Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• BRANDENBERGER, DAVID

Titel

Stalin’s Rewriting of 1917

Ist Teil von

• The Russian review (Stanford), 2017-10, Vol.76 (4), p.667-689

Ort / Verlag

Lawrence: Wiley

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Quelle

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• As the hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution approaches, even a casual survey of the literature reveals scores of accounts of the Bolshevik seizure of power, written by commentators, participants and eyewitnesses from all across the political spectrum. Indeed, it seems as if no sooner had the Bolsheviks managed to seize power on the streets of revolutionary Petrograd than a new struggle began on the printed page to define the nature and significance of their victory. Neglected within this otherwise rich historiography is the role played by Joseph Stalin. How did Stalin narrate the revolution? How did he understand agency and causality? How did he balance the “Russianness” of the revolution with its internationalism? What overall lessons did he draw from 1917? What role did he afford himself within the year's events? Analyzing two decades of Stalin's writing on 1917 (drawn mostly from heretofore unknown archival sources), this article examines Stalin's efforts to define the meaning of the revolution. It reveals the general secretary's views to have changed markedly over time, leading him to repeatedly overturn the Bolshevik canon as he revised everything from the domestic roles played by the party and revolutionary masses to the international implications of 1917 itself.