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Chapter 22 The Bolshevik Revolution and the War of Ideologies (1917-39) The ‘war to end all wars’ did not live up to its name. Neither did the peace treaties that concluded it herald a return of world peace. As the Chief of the Imperial General Staff noted in 1919 after counting 44 wars in progress, ‘this peace treaty has resulted in wars everywhere’. The year 1918 may have seen the end of the Great War but international conflict none the less remained. Most notably, there was an intensification of a struggle that had begun with the Bolshevik seizure of power
followed relief operations for starving populations, refugees and genocide survivors in Central and Eastern European countries. The defeat of Germany and the partitioning of multinational empires led to the creation of new states, thus sending millions of displaced persons on the road, which – together with the war – provoked unprecedented deprivations throughout Europe. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the civil war in Russia also threatened Central Europe to fall under Soviet influence. The 1921–22 Russian famine thus triggered a large-scale international response
Anti-militarism is today an unquestioned mainstay of anarchism. This book presents a systematic analysis of anarchist responses to the First World War. It examines the interventionist debate between Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta which split the anarchist movement in 1914. The controversy revolved around conflicting interpretations of the shared ideas of internationalism and anti-militarism. The book analyses the debates conducted in European and American movements about class, nationalism, pacifism and cultural resistance. Just as Kropotkin's position was coherent with his anarchist beliefs, it was also a product of his rejection of the main assumptions of the peace politics of his day. Malatesta's dispute with Kropotkin provides a focus for the anti-interventionist campaigns he fought internationally. Contributions discuss the justness of war, non-violence and pacifism, anti-colonialism, pro-feminist perspectives on war and the potency of myths about the war and revolution for the reframing of radical politics in the 1920s and beyond. The collaboration between the Swiss-based anarchists and the Indian nationalists suggests that Bertoni's group was not impervious to collaboration with groups whose ideological tenets may have been in tension with the ideology of anarchism. During the First World War, American anarchists emphasised the positive, constructive aspects of revolutionary violence by aestheticising it as an outgrowth of individual creativity. Divisions about the war and the experience of being caught on the wrong side of the Bolshevik Revolution encouraged anarchists to reaffirm their deeply-held rejection of vanguard socialism and develop new strategies on anti-war activities.
Of all Eisenstein’s films Strike retains best of all the promise and mutual interests of the Russian cultural avant-garde and of the Bolshevik political revolution. Strike is both a great film of European modernism and a testament to the energies and hopes of the Bolshevik Revolution. Before Eisenstein made Strike in 1925, he had worked for some years after the Revolution in theatre
1 Engaging with Trotsky The influence of Trotskyism in Britain John Callaghan Part I Movements Trotsky became known in Britain after the Bolshevik Revolution in association with Lenin, as he did across the globe. But as early as 1920 Bertrand Russell, who noted the ‘lightening intelligence’, vanity and charisma of the man while visiting Moscow, warned that Trotsky was ‘not by any means’ regarded as Lenin’s equal by his Bolshevik comrades.1 By January 1925, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was depicting Trotsky, who had ‘resigned’ his government posts
Russian v 89 v Irina Belova subjects. It examines the causes and consequences of mass movement of refugees that began in the summer of 1915, the efforts of the authorities to accommodate refugees in the rear and ensure their welfare. The chapter also addresses the activities of public organisations before and after February 1917 and the activities of the main Soviet organisation for refugees after the Bolshevik revolution. It concludes with a discussion of the Soviet apparatus for the repatriation of refugees in 1918. The first phase Although many people fled their
instigated what Barabanov has called the ‘most radical military reform since the creation of the Red Army following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution’. The speed and depth of reforms under Anatoly Serdyukov, who was Defence Minister from 2007 to 2012, were striking, including considerable downsizing both in terms of personnel and structure, the reorganisation of the central command structures and education, the introduction of new military districts, a shift to brigade structure and the transformation to a combined recruiting system. Underpinning these reforms was the aim to
contemporary Russian painting, even during the war itself. 19 Ambivalent figure in the Soviet era As might be expected, the Bolshevik revolution and the associated break with Russian imperial culture brought important consequences for the perception of Shamil and his resistance against Tsarist colonial power. To be sure, when the young Soviet power was under
Chapter 3 compares and contrasts anxieties and concerns which surrounded the clothed and unclothed male body. Male bodies had a powerful cultural resonance after the war, in rehabilitative initiatives and emerging consumer industries. By the 1930s, the physical power of the masses, from the Bolshevik Revolution to images of crowds at play, was informing a national iconography of controlled and disciplined youth, very visible in newsreel footage from the 1930s of the Scouts, BB, boys' clubs, and totalitarian youth movements in Germany and Italy. At an individual level, young men's physical sense of self was coming under the growing influence of visual forms and commercial leisure trends, bringing working-class young men into contact with new models of personal behaviour and social interaction which made many sensitive to style, fashion and appearance. This chapter examines how working-class young men mediated the feminised connotations of consumption in negotiating these new physical images and ways of performing masculinity.
The Afterword brings together the various strands of the complex encounter between the Black Atlantic and the Red October. It argues for the dynamic and mutually complementary connection between the ideals of social and economic justice put forth by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the emancipatory aspirations of the historical victims of Western racism and imperialism. The relationship between the Soviet experiment and the experiences of the Black Atlantic was far from unproblematic. There were numerous points of convergence, especially when it came to the critique of European and North American racism and colonialism. Yet the appeal of the Soviet claims to colour-blind internationalism and the class-based analysis of history had its limitations, as it would come to compete with a variety of other emancipatory visions, which privileged racial solidarity and black nationalism. It is common to talk about the impact of the Russian Revolution on the colonised majorities in the developing world and the racial minorities in the West. However, the encounter was certainly not a one-way street – it functioned as a vehicle for the forging of Soviet Socialist identity, but it also generated its fair share of challenges to the Soviet status quo. Many of the actors and sojourners of the Black Atlantic found themselves inspired by the Soviet rhetoric of anti-racism and anti-colonialism, but their very engagement with this discourse could, on occasion, put pressure on the Soviets to modernise and to encourage Soviet society towards change and even reform.