Abstract

In opposition to the memory politics that seeks to frame the historical narrative of Communism and the Revolution, this article discusses the possibility of a different memory of the Russian Revolution. Taking as its starting point Derrida’s notion of “politics of memory” in Spectres of Marx and Nancy’s existentialist reconfiguration of communality in The Inoperative Community, I propose an understanding of the Russian Revolution as also guided by the idea that it could retrieve a memory of the common as being-in-common. Although this idea was not prominent in official Bolshevik propaganda, I show in close readings how this idea can be found in the literary works of the Russian Soviet writer, Andrey Platonov.