Introduction: heritage and revolution – first as tragedy, then as farce?

ABSTRACT

If a revolution is taken to be a decisive break with the past, how can there be a heritage of revolution? Conversely, how does any revolution affect tangible and intangible heritage, as well as shifting conceptions of heritage? In this introduction to four papers dedicated to the theme of ‘Heritage and Revolution’, we provide an overview of changing conceptualizations of both ideas and how they have shaped each other since the French Revolution first radically changed both. This special section’s papers developed from the 2017 Annual Seminar of the Cambridge Heritage Research Group. 2017, as the centenary of the February and October Russian Revolutions, provided a global opportunity for reflection on these themes and for analysis of how contemporary heritagization of revolution (or lack thereof) molds and is molded by a society’s conception of itself and its past. At at time of shifting political and heritage paradigms worldwide, this topic remains timely and fascinating.

KEYWORDS:

• Revolutionary heritage
• French revolution
• Russian revolution

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The state-orchestrated famine that took place in Ukraine in 1932–3.

2. Trinity College, Cambridge, on 1 May 2017 and presented by the Department of Slavonic Studies and Trinity College.

3. The London exhibits noted above are just two of many high-profile exhibitions on these themes worldwide this year; a full review is beyond this article’s scope, but, elsewhere in London, the Design Museum put on ‘Imagine Moscow: Architecture, Propaganda, Revolution’, from March-July 2017, just after New York’s Museum of Modern Art hosted ‘A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Avant-Garde’ from December 2016-March 2017. Mayakovsky’s poetry and other works, boundary-shattering as they were, featured in many of these art and architecture exhibits.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research [grant number JCNM.GFAC].

Notes on contributors

Pablo Alonso González

Pablo Alonso González is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Heritage Sciences (INCIPIT-CSIC, Spain).

Margaret Comer

Margaret Comer is a PhD student in the Department of Archaeology and a graduate member of the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre, University of Cambridge.

Dacia Viejo Rose

Dacia Viejo Rose is Lecturer in Heritage at the University of Cambridge and Deputy Director of the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre.

Tom Crowley

Tom Crowley is a PhD student in the Department of Archaeology, a graduate member of the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre, University of Cambridge, and a curator at the Horniman Museum, London.