{"id":1428,"date":"2013-09-03T18:07:07","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T22:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2013-09-03T18:07:07","modified_gmt":"2013-09-03T22:07:07","slug":"two-portraits-of-revolution-re-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/2013\/09\/03\/two-portraits-of-revolution-re-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Portraits of Revolution (Re-post)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Revolution has proven to be an incendiary topic throughout history, thus becoming the subject of countless different interpretations across various mediums. \u00a0Mark Mazower\u2019s\u00a0<em>Dark Continent<\/em>, a rigorous portrait of early twentieth-century European governments, and\u00a0<em>Battleship Potemkin<\/em>, a Russian propaganda film relating the story of a Russian sailing crew\u2019s mutiny against the ship\u2019s oppressive officers, present two equally informative images of the Russian revolution that vary drastically in perspective.<\/p>\n<p>Mazower\u2019s text revisits the topic of interwar European government from a perspective that does not presuppose the primacy of democracy. \u00a0Consequently, he presents the Russian revolution as a quasi re-imagination of liberal democracy. \u00a0The author recounts the revolution\u2019s optimistic origins as a move toward the unification of Russia behind the \u201c\u2018universal democratic soul\u2019\u201d described by Prince Lvov (Mazower, 10). \u00a0However, Mazower acknowledges the divisions that arose due to the ambiguity of the revolution\u2019s goal (i.e. \u201c\u2018bourgeois democratic\u2019\u201d vs. \u201c\u2018proletarian socialist\u2019\u201d) and how this ultimately led Russia to be \u201csqueezed increasingly tightly between the twin extremes of communism and fascism\u201d (Mazower, 10 &amp; 13).<\/p>\n<p>Conversely, in\u00a0<em>Battleship Potemkin<\/em>, the sobering relative objectivity that pervades Mazower\u2019s work vanishes into overt propaganda. \u00a0The plot is simple and quickly established by the on-screen dialogue, which is dominated by rallying cries for revolution such as \u201cAll for one and one for all!\u201d and \u201cLet nothing divide us!\u201d \u00a0These lines originate in the mouths of the mutinous sailors and eventually find their way to the people of Odessa, who rally against the Tsarist regime upon hearing the story of the death of sailor Vakulinchuk (\u201cKilled for a plate of soup\u201d). \u00a0This text in conjunction with the insistently dramatic bombast of the score and several poignant images (the destruction of the Odessa Opera House, a baby carriage careening down a flight of steps in the midst of a riot) creates a poignant albeit transparent appeal to the pathos of the viewing audience in an attempt to glorify the concept of a Russian revolution.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, Mazower\u2019s view of the Russian revolution is one of factual pragmatism that benefits from several decades of hindsight and research, while\u00a0<em>Battleship\u00a0<\/em><em>Potemkin\u00a0<\/em>(much like\u00a0<em>Triumph of the Will<\/em>)<em>\u00a0<\/em>is equally useful as an image of one faction\u2019s ambitions created in the climate of the revolution it advocated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Revolution has proven to be an incendiary topic throughout history, thus becoming the subject of countless different interpretations across various mediums. \u00a0Mark Mazower\u2019s\u00a0Dark Continent, a rigorous portrait of early twentieth-century European governments, and\u00a0Battleship Potemkin, a Russian propaganda film relating the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/2013\/09\/03\/two-portraits-of-revolution-re-post\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1796,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51180],"tags":[80422,80423,80435,80424,47603,77957],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-battleship-potemkin","tag-dark-continent","tag-eisenstein","tag-mazower","tag-propaganda","tag-russian-revolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1796"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}