[Column] The Russian Revolution, seen from 2006

By Han Hong-seok, producer for MBC-TV

Ulyanovsk is a city near the Volga River, and is also Lenin's hometown. There's a huge "Lenin museum" on the spot he was born, and the house he lived in during his teenage years is a property managed by the city. When I visited earlier this year, the 'babushkas' in charge looked at me with surprise and said, "The capitalists are back." Perhaps it was because I was the first visitor from South Korea, but the term "capitalist" gave me a funny feeling. Not that the term was incorrect, mind you, but these women were members of the generation that during the Communist years shouted anti-capitalist slogans.

The hardest thing for me to make sense of while producing the program "The Russian Revolution" (reosia hyeongmyeong) was how so many Russians are sentimental about the old system. How could they possibly

feel nostalgic about a system built by Stalin? It's a question that never left the mind of this "capitalist" from the Republic of Korea. But the fact of the matter is that most older Russians strongly miss the days when there was order and stability, when you were provided with a pension, a university education, and medical services.

Did they have memories of Stalin's horrific purges? They fully remember how in 1937 and 1938 millions were taken away and 680,000 people were shot and killed. But it looked like the memories of most are dominated by "everyday memories" more than by the fears they used to have.

It looked to me like they are lost in memories not of Stalin's concentration camps, but of the "good old days, when waiting for an apartment got you one." It has been 20 years since the Soviet Union collapsed, and yet even now many Russians remain unable to adjust to a society based on competition. Walking around the streets of Russia you frequently come across graffiti that says things like, "Give factories to their workers!" The Communists are also still an important opposition party. When I visited one "workers' party" in St. Petersburg, I even saw a most novel slogan, novel even though it was first used during the 1917 revolution: ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS! Of course, no one thinks this ideology has any chance for revival. Nevertheless, the authors of slogans like these are busy studying programs that would offer protection for the weaker classes in society, at a time when socioeconomic disparity is getting worse day by day. Just like many Russian revolutionaries did 90 years ago...

Russians have a certain lingering nostalgia for "The Revolution." Specifically, it's about a "system the state bears responsibility for" and "strong memories of equality." Is the Russian Revolution something utterly irrelevant for us as we live in the era of neoliberalism? In the course of shooting the program, I gradually realized that "revolution" is more of an everyday, practical kind of thing for ordinary people in their daily lives, and not really a grand ideology after all.

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