CONTRIBUTI / 8 / Edgar Straehle
Russian Revolution and Paris Commune: The Ambivalent Presence of the Revolutionary Memory
This text deals with the problem of tradition and memory, in particular of the revolutionary ones, before, during and after the Russian Revolution. The aim is to show how revolutions, despite being defined by their rupturist character, do not cease to be related to tradition and how continuity and discontinuity are intertwined within them. To this end, I analyze the memory of the Paris Commune in the context of the 1917 revolutions and, in particular, the pragmatic, political and/or strategic uses that were made of it, something that connects with Claude Lefort’s account of power. What I show is the ambivalence of the memory of the Commune. If at first it could serve as a great example for revolutionary inspiration and mobilisation, once power was seized it became a problematic episode and was even used to criticise the incipient Soviet state.
