'Russian Revolution' tag archive

It is well-known that the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) – the current ruling party in the USSR – is fighting not only on an economic and political front, but also on a cultural one: it is fighting against bourgeois culture in the name of proletarian culture. 1 This in particular concerns philosophy. In the view […]

In order to speak about the future one must first recognise the contemporary moment, as it is the contemporary moment that indicates the future. 1 Previous eras were defined by their culture, that is, by an organically stable system of social relations finding within itself its own ideological justification. In our times, however, culture has […]

Accusations of Stalinism have long followed the philosopher Alexandre Kojève. In his influential seminars on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, held in Paris in the 1930s, Kojève had claimed that Hegel saw Napoleon as the embodiment of the universal state, as a reflection of the completed circularity of his philosophical system of knowledge at the end […]

‘[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 […]

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 […]

It would seem that the centenary of the Russian Revolution could not have come at a more inopportune moment for Russia. The colossal scale and universalist ambitions of that event are at odds with the apathetic state of Russian society today. Indeed, efforts to dispense with this inconvenient ghost appear to provide the sole point […]

The theme I shall address today has all the trappings of an academic exercise.* Still, I would like to attempt to show how it intersects with several major historical, epistemological and ultimately political questions. As a basis for the discussion, I will posit that Lenin and Gandhi are the two greatest figures among revolutionary theorist–practitioners […]

****************************************************************** ‘THE REUOLUTlon BETRAYED’ -[.J. Arthur ****************************************************************** In spite of Trotsky’s tremendous role in the victory of the Russian Revolution, his name will be forever associated primarily with the struggle against its decline, with his patient exposures of Stalin’s falsifications of the programme, and the history, of the revolution. as opposed In my view his […]

Philosophizing the everyday The philosophy of praxis and the fate of cultural studies John roberts The following presents a genealogy and critique of the concept of the ʻeverydayʼ, looking at the philosophical, political and cultural conflicts and contexts which radically transformed its contents after the Russian Revolution from a term synonymous with the ʻdailyʼ and […]