(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Behind the reissue at the 100 anniversary of the book The great revolution year - The October Revolution and its history (1967) is a desire to make a sensible presentation "where sympathy lies with the revolutionary Bolsheviks". This is what Professor Gisle Selnes writes in the preface to his late Uncle Kåre Selnes' book, now published on Kolofon. Like Per Egil Hegges Russia 1917 (Vigmostad Bjørke, 2017) on the same theme, we have here detailed reviews of the events up to and during the October Revolution Days. And both releases show, much like Sergei Eisenstein's film October (1927), that it was a chaos of violence, divisions, improvisations and associations that led to the two revolutions that year – first the tsar's abdication in spring 1917, and then the fall of the new government in the fall that followed. A smaller group of well-educated Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Lenin and Lev Trotsky, mobilized enormous support for the revolution in a war-torn era of famine.
In the considerations from Orientering at the 50th anniversary on pages 22–23 in this issue of Ny Tid, Sigurd Evensmo discusses John Reed's eyewitness accounts from the book Ten days that shook the world (Pax, 1967). Reed talks about "how chaotic and uncertain the situation was from day to day" with "leaders who took poker chances". What about the movies trying to reproduce what happened? We remember Warren Beatty's Reds (1981) – based on Reed's book – about the struggle to win supporters of the revolution. As a journalist, Reed had access to "everyone" (see also page 22). As he mentions in the preface, he was not neutral, but strived to be as "conscientious a reporter as possible, with one goal in mind, to bring out the truth." The book received a circulation of two million, after Lenin approved of it. But the Bolsheviks also demanded that Reed set aside his free private life, and the author's ideals thus soon also support reality.
Both the Czech Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival and DOK Leipzig now have revolutions and communism in October. But is that the truth we see in the old movies? IN The storming of the Winter Palace (Evreinov, 1920, see internet) is used, for example, by thousands of extras from this chaotic time, and many have mistakenly perceived this short film as a documentation of the events. Or what about Sergei Eisenstein's Days in October (1927)? Here we see a caricatured upper class triumphantly throwing piles of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda into the river and the newspaper name – "Truth" – being ridiculed. The film's big event is also from the Winter Palace. In Hegge's book, however, one reads that the storm at the Winter Palace never took place outside the movie screen. He points out that the government surrendered without a fight, that only five people were killed, and most only hit by stray shots. The tsar's family had moved out of the palace as early as 1915, and in 1917 the former residence was mainly used as a military hospital. As mentioned in the documentation from the Jihlava Festival, the ministers were arrested by only ten revolutionaries, unlike the storming of the palace the films show. However, the siege also led to the death of a dozen helpless patients.
What about the consequences of 1917? Lenin's revolutionary Soviet power quickly recruited as many as five million people — peasants, workers, and soldiers — into the Red Army to defend the revolution. They opposed the counter-revolutionary interventions from outside, from Western, tsarist "American, British and French troops" that Selnes mentions in his book. Also Czech, Japanese and Italian troops participated. Although all these recaptured large parts of Russia, the economic elites failed to regain a foothold in what became the Soviet Union.
What happens then when some gain great power in their hands? Hegge explains that Lenin first declared that everyone should be allowed to participate in the government of the new revolutionary society, and he predicted that the professional bureaucracy would eventually disappear. Lenin proposed that "under socialism, everyone should rule in turn and quickly get used to the fact that no one rules". Even a kitchen assistant should be able to sit in the top political leadership. But at the same time, Lenin wrote that in the transitional phase, they needed “a special machinery for oppression. The 'state' is still a necessity ».
For freedom did not last long. The film Taurus (Alexander Sokurov, 2001) shows what a fanatical struggle was fought to gain power. We see Lenin, weak and chained to his wheelchair dacha in Gorky, be manipulated by those around him, including Stalin who comes to visit. Sokurov caricatures the helpless, infantilized leader (possibly syphilitic, as Hegge points out). Notice, for example, Lenin who mimics the fact that he shoots his private drivers in the neck with his finger – the man who at record speed introduced a strong central power and overran the people he thought had to be overruled for their own good. Free political participation became impossible, and Lenin ordered massacres: “It is necessary to henge [three lines below] not less than one hundred known kulaks, riches, bloodsuckers. Make it so that people in hundreds of kilometers can see it, "he is quoted in Hegge's book.
As I said: Power corrupts, so too for Joseph Stalin. Knut Løfsnes writes about him on page 23: "However, it is unmarxist not to include the valuable work he did in his 20s and early 30s." For "an illiterate people", progress in education, science and technology was of positive significance. Løfsnes concludes that without "heavy industry, the Soviet Union would have been crushed by Hitler 'Germany".
But the Soviet leaders gained a taste of power, and most often totalized their surroundings. This happened not only through direct purges and killings, but also through hijacking hearts and minds. Both parents, school and society in general helped to create willing subjects in this all-encompassing political system.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt describes in On Revolution (1963) modern revolutions as failed. Either, like Lenin, one fails to establish room for free political participation, or this erodes over time. The revolution gave hope for better conditions, but not hope for freedom. Electricity and technology probably improved the living conditions of Lenin, but his centralist superiority did not give freedom to the individual. According to Arendt, the problem of poverty was rarely solved. The leaders of the Russian revolution followed the pattern of the French, and used the people's misery in the fight against the oppressors, only to end up as the people's tyrants. Rousseau got his very powerful Robespierre, Marx got his Lenin. Tragic, according to Arendt, when a failed revolution in many ways exhausts the very potential for freedom.
Finally: Slavoj Žižek uses Freud's terms minne, repetition og thorough preparation in the new afterword in Selnes' book. Gratefulness are the stories, including the movies mentioned above. The recurrence is often the habit, which we know is painful to reverse. But we can discover the grotesqueness of power – and first of all thorough preparation at a distance we can analyze and change. After all, Žižek believes that we can still find liberating potentials or opportunities in the lessons of the revolutions. Some would argue that the Stalinist turn was inherent in the communist project – a genuinely tragic vision doomed to fail as it triumphed. And Lenin's assertion that human nature "cannot renounce submission, control, and 'rulers'" is what many today dissociate themselves from. Lenin "failed miserably," as Žižek writes. One must not fall in love with power, or, as Žižek adds, have a revolution as a "breaking point for an absolute power."
Now, 100 years after the Russian Revolution, we are still surrounded by elitist power and a growing society of control. But we can still learn from the councils (the Soviets), the communities of interest and the solidarity with oppressed minorities. Here lies the germ, as Žižek puts it, of "avoiding a totalitarian closure." However, a germ of this type is not found in the center of power.
