ABSTRACT
In the course of his great history of the twentieth century, Age of extremes, Eric Hobsbawm explains how the Bolsheviks’ adoption of the Gregorian calendar transformed the October Revolution into the November Revolution. There is a footnote:
It was the October Revolution which reformed the Russian calendar, as it reformed Russian orthography, thus demonstrating the profundity of its impact. For it is well known that such small changes usually require socio-political earthquakes to bring them about.1
