Ernst Bloch

Cultural Hegemony, Religion and the 1917 Russian Revolution

The ambition of this article is to initiate an understanding of the Russian Orthodox Christianity at the time of the revolution in a way that is different from the classical approach which is often focused on its institutional side and limited to historical facts. Its main thesis is that rather than being an obstacle, Orthodox Christianity to some extent contributed to the revolution’s success by providing familiar semantic background against which the majority of Russians interpreted, accepted and fought for the socialist ideals.