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2021-01-01

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Pamir Dietrich, Ayşe

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This collaborative work, organized in commemoration of the centenary of the Russian revolution, aims to explore the events of 1917 with the focus on the impact of the revolution on Russia, the Scandinavian countries, and Europe. The book is comprised of two parts. Part one, The Northern Impact, includes eight articles. The first article, “The Russian Revolution and Civil War in the North: Contemporary Approaches and Understanding” by Vladislav Goldin talks about the preconditions of the Civil War in the Northern provinces, particularly in Arkhangelsk, Vologda and Olonets; the social life of the people; and the conditions of the peasants and industrial workers. He states that the Civil War in the north was not only a national, but also an international phenomenon in the sense that the Allies saw the Civil War as an opportunity to get rid of the Bolsheviks, and helped their opponents, the Whites, in their fight against the Bolsheviks. He emphasizes that the Russian anti-Bolshevik powers organized a full-scale military intervention and prepared a coup d’état in Arkhangelsk with the help of the Allied powers, and initiated the main fighting against the Bolsheviks. The author talks about how the withdrawal of the Allied powers led to the failure of the Whites in the North, the economic conditions after the Entente troops evacuated, and the disturbances and mutinies in the army. Disunited anti-Bolshevik forces could not handle national problems well since they were completely dependent on support from the Allied powers. In the second article, “The Russian Revolution in Sweden: Some Genetic and Genealogical Perspectives”, Karlsson describes how Sweden influenced the Russian revolutionaries, how the Russian revolution affected Swedish society, and how they reacted to the revolution. According to him, at the beginning, when the Provisional Government came to power, liberal groups saw the revolution promising development, and promoting freedom, stability, and democracy. However, with the Bolsheviks these people saw the revolution as a growing threat to their country. The author then analyzes the Russian revolution through its genetic and genealogical perspectives. The third article, “The Idea of Liberal Russia: The Russian Revolutions of 1917 and the Norwegian Slavist Olaf Broch” written by Myklebost, discusses how the Russian Revolution was welcomed by the Norwegian Russian expert Olaf Broch, and the reception of the Revolution by the conservative Norwegian press. Until the Revolution, Broch believed that Russia was oppressed by the autocrats. Therefore, the Revolution was a new era for him to bring Russia closer to Europe. He sympathized with the liberal political agenda, especially with Miliukov, and with constitutional parliamentarism that would free the Russian people from autocratic oppression and bring Russia closer to modernization that resembled the system in Norway. However, when the Bolsheviks came to power his views had changed. He had negative views on Lenin, thought that the Bolsheviks represented only an extremist part of Russian socialism, and that the Bolsheviks should be considered a temporary phenomenon. In the fourth article, “Arkhangelsk Province and Northern Norway in 1917-1920: Foreign Property and Capital after the October Revolution of 1917”, the authors describes the complex ethnic life of the people in the Arkhangelsk province, and the relationship between the Whites and the Bolsheviks in Arkhangelsk and the Northern Norwegians. They compare the period of the Whites and the period of the Bolsheviks in Arkhangelsk, and explain how economic and cultural ties between Russia and Norway during the Whites and the Bolsheviks had been destroyed and how foreign property began to disappear in Arkhangelsk. In the fifth article, “Russian Emigration to Norway after the Russian Revolution and Civil War”, Tevlina examines Russian officers and government officials from the Whites; fishermen and peasant traders who had to migrate to Scandinavia when the Bolsheviks took Arkhangelsk during the Civil War ,and the Norwegians who stayed in Russia. The author talks about their efforts to maintain their culture and community, and their acceptance of a certain social decline in Norway. In the sixth article, “Soviet Diplomacy in Norway and Sweden in the Interwar Years”, Egge examines the nature of the Soviet diplomatic activities in Norway and Sweden; the role of the diplomat Alexandra Kollontai in the Soviet-Norwegian and Soviet-Swedish relationship and her contributions. In the seventh article, “Apprentices of the World Revolution: Norwegian Communists at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West (KUNMZ) and the International Lenin School, 1926-1937”, Rønning focuses on the development of educational institutions for foreign communists in the Soviet Union during the 1920s aimed at the creation of foreign communist cadres to unify the international communist movement and the contribution of the students who attended the Comintern schools in the formation of a Soviet-loyal communist movement in Norway. The eight article, “The Impact of the October Revolution on the North-Norwegian Labor Movement” written by Tjelmeland, discusses the short and long-term impacts of the Russian Revolution at a regional level in Northern Norway and gives a comparison between the political culture in northern Norway and southern Norway. In part two, the first article “Avant-garde Artists vs. Reindeer Herders: The Kazym Rebellion in Aleksei Fedorchenko’s Angels of the Revolution” discusses a film related to the early 1930s Kazym rebellion of the Khanty and Nentsy conducted against Stalin’s collectivization. The second article, “1917: The Evolution of Russian Émigré Views to the Revolution” puts emphasis on émigré attitudes towards the revolution and the Civil War. Andreyev explains how some émigré Russian intellectuals looked for short-term political solutions to the consequences of the revolution, how some émigrés wanted to have a political solution to overthrow the Bolsheviks, and how the majority of Russian émigrés sought a way to preserve traditional Russian culture while remaining outside the country. The third article by Rogatchevkaya, “Russian Revolutions Exhibited: Behind the Scenes”, introduces the author’s experiences and thoughts on the 2017 exhibition Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myth at the British Library. The author also shares visitors’ and reviewers’ responses. In the fourth article, “The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Kremlin’s Policy of Remembrance”, Nielsen discusses post-Soviet leadership’s interpretation of the Russian Revolution, and the methods used to link the October Revolution with the present. This collaborative effort to explore the events of 1917 and their impact on Norway and Sweden in particular, constitutes a valuable source for those interested in studying the reception of the Russian Revolution of 1917 by other countries as well as its various impacts in those countries.

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https://www.ijors.net/issue10_1_2021/reviews/ayse_dietrich.html
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/102399

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Article