Дискурс Пи (Mar 2021)
The 1917 October Revolution Memory Politics
Abstract
The article considers the state of modern Russian political discourse studies on the 1917 Russian Revolution events. It presents various theoretical approaches to the study of the October Revolution, shaped in Russian political science in the post-Soviet period. Particular emphasis is laid on research of the official discourse formed by the governing elites and individual representatives of the Russian political circles. The author believes that these studies help to understand ideological aspirations of contemporary Russian society, since different evaluations of the 1917 Revolution create different pictures of the country's past, present and future. Based on the works of discoursologists, the author of the article notes that the political discourse on the October Revolution memory politics in post-Soviet Russia was initially of a conflict nature. Specifically, it was manifested in irreconcilable positions to the meanings and consequences of the October Revolution taken by the opposing political forces in the early 1990s. The article concludes that thirty years later little has changed: the governing and intellectual elites have proved to be unable to elaborate and offer modern Russian society a non-conflicting approach to rethinking and perceiving the Bolshevik Revolution; the crisis of political bias in evaluations ofsuch a significant phenomenon for further Russian development has not been overcome yet. However, there are grounds to suppose that Russian society is gradually forming a need for a more balanced and impartial evaluation of the 1917 Revolution in the context of Russian and world history. In general, the constant interest in this topic indicates that there is a public and academic demand in research of discursive aspects of this epochmaking event in national history and memory about it.
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