普京為何回避十月革命百年慶典？
11月7日，俄羅斯聯邦的共產黨將慶祝1917年革命100周年，舉行一場節(jié)日游行和一場歡慶招待會。但俄羅斯總統弗拉基米爾•普京(Vladimir Putin)將缺席游行活動，而晚間活動將在距離克里姆林宮很遠的一家毫無特色的會議酒店——莫斯科蒙那多中心萬麗酒店(Renaissance Moscow Monarch Centre)舉行。
For Mr Putin, removing himself so far from a momentous historical anniversary is out of character — under his presidency, history has become an ever more important ideological tool for strengthening national unity and rallying public support.
對普京而言，讓自己距離一次重大的歷史性周年紀念活動這么遠，不符合他的個性。在他擔任總統期間，歷史已成為一件越來越重要的意識形態(tài)工具，被用來加強民族團結和動員公眾支持。
Over the past decade, “Russia has taken to a cult of the past,” says Gennady Bordyugov, a historian and senior official at the Association of Researchers of Russian Society, which monitors public sentiment about the revolution.
過去10年來，“俄羅斯變得很崇拜歷史，”歷史學家、俄羅斯社會研究人員協會(Association of Researchers of Russian Society)高官根納季•布爾久戈夫(Gennady Bordyugov)說。該協會監(jiān)測公眾對1917年革命的情緒。
Indeed, Mr Putin has marked the victory over Nazi Germany with ever more pomp including massive military parades on Red Square, speeches emphasising the role of the Soviet Union over western powers in defeating Hitler and invoking pride in the people’s strength and sacrifices in the second world war.
的確，普京以越來越大的排場紀念擊敗納粹德國的勝利，包括在紅場(Red Square)舉行規(guī)模浩大的閱兵式，發(fā)表強調蘇聯在擊敗希特勒過程中的作用大于西方大國、號召俄羅斯人對前輩們在二戰(zhàn)期間的力量與犧牲感到自豪的演講。
On the president’s instructions, a broad range of history textbooks with widely diverging interpretations of events such as the revolution were replaced with just a few, based on a standardised interpretation.
在這位總統的授意下，對1917年革命等事件的解讀各不相同的眾多版本歷史教材，被換成了基于一種標準化解讀的少數幾個版本。
Last year, Mr Putin argued that Russia’s recent economic weakness — partly triggered by western sanctions over the annexation of Crimea — was insignificant in the grand sweep òf history.
去年，普京辯稱，俄羅斯近期的經濟疲軟——在一定程度上是由吞并克里米亞之后西方出臺的制裁措施引發(fā)的——在歷史長河中是無足輕重的。
“The country may lag behind in some respects, but it has a thousand-year history, and Russia will not trade its sovereignty for anything,” he said. “這個國家也許在某些方面落在后面，但俄羅斯有1000年的歷史，絕不會為了任何東西而出賣主權，”他說。
Andrei Kolesnikov, a political analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Centre, says the Kremlin’s heavy use of history has been convenient in legitimising Mr Putin’s regime. “The elites and pro-Putin majority identify with that and identify with the help of the past ‘who we are and where we come from’.”
莫斯科卡內基中心(Moscow Carnegie Center)政治分析師安德烈•科列斯尼科夫(Andrei Kolesnikov)表示，克里姆林宮大量利用歷史為普京政權提供合法性。“精英和支持普京的大多數民眾認同這種做法，認同‘我們是誰，我們從哪里來’的歷史所提供的幫助。”
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has been seeking answers to those questions. For many other former Soviet republics, many of them dominated by ethnic groups other than Russians, gaining independence in itself was a strong basis for national identity. But in the minds of many citizens of the Russian Federation, the day their country became independent they lost more than they gained — an empire, global power status, a state in which for decades they had been taught to take pride.
自1991年蘇聯解體以來，俄羅斯一直在尋找這些問題的答案。對于其他許多前蘇聯加盟共和國而言，其多數人口并非俄羅斯人，獲得獨立本身就是民族認同的強大基礎。但在俄羅斯聯邦的很多公民看來，他們在國家獨立的那一天所得到的小于所失去的——一個帝國、全球強國地位、他們受了幾十年灌輸要為之驕傲的一個國家。
“That’s why history politics has become so important: What’s needed is clear heroes that inspire people, narratives that can help with reconciliation in society,” says Mr Kolesnikov. “The 1917 revolution is useless for that because the frontlines that played a role then are irrelevant today.”
“這就是歷史政治變得如此重要的原因：我們需要的是鼓舞人民的完全正面形象的英雄，以及有助于社會和解的敘述，”科列斯尼科夫說，“就此而言，1917年革命毫無用處，因為當時曾扮演角色的前線如今是無關的。”
Mr Putin himself has made his ambivalent attitude to the October Revolution very clear.
普京本人很清楚地表達了他對十月革命的矛盾態(tài)度。
“We see how ambiguous its results were, how closely the negative and positive consequences of those events are intertwined,” he said last week. On the one hand, he argued that gradual, evolutionary development would have served Russia much better than the upheaval of 1917 with its “ruin of statehood and the ruthless destruction of millions of human lives”.
“我們看到那場革命的結果是多么模糊，那些事件的消極后果和積極后果是多么緊密地交織在一起，”他在上周表示。一方面，他辯稱，相比1917年那場“毀掉了國家，無情地奪走數百萬人生命”的劇變，漸進式、進化式的發(fā)展本來對俄羅斯會好得多。
Mr Putin’s abhorrence of the turmoil of 1917 reflects a broader anxiety over revolutionary ferment that has shaped his outlook. He prides himself in having returned Russia to stability after the turbulent 1990s. For more than a decade, he has railed against the overthrow of regimes whether in Ukraine, Egypt or Syria, readily seeing them as western plots that might one day extend to Russia itself.
普京對1917年混亂的憎惡，反映了他在整體上對革命狂熱感到的焦慮，這種情緒塑造了他的世界觀。他為自己讓俄羅斯在經歷動蕩不安的1990年代之后恢復穩(wěn)定感到自豪。10多年以來，他譴責推翻政權的事件或企圖，無論是在烏克蘭、埃及還是敘利亞，往往把它們看做西方的陰謀，有朝一日也許會用到俄羅斯身上。
But then he credited the Soviet Union with raising living standards, creating a powerful middle class, reforming the labour market and boosting human rights, and claimed it had helped in advancing these positive developments in the west as well.
但在另一方面，他承認蘇聯提高了生活水平，打造了一個強大的中產階層，改革了勞動力市場，以及改善了人權狀況。他還聲稱，這一切也曾幫助推動了西方發(fā)生這些積極改變。
Mr Putin’s conflicted attitude towards the Soviet Union has long puzzled western observers. In 2005, he memorably called the collapse of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. The phrase was misread by many in the west as praise of the USSR, but was more a reflection of the trauma a majority in the Russian public feels, and a warning of the risks created by the crumbling of a global power.
長期以來，普京對蘇聯的矛盾態(tài)度一直令西方觀察人士感到困惑。2005年，他令人難忘地把蘇聯解體稱為“20世紀最大的地緣政治災難”。這一說法被西方很多人誤解為普京在贊頌蘇聯，其實這在更大程度上反映出俄羅斯大部分公眾感受到的創(chuàng)傷，以及對于一個全球強國瓦解所引發(fā)風險的一個警告。
The Russian president’s view of the revolution’s protagonists is equally ambivalent. On the one hand, he blamed Lenin himself for the Soviet Union’s eventual demise, saying that the revolutionary leader had put a “time bomb” under the state he founded by drawing borders along ethnic lines, He called Lenin a traitor for starting a civil war when Russia was already fighting external enemy in the First World War.
這位俄羅斯總統對革命主角的看法同樣很矛盾。一方面，他譴責列寧本人要對蘇聯的最終滅亡負責——他說，這位革命領袖以民族界線劃定邊界，從而為他創(chuàng)立的國家埋下一枚“定時炸彈”。普京還把列寧稱為叛徒，因為在列寧在俄羅斯已經在第一次世界大戰(zhàn)中與外敵交戰(zhàn)的情況下發(fā)起了內戰(zhàn)。
But Mr Putin has also defended dictator Josef Stalin for making a pact with Nazi Germany, and fiercely criticised neighbouring states for removing monuments glorifying the Soviet army or Lenin. 但普京也為獨裁者約瑟夫•斯大林(Josef Stalin)跟納粹德國簽訂互不侵犯條約辯護，并激烈抨擊了鄰國移除蘇軍或列寧紀念碑的做法。
Fresh research conducted on the eve of the revolution’s centennial shows that with this seemingly contradictory stance, the Russian president stands firmly among the mainstream.
在十月革命100周年前夕進行的最新調查顯示，這一看似矛盾的立場使俄羅斯總統堅定地站在主流中間。
A poll by the pro-Kremlin Russia Public Opinion Research Centre (VCIOM) conducted last year found that 45 per cent believe that the October Revolution represented the will of the Russian people, while 43 per cent disagreed. In 1990, on the eve of the Soviet Union’s collapse, 36 per cent had agreed and 37 per cent disagreed.
去年，親克里姆林宮的俄羅斯輿論調查中心(VCIOM)在調查中發(fā)現，45%的人認為十月革命代表了俄羅斯民眾的意愿，而43%的人不同意這一看法。在蘇聯解體前夕的1990年，贊同和反對這一看法的比例分別為36%和37%。
“The civil war is long over, but the discussion about it is not,” says VCIOM general director Valery Fyodorov. “The proportion of people who don’t know how to answer has shrunk, showing that people understand more about the revolution than they used to. But the rift is as deep as ever.”
“那場內戰(zhàn)結束很長時間了，但對于它的討論沒有結束，”俄羅斯輿論調查中心負責人瓦列里•費奧多羅夫(Valery Fyodorov)說。“不知如何回答的受訪者的比例降低了，這顯示出人們對十月革命的理解相比過去更深刻。但分歧仍跟以往一樣深。”
