Revolution resonates in modern Russia 100 years on

Today's fight for freedom is for freedom of women and sexual liberation and this was one of the many messages of the Bolshevik revolution. The events of the 1917 Russian Revolution continue to reverberate throughout Russia and Eurasia, even if scholars, politicians and ordinary Russians 100 years later can't agree on its contribution to modern Russia. That's the theme of the keynote address by Dr Andrei Kazantsev, a prominent Russian intellectual to the conference  A Century of Revolutionary Change: 1917-2017  at The Australian National University (ANU). Dr Kazantsev, who contributes to critical policy debate in Russia, said  events of 1917 still influence domestic and foreign policy, economics and national identity in Russia. "Today there is a crisis of globalisation and of global markets accompanied by domestic and interstate political conflicts. This just resembles the world of 1917 described by Vladimir Lenin at the time," said Dr Kazantsev, who is the Director of the Analytical Centre of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. "Today's fight for freedom is for freedom of women and sexual liberation and this was one of the many messages of the Bolshevik revolution." The 1917 Revolution put an end to 300 years of the Romanovs' imperial rule with the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II to a democratic provisional government.