Exemplifying political ideas Russian revolutionary circles before 1917 (original) (raw)
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'Illegal Community'? Social Networks of Revolutionary Populism in Russia in the 1870s
Rubtcov A. (2021) ‘Illegal Community’? Social Networks of Revolutionary Populism in Russia in the 1870s. In: Antonyuk A., Basov N. (eds) Networks in the Global World V. NetGloW 2020. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 181. Springer, Cham., 2021
In the Russian Empire in the second half of the XIX century, the judicial investigative authorities were not independent neither in the interpretation of the revolutionary movement with which they fought nor in the practice of conducting inquiries. Meanwhile, it was the political police that created most of the materials and the main explanations of the Narodnik movement, which became the basis for all subsequent historiography. The article discusses the creation of the concept of "illegal community" as a legal basis for the fight against the revolutionary movement. Then, using the example of the Moscow inquiry of 1873-1874, it analyzes how, under the influence of legislation, the investigation was forced to interpret the crimes. Using the analysis of social networks as the primary tool allows us to identify the gap between the data collected by the police and their final interpretation.
Waiting for the people's revolution [Martov and Chernov in revolutionary Russia, 1917-1923*]
Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, 1985
/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. EHESS is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique. http://www.jstor.org the Bolsheviks was the nature of the oppo sition that they faced, the pacific, verbal, and vulnerable opposition recommended by the Menshevik and Socialist Rev olutionary leaders. This paper focuses on the decisions made by Martov and Chernov after 1917, and the reasons for their inaction. What paralyzed them in these years was not the confrontation with Bolshevik authority, but the stark contrast between their theories of revolution and the realities of mass behavior. This rude challenge to the conceptions of the socialist leaders gave them no sure footing for action and caused them to draw back from both the Bolshevik gov ernment and militant opposition to the emerging state. The efforts of Martov and Chernov to describe and under stand their situation after the October revolution are chronicled in their political writings from the period. Their articles and letters express the conflict between contemporary events and their pre-revolutionary assumptions, the effect of these dilemmas upon their prescriptions to their parties, and the ultimate impact of the revolution upon their ideas. I will concentrate on two periods-October 1917 through the first half of 1918 and 1921, times of mass discontent and insur gencies before and after the Civil War, formally defined. Martov and Chernov provide the focus of this analysis not as the most brilliant theorists of their respective parties, Cahiers du Monde russe et sovi?tique, XXVI (3-4), juil.-d?c. 1985, pp. 375-394. 376 JANE BURBANK but in their capacities as party leaders after 1917-Both men gained the support of majorities at party congresses held a few weeks after the October coup. Since neither party was able to organize another full-scale congress after December 1917, Martov and Chernov retained their positions of authority despite subsequent shifts in allegiance and opinion. Radi cally unlike in character, Martov frail, c?libataire, a passionate Marxist theorist and ironic polemicist and Cher nov bluff, hearty, a two-family man and a revolutionary romantic of eclectic, precious prose both belonged to Lenin's generation. (4) With Lenin, they represent the three strands of Russian socialism shaped by the ideological ascendancy of Marxism among the intelligentsia and the development of the working class movement in the 1890's, the disappointments of the I905 revolution, and the scrappy exile politics that followed. The Menshevik version of Russian socialism was close to the left European Marxism of its time anti-revisionist, devoted to "scientific socialism" and to class struggle as the means of progress. (5) There was, however, one outstanding and fundamental difference between the Russian and the European parties, a variation in theory and expectation that derived from the Mensheviks' perspective on Russia's economic and social conditions. According to the Mensheviks, Russia was heading for a bourgeois, not a socialist revolution, for the full development of bourgeois society and production had yet to occur. And, because of the peculiarities of Russia's historical development, this bourgeois revolution would be made not by the bourgeoisie but by the working class. This idea was expressed most dramatically in the founding program
Soviet dissidents and the legacy of the 1917 revolutions
Vestnik Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta. Istoriia, 2019
This article seeks to explain why, as the dissident movement burgeoned in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, there was almost no discussion about the October Revolution in samizdat, and it was the anti-Stalinist motif that predominated instead. It argues that at the time anti-Stalinism constituted a unifying language of activism for the “sixtiers” generation for several reasons: their communist upbringing; family ties to repressed communists; and the tacit acceptance of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization as a reformist framework for their action. As they feared Stalin’s public rehabilitation, anti-Stalinism became the most pressing cause, pushing any deeper reflection on the regime’s legitimacy into the background. However, by the 1970s, as a result of increased repression and the growing isolation of dissidents, the movement had split into several currents. An avowedly non-political current, the human rights movement emerged as a result of the rejection of revolutionary violence. Renouncing the prospect of regime change, it staked instead on a “legalist” strategy, which precluded any questioning of the Revolution as the foundation of the current regime. By contrast, for the more politicized Russophile current represented by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and for the democratic socialist current embodied by Roy Medvedev, it became important to affirm their vision of the Revolution and its place in history in order to affirm their own political programs. While Medvedev sought to offer a demythologized account of the October Revolution to bolster its legitimacy, Solzhenitsyn denounced the February Revolution as a fateful caesura in Russian history.
The Russian Revolution: Broadening Understandings of 1917
History Compass, 2008
The rich historiography of the revolution has tended to focus around urban and political elites, labour history and events in Petrograd and to a lesser extent Moscow. The collapse of the Soviet Union opened previously inaccessible archives and shifted the ideological battlegrounds ranged over by scholars of the Russian revolution. New archivally based research is shifting its focus away from the capitals and political elites, and draws together social and political approaches to the revolution. By investigating revolutionary events outside the capitals, and lived experiences of revolution for Russia's ordinary people, most of whom were rural, not urban dwellers, current research draws a complex and multifaceted picture of revolutionary events. Explanations for the failure of democratic politics in Russia can now be found not only in the ineptitudes of Nicholas II, the failings of Kerensky, or the machinations of Lenin and his cohort. Instead, ordinary people, outside the capitals and in the countryside, defined and determined revolutionary events.
2000
The Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR) in 1917 presents two key paradoxes; the PSR enjoyed massive grassroots support during 1917, despite continued endorsement of the essentially unpopular policies pursued by the Provisional Government, and it failed to resist the Bolshevik seizure of power despite its mass support. Four key explanations for these paradoxes are presented here. The divisions within the PSR at a range of levels prevented it from forming a single coherent whole, which disabled it as an effective opposition force to the Bolsheviks. Divisions enshrined within the party's theoretical foundations were further magnified by the party's organisational weaknesses. The difficulties of administering the countryside, where most of the PSR's supporters lay, accentuated their organisational weaknesses. Finally, the PSR decision to boycott Russia's democratic organisations after the Bolshevik seizure of power was a catastrophic mistake, which enabled the Bolsheviks...
Co-optation amid repression [The Revolutionary Communists in Saratov province, 1918-1920]
Cahiers du monde russe, 1999
This essay seeks to restore to the historical record the Revolutionary Communist Party, formed in September 1918 by a group of former Left SRs. From late 1918 until late 1920 the Revolutionary Communists participated in the ruling coalition in Saratov province, attracting a considerable following in several key districts and uezd towns, as well as elsewhere in the Urals and Volga regions. I argue that the party's sustained commitment to Soviet power proved a decisive factor in keeping the province — perhaps the most important supplier of grain to the urban centers of the Communist-controlled heartland — from falling to the Whites as a result of a rejection of Soviet power from within. The opening of Russian archives makes it possible to illuminate its relationship with the Bolshevik Party, and to study the reasons for the party's ultimate decline in 1920. In comparing the narratives of revolution constructed by both parties, the essay examines Bolshevik policies of co-optation of their populist rivals' strategies of dissent amid repression, a dynamic that became a characteristic Bolshevik practice during the period and a key element of the formative experience of Civil War for all involved. Thus, this case study of the party's relationship toward its populist ally offers valuable insights into how the Bolsheviks exercised state power in general.