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The Power of Symbols—Communism and Beyond

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Abstract

Examining the revolutionary origins of Soviet communism this paper argues that symbolic structures were crucial in the making of Soviet communism as a political force. It conceptualizes symbolizations as contingent interpretive acts that capture people in extraordinary situations of dissolutions of political order. In the first part, I identify the dramatic and imaginative sources of the Bolshevik Revolution, which created a schismogenetic system, in which symbolic structures of time, representation, and leadership would become disintegrative forces in Soviet society. In the second part, I elaborate on the creativity of political symbolism by understanding symbolizations as rites of passage, constructions of origins and ends, as well as reality-creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Rather than to know the origins of symbols, the proposition here is to understand how symbolic meanings contributed to the creation not only of the empirical-objective world of Soviet communism but also of dominant social science interpretations.

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Notes

  1. It was the Soviet national anthem from 1922 to 1945.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. St Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Harald Wydra

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  1. Harald Wydra
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Correspondence to Harald Wydra.

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I have greatly benefited from comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper by Duncan Bell, Graeme Gill, and Michael Urban.

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Wydra, H. The Power of Symbols—Communism and Beyond. Int J Polit Cult Soc 25, 49–69 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-011-9116-x

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