Mistakes commemorated, whether a revolution's or my own

Ah, the seventh of November. A bit of a special day. For me and for Russia

It’s the anniversary of the October Revolution.

Lenin addressing the crowd during the October Revolution
A moment that didn't lead to quite what was hoped
But that isn't the only mistake its anniversary brings to my mind

“The October Revolution?” I hear you cry, “In November?”

Indeed. One of the reactionary aspects of the Russian Tsarist regime, overthrown by the Bolsheviks in that great revolution, was that it had stuck with the old Julian calendar long after practically everyone it dealt with had moved to the Gregorian.

The Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar who launched it, didn’t get the leap years quite right. The result was that as the centuries rolled by, the calendar year got further and further out of step with the actual movement of the earth around the sun (or, as modern science has it, the movement of the earth and the sun around each other). The time it takes for the earth to go around the sun (or, as modern science has it, etc.) isn’t exactly 365 days, but more like 365.256 and then a bit. That extra fraction eventually begins to add up.

So the Gregorian calendar adds an extra day every four years, in leap years, but then adds the additional refinement of not making century years leap years except, as a further refinement still, if the century year is a millennium year. 1900 wasn’t a leap year but 2000 was.

That keeps the years pretty closely aligned with the earth’s movement.

But the Gregorian calendar was launched in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. Well, the Protestants and the Orthodox were a bit wary of anything papal, so they didn’t immediately switch with the Catholic nations. That meant that Britain, for instance, was ten days behind most of Europe in the seventeenth century, leading to such charming little discoveries as the coincidence of the deaths of Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, and William Shakespeare on the same date, 23 April 1616, but ten days apart.

It’s a lovely coincidence only slightly tainted by the fact that scholars today claim that Cervantes died on 22 April and the 23rd was the day he was buried. Still, why spoil a great little story just for the sake of the truth? After all, few of our political leaders these days do.

So you can see where this is heading. The revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power happened on 25 October 1917 in Russia. Pretty much everywhere else it was 7 November. That is the date that the event is now commemorated.

Why’s it so special to me? Well, not because of the revolution. Once I thought it was a pretty remarkable event, opening the doors to a better future for the victims of oppression everywhere. Not any more.

These days, it seems to me that the Russian revolution was tainted in its very roots. Not by the violence to which it led. The revolution itself involved little violence, and it was only because of the attempted counter-revolution against it that a bloody civil war broke out.

No, the problem was that it was led by people who knew they were right. They were expressing the force of history, which is at least as magnificent and all-powerful as the force of divinity, for those who believe in that idea. So anyone who stood in their way, wasn’t just a critic or an adversary, he was a traitor to a fundamental force that was unstoppably moulding human destiny. To sweep him away wasn’t merely justified, it was obligatory. If that involved a little torture, some forced confessions and an execution, well you couldn’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

The result was a regime that lasted over 70 years and killed more people than Hitler’s, mostly because it had so much longer to do so. That means the anniversary of the seizure of power is hardly a matter to celebrate.

Instead the reason I smile each year the date comes round is in memory of a deeply frustrating afternoon I spent in the library of the Royal Society, Britain’s most prestigious scientific academy, in London. I was researching a French scientist who had spent some time in London and, specifically, at the Royal Society in the early eighteenth century.

What I couldn’t cope with was that a letter of his announcing his departure from Paris was dated after another announcing his arrival in London.

Yep. I was being pretty dumb. I knew all about the problem of the Julian calendar in Britain and the Gregorian on the Continent. And yet I spent several hours racking my brain to try to understand how Maupertuis could have written a letter from Paris after his arrival in London. How I kicked myself when the solution to the conundrum came to me at last in a flash, as I remembered the difference in calendars...

7 November reminds me each year how badly I too can fail. Making it a salutary lesson in the importance of humility. Among the faults people attribute to me, and they are legion, excessive humility is not one that is often mentioned.

So the lesson is invaluable.

Centenary of a revolution. Or coup d'état

November the seventh. The centenary of the October Revolution.

Yes, yes, I know. October. On 7 November because the Russians were a bit late switching from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.

Lenin addressing a revolutionary crowd

When I first became interested in that portentous event, it had not long before celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. At the time, I accepted its description as a “revolution” and also believed that it had represented the seizure of power by a whole class, the working class of Russia, laying the groundwork for the introduction of socialism. Things had gone astray since but there was still hope that the course could be corrected and the promise of 1917 realised.

Nearly half a century on, I’ve had time to review my early impressions, correct some fairly crucial errors of perception, and fundamentally revise my opinion.

First of all, it was no revolution. That implies a fundamental change in society; in reality, Russia went from an autocracy oppressively run by a self-serving hereditary elite, to an autocracy oppressively run by a self-serving self-selecting elite.

Secondly, it was no revolution. This was not an uprising of the working class against oppression. Lenin never commanded a majority of the working class, but he had a wonderful theory to get around that problem: he proposed that though it was the revolutionary class, not everyone in it was as revolutionary as all the others. Instead, in his world view, there was a vanguard of the proletariat that understood the true working of history (which was to put Lenin and his pals in power) and would lead the rest of the working class to understand that truth. Finding a majority among the vanguard was easy, since the vanguard was by definition made up of those enlightened elements who’d realised that the Bolsheviks and Lenin were the best friends they’d ever had. That kind of sleight of hand is still popular, in groups of left and right alike, when they lack majority support outside their own narrow confines.

Thirdly, it was no revolution. Lacking mass support, what Lenin found was a God-given, or in his outlook, historically-inevitable opportunity in the chaotic conditions created by the government of Alexander Kerensky. With a small armed group and in the face of the impotence of the authorities to block him, he seized power in what he called a revolution but anyone else would call a coup d’état.

There was far more continuity than change across the dividing line Lenin and the Bolsheviks drew in 1917. Change came later, but it was one of degree, not of kind: the Bolshevik autocracy descended into bloodier oppression than ever previously seen in the long and blood course of Russian history. As many as 60 million Russians may have been put to death under the regime that followed Lenin’s, when Stalin mounted his own coup against the leaders of the first. Lenin died too soon to see it, which may have been fortunate: he might well have ended his life in gaol had he survived: he would have meant a constant embarrassment to Stalin, a reminder that he didn’t lead the uprising.

For if the October “revolution” was led by Lenin and his pals, it didn’t only include pals of his. Stalin, whose name meant man of steel, was a friend of no one but Jughashvili (his real name). It’s likely that his regime killed more people than the Nazis though, to be fair, it did have considerably longer.

Among his victims were leaders of the “revolution” that put him in power.

Bolshevik leaders
Indluded are Rykov, Radek, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky,
all put to death by Stalin – who’s nowhere to be seen

Not, then, an event to be celebrated with unmitigated cheer. I shall, I’m sure, raise a glass tonight, since I shall be with colleagues. But it’ll be to their health and mine, not to mark the centenary.

Of the October coup d’état.