119some way, to create spheres of influence, with even some talk of a “Yalta 2.0” to
decide the fate of third countries behind their backs. This is the policy that failed. It
is a consequence of the fact that the attempt to replay the historical process of the
20th century is not appropriate for Russia’s present day foreign and domestic policy.
Dead-end systemReturning back to the academic discussion that exists in Russia, the October
coup can be also called a counterrevolution and some historians do argue this.
After all, the question is not about what is allowed and what is not allowed, it is
more about what is allowed in the mainstream. And the mainstream is actually
where the state sends its signals through state propaganda. As mentioned earlier,
the notion of revolution is generally considered bad in the eyes of the state. In this
way, the state has been quite consistently returning to this point, and moreover it
rather firmly stands on this imperial-state path.
There was a good discussion on how the Russians privatised the revolution and
transferred everything into a new state and imperial phase. In fact, this has been
happening since the late 1920s, such as the 1950s when there was a new under-
standing of national-Soviet statehood. It was not about Russians anymore – even
though Stalin often promoted the word “Russian” – but it was understood as the
“nation” of the Commonwealth of Soviet Nations. Those nations which sought
to withdraw from the Soviet Union were considered to be in error. It was called
“bourgeois nationalism”. A healthy form of nationalism in the Soviet sense was when
everyone understands that we are special, that we are Soviet. This is Messianism.
This is what Soviet citizens were taught.
Some have argued even further that what is taking place in Russian society is
a certain type of fascistisation. I would argue that it is not fascism, but that our
society does bear some features of Nazism. After all, fascism implies certain forms
of organisation of society while Nazism means basically one thing: blood and soil.
For the Kremlin today, these concepts are not spoken directly, but they are im-
plied. Not so long ago Putin said that the Russians (not just those living in Russia)
are the most divided nation in the world. When I heard that, I recalled another
speaker who said the same thing about Germans in 1938. Everybody knows how
that ended. This understanding of the “Russian world”, of the “blood and soil”, has
awakened in people. Does the current militaristic frenzy in Russia resonate with
the population? Unfortunately, yes, because it is very easy to wake these low fea-
tures: our-ness, us vs. them. Unfortunately, it is impossible now to eradicate this
from the consciousness, or to re-educate the population.
How Russia interprets 1917, Nikita Petrov History & Memory