Communism: 100 years onTracing communism’s reach, 100 years after the Russian Revolution
One hundred years ago Wednesday, 25 October, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), which came to power on 3 March 1917 after the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II. The Bolsheviks, or communists, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, were now in power in Russia, ending nearly two centuries of monarchic rule. A civil war followed, leading to the creation of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1922. So great was the Soviet Union’s outsize impact over the course of its brief life, that its dissolution, on 25 December 1991, led to debate over what to expect in a world without it. In a 1989 essay titled “The End of History” – expanded in a 1992 book — political scientist Francis Fukuyama argued that the end of communism meant that the last challenge to Western liberal democracy had ended, and that humanity had reached an endpoint, with the “universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” NYU politics professor Joshua Tucker, the co-author of a new book, Communism’s Shadow, suggests that communist thought continues to have a real impact today, and that the legacy of the Soviet Union is very much alive.
One hundred years ago Wednesday, 25 October (Julian calendar; 7 November Gregorian calendar) the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government, which came to power on 3 March 2017 (Julian calendar; 16 March Gregorian calendar) after the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II. The Bolsheviks, or communists, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, were now in power in Russia, ending nearly two centuries of monarchic rule.
A civil war followed, and the triumph of the Red Army over the White forces laid the foundation for the creation of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1922. The USSR would dissolve within nearly seventy years, but the state and its citizens produced numerous scientific and cultural touchstones—the Sputnik 1 satellite, the novel Doctor Zhivago, and the video game sensation Tetris, to name a few—plus a Cold War with the democratic West that shaped global politics for half a century in the aftermath of the Second World War. So great was the Soviet Union’s outsize impact over the course of its brief life, that its dissolution, on 25 December 1991, led to debate over what to expect in a world without it.
In 1989, political scientist Francis Fukuyama predicted that “the passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology of world historical significance.”
Was Fukuyama right? Did communism die with the Soviet Union? Your answer may depend, in part, on your definition of what it means for an ideology to be “living.” But NYU politics professor Joshua Tucker’s new book, Communism’s Shadow (co-written with Grigore Pop-Eleches), which analyzes the attitudes of individuals living in post-communist countries, suggests that communist thought continues to have a real impact today.
To mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, NYU News spoke with Tucker about communism’s legacy and how the Soviet Union changed the world.
