When speaking about the Bolshevik Revolution, one should not forget about the currents that developed then, the Socialist theory, the Manifesto of the Communist Party and others so as to realize their impact. It wasn’t an explosion. It was a specific Russian event in an international context. There were objective historical conditions that generated inevitable events, director of the Association for Participatory Democracy (ADEPT) Igor Botan, the standing expert of IPN’s project, 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.
Igor Botan said a lot of time passed since the so-called Russian Revolution and things got settled and the people brought their ideas in order. “When we speak about revolutions, we mean the dramatic change in all the sociopolitical relations witnessed in 1917. I think it is logical to see what the impact was on us, those who now live in the Republic of Moldova. I think the impact of that revolution was an extraordinary one and it influenced many fates,” noted the expert.
According to him, the current Republic of Moldova is a consequence of those events. The political class that declared the independence and later developed a multiparty system in our country has deep roots there. “A generation changed. A new generation of politicians comes and we see what is going on in our country. As a citizen, I want to know if there are political forces in Moldova that make use of communist and socialist traditions. We do not have parties that care a lot about traditions that are 100 years old,” he stated.
Igor Botan noted that the Socialist-Communist idea should be delimited from the methods applied by Russia to implement this idea. Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin said a Communist Revolution should know to defend itself. In this case, totalitarianism was the method of defending this Revolution. But the Socialist Revolution for Russia was an event of dramatic modernization and industrialization and the things it left as inheritance cannot be ignored.
According to the ADEPT director, the supra-administered body – the USSR – went through a phenomenon that appeared about 50 years ago and we have lived it – the information revolution. “If we look at the role of a superpower like Russia, we see that it regrettably didn’t form part of this torrent that took part in the revolution. They suffer from “mental retardation” and are now taking measures to get rid of this label. Russia is a rich country with talented people, but, owing to its territory and history, it has to permanently catch up with someone,” stated Igor Botan. In another development, he noted that the people have the right to revolutions and without them it is impossible to change things, but these should not necessarily be bloody ones.
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.
