Istanbul Institute of
Russian and Sovietic Studies
At Right: Peter the Third, who was betrayed and dethroned by his wife, an “etatist”
What is the real stake behind the over-romanticising of October Revolution by The New York Times? It is also noticeable that Putin’s regime overlooks Lenin and the October Revolution. Is a new propanganda warfare on re-writing history between American establishment and Russian regime coming out? Could we link this warfare to Trump’s election and his neo-keynesian economy-politics aiming to overcome the current (2008) “great depression”? And the rise of Russia as the new global power undertaking huge infrastructures namely the New Silk Road, Yamal Project, Shanghai Five, rebuilding the Eurasia-centered World system as the new global converging market?
The New York Times’ pathetic transformation
The New York Times, almost a century long mouth piece of the Red Scare, began publishing a serial named “The Red Century”, beginning from 2017, so-called, by means of the remembrance of the centannial of 1917 Revolution. Our intense studies of these articles, we decided to translate all of them into Turkish. Their celebration and over-romanticising of Bolshevism was quite stunning:
In article number 15, Sarah Jaffe, giving a brief account about the black activists in the history of American communism, discovers that communism was well fitting to the “essence” of black people. From the traditional viewpoint of The New York Times, this postulate however would be conceived as racist! This alone provides a perfect example how the celebration of race multiplicity by globalist multiculturalism goes hand in hand with the exclusivist racism.
The two George Kennan’s stories in the 3rd article was also interesting to detect how the first who was pro-Russian is celebrated by the author, as opposed to the second who was a pioneer of the anti-communist propaganda when Russia took part in USA’s ambitions to restructure the post-war global order. The article aims to locate Putin’s etatism in line with Stalinism – undermining their differences and without explicitely expressing it.
Let’s skip Sverdlov, let’s talk about love!
The article of Yuri Slezkine (Article number 8) digging “the love lives of bolshevics” first slightly tends to refer to Sverdlov. However his reference remains irrelevant and ambiguous throughout the text and whimsically shifts into giving a discourse on Osinsky’s loves. However, Sverdlov was a much more interesting character than the minister (commissariat) of accounting Osinsky: Was Sverdlov killed on purpose when left fallen while being thrown in the air by the crowd during street celebrations? What kind of engagement and international connections he had? What’s matter is rather to uncloth the connections of these -so called- revolutionaries to global capitalism.
Why does Historian Sean McMeekin teaching at Bard College need specifically to emphasize (article number 17) that the question whether Lenin had been a German agent or not, was NOT an important question? Sean McMeekin used to teach in Turkey as guest academician in the Centre for Russian Studies at Bilkent University in Ankara and in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Koç University in Istanbul. A historian’s point should be the opposite: he, personally might not be interested specifically with that question, but proclaiming that this question was not important is incompatible with his academic identity.
“The mask of the clown is closely related to the audience. It operates more via the body and gestures than via speech and is intended to provoke laughter and to challenge and involve the public, but at the same time he or she is often frightenning. The clown usually appears as an insular figure – even within a group of clowns each one appears as an individual. Furthermore the clown’s mask is fixed, somehow frozen. Difference and melancholic individuality unfold within, something with which we as the audience are invited to empathize via a concentrated examining of gestures and mimicry. Besides there is something grotesque in the mask of the clown…” (Anna Shober, “Picturing “Gender”: Iconic Figuration, Popularization, and the Contestation of a Key Discourse in New Europe” into “Sociology of the Visual Sphere”, editors: Regev Nathansohn, Dennis Zuev, Routledge, 2013, p.75.) In later centuries, through the structural transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas) we see the evolution of “clown” into “public intellectual”. So the article number 6 of The New York Times’ The Red Century serial is concocted by one of the most prominent ones of our days, the British-Pakistani “public intellectual” Tariq Ali. In his panegyric contribution to The Red Century, he expresses his deep enthousiasm to Lenin.
Liberalism in crisis: let’s affiliate Trotskyism…
The Trotskyist doctrine of “continuous revolution” can be an excellent instrument for liberal brainwash to postpone and curtain their political and ideological failure. This discoursive practice can function similar to that of the pacifism of “mahatma” Gandhi who delayed the Indian independence for more than 30 years as well as similar to Mevlana during the mongolian occupation of Asia Minor. They are indeed all “mahatmas” (which means “great soul”), Gandhi, Mevlana… but be careful with all those “mahatmas”! Whenever there is such a “greatness”, a sublimation of soul in the history, it functions as an ideological trick to perpetuate the current declining power relations. So, does David Priestland’s touching article pointing out the decline of global liberalism in reference to the remembrance and celebration of Trotsky exhibits his Trotskyist conversion into neo-conservatism?
Australian economist, Professor at the University of Queensland John Quiggin’s article is an exception: it asks an interesting question: “what if Kerensky had accepted German peace proposal? It seems like he wasn’t manipulated by newspaper’s editorial imposition. It’s not easy to manipulate a mathematician’s mind – so we recommend historians, “public intellectuals”, first to study Math!
Francis Beckett’s tearful article (article number 4) talks about a couple’s ‘drama’ about Comintern… This story about ‘Comintern’ leads us to think whether Max Petrovsky and Rose Cohen were double agents…
In her article (number 16), Caryl Emerson comes up with a great idea to divide and mess up Russia: she recommends reading 19th century Russian litterates. The study of this article may provide a good lesson to political scientists to figure out how an academic title becomes a tool to intermingle the public sentiment to decompose a geographical-political unit.
What does it mean “hard people”?
Resilient dissident leaders against (A) the centralist unitary state? Or cruel killers at the hands of (B) despotic paranoiac dictators? Is A = B ? Or is A ⊆ B and not A = B ? This is a history long debate going back to Hobbes, Aristotle and Plato… In his article (number 13) Jonathan Brent doesn’t discuss such crucial questions, but leaves the reader on its own to reflect, but to reflect what? Does this reference to Lenin’s words “hard people” intend to endorse “people like” Alexei Navalny? There is a clue: “Stalin did not bluff: Literally “anyone” could be guilty”. So Stalin might anachronistically have studied Althusser. Indeed, condemning insurgence “against corruption” can be considered corrupt in people’s pseudo-logic, and therefore guilty…! A good example for ideological indoctrination: fill your paper with plenty of unnecessary information to assert fake logical inferences for what you really want to mean.
A Putin’s Project: Mathilda!
We also study the polemiques and speculations arising about the film of Alexey Uchitel “Mathilda”, a love story of Nicholas the 2nd and a Ballerina when the heir to the throne was 22 and the ballerina Mathilde was 17 years old.
The Film Mathilda has been shot by a pro-Putin film director Alexey Uchitel. This film reflects the Russian governmental vision to restore the glorious times of Russian Empire. While The New York Times writers romanticize and appreciate Bolshevism, what we see here is a movie made by a pro-Putin director intending to boost imperial sentiments.
The .pdf document titled “Attack to Uchitel’s Studio in Leningrad” had been prepared by our Director AliPolaT as a compilation of documents and newspapers including The Times of Israel’s Sept 1, 2017 edition and many other Russian newspapers. The commonview among Russian people about the film is that it was a kitsch senario visually and technically supported by huge money poured by Putin’s government. Was the attack to the studio organised in order to attract more public interest to the film? The stupid predicate was that the Nicholas II was a Saint (because he was shot by the heretics) and that he couldn’t have an affair out of marriage with a lady of 17 years old.
Zealous reactions from “Liberal” media
Stunningly, the liberal Western media kept on emphasizing (even The Guardian emphasizing the sex scenes of lovers and that Mathilde was a teenager at that time – Monday 11 September 2017 11.18 EDT) the “pedophilia” of Tsarevitch Nicholas almost simultaneously, but their point was the opposite, to emphasize the “corrupted” nature of Russian pallace life. Was it so unusual for westerners to come across a 22 years old boy and 17 years old girl in love!
In order to better understand the political stance of Alexey Uchitel, it is worth to give a look to his Filmography. In the .pdf file entitled “Western Media’s agony on Ivan Bunin” we pointed out how Western media had blackened Uchitel’s biography of Ivan Bunin who was blessed by Nobel Prize of Litterature.
Our readers and researchers focusing on the secretive aspects in Russian history will also find the diaries of Mathilda and her correspondances with Tsarevitch Nicholas II first time in Turkish after Russian. The translations has been made by our director AliPolaT directly from Russian after their publishing in Russian newspaper The Moscow Komsomolets. We will discuss later why her memoirs she wrote later when she moved to the US were different than these diaries.