Russian Revolution had radical global ramifications

The Bolsheviks’ efforts to change the world remain relevant in our own time of popular disaffection with establishment politics and brutalist economics, says Geoffrey Roberts

PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation is the political heir to the upheavals of the November, 1917 Bolshevik revolution. But Putin is no revolutionary. As a former communist, he remembers with affection the idealistic creed of Soviet communism, but his socially conservative regime is not celebrating this year’s 100th anniversary of the revolution. These days, nothing causes more anxiety in the Kremlin than the prospect of a regime-changing revolution.

Putin is viewed by some commentators as a radical, seeking to overturn the western-dominated global order. But his foreign-policy ambitions are modest compared with those of his Bolshevik predecessors, who sought nothing less than to spread communism and the Soviet system worldwide. Putin is more pragmatist than ideologue, driven by the desire to secure the Russian Federation’s borders, to guarantee friendly neighbours, and to win recognition for Russia as a world-class political player.