Then there is the very different perspective of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), which is a very important institution: in terms of public trust it comes in at fourth place, after the president, the FSB and the army. The ROC regards the October Revolution as an unmitigated tragedy: for it, 1917 was the starting date for its persecution, the repression of believers and murder of Russia’s first “new martyrs”, Orthodox priests who were executed. The ROC has also canonised Russia’s last Tsar, Nicolas II, and his family as “new martyrs”. [...]
But then 2017, the 100th anniversary, came around. You need to talk about it somehow. Putin is not a big fan of the early Bolsheviks. He has admitted this two or three times in passing, as something of slight importance. The Bolsheviks came to power because of the weakness of the Tsarist state; they were instrumental in its downfall, a fact that flies in the face of Putin’s perception of the crucial importance of strong state in Russia. But politically, Putin needs the support of both the communists and the ROC. [...]
Of course, we can’t remain at Soviet positions. The Soviet period is inseparably linked to the Revolution that spawned it. It was a period of totalitarianism, when the people had one unalterable truth dictated to them from “above”. For Putin, revolution is unacceptable. He is an anti-revolutionary leader: the idea that a popular uprising might overthrow the government is an absolutely unthinkable historical construct, exacerbated by the recent “colour” revolutions which he believes were inspired by the west. To contend, however, that the revolution was a manifestation of evil, a catastrophe, as the ROC sees it, is also impossible, because you then have to decide how to view the rest of the Soviet period, the “good”, acceptable USSR. If you start to formulate all this clearly, you leave yourself very little room for manoeuvre. This is why Putin, the current regime, has one option — not to articulate anything. [...]
Of course, as an individual, a person with my own ideas about the Russia in which I live and the Soviet Union in which I used to live, I would like society to come to at least some kind of consensus on condemning Communist terror. Today, it seems that the authorities are talking about this: this year has seen the opening of a monument to victims of the Great Terror at Butovo, outside Moscow, where mass shootings took place in 1937-8. Another monument, created on the order of Putin himself, was unveiled on Moscow’s Andrei Sakharov Avenue on 30 October, the memorial day for victims of political repression. The president was present at the unveiling and spoke again of overcoming the national split, reconciliation and mutual forgiveness. But this memorial, this immortalisation is much more modest in scope. [...]
It is a principle with Putin — and one formulated very succinctly, deftly and conceptually in his 1999 article “Russia at the turn of the Millennium” — that in Russia the most important organising principle is state power. This doesn’t apply in all countries: not everyone has a need for such a powerful centralised system of government, but for Russia, there is no alternative. And that power, strength and might must never be allowed to weaken. This is the criticism Putin throws at the Bolsheviks. He hasn’t made a big deal of it but he has talked about it and in particular about Russia withdrawing from the First World War in 1917. It was, he contends, unforgivable to admit defeat. Russia had a chance to be among the victors: but the Brest-Litovsk peace represented a surrender of positions and a voluntary admittance of defeat in a world war.
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