Significance of November 7

All the military might of the “first socialist state” was on display on this day. It was a military might which evoked a special sense of security and meaning. It was this might which challenged and kept under control the hegemonism of one power, i e, the US. Now that the American hegemonism has become the sole determinant or the defining characteristic of the international system it should be easy to see what a countervailing force the Soviet power was and has always been. The parade in the Red Square was in a sense a promise, a promise made to the struggling people around the globe. The number of liberation struggles that were aided and assisted by the then Soviet Union is legion.

The French who proudly claimed and still do that the ideas like liberty and equality and fraternity were their preserve merrily stuck on to their colonies like Algeria and it was the so-called totalitarian Soviet Union which was the greatest source of strength and military assistance in the Algerian fight for their “liberty”. The same was true of the French possessions in Indochina. All this needs to be stated because November 7 cannot be an exclusively Russian affair.

The Chinese in stark contrast to the Russians have once again demonstrated that their sense of history is about the sharpest. For them politics is not the art of the forgettable. But then it is also a question of the state. This kind of amnesia leads one to believe in the hegemonist’s argument that the state is a problem, all states that is, except of course the primary state of the new order. It does not like military power except its own. November 7 also meant a different kind of power distribution. It was hated for that very reason. Unlike the Chinese it is the end of history for the Russians. The end of history is also the end of memory. GPD EPW OF Life, Letters and Politics