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Summary Theory I: perspectives on history
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Theory I: perspectives on HistoryWeek 1:
Lecture I (introduction)
Perspective on history
Our perspectives on historical events matter. It raises the question of which concepts, theories, and
frameworks historians have deployed, and this includes mainly two processes:
- The borrowing, translation, and appropriation of tools from related academic disciplines in the
humanities and social sciences and from philosophy.
- The development of original approaches and methods resulting from historians’ specific
reflections and empirical research.
The central task of this course is to develop a sensitivity for the strengths and weaknesses of both
processes, their evolution, and adaptions, and their consequences for the results historians can deliver.
A variety of perspectives leads to different positioning, different emphases, and historical debate.
What is the Russian revolution?
Russian citizens carry a banner reading ‘Great October Socialist Revolution’ during a rally marking the
anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Moscow.
What ‘is’ history?
The Russian Revolution has its 104th anniversary this year but what do we know about it? There was a
movie produced, ten years after the revolution and it is based on eye-witness accounts.
How can we study history?
Can or should history be objective, neutral, or unbiased? The film appears to claim this by presenting a
set of historical facts, but some people argue that there is nothing such one truth. Therefore, four different
approaches will be provided which are not mutually exclusive.
Social Science perspectives
‘Revolutions are the festivals of the oppressed and the exploited. At no other time are the masses of the
people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order.’ – Vladimir Lenin
We might put the history of revolutions in a position of social and political history. They tend to look at
the oppressed and the exploited, but it is a little bit harder than that.
Social sciences:
Knowledge objective is human behavior. It is the study of groups of people within a society. Individual
decisions are less important compared to the description and analysis of group behavior. Positivist vs.
interpretivist.
When we look at this field, we can ask two different but fundamental questions:
Question for history as a field of study: What can we learn from the past about social behavior?
Contribution to history: What van insights from the social sciences teach us about the past?
Russian Revolution in the Social Sciences
What drove the Russian Revolution?
A social science attempt is not to look at Lenin or Trotsky and their revolutionary zeal, but rather at the
situation of the population in terms of:
• Income, the standard of living, inequality, social mobility
▪ Were frequent food shortages to blame? Was there inflation? Could they move from a
peasant to a worker?
• Distribution of power
▪ Tsarist autocracy to the dumas. How was the political situation?
• Change over time (e.g., industrialization)
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, ▪ Urbanization creates new political actors.
Two revolutions swept over Russia in 1917 but social unrest had been brewing for decades.
Conjunctural (short term) vs. structural factors (long term)
Structural:
• Political, economic, and social inequality.
• Role of the Tsarist regime and orthodox church. Tsar was the head of the church and they held
in the serfdom in stand.
• End of serfdom, but persistent land problems. Peasants were left with low quality land and had
to pay rents and taxes on their labors.
Conjunctural
• Industrialization and growing working class (poor conditions, like low pay, long days, and bad
air)
• WWI and low morale (people weren’t happy with the war)
• Frequent food shortages
The Russian Revolution as a social experiment
The dual economy was because of the transition to a modern society and industrialization. But with a
cost. Low standard of living was a cause of the revolution.
Social groups:
- Old political elite +-1%
- New economic elite (12%)
- Urban workers (4%)
- Peasants (82%)
A study was done on the heights of soldiers that stagnated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because
of the poor conditions. This gives a sense of how good or bad the people were living.
Bolshevik’s claim was that they could solve these problems with peace, bread, and land.
Peace: Russia fought against Germany in WWI, but the army and population did not support that war.
Bread: industrialization led to fast urbanization and poor conditions in cities as well as impoverished
rural areas.
Land: centuries of suppression and failed land reform had led to unequal distribution of land including
many landless rural workers.
They switched from one elite to another:
The Russian Revolution led to a one-party dictatorship that was much more violent, bloody, and vicious
than what it had replaced.
The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was a bloody affair Lenin, and his entourage created a new elite,
themselves, at the head of the Bolshevik’s party.
Memory perspectives:
Remembering the Russian Revolution
Looking at events, not at that time but how they are remembered after that time. The centenary is a
good way to look on how the perspective has changed. Memories change over time. The cold war has
had influence on how the revolution is remembered. In the SU the memories of this were very positive.
The story was told that the Bolsheviks party had overthrown the other party with the working class. The
revolution was seen as fated because it was ‘right’. Rival parties were forgotten and written out of
history. It also was remembered with street views, monuments, statues.
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,The side of the West was quite negative of the revolution. The story they told was that the revolution
was a conspiracy led by the few. It had been violent and bloody.
Political leaders were doing the same thing: they were trying to make a certain memory to use for their
political aims.
The revolution lost the place that it had in the first place. Some still remember it as a good thing, but
many remember it as something bad. In 2004 Putin decided to cancel the holiday that remembered this.
The revolution is important and good in the eyes of Putin because on one hand it was a global thing and
it showed what kind of influence Russia had. But on the other hand, it was a negative memory because
there was a revolution, and he is anti-revolutionary and conservative. The victims of the revolution were
the people of the orthodox church and the Tsar. He decided to not remember the revolution and forget
about it, so they downgraded this event.
Some leaders will use memory and when it is not handy, they will discard it.
Geographical perspectives
Revolutionaries in a transnational social field.
• Cross-border mobility. People physically moving across borders but also ideas.
• Global public spheres.
Learning from geography: space as a central analytical category in historiography. What was the
relevance of space?
Before the Revolution Trotsky and the other one met in 1913 and hated each other from the start.
The global dimensions of the October Revolution
1. Europe was on the verge of something new.
2. The impact of 1917 beyond Europe.
Traces of a world revolution?
It was a trigger for other revolutions.
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,Hermeneutics
This means interpretation. It is a rough description.
The problem of interpretation and has to do with facts, objectivity, subjectivity, and relativism.
Russian Revolution:
General understanding: the act of interpretation. Reconstruct process of author or expression inner life.
Some think it is a method and some think it is a theory.
Philosophical hermeneutics: reflection on interpretation. Characteristic of our being: we are
interpretative beings but how do we interpret life as a whole?
Can historians give an objective account of the RR?
What is objectivity? Ideas of adjustments formed under consideration. Truth should be independent of
how someone feels or thinks.
Events: take place, occur, on locations, sort time or whole revolutions/wars
States of affairs: have a duration and you can try to change them
Facts: are stated, contested, conceded, challenged, and disputed. Facts are in language: they depend on
conceptual frameworks and are context-bound. We perceive reality mostly through language
(interpretation). Factual claims are always a collection of state of affairs.
Historians don’t find cold hard facts and do not present them as they really happened. They interpret
based on point of view and construct a narrative. The key is the art of interpretation and that is wat
hermeneutics are called. But what about objectivity, subjectivity, and relativism?
Can we objectively know and understand the past? Different answers throughout history; specifiek
contexts: leads to relativism?
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,Week 1:
Lecture II Memory perspectives
1. Memory and history
2. Memory and space
3. Memory wars
Memory and history
(Past as remembered) (past as studied)
Everyone has memories. Memory is a way to relate to the past, but memory is a difficult source for
historians. Traditionally memory was left aside because it was too risky, but historians today pay much
more attention to memory.
How does memory work?
Memory is remembering and remembrance. The act of remembering is a common everyday aspect.
Questions like where is my bike?
Remembrance is a more conscious and visual way to remember.
The processes of remembering are mysterious and complex, so to answer this question is to turn to
neuroscientist colleagues. They distinguish it into three types:
1. Episodic memory (events). What did you do on your birthday?
2. Semantic memory (knowledge). When did the second world war begin? These are learned ideas.
3. Habit memory (procedures). How do you ride a bike or open a door? Subconscious.
Memories are always made in the present. Memory works through stories. When you ask something for
example about Cinderella, you are likely to answer with a story. It must be transmitted through stories.
Memory functions through story, but history as well.
Memory helps us to make predictions. When you are told to not put your hand in the fire, you would
not put your hand in the fire. Even later in life. Memories help us make choices and make sense of the
world. If you apply this to the thought that knowledge of the past helps us act within the present, you
can see how it has relevance to how we think about history.
Memory connects the past and the present. If we have a happy memory but it is followed by a tragic
event, this memory will be reinterpreted into a different light. We make decisions in the present because
of the past (like putting your hand in the fire).
We update our memories on present knowledge. They are constructed in the present moment in response
to external stimuli.
History made in the present. History is influenced by what is happening in society. What is happening
at that moment, for example, reinterpreted crusades as a clash between the western and Islamic cultures.
This is the beginning of the 21st century. The historians look at the crusades with the eye of now and
what is going on in the world like politics.
Presentism (looking at the past as seen from today) vs. historicism (past in its historical context, an
attempt to look at a situation in the context of its own time).
Individual and collective memory
There are memories that are personal and unique to us and will be strongly connected to our identity. If
you meet someone new, you will give them a short account of a biography. You tell a little bit about our
memories and our past.
Collective memories can belong to a small group, like a family but can also belong to a larger group,
like a football club. Collective memories are strongly connected to identity. When you go to a school
reunion, you are likely to talk about memories. Those shared and collective memories give you a sense
that you belong to the group.
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, Maurice Halbwachs (1877-194%)
He has two main works dedicated to collective memory. Individual memory doesn’t happen in isolation.
These are shaped by a social framework. He meant that collective memories are socially determined,
they are shaped by tradition, our position in the society, our beliefs, by convention.
Individual memories are also social. For example, you are the only one to witness a crime, the way you
remember it is shaped by the society we exist within.
Collective memories are also individual. Collective memories exist in the minds of the individual
because groups can’t have memories because they don’t have a brain. These memories are always
filtered. This is a critique of Halbwach because he didn’t know these memories could be individual.
Individual and collective memories are connected
9/11: these attacks are a very important collective memory. Other people have also a strong individual
memory of this event.
Halbwachs was a victim of history. He lived in a concentration camp and died there so his work was
published after he died.
Memory boom: this publication was so influential that it created a memory boom. It led to the emergence
of this field: memory study.
The first type of collective memory. It is invented by Jan and Aleida Assmann and it is called cultural
memory. This is a collective memory shaped through culture. It is a sub-section of collective memory.
It is shaped by monuments, art, films, these kinds of artifacts. Cultural memory is built by the people
that work in this sector, so it is institutionalized. This also means it is elite.
National memory: memory of a specific nation. Tend to be based on foundation myths, origin stories.
Italy is based on the idea that it is based on the roman empire. It gives the people of a nation a sense of
who they are. The past is used to legitimate the present.
A part of national memory is a commemoration, this could be events, people, heroes, and martyrs.
Shared memories are used to unite a nation. > unity, legitimacy, and identity.
National forgetting with events that are to be ashamed of, like for Germany to forget the nazi-past.
Countries will get rid of memories that are uncomfortable.
National memory:
- Important for a nation
- Will include and exclude parts and people
- Are governed
Individual and collective
- Differ
- They connect
- And have common features like that they are connected to identity
How does memory relate to history?
History and memory were separate. So, history was objective, reliable, and written. Memory was
subjective, untrustworthy, and oral. History was superior to memory. This is an outdated way to look at
memory and history.
Casestudy: Greenham Common women’s protest (cold war). Greenham is an army base and was used
to store a nuclear missile. Women started to protest, and they were imprisoned and some even killed.
This is an event in memory and history. It contributed to banning a specific type of missile in Britain
and contributed in a small part to the ending of the cold war. It is also contemporary, so it still lives in
our active memory.
‘Mothers of the revolution’ is a perfect example of a combination of memory and history.
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