Bolshevik Revolution 100th Anniversary Thoughts

The Bolshevik Revolution is to political change, what nuclear weapons are to warfare: the ultimate deterrent.
The question on this 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution is what happens to a society when you take violent overthrow of the government by the governed as a last resort out of the equation. How does it affect a society’s ability to respond to the inevitable changes wrought by the passage of time?
Economic, political, social pressure’s build up as decades pass. These pressures weaken and deform the political system, certainly it deforms the politicians who work in that system. What happens then?
To paraphrase Langston Hughes, do Generations of dreams deferred, dry up like raisins in the Sun, or fester like sores … or do they explode?
Is it even possible to hold off the explosion?
The overwhelming violence in which the Soviet Union was born and its ultimate failure, has obscured our ability to think about revolution clearly.
It is wrong to judge revolutions by whether they succeed or fail. Virtually all revolutions fail. Either they fail literally and are reversed by forces of reaction or they fail metaphorically by compromising their lofty goals. The fairest way to assess the impact of a revolution is by the fact that it happened at all. Revolutions represent tectonic shifts in society, terrible rupturings that create decisive breaks with the past.
Michael Goldfarb asks Does the Bolshevik Revolution mean there will never be another revolution in a major country like the US?

The Bolshevik Revolution is to political change, what nuclear weapons are to warfare: the ultimate deterrent.
The question on this 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution is what happens to a society when you take violent overthrow of the government by the governed as a last resort out of the equation. How does it affect a society’s ability to respond to the inevitable changes wrought by the passage of time?
Economic, political, social pressure’s build up as decades pass. These pressures weaken and deform the political system, certainly it deforms the politicians who work in that system. What happens then?
To paraphrase Langston Hughes, do Generations of dreams deferred, dry up like raisins in the Sun, or fester like sores … or do they explode?
Is it even possible to hold off the explosion?
The overwhelming violence in which the Soviet Union was born and its ultimate failure, has obscured our ability to think about revolution clearly.
It is wrong to judge revolutions by whether they succeed or fail. Virtually all revolutions fail. Either they fail literally and are reversed by forces of reaction or they fail metaphorically by compromising their lofty goals. The fairest way to assess the impact of a revolution is by the fact that it happened at all. Revolutions represent tectonic shifts in society, terrible rupturings that create decisive breaks with the past.
Michael Goldfarb asks Does the Bolshevik Revolution mean there will never be another revolution in a major country like the US?

How Media Obscures Our Understanding of History

Media obscures history. Not intentionally, but the effect of looking at images without a deeper understanding of the context in which the images were created will keep the viewer from knowledge of an historical event. In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb looks at how this lack of full understanding is hampering efforts to create a coherent political strategy to oppose President Trump.
He explores the seminal research into how media obscures not just history but also other aspects of life by thinkers like:
George Gerbner: http://web.asc.upenn.edu/gerbner/Asset.aspx?assetID=2597
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/05/the-man-who-counts-the-killings/376850/
& Neil Postman: https://quote.ucsd.edu/childhood/files/2013/05/postman-amusing.pdf
He also writes about the television programs that shaped the Vietnam generation, like Beulah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ2l_KTDcHU
This essay on how media obscures our undertanding of history is inspired by Ken Burns series “The Vietnam War.” Goldfarb asks, Why American society today feels like it is coming apart at the seams because when watching Burns documentary you realize there is no comparison between the objective reality of the Vietnam era and now.
The reality then: half a million troops in combat deployment, riots in American cities every summer with hundreds killed, major political assassinations as a regular feature of national life.
Reality today: a sense of panic that is comparable to the Vietnam era but not based in anything like the same scale of trauma.

Media obscures history. Not intentionally, but the effect of looking at images without a deeper understanding of the context in which the images were created will keep the viewer from knowledge of an historical event. In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb looks at how this lack of full understanding is hampering efforts to create a coherent political strategy to oppose President Trump.
He explores the seminal research into how media obscures not just history but also other aspects of life by thinkers like:
George Gerbner: http://web.asc.upenn.edu/gerbner/Asset.aspx?assetID=2597
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/05/the-man-who-counts-the-killings/376850/
& Neil Postman: https://quote.ucsd.edu/childhood/files/2013/05/postman-amusing.pdf
He also writes about the television programs that shaped the Vietnam generation, like Beulah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ2l_KTDcHU
This essay on how media obscures our undertanding of history is inspired by Ken Burns series “The Vietnam War.” Goldfarb asks, Why American society today feels like it is coming apart at the seams because when watching Burns documentary you realize there is no comparison between the objective reality of the Vietnam era and now.
The reality then: half a million troops in combat deployment, riots in American cities every summer with hundreds killed, major political assassinations as a regular feature of national life.
Reality today: a sense of panic that is comparable to the Vietnam era but not based in anything like the same scale of trauma.

What is a Nation?

Referendums in Iraqi Kurdistan and Catalonia raise the question “What Is a Nation?”

What is a nation? What is a nation-state? Is it the same as a country? Are a people, or a tribe, the same thing as a nation? What does national sovereignty really mean? These are the key questions for our globalized 21st century.

What is a nation? Is it something you die for? Get murdered for? Is it something that can make you clinically insane, incapable of seeing reality? Is a nation something that can be created by treaty or politics? What does the birth of a nation look like? What does it smell like when it dies?

Michael Goldfarb draws on his decades covering conflicts rooted in frustrated attempts to express national feelings to look for an answer and comes up with more questions:

• Can the dozens of nations that make up western Europe hope to preserve their wealth and high living standards in a globalized economy without pooling their nation-hood into something greater?
• What is the importance of a nation-state in a world whose economy is no longer organized on national lines, In an era where the loyalties of global elites are to each other and not the lands of their birth?
• Will the 21st century see the creation of a United States of Europe and witness the splitting apart of the United States of America?

Referendums in Iraqi Kurdistan and Catalonia raise the quesiton “What Is a Nation?”
What is a nation? What is a nation-state? Is it the same as a country? Are a people, or a tribe, the same thing as a nation? What does national sovereignty really mean? These are the key questions for our globalized 21st century.
What is a nation? Is it something you die for? Get murdered for? Is it something that can make you clinically insane, incapable of seeing reality? Is a nation something that can be created by treaty or politics? What does the birth of a nation look like? What does it smell like when it dies?
Michael Goldfarb draws on his decades covering conclficts rooted in frustrated attempts to express national feelings to look for an answer and comes up with more questions:
Can the dozens of nations that make up western Europe hope to preserve their wealth and high living standards in a globalized economy without pooling their nation-hood into something greater?
What is the importance of a nation-state in a world whose economy is no longer organized on national lines, In an era where the loyalties of global elites are to each other and not the lands of their birth?
Will the 21st century see the creation of a United States of Europe and witness the splitting apart of the United States of America?

Without Memory There is No History, Here’s why

If an event happens and there is no one to witness and remember it, does it become part of history? If memory is eliminated is it possible to write or understand history? When FRDH host Michael Goldfarb researched his book Emancipation, about Europe’s Jews in the century and a half between being liberated from the ghetto and the Holocaust he came across stories of many interesting people in obscure places, completely forgotten because the community that might have remembered them had been eradicated. They were no longer part of history. Restoring them to the record became his obligation.
In this archive recording, originally made for the BBC, he tells the story of Gabriel Riesser.
It is particularly relevant to what’s happening in America today. This is about the ephemeral nature of civil rights laws, the tarnished promise of integration, how racial hatred is never dead and buried, and finally the foundation of all history writing: memory.

If an event happens and there is no one to witness and remember it, does it become part of history? If memory is eliminated is it possible to write or understand history? When FRDH host Michael Goldfarb researched his book Emancipation, about Europe’s Jews in the century and a half between being liberated from the ghetto and the Holocaust he came across stories of many interesting people in obscure places, completely forgotten because the community that might have remembered them had been eradicated. They were no longer part of history. Restoring them to the record became his obligation.
In this archive recording, originally made for the BBC, he tells the story of Gabriel Riesser.
It is particularly relevant to what’s happening in America today. This is about the ephemeral nature of civil rights laws, the tarnished promise of integration, how racial hatred is never dead and buried, and finally the foundation of all history writing: memory.

Berkeley: High Point Of The Revolution

This episode of FRDH is about Berkeley and the high point of the revolution of the 1960’s as host Michael Goldfarb remembers it. Revolution is a romantic word and a bloody practice.
This autumn “revolution” will be discussed a lot, as we mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution.
The word will also come into use as we move towards the 50th anniversary remembrances of 1968, the year of student revolution.
The University of California Berkeley, is where student revolution was effectively born in the US, during the Free Speech Movement. That was a movement of the left. Free Speech Week which may well spark a riot, is a movement of the right and it providing pundits the opportunity to note the irony that Berkeley, home of the Free Speech Movement, has become anti-Free Speech.
In this FRDH podcast Goldfarb recounts the story of the Free Speech Movement, the fight over People’s Park and recalls a memorable rally on Berkeley campus addressed by Herbert Marcuse and Angela Davis. He then describes a moment of calm in the intensity of the Sixties, a calm that he calls the High Point of the Revolution.

This episode of FRDH is about Berkeley and the high point of the revolution of the 1960’s as host Michael Goldfarb remembers it. Revolution is a romantic word and a bloody practice.
This autumn “revolution” will be discussed a lot, as we mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution.
The word will also come into use as we move towards the 50th anniversary remembrances of 1968, the year of student revolution.
The University of California Berkeley, is where student revolution was effectively born in the US, during the Free Speech Movement. That was a movement of the left. Free Speech Week which may well spark a riot, is a movement of the right and it providing pundits the opportunity to note the irony that Berkeley, home of the Free Speech Movement, has become anti-Free Speech.
In this FRDH podcast Goldfarb recounts the story of the Free Speech Movement, the fight over People’s Park and recalls a memorable rally on Berkeley campus addressed by Herbert Marcuse and Angela Davis. He then describes a moment of calm in the intensity of the Sixties, a calm that he calls the High Point of the Revolution.