An idea dead & alive

Putin’s Russia ignores the centenary of the Russian Revolution. Xi Jinping’s China wants to keep its message alive.

Written by Sudheendra Kulkarni | Published:November 10, 2017 12:35 am

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The Aurora Cruiser during a light show marking the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution in St Petersburg, Russia. (Source: AP)

World history is a history of big ideas. Big changes have always needed big ideas capable of appealing to the hearts and minds of the multitudes and energising them into action. Karl Marx, the originator of one such Big Idea — the theory of communism that envisioned a society based on equality and free of exploitation, and a state that would ultimately wither away — said it best. “Material force (violence used by guardians of the old social order) must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.”