1917-2017

Everyone loves a centenary – the jerky black and white film and the memorable hats all make for good TV. Not so in Russia, where the past is not a source of nostalgia but a live political issue.

The World Today
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Indeed, smoothing over the bumps of Russian history – and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 is one of the roughest – is key to Vladimir Putin’s hold on power. As Konstantin von Eggert writes in our opening article, celebrating a revolution clashes with the Kremlin’s focus on stability and the proclaimed continuity of Putin’s Russia with Tsarist times.

So is there going to be another Russian revolution? Looking at demography – a youth bulge in 1917, and a severe youth gap today – Ekaterina Schulmann concludes that tensions will spring from the migration of Muslim people into the heartland of Russia to replace the generation not born in the 1990s.

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