Lenin named revolutions ‘the festivals of the oppressed and the exploited.’ And today, the world commemorates the centenary of one of the most important festivals of this kind, the Great October Socialist Revolution.
The October Revolution, that followed the February Revolution of the same year, resulting in the dethroning of Tsar Nicholas II, happened in the context of the World War I when Europe was shattered by crises. The Ottoman, German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires were collapsing, and the general experiences of war and defeat were making space for paramilitary violence in attempts to consolidate the dissolving Empires. In Russia, the Bolsheviks ideology – working towards the establishments of a socialist society based on equality – added to the rise of extreme politics and on October 24-25 (6-7 November), 1917, the Red Guards, under the orders of the Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee took control over the entire Russian capital to fire start the Russian Civil War and lead to the creation of the Soviet Union.
A great contradiction and a major paradox of the 20th century, in its essence the Russian Revolution was a vision of a perfected society and the creation of a new better type of a human that would build the new world.
In reality, the Soviet regime that was established with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on the 7th of November 1917 (New Style), brought in a communist regime to take control over the industry and to soon result in an economic downturn.
At the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the transition to a market based economy begun, the size of the centrally planned Soviet economy was less than half that in the USA, to see a further 60% sinking of the GDP % between 1991 and 1999, and the economic consequences of the Soviet Era to be finally surmounted 90 years after the Great Revolution, when Russia made it to the top 5 Economies with the Largest Contribution to Global Economic Growth.
The last years’ recession driven by the sharp decline of oil prices (crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas comprise over 50% of Russia’s exports), along with the exposed international sanctions on the country, is followed by encouraging signs of recovering – Moscow’s plan to rebuild foreign currency reserves, privatise companies and improve its financial system, on top of Russia boasting three of the largest 2016 international M&A transactions in the upstream oil and gas sector and Russian energy companies signing investment deals worth billions with Saudi Arabian partners.
100 years after the Great Revolution, while the Russian State Duma is holding a tender for a detailed study on the subject of cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and initial coin offerings (ICOs); and the central bank and the finance ministry are drafting legislation for cryptocurrency prior the expected launch of the Russian official cryptocurrency, the CryproRuble, the world is awaiting the Great Russian Cryptocurrency Revolution, powered by Ethereum and its potential to revolutionise a new economic order.
