The winners write history

So what is the moral of this story? Simple, politics is about compromises and collateral damage. Sometimes you need to sacrifice friends and family for the sake of political expediency. And many times you need to work with your enemies when faced against an even bigger enemy. And you let the others do all the work and take all the risks and then, after it succeeds, you hijack the cause. If it fails you lose nothing because you are in a safe place anyway.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Be clear about one thing: it is the victors and not the vanquished who write history and those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.

And what do I want to write about today? I really don’t know. I normally start with a blank sheet of paper and just ramble on. I do not know what is going to emerge onto paper or where I will end up. It all depends on my mood and my mood depends on the music blaring away in the background. At the moment, though, I am listening to Curtis Stigers singing I wonder why, the lyrics which goes as follows:

See video here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebr3qoM601E)

Hence I suppose that song is going to influence my mood today, which is about a love-hate relationship that you want to break off but can’t seem to do so. (Figure that one out yourself). Does that sound very emotional and passionate? Well, I am an emotional and passionate person so I suppose that is only to be expected of me. But then that is what drives me: my emotions and passion. Without that I would not be who I am. And if my articles these last 20 years or so have not given you that impression by now then you are dumber than I thought.

Anyway, enough digressing, let’s get back to the topic that I started off, about history being written by the victors. And today I want to talk about the Russian Revolution, one of my favourite subjects.

When we talk about the Russian Revolution, we always talk about the Bolshevik Revolution. That is what the Western historians want us to believe -- and what the West says is what becomes history. I mean, if the British had won the war against the Americans back in the late 1700s then it would have been called ‘The American Rebellion’ instead of ‘The American War for Independence’. And the ‘Indian Mutiny’ of 1857 would have been called ‘The Indian War of Independence’ had the Indians kicked the British out of ‘British India’.

‘British India’? Yes, ‘British India’, and we also had ‘British Malaya’ as well. And that was because the British, the victors, wrote the history books. So why was it called ‘The Japanese Occupation of Malaya’ back in WWII and not ‘Japanese Malaya’, or ‘The British Occupation of Malaya and India’?

So you see how words can make a difference? And words are what go into the history books. Hence words can be used to influence our thinking about the ‘true history’.

Actually, the Russian Revolution should be credited to the Mensheviks, not the Bolsheviks. Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky was the prominent leader of the Revolution before the emergence of Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. In fact, Kerensky, Trotsky and Lenin were not on the same page, they were all rivals. And I would go so far as to claim that Kerensky and not Trotsky or Lenin was the real ‘Father’ of the Russian Revolution, although I am sure many historians would disagree with me, as they would disagree with my views on Ho Chi Minh being a patriot and true son of Vietnam.

Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky

At the time of the Revolution, Lenin was living in exile in Europe, as was Trotsky. Kerensky, on the other hand, was post-Revolution Russia’s first Minister of Justice, then the Minister of War, and then Russia’s Prime Minister soon after that. Kerensky was the one who proclaimed Russia a Republic on 15 September 1917.

The military, however, saw Kerensky as too liberal. The people were tired of the war and Kerensky shared this sentiment, especially after two million soldiers had deserted the army. But the West wanted Russia to continue engaging Germany on the Eastern Front to reduce pressure to the Alliance on the Western Front. So the West, in particular the United States, was more supportive of the Bolsheviks than of Kerensky. (The Western media had a 'love affair' with the Bolsheviks and their reporters were given VIP status in Russia and were allowed to move about freely).

In October 1917, the Bolsheviks launched the Second Revolution and grabbed power. Kerensky managed to escape to Paris where he lived in exile until 1940 and died in New York in 1970.

So, yes, when we talk about the history of the Russian Revolution, we always talk about Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks. There is no prominent mention of the Mensheviks or Kerensky. There is also no focus of the involvement of the Western powers, in particular the United States, in Russia’s domestic politics and the power struggle between the two opposing forces, the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.

And how would I summarise the events in Russia between the First and Second Revolutions? I would summarise it as follows. The true Revolutionaries were the Mensheviks who created the Republic. The Bolsheviks, with Western (financial) support, hijacked the Revolution. The Czar was ousted in 1917 when the Republic was formed but he and his family were executed on 17 July 1918 after Kerensky had been ousted and the western-backed Bolsheviks took over. The question is: would the Royal Family had been spared and had been allowed to go into exile in the UK had Kerensky remained in power?

The problem is, though the Czar was a cousin to King George V of England, Britain did not want the Russian Royal Family on English soil. This is because, for political reasons, they did not want to upset the Bolsheviks. They needed the Bolsheviks to continue with the war against Germany. Hence they sacrificed the Russian Royal Family as a gesture of ‘goodwill’ to the new Russian government led by the Bolsheviks.

So who killed the Russian Royal Family? I would say that the British and Americans did. But do the history books, which are all written by the victors from the West, tell us this? The ‘devils’ in this entire episode are the Bolsheviks, not the Western powers. That is how history has been written.

So what is the moral of this story? Simple, politics is about compromises and collateral damage. Sometimes you need to sacrifice friends and family for the sake of political expediency. And many times you need to work with your enemies when faced against an even bigger enemy. And you let the others do all the work and take all the risks and then, after it succeeds, you hijack the cause. If it fails you lose nothing because you are in a safe place anyway.

But what I have related above is something that happened about 100 years ago in another country. Do you think, though, that things have changed much? What happened 100 years ago in Russia could be said to be still happening today in Malaysia. Times may have changed and the place may be different but politics and politicians have never changed in 5,000 years of recorded history.

And what is my message to you? I don’t know. Is there a message? Or am I only writing whatever happens to come out from my mind depending on my mood determined by the music blaring in the background? I suppose different people will see different messages depending on your intellectual level.