Revolution Of 1917 Research Articles

Nationalism and the Ottoman-Arab Dynamic: From Cultural Renaissance to Political Revolt

This paper delves into the intricate relationship between the Ottoman Empire and its Arab Muslim subjects amidst the backdrop of rising nationalist sentiments during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It traces the historical evolution of Arab nationalism, examining its cultural origins and political dimensions, while also dissecting the Ottoman administration's response to nationalist aspirations. Through an analysis of historical documents, scholarly works, and contemporary accounts, the study illuminates how nationalist movements reshaped the political, social, and cultural dynamics within the empire, leading to increased tensions between the central government and Arab nationalists. The paper highlights key events such as the Tanzimat reforms and the Young Turk Revolution, which exacerbated these tensions, culminating in the Arab Revolt of 1916 supported by the British. It also explores the impact of World War I on Ottoman-Arab relations and the subsequent dissolution of the empire, as reflected in treaties like the Treaty of Sèvres and the Treaty of Lausanne, which paved the way for the establishment of modern Arab states under European mandates. Through a comprehensive examination of historical sources and scholarly literature, the paper elucidates the multifaceted nature of nationalism's influence on the Ottoman Empire's relationship with its Arab Muslim subjects, underscoring its profound and enduring significance in shaping the modern Middle East.

Army and Progress? The Russian and Greek Reactions to the 1903 Coup in Serbia and to the 1908 Young Turk Revolution

In the early twentieth century, Greece and Russia represented two strikingly different state and social models for the Christian Orthodox world – its first ethnocentric nation-state vs. its last confessional dynastic empire. Yet they demonstrated similar reactions to the military coups in Serbia and the Ottoman Empire. Except for rightwing monarchists, most commentators, diplomats, and officers shared a belief in the potential of army-led modernization to promote financial efficiency and legitimacy based on constitutional parliamentary institutions. As such, the article contributes to the studies of military political involvement in the context of nationalist and socialist challenges to established monarchical regimes. The article also adds to the literature emphasizing Ottoman agency and influence abroad. While there are some valuable works on Russian and Greek responses to the Young Turk Revolution, there have not been any attempts to compare them in a single book or paper based on a variety of archival and print sources. The repercussions of the 1903 Serbian coup are researched even less (not at all on the Greek side).

«И младотуркам не воскресить своего отечества»: русские правые и Младотурецкая революция

The article examines the views of early 20th-century Russian conservatives (Black Hundreds and nationalists) on the causes of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, their attitudes towards the development of the revolutionary situation, and the judgments of the Russian right-wing about the consequences of the power shift in the Ottoman Empire. These questions have not previously been the subject of independent research in the scientific literature. Based on materials from right-wing periodicals (newspapers “Zemshchina,” “Russkoe Znamya,” “Moskovskie Vedomosti,” “Kolokol,” “Kievlyanin,” “Novoe Vremya”) and journalistic works by conservative authors, three significant aspects through which the opinion of the Russian right on the Young Turk Revolution was formed are identified: the ideological positions of conservatives rejecting revolutionary social changes; Turkey’s place in the system of international relations and the forecasting of geopolitical changes in light of the Young Turks’ rise to power; and the perception of revolutionary events in Turkey as a negative example of potential further developments in Russia’s domestic political situation. The range of issues related to the Turkish revolution raised by conservatives allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the foreign policy views of the early 20th-century Russian right-wing.

GEORGIA IN THE PLANS OF GERMANY AND ITS ALLIES AT THE INITIAL STAGE OF THE WORLD WAR I (MILITARY OPERATIONS ON THE TRANSCAUCASUS FRONT)

Nugzar zosidze
 E-mail: n.zosidze@bsu.edu.ge
 Associate Professor, Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University 
 Batumi, Georgia
 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2613-3365
 
 Abstract. In the early twentieth century, two large opposing hostile coalitions have formed in Europe: Triple Alliance and Triple Entente.
 The Triple Alliance initially included: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. After the start of the World War I, the latter withdrew from the bloc, but Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria joined it, thus forming the Quadruple Alliance. The countries included in it demanded a "place under the sun" and assumed to take the colonies from the Entente countries through war. 
 The core of the "Entente" consisted of the world's largest colonial empires of that time - Great Britain, France and Russia. It was between these two imperialist groups that the World War I of 1914-1918 broke out, involving thirty-eight states from different continents. 
 The war was imperialistic, unjust and conquering on both sides, resulting in the deaths and maiming of millions of people, destruction and extermination on a grand scale.
 Germany and its allies had significant plans for Transcaucasia and the expulsion of Russia from there. This unity of these interests largely led to the Ottoman Empire joining the Alliance, following the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. After the Revolution, three leaders distinctively stood out in the political life of the Ottoman Empire: Enver Pasha, Military Minister and and de facto dictator of the Ottoman Empire; Talaat Pasha, Minister of Internal Affairs; and Ahmed Djemal Pasha, Minister of Marine. Those three were obviously prone to Germanophilism. 
 Young Turks, in their attempts to find ways for quickly reorganizing their army defeated in the Balkan wars, looked at Germany with hope. That is why they happily met Germany's proposal to send a military mission to the Ottoman empire, which was received. On 8 October 1913, an agreement was signed between Germany and the Ottoman Empire, which gave the Sanders military mission extensive rights (M.Larcher, La guerre Turque dans la guerre mondiale: 609-610).
 The German military mission undertook considerable work in the Ottoman Empire prior to the war. The members of the mission had responsible positions in the local general staff, border corps and fortifications. The history of the period in question became especially relevant from the beginning of the 50s of the twentieth century. However, many details and features of these liasons have not yet been fully investigated, comprehensively studied and scientifically substantiated.

Blok – the Poet of Russian Counter-revolution

In the article the author examines the early creative works of A.A. Blok in the context of his political views which for a long time were clearly right-wing, conservative and even counter-revolutionary. The author quotes the opinions of many well-known Blok scholars who state that even in the years of 1905 – 1907 Blok was not ready to fully resign his ideals of autocracy and his reaction to the fi rst Russian revolution as really mixed. The author also claims that Blok’s poetic myth of the early years was based on the assumption that it was possible to revive the Petersburg empire, to inspire renewed force illuminating it with dawn light and waling it from hibernation. The author notes that the image of “dawn” in Blok’s poetry has much in common with the symbol of “returning ships”. On the basis of the analysis of a number of Bloc’s texts, the author comes to the conclusion that the “retuning ships” for Blok included also the Baltic squadron that sailed to the coast of Japan and perished in May of 1905 in the battle of Tsushima. This hypothesis lets the author to conclude that the poet, as well as many St. Petersburg intellectual class representatives, including Blok’s father-in-law D.I. Mendeleev, hoped that the empire could be revived by the turn to the East of those days, that the new reign would open for Russia the vast areas of Asia and revive the power of Peter’s state. The feeling of disaster that overcame St. Petersburg over the news of the squadron defeat at Tsushima was refl ected in Blok’s lyrical drama “King in the Square”, where the poet still chose the side of the dying myth of the autocracy in its opposition to the revolutionary masses.

WHEN PERSIA MEETS THE CAUCUSES THROUGH POETRY”: ASHRAF OF GILAN’S ALLUSION TO MIRZA ALAKBAR SABIR DURING THE IRANIAN CONSTITUTIONAL ERA

Mirza Alakbar Sabir was one of the pivotal literary figures during the Iranian Constitutional revolution in 1907 and the unsuccessful revolution of 1905 in Russian, which affected the Caucuses. He was a role model of many poets of his time including some great Persian poets. In this article, T.S. Eliot’s famous stance towards borrowing from other poets “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal” has been adopted as the basis of our survey of some of the borrowings of one of the Persian political poets during the Iranian Constitutional revolution namely Ashraf to see if he has allusions to Mirza Alakbar Sabir. The results of the paper show that Ashraf’s poem is a pastiche of Sabir’s style. He is the translator of Sabir, but he makes some alternations of detail, arrangement, and number of lines tending to play down the presence of Sabir in his work remaining “auditory imagination”.

Rol' i mesto pervoj russkoyazychnoj gazety «Stambul'skie novosti» v Turcii

In 1908, immediately after the Young Turk Revolution, the Russian revolutionary Jalalettin Korkmasov, originally from Dagestan, came to Istanbul at the invitation of the Young Turks, whom he met while studying in Paris. From 1909 to 1910, he published the Russian-language newspaper Istanbul News in the Ottoman capital. The Istanbul News was not only the first continuous publication to appear in the Ottoman Empire, but also the first Russian printed newspaper to be distributed in the East outside of Russia. The newspaper published articles, essays, short stories, essays by famous public figures, cultural figures, politicians of both Russian and Turkish origin. The materials of Turkish authors were published in translation into Russian. Despite the importance of this newspaper as a source on the history of the early years of the Young Turk Revolution, as well as on the history of the Russian and Turkish press, the newspaper has not attracted scientific interest either in Turkey or in Russia so far.

Reclaiming History from the Settler Coloniser: A Meditation on Nur Masalha's Palestine across Millennia: A History of Literacy, Learning and Educational Revolutions

In this wonderful book, Nur Masalha challenges and transforms world history, as did his earlier Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History (2018). In this meditation I recount some of Nur Masalha's argument — not all, given the extraordinary richness of the material he has uncovered, described, and analysed — but also offer my own reflections prompted by his book. As Masalha relates in his introduction, the work is a passionate response to Zionism's historical claim that Palestinians possess no history of literacy, education, and literary culture. He shows the falsity of such a claim through multiple examples. Masalha explores, for example, the multifaceted history of education in Byzantine Palestine (Third to Early Seventh Century), based on a philosophy of ‘civil society’. Palestine as a cosmopolitan and transnational world inhered in what Masalha refers to as Cities of Learning. There were famous intellectuals, such as in antiquity Josephus (AD 37-c.100) and Origen (AD 185–253). In modernity he highlights Khalil Sakakini (1878–1953), whose remarkable educational reforms, emphasizing a ‘philosophy of joy’, emerged at a similar time to A.S. Neill's Summerhill School in the UK. Women's education is featured, from the time of the Palestinian Madrasas under the Ayyubids and Mamluks (1187–1517) onwards, a powerful tradition which continues into the modern era. When press censorship was relaxed following the Ottoman Young Turk Revolution of 1908, there was a huge growth of newspapers, photography, and photojournalism, a remarkable figure here being the Palestinian photographer Karima ‘Abboud (1893–1940). Masalha draws attention to the importance of translation in Palestinian history, especially in the important figure of Khalil Ibrahim Beidas, a relative of Edward Said, who was interested in the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Gorky. There is a fascinating chapter on the interactions of Palestinian scholars and the Crusaders, with free passages of ideas, goods and technologies; arabesque became a mainstream European decorative art. The result of these multiple explorations is a major transformation in how we think about the world.

Two Images of the Young Turk Revolution: Public Reaction in Beirut and Damascus to the Revolutionary Events of 1908 in the Ottoman Empir

In this study, the author examines the reaction of the provincial society to the events of the first stage of the Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire in 1908 on the example of two large centers of the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire – Beirut and Damascus. The Young Turks' restriction of the power of Sultan-Caliph Abdul-Hamid II caused an ambiguous, sometimes diametrically opposed reaction in the Arab periphery of the Ottoman Empire, the analysis of which is necessary to understand the mechanisms of further relations between the provincial elites and the imperial center. On the basis of consular reports and testimonies of a number of eyewitnesses of the events, two images of the Young Turks and their actions in 1908 are shown through the eyes of the Beirut and Damascus public. While in seaside Beirut, which served as the main “sea gate” of Ottoman Syria, liberal sentiments among local intellectuals and merchant families (both Muslims and Christians) served as a breeding ground for a positive and even enthusiastic perception of the revolution, in a more traditional and conservative Damascus the restoration of the constitution and the limitation of the Sultan's power was perceived with a wary negative. The destruction of the “patron-client” relationship that connected the large landowners and Muslim religious figures of Damascus with the Sultan's court gave rise to protest moods among the townspeople, which, in turn, led to mass riots in Damascus in the fall of 1908. The conducted research refutes the widespread thesis about the unambiguously positive perception of the Young Turk Revolution in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

Projections of Xenophobia: The Capitulations, Employment, and Anglo-Turkish Relations in the 1920s

Some tensions remained painfully unresolved between Turkey and the Allies at the end of World War I, even after the peace treaty that was signed in 1923 at Lausanne. This article aims to unpack these tensions by examining descriptions and manifestations of xenophobia in post-Lausanne Turkey. It focuses on Anglo-Turkish encounters over employment in Istanbul in 1926, within a timeframe that extends from the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 to Turkey’s entrance into the League of Nations in 1932. The article traces the politics of employment in light of the traumatic impacts of the capitulations, encounters involving specific institutions, as well as broader geopolitical dynamics. It approaches Anglo-Turkish relations in the 1920s as a particularly revealing window onto postwar international politics and stresses the link that was “internationally” drawn in this decade between peoples’ “ability” and sovereignty. Through this emphasis, the article argues that competing projections about Muslim Turks’ ability “to stand by themselves” were central to descriptions and manifestations of xenophobia in post-Lausanne Turkey

In search of a common enemy: Russo-Turkish cooperation and its discontents (1908–1923)

The uneasy Putin-Erdogan partnership reminds of the early twentieth-century trends in the Russo-Turkish relations – taking advantage of each other’s dissidents vs cooperating against Western imperialism. Imperial Russia tended to indulge in the former which undermined the latter tendency in its policies in regards to the Young Turk regime who were similarly making irredentist overtures to Russian Muslim minorities. Both sides were also tempted or constrained by their existing or potential Great Power allies. In contrast, the partnership between the Soviets and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk would be more consistent as they minimized meddling in each other’s internal affairs to jointly oppose European encroachments. This article also shines a new archival light on the motivations of the Soviet side while highlighting the less well-known opposition to close cooperation between traditional rival empires on all levels of Soviet leadership. There is no scholarly work focusing on the 1908–1923 period in a single monograph or article (from the Young Turk revolution to the Lausanne negotiations). Looking at both sides of the 1917 divide reveals surprising continuity between the imperial and the Soviet policies despite the earthshattering effects of the First World War.

Revolutionaries on revolutionaries: how Chinese Xinhai revolutionaries and Young Turks viewed each other

This article explores the Chinese Xinhai revolutionaries’ views of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, and the Young Turks’ semi-official organ Tanin’s coverage of the Chinese Xinhai Revolution in 1911. The Chinese and Ottoman revolutionaries were greatly interested in each other. And there was a striking similarity between their views of each other: both the Chinese and Ottoman revolutionaries analyzed each other’s revolution in the context of international politics. They knew a revolution in the other country would change that country’s position in international politics and impact the great powers’ thinking and behavior, and the response of the great powers in turn would have an influence on the fate of their own country. For Chinese revolutionaries, the Young Turk Revolution proved the need for a revolution in China. The revolutionaries’ interests in each other and similarity in their views proved an important but neglected intellectual connection between revolutions in the early twentieth century.

Revolution and War: International Entanglements in the Ottoman Transition

Beginning of the 20th century witnessed revolutions and wars. As the region faces such episodes again, assessing the influence of global politics on domestic context remains crucial. Inspired the International Historical Sociology approach, this work contributes to the discussion of global-domestic interaction in the emergence of agency in 1908 Young Turk Revolution and in 1920 opening of new Parliament in Ankara, Ottoman Empire. The argument is that transnational learning, a new international order, global intellectual entanglements and various other transnational connections conditioned the rise of revolutionary agency. These actors were constituted by a conjuncture of international, imperial and local factors.

David E. Gutman, The Politics of Armenian Migration to North America, 1885–1915: Sojourners, Smugglers and Dubious Citizens

Reviewed by: The Politics of Armenian Migration to North America, 1885–1915: Sojourners, Smugglers and Dubious Citizens by David E. Gutman Ümit Kurt David E. Gutman. The Politics of Armenian Migration to North America, 1885–1915: Sojourners, Smugglers and Dubious Citizens. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. 264 pp. Cloth, $125. ISBN: 978-1474445245. That the principle of equality in the basis for citizenship codified by the 1876 Constitution remained at the formal level and led to no distinct improvements in the lives of the empire's Christian elements instigated a process in which these elements created organized structures along the axis of a certain political awakening. Fundamentally, the steps toward reform that were made in Istanbul and initiated through the Tanzimat did not lead to any changes in the lives of the non-Muslim subjects—particularly the Armenians. Societal unrest was on the rise, especially in the eastern provinces where the Armenian population was concentrated. The defeats in the war of 1828–29 and the Crimean War in 1853–56 with Czarist Russia concurrently brought about significant humanitarian tragedies for the Muslim population living in this region. The population [End Page 478] living in the Caucasus and Russia, the largest group being the Circassians, was rescued from this tragedy and fled to Anatolia. The Ottoman state, forced to "manage" and "administer" this population, resorted to dispersing them throughout the eastern provinces. The Armenians were already under constant threat from the manifold Kurdish tribes in the region and were suddenly confronted with this scattered and landless population comprising mostly Circassians. They paid taxes to both the central government and to these tribes and were, in this way, able to ensure their own security. They were forced to share, both with the central government and the Kurdish tribes acting as a local government structure, the revenues they acquired from the lands they cultivated. Coming to the late nineteenth century, there was consistently an atmosphere of "insecurity" that allowed for ethno-religious conflicts in which the fault lines I roughly drew in the eastern provinces became further entrenched. The Armenian migrations in the Ottoman Empire transpired in this historical-political context. Harput is one of the most significant regions from which the first Armenian migration to North America took place. David E. Gutman's important study entitled The Politics of Armenian Migration to North America, 1885–1915: Sojourners, Smugglers and Dubious Citizens meticulously presents the social, political, economic, and historical causes and outcomes of this migration. One notable aspect of the book is the systematic discussion of the migration policies of the Ottoman state and bureaucracy specific to the Armenians and particularly in the Harput province. As Gutman points out, "Between 1885 and 1915, at least sixty-five thousand Armenians left the Ottoman Empire for the United States… At least half of the Armenians who migrated to North America left between 1888 and 1908, during which time the Ottoman state enforced a strict ban on Armenian overseas migration" (p. 4). It is important to emphasize that this ban was enacted during Abdülhamid II's reign (c. 1876–1909). Abdülhamid, with the domestic and international travel bans, sought to obstruct the networks of political-social relations that were rapidly developing and expanding among the Armenian communities and, accordingly, to prevent the political and social mobilization of Armenian society. These travel restrictions were removed with the Young Turk Revolution in July 1908. In his book, Gutman examines in detail the state policies that restricted and prohibited the Armenians' mobility and analyzes how an underground economy aiming to overcome these prohibitions emerged among the Armenians who were left, as a result of these policies, with the option of migrating for a better and more secure life. Ultimately, a common "smuggling network" appeared. Gutman concretizes these secret networks and presents the strategies the state adopted in order to prevent them. [End Page 479] By analyzing the relationships between both migrants and smugglers as well as the central government and its local representatives, he allows us to see explicitly the social and political dynamics that shaped the power of the state and its power of sanction. In this regard, he shows how the state redefined concepts...

Confronting British Capital: An Evaluation of the Opposition of the Ottoman Greek Employees to the Administration of the Aidin Railway Company during the Strikes of September 1908

In the summer of 1908, following the recent outburst of the Young Turk Revolution, a wave of strikes swept the companies situated in the Ottoman Empire, including the Aidin Railway Company. The railway, although financed by British financial interests, encompassed a vast Greek labor force as technical support staff. Following the formation of the union, the workers requested a wage raise, as well as better working conditions. The management's denial to concede to the workers' demands resulted in the declaration of three alternate strikes. During the last one, the employees asked for the dismissal of the company's general manager Herbert Barfield on account of his derogatory attitude towards the indigenous personnel. However, the reason behind the strikes resided in the particular position of Asia Minor Greeks in the Ottoman Empire during the period preceding World War I and, more specifically, in their dual identity as both Christians and Ottomans.

THE REPORTS OF THE DAILY NEWSPAPER “POLITIKA” ABOUT THE SITUATION IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA PRECEDING THE ANNEXATION CRISIS OF 1908

In this paper, the writings of the daily newspaper “Politika” regarding the events preceding the Annexation Crisis were analyzed. The political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the beginning of the XX century was extremely complex and tense. Combined with the already complicated international circumstances, a favorable environment was created for one of the greatest political crises in Europe at the time. The period between the Young Turk Revolution and the Annexation Crisis was characterized by the attempts of Serbs from Bosnia and Herzegovina to resolve legally the question of Bosnia and Herzegovina without changing the state and legal status of the territory, as well as by the attempts by Austria-Hungary to integrate Bosnia and Herzegovina into its state structure. Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina and thus abused its mandate for occupying Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was provided by the Treaty of Berlin from 1878. The preparations for the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina were covered by the correspondents of “Politika”, who informed the Serbian public about it. The articles published in “Politika” at the time are invaluable for obtaining an accurate picture of the state of affairs at the time, as well as of a reign of terror that the Austro-Hungarian rule imposed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Младокурды и младотурки: особенности национально-политических движений в Османской империи в конце XIX – начале ХХ вв.

The article examines the little-studied question of the relationship between the young Turk and young Kurd movements in the crucial years for the Ottoman Empire preceding the revolution of 1908. The formation of the Kurdish identity and the beginning of the cultural and political movement in the late XIX century. it was received ambiguously in the Ottoman Empire. Thus, unlike the Armenian political movement, the leaders of Turkey’s Kurds expressed the full commitment of the Central government and the Empire reforms, whose purpose in part was to involve the Kurdish population in a more active participation in economic life. It is significant that after the victory of the young Turk revolution of 1908, there was a split in Kurdish society and among its leaders in relation to the new government and its slogans. The Kurdish movement showed great conservatism and adherence to traditional Islamic values, while the pan-Turkist Pro-European ideology of the young Turk political elite was not accepted by the main Kurdish mass. Nevertheless, during the First world war, the Kurds of the Ottoman Empire remained loyal to the government, actively waging an armed struggle against the enemies of the Empire.

Russian Diplomats Nikolai V. Charykov and Vassili N. Strandtmann on the Reasons for the Failure of the Russian Plan to Create a Balkan Federation

In Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, a new strategic line in relations with the Ottoman Empire was being developed. The urgent task of Russian diplomacy was to prevent the participation of the Ottoman Empire on the side of Russia’s opponents in a possible war. Unfortunately, Russian diplomacy failed to cope with this task. Diplomatic documents attest to the existence of a Russian plan to create a Balkan Federation under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire. Russia’s efforts in this regard intensified after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. In 1910, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was developing a plan for the possible unification of the Balkan states into a single Balkan Federation led by the Ottoman Empire. Serbia played an important role in the implementation of this program. This idea was developed by Nikolai V. Charykov, the Russian ambassador to Constantinople from 1909 to 1911. Russian diplomacy sought to smooth out the contradictions in the Balkans and normalise the relations of the young states with the Ottoman Empire. In 1911, the Russian Envoy to Constantinople, Charykov, negotiated with the Turkish leadership on the Russian-Turkish treaty, which, in particular, included the question of the Balkan Federation. This episode in Russian-Turkish relations went down in the history of diplomacy as the “Charykov demarche.” The formation of the Balkan Union and the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 meant the failure of the Russian model of peaceful coexistence of the Balkan states as a confederation, including the autonomy of European Turkey. The reasons for this failure were discussed in their memoirs by two Russian diplomats Nikolai V. Charykov and Vassili N. Strandtmann, who gave years of diplomatic service in the Balkans, and who remained living there after escaping from revolutionary Russia.

Book Review: Giray Fidan. Chinese Witness of the Young Turk Revolution: Kang Youwei's Turk Travelogue. Translated by Giray Fidan. New York: Kopernik Inc., 2019.

Book Review: Giray Fidan. Chinese Witness of the Young Turk Revolution: Kang Youwei's Turk Travelogue. Translated by Giray Fidan. New York: Kopernik Inc., 2019.

Les représentations de la Révolution de 1917 dans le discours officiel en Russie contemporaine : le rôle de la doxa dans les stratégies discursives.


 
 
 Depuis la perestroïka, les représentations de la Révolution russe de 1917 ont subi des changements profonds, renversant le mythe révolutionnaire soviétique. Les dirigeants politiques russes des années 2000 font un usage sélectif de ces représentations transformées dans leurs stratégies discursives. Cet article interroge la façon dont la révolution est traitée dans l’espace communicatif du Kremlin, après la rupture avec la mythologie soviétique et au moment de la recherche d’une certaine continuité avec l’époque soviétique. En effet, le concept de révolution, avec des références aux événements et figures du moment révolutionnaire, est réactualisé dans le discours politique russe contemporain dès avant les « révolutions de couleur » dans l’espace postsoviétique. Ces bouleversements réduisant la distance entre l’usage du soft power et du hard power inquiètent le pouvoir russe et l’incitent à chercher des instruments d’autolégitimation dans la mémoire historique, en particulier dans celle des révolutions de 1917. Les représentations du moment révolutionnaire dans le discours du pouvoir russe contemporain s’appuient sur la doxa héritée de l’époque de la perestroïka. Cependant, certains éléments de cette doxa sont utilisés pour défendre le paradigme évolutionniste qui constitue le fondement de la légitimité du pouvoir. Cette étude montre ainsi comment les dirigeants russes contemporains parviennent à inscrire dans leurs stratégies d’autoreprésentation et d’argumentation les divers éléments constitutifs des nouvelles représentations de la révolution. L’article interroge la place des représentations de la révolution dans les procédés rhétoriques et discursifs de légitimation de Soi et de délégitimation de l’Autre.