ABSTRACT

Historians love watersheds and turning points. They are convenient to explain differences among periods. This chapter examines political practices that persisted across 1917 in an attempt to get below the surface of persistence using some tools of anthropology. The simplest theoretical explanation for persistence is functionalism. Sahlins' emphasis on structure and culture bring us to historical structuralism, whose contributions may be useful to our analysis of 1917 because they explore the relationship between 'event' (1917, for example) and 'structure' (Russian culture, for example). As a student of the French Revolution, Sewell tries to come to grips with the standard notion of revolutions as 'events' that transform culture and structure. For Sahlins, historical events cannot be understood except as references to and reproductions of cultural categories and meanings that comprise the field of possibilities for events. The simplest and most common explanation of the body/mausoleum ensemble is intentional-functional.