Revolution and Emotions: Toward a Reinterpretation of the Political Events of 1914–1917

Abstract

V.P. Buldakov explores the emotional overheating in the Russian Empire, but also of the entire European cultural milieu during the era of Great War, Revolution, Civil War and beyond. Exploring a wide range of sources, archival, philosophical, literary, journalism, epistolary, memoirs and diaries, he calls for a new (socio)-psychological history of the Russian Revolution that integrates the irrational, the energy of negation, impulsiveness, atavisms and aggression and the importance of myth and rumor- in other words the full panoply of the emotions as manifested in social movements and politics.