>the nature of the Bolshevik movement was that it implied a cultural revolution, because it meant peasants leaving the land and coming into mines, factories, ci

>the nature of the Bolshevik movement was that it implied a cultural revolution, because it meant peasants leaving the land and coming into mines, factories, cities; sometimes sending money home, sometimes returning to home to help bring in the harvest but at the same time buying into an idea of modernisation – hyper-modernisation, really; that the answer to Russia's backwardness and poverty was to sweep away the old peasant world. The cultural revolution rapidly (in a span of few decades) lifted Russia from a rural state to an urban one, and brought a changed cultural consciousness. Strong state institutions like schools, councils, enterprises, and theatre furthered the social progression. >As a nation, Russians are the last victims of their own revolution. It's very difficult for Russia to become a nation, because it has this imperial legacy and because it was the 'Russian' Revolution – so they can't[, like other post-Soviet nations], blame 'the Russians' for their revolution. That's why, I think, the centenary is going to be so quiet: it's not a history that the Russians can use to go anywhere; it doesn't have any positive uses for them. In Latvia they can celebrate liberation, in Ukraine they can celebrate independence; but in Russia it's very hard to do that. The most critical observation of the article. Other states like Germany, France, typically deflect previous revolutions that aren't compatible with the current model of their state. Russia does no such thing, in no small part because: >what happened in 1991 was just collapse; there wasn't any democratic revolution to create a new state. All that happened was that the Soviet state collapsed and new political elites, largely made up of the old ones, found themselves back in power. Putin's state is still essentially the inheritor of the Soviet state, in every aspect – in its attitude to power, in its attitude to the country – and that means that many of the old reflex-attitudes of Russians – the unquestioning acceptance of authority, the acceptance of the need for the state to use violence, the protective role of the Cheka/KGB/FSB – are all still there. For Russia to become a democracy will not really happen until Russians begin properly to reconsider what the revolution meant in terms of its legacies, in terms of those deep cultural aspects of thinking. And I don't see that happening.