The Cultural Turn in the Studies of the Russian Revolution

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to reveal the origins and essence of the cultural turn in the studies of the Russian revolution. The cultural turn in the studies of Great French Revolution, associated with F. Furet and his followers backed by number of post-structuralist approaches was the first source of cultural turn in Russian revolution’s field. Its second source was revisionist or social history of the Russian revolution. It proved that rank-and-file revolutionaries (the "masses") were not just the objects of manipulation by the Bolsheviks (or their historical construct legitimating its power). They had their own world of meanings, emotions and experience (albeit often expressed in new revolutionary phraseology), which was especially acute during revolutionary crises.