What Else Can the Russian Revolution Teach: the Pyotr Chaadayev Factor and the Political Will

Occupation: Professor, St Petersburg State University; National Research University “Higher School of Economics” – St Petersburg, Russia; Researcher, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University
Affiliation:
St Petersburg State University
National Research University “Higher School of Economics” – St Petersburg
Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University
Address: Russian Federation

Journal name

Voprosy filosofii

Edition

Issue 12

Pages

131-140

Abstract

The Russian revolution is a process of ambiguous modernization (since the end of the 19th century), which is still not institutionally completed. The key moment was the events of 2017. Their result was the coming to power of the Bolshevik Party, the Civil War, the formation of the political regime, which gave the very traumatic modernization form for socium. To explain these events, we propose a P. Chaadayev paradox about the prospect of the victory of historically untenable socialism because of the untenable of its opponents. The "Chaadayev factor" content clarified with the help of the concepts of political will and N. Taleb’s "black swans". From this point of view, the society transition into a new state is a matter of a small number of uncompromising people, who are personally interested in the transition, involved in this process. Success comes in the case of simplification of problems and solutions in combination with the accentuated uncompromising minority and sufficient tolerance of the majority, when representatives of this majority have an asymmetry in their choice. The review results are beyond the scope of Russian experience and open up new opportunities for analyzing and solving problems of passionarity and tolerance. For example, if the reciprocity in tolerance conditions will violated, the society may lose immunity in relation to the willful intolerant minority.

Keywords

bourgeois revolution, Chaadayev, intolerance, modernization, nationalism, “passionarity”, political will, Russian revolution, Taleb, tolerance

Acknowledgment

The study was performed under the grant of the Russian Science Foundation (№18-18-00442) "Mechanisms of sense formation and textualization in social narrative and performative discurses and practices" at the E. Kant Baltic Federal University.

Received

20.12.2018

Publication date

20.12.2018

Cite

GOST	Tulchinskii G. What Else Can the Russian Revolution Teach: the Pyotr Chaadayev Factor and the Political Will // Voprosy filosofii – 2018. – Issue 12 C. 131-140 [Electronic resource]. URL: http://ras.jes.su/vphil/s207987840001118-8-1-en (circulation date: 05.11.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S004287440001891-5
MLA	Tulchinskii, Grigorii L "What Else Can the Russian Revolution Teach: the Pyotr Chaadayev Factor and the Political Will." Voprosy filosofii 12 (2018):131-140. DOI: 10.31857/S004287440001891-5
APA	Tulchinskii G. (2018). What Else Can the Russian Revolution Teach: the Pyotr Chaadayev Factor and the Political Will. Voprosy filosofii (12), pp.131-140 DOI: 10.31857/S004287440001891-5

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