I love history.
History has lasted a long time (and gets longer every day), but two periods always had my particular interest. As it turns out, they might contain insights into our future. Let me explain.
The first period is the Russian Revolution in 1917, culminating in the founding of the Soviet Union.
The second is the Indonesian Revolution and War of Independence, starting in 1945 and ending with the recognition of Indonesian Independence by the Netherlands in 1949.
Why do these periods fascinate me so?
Because in both cases, within the span of a few years, a way of life had disappeared, to be replaced by something entirely different, without anyone anticipating it, even just before it happened.
How then do these Revolutions resemble each other, and what can they tell us about our own time?
First, let me tell you about them.
Russia in 1914 was a backward country but slowly catching up to the West. There had been a revolution in 1905, but the country was stable again. Nobody anticipated the upheavals to come. Then World War I started, and the efforts to wage war proved too great and caused the Empire to crumble and fall in a few weeks in 1917.
The Russian Revolution meant the end of the rule of the Tsar, Nicholas II. His family, the Romanovs, had ruled Russia for over four centuries. Many things changed over the course of these centuries, but the basis remained: All authority was concentrated in one person, the Tsar, bound by no law. Different groups had their fixed place in the social pyramid. At the bottom was the big mass of peasants (80 million in 1914, 85 % of the population). Above them stood the nobility and civil servants, separated into many classes. And above them all, the Tsar.
After the Russian revolution, a culture and a way of life, with terrible inequities but also beautiful things, had vanished from the face of the Earth.
The same is true for the Indonesian Revolution1. In 1941, Dutch colonial rule had existed for more than 300 years. There was a nationalist movement led by Sukarno, but it didn’t pose a threat to the status quo. Nobody, the Dutch nor the Nationalists, imagined it would have ended within a decade. Again, a whole way of life disappeared.
It is strange reading about the time just before these revolutions. People are going about their lives as if nothing would ever change, unaware their world will be turned upside down in just a few years’ time. While reading, I feel like a ghost, wandering among them, unable to warn about their fate.
Black becomes white, up becomes down, and light dark…
Because of these revolutions, everything was turned upside down. What was cherished before the Revolution was despised after. The people who had been at the top of the social pyramid became the lowest and vice versa. Virtue became sin.
In Russia, nobles and business owners were held in high regard before the Revolution. After, they were pariahs, and peasants and workers became the de facto new nobility.
In Indonesia (before 1942 called The Dutch East-Indies), because of the Revolution, the social pyramid was inverted too: before, the Dutch were the rulers, with people of mixed blood on the second step of the pyramid, and the native population at the bottom. After Independence, it was the other way around. Soon all Dutch returned to their homeland, and after a few years, most people of mixed blood followed them.
Few traces are left of 3 centuries of Dutch presence: a Dutch children’s song, lingering in the memory of an old Indonesian man, sitting in front of his house; a lonely tombstone on a forlorn island surrounded by the turquoise sea, a fading old-fashioned Dutch name carved on it.
I think we live in times of change, similar to these periods.
We have seen many signs that the world around us is changing in ways we wouldn’t have believed a few years ago.
There is war in Europe, and a worldwide pandemic had led to millions of dead and the curtailment of our civil liberties. By the way, both revolutions I talked about above wouldn’t have happened without a World War: World War I in the case of Russia and World War II in the case of Indonesia. Wars cause mighty empires to fall, power to change hands, and cultures to crumble in ways nobody can foresee…
I think our world will be unrecognizable in a few years. Maybe we are like the Russians in 1914, going about our lives, unaware that in a short while, the world as we know it is about to disappear into the abyss of history.
It has happened before…
Of course, there are many differences between the Russian and the Indonesian Revolution. For one, I think the Indonesian Revolution was a good thing, and the Russian a bad thing.
When black becomes white, and up becomes down
Totally agree, Henk. This was a great piece. History can certainly help put certain trends in context. Even if we don't know exactly what is in store for us, it certainly feels like some form of reversal is at hand.