How have political changes in the Soviet Union during the 20th century affected the way that the history of the Russian Revolution has been written?
The dictionary definition of history is, the branch of knowledge that records and analyses past events. This however is a very simplistic view of history and to understand the study of history we are introduced to historiography, the definition of which is, the principles or methodology of historical study . It is with the latter that we can truly answer some of the major questions in history, as it is not solely the facts and figures that truly give us an understanding of the past, but in analysing different interpretations of the past events.
However, this is not as easy as it may seem, for example some of the more controversial or pressing issues of the past, and for example the holocaust can spark raw emotion inside the person studying the event. The Russian revolution can also come under this heading. This essay will look at the political changes within the Soviet Union during the 20th century and how this in turn affected the way in which the history of the Russian revolution had and has been written.
In the early 20th century the political unrest in Russia was so much so that there was in fact three revolutions, one in 1905 and two in 1917, February and October. It is said however that the Russian Revolutions were three in one - an unholy trinity. Lenin called 1905 a ‘dress rehearsal’ and was the first to argue that October must follow on from February. For Trotsky the three revolutions were all part of one continuous ‘permanent revolution’. This essay however will focus on the final October revolution, which is the one commonly referred to solely as the” Russian revolution”, with the 1905 revolution referred to as the 1905 revolution and the February revolution also mentioned with the date it occurred. However it is nigh on impossible to mention the Russian Revolution without mentioning the two...