The 1917 Russian Revolution from the perspective of white-guardist and bolshevik state building

0502029 - ÚSP 2019 RIV PL eng J - Journal Article
Halász, Ivan
The 1917 Russian Revolution from the perspective of white-guardist and bolshevik state building.
Krytyka Prawa. Roč. 10, č. 2 (2018), s. 561-572. ISSN 2080-1084. E-ISSN 2450-7938
Institutional support: RVO:68378122
Keywords : Bolsheviks * dictatorship * revolution * state-building * White Guardist movement
OECD category: Law

The 1917 Russian Revolution was one of the central events of the 20th century, resulting in a great deal of novel developments not only in terms of ideology and socio--economics, but also in the field of state-building. Very innovative was the Bolshevik state-building. Both in terms of power and administration and in terms of the identity of the state, the Bolsheviks were thinking in terms of a completely new and novel concept of the state. The camp of the opponents of the Bolsheviks was heterogeneous. They ranged from the hardest Russian etatists to anarchists of various bents kinds As a result, the White movement’s ideology was strongly reflective (reactive) in its character. The majority of White leaders saw their own system as a military dictatorship restoring order. Officially, the generals claimed that their role was temporary, to be maintained only until the rule of law and the unity of the state are restored in Russia. It was, in fact, one of their paramount objectives to restore a “unified and indivisible” Russia. Although the factual existence of a military dictatorship did not mean that representative bodies in various forms and with various competencies did not exist at all, those bodies could never be equal partners of the leading generals. They were more akin to consulting bodies. Instead, amid the terror and the chaos of the Civil War, the ideology of ‘the strong hand’ and ‘effective, stable power’, without any additional adjectives became increasingly important in the ideology of the White movement.

Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0293981