Wild Times: From the 1917 Russian Revolution to the Revolution of Our Times
We are living in wild times. It’s difficult for our generation to
adapt to the new situation. But through this revolution, our
lives will be purified and things will get better for the youth.
S. Semyonov, spring of 1917
I.- The Revelation
The revolutionary outburst split the world in two; moreover, it split the
social imaginary of the world in two. On the one hand, the existing world
with its inequalities, exploitations and injustices; on the other hand,
a possible world of equality, without exploitation, without injustice:
socialism. However, the result was not the creation of a new alternative
world to the capitalist one, but the emergence - in the collective
expectation of the world’s subordinates - of the mobilizing belief that this
could be achieved.
The Soviet revolution of 1917 is the most important political
event in the twentieth century since it changed the modern history of
states, divided the dominant political ideas in two, transformed the
social imaginaries of peoples -giving them back their role as subjects
of history-, and innovated the scenarios of war introducing the idea of
another possible option (world) in the course of humanity.
With the revolution of 1917, what until then was only a marginal
idea - a political slogan, an academic proposal or an expectation kept
in the intimacy of the working class- became matter, visible reality, and
palpable existence. The impact of the October Revolution on world beliefs
- which are ultimately the result of political action - was similar to that
of a religious revelation among believers, that is, capitalism was finite
and could be replaced by another better society. That means that there
was a different alternative to the dominant world and, therefore, there was hope; in other words, there was that Archimedean point with which
revolutionaries felt capable of changing the course of history.
The Russian Revolution announced the birth of the twentieth
century, not only because of the planetary political division it
engendered, but above all because of the imaginary constitution of a
meaning of history, that is, of socialism as the moral reference of the
modern plebe in action. Thus the spirit of the twentieth century was
revealed to all; and, from that moment, supporters, opponents and
bystanders had a place in the destiny of history.
But as with all "revelation", the cognitive disclosure of socialism as
an actual possibility came with an agent of the channeling entity of this
uncovering: the revolution.
Revolution became the most vindicated and demonized word of
the twentieth century. Its defenders raised it to refer to the imminent
compensation of the poor against the excessive oppression in effect;
detractors disqualified it for being the symbol of the destruction of
Western civilization; workers movements invoked it to announce the
solution to the social catastrophes engendered by the bourgeoisie and,
in anticipation of its arrival, they used it - at least as a threat - to struggle
the economy of concessions and tolerances with the bosses, which will
lead to Welfare state. On the other hand, the ideologues of the old regime
attributed to it the cause of all evils, from the confrontation between
States and the dissolution of the family, to the deviation of the youth.
In philosophical and theoretical debates, the revolution was for
some the anteroom of a new humanity to come, the roar that unleashes
the self-conscious and self-determined creativity of society. On the
other hand, for the curia of the old regime, it represented the annulment
of democracy and the diabolical incarnation of dark forces that attempt
to destroy individual freedom. Far from envisioning a degeneration of
the debate, this religious derivation of the arguments for or against
the revolution reflects the deep social rootedness unleashed by the
antagonism of revolution / counterrevolution, which even mobilized the
most intimate moral fiber of the society.
In short, revolution (the political-military event of the masses
who seize political power, the armed insurrection that demolishes the
old state and gives birth to the new political order), was the privileged
mediator and carrier of a realizable option of a world. And around this
event a whole narrative of production of future history was built; with such strength that it was able to mobilize the passions, sacrifices and
illusions of more than half of the inhabitants of all continents.
Since 1917 the struggle for revolution, its preparation, realization
and defense, captured not only the interest and diligence of millions, but
the willingness and predisposition to efforts and sacrifices seldom seen
in the history of humanity. Clandestinity, material deprivation, torture,
imprisonment, exile, disappearances, mutilations and murders were the
high price that thousands and thousands of militants were willing to
pay to achieve it. Such was their ability to surrender to the revolutionary
cause, that most of them endured each of the seasons of the torment even
knowingly that, most likely, they were not be able to enjoy its victory. And
this devotion to historical sacrifice -with the confidence that the next or
subsequent generation may witness the dawn of the imminent revolutionrefers
us to the presence of a type of Bataillean "heroic expenditure"
with regards to the revolution and the revolutionaries; in fact, this is
about the most planetary (geographically) and most universal (morally)
investment and generosity of human effort in social history.
In the last 100 years more people died in the name of the revolution
than in the name of any religion, with the difference that in the case
of religious sacrifice, surrender is given in favor of the spirit of the
sacrificed; while in the revolution, immolation is given in favor of the
material liberation of all human beings, which makes the revolutionary
event a kind of community production that episodically advances the
desired universal community.
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