Автор: Зинаида Васильева. Антрополог, автор статей о советской модерности, материальности и памяти о "советском". Живёт в Мюнхене. https://turn-de.academia.edu/ZinaidaVasilyeva
I rarely comment on daily political news, but the discussion around a tweet posted last week by Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, reminded me something I would like to share. I am writing in English - mainly for my international friends, especially those outside the academic world.
Some of you have probably read the already deleted tweet by McFaul where he compares the recent attack of the Capitol by Trump’s supporters with the 1917 revolution and “communism”. Anybody familiar with Russian history understands this comparison is ahistorical, politically irresponsible and highly manipulative. The only goal of this tweet is to discredit leftist political ideas and restore the Cold War thinking.
And now a personal vignette - about Russian revolution, Trump and today's global condition.
A couple of years ago I spent a semester in Berkeley. In addition to my research I was involved in two private projects: (1) I assisted my friends in the publication of the memoirs written by a Russian White Army officer after his emigration to Spain - for those unfamiliar with Russian history, White Army was the Anti-Bolshevik army during the Civil War that started after the revolution. And (2) I had a family mission to accomplish: I had to find the grave of my indirect ancestor, who was a White Army officer officer too and emigrated to the US after the Bolsheviks won the civil war.
Despite my historical training, the reading of these memoirs was, perhaps, my first documentary encounter with the intimate world of a pre-revolutionary Russian noble.
An aristocrat, military, monarchist and Russian nationalist - a typical portrait of a White Army officer - he could not adapt to his life in exile and accept the fate of an “ordinary émigré”. His memoirs reveal his multiple frustrations, bitter disappointment and all sorts of social, ethnic and religious xenophobia toward the Spanish society, to say the least - I spare you the details.
This reading experience worked weirdly on me when I went to look for the grave of my ancestor.
All we knew was his name and that he left for San-Francisco. Some time later we learned that he worked as a lab technician at Stanford University and was buried at the Serbian cemetery. The cemetery did not have any proper indications and it took me a while to find the grave. After walking here and there and counting the rows in different directions, I became almost desperate and at the same time determined to find it. I expected it to be an important encounter. I needed to find it - for my mom, for her cousin from Blagoveshchensk, and for the whole family memory. And finally I faced the grave with the familiar name and an old sepia picture of a man in a uniform I could not identify. I was staying in front of his monument, together with my African-American friend who drove me there, slowly realizing that most probably my ancestor, indeed, shared the same social, cultural and political hatred I just read in the memoirs. Rather than feeling any kind of proximity and reconciliation, I was struck by the distance that laid between us. The only thing I experienced was estrangement and a kind of embarrassment, as if my friend was able to read my thoughts.
There were only three people at the cemetery at that moment: a Mexican worker collecting leaves off the ground and taking care of the graves, my African-American friend and myself, a post-Soviet Russian aspiring to reunite with her family past. But no reunification was possible. I was looking at the face of my ancestor and thinking how far I was from the world of that man, his beliefs and aspirations. And how glad I was to be that far.
The 1917 revolution was not a historical accident. It was a collective “no” to the monarchy, birth-based privileges, Russian nationalism and drastic inequalities across the empire. It was a demand for a radical change and a hope for democracy (yes, without capitalism). This was the Russian way to the modern world, no matter how much drama and terror it brought together, including into my family.
Indeed, don’t compare “brave democratic demonstrators in Belorusians” with Trump’s supporters, as McFaul suggests. But please, don’t compare them with the 1917 revolution either. Revolution is not a trick, it doesn’t happen without a wide social support and struggle. And this struggle is worth to be respected and taken seriously. Moreover, revolutions rarely happen “for” something; they usually happen “against” - unwanted leaders, unequal regimes, unfair treatment of groups and individuals. They happen when people cannot stand it anymore. Like the people of Belarus cannot tolerate Lukashenko and state-run hypocrisy any longer and like so many people in 1917/1918 could not stand the tsarist regime back then.
Don’t trust simple comparisons. Don’t believe leftist ideas are about violence. Violence may accompany any political ideas. We need a connected, intelligent and careful world - let’s stay connected and intelligent. Let’s care.