American Historical Association

131st Annual Meeting (January 5-8, 2017)

January 05 - 08, 2017

As the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution approaches, it appears to have a decreasing impact on recent history and contemporary events. In Russia, after several decades of dismantling statues of Lenin and museums to the revolution, the Putin administration openly spurns the October Revolution. Leaders in communist countries that once followed and emulated the Bolsheviks, now downplay the radicalism of 1917. Left-leaning radicals in Europe, Asia and Africa no longer look to Russian revolutionaries for inspiration. In this panel, historians will look at the Bolshevik revolution from a global perspective to discuss the remarkably amorphous use and application of the Bolshevik Revolution over the last hundred years around the world. Choi Chatterjee looks Indian intellectuals journey with Bolshevism as they negotiated anti-colonialism, nationalism, and global capitalism. Michael David-Fox examines the Bolshevik Revolution and Moscow as an incubator for foreign communists to interpret and re-interpret over their lifetimes and the lifetime of their movements the meaning of revolution. Ali İğmen turns to a Turkish poet and writer who used the Bolshevik Revolution as a way to expand and complicate emerging Turkish nationalism. Lisa Kirschenbaum follows the trail of a Jewish-Russian revolutionary in the United States to explore how local and personal networks helped make the Russian revolution globally significant.