All power to the soviets: Marx meets Hobbes

Dossier: On the 1917 commemorations

Lars T. Lih ~ RP 2.01 (February 2018), pp. 64–78 ~ Article

‘[M]en have no pleasure, but on the contrary a great deal of grief, in keeping company, where there is no power to over-awe them all.’ Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 1 The way we think about revolution is deeply involved with the great traditions of political theory, and conversely, our understanding of these traditions is strongly influenced […]

Revolutionary commemoration

Dossier: On the 1917 commemorations

Hannah Proctor ~ RP 2.01 (February 2018), pp. 48–57 ~ Article

No more anniversaries! Vsevolod Meyerhold 1 Fire and ice On 18th March 1921 the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Paris Commune was marked in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Newspapers were emblazoned with headlines decrying the brutal suppression of the heroic Communards by bourgeois reactionary forces just seventy-two days after its […]