The October Revolution: perceptions by contemporaries versus generational memory

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the problem of constructing a Soviet myth of the October Revolution supplemented by consistent exclusion of alternative contemporaneous interpretations. Building on theories of cultural and communicative memory (Halbwachs; Assmann), the analysis investigates why representations of the Revolution that diverged from the official Soviet discourse failed to become stabilized within collective memory. Drawing on ego-documents produced by contemporaries (Bunin, Sorokin, Gorky, and Plekhanov), the study reconstructs displaced narratives that conceptualized the Revolution as social catastrophe rather than historical progress. By juxtaposing these narratives with demographic data from the 1937 census and statistics on political repression, the article demonstrates that the institutional interruption of intergenerational mechanisms of experiential transmission facilitated the replacement of alternative narratives with an ideologically sanctioned construct. This finding contributes to broader debates on the role of state capacity and symbolic power in the consolidation and naturalization of hegemonic historical narratives.