Presentation: 100 years of the revolution that transformed the world - PDF document

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320617497 Presentation: 100 years of the revolution that transformed the world and its relevance Article · September 2017 DOI: 10.1590/2179-8966/2017/30070| CITATIONS READS 0 33 2 authors: Guilherme Leite Goncalves Felipe Demier Rio de Janeiro State University Rio de Janeiro State University 65 PUBLICATIONS 124 CITATIONS 8 PUBLICATIONS 6 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Primitive Accumulation and Legal Violence View project All content following this page was uploaded by Guilherme Leite Goncalves on 25 October 2017. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

1740 Qualis A1 - Direito CAPES Editorial September, 20th 2017 The newest edition of the Law and Praxis Journal (vol. 8, n. 3, 2017, jul-set – edition 19) brings an important novelty! We would like to announce the new section of articles published in "ahead of print". This modality allows articles accepted after the double blind review process to be immediately available online to the academic community, and may be shared and quoted even prior to their assignment to a specific issue of the Journal. Check our website for detailed information and articles published in this format! In this edition, in the section of unpublished articles , we present works by researchers focusing on policial state issues, state of exception, and articles in the field of theory and philosophy of law. The dossier of this edition presents a series of articles that discuss from an interdisciplinary and also juridical point of view the meaning of the Russian Revolution at the time of its 100th anniversary. The dossier is organized by professors Guilherme Leite Gonçalves and Felipe Demier, both from the State University of Rio de Janeiro. The dossier contains articles by national and international researchers. More details can be seen in the editors' presentation and also in the text that follows this editorial, which offers an explanation of the artwork chosen for the cover. Finally, we present two recent book reviews of professors Wolfgang Streeck and Peter Frase. We would like to remind that the editorial policies for the different sections of the Journal can be accessed in our page and that the submissions Rev. Direito Práx., Rio de Janeiro, Vol. 08, N. 3, 2017, p. 1740-1759. Revista Direito e Práxis, Guilherme Leite Gonçalves, Felipe Demier DOI: 10.1590/2179-8966/2017/30070| ISSN: 2179-8966

1741 are permanent and always welcome! We thank, as always, the authors, evaluators and collaborators for the trust deposited in our publication. Enjoy your reading! Law and Praxis team. *** Presentation: 100 years of the revolution that transformed the world and its relevance Felipe Demier University of the State of Rio de Janeiro - RJ, Brazil Guilherme Leite Gonçalves University of the State of Rio de Janeiro - RJ, Brazil At the moment of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989, Eric Hobsbawn noticed how the controversies concerning the question divided opinions in two fields: the defenders and opponents of the Great Revolution . At that time – as Hobsbawn emphasized –, due to the advance of neoliberalism, the participants of the second camp predominated in the academic, journalistic and political mainstream. Currently the same seems to occur with the Soviet centenary. Following the Conservative Wave, followers of the current reactionary order strive to delegitimize the achievements of October 1917 . Analysing from this perspective the contemporary opponents of October seem only to reproduce the analytical scheme of the neoliberal opponents of the French revolution replacing the characters of the plot: if the Rev. Direito Práx., Rio de Janeiro, Vol. 08, N. 3, 2017, p. 1740-1759. Revista Direito e Práxis, Guilherme Leite Gonçalves, Felipe Demier DOI: 10.1590/2179-8966/2017/30070| ISSN: 2179-8966

1742 “ignorant” proletariat of Saint Petersburg assumes the role of the “angry” Parisian sans-culottes, “Criminal” Bolshevik party takes the place of the “terrorist” Jacobin club and, of course, the tyrants Lenin, Trotsky, Sverdlov and other artificers of the Winter Palace takeover replace the “irascible” Robespierre, Danton, Marat and Co. We would like to briefly highlight here three aspects that structure the narratives produced by this wide liberal field of the interpreters of October . The first of these aspects refers to the cult of liberal democracy as the complete and perfect form of political organization. Added to this idealistic dimension, there is an unmistakable anachronism. At the time of the October Revolution not only the representative democracy – with all its impregnable repressive ingredients against the labor movement, we shall remember – only existed in a few nations originating from industrial capitalism, as well as the delayed unequal and combined development of industrialization in the Russian social-political historical formation did not allow a democratic-liberal regime to appear as a feasible option. This democratic-liberal impossibility was evident throughout the behavior of the Russian bourgeoisie over the first two decades of the twentieth century. Without ever having challenged Czarist absolutism by wielding a democratic program, such bourgeoisie was brought to power in February 1917 by a popular revolution in which they did not take part. The Provisional Government was not able to change the country's nobiliary agrarian structure, did not meet the worker’s demands for social rights, did not guarantee any rights to the oppressed nationalities of the Tsarist empire, delayed the elections to a constituent assembly, and finally did not dare to withdraw the country from a war which, taking into account only the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisies of the West, cost millions of peasant lives on the front. Moreover, the support of the Russian bourgeoisie to the Kornilov uprising made it clear that the ruling class of the country sought to overthrow its own (too “democratic”) Provisional Government and replace it with a restorationist military dictatorship. Rev. Direito Práx., Rio de Janeiro, Vol. 08, N. 3, 2017, p. 1740-1759. Revista Direito e Práxis, Guilherme Leite Gonçalves, Felipe Demier DOI: 10.1590/2179-8966/2017/30070| ISSN: 2179-8966

1743 Thus it would not be wrong to say that today's liberal historians are the only ones who truly wish that a liberal democracy had been established in Russia in 1917, whereas more realistic liberals from the past knew very well that only a dictatorship could save their property. The second aspect to be highlighted concerning these historiographical tendencies hostile to October is the intending union between two distinct phases of the initiated process with the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, which can be verified through the conception that Stalinism would have been a natural evolution of Leninism. To refute this thesis, it would suffice to point out that, under Stalin's orders, the revolutionaries of the period 1917-1924, among them practically all members of the central committee chaired by Lenin, were arrested, sent to forced labor camps and have benn shooted to death. It would be necessary that the adepts of the thesis of Lennin-Stalin’ continuity theory explain why the latter, a “mere successor” had to eliminate practically all of the allies of the first, “his master”. The liberal interpreters of October take refuge in the assertion that under the command of Lenin and Trotsky the repressive apparatus also victimized thousands of people. These interpreters, however, treat violence in an abstract way and disregard the historical content of the repression practiced by the young revolutionary regime, which was immersed in a civil war resulting from the military offensive triggered by the restoration and by the armies of capitalist nations. Except for condemnable exceptions (as in Kronstad), it was against these forces that the Bolsheviks directed their arms, and not against the revolutionaries themselves, as Stalin would later do. Trying to equate both repressions because they are both repressive is as unreasonable as willing to equate – to remind us once more of the French case – Robespierre both to the Girondists of the Directory , and to Louis XVI and his absolutist entourage for the simple fact that they all cut off the head of their enemies. There is, however, another question from liberal researchers which is opposed to the one described above, but equally problematic. Still in the post- Second War, within the Marxist field itself, some schoolars considered that the Rev. Direito Práx., Rio de Janeiro, Vol. 08, N. 3, 2017, p. 1740-1759. Revista Direito e Práxis, Guilherme Leite Gonçalves, Felipe Demier DOI: 10.1590/2179-8966/2017/30070| ISSN: 2179-8966