In his 2005 state of the nation address, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the fall of the Soviet Union, “the greatest geo-political catastrophe of the century.” Few outside of Russia would agree, but apparently that’s what he believes. So how did Mr. Putin celebrate the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution that brought Vladimir Lenin and global communism to power?
He didn’t.
For 75 years, November 7 was the principal holiday for Russia, Ukraine and the other 13 “republics” spread across a dozen time zones in the USSR and after World War II, extending west to Central European “satellites” (Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, etc.) and countries on other continents allied with Moscow (Cuba, China, Angola, etc.). Schools, factories and enterprises closed for parades, concerts, speeches and rivers of vodka. A few bars in New York, Ukrainian Labor Temples in Cleveland and Detroit, and communist hangouts in Paris, Bologna and London also celebrated Lenin and his revolution.
I was 22 in 1970 when I first went to Ukraine. Stiflingly repressive, the USSR was at the height of its power and, to the eyes of the young kid I was back then, Russian rule was indeed “total.” There was no escaping politics. Everywhere from Uzhhorod, Kyiv and Lviv to the villages and towns we drove through, you saw the red flag, the hammer and sickle, and the slogan: “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will always live,” as if he were god. That, coupled with ubiquitous government surveillance and concomitant self-censorship intimidated pretty much everyone, including within days, tourists like me and my three friends who dialed back our brash American openness to conform to prevailing social norms, protecting relatives we knew might be punished for their connection to us.
And yet, young dissidents in Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus and the Baltic states – products of the 1960s – were starting to openly confront the Kremlin dictatorship. Tiny as it was relative to the vast Soviet population, the dissident movement would become a moral force that a generation later led to the Putin-lamented demise of the “Evil Empire.” And so Lenin, who might have “lived” forever half a century ago, is certainly dead now, even if his corpse (or a wax facsimile) is still revered at a mausoleum at Red Square and a thousand statues to him loom in Russian cities, towns and villages. But the Communist economy and worldwide empire he imposed is gone, and the revolution he launched a hundred years ago is now but a footnote in official Russian history.
It’s not hard to see why: Mr. Putin has been president or prime minister of Russia since 1999, pledging to restore Russia’s greatness and inaugurate prosperity. His promises, however, are nothing more than propaganda, 21st century versions of the “Potemkin Villages” tsarist officialdom constructed in 1787 to impress Empress Catherine II for a cruise down the Dnipro River. The “villages” were actually empty facades erected to give the impression of prosperity while masking the reality of serfdom, ignorance and poverty.
By all accounts, Russia is not that different today, albeit bereft of Ukraine and other colonies; it’s still a repressive country where a small circle enjoys opulence and status – boyars in the tsarist age, commissars under Stalin, oligarchs today. The latter are dependent for their protected privilege on a Kremlin ruler to whom they owe unquestioning obedience while he presides over inert masses, placating them with hollow slogans about their country’s greatness. Its “greatness” is based on invading Georgia and Ukraine, and threatening and cyberattacking its neighbors. Troll farms intervene in votes around the world: Brexit in the United Kingdom; Catalonia in Spain; the Netherlands referendum on Ukraine’s association with the European Union; and, of course, the recent U.S. presidential campaign. There’s even Kremlin support for quixotic secession movements in Texas and California. Russia also promotes its “greatness” by providing athletes with performance-enhancing drugs to “win” medals at the Olympics and world championships. Hundreds of Russian athletes have been implicated in doping. Scores have been stripped of medals.
With economic hardship at home, ostracism abroad and social-economic inequality reminiscent of tsarist days, it’s no wonder Mr. Putin avoids mention of the overthrow of an oppressive, autocratic regime. That’s why he declined to celebrate Lenin’s revolution, which in reality was a coup d’état.
The real revolution came early in 1917. And actually what’s called the “Russian Revolution” was a dozen revolutions, including the one in Ukraine. When Tsar Nicolas abdicated a century ago this past February, Ukrainians promptly set up the Central Rada to organize for independence. The ensuing years were complex and difficult for the small cohort working to set up a state after centuries of tsarist rule under which nationally conscious Ukrainians were barred from administering their own territory. Indeed, it was a crime to even publish in the Ukrainian language or to formally teach it to children. It’s telling that the leaders of Ukraine’s revolution were for the most scholars like historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky or litterateurs like journalist Symon Petliura and novelist Volodymyr Vynnychenko. They and others of similar backgrounds were unprepared to form a state but, in the absence of those who might have done so, were willing to take on the challenge. Hrushevsky was tasked with setting up a government, Petliura with organizing an army. Given the hurdles they confronted, their accomplishments were astonishing. Taking a largely illiterate population and forging an independent state out of such unproven raw material, and then defending its sovereignty for three years against a host of Bolshevik and “White” Russian armies is a legacy worth commemorating.
It’s already begun. At Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, Dr. Mark Andryczyk organized a conference in February with a focus on lesser-known figures in Ukraine’s Revolution. In November, Ohio State University’s Slavic Center sponsored a conference recounting how the Bolshevik tragedy impacted individual lives.
Russia ignored its revolution. It will be revealing to compare that with the fireworks Ukraine is sure to set off on January 22, 2018, when the country celebrates the centennial of the Central Rada’s independence proclamation in the Fourth Universal. Two different countries, two different revolutions.