The Desacralization of Revolution and Anti-revolution Consensus in Modern Russia: the 2017 Anniversary and Its (Non-)Use in Politics
Abstract
Boris Kolonitskii – DSc in History, Professor, European University at St. Petersburg; Senior Research Fellow, Saint Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences. Address: 6/1А Gagarinskaya St., Saint Petersburg, 191187, Russian Federation. E-mail: kolon@eu.spb.ru
Mariya Matskevich – PhD in Sociology, Senior Researcher, Sociological Institute of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences. Address: 25/14, 7th Krasnoarmejskaya St., Saint Petersburg, 190005, Russian Federation. E-mail: m.matskevich@socinst.ru
Citation: Kolonitskii B., Matskevich M. (2018) The Desacralization of Revolution and Antirevolution
Consensus in Modern Russia: the 2017 Anniversary and Its (Non-)Use in Politics. Mir Rossii, vol. 27, no 4, pp. 78–101 (in Russian). DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2018-27-4-78-101
Using a case study approach, the authors review the relationship between Russian symbolic politics and public opinion in the context of the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution. Public opinion polls and other sources demonstrate that this anniversary was not perceived as an important event by the majority of Russians. The main political actors – the authorities and their opponents – did not exploit the anniversary for their own goals. The authors argue that this lack of interest in exploiting the revolution in
political rhetoric could be due to an anti-revolution consensus, i.e. a situation in which most Russians openly oppose a revolution as a possible future scenario for their country, even though they differ widely in how they evaluate the revolution of 1917. Apart from politicians, this also had a great impact on other actors such as writers, film directors, and social movement activists. The authors conclude that the anti-revolutionary consensus constrains the repertoire of protest activities by limiting the use of the Russian
revolutionary political tradition.
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