; thereafter they became realistic possibilities, “premature truths” as Lamartine remarked, or coinciding with Progress, as Oscar Wilde wittily observed. But dystopias were produced by utopians who dreaded the prospect of success, with Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell supplying us their imperishable accounts. Above these dreams and nightmares hovered the confrontation between the Grand Inquisitor and the Silent Christ, their unresolved conflict, and the awareness that dystopia stalks utopia.

The Revolution was driven by two utopias competing and collaborating with each other, the Bolshevik one for building the state, and the avant-garde one for creating the new human being. The main ideological source for state building was Marxism; the equivalent for nurturing the human resource was Nietzsche, and the model for the new person was the creative artist. The utopian new state was composed of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (yes, conceived as a utopia) and the somewhat anarchistic soviet democracy, both together mutating into the One Party dictatorship of the Soviet Union; the utopian moulding of the New  Person likewise evolved into the New Soviet Person; but dystopias emerged both before and after such transitions.

Madhavan K. Palat is at present the Editor of the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru. He has been Visiting Professor at Ambedkar University Delhi and was earlier Professor of Russian and European History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Additional details and publications may be accessed at: https://independent.academia.edu/MadhavanPalat

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Dilip Simeon: Closing the Circle - Bolshevism in Retrospect
Tuesday November 7, 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM
Venue: IIT Delhi, HSS Committee Room (MS 610)

The Russian Revolution of 1917 is one of the most enigmatic events of modern history. Rosa Luxembourg called it 'the mightiest event of the world war.' Yet by 1919, even as she was founding the German Communist Party, she denounced the Bolshevik regime for its despotic attitude towards democratic freedoms; and Lenin's erstwhile comrade Plekhanov, the doyen of Russian Marxism, called Lenin a Blanquist. The Revolution arose out of massive popular disgust with war; yet heralded a brutal civil war that led to an even greater loss of life. It began with a quest for democracy, yet resulted in a regime wherein the political police took centre-stage in the life not only of the opponents of the regime but of the ruling party itself. It was legitimised in the name of the soviets, yet in three years these organs of workers power were reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. Its success was based upon a worker-peasant alliance, yet that alliance was torn to shreds long before the collectivisation of the 1930's.

Was it one revolution or two? Was the second one the 'real' revolution or did it put an end to the aspirations of the first? Did Bolshevism signify living proof of the so-called Marxist 'laws of history', or the completely contingent nature of historical events? These questions are part of the enigma of Bolshevism. A century after it unfolded, we have the benefit not only of hindsight, but also of the very recent availability of a massive, hitherto unseen archive, made accessible after 1991. An entire century passed in the shadow of 1917. It is time to think of it afresh.


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