The Russian Revolution was an epochal event that radically changed the fate of the region, of Bessarabia, of the current territory of the Republic of Moldova and transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people. This Revolution was mainly the product of World War I, which was the first all-embracing war that resulted in the extraordinary mobilization of society, historian Virgil Pislariuc stated in the public debate “A century of Russian Revolution: consequences and expectations” that was the 80th installment of the series “Developing political culture by public debates” and was staged by IPN News Agency and Radio Moldova.
According to the historian, the social transformations witnessed later in the ex-USSR were not exclusively the result of the Russian Revolution and many people forget that Otto fon Bismarck is the one who can be considered the real promoter of those social changes. The big problem related to the perception of the Soviet past is that big discrepancy between theory and practice because it is one thing what the initiators of the Revolution projected and it is another thing how the goals were achieved.
Virgil Pislariuc said that when we speak about the Communist inheritance, we should consider the extent to which the costs were justified. “I think the costs cannot be justified. The damage was huge and catastrophic for us as a society, including the totalitarianism that has its roots in the October revolution and the approach that the individual has no value and collectivity is superior and the person can be sacrificed for a “bright” future,” he stated.
The historian believes Moldovan society too easily tries to find a justification for the current situation in the past. “We should not permanently look for excuses in 1505, 1812, 1917 etc. Today we can very well solve the people’s problems by good governance. Yes, it is easy to mobilize the voters by making use of history. If we want to build a state, peace and prosperity for the people are the main problems that we should solve and these can be actually solved by our politicians,” stated Virgil Pislariuc.
The public debate “A century of Russian Revolution: consequences and expectations” was the 80th installment of the series of debates “Developing political culture by public debates” that are organized with support from the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany.
