Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918-1922 9781400872862

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
The Civil War and the Communist Myth
Western Myths
Historical Approaches
The Road to Civil War
Part 1: 1918-1919
1. The "New Course" That Failed (December 1918 –April 1919)
2. On the Internal Front: Enemies among the Workers
3. The White Tide
4. On the Internal Front: The Greens
5. What Is to Be Done? Soviet Parties Face the Challenge of the Whites
6. The Red Tide
Part 2: 1920-1921
7. The End of Legal Opposition
8. Workers under Militarized Labor
9. The Green Tide
10. The Peasant War in Ukraine and Cossack Lands
11. Sovietization of the Countryside: Tambov, Saratov, Tobol'sk
Epilogue Regime in Crisis, 1921
Conclusion Identity, Allegiance, and Participation in the Russian Civil War
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

From the Harvard Map Collection, Harvard University

BEHIND THE FRONT LINES OF THE CIVIL WAR

POLITICAL PARTIES AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN RUSSIA, 1918-1922

Vladimir N. Brovkin

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON. NEW JERSEY

Copyright © 1994 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brovkin, Vladimir N. Behind the front lines of the civil war: political parties and social movements in Russia, 1918-1922/VladimirN. Brovkin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-03278-5 Soviet Union-History-Revolution, 1917-1921. 1. Title. DK265.B697 1994 947.084'I-dc20 93-5299 CIP This book has been composed in Linotron Electra Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I

To Karen and Katia

Contents

A ck n o w led g m en ts A bbreviations Introduction

xi xiii 3

The C ivil W ar a nd the C om m unist M y th

3

Western M yth s

5

Historical Approaches

I

The Road to C ivil W ar

9

PART O N E : 1918-1919 1. T h e “New C ourse” T h at Failed (D ecem ber 1918—April 1919)

25

Causes o f Legalization

25

Legalization o f the O pposition Parties

29

L enin a n d M artov

31

M enshevik Policy Proposals

34

Legalization o f the P SR

40

D ebate on the Cheka

45

The E n d o f the “N ew Course”

49

2. O n the Internal Front: Enem ies am ong the Workers

57

Strikes in Moscow

63

Strikes in Petrograd

66

Trouble in the Provinces

72

Strikes in Sormovo and Tver

77

Rebellions and M utinies in Orel Province

79

The A strakhan Tragedy

82

3. T h e W h ite T ide

90

The W hite Tide in the East

92

Red Terror in the Urals

93

Peasant Rebellions on the Volga

98

The W hites’ Breakthrough in the South

100

CONTENTS

I

Decossackiza tion

101

M akhno, Grigoriev, Zelenyi, and Others

106

Peasant A ttitu d es in Ukraine

108

Red A rm y Soldiers’ A ttitudes

112

The Three Blows to the Reds

114

Red Terror in Ukraine

118

O n th e internal Front: T h e G reens

127

The Historical Setting

128

Policies o f the Bolshevik G overnm ent

130

Requisition D etachm ents

132

Local G overnm ent in the C ountryside

134

Peasant A ttitu d es D istribution o f L a n d The C o m m u n ist Party and Soviet Power The C ivil W ar

140 141 141 143

The Greens

145

The Greens’ O rganization a n d Tactics

149

Bolshevik Antidesertion Measures

150

Peasant Uprisings

155

W h a t Is to Be D one? Soviet Parties Face the C hallenge o f the W hites

163

The M enshevik Assessment o f the Situation

163

The R ig h t M ensheviks

169

T he SRs a n d the W hite Threat

174

F ighting on AU the Fronts

184

T h e Red T ide

192

Collapse o f the W hites in the E ast The W orldview o f the W hites A tam anshchina: Warlords The A rm y a n d Desertion Peasant Resistance The Workers W h ite Terror Political Parties

193 193 196 197 199 202 204 206

Collapse o f the W hites in the South S ta te Order

209 210

CONTENTS

Workers The Countryside Terror Agony The Fragmentation o f Society

ix

213 218 226 229 233

PART TW O : 1920-1921 7. T h e E n d o fL e g a lO p p o s itio n

239

The M ensheviks’ N ew Platform

239

Successes and Perils

243

The L eft S R Factions

250

The Balancing A ct Breaks Down: The Affair with the British Delegation

251

O therForeignD elegations

258

The Cheka Assault on the Opposition Parties

262

8. Workers under M ilitarized Labor

270

Theater o f the Absurd

270

T h eM ilita riza tio n o fL a b o r

272

The Workers’ Economic Situation

278

Workers’ Responses

280

Elections

284

Strikes

287

9. T h e G reen T ide

300

Bolshevik Intentions

301

Razverstka and O ther Obligations

301

The Collection o f Tribute

305

Informal, Invisible Peasant Government

310

Peasant Perceptions

313

Peasant Resistance: C entral Russia Deserters Avengers Spontaneous Rebellions Large-scale Uprisings

315 317 319 321 323

10. T h e Peasant W ar in Ukraine and Cossack Lands

327

Bolshevik Agrarian Policy in Ukraine

327

Occupation Policies in the D on Host and Kuban

329

Peasant Rebels: Ukraine

334

D on and K uban Resistance

341

Subjugation

346

A Reign o f R ed Terror in K uban

349

11. Sovietization o f the C ountryside: Tam bov, Saratov, T obolsk

357

Tam bov T h eC a u ses Popular Insurrection T he Role o f the SRs T h e W ar Effort

357 358 360 363 368

Lower Volga

373

The Urals a n d Siberia

377

Suppression

382

Epilogue Regime in Crisis, 1921

389

Conclusion Identity, A llegiance, and Participation in the Russian Civil W ar

403

Chronology o f the C ivil W ar

403

E xternal a n d Internal Fronts

405

The W h ite M ovem ent

409

T h eK a d ets

410

T he Party o f Socialist Revolutionaries

411

T heM en sh eviks

412

TheB olsheviks

414

T h eG reen s

415

Scope o f the Peasant W ar

416

Character o f the Peasant W ar

417

M ilita ry Victory

419

W ho Won? W ho Lost?

421

Legacy

421

Bibliography

423

Index

445

Acknowledgmen ts

T h e r e are m any people and institutions to w hom one owes thanks for support,

advice, and ideas after years of researching and writing a book. Above all others, I m ust thank m y wife Karen, who over several years had to put up w ith endless conversations about the civil war, an unpleasant subject dealing with tragedies and atrocities. She edited the m anuscript and helped greatly in conceptualizing and organizing this im m ense m aterial. Thanks to her encouragem ent and help the project evolved and moved to com pletion. O f m y colleagues, I am truly grateful to R ichard Pipes and Adam U lam , who have been following the developm ent of this project over several years. Pro­ fessor Pipes read the chapters as they were being written and offered m any insightful criticism s and suggestions. These discussions we had about new m aterials, new sources, and new ideas as he was working on The Russian R evolution and I on Behind the F rontL ines o f the C ivil W ar will rem ain in my m ind as a m ost stim ulating and enriching experience. M any other colleagues in the field and at the History D epartm ent and the Russian Research C enter have helped m e greatly, above all C aroline Ford and David Mayers, to nam e only a few, w ho have read parts o f the m anuscript and offered m any valuable suggestions. I am also grateful to N icholas Riasanovsky and Frederick Starr, who read parts of the m anuscript and helped m e immensely. M y research at several archives in E urope and America would n o t have been possible w ithout the generous support o f several foundations. An N E H fellow­ ship for college teachers m ade it possible to do research in Amsterdam; a K ennan Institute research scholarship brought m e to the National Archives; a Clark M em orial F u nd award from Harvard University supported my research trip to Moscow. A Social Science Research C ouncil fellowship over three years enabled m e to undertake several trips to the Hoover Institution at Stanford and the Institute for Social History in Am sterdam. I also wish to express thanks to the editorial boards o f Slavic Review, Jahrbiicherfur Geschichte Osteuropas, and European History Quarterly for granting permission to reprint in this book versions of chapter 2, chapter 4, and the conclusion, respectively, w hich appeared as articles in these journals.

A bbreviations

CC CEC Cheka CP C PC EC

G PU Kadet

NEP NK V D O rgburo

PLSR PS PSR RCP(b) Rev. Corns.

RSD RP

SD Socialists SR T s.G .A .O . R. T s.G .A .S .A . Ts. P. A. Vecheka

C entral C om m ittee C entral Executive C om m ittee of Soviets, the official state legislative institution. Extraordinary C om m ission: C om m unist political police in charge of the Red Terror. C o m m u n ist party C ouncil of People’s Com m issars— governm ent Executive C om m ittee: a local soviet executive branch for a city or province nom inally responsible to an elected assembly, city soviet or province soviet State Political Directorate: a successor to the C heka after 1921 Russian KD or C onstitutional Democrats: a party of Russian liberals, outlawed by the Bolsheviks in D ecem ber 1917 New E conom ic Policy People’s C om m issariat o f Internal Affairs O rganizational Bureau: one of the three top C om m unist party institutions, along with the Politburo and the Secretariat Party o f Left Socialist Revolutionaries People’s Socialists: a party of m oderate socialists and liberals Party o f Socialist Revolutionaries Official nam e of the C om m unist party: Russian C o m m u n ist Party o f Bolsheviks Revolutionary Com m ittees: ad hoc com m ittees of C om m unists in the provinces that replaced elected institutions, such as soviets Russian abbreviation of R SD W P— Russian Social D em ocratic W orkers’ Party, official nam e of the Mensheviks See R SD R P C o m m o n nam e of all non-Bolshevik political parties o f the Left Socialist R evolutionary C entral State Archive of the O ctober revolution C entral State Archive of the Soviet Army C entral Party Archive All-Russian Extraordinary C om m ission

BEHIND THE FRONT LINES OF THE CIVIL WAR

Introduction

o f a century after the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd, Russia is in the process of shaking off the Bolshevik legacy. Cities, towns, and streets nam ed after L enin and other Bolshevik leaders have had their preBolshevik nam es restored. Bolshevik ideology, values, and social structure are disappearing fast. M any journalists, historians, and public figures have begun to express doubt as to w hether the civil war was necessary and w hether the Bolshevik victory was indeed a blessing. In fact, the Bolshevik revolution and the civil war are increasingly viewed in Russia as a national tragedy, w hich disrupted the natural course o f developm ent. T h e O ctober revolution has been described as the G reat O ctober C ounterrevolution, w hich led to carnage, terror, and fam ine. 1 T h r e e q u a rte r s

The Civil War and the Communist Myth T h e Russian civil war has been an object o f m anipulation for decades. At first, it was a source of m yths serving the needs of C om m unist state building. H u n ­ dreds, indeed thousands, of books were written by obedient servants of the C o m m u n ist state describing the glorious Bolshevik victory in the civil war. It was a m uch simplified history that divided all participants into heroes and villains. T h e Bolsheviks were the heroes led by the greatest hero of all times, com rade L enin, the wisest teacher and leader of all proletarians worldwide. T h e villains were the W hites, hirelings of world im perialism and reactionaries who, relying on foreign m oney and war supplies, strove to strangle the young Soviet Republic. T hey failed miserably in their counterrevolutionary en­ deavors because th e entire Russian people, so the m yth goes, rose in a heroic effort to defend their own Soviet power o f workers and peasants. T h e outcom e was supposed to prove that History was on the side of the C om m unists because the progressive forces of the revolution won over the reactionary ones. Few were bothered by the fact th at this official history simplified the com ­ plexity of the war. It was a history w ithout politics, as though there were no political struggles between political parties, or inside the Bolshevik party over policy choices, or w ithin the W hite m ovem ent over power and policy. T he official history falsified the role and aspirations of the m ost im portant social 1 Inar M ochalov, “ U istokov velikoi V andei,” Ogonek, no. 45 (O ctober 1991), I. For a percep­ tive discussion of changes in Soviet writing on the revolution d uring the glasnost era, see E berhard M uller, “Blick Z u ru ck im Zorn?! Biirgerkrieg, K riegskom m unism us und N eue O konom ische Politik,” in G eyer, ed., D ie U m w ertung der Sowjetischen Geschichte, pp. 7 5 -1 0 ? .

groups, such as workers and peasants. T h e workers have always been depicted as following the Bolshevik party with enthusiasm for the cause of C o m m u n ist construction. AU the lesser-known protests, strikes, and rebellions were simply om itted, and everyone pretended as if none of them had happened. T h e m ost violent outbreaks w hich could no t be purged from history, such as the strikes in M oscow and Petrograd in February 1921, were treated as local, tem porary, and u n im p o rtan t eruptions of social unrest engineered by the hirelings o f the bour­ geoisie, th e M ensheviks and SRs. T h e peasant m ovem ent of the G reens like­ wise was a taboo subject u ntil very recently. And such cases as the Tam bov peasant rebellion, w hich d u e to their m agnitude could not be ignored, were relegated to regional history as exam ples o f a Russian Vendee. T h in k in g on the civil war clearly changed during the G orbachev years. C autiously journalists (but few historians) began to raise the forbidden ques­ tions such as th e role of L enin in the introduction of the Red Terror, the true dim ensions o f the decossackization cam paign in 1919, or th e extent o f reprisals against the clergy or the peasants.2 U nfortunately, the m ain thrust of the glasnost-era reevaluation focused on the spectacular episodes. T h e silent m is­ sion of journal editors seems to have been to find the m ost gruesom e evidence o f Bolshevik atrocities. * At the sam e tim e the W hites received considerable attention for the first tim e. A p ro-C om m unist m yth was replaced by an antiC o m m u n ist one. If the earlier m yth had to prove that the Bolsheviks were the heroes and th eir opponents the villains, now the Bolsheviks becam e the villains and their opponents the heroes. Since the Bolsheviks were state terrorists, their opponents m u st have been the saviors o f Russia. T h e ir slogan, For Russia, U nited and Indivisible, was appealing to m any. Som e even w ent as far as to idealize th e W hites. Indeed, one can speak of a W h ite m ovem ent cu lt in contem porary R ussia.4 2 O n peasants, see Iurii Borisov, “Zigzagi i tupiki agrarnoi politiki posleoktiabr’skogo desiatiletiia,” K o m m u n ist, no. 2 (1991), 1 1 0 -1 3 , and V. D. D e m en t'ev and V. V. S am oshkin, “Vosstaniia krestian na T am b o v sh ch in e v 1920—21 go d ak h ,” Istoriia S S S R , no. 6 (1990), 99—100. O n decossackization, see A leksandr Kozlov, “R askazachivanie,” Roc/ίηα (1990), 4 0 -4 4 . O n L enin, see A. M okrousov, e d ., “L e n in , " O gonek, no. 7 (February 1992), 10—12; for a scholarly discussion o f the changing attitudes to L en in , see B enno E nnker, “E n d e des M ythos. L enin in der Kontroverse,” in G eyer, c d ., D ie U m w ertung der Sowjetischen Geschichte, pp. 5 4 -7 5 . See also a collection o f the glasnost-era Soviet articles on history in Raleigh, e d ., Soviet H istorians a n d Perestroika. 4 See, for exam ple, a n article e q u atin g Bolshevism w ith fascism and listing Bolshevik crim es against the R ussian people: V iacheslav Kostikov, “L iutsifer n a Russkom Rendez-vouz," O gonek, no. 4 (Jan u ary 1992), 9 -1 0 . 4 T h is is m anifested by a steady stream o f m onarchist and W h ite G u ard s’ literature: Z hiliar, Im perator N iko la iII; D en ik in , O cherki R u ssk o ism uty; D ieterikhs, V biistvo Tsarskoi sem 'i i chlenov dom a R om anovykh na V rale; and an unam biguously anti-S em itic p a m p h le t by von L am pe, Tragediia Beloi A rm ii, to n a m e only a few. In addition to reprints, som e historians, such as V. G . Bortnevsky, have published dozens and d ozens o f articles on the patriotic activities o f various W h ite generals, the W h ite adm inistration, plans for the overthrow o f the Bolsheviks, e tc ., particularly in the new journal Russkoe Proshloe (1991).

T h e problem with the post-C om m unist appraisal of the civil war is that it rem ains a tool in the m yth making. V irtually no one regards the Russian civil war as a problem of the Russians themselves. T he nationalist circles in Russia today go out o f their way to dem onstrate that the Bolsheviks were led by jews and their victory in the civil war was nothing but a victory o f Marxist Jewish conspirators over Holy R ussia.5 For the sake of myths, historical facts are conveniently forgotten. In fact it was the Russian peasants, who had never heard o f any M arxism , who refused to fight for m other Russia and helped the Bolsheviks to power in 1917. In fact it was the Russian regim ents, not Jewish, who abandoned the front in the fall of 1917 and pillaged Russian villages in their fam ous retreat. W ith o u t any instruction from the Marxists, they poked icons with their bayonets in desecrated churches, set scores of noble estates on fire, and m urdered their officers en masse. Today’s patriots prefer to ignore that kind o f history because they need to m aintain the myth that Marxists, Jews, and foreigners were to blam e for Russia’s misfortunes. T h e liberals write of the civil war as a national tragedy in w hich everybody suffered and every group bore enorm ous casualties. T h eir key them e is repen­ tance, to heal Russia’s wounds. Yet they strongly im ply that if there was a root cause of th at tragedy, it was M arxism -Leninism .6 T h e liberals prefer to focus their attention on Bolshevik atrocities because the great Russian people m ust be seen as victims and victims only in the civil w ar.7 T h e inability to see the Russian people as participants in their own self-destruction is the m ain problem in contem porary post-C om m unist Russian discussions o f the civil war.

Western Myths If in Russia th ro ughout the late 1980s Bolshevik myths of the civil war were subjected to increasing criticism , the m ain thrust of W estern historiography developed in the opposite direction. A spate of books discussed the proletarian consciousness o f workers and their genuine support for the Bolsheviks.8 Bol­ shevik rule was portrayed as proletarian and in the interests o f workers.9 Articles 5 See, for exam ple, Aleksei Vinogradov, ‘“ C hernaia ruka’ m asonov,” M olodaia Gvardiia, no. 2 (1991), 1 19-22, and Petr L anin, “T ain y ep ru zh in y istorii, ”M olodaia G vardiia, no. 8(1991), 251 — 65. fi T h e m ost thoughtful and im portant statem ent in this school of thought was m ade by AIeksander Tsipko, Ό zonakh zakrytykh dlia m ysli,” in Senokosov, ed., Surovaia dram a naroda, pp. 175-258. 7 See, for exam ple, an article drawing a sharp distinction between the “bad” Bolsheviks and the “good” Russian people: Boris M ozhaev, “la teriaius,” O gonek, no. 49 (D ecem ber 1991), 12-13. 8 See, for exam ple, Koenker, Moscow Workers a n d the 1917 Revolution; Sm ith, Red Petrograd; M andel, Petrograd Workers a n d the Soviet Seizure o f Power. 9 SIieila Fitzpatrick, for exam ple, wrote about “active support of urban working class for the Bolsheviks” in T he R ussian R evolution, p. 70. S e e also W illia m Rosenberg, “Identities, Power, and Social Interaction in R evolutionary R ussia,” Slavic Review, vol. 47, no. I (1988), 27.

appeared discussing the dem ocratic political culture of the Bolsheviks. 10 T he Bolshevik victory in the civil war was explained by social support for the Bolsheviks: Indeed in w eighing the significance o f these workers’ contribution to the eventual result, on e needs to consider not only the part played in the Bolshevik seizure of power in M oscow and the patterns in the elections to the C onstituent Assembly, but also the ways in w hich the dramatic advances o f the W hite armies in the course o f the civil war were repeatedly stopped and eventually repelled on ce they reached and cam e up against these inner redoubts o f Soviet power in the industrial towns and villages o f the Central Industrial region. 11

Workers and peasants, it was asserted, in a choice between the Reds and the W hites preferred to support the Bolsheviks. Thanks to workers’ support, the Bolsheviks won the civil war, 12 T here did not seem to be any other logical explanation. If the Bolsheviks won, it m ust have been because they enjoyed popular support. T he idea that it is possible to win a civil war against the will of the m ajority of the population has not been seriously considered. T he key them e in all these revisionist studies is that there was no alternative to Bolshevik rule. Few studies on alternative forces in Russian society have appeared. To date there is still no study of the G reen m ovem ent on the national scale. 13 T here is not one full-length book on the SR party. T here is not one W estern study of the Red Terror or the attack on religion. 14 T he m ain thrust of revisionist historiography on the Russian revolution and the civil war was to confer legitimacy on Bolshevik rule. T he revisionists tried to discredit the work of their critics as a product of the cold war and therefore biased against the Bolsheviks. 15 In this endeavor the revisionists accepted m any of the Bolshevik myths. T h e Russian civil war was conceptualized as a war between the Reds and the W hites only, that is, between the C om m unist-led Soviet Republic and the m onarchist, reactionary W hite m ovem ent. 16 Seen from this perspective, the Bolsheviks re-created a shattered and m aladjusted Russian society in the 10 Alexandeer Rabinowitch, “T he Evolution of Local Soviets in Petrograd, N ovember 1917June 1918: T h e Case of the First City District Soviet,” Slavic Review, vol. 46, no. I (1987), 2 0 -3 8 . 11 Leopold H aim son, “T h e Problem of Social Identities in Early Twentieth C entury Russia,” Slavic Review, vol. 47, no. I (1988), 11. 12 M oshe Lewin, “M ore T h an O n e Piece Is Missing in the P uzzle,” Slavic Review, vol. 44, no. 2 (1985), 243, and Rem ington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia, p. 101. 15 E xceptfor two regional studies: Figes, Peasant Russia, C ivil War, and Radkey, The U nknown C ivil W ar in Soviet Russia. 14 In fact the only study on the Red Terror ever undertaken was that by Sergey Melgunov, Krasnyi terror v Rossii. 15 O ne can cite here as the latest exam ple the attacks on Richard Pipes’s book, The Russian Revolution. See, for example, a review by W illiam Rosenberg in The N ation (18 February 1991), 2 0 2 -3 . 16 For the latest detailed study along these lines, see Mawdsley, The Russian C ivil War.

interest of workers. 17 T h e revisionists brought Soviet M arxist categories o f social analysis into W estern historiography, such as the alliance o f workers and peasants, th e proletarian dictatorship, and Soviet dem ocracy, as if these notions h ad existed in reality. 18 T h e revisionists saw the Bolshevik victory in the civil war as a natural and progressive event in tw entieth-century history. T h e problem , however, is th at the C o m m u n ist regim e was not really a republic, an d there was no such thing as Soviet dem ocracy, and the workers did n o t really exercise any dictatorship, and there was no alliance o f workers and peasants, an d th e Bolsheviks were fighting not only the W hites. T h e historical record contradicts m any of the established m yths of the Bolsheviks and their W estern prom oters. T h e factor o f rebellions, m utinies, and strikes has no t been taken into ac co u n t at all by this conceptualization. N eith er does this approach allow for th e role played by the socialist parties o f M ensheviks and SRs, o n both Red an d W h ite territory. Sim ilarly, th e war o f both th e Reds an d the W hites against th e nationalities is left o u t in a traditional Red versus W h ite dichotom y. W ith the collapse o f C o m m u n ist m ythology in Russia, W estern revisionists find them selves in an intellectual dead end.

Historical Approaches T h e history o f th e Russian civil war raises a n u m b er o f fundam ental questions of R ussian history in general, such as the disintegration and centralization of th e R ussian state. C an Russia as a state be held together by force only? Is Russian identity inseparably linked to th e em pire? O r to p u t it in different words, can Russian statehood be reconciled with the loss o f the em pire? T h e Russian civil war b ro u g h t forth the question th at bedevils R ussian rulers today, just as it bedeviled the provisional governm ent, the Bolsheviks, and the W hites, nam ely, how to deal w ith regional identity an d allegiance in Russia. Is Siberian or cossack regionalism an en em y o f th e Russian state? T h e R ussian civil war was in m an y ways a conflict o f a variety o f Russian identities, a conflict that reflected th e p eo p le’s m any loyalties to their villages and regions and to their social status and self-definition. T h e R ussian civil war can be seen as an attem pt by th e Bolsheviks and by the W hites to reconquer th e state. It was an attem pt to reconstitute th e em pire o f the tsars, cem ented by a new and m ore dynam ic ideology. A nd yet as we now know, the reconquest proved to be a tem porary one. O ld local and regional and national identities reem erged with a vengeance as soon as people freed them selves from fear. T h e old m yths vanished, and old problem s reappeared. 17 W illia m R osenberg, “Identities, Pow er, and Social Interaction in R evolutionary R ussia,” Slavic Review , vol. 47, no. I (1988), 27: 18 V iola, Best Sons o f the F atherland, pp. 9, 12, 14.

It is essentia] to conceptualize the course of the Russian civil war as an interaction o f all social groups, political m ovem ents, and parties. T h e Bol­ sheviks were n ot free agents. Everything they did was in response to the actions o f o th er participants. M ost o f their actions were improvisations for dealing with day-to-day em ergencies. T h e decisions the Bolsheviks m ade reflected the com ­ position of social and political forces w ithin the Bolshevik party, w hich in turn reflected the political interests of the Bolsheviks’ local organizations. T h e shifting front lines of the civil war reflected the shifting allegiances of social classes, political parties, and popular m ovem ents. It is impossible to conceptualize the course of the Russian civil war w ithout analyzing the politi­ cal battles b ehind the front lines. M oreover, one can argue that the visible front lines of the civil war were m erely a reflection of the real battles behind the front lines, battles that both the Bolsheviks and the W hites fought against G reens, cossacks, U krainians, and workers, and battles over policy between factions in the Bolshevik, M enshevik, and SR parties, and am ong the W hite generals. It is essential to see these processes as interrelated and interconnected in a dynam ic disequilibrium . Decisions taken by the Bolsheviks concerning food supply policy or the extent of m obilization, for exam ple, had a direct bearing on the political behavior of peasants and on the rate of desertion and consequently on the fortunes of the arm ies at the front line. T h e trajectory of workers’ and peasants’ m ovem ents during the civil war cannot be explained by the M arxist or neo-M arxist social science m ethodology of revisionists. W hy did the peasants in one province rise in rebellion b u t in another did not? W hy did the peasants in the Volga basin rise against the Bolsheviks and w elcom e the W hites in the spring of 1919 b u t then abandon them three m onths later and w elcom e the Reds, only to turn against them in 1920 again? How can we explain such turns in popular behavior? Surely urbanization or education-level statistics or m arriage patterns would not be very helpful. M any of these twists and turns in the behavior of peasants, workers, intelligentsia, cossacks, and nationalities becom e m ore clear w hen seen as reflecting changes in their self-definition and allegiance. W ho did these people think they were? D id workers really think of them selves as m em bers o f the ruling class exercising dictatorship over the rest of society? O r did they perceive them selves as dow ntrodden and exploited individuals at the mercy of the new bosses? D id peasants define them selves as m em bers of the toiling peasantry in alliance with the working class or as residents o f their province first and fore­ most, and thus suspicious of any city newcom er? Identity defined allegiance, and allegiance determ ined participation in the civil war. T h e m ain purpose of this book is to reconstruct the course of the civil war as a social and political interaction am ong diverse forces of Russian society. It is seen here as a dynam ic, open-ended, ever changing, and unpredictable process that could have gone in a variety of directions at certain critical junctures. T his is an attem pt to explain the worldview and political behavior of the civil war’s

INTRODUCTION

9

key participants. It is an attem pt to question som e o f the convenient m yths that have prevailed in both Russia and the West.

T he Road to Civil War W h e n the Bolsheviks seized pow er in Petrograd in O ctober 1917 and the defenders o f th e provisional governm ent tried to recapture the capital, the press referred to this struggle as th e civil war. Sim ilarly ten days later the fighting for control o f M oscow was described as the civil war. Any fighting o f Russians against Russians th eir contem poraries defined as a civil war. Few believed at th at tim e th at th e civil w ar w ould ignite like fire with new vigor and then die dow n and th at it would last four long years. In the fall of 1917 the Bolsheviks them selves were far from sure th at they w ould hold power. T h e general expec­ tatio n was th at they w ould not survive for m ore than a few weeks at most. T h e Bolshevik seizure of pow er was a wild gam ble. Russia was a peasant country and an em pire. T h e Bolsheviks had no organizations in the countryside and defi­ nitely did n o t h o ld th e d o m in an t position in U kraine, the Baltics, th e C a u ­ casus, Siberia, an d other parts o f the em pire. It was certain th at if they stayed in pow er in Petrograd, they w ould have to reconquer those areas by force. For a long tim e the origins o f the civil war rem ained obscure even in Soviet historiography. T h e Bolshevik victories in Petrograd and M oscow have always b een portrayed as ushering in the “trium phal m arch o f Soviet power. ” C ity after city, province after province proclaim ed Soviet power and accepted the Soviet governm ent in Petrograd as legitim ate u n til the convocation of the C o n stitu en t Assembly. B ut if Soviet power had been established w ith such ease, how then explain th e fact th at a few m o n th s later the Bolshevik governm ent faced a m ortal danger from its opponents?19 Official Soviet historiography has never b een able to explain this trajectory o f S ovietpolitics in 1918.20 Soviet historians referred to th e m alicious intrigues o f the W hites, b u t the problem is th at the Bolsheviks’ key opponents in 1918 were not the W hites b u t the SR-Ied factions p u sh in g to establish a dem ocratically elected C o n stitu en t Assembly. W h a t C o m m u n ist propagandists presented later as the “trium phal m arch of Soviet pow er” showed actually n o t allegiance to th e Bolsheviks b u t a co m m it­ m en t to convene th e C o n stitu en t Assembly. Soviet power in Petrograd was greeted by local soviets as a sym bol o f agreem ent betw een m ajor political parties th at th e C o n stitu en t A ssem bly w ould be convened and th at a way w ould be found o u t o f political stalem ate in the capital. T h e Bolsheviks’ hold on power 19 John Keep subjected the establishm ent o f S ovietpow er in the provinces to extensive scrutiny, “O c to b er in the Provinces,” in Pipes, e d ., Revolutionary R ussia. 20 For a glasnost-era discussion o f Soviet historical literature on the origins and chronology of th e civil w ar, see lu. A. Korablev, “G razhdanskaia voina 1 9 1 8 -1 9 2 0 . Novye podkhody,” in Kinkulkin, e d ., S tra n itsy istorii Sovetskogo obshchestva, pp. 5 6 -8 8 , h e re pp. 6 0 -6 1 .

was very ten u o u s an d co n d itio n al, b u t th e ir style bom bastic an d th reaten in g , as if in need o f bolstering th e ir claim to power. In fact th e Bolshevik governm ent was n o t m u c h o f a g overnm ent, because it co u ld n o t govern. T h e re were m inistries th a t issued orders, b u t m ost o f th em were ignored. T rade unions, local soviets, an d reg im en t co m m an d ers had m o re pow er over th e ir local units th an any m inister. Pow er was in th e streets, pow er was dispersed. Both the provisional an d th e B olshevik governm ents (also called provisional at first) p reten d ed th a t they h eld power, know ing fully well th at th eir claim s w ere on paper o n ly .21 T h e first few m o n th s w ere indeed a carnival of revolution. T h e workers celebrated th e victory of labor over capital. In practical term s this am o u n ted to freedom from work. N ow nobody h a d the pow er to force anybody to work. A n o t u n c o m m o n attitu d e am ong th e workers was: “Let th e exploiters, th e bo u r­ geoisie, w ork.” M ost o f th e tim e was spent rallying and passing resolutions. D irectors an d ow ners were rolled o u t o f th e plants to the jubilation o f workers. E n tire regim ents o f revolutionary soldiers were drunk. G angs o f robbers helped them selves to th e property o f others. H undreds of officers w ere brutally m u r­ dered by th e ir soldiers. In so u th ern cities violent pogrom s took place against Jews. In m an y cities law an d order collapsed. It was a drunkard orgy, free-for-all violence, an d anarchy. For soldiers, th e victory o f th e “p roletarian revolution” m e a n t freedom from fighting in th e war. T h e y were free to pick u p th e ir bayonets and go hom e. H un d red s o f thousands o f th e m did. O n th e ir way they pillaged and looted, and seized th e “bourgeois pro p erty ” o f the exploiting classes. T h e victory o f the “proletarian revolu tio n ” for peasants m e a n t freedom from landlords and free­ d o m from th e state. N ow they co u ld finally divide the land equally. T h e day of th e Black repartitio n o f land h ad finally arrived. T h e dream o f generations of peasants h ad finally com e tru e. T h e peasants were b u rn in g landlords’ estates an d obliterating every sign o f th eir presence in th e countryside. T h e Bolsheviks soon began to realize th a t this destructive radicalism o f the masses h a d to be harnessed before it swept th eir governm ent away, as it had the provisional governm ent. T h ey tried to accom plish this by encouraging destruc­ tive violence an d c h a n n e lin g it in to a vengeful “class struggle. ” T h ey cam e o u t w ith th e slogan L o o t th e Looters. Property could be taken back from the old elite becau se it h ad been stolen from th e w orking people. T h e Bolsheviks tried to cast this great redistribution of w ealth in to M arxist categories of class struggle, and they tried to direct this energy against th eir political enem ies. Bolshevism as a social m o v em en t in late 1917 a n d early 1918 was indistinguishable from an arch ic an d destructive pop u lar upheaval. Bolshevism as a system o f govern­ m e n t was a lawless regim e w h ich boasted th at it had abolished all bourgeois laws. T h e Bolsheviks w ere follow ing th e masses, pretending th at they were 21 Richard Pipes discussed the concept of a claim to power in The Russian Revolution, p. 507.

leading them . Before too long they would venture to reim pose state control, w hich would generate resistance. Educated society was atom ized and incapacitated at the end of that fateful year. T h e conservative forces, the m onarchists, the officers— those who later would be known as the W hites-w ere politically insignificant. T hey had suf­ fered a great shock: the collapse of the m onarchy, the collapse of any govern­ m ental authority, the defeat o f the country in the G reat War, and the disin­ tegration of the em pire. To make things worse, the governm ent, from their point of view, was in the hands of G erm an spies and subversive revolutionaries. No one seemed to know what to do or how and where to start resistance to this “m adness,” as the conservatives would put it. G eneral Aleksei Kaledin tried to organize the cossacks on the D on in D ecem ber to repel the Bolshevik advance, but he failed, and the Bolsheviks overran the cossack lands and Ukraine. For the socialists (the M ensheviks and SRs7 the former leaders of the provi­ sional governm ent), the events of O ctober—Novem ber 1917 were a catastrophe. T h ey too were baffled and disoriented. Everything they believed in was falling to pieces. After the February revolution of 1917, they had tried to inaugurate a participatory dem ocracy by granting substantial decision-m aking power to workers through the soviets; they had tried to involve the masses in the process of governm ent. Yet nothing seemed to work. T h e masses were willing to follow those who offered ever m ore radical promises, even though such promises were, from the socialists’ point of view, unfulfillable. T h e Bolsheviks had prom ised the masses socialism, democracy, and prosperity as if by magic, if only all power was transfered to the soviets. T h e socialists were convinced that the Bolsheviks realized that there was no quick fix to Russia’s problem s and were throw ing the country into chaos in order to gain power, instead of acting responsibly w ith other socialist parties. T he M ensheviks and SRs perceived the Bolsheviks as adventurers at best and liars at worst. N ot only the socialists, but all Russian educated society at the end of 1917 was horrified by its separateness from the Russian people. AU the parties tried to adapt as best they could to an unprecedented popular upheaval, a social revolu­ tion th at no one could direct or channel. In this political situation the Bol­ sheviks survived not because of popular support for socialism but because all their politicaljjpponents, from the Mensheviks to the m onarchists, were disor­ ganized, disoriented, and uncertain over the further course of action. In January 1918 the Bolsheviks disbanded the C onstituent Assembly by force. M ore than any other event this was the watershed w hich set the chain of events in m otion leading to the civil war. ThHBolsheViks had received about a q uarter of the seats, largely because o f support from soldiers at the front and radical workers in big cities, bu t their m ain opponents, the Socialist Revolu­ tionaries, got over 40 percent. 22 T hey were the clear winners, thanks largely to 22 Radkey, Russia Goes to the Polls.

the peasant vote. T h e party of Russian agrarian socialism, the party of Alek­ sandr Kerensky and the provisional government, still com m anded the alle­ giance of the majority of Russian peasants. T h e Socialist Revolutionaries were now convinced that the Bolsheviks had overthrown the provisional government and seized power not in order to se­ cure the convocation of the C onstituent Assembly, as they had publicly an ­ nounced in October, but in order to establish a one-party dictatorship. Vig­ orous debates in the SR party focused on where and how rather than whether to resist the Bolshevik dictatorship. T he moderates grouped around Victor Chernov, the chairm an of the ill-fated C onstituent Assembly, prevailed once again in the party dispute and decided to abstain from armed defense of the C onstituent Assembly at the m om ent. T heir assessment of the political situa­ tion was that the masses, primarily soldiers and the majority of peasants, were still in a state o f euphoria over the defacto end of the war and repartition of land. They were not ready to rise to defend the C onstituent Assembly and parliam entary democracy. T he SRs’ strategy was to wait until the peasants felt the burden of the Bolshevik dictatorship. T h e M ensheviks were going through a similar agonizing process of defining policy. T h e party was in deep crisis because unlike the SRs, who had preserved their share of the peasant vote in the C onstituent Assembly elections, the M ensheviks had done poorly. Most workers had supported the Bolsheviks. Or so it seemed. O n a closer exam ination of workers’ political attitudes it was apparent, however, that workers perceived the Bolsheviks as a radical workers’ party which had promised speedy convocation of the C onstituent Assembly, conclusion o f the war, and an improved econom ic situation: Bread, Land, and Peace, as the political slogan of the day sum m arized it. They had not voted for a one-party dictatorship in their nam e; neither had they voted for the construc­ tion of socialism or for the destruction of independent trade unions. T he honeym oon between the Bolsheviks and the workers was rather short, and already in the spring of 1918 the Mesheviks began to recover lost ground. Their strategy under the new center-left party leadership of Iulii M artov and Fedor D an was to expose the utopian (from their point of view) and destructive econom ic policy of the Bolsheviks, which was going to h u rt the workers and lead to a total collapse of industry. T he Mensheviks and SRs chose a course of a peaceful com petition with the Bolsheviks in the soviets, the same strategy that the Bolsheviks themselves had pursued in 1917. T h e C onstitutional Democrats (Kadets in Russian abbreviation), or Russian liberals, and all the groups to the right of them were simply outlawed and disfranchized by the Bolsheviks. W ith the disbandm ent of the C onstituent Assembly they had no representation of any kind. They were made voiceless politically, and their property was confiscated or expropriated or made valueless by inflation and the seizure o f the banks. T he Kadets and the army officers were ready at that stage to resist the Bolsheviks by force of arms, but they did not have any. They too had to wait for an opportune m om ent.

Prospects looked good for the Bolsheviks in January-F ebruary 1918. T heir gam ble o f seizing the capital in O ctober seemed to have worked. T hey had overcom e the hurdle of the C onstituent Assembly successfully, since no force seem ed to be on the horizon that could topple or even challenge their suprem ­ acy. T h e situation began to change in the spring of 1918. T h e danger cam e not from any organized political party or m ovem ent but from the Bolsheviks’ own O ctober constituency of workers, soldiers, and peasants. Social and political processes in the spring of 1918 underm ined this ad hoc coalition and brought the Bolshevik governm ent to the brink of disaster in the sum m er. In the cities the Bolsheviks’ problem was that econom ic conditions kept getting worse, whereas political expectations were very high. Clearly the disin­ tegration of Russian industry had started back in February 1917. Inflated war production was bound to collapse at some point, especially as Russia withdrew from the war. Clearly, high unem ploym ent was going to weaken the appeal of the governm ent, any governm ent, in Russia. Yet the Bolsheviks launched a nu m b er of radical policies w hich they described as “the Red G uards’ attack on capitalism ,” and that m ade the econom ic situation worse than it had already been. T h e Bolsheviks behaved as if their chief priority was to shake the founda­ tions o f the capitalist international and social order rather than engage in a search for constructive solutions. T heir first acts were, so to say, for the record, so th at if and w hen they fell, the whole world would know what the first proletarian dictatorship was all about. T h e Bolsheviks were prim arily interested not in im proving econom ic condi­ tions but in a “socialist” revolution. T hey introduced workers’ control at the factories, w hich was supposed to resolve all problem s because, they insisted, it was the capitalists who had sabotaged production. In reality, workers’ control resulted in m ism anagem ent, parochialism , and chaos in industry. To make things worse, the Bolsheviks “nationalized” the banks, better to say seized them , in D ecem ber 1917.23 As a result m oney lost all value. C redit stopped, inflation soared, and one plant after another w ent bankrupt and shut down. Initially the Bolsheviks did not m ind the bankruptcies, because they h u rt the capitalists; they willingly nationalized (i.e., took under state protection) one plant after the other. T h e workers craved protection, and they believed that the proletarian state would not let them down. Alas, the m ore industry was nation­ alized, the less the Bolsheviks were capable of sustaining it by governm ent subsidies. As early as January 1918 massive unem ploym ent hit Petrograd and other big cities. T h e workers began to grum ble, rem inding the Bolsheviks of their O cto­ ber promises. T h e Mensheviks saw their chance and opened a vigorous cam ­ paign against the Bolshevik “quasi-socialist experim ents,” as they put it. They stood for a m ixed economy, partial denationalization, and a partnership of 22 For a tim id glasnost-era criticism of the “seizure of the banks,” see V. V. Zhuravlev, “Kavaleriiskaia ataka na kapita). Priobreteniia i poteri," Voprosy lstorii K P SSy no. 4 (1991), 33-46.

trade unions, factory owners and the state— that is, the system of 1917. T he Bolsheviks perceived these appeals as a betrayal of socialism and the M en­ sheviks as agents of the bourgeoisie am ong the workers. Yet the Menshevik message was popular now, and they began winning one city soviet election after another in m ajor industrial centers. In most cases they formed an electoral bloc with the SRs, and the two parties were well on the road to recovering majorities in m ajor urban centers, which they had lost to the Bolsheviks in S eptem berOctober 1917. If this process had not been disrupted by violence, the Bolshevik seizure of power in the fall of 1917 would have appeared as a tem porary success due to the appeal of radical solutions, which collapsed when it became evident that they did not work. To make things worse for the Bolsheviks, the Left SRs and the mainstream SRs were doing very well in the provincial soviet elections in the countryside. T h e Left SRs had split from the mainstream SRs in O ctober 1917 because they believed then that the SR party had stalled on the question of agrarian reform and the redistribution of land to the peasants. T he Left SRs had becom e allies of the Bolsheviks, perceiving them as a party that would guarantee radical social revolution. Yet in the spring of 1918 the Left SRs discovered that the Bolsheviks had adopted a utilitarian approach toward peasants. It was going to be a prole­ tarian dictatorship over all others, including the peasants. T he norms of repre­ sentation in the soviets favored workers’ votes over those of peasants. T he rift between the Left SRs and the Bolsheviks began to widen over the Brest-Litovsk separate peace treaty with Germany, which the Left SRs perceived as capitula­ tion to G erm an imperialism. Before too long the rift exploded into an open confrontation. W hile losing the support of urban workers, the Bolsheviks did not fare better with their m ain constituency of October, the soldiers. T he army simply melted away; it ceased to exist. Soldiers, m ost of them former peasants, returned to their villages and were gradually reabsorbed into the peasant com m unity. T he trajectory of peasant political attitudes was somewhat different from that of workers. T he workers felt the aftereffects of the “socialist” revolution very quickly and reacted accordingly. T h e peasants, on the other hand, were quite content in the spring of 191 8. They had divided up the land, and they were not interested in national politics anymore. As far as they were concerned, the city folks could argue, but they had gotten what they wanted. At first the withdrawal of the peasants from national politics h u rt the SRs most, since the peasants did not rise to defend the C onstituent Assembly. But it is far m ore im portant that their withdrawal h u rt the Bolsheviks as well, perhaps ultim ately m ore than the SRs. T h e peasants were not against the Bolsheviks as a political party yet, but they were traditionally suspicious of any government. Now that the Bolsheviks were the government, the peasants adopted a defensive posture in regard to their land and their grain. T h e Bolsheviks needed grain to provide subsidies to the army and the cities,

b u t they could not get it because the peasants were not willing to sell. And they were not willing to sell because the ruble was losing value with every passing day, partly, one m ight add, due to the Bolsheviks’ attack on capitalism and the m arket econom y as such. So the Bolsheviks had to devise some m ethod of getting grain and other food supplies from the recalcitrant peasants. T he M en­ sheviks and SRs argued in the Parliam ent (Central Executive C om m ittee of Soviets, C E C ) that the only way to do it was to restore the m arket m echanism , restore peasant trust in m oney, and raise fixed state prices on agricultural products. In fact, som e m oderate Bolsheviks defended policies along the same lines as well. B ut L enin m ust have com e to the conclusion that such a course was suicidal for the Bolsheviks politically, even though it m ade perfect sense econom ically. If the m arket m echanism were restored and credit and com ­ m erce reappeared, who would benefit? T h e answer was unam biguous: cer­ tainly the well-off peasants, those who had voted for the SRs, the Bolsheviks' m ain rivals. Capitalism would lead to the econom ic and political recovery of the countryside and of the SRs, and that was unacceptable to the Bolsheviks. T h ey had to find a way to feed the arm y and the cities w ithout aiding the rich and the SRs. Political considerations certainly were the key to Bolshevikpolicy choices.24 In May 1918 the Bolsheviks decided to form detachm ents of dedicated workers, arm them , and send them to the countryside to collect grain by force. To aid these proletarian troops, the Bolsheviks devised a plan to divide the peasant com m unity into warring factions. T heyw ere going to form com m ittees of the poor, which would get a share if they helped the workers’ detachm ents to expropriate rich peasants’ grain. T his social policy of divide and rule was supposed to kill two birds with one stone: get the grain and create a social constituency of support for the Bolsheviks in the countryside.25 It m ade perfect sense as far as the interests o f the Bolshevik party were concerned. But the price was high. In practical term s it m eant a civil war in the countryside: Bolshevik detachm ents and their supporters in local com m unities versus the bulk of the peasantry. As soon as the contours of Bolshevik policy becam e apparent, the Left SRs turned from loyal and friendly critics of the Bolsheviks into irreconcilable enem ies. T h e Left SRs and the SRs were going to do their utm ost to organize peasant resistance. So by June 1918 the ad hoc coalition o f social forces that had propelled the Bolsheviks to power in O ctober disintegrated. T h e Mensheviks, the SRs, and the Left SRs were the m ain beneficiaries of the crisis of Bolshe­ vism, b u t they were far from united in their vision of what had to be done next. D uring the spring of 1918 the Bolsheviks claim ed that the legitimacy of their 24 I discussed this issue in greater detail in "Politics N ot Econom ics Was the Key,” Slavic Review, vol. 44, no. 2 (1985), 2 4 4 -5 0 . 25 For a critical post-C om m unist appraisal o f this policy in Russia, see Kuleshov, ed., Nashe Otechestvo, vol. 2, pp. 50-53.

governm ent was based on the will of freely elected soviets of workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ deputies. T hey claim ed th at since they, the Bolsheviks, had re­ ceived a m ajority at the Second Congress of Soviets in O ctober, they had form ed a legitim ate governm ent regardless of the C onstituent Assembly, w hich was a bourgeois institution and a holdover from the old regime. T h e logic of this reasoning was that the soviets were the repository o f national sovereignty and th at Soviet dem ocracy was superior to bourgeois dem ocracy because it was a dem ocracy o f workers, peasants, and soldiers excluding the parasitic classes of society, such as capitalists, landlords, and the clergy as well as officers, pro­ fessors, doctors, lawyers, and other bourgeois elem ents. Bolshevik leaders kept repeating during th e spring o f 1918 that w hichever party won the m ajority of soviets would autom atically have a m ajority at the Congress o f Soviets, a suprem e legislative institution, and would be able to form the next Soviet governm ent. It is im portant that at this date the Bolsheviks defined their gov­ ern m en t as a dem ocracy in principle. T h e ideology th at Russia was to be led by a vanguard o f th e proletariat regardless of popular vote because scientific laws of h u m an developm ent ordained the C o m m u n ist party to fulfill the m ission of socialist construction— this ideology was not yet m ade public. W h en th e Bolsheviks realized that the election returns to the provincial soviets m ight leave them in a m inority nationw ide, they faced a dilem m a: power or principle. To hold on to power they had to start disbanding, n o t just the “bourgeois” C o nstituent Assembly, b u t the soviets as well. Staying faithful to th e principle o f Soviet power, on the other hand >would m ean in practice that the M ensheviks and SRs would gain a m ajority as in 1917, and the O ctober gam ble o f seizing power would be for nothing. Yet if it was possible to disband workers’ soviets in a proletarian state, som e Bolsheviks wondered, w here would the cycle o f violence lead? W ould the institutions o f repression becom e a state w ithin a state? W ould it be impossible to establish a rule of law o f any kind? W ould th e C o m m u n ist party itself turn into a privileged and uncontrollable elite? It is to the credit o f the Bolsheviks that there still were people in their ranks who were concerned with these issues and had the courage to express their views publicly. In each and every case, however, w hen the M ensheviks and SRs won elec­ tions to th e soviets, these were disbanded by force, or the opposition parties were expelled from the soviets.26 T his am ounted to a coup d'etat by the Bol­ sheviks against th e system o f soviets as institutions of popular sovereignty. Now the Bolsheviks revealed them selves as a party willing to violate their own consti­ tution: they betrayed the principles they had pledged allegiance to only a few m onths earlier. O n June 14 the Bolsheviks finalized this creeping coup d ’etat by officially expelling from the C E C the opposition parties of the M ensheviks 26 For a detailed discussion, see Brovkin, T he M ensheviks after October, chapter 5, “T h e E lections to th e C ity Soviets,” pp. 1 26-61.

and SRs. By law they had no authority for this act, since only the Congress of Soviets had the right to change the com position of its C entral Executive C om ­ m ittee. From this point onward the Soviet governm ent was nothing but an instrum ent in the hands of the C om m unist party dictatorship. T he distinction between the two ceased to exist. By June 1918 Russia was sliding into chaos and civil war. It was a different kind of chaos than in the fall of 1917. N o longer was it directed against the propertied classes of the old regime. Now the Bolshevik governm ent and its agents were quickly turning into an enem y of m any groups in the population. Like tremors before an earthquake, m ore and m ore peasant rebellions began to break out. These were propelled by an ever increasing peasant resistance to grain requisitioning and com m ittees o f the poor. T h e arrival o f grain requisi­ tion detachm ents in the countryside usually led to arm ed clashes. C hurch bells rang, and angry peasants assembled in village squares and often attacked the detachm ents. T h e Bolsheviks responded with reprisals and by taking hostages, and the cycle of violence intensified with every passing week. In m any small towns the soviets were attacked, and in some the Bolsheviks were locked in a soviet building and burned alive.27 In the cities a wave of strikes escalated to general strikes and uprisings, this time against the Bolsheviks.28 T hey responded by banning public gatherings, arresting M ensheviks and SRs, and disbanding independent trade unions. Some plants, deem ed hotbeds of opposition, were shut down altogether, all workers fired and exiled to faraway provinces. T he workers’ protest m ovem ent was coordinated by a new organization, a council o f workers’ plenipotentiaries (·upolnomochennye) led by the Mensheviks. These were particularly strong in Russia’s oldest and biggest industrial cities: Petrograd, Tula, Izhevsk, Sormovo, and Kolom na. Metalworkers, railway workers, and printers were the leaders of this m ovem ent. T heir m ain political slogans called for free elec­ tions to the soviets, independent trade unions, and the right to strike, and denounced the one-party C om m unist dictatorship. T h e Bolsheviks responded by arresting the leaders of the plenipotentiaries m ovem ent and with wholesale arrests of the M enshevik and SR party leaders. AU their newspapers had been shut down by m idsum m er 1918 in Soviet Russia. T h e expulsion of the opposition parties from the C E C had a profound effect on the SR party. T h e center-left course o f Victor Chernov, who had advocated peaceful com petition with the Bolsheviks in the soviets, was now in shambles. T h e Bolsheviks had disbanded not only the C onstituent Assembly but the soviets as well. C om bined with the attack on peasants, Bolshevik policies 27 “Pogrom Soveta v Pavlovskom Posade,’’ Delo naroda (15 May 1918), 2, reprinted in English in Brovkin, The M ensheviks after October, p. 259. 28 W illiam Rosenberg, “Russian Labor and Soviet Power after O cto b er,” Slavic Review, vol. 44, no. 2 (1985), pp. 2 1 3 -3 9 .

generated a desire am ong the SRs to fight back. T hose am ong the SRs who had advocated a resolute arm ed struggle against the Bolsheviks were gaining the upper han d in the SR party. T h ro u g h o u t April and M ay these SRs were co n ­ tem plating w here and how they would start arm ed struggle against the Bol­ sheviks.29 T hey were planning to raise an arm ed insurrection in the agricultural provinces along th e Volga, w here their organizations had been traditionally strong and w here they had w on handsom ely in the elections to the C onstituent Assembly. If in O ctober 1917 a fortunate com bination of circum stances favored the Bolsheviks’ bid for power, now in June 1918 sheer luck was on the side of the SRs. Leon Trotsky m ade one of his greatest blunders, w hich changed the constellation o f forces virtually overnight. H e ordered th at the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia be disarm ed. Partly this order was issued to com ply with the dem ands of th e G erm ans, who feared the presence o f well-organizeed arm ed force hostile to G erm any on Russian soil. T h e C zechs had wound up in Russia as prisoners o f war because they were subjects o f the Austrian m onarchy. Since, however, th eir true loyalty was no t to Austria bu t to a future independent Czechoslovakia, they were treated in Russia not as enem y POW s but as allies against Austria and G erm any. T h e C zech Legion was thus form ed in Russia as a part of the Allied forces against the C entral Powers. As long as Russia re­ m ained an Allied power, the C zech Legion did no t represent any danger to a Russian governm ent. Yet w hen the Bolsheviks concluded a separate peace treaty w ith G erm any, the status o f the C zech Legion becam e m ore am biguous. T h e treaty certainly strengthened the C entral Powers and underm ined the suprem e goal o f the C zechs to form an independent Czechoslovak state. T hus the Bolsheviks were perceived by the C zechs as having betrayed the Allies and the cause of Czechoslovak national liberation. T h a t is why, w hen Trotsky ordered th at th e C zechoslovak Legion be disarm ed, it had no choice b u t to resist. T h e C zechs disarm ed the Bolsheviks instead and seized power in the provin­ cial town o f Sam ara on the Volga. T h ey desperately needed Russian allies who w ould oppose the Brest-Litovsk treaty, oppose the G erm ans, and oppose the Bolsheviks. T h e local SRs quickly realized that this was their chance. Six elected m em bers o f the disbanded C onstituent Assembly who happened to be in Sam ara form ed the C om m ittee of the C onstituent Assembly (Kom uch), whose goal was proclaim ed to be arm ed struggle against the Bolsheviks for reconvocation of th e C onstituent Assembly, restoration of legitim ate govern­ m en t in Russia, and cancellation of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty. T his was the b eginning of the frontline civil war. D u rin g June and July the K om uch governm ent established its authority with Z9 I. Brushvit, “Kak podgotovlialos’ Volzhskoe vystuplenie,” Volia Rossii, no. 10 (1928).

astonishing speed in one province after another along the Volga. By midAugust, in the im m ense territory from the Volga River to the Pacific Ocean, the Bolsheviks were overthrown. T he Komuch government in Samara controlled the territory between the Volga and the Urals, and the Siberian government in which the Right SRs took part controlled the territory from the Urals to the ocean. Upon hearing the news that the Com m ittee of the Constituent Assem­ bly in Samara was spreading its authority, the workers at m unitions works in Izhevsk and Votkinsk in Vyatka Province rose in rebellion, overthrew the local Bolsheviks, and reconvened the soviet which the Bolsheviks had disbanded in June after they had lost the elections. T he Izhevsk soviet pledged loyalty to Komuch and mobilized armed workers to fight the Bolsheviks as a part of the newly formed People's Army. These thirty thousand workers, well armed with rifles they had m anufactured, proved to be the most dedicated fighters against the Bolsheviks. T he success of the Czech and Komuch forces on the Volga and in Siberia prompted a more vigorous involvement of the Allies. T he Czechs could not be left to fight alone, so limited contingents of British and American forces arrived in Vladivostok and Arkhangelsk to protect the trans-Siberian railroad and render aid to the Czechs. T h e Bolsheviks in Moscow were in panic. They gave secret orders to their Urals comrades to execute the entire imperial family lest they be liberated by the Czechs and SR s.30 O ne disaster after another hit the Bolsheviks in those stormy days of July and early August 1918. T he most serious of them was the socalled uprising of the Left SRs on 6 July. For m any decades the official Bol­ shevik version of events stood unchallenged, that the Left SRs in Moscow m urdered the G erm an ambassador, C ount W ilhelm von M irbach, in order to wreck the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty, launch an uprising against the Bolsheviks, and seize power. Yet recent research into this affair casts some doubt on the official version.31 It is not certain whether la. G. Bliumkin killed the German ambassador in his capacity as a m em ber of the Left SR party or as an agent of the Cheka (Lenin’s political police). It seems plausible that the Left SR Central C om m ittee was tricked into accepting responsibility for the m urder and that the Bolsheviks used this opportunity to turn the tables on their former allies. It was a dangerous m om ent for the Bolsheviks. T he Fifth Congress of Soviets was in session in Moscow— the congress which had been elected without the partici­ pation of the Mensheviks and SRs, who had been expelled from the soviets earlier. Even without the help of other opposition parties, the Left SRs did exceptionally well against the Bolsheviks. They had about a third of the elected delegates, even with the unfair norms of representation which heavily favored the urban bureaucracies. In a one-m an, one-vote contest the Left SRs might 30 Pipes, T he R ussian R evolution, pp. 7 4 5 -8 9 . 31 Fel’shtinsky, Bolsheviki i levye Esery.

well have w on a m ajority against the Bolsheviks thanks to th eir overw helm ing rural p reponderan ce. T heB olsheviks used the M irbach m u rd e r to provoke Left SR defiance and th en expelled th em from the C ongress o f Soviets. H undreds of delegates to th e so-called suprem e legislative institution w ere arrested as culprits in a supposed rebellion against Soviet pow er, even th o u g h they knew no th in g of it. AU over Russia the Left SRs, w ho had no know ledge of w hat h ad transpired in M oscow , were arrested an d expelled from the local soviets as well. T h e Bolsheviks th u s com pleted th eir ow n coup d’etat against Soviet power. In addition to the fighting w ith th e Left SRs in M oscow, an uprising broke o u t in Yaroslavl. T h is was a g en u in e uprising well prepared by Boris Savinkov.32 H e used to be an SR terrorist before the war, but in 1917 his reputation was th a t of a right-w ing SR well connected to the officers. H e was expelled from the SR party for his role in th e K ornilov affair in A ugust 1917. Savinkov c o u n te d on A llied help arriving from Arkhangelsk, w hich w ould enable him , h e h oped, to seize M oscow. H elp never arrived. For two weeks fierce fighting for Yaroslavl w ent on in w hich som e d etach m en ts o f workers fought against the Bolsheviks. T h e m o st serious blow th e Bolsheviks suffered th at su m m er, however, was th e capture o f K azan by the C zech and SR forces on 8 A ugust. T h e K om uch go v ern m en t seized the en tire gold reserve of the R ussian E m pire, w hich had b een stored in K azan. Strategically th e capture of K azan opened the way to N iz h n i N ovgorod, the last m ajo r city on th e Volga still in Bolshevik hands, and th en to Yaroslavl an d M oscow itself. It did appear at th at m o m e n t th at the tide w ould co n su m e th e Bolsheviks and th at th e K om uch governm ent w ould recon­ vene the C o n stitu e n t Assem bly in M oscow. T h e Bolsheviks responded to this challenge w ith utm ost vigor and d eterm i­ n ation. Trotsky personally c o m m an d ed th e m eager troops at the Bolsheviks’ disposal. AU they could com e up w ith in those days was a Red A rm y o f twenty th o u san d , throw n into battle at a critical ju n ctu re to defend N izh n i Novgorod. T h e Bolsheviks knew they had to win or die. IfM o sco w had been captured by the pro-A llied forces, the G erm ans w ould probably have occupied Petrograd an d parts o f w estern Russia, a n d the Bolshevik party w ould have disappeared. In this desperate situation the Bolsheviks lau n c h e d a policy of R ed Terror. T h ey set u p c o n cen tratio n cam ps for enem ies o f the proletarian revolution, “w here suspicious agitators, co u nterrevolutionary officers, saboteurs, a n d speculators w ould be placed except those w ho will be shot on the sp o t.”33 H undreds and thousands o f executions were carried o u t all over Russia in Septem ber. T h e C h ek a was em pow ered to act w ithout restraint and, in essence, w ith o u t any legal procedures. W orkers w ho refused to work were arrested and drafted into 32 S pence, Boris S a v in ko v , pp. 208—12. 33 "Prikaz N arkom a po V o ennym D e la m ” (An order of th e w ar affairs p eo p le’s com m issar), Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Corodskogo O bshchestvennogo Sam oupraveniia (17 A ugust 1918), I.

the Red Army; peasants who refused to surrender grain were shot as kulaks and counterrevolutionaries; soldiers who refused to fight were shot as traitors and deserters. In som e cases entire regim ents were shot. T hose w ho dared to speak ou t against th e rule of terror were arrested and shot, m any SRs am ong them . T hese ruthless m easures worked. C onfronting fierce resistance, the SR People’s Arm y retreated. N izhni Novgorod was safe for Soviet power and Red Terror. T h e advancing Reds pursued the C zech and SR units, and before too long Kazan was recaptured. In S eptem ber Sam ara itself, the capital of the territory of the C o n stitu en t Assembly, fell to the Reds. T h e Red Terror had a profound psychological effect on the Bolshevik party. AU m oral restraints were now cast aside. A nything was perm issible in order to stay in power. Few were concerned then that the institutions o f mass reprisals were there to stay and that arbitrary terror directed indiscrim inately against others w ould one day consum e the Bolshevik party itself. N in eteen eighteen was the year the R ussian state disintegrated and regional governm ents em erged on the ruins o f the collapsed em pire. It was a period w hen both th e C o m m ittee of the C on stitu en t Assembly in Sam ara and the Bolsheviks in M oscow claim ed to control territory, b u t in fact m ost of their claim s were on paper only. T h e frontline battles between the nascent Red Army and the troops o f the C on stitu en t Assembly in the sum m er involved tens of thousands o f soldiers rather th an hundreds o f thousands, as happened a year later against the W hites. In m is pivotal year, the Bolshevik governm ent was entirely at the m ercy of the G erm ans. It was close to collapse several tim es due to the dynam ic opposition o f the M ensheviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries, and th e Left SRs. T h e frontline civil war during this first stage was prim arily betw een the C o m m unists and socialists. To be sure, there were a few regim ents of officers in outlying areas, b u t the W hites did no t exist as a contender for political power in 1918. In N ovem ber 1918 the stage o f th e civil war w hich involved the Bolsheviks and the C o m m ittee o f the C onstituent Assembly, allied with the C zech Legion in Siberia, was finally over. A dm iral Aleksandr Kolchak, who held the post of war m inister in a coalition governm ent in Siberia, staged a coup d ’etat, dis­ banded th e C o m m ittee o f the C on stitu en t Assembly, and proclaim ed him self the suprem e ruler o f Russia. O vernight the constellation o f political forces changed in Russia once again. A m ilitary regim e of army officers (the W hites) em erged as a factor o f suprem e im portance in the struggle for power. T h e socialists were relegated to the role o f an oppressed opposition, both on the Redand W h ite-controlled territory. T h u s th e m ajor param eters of m ilitary struggle were set in the fall of 1918 that defined the politics o f the civil war for the next three years. O n the international arena the world war was finally over. For Russia this m eant the end o f the G erm an occupation o f U kraine and a possible vigorous involvem ent

of the Allies in Russian affairs. O n the domestic front it was going to be a struggle o f the Reds against the W hites, and a war of both against Ukrainians and other "separatists” and the socialists. And soon a new factor appeared in national politics which was only marginally present in 1918: the Green move­ m ent of peasants. T he most im portant and indeed decisive stage in the Russian civil war was just beginning.

Part One 19

1 8 - 1 9 1 9

I T h e “N ew C o u rse ” T h a t Failed (D ecem b er 191 δ— April 1919)

I n N o v e m b e r 1918, w hen the worst excesses of local Chekas reached their apogee, L e n in ’s governm ent abruptly changed its policies. T h e D ecree of 14 June, w hich had expelled the M ensheviks and SRs from the C E C , was a n ­ nulled. 1 It was legitim ate again for the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Social D em ocrats to run in elections to the soviets, open clubs, and speak at workers’ rallies. It seem ed, at least for the m om ent, that extraordinary rule was o u t of favor and th at an attem pt was going to be m ade to return to the status o f the spring of 1918— a m ultiparty electoral system with free cam paigning and an independent press. Was this shift in policy m erely a m aneuver m ade for propa­ ganda purposes, or was it a genuine attem pt to find an alternative to the extraordinary rule o f Red Terror, “seriously and for a long tim e”— as L enin described his hopes w hen introducing the N E P in 1921? W hy was m oderation abandoned oncc again in April 1919? G rain requisitioning, mass arrests o f socialists, and R ed T erro rresu m ed . D id L e n in change his m ind, or was his new policy sabotaged by the C o m m u n ist party? O r was he, perhaps, forced by other circum stances to postpone the m oderate policies h e had tried once before, and to sanction w hat is now know n as W ar C om m unism ?

Causes o f L egalization Officially the Bolshevik governm ent explained its decision to legalize the M en ­ shevik party as a response to th e M ensheviks’ m ore conciliatory posture toward the Soviet governm ent. Indeed, in O ctober and N ovem ber 1918 the M en ­ sheviks m ade a n u m b er o f statem ents to the Bolsheviks’ liking. T hey co n ­ dem ned the Allied intervention in Russia in strong terms. T hey forbade party m em bers to take part in any uprisings or arm ed struggle against the soviets, and they recognized the Soviet C onstitution of July 1918. Restoration o f the C o n ­ stituent Assembly and of a parliam entary republic based on universal suffrage was declared to be a long-term goal of the M ensheviks, b u t for the m o m en t they saw th eir task as restoring the rule o f the m ultiparty, freely elected soviets, 1 For the text o f the decree, see “Postanovlenie T sIK ,” V la s t’ Sovetov, No. 29 (27 D ecem ber 1918), 20, and Ό M en shevikahh,” Izvestiia TsIK (I D ecem b er 29]8).

w hich had been replaced by appointed commissars and by the Cheka. M en­ shevik conciliatory pronouncem ents had been m ade earlier as well, but they had n o t led then to a softening o f Bolshevik policy toward the opposition parties. O n the contrary, the second h alf o f 1918 was a period of m ounting attack on the M ensheviks and SRs w hich reached a crescendo during the official Red T error of S eptem ber-O ctober 1918. W hy, then, at the end of 1918 this sudden change of policy? T h e real reasons lay elsewhere: in L enin’s new foreign and dom estic policy objectives. T h e defeat of G erm any in W orld W ar I, the withdrawal of G erm an troops from U kraine and the Baltic states, and on top o f it all the G erm an revolution changed the international environm ent profoundly for Soviet Russia by the end o f 1918. T h e G erm an Social Dem ocrats were propelled to power in Berlin. Having waited patiently for the spread of revolution to Europe, the Bolsheviks in M oscow were ecstatic over the developm ents in G erm any and Austria. T h e rise of the soviets there m ade them hope that the long-awaited revolution in G erm any had finally arrived. T h e rise of socialism in W estern Europe would ease Soviet Russia’s international position and com plicate the Allies’ plans to crush the Soviet regim e. For the tim e being the Bolsheviks were interested in cultivating good relations with G erm an Social Democrats. Since Russian M ensheviks (officially, Social Democrats) were well known in E urope from the days before the war, it was som ew hat em barrassing for Lenin th at M enshevik C entral C om m ittee m em bers were being held in prison. In fact, Karl Radek, a key link between the G erm an Social Dem ocrats and Russian C om m unists, argued in the C E C that it was imperative to annul the M en­ sheviks’ expulsion from the C E C .2 M oreover, G erm an Social Dem ocrats wrote letters asking L enin to free Russian Social D em ocrats from prisons.3 T h e E uropean press had covered the Bolshevik Red Terror extensively, and the Bolsheviks’ reputation in Europe was tarnished. It was a convenient m om ent to soften this negative im age by providing concrete evidence that the opposition socialist parties were legal in Russia and that the Red Terror was directed against “counterrevolutionaries” only. T h e M ensheviks’ support for the Soviet governm ent against Allied interven­ tion was also useful. T h e socialist and labor parties in the Allied countries had to be encouraged to intensify their opposition to intervention in Russia. T he Bolsheviks were seriously worried about the Allies’ intentions, now that the war was over, and they feared that the huge inventories of war m ateriel the Allies had accum ulated could be channeled to the W hites. C oncrete evidence that all of Russia’s workers’ parties were united against the W hites would be useful in generating public-opinion pressure in the Allied countries against intervention. T h e second m ajor cause of the New C ourse, as far as the external situation 2 L. Martov, "Novyi Kurs v Sovetskoi Rossii,” M y s V , no. 1 -2 (February 1919), 11. 5 Ibid.

was co n cerned, was the tu rn o f events in the east of the country. O n 18 N ovem ber 1918 A dm iral Kolchak overthrew the m ultiparty governm ent in Siberia, in w hich th e SRs had played a leading role, and established an undis­ guised m ilitary dictatorship. He started his rule by executing socialists and disbanding th e elected city councils, the dum as. For som e C om m unists, the threat posed by the W hites m ade it necessary to use the socialists, if they were willing, in a joint struggle against the W hites. O thers were interested in broad­ ening th e political base o f the Soviet regim e by reaching an honest agreem ent with the socialists (M ensheviks and S Rs), w ithin the fram ework o f the Soviet C onstitution. T h ese views were expressed m ost articulately by a group of Siberian C o m m u n ists in a letter to Lenin: AU workers and revolutionaries who remained alive, and all those supporters o f the republic express only one wish: the speediest possible conclusion of an agreement with the socialist and pro-republic groupings on the platform o f political compro­ m ise— Power to the People [as opposed to dictatorship o f the proletariat] because if the hostility between the soviets and these groupings continues, it would end with the destruction o f the working class.4

In other words the consolidation of the W h ite forces in Siberia under Kolchak represented such a grave danger that C om m unists needed the socialists against a co m m o n foe. Aside from practical considerations dictated by the exigencies o f the civil war and Allied intervention, som e C om m unists advocated toleration of legal oppo­ sition parties as a m atter o f principle. O n e o f th e m ost outspoken proponents of this was N . Osinsky, one o f the leaders o f the M oscow party organization: “W e m ust say clearly and definitively: th at at the given stage of developm ent there is no need at all to rem ove from the soviets and from free discussion political parties th at do n o t advocate overthrow o f Soviet power. . . . freedom o f the press and assem bly for petit bourgeois parties represented in the soviets is possible and necessary.”5 Osinsky’s advocacy of a new policy stem m ed not out of his sym pathy for the M ensheviks and SRs but out of his concern for the developm ent of th e Soviet regim e. S om ething had gone wrong in 1918. T h e revolution was supposed to liberate the working class. Instead workers were powerless vis-a-vis the appointed com m issars. It was necessary to restore the accountability of th e soviets to the electorate and the accountability of the C o m m u n ist party to th e soviets. E xtraordinary m easures had to be abolished. Power had to be vested in properly elected soviets, and the C heka had to be subordinated to the courts. 4 Fedor D a n published excerpts from this letter in “Poka n e p o z d n o ,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 4 ( 11 February 1919), 2. Also see Spirin, Klassy i partii, p. 361. 5 N . Osinsky, “Novye zadachi stroitel’stva Sovetskoi respubliki,” V /asi’Sovefov, no. 2 (February 1919), 7 - 1 7 , a n d "Raboche-krestianskoe obshchestvennoe m n en ie i m elkoburzhuaznye p a rtii,” Pravda (15 January 1919), 3.

In 1918 the M ensheviks had been arguing along the same lines and were labeled counterrevolutionaries for it. Now, in early 1919, a part of the C o m m u ­ nist party shared these sam e views. T his was partly so because local C om m unist organizations felt threatened by the power of the local Chekas. T h e journal of the executive com m ittees of soviets launched an aggressive cam paign against the prerogatives of the Cheka. T h e local Chekas, not the soviets, were the true masters in the provinces. T hey could shoot anyone "with a report afterward.” In som e places, the M enshevik leader M artov wrote, they even executed C om m unists.6 T h e m ost im portant cause of the New Course was a m ovem ent w ithin the C om m unist party itself for a revival of the soviets and for curbing Cheka lawlessness. These C om m unists saw the restoration of the M ensheviks’ and SRs’ right to be elected to the soviets as the restoration of responsible local governm ent. W h at Osinsky im plied in his articles was that the existence of opposition parties w ithin the system of soviets would be a positive developm ent. Opposition parties would act as a check on the arbitrariness so prevalent in the provinces. Victor N ogin, of the Moscow party organization, echoed these sentim ents at the Eighth C P Congress in Moscow in M arch 1919: “We received such a countless num ber of horrifying facts about drunkenness, debauchery [razgui], bribery, brigandage [razboi], and senseless actions on the part of m any functionaries that hair stood on end [volosy stanovilis’ d y b o m }”7 O ther speakers adm itted that the soviets had simply been liquidated in the provinces, “even though it was against the C on stitu tio n .” Osinsky was even m ore explicit. He spoke o f the rise of patronage cliques, a bureaucratic hierarchy, and arbitrary rule over people “with special instructions [from the center].”8 In fact, he said, local officials were not accountable to anyone. V. A. Avanesov, a high-ranking official in the C E C , continued in the same vein: “in the localities, m ilitary com m anders and executive com m ittees com m it such disgraceful and shocking things about w hich I could have talked for a long tim e.”9 But he did not. Nevertheless, the general picture of the situation in the provinces em erg­ ing from the speeches of some Bolshevik leaders left no doubt that Soviet power had degenerated into a rule of patronage cliques, accountable to no one. Som ething had to be done to restore order in the provinces. For the m om ent, concerned C om m unists saw the solution in restoration of the rule of law. They clam ored for m ore glasnost, fair elections, and accountability of local officials. In the context of 1919 they even dared to defend the idea of a legal opposition party. 6 L. [Iu.] M artov, “Novyi Kurs v Sovetskoi Rossii," M ysl’, no. 1 -2 (February 1919), 9 -1 4 , and “C han g em en t de T actique du G ouvernem ent Sovietiste,” L a Republique Russe, no. 5 (3 May 1919), 4. 7 Vos’m oi S ’ezd RKP(b), p. 169. 8 Ibid., p. 188. 9 Ibid., p. 206.

Legalization o f the O pposition Parties D u e to th e aforem entioned factors of dom estic and foreign policy, a n u m b er of concrete m easures for legalizing opposition parties were adopted. In addition to the C E C decree R aphail A bram ovich, a M enshevik C C m em ber, and other M ensheviks were released from prisons.10 Social D em ocrats could now ru n in elections to the soviets and trade unions. T hey were allowed to reopen their clubs and offices. For the first tim e since August 1918 the M ensheviks were able to speak freely at workers’ rallies. F inally they received a perm it to resum e publication o f their new spaper, Vsegda Vpered, w hich had been sh u t down since M ay 1918. T h e first issue cam e o u t in January 1919. W ith in two weeks the paper reached a circulation o f 100,000 and even that was no t enough to satisfy d e m a n d .11 People from other cities traveled to M oscow to obtain a copy of the opposition paper. T h e editorial board would have been happy to increase circulation, b u t the Bolshevik authorities had lim ited the supply of paper available to the only uncensored publication in Soviet R ussia.12 Even though the C E C resolution had the force o f law, local officials and the Cheka sabotaged its im plem entation alm ost everywhere. In its internal circular th e C heka instructed its local branches to let th e socialists work, in view of the legalization decree, b u t added th at it was im perative to “establish the strictest covert surveillance over th e m .”13 Local C o m m u n ist authorities were in no hurry to allow th e legal existence o f opposition parties. In Petrograd the city E C allowed the M ensheviks to organize a public rally, and it was even willing to consider granting a perm it for publication o f a new spaper, “depending on the outcom e o f the elections to the soviet. ”14 In other words if elections did not turn out favorably for the C om m unists, the opposition paper in Petrograd could not be tolerated. In Kostrom a local C om m unists w rote to their C C th at in view of the antiC o m m u n ist attitudes o f the population they w ould n o t legalize the M en ­ shevik party. In Kozlov Tow nship o f Tam bov Province the Social D em ocrats received the following reply to their application for legalization: “In view of the fact th at th e SD party in the Kozlov uezd [adm inistrative district] has not sufficiently proved its loyalty to Soviet power and in its current com position is deem ed dangerous for the orderly work of the soviet, the E C rejects the legal­ ization ap p licatio n .” 15 Strictly speaking this was a violation of the law, since 10 For the list of M ensheviks released from prisons, see O sv o b o z h d e n ie iz tiu r’m y ,” Ufro M oskvy, no. 21 (4 N ovem ber 1918). 11 “A L etter from Russia” (19 February 1919), Axelrod Archive, series 16, folder 18. 12 “S u m ag a dlia V segda V pered,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 6 (14 February 1919), 2. 15 “Prikaz N o. 113 V eC heK a m estnym chrezvychainym kom nrissiiam ob izm enenii i u luchshenii ikh raboty” (19 D e ce m b er 1918), d o c u m e n t 191, in Belov, ed., I z istorii Vserossiiskoi chrezvychainoi kom m issii (hereinafter Iz istorii Vecheka, pp. 2 3 6 -3 7 . 14 Gogolevskii, Petrogradskii Sovet, p. 167. 15 “K initsiativnoi gruppe S D g o ro d a K ozlova,” Vsegda V pered (25 February 1919), 2.

the C E C did not leave it up to the local authorities to decide w hether to legalize the M ensheviks or not. W h at m attered in Russia, both then and now, was not the letter of the law but the ability of Moscow to enforce its policy. Since the Bolshevik leadership was divided over the legalization o f opposition, conflicting signals cam e down to the provinces, and local authorities chose to act in the way that best suited them . O f all the provincial capitals, only in T ula did Soviet authorities grant the opposition com plete freedom to cam ­ paign during elections to the soviet, but they did not perm it the local M en­ shevik newspaper to resum e p u b licatio n .16 In most provincial cities local au­ thorities banned the sale of and subscription to Vsegda Vpered, even though it was legally circulating in Moscow. In Orel local C om m unists arrested a corre­ spondent of Vsegda Vpered for “m eddling in their affairs.”17 Bolsheviks in Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Province, explained to the Bolshevik C C why they decided not to allow a M enshevik newspaper: “In connection with the legalization of the M ensheviks, they applied to the E C for a publication perm it to reopen their newspaper. But the E C decided against it because popular attitudes in Rybinsk are not favorable to Soviet pow er.”18 In the first three m onths of 1919 the Mensheviks were actually legal in the full sense only in Moscow. A small M enshevik faction was restored to m em ber­ ship in the suprem e legislative institution, the C E C . T h e Mensheviks were also represented on the boards of m any trade unions and recaptured the leadership of the Printers’ U nion. T hey were able to publish their paper, open several workers’ clubs, and defend their point of view at workers’ rallies. In Petrograd, T ula, and Bryansk, large centers of the m etal industry, they were also elected to local soviets but were not perm itted to publish their own newspapers. In Bryansk the M ensheviks were even adm itted to the m anagerial board of the local plant since they had, as a local C om m unist put it: “an overwhelming m ajority over the C om m unists.”19 Generally, at the local level, the Mensheviks m anaged to restore decim ated organizations very quickly. Even if barred from the soviets, they were elected to scores of factory com m ittees, workers’ m utual aid fund boards, trade unions, cooperatives, and workshop com m ittees on the factory floor. At every step in their activity, though, the Mensheviks encountered increas­ ing difficulties. In violation of the law, M enshevik delegates were simply not adm itted to the National Board of the Metalworkers’ U n io n .20 W hen the M ensheviks won a m ajority in the Printers’ U nion, the Bolsheviks refused to com ply with the new leadership and set up their own Red Printers’ U n io n .21 16 M artov, “Novyi Kurs v Sovetskoi R ossii,” M ysl', no. 1 -2 (February 1919), 12. 17 “Protest TsKa R SD R P,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 13 (22 February 1919). 18 “Doklad Rybinskogo U ezdnogo Komiteta RKP(b)” (25 F ebruary-25 May 1919), docum ent 584, Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 471. 19 G . Kirev, “Volki v o v e c h ’ei shkure,” Izvestiia TsIK, no. 103 (15 M ay 1919), I. 20 “Politika litsemeriia i trusosti,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 4 (11 February 1919), I. 21 M . S. Kefali, Vsegda Vpered, no. 5 (12 February 1919), 4.

Now they saw th eir task as “unm asking” the true counterrevolutionary nature of the M ensheviks. In other words w hen their power was threatened, especially through legitim ate elections, local bureaucrats im m ediately turned into zealous guardians o f the C o m m u n ist cause. A hard line would guarantee their privileged and uncontested position, whereas the liberal line o f toleration was a path full o f pitfalls and dangers. No w onder the m ajority of C o m m u n ist fu n c­ tionaries preferred the security o f their jobs and privileges. T h e zigzags in Bolshevik policy toward the M ensheviks reflected an intense struggle within the C o m m u n ist party over econom ic policy, first and forem ost a policy toward the peasants, an d over the structure of local governm ent and the status of the C heka. T h e legalization o f opposition parties was closely intertw ined with these issues.

Lenin and Martov In early 1919 Iulii M artov, the leader o f the Social D em ocrats, was cautiously optim istic ab o u t L en in ’s N ew C ourse in Soviet Russia. Freedom o f speech and freedom of the press seem ed to be a reality at least in Moscow, and no t only for M ensheviks. M ariia Spiridonova, the leader of the Left SRs, was released from prison and th e Left SR party was legalized as w ell.22 M oreover negotiations began in Ufa w ith the Socialist R evolutionaries over legalization of their party.23 T h ese negotiations were conducted by Lev K am enev with the aim of working o u t a com prom ise w ith the SRs, who had been condem ned just a few weeks earlier as th e worst enem ies of Soviet Russia. C learly these were prom is­ ing changes. As for eco n o m ic policy, the notorious com m ittees o f the poor were abolished in D ecem ber 1918. T h e policy of inciting class struggle in th e countryside between the poor and the better-off peasants was now declared m istaken. T h e Bolshevik leaders publicly acknowledged now th at squeezing grain from the countryside by requisition detachm ents had no t justified their expectations. T h e search for a new policy toward the peasants was dictated first and forem ost not by a change o f h ea rt bu t by th e catastrophic food situation and by peasant rebellions. Even black m arket food supplies were ru n n in g out in the big cities during the w inter o f 1918—19. Food prices skyrocketed. As a result workers’, peasants’, and Red Arm y soldiers’ discontent was on the rise. A ccording to M artov, peasant rebellions took place in Tver, Yaroslavl, Kostrom a, V ladim ir, Vitebsk, K azan, T ula, V oronezh, Ryazan, Kaluga, Sm olensk, and Tam bov provinces at th e end of 1918.24 T h e C heka chief, M artyn Latsis, counted m ore 22 April 2? 24

“Le Parti Socialiste-R evolutionnaire de G a u ch e e t Ies B olcheviks," La R ty u b liq u e R usse ( 15 1919), 2. Spirin, Klassy i partii, p. 300—301. M artov, “Novyi Kurs v Sovetskoi R ossii,” M ysI', no. 1 -2 (February 1919).

than a hundred peasant rebellions in the second half of 1918.25 D iplom atic reports likewise spoke o f “anti-Bolshevik peasant riots near Moscow, conclud­ ing, for exam ple, that “the position of Soviet governm ent is weaker than ever; they are losing their last support am ongst the workmen in the large cities and the Red Army soldiers, to say nothing about the peasants. ”26 T he changes in econom ic policy L enin embarked upon m ust have been a response to this explosive situation. W hat is significant, though, is that Lenin not only talked of pragm atic reasons for changing econom ic policy but also tried to define a theoretic basis for his New Course. In his num erous speeches in early 1919 he drum m ed his points over and over again, trying to convince his own party to change its handling of the peasants. T he key them e of his speeches at that tim e was peace with the m iddle-incom e peasants. It was a mistake, he insisted, to attack m iddle-incom e peasants. Russia was a peasant country, and the C om m unists had to find a way of satisfying peasants’ econom ic interests. Lenin m ust have startled his audience at the Eighth Congress o f the C P when he went further than his usual adm onitions and said that the October revolu­ tion was actually a peasant revolution.27 Up to that point the October revolu­ tion had always been referred to as a proletarian revolution. And since everyone knew that peasants were petit bourgeois producers, by im plication Lenin was saying that the O ctober revolution was a petit bourgeois revolution. This was quite a departure from the party line. Lenin explained that in O ctober 1917 Russia was experiencing exceptional conditions. T h e Bolsheviks were simply fulfilling peasants’ aspirations by adopting the SR program. He then went on to say that the revolution had rem ained bourgeois until June 1918: “Even in Russia capitalist enterprise lives, acts and develops, and generates new bourgeoisie, as in any other capitalist society.”28 O nly after June 1918, according to L enin’s new conception, had the revolution becom e a socialist one, since only then did the workers and the poor peasants establish a dictatorship of the proletariat in the cities and in the countryside. T h e logical conclusion from L enin’s reasoning was that now, w hen the com m ittees of the poor were abolished and when the party had to respect the econom ic interests of m iddle peasants, the revolution was no longer socialist. L enin was calling for a “retreat” from socialist construction, just as he would in 1921. A retreat was necessary in the form of an accom m odation with the peasants. L enin warned his party not to push peasants too far and too fast, since this m ight lead to a catastrophe. 25 Latsis [Janis Sudrabs, pseud.], D va goda bar by na vnutrennem fronte, p. 75. 26 A m erican Legation (C openhagen), “M em orandum of the Conversation between Vice C o n ­ sul J. A. Lehrs and M r. H axthansen, D anish C onsul G eneral at Moscow" (27 D ecem ber 1918), Records o f the D epartm ent of State Relating to the Internal Affairs ofRussia and the Soviet U nion, dispatch 861.00.3689, hereinafter referred to as Records. 27 V osm oi S ’ezd RKP(b), p. 102. 28 Ibid.

L en in ’s ideas of early 1919 clearly anticipated his decision to introduce the N E P two years later, in M arch 1921. Both then and in 1919 the new policy was called a “retreat.” In 1921, after a num ber of peasant rebellions, workers’ strikes, and m ost im portantly the sailors’ revolt in Kronstadt, L enin m anaged to force his reluctant party to em bark upon another “retreat.” In 1919, however, the retreat into m oderation did not last long. Part of L enin’s problem was that he chose to define his new policy in such a defeatist, and for m any C om m unists hum iliating, term as “retreat. ” C o m m u n ist com m anders did not like to retreat. They wanted to fight until the final victory, as they put it, over the world bourgeoisie. T hey did not w ant to m ake any concessions to petty traders, or to tolerate opposition parties. T h e question, however, is w hether Lenin him self changed his m ind by April 1919 and abandoned his “retreat” into m oderation once again in favor o f a new “offensive” against the “petite bourgeoisie and its parties,” as the M ensheviks and SRs were called, or w hether he was powerless to control the situation and his party because o f new peasant uprisings, general strikes, the G reen peasant deserters’ m ovem ent, and offensives of the W hites. M artov, just as m u ch as other M ensheviks, was certainly pleased with the turnaround in L e n in ’s thinking. It was after all an admission that the M en­ sheviks had been right. T hey had been arguing all along that Russia was a peasant country and that it was impossible to coerce peasants into submission. In his articles, speeches, and editorials M artov continued his lifelongargum ent with L enin. H e welcom ed the idea that a retreat be sounded now, but he also tried to convince L enin that his conception of socialist construction by m eans of a dictatorship of the proletariat and poor peasantry was wrong. At the Second Congress of Trade U nions in early 1919 M artov spoke after Lenin. He returned to their old argum ent over the nature o f socialist revolution. He politely referred to Lenin as the speaker from the C om m unist party, who had to adm it now that a dictatorship o f a m inority had proved unworkable. T h e heart of the m atter, M artov said, was that the dictatorship of the proletariat according to M arx could only be a dictatorship of a m ajority of the population under conditions of dem ocracy for all citizens.29 T h e speaker from the CP, continued M artov, cited Marx, who had praised the dictatorship of the proletariat as practiced by the Paris C o m m u n e, b ut he forgot to m ention th at M arx had praised the Paris C om m u n e precisely because “it realized the dictatorship of the proletariat in the forms of dem ocratic freedom for all citizens and not only for workers”. 30 M artov was trying to convince Lenin n ot only to abandon the dictatorship of a m inority, som ething L enin seem ed to have been willing to do, but also to recognize that there was no way to proceed to socialism other than through democracy. T h e governm ent had to broaden the social base of the Soviet regime by recognizing the econom ic and political rights of the m ajority of the 29 A bram o v itsch , e d ., M a rto v i ego blizkie, pp. 7 1 - 8 4 , here p. 79. 50 Ib id ., p . 79.

population. L en in ’s m istake, according to M artov, was th at he saw an attack on peasants, private entrepreneurs, as desirable, although currently impossible. T h e true p ath to socialism lay in the liberation of laboring classes u n d er the conditions of dem ocracy.31 In a workers’ state, M artov w ent on, workers’ u n ions had to be independent from state authority, because only u n d er such conditions could they defend their econom ic and political rights.32 In reality, said M artov, it was the Soviet state th at was com pletely independent from workers. L enin, on the other hand, insisted th at workers’ unions did n o t need to be ind ep en d en t from the state, because it was a workers’ state. T his debate between L enin and M artov in January 1919, at one o f the crucial tu rn in g points in the developm ent of the Soviet regim e, revealed once m ore th eir fu n dam ental disagreem ent on the role of workers in a proletarian revolu­ tion, a disagreem ent dating back to 1903. T h e n , in 1903, L enin had ascribed to workers th e role of followers o f the vanguard, the party, because workers on th eir own were supposedly incapable of rising above trade union consciousness; now in 1919, h e conceived o f a workers’ state as a state in w hich the party was to lead the workers, who did not need to be independent from it. M artov, in 1903, argued th at workers had to build their own party instead o f being tools of the vanguard. Now, in 1919, M artov dem anded independence for workers from th e self-appointed vanguard th at controlled the state apparatus. L enin had always favored revolutionary action from above, transform ing society. M artov had consistently argued for m ajority action from below. T h e two positions were irreconcilable. Yet for the m o m en t it appeared that L enin favored a retreat from his offensive. T h e M ensheviks used this opportunity to focus on the three b u rn in g problem s o f the day: restoration of freely elected soviets, workers’ rights, and th e problem o f Red m ilitarism in the civil war.

Menshevik Policy Proposals W h e n on 22 January 1919, after n ine m onths of silence, a M enshevik news­ paper, Vsegda Vpered, cam e out in Moscow, its headlines read in bold print: “W e w ould like to use our freedom o f speech in order to d em and, as a m atter of first priority, freedom o f the press for all and unconditionally!”33 T his set the tone o f th e M enshevik criticism o f the existing order in Soviet Russia. T hey m ade it very clear that they were n o t going to be silent o u t of gratitude for the publication perm it. T hey were going to criticize Bolshevik deeds and m isdeeds even if som e com m issars disliked it. In the very first editorials the M ensheviks 51 This was formulated at the Menshevik party conference on 30 December 1918 in Moscow and published in G azeta pechatnikov (2 January 1919). 32 “Rech M artova,” in Rezoliutsii nezavisimykh na Vtorom s’ezde profsoiuzov (1919), 3 -9 , here 5. 33 Editorial, Vsegda Vpered, no. I (22 January 1919), I.

hurried to explain to their constituency the character of their opposition to the Bolsheviks, and a course o f action they had just defined at the all-Russian M enshevik party conference in January 1919. T hey were going to play the role of a legal, loyal opposition party w ithin the framework of the Soviet regim e— legal in the sense th at they pledged to observe Soviet laws and the Soviet C onstitution, and loyal in the sense that they were not going to take part in any forcible attem pts to overthrow the Bolshevik regime. O n the other hand they m ade it clear that observing Soviet laws was an obligation of the C om m unistsas well, and that they, the Social D em ocrats, were going to report any violations of the law both inside Russia and abroad.34 T h e M ensheviks realized that lim ited freedoms, granted to them out of political expediency, could just as easily be taken away. T h a t is why they were so eager to prod the Bolsheviks toward establishing the rule of law, whereby political rights would be guaranteed for all. T hey argued that the current situation in Russia was unconstitutional, since according to the Soviet Consti­ tution, political power belonged to the soviets freely elected by workers and peasants. In reality, as everyone knew, power belonged to all kinds of com m it­ tees, troikas, Chekas, and com m anders who ruled however they pleased. C o n ­ tested elections w ith free com petition of political parties had not been practiced for over a year, since the spring o f 1918. Restoring free elections becam e a task of first priority for the Mensheviks: “A new election of the soviets, accountabil­ ity to the electorate, struggle against the bureaucratization of Soviet institu­ tions, and abolition of the dictatorship of the executive com m ittees— these are the tasks of the day!”35 How little Russia changes. T h e n just as today, som e high-ranking officials shared these sam e concerns. T h e ir views p u t the M ensheviks in a strong posi­ tion. T hey could hardly be accused of counterrevolutionary agitation and propaganda for dem anding the sam e as w hat som e critics were writing in Pravda and lzvestiia. T h e pages of those papers were full of horrifying stories on corruption, nepotism , com peting cliques, arbitrary shootings, and m isuse of authority. T here was nothing the C om m unist hard-liners could say w hen the M ensheviks dem anded respect for election results, a secret ballot, and account­ ability to the electorate. W ere not the Bolsheviks themselves saying that the will of the masses was the law for the Soviet governm ent? Yet the M enshevik critics w ent further than their Bolshevik counterparts. T hey wrote th at the ruling party had turned the Soviet system into a caricature based on bureaucratism and nepotism .36 T h e lawlessness in the country was not an accidental byproduct o f the Red Terror, as som e critically m inded Bolsheviks believed. It was the logical conclusion of the system of dictatorship 34 “K Perevyboram v Moskovskii Sovet R abochikh D eputatov,” Rabochii In tem a tsio n a l, no. I (11 M arch 1919), 4. 55 “O cherednaia Z ad ac h a ,” Rabochii ln te m a tsio n a l, no. I (11 M arch 1919), I. 36 M ikhail Levidov, “Moskovskie pis’m a ,” M ysl', no. I (February 1919), 21 9 -23 .

th e Bolsheviks had instituted. T h e only guarantee against arbitrary rule was dem ocracy. T h is was the message in one o f the M ensheviks’ direct criticisms o f L enin personally. T h e occasion was th at L enin, in one o f his pronouncem ents, adm itted th at peasants were com plaining o f the local authorities’ despicable behavior. T h e new policy was to seek an “agreem ent” with the peasantry, and L en in called for m erciless struggle against, and even executions of, such scoun­ drels. T h e front-page M enshevik editorial, m ost probably written by M artov, took L enin to task for his resolve. Executions had already been tried. T h e result was the civil war. N ot executions b u t profound dem ocratization was necessary. O nly th en could the arbitrary rule of self-appointed cliques be overcom e. L enin h im self used to write, the editorial continued, about rule by the people, control from below, and workers’ participation in governm ent. W hy then did h e prefer to rely on executions and control from above now?37 H ere again it was very difficult to accuse the M ensheviks of sedition, for they were citing L enin h im self or his ideas expressed in The S ta te and Revolution. T h e M ensheviks w elcom ed L en in ’s new desire to seek an agreem ent w ith the peasantry. B ut they also urged the Bolsheviks to draw logical conclusions from this. An agreem ent could only m ean that the econom ic interests of the peasants had to be respected. T h e peasants’ econom ic interest was first and forem ost to sell their product— grain. T hey dem anded freedom o f trade. To satisfy them as petty producers, said an editorial in Vsegda Vpered, m eant to give them som e­ thing m ore tangible than worthless paper m oney for their grain. It was im pera­ tive to stop the requisitions and confiscations of grain. U nfortunately, co n ­ cluded M artov, “n o t even the first step toward this agreem ent was m ade in practice. And everything boils down to grandiose declarations of in ten t”. 38 A nother M enshevik colum nist, N. Rozhkov, w arned that unless the policy toward peasants changed, and soon, there would be widespread fam ine because peasants were not sowing for the m arket anym ore, just for their personal con­ s u m p tio n .39 In actuality there were no indications that the Bolsheviks had changed th eir policy in the countryside, concluded Vsegda Vpered. T hey were squeezing grain from the villages just as in 1918 and provoking peasants to rebellions.40 As is well know n, fam ine did break out in Russia in 1920-21. T he M ensheviks’ dire predictions cam e true, and it was only th en , w hen m illions were dying, th at L enin finally legalized free trade, som ething the M ensheviks had advocated as early as 1919. Since m any M ensheviks worked in econom ic agencies, they were very well inform ed about conditions in industry. T hey believed that the situation was simply catastrophic. M ost factories and plants were idle for lack of raw m aterials and energy. W orkers were fleeing the cities en masse. Prices for basic com m odi,7 “Bezplodnye deklaratsii,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 8 (16 February 1919), I. 58 Ibid. N . Rozhkov, “Perezhivaem yi m o m e n t i obshchie linii ekonom icheskoi politiki,” R abochii In te m a tsio n a l, no. I (11 M arch 1919), I. ■*0 “Revoliutsionnyi n a lo g ,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 11 (20 February 1919), I.

ties were out of control. T h e M ensheviks’ assessment of the situation was not different from that of other observers, including Bolsheviks and foreign diplo­ mats, b u t their proposed rem edies were. T hey urged the governm ent to dena­ tionalize at least part of industry, since it was obvious that the state was incapa­ ble of sustaining it.41 N ationalizations, especially of small enterprises, m eant in reality that shops were idle, whereas in private hands they would have resum ed production. W h a t was the point, argued Fedor D an, the coleader of the M en­ shevik party, in nationalizing every bakery shop? T his senseless m easure gener­ ated speculation, and enorm ous bureaucracy. T h e M ensheviks urged the Bol­ sheviks to grant concessions to foreign entrepreneurs, especially A m erican.42 T h e biggest problem in the Bolshevik organization of industry, according to Social D em ocrats, was its hypercentralization. A m yriad of directorates, boards iglavki), and centers were sitting and pushing paper in Moscow w hile industry was idle.45 T h e Bolsheviks had created a bureaucratic monstrosity, and ineffi­ cient at that, and called it socialist organization of industry. W h at was neces­ sary, argued M enshevik econom ists, was a mixed econom y based on a partner­ ship betw een the state and the private sector. As in the case of agrarian policy, the Bolsheviks were forced to im plem ent some of these M enshevik ideas w hen the N E P was introduced in 1921, partic­ ularly in regard to the denationalization of trade and small enterprises and granting concessions to foreigners. In 1919, however, these ideas were unpalat­ able to m ost C om m unists. Yet it was difficult for Bolsheviks to attack the M ensheviks for their econom ic proposals at a tim e w hen L enin him self was calling for an agreem ent with the peasant petite bourgeoisie. T h e hard-liners am ong the Bolsheviks needed an issue that would make an attack on the Mensheviks justifiable. M enshevik criticism of Red m ilitarism in the civil war gave them the opportunity they were seeking. T h e scandal broke o ut over several articles in Vsegda Vpered devoted to the m ost pressing issue of the day— the m ilitary cam paigns in the civil war. T here were two im portant cam paigns going on then. O n e — in Ukraine— developed in favor of the Bolsheviks. After the departure of the G erm an troops, Red Army detachm ents poured into the political vacuum . Relying prim arily on volunteer Ukrainian peasants’ form ations, the Bolsheviks were regaining control over U kraine in early 1919. T h e second cam paign— on the eastern front in the Urals, w ent badly for the Bolsheviks. Already at the end of D ecem ber the im portant industrial city of Perm in the Urals was overrun by a rather small W hite arm y force under G eneral A. N. Pepeliaev. T his was the beginning o f a rather successful offensive by Adm iral Kolchak’s W hite arm y forces— an offen­ sive that reached its clim ax in M arch 1919 w hen the W hites overran all of the Urals and in som e areas approached the river Volga. 41 F. D an, “ ‘G oni prirodu v dver’, ” Wsegda Wpered, no. 7 (15 February 1919), I. 42 N . Rozhkov, “Perezhivaemyi m o m en t i obshchie linii ekonom icheskoi politiki,” Rabochii Intem a tsio n a ly no. I (11 M arch 1919), I. 43 M ikhail Levidov, “Moskovskie pis’m a ,” M ysV, no. 7 (February 1919), 219—23.

T he Social Democrats felt obligated to explain fully their party’s position on the raging Civil War. They agreed with the Com m unists that the Soviet Repub­ lic had to be defended and that the W hite army force had to be m et with the Red Army's counterforce. T h e Mensheviks went on, however, to ask embarrassing questions as to why the W hites were able to overrun a huge area in a remarkably short time. T heir answer was that workers’ anti-Bolshevik insurgencies in the Izhevsk and Votkinsk area and num erous peasants’ uprisings had m ade the W hites’ advance possible. T he Soviet governm ent needed the Red Army in order to “force the obedience of striking workers and rebellious peasants in [Soviet] Russia itself.”44 Lenin and Trotsky were dream ing about creating a three-m illion-strong army. Yet the best way to defend the Soviet Republic from the W hites, the Mensheviks argued, was not to build up a huge Red Army but to win the support o f the local population.45 T he problem with Bolshevik policy was that the Bolsheviks applied m ilitary solutions to political problems. T h at was a very dangerous trend, argued the Mensheviks, because any army, even if it was called Red, was based on teaching the mass of soldiers “to be a blind instrum ent in the hands of com m anders.” O ne could not bring about liberation by the force of bayonets, any more than one could insure the support of the people by requisitioning grain. T he Bolsheviks had to change their policies and regain the support of the people, and then the W hites would not be dangerous. From this reasoning followed the Menshevik slogan: Down with the Civil War against the Workers and Peasants! T he author of this slogan was A. Pleskov, a m em ber of the Menshevik CC . In his article “Stop the Civil W ar” he focused on the situation in Ukraine. T he Red Army, he argued, was turning into an instrum ent of conquest. It was bringing not liberation but subjugation to Ukraine, for the purpose of eco­ nom ic exploitation: “This m eans that the Bolshevik authorities . . . will repeat in Ukraine the disastrous experience they practiced in central Russia, that is, they will create comm ittees of the poor, incite one part of the population against another, incite workers against peasants, dispatch requisition detach­ m ents to Ukrainian villages, and take away bread by the force of bayonets and m achine guns.”46 T he Bolshevik regime, argued Pleskov, thrived on Red m il­ itarism. Even according to official sources the Red Army consum ed 40 percent of all available food resources. No wonder the cities were starving. T hus the Bolsheviks had created an endless evil circle. By grain requisitions and the suppression of strikes they provoked the population to rebel; to suppress these rebellions they needed an ever larger Red Army; and to feed the army they relied on requisitions. T h e result was an escalation of the civil war.47 44 “O K rasnoi a rm ii,” V segda V pered, no. 9 (18 F ebruary 1919), I. 45 Ibid. 46 A. Pleskov, “ Prekratite g razh d an sk u iu v o in u ,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 11 (20 F ebruary 1919), I. 47 In addition to Pleskovs article, see also “E dinstvennyi p u t’, ” Vsegda V pered, no. 6 (14 F ebruary 1919), I.

This reasoning was too m uch for the Com m unists. Their patience and tolerance cam e to an end. T he Mensheviks had dared to underm ine the most sacrosanct part of the regime: the Red Army itself, which was heroically fight­ ing against the “bandits of world imperialism” on all the fronts. Scores of articles appeared in the C om m unist press denouncing the Mensheviks’ trea­ son. T he mildest response cam e from Nikolay Bukharin. He acknowledged the Mensheviks’ view that Kolchak had to be fought and agreed that any army was a burden for a country as exhausted as Russia. But then he defended the Red Army’s role in rendering assistance to the revolutionary cause. It would have been right to help, say, the cause of the proletarian revolution in Germany. Unfortunately Russia was too weak. T he problem with the Menshevik article was that it was discrediting the Red Army in the eyes of EuropeA 8T h e leaders of the Moscow soviet, moderates in the C om m unist party, referred to Pleskov’s article as “incorrect,” since it was underm ining the prestige of Soviet power and “inciting to rebellion against the Red Army.”49 Pleskov responded, mildly reproaching Bukharin for playing into the hands of ail those thousands of parasites who could not sleep calmly since a free, independent press had reap­ peared in Russia.50 But if Bukharin’s and the Moscow soviet's reaction took the form of a polite disagreement, other C om m unist politicians were waving their fists in fury. It was high tim e to stop those who were slandering the glorious Red Army, those conspirators, lackeys of the bourgeoisie, traitors!51 O n 25 February 1919, late at night, a Cheka detachm ent arrived at the editorial offices of Vsegda Vpered. They searched all the premises, confiscated all manuscripts, and shut down the newspaper. It was never published again. Bolshevik tolerance had lasted only one m onth. T he Menshevik C C applied for a perm it to publish another paper. For two weeks no answer came, since the C om m unists were debating their policy toward the Social Democrats behind closed doors. Explaining the reasons for the Com m unists’ decision to close Vsegda Vpered, the Mensheviks wrote that it was due to pressure from below. They believed that “the m ore thoughtful and responsible am ong the Bolshevik leaders” had capitulated to those troikas and comm anders who had gotten used to ruling uncontrollably. Those leaders feared glasnost most of all, and that is why they were screaming about Menshevik treason.52 T hat m ay well have been true, but those comm anders and troikas had been just as opposed to the legalization of opposition in December. T hen, however, their pressure did not stop the Soviet governm ent from changing its course. A 48 N ikolai B uk h arin , “Krasnyi m ilitarizm i zheltyi m e n ’sh e v izm ,” Pravda, no. 38 (19 February 1919), I. 49 “R ezoliutsiia Ispolkom a o gazete Vsegda V pered,” V segda Vpered, no. 14 (23 February 1919), I. 50 “Ideolog u c h astk a ,” V segda V pered, no. 13 (22 F ebruary 1919), I. 51 “Pora prekratit’," Pravda, no. 56 (14 M arch 1919), I. 52 "K apitu liatsiia,” R abockii ln te rn a tsio n a l, no. I (11 M arch 1919), I.

m o re plausible explanation, it seem s, is th at from the C o m m u n ists’ p o in t of view th e M ensheviks were doing m ore h arm th an good. T h ey were quite in fluential am o n g E u ro p ean Social D em ocratic parties, and instead o f sup­ p o rtin g th e Soviet governm ent in its struggle against its foes, were criticizing Red m ilitarism . From the C o m m u n ists’ standpoint the M ensheviks sim ply had n o t h eld to th eir part o f the bargain reached in D ecem ber. T h ey had been legalized so th at they could d en o u n c e foreign intervention; instead they were “u n d e rm in in g ” th e Red Army. T h a t w ould n o t be tolerated. T h e closing of Vsegda Vpered was to teach th em a lesson.

Legalization o f the PSR T h e sh o rt legal existence o f the PSR essentially w ent th ro u g h the sam e cycle as th at o f the M ensheviks. T h e key difference betw een the two opposition parties was th at th e SRs were a far m ore im p o rtan t m ilitary and political force th an the M ensheviks an d they were far less inclined to seek accom m odation with the Bolsheviks. D u rin g 1918 th e SR-Ied C o m m ittee of the C o n stitu en t Assembly govern­ m e n t (K om uch) on th e Volga posed a serious m ilitary threat to M oscow. In A ugust 1918 th e SRs seem to have been very close to the realization o f their goal: to overthrow th e Bolshevik dictatorship and reconvene the C o n stitu en t Assem bly in M oscow. Yet in S eptem ber the Red Arm y pushed the co m m ittee’s forces beyond th e Volga. O n 18 N ovem ber A dm iral Kolchak, the war m inister in a n atio n al u n ity governm ent, staged his coup d ’etat. Socialist R evolution­ aries were seized, som e im prisoned and som e executed by u n ru ly right-w ing officers. T h e D irectory (the governm ent) was disbanded, and the w ar m inister pro claim ed h im self the suprem e ruler o f Russia. Siberia and the Urals were now u n d e r m ilitary dictatorship. T h e SR party thus suffered a crushing defeat, squeezed by th e C o m m u n ists on the one side and by the m ilitary putschists on th e other. For m o n th s and years to com e th e SRs were going to p o n d er w hat had gone w rong in 1918 an d w hy th eir attem pt to provide a historical alternative to both th e C o m m u n ists and th e generals did n o t succeed. R ight after the coup d ’etat th e SR party leadership m ade an im p o rtan t decision to cease tem porarily their arm ed struggle against the Bolsheviks an d direct all efforts against th e m ilitary dictatorship of K olchak. T h is change of SR policy was the basis for a ten-daylong legalization o f the SR party on Bolshevik-held territory in M arch 1919. It is im p o rtan t to d eterm in e w hether this legalization represented a gen u in e attem p t by the two sides to find a basis of understanding or w hether from the very b eg in n in g it was only a political m aneuver dictated by m ilitary and politi­ cal circum stances. In th e chaotic days after K olchak’s coup d ’etat, p ro m in en t SR politicians and

party leaders w ent underground. T h ere rem ained two political bodies th at had authority to m ake decisions and shape party policy: the C entral C om m ittee and the C ongress o f M em bers o f the C onstituent Assembly. It is from the latter that a group o f politicians em erged, headed by the C C m em ber V. K. Volsky— a group th at later cam e to be known as the Ufa delegation. In fact it was no t a delegation at all b u t an ad hoc com m ittee of m em bers of the C onstituent Assembly w ho happened to be in Ufa and who shared the opinion that in view of the W h ites’ atrocities the PSR and all dem ocrats had to defend the C o n stitu ­ en t Assembly and fight the W hites. T h e question was w hether to continue arm ed struggle against the C om m unists as well. T h e position taken by the SR party as a w hole or by the C om m ittee o f the C onstituent Assembly as a whole was still o f great political and m ilitary significance because the com m ittee represented th e only legitim ately elected political body in Russia and because, m ost im portantly, there were still significant m ilitary forces that had fought u n d er th e b anners of the C on stitu en t Assembly. W ere these units to resist the putsch and cease arm ed struggle against th e Reds, they would greatly en hance the strength o f th e Reds. W ere they to recognize Kolchak as their new leader and co n tin u e to fight the Reds, they would add to Kolchak’s strength and legitimacy. T h e m ain reason th at the Bolsheviks entered into negotiations with the m e m ­ bers of the C o n stitu en t Assembly was th at they were interested in the future of these units. Unofficial prelim inary talks started in Ufa before the arrival of the Red A rm y w hen both the SRs and the local C om m unists were still u n d er­ ground. T h is equality in status generated a sincere desire to join forces in a co m m o n struggle against the W hites. V ictor C hernov, the chairm an o f the C o n stitu en t Assembly and a key leader of the PSR, later wrote th at he had great reservations from the very beginning about the initiative o f Volsky and C o m ­ pany. H e felt th at even if the C om m ittee o f the C on stitu en t Assembly decided to cease arm ed struggle against the Bolsheviks, it should do so only as a result o f negotiations and n ot before any agreem ent on anything was m ade. T h e Kom u c h ’s bargaining position would have been m u ch stronger if it had held on to the option of co n tin u ed sim ultaneous arm ed struggle against both the C o m m u ­ nists and th e putschists. M any believed this was no longer possible, since the K om uch governm ent was no longer a governm ent and did not control any territory. C h ern o v on the other hand believed th at it was possible to continue partisan warfare against both the Reds and the W hites if an agreem ent with the Bolsheviks could n o t be re ach e d .53 A few m onths later C hernov and the SR C C disassociated them selves com pletely from the Ufa negotiations, but in D ecem ­ ber 1918 it seems C hernov did no t oppose th e negotiations as such. H e had 55 T h is was the m ain p o in t in C h e rn o v ’s speech at the last session o f the Congress o f M em bers of the C o n stitu e n t Assembly on 28 N ovem ber. See Burevoi, R aspad, p. 58. See also T schernow (C hernov), M eine Schicksalle in Sow jet R ussland, p. I 5. For later disassociating him self from the Ufa delegation, see V iktor C hernov, “M oi O tv et,” D elo naroda, no. 4 (23 January 1919), 2.

great reservations about the Bolsheviks’ willingness to grant concessions, but he was willing to let Volsky try. He correctly believed that the chances for getting tangible concessions would be higher if the party negotiated from a position of strength. Clearly the m ainstream political opinion in the SR party was swinging to the left. According to Chernov m any favored finding a modus vivendi with the Bolsheviks against the W hites. Chernov was opposed to holding talks in Ufa after its liberation by the Reds, because in such an environm ent the negotiating parties would not be equal. He proposed an alternative plan: let someone go to Moscow, contact M axim Gorky, and ask him to contact the Bolsheviks and act as an interm ediary.54 T he m ain item on the PSR’s agenda was that all the civil liberties proclaim ed by the Bolsheviks themselves in October 1917, including the convocation of the C onstituent Assembly be respected. O n 31 Decem ber 1918 V. K. Volsky, N. V. Sviatitsky, K. S. Burevoi, and others, however, decided to negotiate with the Bolsheviks in Ufa on their o w n .55 T h e negotiations were not between the Bolshevik party and the SR party but between representatives of Soviet governm ent and mem bers of the over­ thrown C onstituent Assembly government. In the nam e of the C om m ittee of the C onstituent Assembly, the Ufa delegation called on the units loyal to the overthrown governm ent to cease arm ed struggle against Soviet troops.56 T he Ufa delegation protested against the Allied intervention in Russian affairs on the side of the W hites and declared it desirable to coordinate efforts in a joint struggle against the W hites.57 T h e negotiations progressed very slowly, however, because the Bolsheviks wanted to gain tim e, which they believed was working in their favor. T he Ufa delegation had already called on the Komuch-Ied troops not to fight the Reds. This was an im portant gesture of goodwill, but the delegation had no other bargaining power. Nevertheless, the Ufadelegation proposed that guarantees of persona] security be given to every soldier who crossed the front line to the Reds; that political amnesty be granted to all those who had defended the territory of the Constituent Assembly against the Bolsheviks’ that the PSR be fully legalized as a political party on Bolshevik-held territory; that all civil liberties be restored; that a new governm ent of all socialist parties be formed, a governm ent account­ able to the C onstituent Assembly; and that a new C onstituent Assembly be elected.58 T he C om m unists rejected outright the idea of a coalition govern­ m ent or of elections to a new C onstituent Assembly. For the SRs as a whole, however, convocation of the C onstituent Assembly was not a m atter for nego54 T schernow (Chernov), M eine Schicksalle in Sowjet Russland, p. 16. 55 Burevoi, Raspad, p. 60. 56 Ibid., p. 59. 57 V. Vol’sky, “Ufimskie peregovory,” in Burevoi et al, eds., K prekrashcheniiu voiny vnutri demokratii, pp. 39 -5 1 , here p. 49. 58 “Peregovory s U chredilovtsam i,” Petrogradskaia Pravda, no. 13 (18 January 1919), 2.

tiation. If that could not be achieved, there was no point in any negotiations. More and m ore party leaders and local organizations therefore began to ques­ tion the authority of “the so-called Ufa delegation” to conduct negotiations. A January resolution of the SR organization o f Moscow “sharply censured the negotiations conducted by the Ufa delegation of the C onstituent Assem­ bly . . . as an act of total political capitulation to the despotic power of the Bolsheviks.”59 T h e extent of the Ufa delegation’s authority had to be clarified, and the party’s political platform had to be defined m ore clearly. For this purpose a party conference assembled in Moscow in early February 1919. To a certain extent the conference resolution reiterated what the Ufa delega­ tion had been saying concerning the change in SR policy. T h e PSR resolutely rejected the intervention o f foreign powers in Russian internal affairs and protested against the direct aid these powers were providing to the W hites.60 T he conference reiterated that the PSR saw its task as a resolute struggle against tsarist restoration with all m eans available. T h e party pledged to “direct all its forces toward the goal of overthrowing those reactionary governments and reuniting these parts of the country with Russia.”61 Furtherm ore the confer­ ence confirm ed the decision that the party should cease arm ed struggle against the Bolsheviks for the tim e being, m otivating this decision by reference to the fact that the forces of dem ocracy were weak in the country. T h e conference did not rule out the possibility of resum ing arm ed struggle at some point in the future: “AU calls to start insurrection immediately, all calls for arm ed struggle, at a tim e w hen organized dem ocracy is not a true independent force, m ust be removed from the agenda.”62 These decisions strengthened the position of the Ufa delegation, since they could have form ed a basis for an agreem ent with the Bolsheviks. However, the conference resolution stated that the party “sharply censures [osuzhdaet] the steps undertaken by the Ufa delegation. T h e conference considers that the [Ufa] delegation m ust abstain from any negotiations with Soviet authorities concerning political agreem ent involving the PSR. ”6? T h e m ain reason for this decision clearly was the C om m unists’ refusal to agree on new elections to the C onstituent Assembly. T h e C om m unist party, argued m any o f the SR speakers, rem ained opposed to democracy. It continued to violate its own promises given in October 1917. T h e C om m unists rem ained an antipeasant force whose policies were designed to exploit the Russian peasantry: “by system59 “Rezoliutsiia konferentsii Moskovskoi organizatsii PSR o tekushchem m o m en te,” (26 Janu­ ary 1919), T s .P.A., TsKa RKP(b), Fond 274, TsKa PSR, O pis’ I, d ocum ent 11, p. 12. 60 Sovremennyi m om ent v otsenkePartii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov (Fevral'—M art 1919), p u b ­ lished in Paris by I. A. R ubanovich, a representative of th e PSR in th e International Labor Office, cited here from the New York edition (1919), p. 14. 61 Ibid., p. 16. 62 Ibid., p. 14. 63 Ibid., p. 19.

atic arm ed struggle against the peasantry, by barbaric suppression of the peasan­ try, by econom ic plunder of the countryside . . . Soviet power creates an artificial disunity betw een workers and peasants and objectively aids the cause of counterrevolution.”64 In other words as long as peasants rem ained unequal in their voting rights and econom ic status, there could not be any agreem ent. E. Tim ofeev, a C C m em ber p u t it in this way: W h at values can the dem ocratic forces defend together with the Soviet power and under its leadership? Is it electoral law only for those w hom the soviets consider useful? Is it “civil liberties” for the socialists to be taken to the Cheka? Is it great social changes as a result o f w hich the cities have n o m eat other than dog m eat now and the countryside is suffering from violen ce and robbery? After a year-and-a-half rule by this so-called worker and peasant governm ent the proletariat has ceased to exist and the peasantry has begun to rem em ber the tim es under the old regim e with nostalgia.65

T h e Bolsheviks m ost probably did not co u n t on such a strong rebuff from the SR party conference. After all the C om m unists had the Red Army, and the C onstituent Assembly’s arm y was defeated. T h e decisions o f this party confer­ ence were m uch m ore authoritative than the decisions of a group of overthrown politicians; Volsky and his team found themselves in a political vacuum . T heir own party had refused to back them . And yet they continued to negotiate. T h ree crucial sessions took place in M oscow from the n inth to the nineteenth of February 1919. T h e Ufa delegation consisted of N. A. Shm elev, V. K. Volsky, N. V. Sviatitsky, N. I. Rakitnikov, K. S. Burevoi, and B. N. C hernenikov. O n the Soviet governm ent side were Foreign M inister G. V. C hicherin, his deputy Lev Karakhan, M inister of F inance Nikolai Krestinsky, and the M oscow soviet chairm an, Lev K am enev.66 T h e Soviet side was favorably disposed to the legalization of the SRs, but it phrased this willingness in a way insulting to the SRs. Legalization would be possible if the SRs were to prove that they were going to struggle not only against the W hites and foreign intervention b u t also against those SRs who “agitated against Soviet pow er.”67 In other words: “W e will let you defend us b u t not criticize u s.” T h e negotiations were at a dead end, but on 20 February it was suddenly an nounced that the SR party was going to be legalized, that its m em bers w ould be granted amnesty, and that personal security would be guar­ anteed to those who had fought the C o m m u n ists.68 T h e Bolsheviks used the an n o u n cem en t of this “accord” in their foreign propaganda to the fullest advan64 Ibid., p. 17. 65 Ibid., p. 45. 66 “Ufim skaia D elegatsiia,” Vsegda Vperedy no. 4 (11 February 1919). 67 “Soveshchanie s Pravymi E seram i,” Pravday no. 31 (11 February 1919), 3. 68 “Delegatsiia U chreditel’nogo Sobraniia i Sovetskaia V last,” Vsegda Vperedy no. 12 (21 Feb­ ruary 1919), 2.

tage. Now all Russian socialist parties were portrayed as having rallied behind the Soviet governm ent against the dictatorship o f the W hites and foreign inter­ vention. No doubt this dram atic announcem ent was m ade to enhance the status of the fledgling Ufa delegation in the SR party. T h e delegation could claim that although it had not achieved a reconvocation of the C onstituent Assembly, it had obtained legalization of the PSR. Indeed, the PSR Central C om m ittee interpreted the Bolsheviks’ move as an attem pt to underm ine its authority in the SR party. T h e Bolsheviks were signaling to the SR organiza­ tions that their legal existence was possible only if they supported the Ufa delegation rather than the recalcitrant C entral Com m ittee. This is why, on 26 February, the PSR C C issued a strongly worded rebuff to the Ufa delegation: “No PSR organizations have undertaken any negotiations on legalization or any other steps in this direction. Any kind of statements by the m em bers of the Ufa delegation in their talks with the Bolsheviks or in the press have taken place on their own initiative, and the PSR is not responsible for them in any way.’’69 For the first tim e a note of hostility toward the Ufa delegation could be detected in a statem ent of the PSR C C . Before too long the Ufa delegation would lead its followers to an open split from the rest of the party. Victor C hernov arrived in Moscow in early M arch and read the protocols of the negotiations with the Bolsheviks. This convinced him that the “legaliza­ tion” was a tem porary ploy designed to split the SR party. T he Bolsheviks were not interested in reaching an agreem ent b u t in learning all they could about the military potential o f the eastern front. T h e negotiations were always diverted to SRs’ answering questions on the strength of troops, positions, m ovem ents, num bers, arm am ents, m orale, and so on before any political problems were even discussed.70 If splitting the SRs was the Bolshevik goal, they were partly successful. V ictor C hernov and m any others developed a strong antipathy to the m em bers of the Ufa delegation. In their opinion these “delegates” had given away the party’s trum p cards w ithout obtaining anything in return.

D eb ate on th e C heka T he legalization of the opposition parties was halfhearted and incom plete; yet it was a serious attem pt by the m oderate Bolsheviks to return to the constitutional order that had existed before the lawlessness of the Red Terror. In that overall objective the opposition parties and the m oderate Bolsheviks shared identical goals. T hey were political allies. They both believed that a return to the consti­ tutional order would be impossible w ithout establishing the rule of law. H ard­ liners in the C om m unist party clearly wanted to roll back the legalization of the 69 “Protokoly zasedaniiTsKa P S R ,” (26 February 1919session), T s.P.A., Fond 274, TsKa PSR, Opis’ I, docum ent 7. 70 T schernow (Chernov), M eine Schicksalle in Sowjet Russland, p. 19.

opposition. Yet M oscow party leaders such as Kamenev, Osinsky, and some others resisted going that far. T he debate on policy toward the opposition parties unfolded exactly at the tim e w hen the debate on the future of the Cheka reached its clim ax in February 1919. T he two issues were very m uch intercon­ nected. T hey revolved around the questions, W hat kind of political activity was permissible in Soviet Russia? And what was the role of the Cheka, the extraordi­ nary political police, going to be? T h e C heka was the m ain perpetrator of lawlessness and terror. Dozens of examples were published in the Menshevik and SR press as well as in Pravda. Statem ents of the leading C heka bosses were explicit enough. In a letter to the local Chekas, the All-Russian Cheka wrote: “In its activity, the All-Russian C heka is absolutely independent, and it conducts searches, arrests and execu­ tions and reports to the C ouncil of People's Commissars and to the C E C afterward.”71 T h e key word here is “afterward.” T he Cheka defined its preroga­ tives as not requiring permission from any authority prior to conducting searches and executions. In another internal com m unication with the local Chekas the situation was depicted even less ambiguously. T h e All-Russian C heka ordered the local Chekas “to stop terrorizing workers and peasants,” thus acknowledging that such terrorizing took place. And in another instruction the All-Russian Cheka ordered local Chekas (presumably in Ukraine) “to stop terror against the peaceful population” in newly conquered territories.72 From the point of view of the M ensheviks and SRs and some Bolshevik critics, these actions of the Cheka were illegal and unconstitutional. T h e M enshevik leader M artov wrote that political authority kept changing hands, “from the C entral [Executive] C om m ittee to the soviets, from the soviets to the commissars, and from the commissars to the C hekas.”73 T he opposition de­ m anded an abolition o f terror, of the death penalty, and o f the C heka.74 O n these interrelated issues m any high-ranking Bolsheviks held identical views. T h e paper o f the C E C , Izvestiia, published an article dem anding that the legal rights of Soviet citizens be respected. C urrently those arrested by the Cheka could be shot arbitrarily w ithout any trial or defense or accountability. T he author, A. Diakonov, wrote: “I have asked myself a question several times, and I 71 “Raz’iasnenie Vecheka o poriadke podchineniia Cheka na m estakh,” d o cum ent 167, In Belov, ed., Iz istorii Vecheka, p. 200. 72 “Prikaz no. 113 Vecheka m estnym C heka ob izm enenii i uluchshenii ikh raboty” (14 D ecem ­ ber 1918), in Belov, ed., Iz istorii Vecheka, p. 2 3 6 -3 7 . 73 M artov, “Novyi K ursv Sovetskoi Rossii,” M ysl’, no. 1—2 (February 1919), 10. 74 G . Leggett, “T h e C heka and a Crisis of C om m unist C onscience," Survey, vol. 25, no. 3 (S um m er 1980), 1 22-37, here p. 131. It is im portant that Soviet editors of the official Soviet collection o f docum ents on the C heka acknowledged the fact that the M ensheviks and other “enem ies” w ithin the CP, as they were called, dem anded abolition of the Cheka: see Belov, e d ., Iz istorii Vecheka, p. 232. T his dem and was form ulated in “K perevyboram v Moskovskii Sovet,” Rabochii Intem atsional, no. I (M arch 1919), 4.

have read and reread [government] decrees trying to find whether the AllRussian Cheka had a right to execute w ithout a trial or to impose any kind of penalties, and I have n ot found that right [in law]. It is not there, and it cannot be th ere.”75 Criticism s of the Cheka were also pouring in to the Bolshevik C C . Most complaints cam e from the provincial executive committees of Soviets (ECs). T he journal of the People’s Com m issariat of Internal Affairs pointedly changed its nam e from Courier to Power to the Soviets (V last’ Sovetov). It became a political slogan. After all the October revolution had proclaim ed power to the soviets and not to the political police. T he ECs of soviets naturally insisted that the local Chekas be subordinate to the local soviets.76 Clearly the E C function­ aries were not defending democracy but their own prerogatives. They felt threatened by the power of the Cheka to arrest and execute anyone. A special com m ission under the auspices of the C E C investigated the activ­ ities of the Cheka and presented a report to Lenin. O n 9 January 1919 Ka­ menev, one of the key Bolshevik leaders supporting reform o f the Cheka, proposed a draff resolution to Lenin to abolish the Cheka altogether.77 T h e Moscow C P com m ittee debated the status o f the Cheka on 27 January. Izvestiia published only a short note to that effect, w ithout rendering what exactly was said at the m eeting. T h e M enshevik paper reported that a heated exchange took place between Nikolai Krylenko of the People’s Com m issariat of Justice and Iakov Peters, deputy chairm an o f the Cheka. Krylenko was reported as saying that no one had given the Cheka the right to execute people. Peters defended the Cheka role in “com bating banditry. ” In the end the Moscow C P com m ittee resolved that the authority to try and convict people had to be withdrawn from the Cheka, whose role was to be limited henceforth to that of an investigative institution.78 T hus a powerful ad hoc coalition of political forces was lobbying for drastically curbing or abolishing the prerogatives of the Cheka: the opposi­ tion parties, the C E C (nom inally the suprem e legislative institution) led by Kamenev, the Moscow C P organization, num erous local ECs of soviets, the People’s C om m issariat of Internal Affairs, and the People’s Com m issariat of Justice. 75 A. Diakonov, “Sud ili rasprava,” lzvestiia TslK (I February 1919), I. 76 Peters, deputy chairm an of the All-Russian C heka, acknowledged this in his interview to lzvestiia, but he objected to this dem and: see “Zaiavlenie Zamestitelia Predsedatelia Vecheka la. Kh. Petersa,” lzvestiia TsIK (17 O ctober 1918), in Belov, ed., Iz istorii Vecheka, pp. 2 00-203, here p. 201. 77 According to Boris Nicolaevsky, an dmigrd Menshevik historian and an archivist, an influen­ tial group w ithin Lenin's governm ent itself— the C P C — favored the liquidation o f the Cheka. See Boris Nicolaevsky, “Pervaia popytka istorii mashiny Sovetskogo terrora,” Sotsialisticheskii Vestnik, no. I (January 1958), 5 4 -5 6 , h ere p. 55. T h e SR sources also report that rumors were circulating in Moscow at the tim e about liquidation o f the Cheka: see Cheka, p. 134. 78 “Rezoliutsiia Moskovskogo Komiteta RKP(b), ” lzvestiia TsIK (30 January 1919).

O n 3 February 1919 the C om m unist C C stated in a letter to the local Chekas that it was drafting new rules of operation for the C heka.79 T he new rules becam e law after they were adopted at the C E C session of 17 February. At first glance, m ajor structural changes in the status of the C heka were introduced. T h e Cheka was deprived of the authority to render verdicts. T h at authority was henceforth to be in the hands of the revolutionary tribunals. T he role of the Cheka was to investigate crimes but not to render verdicts or pass sentences. T h e notorious district-level (uezd) Chekas were abolished altogether.80 Nev­ ertheless Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the chairm an o f the Cheka, proposed a num ber of am endm ents to enhance the role of the Cheka in exceptional circumstances. In case of armed rebellions he proposed that the Cheka retain the authority to make extralegal reprisals (rasprava). T he same would apply to areas declared to be in the state of emergency. Dzerzhinsky also wanted to continue running the concentration camps: “C om plim entary to the verdicts passed by the courts, it is necessary to retain the authority to pass sentences in administrative fashion, specifically incarceration into concentration camps. Even now we are not utilizing convict labor to the full extent for socially useful work. And therefore I suggest that we retain these concentration camps for the use of the labor of those arrested.”81 T hese recom m endations were adopted by the C E C . Furtherm ore, in order to elim inate friction between the EC s of soviets and the Chekas in the prov­ inces, Dzerzhinsky was appointed people’s commissar of internal affairs, and in order to elim inate friction between revolutionary tribunals and the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky’s deputy, Peters, was appointed chairm an of the Revolutionary T ribunal. Few realized the long-term implications of these appointm ents. In real term s they enhanced rather than limited the authority of the extraordinary political police. From then on the Cheka was to control not only its own extralegal apparatus but also the apparatus of the tribunals and of the local soviets. T h e Chekas were not going to be subordinate to the soviets, but the soviets were going to be subordinate to the head of the Cheka. Indeed, the extraordinary political police were going to rem ain outside the control of any elected institutions as long as they retained the prerogative of administrative reprisals outside the courts.82 T h e “reform ” of the Cheka was thus actually a defeat for those who were striving to establish a legal order in Soviet Russia. 79 TsKa RKP(b), in Belov, ed., I z istorii Vecheka, p. 250. 80 “D ecret du C om ite E xecutif Central des Soviets sur la Suppression des Tchekas de district,” in Jacques Baynac, e d ., La Terreur sous Lenine, p. 60. 81 F. D zerzhinskii, Ό deiatel’nosti Vecheka. Doklad na zasedariii V T sIK ,” in Dzerzhinskii, Izbrannye proizvedeniia v dvukh tomakh, p. 188. 82 See instructions of the C P C C to the local Chekas on how to deal with uprisings: “Tsirkuliarnoe pis’m o TsKa RKP(b) gubernskim kom itetam partii, 15 m arta 1919 goda,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, pp. 137-38.

L enin's role in preserving th e C heka was cru cial.85 T h ere was n othing wrong with terror against class enem ies, in L en in ’s view. H e was no t concerned with creating a system of checks and balances in his governm ent. T h e only problem was that there were mistakes and excesses. T hese were to be corrected by the capable leadership of com rade Dzerzhinsky. T h e C heka was to rem ain the in strum ent of the party, accountable to L enin. T here was no problem , because Lenin trusted Dzerzhinsky. H e had a reliable com rade in a key position. But this rather personal approach to m atters of state showed a lack of foresight on L enin ’s part. D id h e ever worry w hat would happen w hen he was no longer in control? Was he no t concerned th at the institutional structures he created would perpetuate arbitrary rule outside the law or public control? T h ere are no indications in L e n in ’s writings that he was concerned at that tim e. But w hen he turned to som e o f these issues at the end o f his career in 1922, it was too late. By then Stalin had m anipulated the C o m m u n ist state to reflect his own personal style of governm ent, the way L enin had done earlier. T h e M ensheviks reacted angrily to the adopted changes in the status o f the Cheka. T h ey felt that the “reform ” dealt a heavy blow to their hopes for restoration o f the rule o f law. T h e inalienable h u m an right to be tried in a court of law was still being violated. Even worse, adm inistrative convictions w ithout trial and incarceration in concentration cam ps— m easures thought to be tem ­ porary and extraordinary even by the C om m unists them selves, were now a part of the p erm an en t system. T h e M ensheviks had the courage to write about these changes in Vsegda Vpered, know ing full well w hat reaction this would produce in the C heka. T h ey denounced the new status of the C heka as a reincarnation of the prerogatives o f the tsarist secret po lice.84 T hey objected even to the new rules th at lim ited C heka authority to investigation. W hy should extraordinary police, they asked, be entrusted w ith investigation? W hy could that not be done by investigative judges, elected by the people? W h a t had begun as a prom ising attem pt to restore a norm al system o f justice ended as a m iserable fiasco.

The E nd o f the “N ew Course” S im ultaneously with the debate on the C heka w ithin the C o m m u n ist party, a new debate on th e status o f opposition parties unfolded in M arch 1919 at the Eighth C P C ongress.85 As in the past, two policies were recom m ended each by 85 M ichael H eller, “L en in and the C heka: T h e Real L e n in ,” S u rvey, vol. 24, no. 2 (Spring 1979), 1 7 5 -9 2 . 84 “C hrezvychainaia vesna,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 10 (19 February 1919). 85 U nfortunately, Soviet editors o f the “m in u te s” have c u t o u t alm ost the entire discussion. It is clear from the “m in u te s” th a t the debate opened at 6:55 p . m . and ended at 10:15 p . m . on 20 M arch 1919. Yet the pub lish ed proceedings are only 26 pages long. T h e lio n ’s share is m issing.

a different Bolshevik faction. O ne of the hard-liners, I. V. Mgeladze, published a critique of the Menshevik proposals. Granting freedom of political cam paign­ ing to opposition parties would disrupt the work of the soviets. Abolishing the death penalty would be inadmissible because it was necessary to destroy class enemies. Restoring freedom of speech would am ount to allowing "enemies of the people” and “lackeys of the bourgeoisie” speak. Mgeladze was most upset by the M enshevik dem and to cease terror and abolish the Cheka. Such a demand, he insisted, could originate only from the enemies of the revolution.86 O ne of the delegates, R. I. Levin, proposed to annul the C E C law on the legalization of opposition parties. T he fact that it was not done suggests that the moderates won on that score, but their speeches sounded clearly on the defensive. N. Osinsky said: “T h e Question is: C an we, as we are making steps toward a form of proletarian democracy from a form of military state organization, can we broaden the franchise, can we begin holding new elections to the soviets regularly, can we grant complete freedom of campaigning and of the press to the petit bourgeois parties? No, so far we cannot do it.”87 This speech was a big step backward in comparison with Osinsky’s articles in January. T hen he as­ serted exactly the opposite. Nevertheless he described the current regime as a military state and implied that proletarian democracy was something desirable although presently impossible to achieve. T he hard-liners, of course, did not want to hear anything about democracy of any kind. For them , there were only two systems possible: either the dictator­ ship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat (meaning their own dictatorship). As in the debate on the Cheka, am ong the moderates in the Bolshevik party were the Moscow party organization and leaders of the Moscow soviet— people like Osinsky, Kamenev, Aleksei Rykov, and Anatoliy Lunarcharsky. T he hard-liners included Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka, executive com ­ mittees, local functionaries, and comm anders from the provinces. In February and M arch 1919 Dzerzhinsky collected all kinds of statements m ade at regional and national conferences by SRs. Relying on this information, he drafted a m em orandum , “Position of the SRs,” which tried to prove that “no changes in the ideological position of the SRs have taken place.”88 By implication the m em o suggested that no changes should take place in Bolshevik policy either; the SRs should not be legalized. Lenin, as usual, maneuvered between the factions. As he would do in the trade unions debate a year later, he tried to find a m iddle ground. O n the one hand he continued to talk about broadening the social base of Soviet power and reaching an agreement with the peasants; on the other he went along with the Cheka operation against the opposition parties, which was just about to begin while the C P congress was still in session. In 86 I. V. Mgeladze, “Izbiratel’naia platforms M en’shevikov,”Pravda, no. 53 (16 M arch 1919), I. 87 Vos’moi S ’ezd RKP(b), p. 306. 88 “Pozitsiia Eserov. M art 1919,” in Ts.P.A ., Dzerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, Opis’ 3, file Ό deiatel’nosti pravykh i levykh Eserov,” docum ent 49.

Lenin’s published pronouncem ents there is no advocacy for banning opposi­ tion parties again, neither is there a defense of continued toleration. In his speeches Lenin simply adm itted that the policy toward opposition parties was contradictory and inconsistent. It is quite possible that Lenin was not certain him self how to deal with the opposition parties at this point. O n the one hand it was necessary to m aintain the impression abroad that the Social Dem ocrats and Socialist Revolutionaries were legal parties in Russia because the Congress of the Second International was in session in Bern. It was im portant to encourage European socialist parties to oppose Allied intervention in Russia, and therefore it was im portant that they perceive Bolshevik Russia as a proletarian m ultiparty democracy. F urther­ m ore, L enin was preoccupied with the founding of the T hird International, and he was negotiating with the G erm an left-wing Social Dem ocrats— the Independents, m any of w hom were M artov’s old-tim e colleagues. O n the other hand the M ensheviks’ attempts to make public some of the negative features of the “proletarian” dictatorship were clearly irritating and had to be stopped, and the SRs’ subversive potential in the countryside could not be ignored. After the closing of Vsegda Vpered at the end of February, and throughout M arch, there was no consistent Bolshevik policy toward the opposition parties. Each Bolshevik faction followed its own policy. T h e moderates continued to support freedom of the press, and the Social Dem ocrats received a perm it to publish a new journal. They were given assurances that the perm it for a daily paper would be settled within a few days. W hen the new SD weekly cam e out on 11 M arch, it showed no signs that the Mensheviks were ready to abstain from criticism. W hat the C om m unists found particularly offensive was that the weekly appealed to the local M enshevik organizations to collect inform ation on social and political conditions in their provinces.89 This inform ation the M en­ sheviks promised to send to the European Socialist and Social Dem ocratic parties. Defiantly the weekly wrote: “We have appealed and we will appeal to the world proletariat!”90 M oreover the Social Dem ocrats announced that they had already sent to European socialists a list o f socialists executed by the Bolsheviks during the Red Terror. T his was most embarrassing. T he Bolshevik propaganda m achine was depicting Soviet Russia as the country of a victorious proletariat. T hey wanted to persuade reluctant European socialists to join the new International just proclaim ed to have been born in Moscow. In what turned out to be the last issue of the M enshevik journal, the SDs wrote that the T hird International was no m ore than a gathering of a group of emigre politi­ cians who had no right to speak on behalf of the European workers. They accused the Bolsheviks o f trying to create an organization that would control the international workers’ m ovem ent from above.91 89 “K priezdu Bernskoi delegatsii,” Kahochii ln tem a tsio n d l, no. 1(11 M arch 1919). 90 O ts ta n 'te ,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 7 (15 February 1919). 91 A. Erm anskii, “Kremlevskii P arad,” Rabochii lntem a tsio n a l, no. I (11 M arch 1919).

T his critique m ust have overfilled the cup of Bolshevik patience. Pravda exploded with a rash o f articles condem ning M enshevik treason.92 Som e de­ m anded the arrest o f all M ensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries im m e­ diately. O n 17 M arch, the day w hen the second issue of the M enshevik weekly was supposed to com e out, a C heka detachm ent arrived in the editorial office and sh u t it d ow n.93 No M enshevik periodical, as it turned out, was ever to com e ou t legally in M oscow again. T h e crackdown on opposition continued. O n 20 M arch a C heka d etachm ent arrived at the office of the M enshevik C entral C o m m ittee.94 T hey politely asked all those present to show their identification. T h e C heka w anted to m ake sure that there were no deserters from the Red Arm y in the M enshevik C C . T h e entire C entral C om m ittee was detained and taken to L ubianka (the C heka headquarters and prison). U ntil early dawn they were interrogated. M artov was the first to be released. T h e C heka agents were so polite (as was rum ored on L enin’s insistence) that he was driven hom e in a c a r.95 D uring the next several days an intense struggle m ust have been going on at th e very top of the Bolshevik leadership, since contradictory statem ents were m ade by the M oscow soviet and the Cheka. O n 20 M arch D zerzhinsky pub­ lished an undisguised threat to the opposition parties: “Hereby the Cheka declares th at it will not distinguish between W hite Guardists like Krasnov [a general] and W h ite G uardists from the parties of the M ensheviks and Left SRs. T h e punitive h an d of the C heka will fall with equal force upon the heads of both. T h e M ensheviks and the SRs we have arrested will be held as hostages, and their fate will depend on the behavior of these parties.”96 It was a return to the practices of the Red Terror, and a clear violation of the C heka prerogatives as defined by the C E C . T h e C heka had no authority to seize hostages or to carry o u t arrests. O n 23 M arch Latsis announced that the C heka had arrested five leading M ensheviks as deserters.97 T h e M oscow E C , however, published an explanation in Izvestiia that the M ensheviks were m erely detained, not taken as hostages, and only because the C heka was looking for deserters. According to law, the C heka was supposed to be responsible to the Moscow soviet. O n behalf of the M enshevik C C M artov sent an official inquiry to the M oscow soviet. He asked the leaders of the soviet 92 “G olosa rabochikh ,” Pravda, no. 65 (23 M arch 1919), 4. See also, for exam ple, B ukharin’s angry article con d em n in g the M ensheviks’ sending inform ation abroad. “Bor’ba m ezhdunarodnogo proletariata i gospoda m ensheviki,” Pravda no. 54 (I I M arch 1919), I. 93 “Z akrytie gazet,” Rabochii ln te m a tsio n a l, no. 2 (17 M arch 1919), and O t T s K a RSD RP," Delo naroda, no. I (20 M arch 1919), 3. 99 Sokolov, Bol’sheviki o bol'shevikakh, p. 20. 95 D. Iu. D alin, “Otryvki V ospom inanii,” in A bram ovitsch, e d ., M artov i ego blizkie, pp. 1 1 1 12; “Z alo zh n ik i,” Delo naroda, no. 2(21 M arch 1919), 2; and “Aresty SotsiaI D em okratov,” Delo naroda, no. 3 (22 M arch 1919), 2. 96 D zerzhinsky’s statem ent was published in the SR paper. See “Snova "D elo naroda, no. I (20 M arch 1919). 97 “K om u oni slu zh at,” Izvestiia TsfK, no. 63 (23 M arch 1919).

on w hat grounds th e C heka h ad arrested leaders o f a legal political party. T h e explanation th at th e C heka was looking for deserters was no t satisfactory, be­ cause n o n e o f th e C C m em bers was o f draft age, and two w om en ineligible for the draft were arrested as well. M artov dem anded an answer to two questions: w hether th e C h ek a had acted on its own and thus in violation o f the law, and w hether th e Social D em ocratic party was still legal.98 T h e M oscow soviet E C , led by K am enev, sent a conciliatory reply. It stated th at the SD party was legal, since th ere was n o C E C decree a n n u llin g legalization. T h e C heka was asked to furnish an explanation for its actions. T h e seals were rem oved from the M en ­ shevik C C offices, and all those arrested were released. T h e first ro u n d betw een D zerzhinsky’s C heka and K am enev’s M oscow soviet thus seem s to have ended w ith K am enev’s victory. O n 25 M arch the M oscow soviet debated th e policy toward the opposition parties. T h e closed session of the Bolshevik faction lasted over three hours, and not a word on the proceedings was published. T h is was usually a sign o f serious disagreem ent w ithin the Bolshevik lead ersh ip.99 A few days earlier, on 20 M arch, th e SR party h ad been legalized and resum ed pu b lication o f its paper, Delo naroda, for the first tim e since June 1918. It appeared, at least for the m o m en t, th at th e legal existence o f the opposition parties w ould be tolerated. W h en the first issue o f Delo naroda cam e out, C h ern o v and o th er SR party leaders believed th at th eir “legalization” was a tem porary m aneuver: “T h e Left SRs are outlaw ed. T h e Social D em ocrats have been deprived o f the possibility to speak openly and have in fact been driven u n derground. B ut we are legalized. W h a t does th at m ean?”100 Mass arrests of the Left SRs in m id -M arch were followed by the unexpected legalization o f the SRs. W as th ere any logic in this? asked C hernov. H owever sh o rt the period of th eir “legalization” was going to be, C hernov pledged th at th e SRs were going to write openly ab o u t the social and political problem s o f th e country. Articles in D elo naroda were m u c h m ore outspoken and sharp th an in Vsegda Vpered. T h e paper published m aterial on the Red T error an d the atrocities o f the C h e k a .101 C h ernov published a devastating critique o f L e n in ’s polem ic w ith th e G erm an socialist Karl Kautsky on the n atu re of th e dictatorship o f the proletariat and the problem of w ho was a renegade of socialism . It is astonishing th at the paper was n o t closed the sam e day after such a h u m iliatio n o f th e “leader o f the world revolution.”102 SR editorials argued th at Bolshevik C o m m u n ism was bankrupt, th at industry had 93 L. [Iu.] M artov, “Iz istorii odnoi legalizatsii,” D elo naroda, no. 3 (22 M arch 1919), 3. T h e SRs displayed political courage by agreeing to publish M artov’s letter. It was only th e third day th at their ow n paper was allow ed to co m e o u t, and they risked a great deal by show ing th eir solidarity with th e Social D em ocrats. 99 “Moskva. Z ased an ie M ossoveta,” D elo naroda, no. 6 (26 M arch 1919), 2. 100 V iktor C hernov, “N as L egalizavali,” D elo naroda, no. I (20 M a rch 1919), I. 101 “P am iati A leksandra Vasil’evicha T u rb y ,” Delo naroda, no. I (20 M arch 1919), I. 102 V iktor C hernov, “L en in protiv K autskogo,” Delo naroda, no. I (20 M arch 1919).

ceased to exist, and that an attack on the peasantry would tu rn its sympathy toward the W hites. T h e Bolsheviks’ course was suicidal for them and for the revolution: “W e dem and from the ruling party: abolish the dictatorship of the party, abandon the policy o f violence in the countryside, and reestablish all civil liberties generally and during elections to the soviets in p artic u la r.103 Arm ed with this “counterrevolutionary propaganda,” Dzerzhinsky m anaged to reverse the decision of the M oscow soviet to legalize opposition, and on 31 M arch a m u ch larger operation against the opposition parties was launched all over Russia. E ither the C heka had decided to present the M oscow soviet with a fait accom pli, or, w hat is m ore likely, L enin had been inform ed and had sanctioned th e C heka’s actions. T h e n u m b er o f arrests was greater than any­ th in g since the days o f Red Terror. In Moscow alone at least two hundred people were seized. T h e SRs' Delo naroda was shut down after ten issues.104 T h e editorial office was dem olished by the C heka detachm ent. M achines were sm ashed; all files, correspondence, subscription lists, and addresses were seized by th e C heka. Agents waiting in am bush on the premises im m ediately arrested and jailed everyone who entered. M ore than one hundred people were seized in this fa sh io n .105 Arrests were going on in the m ajor provincial cities as well: in T ula, Sm olensk, V oronezh, Penza, Sam ara, Saratov, Sormovo, and Kos­ trom a. Several hundred M enshevik and SR party m em bers, mostly workers, were rounded up, the highest nu m b er o f arrests at any one tim e .106 In some cities the arrested workers were held as hostages, just as D zerzhinsky had prom ised. T h ere were no charges and no trials.107 T h e official form ulation was that they were “listed” after being taken away by the Cheka. W ith o u t any pretext or explanation the C heka arrested all m em bers of the M enshevik C C and of the M enshevik Moscow party com m ittee. M artov was put un d er house arrest; it would have been em barrassing to shut him up in a C heka jail at th e tim e of the founding of the C o m m u n ist International. O f the C C m em bers only David D alin escaped arrest, since he was not staying at hom e. W orrying about M artov’s health, he contacted a friend of M artov’s who w ent to Lunacharsky, the m oderate M oscow Bolshevik who was the people’s com m issar of education. (U nfortunately D alin did not identify w ho that friend was.) Lunacharsky called L enin in the presence of this friend and inquired about M artov. L enin is reported to have said: “M artov is a very clever m an. Let 103 “P artiinaia Z h iz n ’ (rezoliutsiia konferentsii predstavitelei PSR na territorii Sovetskoi Rossii),” Delo naroda, no. I (20 M arch 1919), 3. 104 C heK a, p. 126. 105 Ibid., p. 136. 106 T hese data were published in an underground appeal o f the M enshevik C C w hich was sm uggled out o f Russia to independent Georgia and published there. See “V RSDRP. Vozzvanie (24 M ay 1919),” Bo r’ba, no. 171 (I A ugust 1919). According to another source, the total n u m b er o f arrests was approxim ately 3,000. See G . Krasinsky to P. Axelrod (13 June 1919), Axelrod Archive, file 25/XV; also in Les Echos de Russie (July 1919), pp. 2 5 -2 7 . 107 M artov to Stein (3 Ju n e 1919), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 17, box 51, folder 4.

him sit [under arrest] (puskai posidit).”l0&T h e Cheka detachm ent spent several days in M artov’s apartm ent and arrested everyone who came in .109 He was treated fairly well, but lesser-known figures and scores of rank-and-file M en­ sheviks, SRs and Left SRs were subjected to miserable treatm ent in the Cheka jail. W ith these decisive actions Dzerzhinsky showed Kamenev who had real power in Soviet Russia and what resolutions of the Moscow soviet were worth. The hard-liners’ victory was total, since on 3 April the C E C condoned the arrests: “T he task of Soviet power now is to wage a merciless struggle against the Mensheviks and SRs who have gathered around the newspapers Vsegda Vpered and Delo naroda (now closed) and who in reality are disrupting our struggle; who are allies of our enemies, because they are campaigning for strikes and for free trade and for cessation of the civil w ar.”110 T h e C E C resolution did not annul the decree on legalization of the opposition parties, though. At least in theory they rem ained legal. But laws did not m atter m uch in Soviet Russia. W hat mattered was a “revolutionary policy, ” or a decision at the top. At the end of May the terms of the “merciless struggle” were concretized somewhat, when a secret circular went out to the provinces urging the Cheka “to arrest all prom inent Mensheviks and Right SRs, unless it was known that the individuals in question were ready to help us actively in our struggle against Kolchak.”111 T he brutality of the Cheka operation and its large scale in m any cities led the SR party leadership believe that their ten-day-long “legalization” was a C om ­ m unist trap, a provocation. It was designed to induce the SRs to come out into the open, to reveal their identities and num erical strength in factories, cities, and provincial towns. Armed with this information, the Cheka hit back hard, violating an agreem ent signed barely a m onth earlier. T h e SR party leadership was not surprised about the turn of events. It had taken precautionary measures. Victor Chernov escaped arrest despite the Cheka’s all-out effort to capture him. Many provincial organizations suffered casualties but quickly returned to u n ­ derground activity shortly after the wave of arrests. Reflecting upon the possible reasons for this Bolshevik action, most SRs believed that the Bolsheviks had discovered how unpopular they were in the country. Just as Vsegda Vpered had done in January, Delo naroda reached a circulation of 100,000 in a few days.112 Peasant khodoki (literally, walkers) started to arrive to Moscow from the provinces to m eet with Chernov and obtain a copy of the paper. Most importantly the SRs and the Mensheviks were greeted with enthusiasm by workers at rallies in Moscow and other cities. 108 D alin , O try v k i V o spom inanii” in A bram ovitsch, e d ., M artov i ego blizkie, pp. i l l —12. 109 T[le description o f the am b u sh in M artov’s a p artm e n t is in G . Krasinskii to Pavel A xelrod, Axelrod A rchive, file 25/XV. 110 “R ezoliutsiia T siK Sovetov,” Izvestiia , no. 73 (4 April 1919). 111 Izvestiia TsK a R K P (b), no. I (28 M ay 1919), cited in Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 101. 112 “G od Z h iz n i Partii S R ,” N arodovlastier no. I (1919), 62.

Railway strikers in M oscow and striking metalworkers in T ula as well as peasant rebels in O rel were putting forward M enshevik and SR slogans. T h e SRs were n o t wrong w hen they wrote: W e assert that the true reason for the latest attack on the party is its success among the masses of people, which was manifest from the m om ent of its “legalization.” T he Bolsheviks could not conclude an honest agreement with democracy, because for them this would have amounted to a voluntary departure from political scene. . . . Under the conditions not even o f universal suffrage but simply of relatively free elections to the soviets, they would have had to face the prospect of being a modest opposition. 115

T h e status o f the opposition parties was a barom eter of the Bolsheviks’ overall policy. W h en reforms were contem plated in the direction of the rule of law, econom ic flexibility, and peasants’ private enterprise, the policy toward opposi­ tion parties was one o f relative toleration; w hen on the other hand the hard-line policy prevailed, repression followed toleration. T here were several reasons for the Bolshevik’s ab an donm ent of a m oderate course in early April 1919. First, foreign policy requirem ents did no t press L enin to m aintain a dem ocratic appearance in April 1919 as m uch as in Novem ber 1918. In G erm any the W eim ar R epublic had been established, and hopes for a proletarian revolution there decreased with every passing week, especially after the Spartacist uprising o f January 1919 ended in a fiasco. T h e G erm an governm ent was far m ore interested in the W estern powers and their favors than in Soviet Russia. Soviet overtures to th e W estern powers did not bring desired results either. England and especially F rance were determ ined to help the W hites in their struggle to oust the Bolsheviks. It did n o t m atter m u ch w hether socialist opposition parties were tolerated in Russia or not. T h e “reform ” of the C heka dem onstrated that the constellation of forces w ithin th e Bolshevik party did not favor the m oderates. Provincial cliques, the C heka, and m ilitary com m anders— all w anted a hard-line policy toward the “petite bourgeoisie.” Serious setbacks at the civil war front in the Urals in M arch m ade it apparent that the Bolsheviks’ hold on power was precarious. T h e C o m m u n ist leaders realized that they were dependent on the Red Army and th e C heka to stay in power. Perhaps the m ost im portant cause of the repressions in April, however, was the wave of strikes and uprisings in Bolshevik-controlled territory. T hese outbursts were so serious that they necessitate a closer exam ina­ tion o f popular discontent in the spring of 1919. 113 Ibid., p. 162.

2 O n th e In tern al F ront: E n em ies am o n g th e W orkers

O f a l l s o c i a l g r o u p s in Russia, workers have been traditionally portrayed as supporters o f th e Bolsheviks during the civil w a r.1 T h e political system was officially defined as a dictatorship of the proletariat. T h e workers were supposed to be th e beneficiaries o f their ow n dictatorship over the bourgeoisie and the peasants d u rin g th e civil war. T h e enem ies of Soviet power were fought against in th e workers’ n am e. W ith o u t th eir support, the C o m m u n ist governm ent did not have a raison d ’etre. T h u s the issue o f workers’ support had no t only m ilitary and eco n o m ic significance bu t also was a m atter of ideological co m ­ m itm en t for the Bolsheviks. Perhaps th at is why a m yth was born th at workers chose to su p p o rt the C o m m u n ist governm ent during the civil war. A close exam ination o f workers’ political behavior in 1919, however, suggests th at the dynam ics o f th e triangular relationship betw een the workers, the Bolsheviks, and th e socialists was m u c h m ore com plex. Studying workers’ political attitudes d u rin g the civil war is a difficult u n d e r­ taking. W orkers did no t record their views systematically. A nd w hen they did, as in som e protest resolutions, these seldom becam e know n, d u e to Bolshevik censorship. After the suppression o f the opposition press in the su m m er of 1918, and except for a b rief period from January to M arch 1919, there was no opposition press to cover views critical o f th e governm ent. W orkers’ political preferences expressed in resolutions and published in the C o m m u n ist press should be treated w ith cau tio n , because C o m m u n ist party cells system atically portrayed th eir ow n resolutions, prepared in advance, as gen u in e workers' views.2 N eith er can political aspirations be easily deduced from the voting record in th e soviets, because the latter were packed with representatives of governm ent-controlled agencies. T h e share o f delegates elected by popular vote was so sm all in m ost cases that their voices could no t be heard. A victory of 1 Sheila F itzpatrick w rote o f th e “active su p p o rt o f the u rb an w orking class" for the Bolsheviks in The R ussian R evolution, p. 70, as did T h o m a s R em ington, B uilding Socialism in Bolshevik R ussia, p. 101. O n the o th er h a n d , W illiam C hase acknow ledged “mass w orker u nrest" in M oscow b u t m istakenly saw it as b eg in n in g only a t th e end o f 1920, after th e victory over the W hites. See Workers, Society, a n d the Soviet S ta te , p. 11. 2 Rravda editors w ere c o n cern ed th a t workers w ere censored by th e local party bosses. T h e y cited nu m ero u s exam ples w hen workers did not dare w rite to Pravda w ith o u t au th o rizatio n from the local party cells. H en ce the title o f the article, “C a n W orkers W rite in PravdaT' (M ogut Ii rabochie sotrudnichat’ v Pravde), Pravda (4 F ebruary 1919), 2.

opposition parties in elections to the soviets alm ost autom atically led to dis­ b an d m en t of th e soviets. 3 E lections to local bodies, such as factory com m ittees and trade union boards, were a better barom eter o f popular attitudes, bu t data on such elections are sporadic and inconclusive. This is due partly to a deliberate effort by local authorities to suppress em barrassing inform ation and partly to a severe disrup­ tion o f co m m u n ications during the civil war. C orrespondence of the Bolshevik C entral C o m m ittee (C C ) with local organizations dem onstrates that M oscow was poorly inform ed on the political events in the provinces. T h e Bolshevik C C h ad to rely on special em issaries from the center whose job was to investigate w hat had happened in a given locality and subm it a report to the C C .4 T hese reports present popular attitudes in tim e-specific phraseology that makes it difficult to discern the real m eaning o f words and labels. W orkers’ strikes are seldom referred to as strikes but rather as antisoviet conspiracies. Workers were no t supposed to have had critical views o f “proletarian” authorities, and that is why workers’ views were seldom reported. T his paucity of inform ation was acknowledged by the International Labor Office: “D ifficult as it is to obtain inform ation on labor disputes after the C o m m u n ist revolution, it is still m ore so, if n o t well nigh im possible, to find out anything about strikes”. 5 A close scrutiny of Bolshevik, M enshevik, and SR legal and underground press and diplom atic reports m akes it possible, however, to reconstruct the m ain contours o f workers’ political behavior during the height o f the civil war w ith th e W hites. S om e Bolshevik orders, threats, an d reports were published at th e tim e. M u ch outspoken m aterial can be found on the pages of Izvestiia and Pravda. W orkers expressed their views in a variety of ways. T hey wrote letters to the Bolshevik and opposition press describing conditions at their factories. T h ey drafted th eir ow n resolutions at m eetings to w hich they had been su m ­ m o n ed by C o m m u n ist propagandists. T hey petitioned local authorities w hen they believed th eir rights were being violated. And, o f course, they w ent on strike w hen they perceived th at there was no other way to achieve their goals. As a last resort they took u p arm s and participated in uprisings. W orkers’ petitions, strikes, and riots can be seen as three stages of interest articulation, each successively m ore radical. M ost of the m ore radical protests, riots, and uprisings 3 Brovkin, T h e M e n sh e v ik sa fte rO c to b e r, pp. 1 2 6 -6 0 . 4 S om e o f these reports have since becom e the richest source on local politics d uring the civil war in R ussia. O f the n u m ero u s reports in this category, several stand out: (I) a report by the special em issaries o f th e N K V D to T am bov in M arch 1918— S han u k h in , Shirokov, and B utiugin, “DokIad em issarov K om m issariata V n u tre n n ik h D e l,” V estnik K om m issanata vnutrennikh del, no. 9 (April 1918); (2) a report on the d isbandm ent o f the newly elected soviet in Sorm ovo— “D oklad v K re m le o so b y tiia k h v S o rm o v o f'V e c h e m ia ia Z v e zd a , no. 71 (21 M ay 1918), 3 ;a n d (3 )a re p o rtb y a political com m issar o n his m easures against th e G reens in th e su m m er o f 1919 in Sm olensk Province— B. Ardaev, “D onesenie Roslavl’skom u U ezdvoenkom u” (6 A ugust 1919), Sm olensk A rchive, file 119. 5 T h e Trade U nion M o vem en t in Soviet R ussia, p. 168.

took place in th e provinces; conversely m ore peaceful letters, resolutions, and strikes were co m m on in the capitals. T h e w inter of 1 9 1 8 -1 9 was perhaps the harshest tim e of all during the years of war and revolution. R ecent studies on the social com position o f the labor force show its dram atic decline in the big cities.6 T h e decom position of indus­ try th at h ad begun in 1917 accelerated in 1918 and reached truly catastrophic proportions du rin g the w inter o f 1918-19. Shortages of electricity, raw m ate­ rials, food, and skilled workers plagued industry and brought it to a virtual halt. W ho, th e n , were th e workers in the big cities at the time? It is clear from the available evidence that these were the workers who had now here to go. M any of them had been city dwellers for a long tim e. Som e were skilled and som e unskilled. Som e were literate and well versed in politics; others, as is clear from their language, were sem iliterate at best. T his social group reflected the social diversity of th e working class at large. It was th e working class of 1918 m inus those w ho had fled to the countryside, m inus those who had joined or been drafted into th e Red Army, and m in u s those w ho had m ade careers in the C o m m u n ist party. R ecent research by social historians shows that the decrease in the n u m b er of workers in M oscow occurred prim arily am ong m en. T h eir num bers fell from 215,000 in 1918 to 124,000 in 1920. Two m ain groups left the city: one was the sem iurban, unskilled workers, recent arrivals from the countryside who went back, and the o th er group was the young, m ostly single, politically active, skilled workers. T hey w ent m ainly into the ranks of the Red Arm y and the Bolshevik adm inistration. T h e core o f th e rem aining workers were family m en, longtim e residents o f Moscow. M ost im portantly, they were "veteran urban proletarians,” th e skilled m etalworkers of M oscow .7 S in c e th e Bolsheviks’ prior­ ity was to keep industry operating to fuel the war effort, the three m ain catego­ ries o f workers w ho actually were present at their factories and worked sporad­ ically were m etalworkers at state w ar-industry plants, railway workers, and printers. In m ost cases these were the sam e workers w ho had been there in 1918 and in 1917. D iane Koenker concludes that these workers were less likely to support the Bolsheviks, due to their social characteristics.8 T h e workers who rem ained at the factories in 1919 were the ones w ho for o n e reason or an o th er did n o t benefit from the possibilities for upward m obility offered by the Bol­ shevik party and the civil war. T h e cleavage betw een those who did and those w ho did n o t was one o f the m ain sources of discontent in 1919. In a letter to Izvestiia a M oscow C o m m u n ist worker wrote that workers’ 6 W illiam Rosenberg, “ Russian L abor and Bolshevik Pow er after O c to b er,” Slavic Review, vol. 44, no. 2 (S u m m er 1985), 2 1 3 -3 9 . 7 D ia n e K oenkerdiscussed th e com position o f M oscow workers as a social group in h e r “U rban­ ization and D e u rb an iz atio n in the R ussian R evolution and C ivil W ar,” The ]o u m a l o f M odem History, vol. 57, no. 3 (S eptem ber 1985), 4 2 4 -5 0 , here 437 a n d 443. 8 ib id ., 442.

dissatisfaction could no t be attributed simply to low food rations, because, he argued, food rations were not low in food-producing provinces, and yet workers there were just as unhappy as in Moscow. T h e true reason h e saw in privileges granted to the C om m unists. T hey had only recently been prom oted to posi­ tions o f authority, and this bred resentm ent am ong workers. T h e author de­ scribed them as a “gray and em bittered m ass,” resentful that the upstarts were riding in autom obiles and m oving into large apartm ents. N um erous other C o m m unists were alarm ed by the fact that workers at their factories lacked political consciousness, as they p u t it. Workers did not understand or support C o m m u n ist objectives.9 Som e C om m unists’ com plaints about workers’ atti­ tudes were rem arkably explicit: “It is bitter to hear how workers abuse [ponosiat] Soviet authorities. . . . T hey say it was better under the tsar.” 10 A nother C o m ­ m unist, in a letter to lzvestiia, claim ed that his factory had always been and still was a refuge o f th e M ensheviks.11 A worker from the Duks factory adm itted that “the m ajority o f workers have counterrevolutionary views. ” And a C om m unist printer wrote th at the printers were siding with the counterrevolution, m eaning with the M ensheviks.12 Such assessments o f workers’ attitudes from below, by C om m unist activists in at least som e factories in M oscow and Petrograd, find their counterpart in assessments from above. Grigorii Zinoviev was explicit in his speech at the E ighth C P Congress in M arch 1919: “Truly we cannot hide from ourselves the fact th at in som e places the word commissar has becom e a swear word. A m an in a leather jacket [i.e., a Chekist] has becom e hateful, as they say now in Perm. To hide this would be laughable. W e m ust face the tru th ”. 13 Pravda acknowledged th at the speeches o f M ariia Spiridonova, the leader of the Left SRs, who had just been released from prison in late 1918, and of Fedor D an, a M enshevik leader, m et with approval.14 Workers storm ily applauded these opposition speakers w hen they condem ned the privileges of the com m is­ sars at workers’ rallies. A curious and rather revealing episode took place at one of the rallies in Petrograd. A natolii Lunacharsky spoke for the Bolsheviks. Suddenly som eone shouted from the floor: “Take off your fur coat!” Apparently it was cold in the hall, and Lunacharsky was com fortable with his fur coat on. T h e workers did not have fur coats, and som eone who had was trying to pass as a 9 "R aboehaia z h iz n ’ Pora opom nitsia,” lzvestiia (S April 1919), 4, and Ό vystuplenii Spririd o n o v o i,1’ Pravda (6 February 1919), 4. 10 “Privykli ch u zh im i rukam i zhar zagrebat’. Presnenskii m ekhanicheskii zavod,” Pravda (18 February 1919), 4. 11 "N a zavode G rach ev a," lzvestiia (16 April 1919), 4. 12 For the D uks factory, see “Rabochaia z h iz n ’, ” Pravda (5 July 1919), 4; for th e printers, see “Belogvardeiskie vykhodki,” Pravda (16 M arch 1919), 4. 15 Vos’moi S ’ezd R K P(b), p. 220. 14 “O vystuplenii M arii Spriridonovoi” and “K vystupleniiu D ana na fabrike D e m e n t,” Pravda (4 February 1919), 4.

spokesm an for workers’ power. Lunacharsky was w histled at in derision and had to re tire .15 M ost reports in th e B olshevik and in the opposition press convey th e atm o­ sphere o f d isco n ten t th at was brew ing am o n g M oscow workers in early 1919. In a private letter th e M enshevik leader B. O. Bogdanov, who in 1918 was o n e o f the founders o f th e uponom ochennye (plenipotentiary) m ovem ent, described his im pressions o f workers’ attitudes right after the M ensheviks were legalized in January 1919: Since yesterday we have finally begun party work. . . . I shall still have to attend m eetings as in the good old times. In fact I have already begun doing so and, I must confess, very successfully. I have never had such a triumph. O f course this is due not so m uch to my oratorical talents as to the m ood o f the workers. There is great animosity toward the Bolsheviks. As soon as a Bolshevik m ounts the platform, cries of “Clear out!” greet h im , but when a M enshevik appears, before he has tim e to open his m outh, the audience begins to applaud. 16

Similarly, th e SR paper Delo naroda in one o f its last issues in M arch reported that at a w orkers’ rally o f the R yazan railway line a “forest o f hands was raised for th e SR -sponsored resolution” and only ten voted for the Bolshevik o n e .17 An identical ac co u n t appeared in D vestiia on elections to the factory com m ittee o f the G u z h o n p la n t in Moscow. W orkers did n o t let C o m m u n ists speak and elected a factory com m ittee consisting o f “saboteurs, ” th at is, m em bers o f the opposition p a rtie s.18 S ince th e su m m er of 1918 the M ensheviks, SRs, and Left SRs had not been allowed to openly address workers' rallies. T h ey had been expelled from the soviets, and m any o f th eir leaders had been arrested. T h ey now used their legalization, w hich tu rn ed o u t to be a short breathing spell, to present their critique o f B olshevik authorities. W orkers did n o t seem to distinguish the nuances o f differences betw een these parties’ positions. In m ost cases they applauded w ith equal enthusiasm any speaker o f th e opposition parties. T hey heard w hat they w anted to hear: speeches against the C o m m u n ists’ privileges, unfair elections, unpaid wages, low food rations, the ban on trade, and endless 15 “B o lsh o i m itin g v n aro d n o m d o m e ,” Petrogradskaia Pravda (14 M arch 1919), 2. 16 T h is letter was seized by th e C h ek a w h en it raided th e office o f th e M enshevik C C paper, Vsegda V pered, a n d was published in “T u p o u m ie ili prestupnaia dem agogiia,” Petrogradskaia Pravda (4 M arch 1919), I. It was also p ublished in “W orkm en against B olsheviks,” B ulletins o f the R ussian Liberation C o m m ittee, no. 7 (5 A pril 1919). T h e R ussian L iberation C o m m itte e was a group o f R ussian exiles in L ondon w ho published som e reprints from the S o v ie tp re ssasw ellas their own political opinions. In a sm u ch as can be judged, th eir views were close to those o f the K adet party. 17 “V Perovskikh m asterskikh,” D elo naroda, no. 9 (29 M arch 1919). 18 “R abochaia z h iz n ’ S abotazhnyi z avkom ,” Izvestiia (22 June 1919), 4 , and “M oskovskii m etallicheskii zavod, byvshii G u z h o n a ,” Izvestiia (I July 1919), 4.

m obilizations for the civil war. O f all the opposition speakers, M ariia Spiri­ donova seems to have enjoyed a particularly enthusiastic reception. Her fiery speeches and uncom prom ising condem nation of C om m unist atrocities during the Red Terror drew enorm ous crowds during this short period o f free speech in January 1919.19 C om m unists reported that workers referred to Spiridonova as G odm other (Bogoroditsa) or simply m atushka— m other. T h e m ain them es of h er speeches were well reflected in an underground Left SR leaflet that circu­ lated in Petrograd in early 1919: “W here is the dictatorship o f the proletariat and o f the working peasantry? It has been supplanted by the dictatorship of the Bolshevik C C governing with the assistance of extraordinary com m issions and punitive d etach m en ts.” T h e leaflet went on to say that the soviets were no longer elected in Soviet Russia: “W here are the prom ised rights of elections? At the factories and plants, at the ships and railroads, the self-appointed Bolshevik com m issars are sitting! W h at has becom e of freedom of speech and of the press? . . . T h e laboring classes are not allowed to congregate. . . . T hey may not utter a word against the Bolsheviks under penalty of being arrested and s h o t.”20 C om m unists wrote in Pravda that in view of the masses’ lack of political consciousness, w hich m eant lack of support for the Bolsheviks, it was necessary to shut the m outh of Spiridonova and others. T hey labeled her speeches W hite G uardist propaganda, a stab in the back, treason, and a call for insurrection.21 M ensheviks, Left SRs, and SRs were called traitors,, social Kolchakovites, Black H undreds, and m onarchists.22 It seems that local C om m unists tried to invent the worst possible label to stick on their opponents, regardless o f w hether it was accurate. T h is betrayed their fear of losing their position of authority in case a new factory com m ittee was elected or if a given factory went on strike. T h e lower down the scale of authority a particular Bolshevik was, the m ore em bit­ tered he seems to have been against the socialists. City bosses were well pro­ tected by 1919: electoral m echanics guaranteed their security in power, unless an uprising broke out. Lower party functionaries, however, were still often throw n out at elections to factory com m ittees, hence their insecurity and anger against the troublem akers. O n e Bolshevik factory com m ittee m em ber, for example, related in Pravda how a worker, a M enshevik, incited the workers to elect a new factory com m it­ tee, T h e re was n othing unlaw ful in such a course of action, yet the author 19 For the Bolshevik com m entary on Spiridonova’s speeches, see “Aresty sredi Levykh Eserov," Pravda (13 February 1919), 3. 20 “Indictm ent o f Bolshevism: Russian Socialists’ Proclam ation,” T he Times (10 April 1919), 12.

21 E. Iaroslavskii, “C hego khotiat Levye Esery,” Pravda (6 February 1919), and K. Tverdovskii, “Snova avantiura,” Pravda ( 13 February 1919), I. 22 For exam ple in “E shche o zavode, byvshii G u z h o n a ,” Izvestiia (I July 1919), 4, th e M en ­ sheviks are referred to as Black H undreds; the SRs are likened to W hite G uards in “Rabochaia zh izn ’," Pravda (16 M arch 1919), 4.

presented the m atter as if the very cam paign to elect a new com m ittee was tantam ount to an anti-Soviet conspiracy. He tried to enlist the support of the authorities and cursed the M enshevik worker, Petrov, as a hidden Kolchakovite.23 From a town in Rzhev in Tver Province the local Bolsheviks frankly wrote to their own C entral C om m ittee that they had decided against the contin­ ued existence of the city soviet, since it was in the M ensheviks’ hands.24 Clearly, the Bolshevik authorities would rather deal with a loyal C om m unist in charge than with an opposition-led soviet. Just as the newly elected soviets were disbanded in the spring o f 1918, so the newly elected opposition-led soviets were being disbanded in the spring of 1919. A new hysteria against the opposi­ tion parties began to unfold as workers’ protests becam e m ore articulate in the spring of 1919.

Strikes in M oscow Letters to Pravda and to the opposition press describe workers’ political atti­ tudes, invariably from the perspective of the correspondent. C om m unist activ­ ists portrayed the grum bling workers as a “gray em bittered mass” lacking po­ litical consciousness, applauding the Mensheviks, and sympathizing with Kolchak. Was this an accurate description? Workers’ own resolutions and above all their actions provide a m uch m ore com prehensive picture of their political preferences. As did most strikes, the one at the AIeksandrovskii railway work­ shops broke out spontaneously at the end of February. T he im m ediate cause of the strike was that workers were not paid 40 percent of the wages due to them for February. W h en it began, three thousand workers were present at a rally.25 They did not let the representative of the authorities speak and dem anded im m ediate pay and food rations equal to those of Red Army soldiers. T he Bolsheviks agreed to fulfill this d em an d .26 T h e workers were ready to resum e work, and it looked as if the m atter was settled. But soon it becam e known that on that sam e night the Cheka arrested the leaders of the proposed strike. Workers stopped work again and dem anded their im m ediate release.27 W hat had begun as an econom ic protest now turned into a political strike.28 23 T h a t is, supporters o f Admiral Kolchak, the suprem e ruler of Russia (his official title), the leader of the W hite arm ies in Siberia. S. Petropavlovskii, “Prekrasnaia taktika,” Pravda (I I M arch 1919), 4. 24 “D o cum ent no. 4 2 6 ,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 393. 25 "Iz professional’nogo i rabochego dvizheniia,” Rabochii lnternatsional, no. I (I I M arch 1919). T his was a paper o f the M enshevik C C and was the first and only issue that cam e out. 26 “Sudebnyi otdel. D elo o zabastovke na Aleksandrovskoi zheleznoi doroge,” Pravda (23 May 1919), 4. 27 “Iz professional’nogo i rabochego dvizheniia,” Rabochii lnternatsional, no. I (11 M arch 1919). 28 “K zakrytiiu masterskikh Aleksandrovskoi zheleznoi dorogi,” Pravda (I April 1919), 4.

An official investigation into the causes of the strike showed that some representatives of Soviet authorities had distributed food and apartm ents u n ­ lawfully. “T his m ade the workers angry.”29 T h e “enem ies,” according to Pravda, were using these unlawful actions as a pretext to incite the workers to strike. T h e elections to the M oscow soviet at the end of M arch aggravated the situation: the Aleksandrovskii railway workshops elected Mensheviks and SRs only. T h e candidates of the ruling party were defeated.30 T h e Bolsheviks then em barked upon drastic measures: they occupied the workshops, evicted strikers by force, and shut down the workshops for the tim e being. T h e account in Izvestiia spoke of a possibility of bloodshed.31 O n BI M arch all workers were fired, and an an n o u n cem en t that new workers were to be hired was published in P rav d a.32 According to opposition sources, though, some workers were killed.33 A purge o f the “counterrevolutionary elem ents,” that is, o f the social­ ists, was im plem ented, regardless of their actual participation in the strike. Twelve workers were pu t on trial by the Revolutionary Tribunal, chaired by the C heka functionary Iakov Peters. T h e strikers were charged with “preparation of the strike and o f th e arm ed insurrection against Soviet power [sic!]."34 They were all workers of long standing, some of them m em bers of the Social D em o­ cratic or Socialist Revolutionary parties. All workers’ meetings henceforth had to be reported to the C heka in advance, and its representatives had to be present. M inutes of the proceedings were to be subm itted to the C h ek a.35 It would be repetitive to relate the course of other strikes. M ost of them were remarkably similar: econom ic dem ands, arrests of ringleaders, strikes, lock­ outs, m ore arrests, purges, trials, and som etim es shootings— these were the m ain stages. In Moscow m ost active strikers in the spring of 1919 were railway workers, tram workers, and m etalworkers.36 Repressive m easures were effective 29 “Sud nad Aleksandrovtsam i," Pravda (29 May 1919), I; also a report to the S tateD ep artm en t by M r. Im brie, the A m erican consul in Vyborg, Finland. O fa il reports on file in the D epartm ent o fS ta te fo r 1 9 19-20, those o fM r. Im b rie are c o n sisten tly th e m o stth o ro u g h and well docum ented, especially o n the situation in Petrograd. Im brie, Vyborg, F inland, “Excerpts from Soviet News­ papers” (22 May 1919), Records, dispatch 8 6 1 .0 0 .4566-4567. 30 “Vybory v Moskovskii Sovet,” Delo naroda, no. 8 (28 M arch 1919), 2. 31 “C hrezvychainoe zasedanie M ossoveta,’’ Izvestiia (5 April 1919), 3, and “Sredi zheleznodorozhnikov,” Pravda (12 April 1919), 4. 32 “Rabochaia zh izn ’. V Aleksandrovskikh m asterskikh,” Pravda (I April 1919), 4. T h e sam e inform ation is in Im brie, Vyborg, Finland (7 April 1919), Records, dispatch 861.00.4227. 33 “Sobytiia n a Aleksandrovskikh m asterskikh,” Severnaia Kom m una (9 April 1919), 3; and Im brie, Vyborg, F inland, “Excerpts from Soviet Newspapers” (22 May 1919), Records, dispatch 861.0 0 .4 5 6 6 -4 5 6 7 . ** “Sudebnyi otdel. D elo o zabastovke na Aleksandrovskoi zheleznoi doroge," Pravda (23 May 1919), 4. 55 “Liubopytnyi d o k u m en t,” Delo naroda, no. 8 (28 M arch 1919), 2. In this article the SRs published an ordinance (rasporiazhenie) by the C heka section of the Aleksandrovskii railway workshops to all em ployees w hich outlines these regulations. 36 For inform ation on the strike at the Bogatyr’ factory in Moscow, see “Profsoiuzy kak kara-

for a sh o rt tim e, until som e o ther b u rn in g issue ignited workers’ protests again. O n 24 June, for exam ple, railway workers w ent on strike at the Aleksandrovskii railway w orkshops again. T h is tim e workers of several m ajor lines joined them : the N o rth e rn , M oscow -K azan, K iev-V oronezh, and Kursk lines. W h a t trig­ gered protest this tim e was a decree ordering the m obilization o f som e workers into th e Red Army. G eneral A nton D e n ik in ’s offensive was gaining m o m e n ­ tu m , an d th e Bolshevik governm ent had to throw all the resources it had into battle. At workers’ rallies Bolshevik speakers tried to get the workers to vote for th eir resolution expressing enthusiasm for the heroic fight o f the Red Army. Instead, workers w histled at Bolshevik speakers and chased them from the podium . T h e Aleksandrovskii railway workshops resolution read: the authorities must restore freedom o f the press and assembly; must abolish the death penalty and open the doors o f prisons. . . . Until this is done, we regard Denikin's, Kolchak’s, and the C om m unists’ authority as equally sham eful, because this author­ ity is not the authority o f the soviets, because nobody other than the C om m unists can be elected there, and if one [a n on -Com rnunist] is elected, he would wind up not in the soviet but in the Butyrki jail. 37

T h e Bolshevik press also spoke o f heightened opposition am ong railway workers. At th e railway workers’ conference in June 1919 the workers’ instruc­ tions (n a k a z ) to th eir delegates reiterated th eir m ain concerns: opposition to m obilization into the Red Army, th e right to elect their own representatives, and freedom to purchase food. O n e of the dem ands read: “D ow n w ith th e civil war!”38 Available evidence o n workers’ attitudes in M oscow suggests th at railway workers in p articu lar as well as m etalworkers were profoundly dissatisfied with Bolshevik eco n o m ic policies an d with the dictatorship o f those who spoke in their n a m e b u t w ith o u t th eir consent. In contrast to the interpretations of social historians w ho ten d to attribute workers’ political behavior to social characteris­ tics, th e evidence just considered suggests th at M oscow workers did n o t support the Bolsheviks an d did support the opposition parties, no t because they were family m en and less radical, b u t because very concrete Bolshevik policies induced th em , as politically active workers, to protest and articulate their dem ands. In Petrograd, consistent with the tradition of that city, workers’ protests were m u c h m ore radical.

tcl’nye organy,” V segda V pered, no. 9 (18 F ebruary 1919), I; on the strike a t the Sokol’niki tram park, see B u lletin s o f the R ussian L iberation C o m m ittee , no. 5 (24 M a rch 1919), 2; o n th e Aleksandrovskii railway w orkers’ strike, see S cheibert, L enin an der M a c h t, p. 319. 37 Q u o te d h e re from a re p o rt by a p articipant, “R abochee dvizhenie v M oskve," Listok "Dela naroda”, no. 2 (n .d .), 4, P S R A rchive, folder 2003. 38 For the Bolshevik assessm ent o f this nakaz, see “Z h elezn o d o ro zh n ik i i revoliutsiia” and “K onferentsiia z h elez n o d o ro z h n ik o v ,” Izvestiia (22 Ju n e 1919), 4.

Strikes in Petrograd Petrograd was the scene of a powerful workers’ protest m ovem ent in 1918. T he independent Workers’ Assembly of Plenipotentiaries led several im portant strikes in M ay and June 1918 and attempted to organize a general strike on 2 July 1918. Workers protested against the restriction of trade, grain requisition­ ing in the countryside, and, most importantly, against new rules for the elec­ tions to the Petrograd soviet, which guaranteed a Bolshevik victory irrespective of the popular vote.39 It was in Petrograd that, for the first tim e, the Bolsheviks resorted to a lockout of the striking workers. T h e O bukhov plant was shut down in June 1918, and the workers were fired. After the suppression of the Workers’ Assembly in July and the arrest of its leaders, the protest m ovem ent quieted down in the fall. Mass executions during the official Red Terror in the fall had an intim idating effect on Petrograd workers. Protests achieved nothing but intensified repression. D uring the sum m er and fall, workers fled from Petrograd. From 150,000 workers in June 1918, the num ber fell to 136,000 at the end of 1918.40 T he workers’ econom ic situation dramatically deteriorated during this period. This is amply docum ented by the calculations of the well-known statistician S. G. Strum ilin. W orkers’ food rations were getting smaller, and they reached a level deem ed inadequate to provide the nourishm ent enabling one to work. Workers’ wages were alm ost always one or two m onths late. At the same time workers were well aware that the C om m unist bosses received a more generous food ration.41 A ccordingto Strum ilin, during the elections to the Petrograd soviet in D ecem ber 1918 voters’ elem entary rights were often violated. At some plants the bosses “elected” themselves to the soviet without any regard to the pre­ scribed procedure. Som e “elected” themselves from enterprises that had been closed— hence the nicknam e “dead souls”— and some falsified figures on the num ber o f employed workers to obtain m ore seats on the soviet.42 No cam ­ paigning am ong different political parties as in June 1918 was possible. T he outcom e of elections com bined with the econom ic trends and social inequality created new bitterness am ong the workers, which exploded in a rash of strikes in M arch 1919. 39 For a detailed discussion of events briefly touched upon here, see Brovkin, “T h e Mensheviks under A ttack,” in The Mensheviks after October, pp. 220-56. 40 Cited here from a detailed statistical chart calculated by S. Strum ilin in his “Petrogradskaia prom yshlennost’ na pervoe ianvaria 1919 goda,” Statistika truda, nos. 8 -1 0 (April 1919), 17. 41 S. Strum ilin, “Arbeitslohn und Arbeitsproduktivitaet in der Russischen Industrie,” in Lebensbedingungen Staedtischer Bevolkerung von 1917—1921, vol. 4, section 2, in T em en, ed., Arbeitsverfassung u n d Arbeiterschaft in der Sow jet Union zwischen den Kriegen, here pp. 2 8 -4 8 . 42 S. Strum ilin, “Vybory v Petrogradskii Sovdepvdekabre 1918 goda,” Statistika truda, nos. 8 10 (April 1919), 2 3 -2 7 , here 27.

O ften , w h en a dictatorship is loosened som ew hat and freedom s are granted th at were previously suppressed, an avalanche o f protests can no longer be contained. T h is is exactly w hat happened in Petrograd in F eb ru a ry -M arch 1919. W h e n th e leaders o f the plenipotentiary m ovem ent were released from prisons, w h en the M enshevik, the Left SR, an d the SR parties were partially legalized, w hen M ariia Spiridonova, released from prison, began a series of im passioned speeches at Petrograd plants, the workers' bitterness was ignited, and a powerful opposition m ovem ent flared up with m ore vigor than in 1918. T h ro u g h o u tJa n u a ry an d February the M enshevikpress reported the spectacu­ lar popularity o f M ariia Spiridonova at Petrograd plants. T h e Bolsheviks granted th eir political opponents freedom of speech and th en , scared by the consequences, decided to w ithdraw it. Left SR party leaders in m ost industrial cities, as well as Spiridonova in M oscow, were suddenly arrested at the end o f February. T h e R evolutionary T ribunal charged Spiridonova w ith slandering Soviet pow er by referring to it as “com m issaraucracy.” She was consigned to one year of isolation in a hospital [sic/].45 T hese mass arrests of Left SRs sparked the protest m o v em en t in Petrograd. T rouble started at the Erikson factory on 2 M arch, w here workers evicted Z inoviev by force w hen h e tried to address them . As on earlier occasions, the P utilov p lan t workers played the leading role. A ccording to a top secret report of the C heka, at a protest rally on IO M arch the fam ous Putilov resolution was passed, and o u t o f ten th ousand present, only twenty-two abstained.44 W e, the workmen o f the Putilov works and the wharf, declare before the laboring classes o f Russia and the world, that the Bolshevik government has betrayed the high ideals o f the October revolution, and thus betrayed and deceived the workmen and peasants o f Russia; that the Bolshevik government, acting in our nam e, is not the authority o f the proletariat and peasants, but the authority o f the dictatorship o f the Central C om m ittee o f the C om m unist Party, self-governing with the aid o f Extraor­ dinary C om m issions, C om m unists and police. W e protest against the com pulsion of workmen to remain at factories and works, and attempts to deprive them o f all elementary rights: freedom o f the press, speech, m eetings, and inviolability o f person. W e demand: I. Im mediate transfer o f authority to freely elected Workers’ and Peasants’ Soviets. 45 “D elo Spiridonovoi,” Vsegda Vpered (25 February 1919), 2. Fordata on the arrests of the Left SRs, city by city, see the Menshevik source O p i a f Krasnyi T error,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 16 (14 February 1919), I; Bolshevik sources are “D eiatel’nosf chrezvychainykh kommissii,” Petrogradska'ia Pravda (28 February 1919), 3, and “Aresty sredi Levykh Eserov,” Pravda (13 February 1919), p. 3. 44 “Svedeniia Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka o partii Levykh Eserov,” (Data of the Secret D epart­ m ent of the Vecheka on the Party of Left SRs), Ts.P.A ., TsKa RKP(b), Fond 17, Opis’ 84, Biuro Sekretariata, D ocum ent 43.

2. Im m ediate re-establishm ent o f freedom o f elections at factories and plants, barracks, ships, railways, everywhere. 3. Transfer o f entire m an agem en t to the released workers o f the trade unions. 4. Transfer o f food supply to workers’ and peasants’ cooperative societies. 5. G eneral arm ing o f workers and peasants. 6. Im m ediate release o f m em bers o f the original revolutionary peasants’ party o f Left Socialist R evolutionaries. 7. Im m ediate release o f M ariia Spiridonova.45

According to S trum ilin, the Putilov workers also dem anded the abolition of any lim itation on the am ount of food allowed to be brought to Petrograd.46 T hey also dem anded an increase in their food rations, but not at the expense of other groups o f the p opulation.47 T his was a verbatim repetition o f the W orkers’ Assembly dem and in M ay 1918, w hen the Bolsheviks raised workers’ rations at th e expense o f “n onproletarian” groups. It is virtually impossible to pinpoint w hich political party’s views these dem ands reflected. In fact the M ensheviks, the SRs, and the Left SRs would have w holeheartedly supported all these dem ands. T h e differences am ong the socialist opposition parties were becom ­ ing blurred, at least for the tim e being. O nly a positive reference to the O ctober revolution, and an explicit reference to M ariia Spiridonova, indicates a strong Left SR influence. C o ntinuity is the best word to describe the nature of workers’ dem ands between June 1918 and M arch 1919. Exactly as in 1918, workers’ delegations were sent to other factories and plants, reviving the practice of the disbanded assembly o f plenipotentiaries. O th er factories and plants joined in the strike: the Skorokhod rubber factory, the Baltic shipbuilding plant, and the tram park.48 At Siem ens-Schuckert protests broke out w hen the workers found out that the factory com m ittee had “elected” th e plant’s representatives to the bust of elec­ trical enterprises w ithout inform ing th e plant’s general m eeting.49 Workers at the R echkin railcar-building plant w ent on strike on 13 M arch in protest against the transfer o f som e workers into a lower category of food rationing.50 A ccord­ ing to S trum ilin, the strike spread to fifteen enterprises em ploying thirty-four 45 C ited here from “Putilof M eetin g ,” The Tim es (4 April 1919), 10. T h e editors identified this report as dated 21 M arch 1919. S e e a lso th e text ofthis resolution in docum ent61 in A Collection o f Reports on Bolshevism in R ussia, p. 95. 46 S. S trum ilin, “Zabastovki v Petvograde,” Statistika truda, nos. 8 -1 0 (April 1919), 3 7 -3 8 . O n e -an d -o n e -h alf pud was the lim it established by the authorities. T his was the m ajor concession to workers d uring the protests in May 1918. 47 Ibid. See also R em ington, B uilding Socialism in Bolshevik R ussia, p. 108, b u t h e cites only the dem ands listed by Strum ilin; see also A. V. Gogolevskii, Petrogradskii Sovef, p. 175. 48 “P utilof M eeting,” The Tim es (4 April 1919), 10. Also see “Russian D o c u m en ts,” Struggling R ussia, vol. I, no. 16 (28 June 1919), 230. 49 Gogolevskii, Petrogradskii Sovef, p. 176. 50 “Russian D o c u m en ts,” Struggling Russia, vol. I, no. 16 (28 June 1919), 230.

thousand workers. O f those, 90 percent took part in the strike. T h e enterprises on strike in clu d ed all m ajor branches o f industry: m achine building, railcar building; electrical, textile, chem ical, and rubber m anufacturing; Putilov, Rechkin, S iem ens-S chuckert, Baltic, A rth u r Koppel, Skorokhod, and o th ers.51 T hese were th e largest plants in Petrograd. T h ey accounted for m ost of the m etal industry in th e city. T h e strike em braced 50 percent o f the total labor force in Petrograd. T rouble at th e Putilov plant, and especially the shouts “D ow n with the party dictatorship!” alarm ed the Bolsheviks so m u ch that L enin him self cam e to Petrograd on 12 M arch and gave a speech at a huge rally at the P eoples H ouse on 13 M a rc h .52 He adopted a conciliatory approach and prom ised to increase food rations. W orkers were no t appeased and dem anded his resignation.55 W h e n Zinoviev tried to address the workers, he was greeted with shouts of “D ow n with the Jew!”54 L unacharsky had great difficulty in getting workers listen to h im , and h e finally prom ised that the Bolshevik governm ent would resign if th e m ajority o f workers desired its resignation. T h e workers dem anded th at the Putilov p lan t resolution be published in the C o m m u n ist party paper Severnaia K o m m u na. Street rioting broke out in som e places, and Bolshevik speakers trying to address the protesters were m o b b ed .S5 T h e situation was becom ing precarious for the Petrograd Bolsheviks. O n 14 M arch an extraordi­ nary session o f the Petrograd soviet debated the crisis. T h e m easures adopted were m u ch h arsher than in a sim ilar situation in June 1918. T h e Bolshevik speakers d eterm ined th at the strike was th e result of “subversive Left SR activity” and dem an d ed th at th e Left SRs be treated as insurrectionists, under the decree on Red Terror. T h is provided for execution as a penalty for attem pted insurrec­ tion. T h e soviet resolved to “clear the Putilov plant of W hite Guardists and speculators.”56 T h e Bolsheviks labeled the workers’ protest in those term s because at stake 51 S. S tru m ilin , “Zabastovki v Petrograde,” S ta tistika truda, nos. 8 - IOyApril 1919), 37. T h is is a conservative estim ate. A British p arliam entary report cites a n “intercepted Bolshevik wireless m essage, w hich states th at 60,0 0 0 w orkm en are on strike in Petrograd, dem anding an end to fratricidal w ar and an in stitution of free trade." See “S um m ary of a R e p o rto n th e Internal Situation in R ussia," in A C ollection o f Reports on Bolshevism in Russia, d o c u m e n t 54, p. 60. 52 For the dates on L e n in ’s presence in Petrograd, see editor’s note to L en in , Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 38, p. 520; for the text o f his speech, see pp. 3 1 -3 8 . For a m ore detailed account, see “B ol’shoi m iting v n aro d n o in d o m e ,” Petrogradskaia Pravda ( 14 M arch 1919), 2. Sovietsources failed to n o te a negative reaction o f the a u d ie n ce to L en in ’s speech. Sec also W estern reports such as “Strike against B olshevists,” TAe T im es (2 April 1919), 12. 5’ Ibid. A n o th er source on this is A m erican m ilitary attache, Sw itzerland, “S um m ary o f the Bolshevik S ituation . . . du rin g W eek E n d in g 5 April 1919,” Records, dispatch 861.00.4510, P- 4. 54 “P u tilo f M e e tin g ,” T he T im es (4 April 1919), 10. 55 Im brie, Vyborg, F in lan d , “Telegram to D e p artm en t of State” (19 M arch 1919), Records, dispatch 861.00 .4 1 0 5 . 56 Gogolevskii, Petrogradskii Sovet, p. 176.

were not just bread rations bu t the Bolsheviks’ very legitimacy. Since the proletariat was in power, it could not protest against its own governm ent, they reasoned. Objectively, the strikers were agents of the bourgeoisie in the ranks of the proletariat. T h e soviet resolution of 14 M arch declared that all those who did not w ant to work were to be fired w ithout com pensation.57 T h e Left SRs were den o u n ced as the “last detachm ent o f the bourgeoisie,” w hich had to be sm ashed. M eetings and rallies were banned. A nyone in possession o f the Putilov resolution was arrested im m ediately.58 Workers who refused to resum e work were throw n o u t o f their dwellings, and their food ration cards were taken away.59 Suppression of the strike at three enterprises, at least, involved the use of arm ed force: at the Putilov plant, the T reugolnik rubber factory, and the Rozhdestvenskii tram park.60 T h e Bolsheviks intended to deploy the Baltic Sea sailors, but they refused and voted at th eir m eeting to join the workers instead.61 This posture of the Baltic Sea sailors is quite plausible in view of their past record: their solidarity w ith the Petrograd strikers in June 1918, their own abortive uprising in O ctober 1918, and their widely known support for the Left SR party.62 T h e Petrograd authorities hurriedly brought additional forces into Petrograd: eighteen th o u ­ sand m en and 250 m achine guns, according to an A m erican intelligence rep o rt.63 Strikers barricaded them selves at the Putilov plant, w hich was storm ed and occupied. T hose in possession o f firearms were executed on the spot. T h e Left SRs printed an underground leaflet w hich shed som e light on the details of this operation: T he Bolsheviks have opened fire on the m eeting o f workers at the Treugolnik factory. The Bolsheviks have opened fire on the workers of the Rozhdestvenskii trampark. There are hundreds o f arrested Putilov workers. A detachment o f executioners from Gorokhovaia Street [the address o f the Cheka] dressed up as sailors have entered the premises o f the Putilov plant. Everybody! Defend the Putilov workers! Down with the Autocracy of the Commissars!64

57 Ib id , p . 177. 58 “Strike a g a in st B o ls h e v is ts ,” T h e T im e s (2 A pril 1 9 1 9 ), 12. 59 “P etrograd R e v o lt a g a in st S o v ie t ,” T h e T im e s (3 A pril 1 9 1 9 ), 14.

60 T h e fo u r s o u r c e s o n th is are G o g o le v s k ii, P e tro g ra d sk ii S o v e t, p. 178; Ό

n o v o m p r e stu p le n ii

L evyk h E se r o v v P e tr o g r a d e ,” lz v e s tiia (1 8 M a r c h 1 9 1 9 ), 5; I m b r ie 1 V y b o r g , F in la n d , R e co r d s, d is p a tc h 8 6 1 .0 0 .4 1 4 7 ; an d “Petrograd R e v o lt a g a in st S o v ie t,” T h e T im e s (3 A pril 1 9 1 9 ), 14. 61 “S trik es in P etr o g r a d ,” B u lle tin s o f th e R u s sia n L ib e r a tio n C o m m itte e (2 4 M a y 1 9 1 9 ), 4 . 62 I. F ler o v sk ii, “M ia te z h m o b iliz o v a n n y k h m a tro so v 14 oktiabria 1 9 1 8 g o d a ,” P r o le ta r sk a ia re v o liu ts iia , v o l. 8 , n o . 55 (1 9 2 6 ) , 2 3 7 . T h e a u th o r w as a B a ltic F le e t c o m m is s a r in 1 9 1 8 . A s h e stated in th is a r tic le , th is a b o r tiv e r e b e llio n r e m a in e d la rg ely u n k n o w n . 63 Im b r ie , V y b o r g , F in la n d (2 0 A p ril 1 9 1 9 ), R e co r d s, d isp a tch 8 6 1 .0 0 .4 3 3 0 . 64 “L istovk a L ev y k h E se r o v ,” T s . P .A ., F o n d 17, T sK a R K P(b), O p is ’ 8 4 , B iu ro Sekretariata, d o c u m e n t 4 3 , pp. 2 0 - 2 2 .

T he data on the num ber of arrests reported in the Soviet press and in the West are close enough. According to the Times, 300 arrests were m ade during the week after 16 M arch ,65 and suspected ringleaders were shot w holesale.66 Ac­ cording to a Soviet source, 225 Left SRs were arrested in M arch, 75 of them at the Putilov p lan t.67 T h e exact num ber of those shot is not known. Bolshevik newspapers published the nam es of 15 Left SRs who were executed. Som e Western reports cited the figure o f 12.68 A letter from Petrograd, published in the West, did not provide an exact figure but simply stated: "A score or so of workmen were shot at the [Putilov] works. ”69 T h e Am erican consul’s figure was the highest: in April, h e reported, 200 workers were shot on orders from Zinoviev.70 T h e findings in a recent study make this figure quite plausible: “T he strike was suppressed and the Cheka went to work, holding sum m ary trials. M any executions followed, taking place in a remote locality called Irinovka, near the fortress of Schlusselburg. T h e procedure was to line up the victims against the wall, blindfolded, and to shoot them down in batches by m achine gun fire.”71 T he Bolshevik authorities publicly declared that the arrested socialists would be held hostages and that their fate would depend on the political behavior o f the opposition parties.72 AU these m easures— lockouts, plant occupations, arrests, shootings, execu­ tions, and the taking of hostages— had been practiced earlier. T h e truly new procedure in the afterm ath of this strike was that the workers were forced to recant their sins.7? A new ritual, w hich was to becom e so famous in the 1930s, was established in 1919: workers were forced to say publicly that they had been led astray by provocateurs and counterrevolutionaries. And this despite the fact that the Bolsheviks’ own investigation showed that the m anagem ent had been incom petent at m any plants and that some workers’ grievances were legiti­ mate. T h e Bolsheviks now defined the role of m anagem ent and workers explic­ itly. T here was no talk anym ore that the will of workers was the law for the CP. Now the task of m anagem ent was to “create a truly dictatorial organ” that would 65 “Strike against Bolshevists,” The Tim es (2 April 1919), 12. 65 “Putilof M eeting,” The Times (4 April 1919), 10. 67 Gogolevskii, Petrogradskii Sovet, p. 178. 68 “Les O uvriers chez Ies Bolchewiks,” B ulletin Russe (15 June 1919), 3, and “V Chrezvychainoi K om m issii,” Petrogradskaia Pravda (13 April 1919), 3. 69 “Soviet Russia: A Letter from Petrograd,” B ulletins o f the Russian Liberation Com m ittee (3 May 1919), 3 -4 . 70 Im brie, Vyborg, Finland (18 April 1919), Records, dispatch 861.00.4323. 71 Leggett, T he Cheka, p. 313. 72 D ata on workers being forced to work are in A m erican military attache, Switzerland, “S um ­ mary of the Bolshevik Situation . . during Week E nding 5 April 1919,” Records, dispatch 861.00.4510, p. 4; on taking hostages see “Na belyi terror otvetim krasnym ,” Petrogradskaia Pravda (9 April 1919), I. See also “Strikes in Petrograd,” B u lletin so f the Russian Liberation Com m ittee (24 May 1919), 4. 73 Rem ington, BuildingSocialism in Bolshevik Russia, p. HO.

treat the workers as pupils. T h e party would teach the workers by dictatorial m eans what they were perm itted to do. Despite the severity of Bolshevik repressions, sporadic outbursts of workers’ protests con tin u ed throughout the rem ainder o f 1919. As in Moscow, the new wave o f strikes cam e in June and July, in response to drafting into the Red Army. An eyewitness reported from Petrograd: “there were strikes on a large scale at the Putilov and O bukhov works. D uring the last strike known to m e, on 11 July, at the Nikolayev [railway] engine workshops, there were six strikers killed and n ineteen w ounded.”74 C heka boss Iakov Peters adm itted that arm ed force had to be used at the Nikolayev railroad.75 W h a t looked at first like extraordinary em ergency m easures, such as plant occupations and shootings, were practiced systematically by m id-1919. Plants involved in n onm ilitary production were simply shut down tem porarily in the event of a strike.76 Striking workers were either dismissed or drafted into the Red Army. A protester would becom e a soldier, and he would have to obey orders or face th e prospect o f being shot. At plants producing war m ateriel workers would be forced to work, as the A m erican consul explained: “Up to 6 July, labor districts of O bukhov, Aleksandrovskii, and Putilov plants were under supervi­ sion of enforced detachm ents of Red police, and in recent times, owing to the strike inaugurated at Putilov plant, Red police were introduced inside the factory. ”77 U nderground reports from the factories said that workers were afraid to speak freely, th at C o m m u n ist cells were spying on everyone, trying to iden­ tify “counterrevolutionaries,”78 and that elections could no t be called anything dim ly resem bling real elections. Any objections were regarded with suspicion. Any attem pts to resort to a m ore energetic protest resulted in the use of arm ed force, and new casualties.79 T h e Bolsheviks were getting used to applying m ilitary solutions to social and political problem s.

Trouble in the Provinces In the spring of 1919 serious disturbances broke out in the provinces: strikes, general strikes, and uprisings. W hat distinguished them from the unrest in the capitals was th at not just workers b u t soldiers, sailors, and peasants took part, 74 “L abour D isadvantages,” The Tim es (12 A ugust 1919), 1 1 -1 2 . 75 “Strike M ovem ent in Petrograd,” B ulletins o f the R ussian Liberation C om m ittee (18 A ugust 1919), 3. For an estim ate o f casualties in Petrograd in M ay and June 1919, see “Latest News from Petrograd,” B ulletins o f the R ussian Liberation C om m ittee (19 July 1919), 4. 76 Im brie, Vyborg, F inland, “R eport on C onditions in Petrograd by an A gent Acting on Office Instructions” (20 July 1919), Records, dispatch 861.00.5111. 77 Ibid. 78 “L abour D isadvantages,” The Tim es (12 A ugust 1919), 11-12. 79 Im brie, Vyborg, F inland, “R eport on C onditions in Petrograd by an A gent Acting on Office Instructions” (20 July 1919), Records, dispatch 861.00.5111.

and th e Bolshevik suppression was m u c h m ore bloody. Peters, the C heka boss, adm itted th at troops destined for the frontline war against the W hites had to be diverted to the internal fro n t.80 T hese disturbances were no t the work of the W hites; rather they were m anifestations o f internal social and political tensions in Bolshevik Russia. Strikes and general strikes took place in T ula (arm am ent and cartridge plants), Sorm ovo (locom otive plant), Bryansk (m etallurgical plants), Tver (textile and m etal industry plants), and Ivanovo-Voznesensk (tex­ tile industry), th at is, in all m ajor cities o f the central industrial region.81 Red Army m u tin ies and rebellions w hich coincided w ith workers’ strikes broke out in O rel, Bryansk, Sm olensk, G om el, and Astrakhan. It is extrem ely difficult to reconstruct the course of events in these cities. For exam ple, all we know o f strikes in Ivanovo-Voznesensk is w hat local C o m m u ­ nists them selves reported: th at workers were grum bling, that C o m m u n ist orga­ nizers were shouted at and prevented from addressing workers’ rallies, and that attem pts were m ade to strike.82 C o m m u n ist authorities im posed a com plete news blackout on strike activity. W h e n the SR paper Delo naroda tried to publish an ac co u n t o f the strikes in T ula at the end of M arch, C o m m u n ist censors prohibited this, and the paper cam e o u t w ith blank w hite colum ns un d er th e title “Events in T u la .”83 T h e Bolshevik press did n o t write about w hat had actually h ap pened in T ula an d Bryansk either bu t sim ply condem ned a “new counterrevolutionary conspiracy.”84 Events in T ula are reconstructed here on the basis o f four sources. T h e first source, Soviet history books, presents the official v ersion.85 It is very short. It acknowledges that strikes did take place in T ula and Bryansk. T hese are said to have been instigated by M enshevik and Left SR provocateurs, w ho plotted to weaken Soviet power and render help to the advancing troops of A dm iral K olchak.86 T h e trouble was so serious that L enin found it necessary to dispatch D zerzhinsky to T ula on 3 April to “liqui­ date” the strike.87 W h a t is conspicuously m issing from this account is any explanation o f why the strike broke o u t and w hat D zerzhinsky did to “liquidate” the strike. 80 Peters, “K om u oni p o m o g aiu t,” Izvestiia (12 April 1919). 81 F or a b rief discussion o f strikes in Petrograd, T u la , and Astrakhan see, for exam ple, R em ing­ ton, B uilding Socialism in Bolshevik R ussia, pp. 1 0 8 -1 0 , and the m u c h m ore detailed S cheibert, L enin a n der M a c h t, pp. 3 1 9 -2 1 . 82 D o c u m e n t 431, Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 317. 88 See “Belye Polosy,” D elo naroda, no. 2 (21 M arch 1919), I. 84 D zerzhinsky, Latsis, a n d Peters, the C heka bosses, m en tio n ed troubles in T u la and Bryansk in several articles, and n o th in g else was said in th e official Bolshevik press. Latsis, “K zagovoru Levykh E serov,” lzvestiia (21 M arch 1919), I. 85 S pirin, K lassy i partii, pp. 308—10. 85 M artyn Latsis, “K zagovoru Levykh E serov,” lzvestiia (21 M arch 1919), I, and Peters, “K om u oni p o m o g a iu t,” lzvestiia (12 April 1919). 87 “R asporiazhenie L en in a sekretariu, 3 A prelia 1 9 1 9 g o d a ,” in Belov, e d ., Izisto rii Vecheka, p. 270. See also Leggett, T he C heka, p. 319.

T h e second acco u n t, by the T ula Bolsheviks them selves, provides m ore inform ation and contradicts som ew hat the official version.88 A ccording to this report, strikes at the arm am ents and cartridge plants broke ou t in early M arch and th en again in the first days o f April, w hen the railway workers joined the m etalworkers, th u s tu rn in g the p lan t strikes into a general strike. T h is explains why it was exactly on 3 April th at L enin urged D zerzhinsky to “liquidate the strike” in T ula. W h a t caused the strike, th e T ula Bolsheviks reported, was the arrest of th e M ensheviks and SRs. U nfortunately the T ula Bolsheviks did no t explain why they decided to arrest the M enshevik and SR workers, b u t the sequence o f events is im portant: first the arrests, th en th e strike. At certain points th e frankness o f the report is sim ply surprising: “the masses were follow­ ing th e M ensheviks.” T h e C o m m u n ist party was very weak am ong the T ula workers: o u t o f several thousand em ployed workers, there were only 228 C o m ­ m u nists in th e entire city organization. T hose who were officially listed as C o m m u n ist sym pathizers were in fact “very unstable. ” T h e T ula C om m unists criticized them selves for n o t being able to “knock the ground from u n d er the M ensheviks,” b u t they pointed to extenuating circum stances: “the social m ilieu in T u la was n o t favorable to C o m m u n ist construction. T h e fact th at the T ula workers follow any opposition, in this particular case the M ensheviks, so readily can be explained by their social origin: a worker at the arm am ents or cartridge plants here is n o t a pure proletarian. H e is firm ly connected to the village.” In o th er words, the workers’ petit bourgeois consciousness was at th e root of the problem . A pparently in order to com bat this consciousness, the T ula Bol­ sheviks prohibited workers from ow ning plots of land in th e surrounding c o u n ­ tryside, th u s u n d erm in in g severely th e workers’ capacity to su p p lem en t their poor food rations. T h e T u la Bolsheviks frankly described the workers’ oppositional attitudes, b u t they w ithheld inform ation from the C entral C o m m ittee on the workers’ deteriorating eco n o m ic conditions— the m ain cause of the strike— and said virtually n o th in g ab o u t the extent o f the repression. O n 22 February 1919 the head o f th e L abor Statistics D e p artm en t gave a report to th e T ula C o m m u n ist leaders on th e workers’ econom ic situ atio n .89 H e com pared the absolute m in i­ m u m o f food necessary for a worker w ith w hat th e T ula workers h ad actually been getting over the preceding several m onths. T h e trend was alarm ing. T h e cost o f a food ration for a single (unm arried) worker in N ovem ber 1918 was 14 rubles an d 42 kopeks a day; in D ecem ber it clim bed to 16.47, and in January 1919 to 23.56. T h a t m ean t th at wages for th e lowest-paid, single workers 88 It appeared several m o n th s after th e strike in an official rep o rt o f the T u la Province C P C o m m itte e to th e C C in an internal C o m m u n ist party publication: “Iz otcheta d eiatel’nosti T u l’skoi gubernskoi organizatsii za m a rt i aprel’ 1919 g o d a ,” Izvestiia TsK a R K P (b), no. 3 (4 July 1919), 4. 89 “P rozh ito ch n y i m in im u m v gorode T ule. D oklad tovarishcha B erlina, zaveduiushchego podotdelom statistiki, T u l’skogo otdela tru d a ,” S ta tistika truda, no. 5—7 (M arch 1919), 35—36.

covered only 42 p ercent of bare m in im u m needs; wages for a worker providing for a two- or th ree-m em b er fam ily covered 30 percent of needs in N ovem ber 1918 and 18 p ercent in January 1919. T h e statistician adm itted that th e quality of food distributed to workers at those fixed prices was falling dram atically and that an ever larger share o f food had to be bought at ever increasing prices on the free m arket. A m id th e workers’ increasing frustration any incident or case o f perceived injustice could have provoked protests. As in other cities, workers in T ula com plained th at the C om m unists, Red A rm y soldiers, and the C heka were well supplied w ith food. In the beginning of F ebruary those who com plained were arrested as provocateurs, and th e first wave o f strikes broke out. A ccording to a participant, a T u la worker, the strike started after th e authorities arrested the M ensheviks an d SR s.90 T h e Bolsheviks shut down the plant, and a great m any workers were fired. Several days later rehiring began. “Provocateurs” and “tro u ­ blem akers” were kept out. H ungry and intim idated, the workers returned to the plant. B ut in m id -M arch the strikes resum ed. T h is tim e th e m ain dem an d was th at the food rations take workers’ families into account. Indeed, th e T ula Labor Statistics D ep artm en t figures show that the m ost critical situation confronted workers w ith fam ilies. At a large rally workers d em anded th at the city soviet chairm an, Grigorii Kaminsky, give an account on th e food supply situation. H e was forced to attend the rally and had to listen to workers’ bitter speeches about the privileges the com m issars enjoyed while workers’ ch ildren w ent hungry. Som e speakers called for reconvocation of the C o n stitu en t Assembly. Shouts were heard: “D ow n with the commissars! Down with th e soviets!”91 Kaminsky prom ised to im prove the workers’ situa­ tion, b u t th at sam e n ig h t the C heka arrested two hu n d red worker activists.92 T his understandably ignited m ore protests and clashes, and at that point L enin dispatched D zerzhinsky to “liquidate” the strike. In contrast to th e official version o f these events, a T ula worker— the third source— reported th a t th e m ore experienced anti-B olshevik workers w arned other workers in m id-M arch against fu rth er strikes, because these w ould be fruitless. T h e T u la M enshevik com m ittee also tried to prevent the strike, fear­ ing th at it w ould lead to severe repression and bloodshed.93 C ontradicting the assertions of th e C heka functionaries, Pravda likewise adm itted that the M en ­ sheviks urged the workers not to strike.94 Yet n eith er Pravda n o r any other 90 This unique docum ent was published in a Siberian newspaper on the W hite-held territory after the author was taken prisoner o f war at the front. “C hto delaetsia v T u le ,” Nasha zaria, no. 185 (26 August 1919). 91 Ibid. 92 According to Peters, the Cheka functionary, there were 40. Peters, “Komu oni pom ogaiut,” Izvestiia (12 April 1919). 93 “Pis’m o v redaktsiiu,” Delo naroda, no. 10 (30 M arch 1919), 3. 94 “O M en’shevikakh,” Pravda (6 April 1919).

published source revealed exactly how the strike was “liquidated,” to use L enin’s expression. This we learn from the fourth and most thorough source on the Tula strike: the secret reports to Lenin by special plenipotentiaries. T he author of the first report was not identified; the second was written by a m em ber of the NKVD Collegium , V. P. Antonov. His report admitted that the Menshevik and SR organizations in Tula “were very strong” and that they managed to “provide an outlet for the discontent of the masses by their demagogic agitation.” Antonov equated the Mensheviks and SRs with Black Hundreds and did not hide his intense hostility to them . AU the more revealing is his admission of their political strength.95 Like all accounts, this one confirmed that on 23 M arch the Tula Bolsheviks arrested 23 Mensheviks and SRs. They were mostly members of the M enshevik and SR city party committees and prom inent leaders of a local trade union of metalworkers. In response to this action the trade union sum m oned a city conference of metalworkers. T he Bolsheviks were worried because the conference had the authority to speak on behalf of the Tula workers. According to the unnam ed author of the first secret report, local Bolsheviks decided that if the conference adopted a resolution in favor of a strike, it would be necessary “to arrest the entire conference immediately. This decision was adopted unanim ously by the soviet and the city [Communist] party com m ittee.”96 Cheka agents appeared at the conference and arrested some more prom i­ nent trade union leaders. It does seem that the Bolsheviks were deliberately provocative. They were worried because the Mensheviks and SRs had estab­ lished contact with Red Army soldiers “who were expressing discontent also. ”97 T he unnam ed author of this report criticized the actions of the Cheka at the conference in hindsight: “We could have started the arrests immediately any­ way, not at the plants, but in their homes. W e could have arrested all those we needed to .”98 O n 3 April the plants stopped once again in protest against the arrests at the conference. In retaliation the province CP comm ittee, the M ili­ tary Com m issariat, and the E C of the soviet formed a troika to “liquidate the strike.” They armed all Com m unists at both plants, a total of four hundred people, and occupied the plants with the help of a detachm ent of International95 Predsedateliu Sovnarkoma tovarishchu Leninu, “Doklad chlena kollegii NKVD Antonova o sobytiiakh v T u le s 30 M arta po 10 Apreiia” (To the chairm an of the Council of People’s C om m is­ sars comrade L enin, A report of the m em ber of the NKVD Board Antonov on the events in Tula from 30 M arch to 10 April), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 363. 96 Predsedateliu Sovnarkoma tovarishchu L eninu, “Doklad o polozhenii na T ul’skom oruzheinom i patronnom zavodakh s 14 m arta po 10 apreiia” (A report on the situation at the arm am ents and cartridge plants in Tula from 14 M arch to 10 April), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docum ent 363. 97 A report of the m em ber of the NKVD Board Antonov on the events in Tula from 30 M arch to 10 April, T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 363. 98 A report on the situation at the arm am ents and cartridge plants in Tula from 14 M arch to 10 April, T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docum ent 363.

ists, th at is, foreigners in the service of the C heka. T h e strike com m ittee organized a street procession trying to attract Red A rm y soldiers to their side. Railroad workers joined the strike. New arrests followed. O n 8 April “all the dem agogues an d hooligans” were arrested. Ten thousand workers, a third of the work force, returned to work at this stage. T h e problem the Bolsheviks faced was th at it was difficult to get rid o f all active strikers, because they were the m ost skilled workers and could no t be replaced im m e d ia te ly ." A ntonov’s re­ port co n cu rred , and yet he recom m ended that the C om m unists “decisively remove all the M ensheviks an d SRs, transfer the arrested m em bers o f the T ula city com m ittees o f these parties to M oscow, and exile all others o u t o f T ula Province.”100 Even this detailed top secret report to L enin failed to m ention how m any Tula workers were arrested and deported. A ccording to the T ula M ensheviks’ report to th eir own C entral C o m m ittee, from from 30 M arch to 15 April one thousand workers were seize d .101 T h e general strike was suppressed brutally. Som e workers fled to nearby villages. M ilitary discipline was established at the plants, and as usual a screening and purge o f socialists from the workers’ ranks was carried out. Even though “order” was outwardly restored, m any workers were reportedly b egin n in g to w onder w hether a victory of the W hites w ould really be worse. T his attitude am o n g the T u la workers threw the Bolsheviks in M oscow into panic in O ctober 1919, w hen the forces of G eneral D enikin took O rel and were ap proaching T ula.

Strikes in Sorm ovo and Tver Like th e arm am en ts p lan t in T ula, the locom otive plant in Sorm ovo was a hotbed o f opposition to the Bolsheviks throughout 1918. T h e leading role here was traditionally played by th e SRs. T h e strikes in the spring of 1919 were alm ost an identical replay of w hat we have already seen in T ula, Petrograd, and Moscow. W orkers’ resolutions in Sorm ovo, as elsew here, dem anded a cessa­ tion of th e civil war, fair elections, abolition of privileges for C om m unists, and convocation of the C o n stitu en t Assembly. In a fam iliar pattern the plant was shut dow n, and thirty worker activists were arrested. T h e authorities deducted food rations for every strike day from the strikers’ rations and openly ann o u n ced that only those supporting Soviet power would receive the food ra tio n .102 T his 99 Ibid. 100 A report of the m em ber of the NKVD Board Antonov on the events in Tula from 30 March to 10 April,” T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis' 3, docum ent 363. 101 “Pis’mo T u l’skoi organizatsii RSDRP” (15 April 1919), T s.P A ., Fond 275, TsKa RSDRP, Opis’ I, docum ent 190. 102 T his is a report by a worker, a participant in the strike. “Iz nastroenii rabochikh, Nizhegorodskaia guberniia,” Listok “Dela naroda”, no. 2 (n.d.), 4, PSR Archive, file 2003. See also “Rabochie volneniia v Sorm ovo,” Otechestvo, no. 216 (2 October 1919).

m ethod o f dealing with the strike demonstrated only too well how vulnerable the workers were to econom ic control by the authorities. In Tver the authorities also managed to break down the strike m ovem ent, w ithout bloodshed as the official report boasted, by means of intimidation and econom ic pressure. As in Tula, strikes in Tver in June 1919 turned into a general strike: the textile mills, the railcar plant, the tramlines, the printing shops, and all city services w ent on strike, a total of twenty-nine enterprises.103 As in Moscow, strikes began in protest against an order, which came out in June, that 10 percent of the labor force be mobilized into the Red A rm y.104 T he workers also dem anded that a miserable food ration— three-quarters of a pound a day— be increased and that fair elections to the soviet be held. These and other workers' dem ands are known only because a special commissar, V. I. Nevsky, dispatched from Moscow to “liquidate” the strike, reported them to the Bolshevik C C .105 He admitted that the workers’ complaints about unfair food distribution were justified, as was their dem and to hold new elections. He characterized the workers’ econom ic demands as SR in nature— that restric­ tions on trade be lifted and grain requisitioning in the countryside be stopped. Most importantly, Nevsky reported that the workers had presented political dem ands as well. They dem anded a government that would “put an end to [unichtozhit’] the one-party dictatorship.”106 Nevsky’s report produced the impression that at least some of the workers’ concerns were legitimate grievances. He wrote that the local commissars de­ tached themselves from the masses and that they “did not enjoy the trust of the workers.” He felt that some workers’ demands could be fulfilled but that the strike had to stop immediately and unconditionally.107 T he Tver workers, on the other hand, wanted their demands to be fulfilled first, and then they would negotiate about ending the strike. O n 18 June all twenty-nine enterprises were on strike. As in 1918, the Tver workers elected a council of plenipotentiaries from the factories and plants, consisting of 150 representatives, and entrusted it to negotiate with the authorities.108 T he council established contact with the local Red Army soldiers, and they promised not to take part in suppressing the strike.109 Nevsky’s m ain concern when he arrived in Tver was to prevent a huge workers’ dem onstration and a rally in the center of the city. T he strikers who had printed the announcem ent of the rally were arrested. Nevsky m et with the representatives of the strikers and presented them with an ultim atum . 105 “Likvidatsiia zabastovki v T v eri,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta (28 Ju n e 1919), 2. 104 Ibid. It is cu rio u s th a t th e Bolsheviks published su c h an em barrassing fact. 105 V. I. Nevskii, “Tverskaia Z abastovka,” Izvestiia (I July 1919), I. 106 Ibid. 107 "Tverskie sobytiia, Beseda s tovarishchem V. I. N evskim ,” Izvestiia (28 June 1919). 108 Ibid. 109 “V seobshchaia zabastovka,” L istok "D ela naroda”, no. 2 (n .d .), 8, PSR A rchive, folder 2003.

Unfortunately he did not report what exactly the conditions of the ulti­ m atum were, only that he had threatened to resort to “decisive m easures.”110 The council of plenipotentiaries debated this ultim atum all night long and finally decided to accept Nevsky’s conditions. They agreed to a mobilization of 10 percent of the labor force into the Red Army, and they agreed to stop the strike immediately, but they failed to convince the rank and file to accept this decision. T h e representative of the Tver Menshevik party comm ittee, Leikart, also declared that he was against the strike and urged the workers to go back to work.111 Nevsky admitted that the Tver workers were more radical than the council of plenipotentiaries, which lost the leadership of the strike. Nevsky did not explain in his report what “decisive measures” to suppress the strike he undertook, except that “this tim e,” (emphasis is mine) “not a single shot was fired. ” W ith all the similarity to strikes in other cities, what is remarkable about the pattern of strikes in Tver is that the authorities initially negotiated with the strikers, the workers m anaged to organize themselves and elect their own repre­ sentatives, and they established contact with Red Army soldiers. As we shall see in Orel and Bryansk, unrest flared up simultaneously among workers, peasants, and Red Army soldiers’, which made it particularly dangerous for the C om m u­ nist authorities.

R ebellions and M utinies in Orel Province The farther away from Moscow the province, the more ruthless were the local commissars and the m ore arbitrary was their rule, especially if the area in question was close to the quickly shifting front line of the civil war with the W hites, and if the bulk of the population were peasants. This was the socio­ political mix in the black earth region, south of Moscow, bordering on Ukraine and the cossack lands. Kursk, Tambov, Voronezh, and Orel provinces were hotbeds of rebellion throughout the civil war years. Among the m ain reasons for this were Bolshevik econom ic policies— grain and horse requisitioning and attempts to organize peasant com m unes— but most importantly was the arbi­ trary nature of the local C om m unists’ rule. Orel Com m unists had to adm it to the Bolshevik C C that drunkenness among the local Com m unists was ram ­ p a n t.112 T h e Orel Com m unists objected strenuously when Moscow issued a circular on the legalization of the Menshevik party.113 T he local Comm unists responded that it was dangerous to legalize the opposition parties because in a no “Tverskie sobytiia, Beseda s tovarishchem V.I. Nevskim,” Izvestiia (28 June 1919). 111 Ibid. 112A letter of the Orel C om m unist Party City C om m ittee to the C C (received 4 February 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 226. 113 “Orlovskomu Gubernskom u Komitetu RKP(b)” (26 February 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, pp. 100-101.

city like O rel th ere was no social base for C om m unists to rely upon. It was a petit bourgeois city w ith o u t any plants or workers. 114 T h e local C heka arrested th e O rel co rresp o ndent o f the M enshevik new spaper, w hich was still legally co m in g o u t in M oscow . 115 If there were those w ho dared to criticize, they were d ealt w ith severely. T h e O rel Izvestiia reprinted a decision o f one uezd C o m ­ m u n ist party cell: “Karachevskii U ezd. C o m m u n ist party of the Bolsheviks co n d em n s citizen M oisei M akarovich Z elenko to death for evil actions de­ signed to u n d erm in e the authority o f the party and o f the authorities. E xecu­ tion of th e verdict is declared to be a duty o f any C o m m u n ist w ho would m eet Z elenko an y w h ere. ”116 In th e city o f Bryansk, a m etallurgical center, the situation was certainly not as bad as in Karachevskii U ezd. T h e M enshevik an d Left SR party existed legally and still h ad their representatives in the local city soviet. 117 T h e M oscow Bolsheviks adm itted th at the opposition socialist parties had had an overw helm ­ ing prep o n d eran ce in the Bryansk area “until very recently. ”118 As in other cities, th e opposition parties cam paigned for abolition of the C heka, free elec­ tions to th e soviets, and cessation o f grain requisitioning. T hese resolutions were later construed to have represented a call for an arm ed insurrection. W h en ev er trouble broke out, local C o m m u n ists alm ost always reported to M oscow th at strikes and rebellions were the work of M enshevik, Left SR, or SR provocateurs and agitators. A local Bolshevik reported to M oscow that the uprising in Bryansk was the work o f Left SR adventurists, whose slogan was D ow n w ith th e C om m issars and Jews!” 119 T h e M oscow em issaries were som e­ tim es re lu ctan t to accept such an easy explanation and tried to investigate w h eth er local C o m m u n ists were guilty of any m isdeeds, as Nevsky had done in Tver. A ccording to a special C heka em issary who investigated the Red Arm y soldiers’ m u tin y an d the peasants’ rebellion: “It was caused by the abuse of au th o rity on th e part o f som e representatives of Soviet power and by the incite­ m e n t o f the kulaks. For exam ple, com rade Kiselev cam e to a village to requisi­ tion horses, and to the question of peasants ‘How m any horses are needed?' he answ ered, ‘I will take as m any as I please. ’”120 D espite th e fact th at it was convenient for both the M oscow C om m unists and 114 “O t O rlovskogo G ubernskogo kom iteta” (18 F ebruary 1919), P erepiskaSekretariatar vol. 6, p. 311.

115 “Protest T sK a R S D R P ,” V segda Vpered, no. 13 (22 F ebruary 1919). See also “Protiv M enshevikov,” V segda V pered, no. 9 (18 February 1919). 116 "S m ertn y i prigovor k o m m u n ista m ,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 5 (12 F ebruary 1919). 117 O n th e n u m erica l strength o f opposition parties in the Soviet, see Vsegda Vpered, no. 4(11 F eb ru ary 1919), 4. 118 G . Kirev, “Volki v ovech ’ei sh k u re ,” Izvestiia, no. 103 (18 M ay 1919), I. 119 “D oklad predsedatelia D m itrovskogo Ispolkom a Kurskoi g u b e rn ii,” T s .P A ., D zerzliinsky A rchive, F ond 76, O pis’ 3, d o c u m e n t 49. no “γ V serossiiskuiu C h re zv y c h ain u iu K om m issiiu ot tovarishcha Z hukova, kopiia v TsKa R K P(b),” T s.P .A ., Fond 17, RKP(b), O pis' 6, d o c u m e n t 197, p. 105.

the local autocrats to blam e “agitators,” som etim es articles in Pravda and highranking C o m m u n ists adm itted th at the real cause of rebellions was the m is­ deeds o f local C o m m unists. T h e im m ediate cause o f the rebellions in O rel Province in M arch and April Pravda saw no t in M enshevik agitation b u t in the failures of th e local a u th o rities.121 T h e supply of heating fuel disappeared alm ost com pletely in O rel even though local authorities had locom otives and railcars at th eir disposal, and th e province’s Red Army soldiers did not receive even a third o f th e food rations d u e to them , because o f the negligence o f the Province M ilitary C o m m itte e .122 Sim ilarly, distribution of bread rations at the Bryansk p lan t stopped a lto g eth er.123 In the city o f O rel a Red Arm y soldiers’ m utiny broke out, and in Bryansk workers w ent on strike. In O rel the local C heka took eight hostages from am ong the socialists.124 Two o f them were M ensheviks, G lukhov an d K ogan.125 A special operations headquarters was set up to suppress the uprisings o f workers, soldiers, and p easan ts.126 T h e C heka agent reported th at on 8—10 M arch rebellious Red A rm y units were killing C o m m unists. T h e ir slogans were: D ow n w ith the Soviets1. Beat th e Jews!127 F ighting m u st have been heavy, since Peters wrote in Izvestiia: “R einforce­ m ents designated for the front line are used up for the liquidation o f the uprising.” 128 In Bryansk som e units refused to obey orders and w ent over to the side of insurgents in stead .129 D espite heavy reinforcem ents from the front it took th e Bolsheviks at least a m o n th — from m id-M arch to m id-A pril— to suppress th e m o v em ent by m eans o f special troikas and m erciless execu­ tions. 130 C o m m u n ist sources do n o t say anything about casualties, understand­ ably. A ccording to an SR source, 152 workers were arrested at the Bryansk plant and transferred to the Butyrki jail in M oscow .131 C asualties incurred during the fighting w ith th e soldiers and the rebels were estim ated to have reached several th o u sa n d .132 Events in O rel Province in the spring o f 1919 suggest that o ur understanding 121 “B esporiadki v O rlc i B ryanske,” Pravda (21 M arch 1919), I. 122 Ibid. 125 “Prodovol’stvie m ashinostroitel’nykh zavodov,” Izvestiia (20 February 1919), 4. 124 “Besporiadki v O rle i B ryanske,” Pravda (21 M arch 1919), I. O n taking hostages, see also E ditorial in D elo naroda, no. 2 (21 M arch 1919). 125 la. M iakotin, “K sobytiiam v B ryanske,” D elo naroda, no. 9 (29 M arch 1919). 126 “K sobytiianr v B rianske,” Delo naroda, no. 3 (22 M arch 1919), 2. 127 “V V serossiiskuiu C h re zv y c h ain u iu K om m issiiu ot tovarishcha Z hukova, kopiia v TsKa RKP(b),” T s.P .A ., F ond 17, RKP(b), O pis’ 6, d o c u m e n t 197, p. 105. 128 Peters, “K om u oni p o m o g aiu t,” Izvestiia (12 April 1919). 129 “C h to delaetsia v T u le ,” N asha zaria, no. 185 (26 A ugust 1919). no “Q{ O rlovskogo G ubernskogo kom iteta” (18 M ay 1919), “D oklad o rabote Orlovskogo G ubem skogo K om iteta RKP(b) za a p rel’ i pervuiu polovinu rn a ia ,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 416. 131 “V M oskovskoi Butyrskoi tiu r’m e ,” Volia Rossii (18 D ecem b er 1920). 132 lm b rie, Vyborg, F in lan d , “Intelligence R ep o rt” (26 M ay 1919), Records, dispatch 861.00.4587.

of the civil war as a war between the Bolsheviks and the W hite armies should be reconsidered. A civil war was raging on the supposedly Bolshevik-controlled territory as well, a war between the C om m unist authorities and peasants, soldier-deserters, and workers— a war on the internal front. T he closer the rebellious area was to the forces of the W hites, just across the front line, the more brutal was the suppression on the internal front.

The Astrakhan Tragedy Located on the steppes of the lower Volga, between the lands of the Don and O renburg cossacks, Astrakhan— this provincial fishing town on the periphery of European Russia— acquired great strategic im portance in the spring of 1919. It lay in the area of a possible juncture of the forces of Admiral Kolchak, advancing to the Volga from the Urals, and General Denikin, whose forces were just beginning to unfold their historic offensive from the N orth Caucasus that would bring them to the threshold of Moscow by October. T he C om m u­ nist high com m and decided that Astrakhan had to be held at whatever cost, to prevent a linkup of the W hite armies. Perhaps that is why the workers’ strike and the soldiers’ m utiny there in M arch 1919 were suppressed with such excep­ tional brutality. To this day the tragedy in Astrakhan remains largely unknown. T he authori­ ties imposed a com plete news blackout, and the C om m unist press in the capitals did not even m ention that anything had happened. Soviet histories do acknowledge that what they call a W hite Guardist rebellion took place and that these enem ies attracted “backward elements of workers. 33 T he rebels are said to have disarmed a part of the Forty-fifth Regiment, seized the building of the local party com m ittee, and installed m achine guns in some towers. For two days “intense m achine gun fire” was going on in the city.134 N othing is said about w hat caused the insurgency, who the enemies were, or how m any were killed during the “intense m achine gun fire.” Fortunately, accounts by the Astrakhan Com m unists themselves and by the local SRs shed some light on the course of events in Astrakhan. T hree familiar causes can be ascertained to have triggered the workers’ brewing discontent into a strike and a rebellion. First, the workers’ food rations were lower than those of sailors, and they dem anded that they be given an equal food ration. Second, at protest rallies at the end of February some vociferous protesters were arrested, which electrified the situation.135 And third, as in Tver and Bryansk, soldiers newly drafted from the labor force had no desire to be sent to the front. In the 151 Ocherki istorii Astrakhanskoi oblastnoi organizatsii KPSS, p. 189. 154 O t Astrakhanskogo Gubernskogo Komiteta RKP(b)” (May 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, pp. 371-73. 135 Victor Chernov, “Krovavoe delo” (newspaper clipping), Nicolaevsky Collection, no. 7, PSR, folder 64.

first days of M arch work cam e to a halt at several metal industry war plants.136 At a session of the trade unions’ council sailors’ representatives announced that they would not move against the workers. According to the Astrakhan C om m u­ nists’ report, workers at rallies would not let the Com m unists open their mouths: “Everybody was waiting for an insurrection of the internal enem y— of the masses who lacked political consciousness,” they w rote.137 Although Soviet official histories speak of W hite Guardists, the Astrakhan Com m unists identi­ fied the masses as the enemy. As in Tver, workers’ elected representatives presented their dem ands to the authorities. They called them an ultimatum: food rations had to be increased, free purchase of food had to be allowed; and arrested workers had to be released. Striking workers, anti-Soviet recruits, and neutral sailors— such a com bination m ust have m ade the local Communists insecure, hence their resolute actions once clashes broke out on 10 M arch. As the Astrakhan Com m unists explained: “O n 10 M arch 1919, at ten in the morning, workers at the Vulkan, Etna, Kavkaz, and Merkurii plants stopped work upon hearing the emergency siren [trevozhnyi gudok] and began a rally. T he workers rejected the dem and of the representatives of the authorities to disperse and continued the rally instead. T hen we fulfilled our duty and applied force of arm s.’’138 Thus the workers at several plants, not W hite Guardists, gave a signal to start an “insurrection,” according to the Astrakhan C om m unists’ report. W hat is questionable in their version of events so far is the reference to insurrection. By their own admission, the workers were beginning some rallies and speeches. T h at can hardly qualify as an insurrection. Most likely the Astrakhan Com m unists accused the workers of insurrection in order to justify their imm ediate use of armed force. W hen the workers refused to disperse, loyal C om m unist troops tried to break up the rallies by force. They locked the gates of some workshops to prevent protesters from joining m utinous soldiers outside. T he workers tried to break out, and at this point loyal troops applied the force of arms. As the Astrakhan Com m unists put it: “Since the crowds went on a rampage, the troops opened fire on the crowds.” T he report went on: “At this time, the crowd consisted of the deserters from the Forty-fifth Regiment, who had been recently drafted from am ong the street scum and other suspect persons. This crowd attacked the sentries of the Forty-fifth Regiment at the Elling [part of town], seized weapons, and moved toward the Tartar market shouting: ‘Down with the Communists! Beat the commissars!’”139 T h en the crowd attacked the district C om m unist party com m ittee, and the Com m unists had to flee, in “view of their small 156 Ibid. 137 T h e SR paper in Moscow reprinted this explicit docum ent from the newspaper Komm unist (16 M arch 1919) published in Astrakhan. It is noteworthy that the Moscow Com m unists not only did not reprint it but did not even m ention its existence. “Vosstanie v Astrakhan!, ” De/o naroda, no. 10 (30 M arch 1919), a reprint from K om m unist (16 M arch 1919). 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid.

n u m b er.” T he rebels, continued the report, went to the church square and installed m achine guns in the bell tower. Loyal troops “were compelled to open m achine gun and artillery fire” on the rebels. Even though this report is m uch more explicit than the official Soviet his­ tory, it fails to m ention the num ber of casualties as a result of m achine gun and artillery fire, and it describes the crowds as consisting of deserters rather than workers. Either the loyal troops managed to prevent the workers from joining the crowds in the initial stage, when they locked the gates of the workshops, or the workers did join the rebellious soldiers but the Com m unists did not want to refer to workers as targets of m achine gun and artillery fire. T he latter is confirmed in an eyewitness a cco u n t.140 According to this version, violence started when workers got into a fight with pro-Bolshevik sailors. Workers were shouting: “Beat the sailors! Beat the Com m unists!” W hat neither the Astrakhan C om m unists’ report nor the SR party report m ention, but this eyewitness account does, is that “the workers began to seize individual Com m unists and to kill th em .” This is probably what the Astrakhan Com m unists referred to by the words: “the crowds went on a rampage. ” It was too embarrassing to adm it that in a country of the victorious proletariat, workers were seizing and killing C om ­ munists. T h e SR party account omitted this piece of evidence probably because it suggested that the workers were the first to start the killings. Like other sources, this one confirms that soldiers and workers attacked the party com m it­ tee and installed m achine guns in some locations. Heavy fighting continued for two days. Troops loyal to the Com m unists fired m achine guns and artillery right into the crowds. Scores of rebels were seized on the streets. T he crucial role in the suppression of this rebellion was played by Sergey Kirov, the chair­ m an of the Provisional M ilitary Revolutionary Com m ittee. On 10 M arch he issued the following directive: “I order the merciless extermination of the W hite G uard swine by every m eans of defense at our disposal.”141 On the next day Kirov elaborated on the measures to be undertaken: “AU bandits, maurauders, and others who oppose the orders of the Soviet regime are to be summarily shot . . . prevent the factory committees from making any money payments to workers, pending specific instruction on this m atter.” Factories not working on military contracts were to be closed; all trains out of Astrakhan were to be stopped; ration cards were to be confiscated from those who refused to work; food was to be distributed only to supporters of the Soviet regime; those who wished to eat were to present themselves at their factory, give their nam e to the factory commissar or factory comm ittee, and begin work immediately. Finally, the special departm ent was to bring all those found responsible before a M ili­ tary Revolutionary Field T rib u n al.142 140 T h is is a han d w ritten d o c u m e n t titled “A strakhan’, ” PSR Archive, folder 2046. 141 Jo h n Biggart, “T h e A strakhan’ R ebellion: A n E pisode in th e C areer o f Sergey M ironovich K irov,” S E E R , vol. 54, no. 2 (April 1976), 2 3 1 -4 6 , here 240. 142 Ibid, 241.

T he authorities seized so m any prisoners that they could not house them all in one location. M any were placed on barges on the river. O n 12 M arch executions started. Horrifying scenes are depicted in several docum ents.143 Most executions were carried out at the Cheka headquarters. At some barges the authorities were simply drowning prisoners by throwing them overboard with a stone tied to their body. O n 15 M arch the authorities decided to add a class struggle aspect to the uprising. Prior to that date they had been executing workers and soldiers. On 15 M arch they began to seize m erchants, house owners, and others, com m only referred to as “bourgeoisie.” Either it was a convenient m om ent to settle accounts, or local Com m unists felt that they had to present the disturbances to Moscow as the work of the bourgeoisie. In any case property owners paid a heavy price. Some women of “bourgeois” origin were raped and m urdered. Houses of the “bourgeoisie” were pillaged. Those taken away were not charged with anything, simply executed. T he entire operation was very m uch along the lines of the “class vengeance” most widely practiced during the official Red Terror in the fall of 1918. D uring the insurrection forty-seven Com m unists were killed, and several hundred rebels were executed. How m any were killed in street clashes and in the vengeance campaign afterward is not known. T h e conservative estimate was two thousand, but other sources quoted a figure of four thousand casualties.144 The Com m unists did not blame the socialists for the riots but rather W hite Guardists or “backward masses.” T he SRs explained that practically no SR organization was left in the city by that date, since during the Red Terror the entire fifteen-member local SR comm ittee was executed.145 T he Mensheviks, too, were bypassed by events. T he workers were m uch more radically antiBolshevik than the Mensheviks. A clearly seen pattern in Astrakhan, which was repeated over and over in various parts of the country in 1919 and 1920, was that the mass m ovem ent went out of control of any political party. Data on one strike in one city may be dismissed as incidental. W hen, however, evidence is available from various sources on strikes in different cities that took place simultaneously and independently of one another, an overall picture begins to emerge. Workers’ unrest in European Russia proper— that is, in the area the Bolsheviks claimed to control— broke out at approximately the same time: February seems to have been a time of brewing discontent, M arch— April the peak of strikes everywhere, May a slackening, and June and July a new wave of strikes. T he peaks of strike activity coincided with the peaks of the W hites’ offensives. Workers' unrest erupted in Russia’s biggest and most im portant industrial 145 P. S ilin, “A strakhanskie rasstrely,” in C heka (1922), 2 4 8 -5 5 ; M elgunov, Krasnyi terror v Rossii1 pp. 50—51. 144 V. M iak o tin , “Z h u tk aia k n ig a,” N a chuzhoi storone, no. 7 (1924), 266. 145 C h ern o v , “ Krovavoe delo ” (new spaper clipping), Nicolaevsky C ollectio n , no. 7, pSR, Folder 64.

centers: M oscow, Petrograd, T ula, Bryansk, and Sorm ovo. Strikes affected the largest, prim arily m etal industry, enterprises: m etallurgical, locom otive, and arm am en ts plants. T h e m yth th at m etalworkers were the backbone of Bolshevik su p po rt du rin g th e civil war has to be finally cast aside. If anything m etal­ workers were the m ain force in anti-B olshevik strikes. Railway workers and printers also were particularly active in anti-B olshevik protests. In som e cities— Petrograd, Tver, an d N izh n i N ovgorod— textile an d o ther categories of workers were active protesters as well. In at least five cities: Petrograd, Tver, T ula, Bryansk, an d A strakhan— th e strikes acquired th e character of general strikes. W orkers’ d em an ds reflected th eir grievances. E ven though there is a pro­ found h om ogeneity am ong th em , local differences should no t be overlooked. AU workers d em an d ed h igher food rations and a fair distribution o f food. Yet the P utilov workers were m ore specific: they w anted rations w ithout privileges for th e C o m m u n ists, rations equal to those o f Red A rm y soldiers, an d this equality n o t at th e expense o f the rest o f th e population. Everyw here the dem an d for in d ep en d en t an d u n lim ited food purchases figured prom inently, and th e Tula workers w anted to keep their ow n land plots in the countryside. T h e d em an d to release political prisoners, strike leaders, an d socialists was at the top of th e list everyw here as well. In m ost cities these arrests triggered the strikes: in Moscow, Petrograd, T u la, and Sorm ovo. W e en c o u n te r the m ost diversity in workers’ explicitly political dem ands or th eir expressions o f political opinion. O n th e one h an d all workers’ resolutions dem an d ed free and fair elections to the soviets, an d in fact all socialist opposi­ tion parties agreed on that. O n the o th er h an d som e workers dem anded th at a C o n stitu en t Assem bly based on universal suffrage be reconvened (rail workers in M oscow, m etalworkers in Petrograd and Sorm ovo). Som e workers w ent even fu rth e r and co n d em n ed Bolshevik rule as such w ith o u t proposing any concrete alternative program , as evidenced by catcalls from th e floor at workers’ rallies: “D ow n w ith the Soviets! D ow n with the com m issars! It was better u n d er the tsar!” In at least fo u r cities— M oscow, Tver, Sorm ovo, an d A strakhan— workers’ d em ands reflected th eir unw illingness to fight for the Red cause at the front lines o f th e civil w ar against th e W hites. T h ey protested against being drafted into th e Red Army. T h is attitude was even m ore widespread am ong th e peas­ ants, w ho defected e n m asse once drafted into th e Red Army. It is n o t surprising th at soldiers an d sailors shared political attitudes w ith workers and peasants, since they h ad b een drafted from those social groups. W h ile it is generally acknow ledged th at th e K ronstadt sailors joined hands with the Petrograd workers on strike in F ebruary 1921, other instances of workers’ and soldiers’ jo in t political actions against the Bolsheviks have rem ained largely unknow n. D u rin g th e strikes in M ay 1918 in Petrograd som e soldiers and sailors joined h an d s w ith th e workers, and Red A rm y m utinies and rebellions against the Bolsheviks took place in Saratov, th e Urals, and Kronstadt in 1918, to m ention

only a few.146 D uring the spring of 1919 sailors refused to suppress a workers’ strike in Petrograd, soldiers assured workers they would not act against them in Tver, sailors gave a similar promise in Astrakhan, and in Bryansk soldiers went over to the side of the strikers. Red Army draftee rebellions broke out parallel to the workers’ strike in Astrakhan, and there was a m utiny in Orel. AU this suggests that the Red Army was m uch less reliable than has been assumed. In fact deserters from the Red Army, the peasant Greens, posed a serious military threat to Bolshevik rule in several provinces for considerable periods of time. AU strikes, according to Bolshevik sources, were led by the socialists: the Mensheviks, the SRs, and the Left SRs. In Tver, however, the socialist parties were said to have lost the leadership because they were not anti-Bolshevik enough. In Bryansk, Tula, Sormovo, Tver, and Astrakhan the socialists them ­ selves claim ed to have opposed the strikes. W hat, then, was the role of the socialists? T here is no simple answer to this question because the three opposi­ tion parties pursued different policies and there were factions within each of the parties. Individual workers who were members of those parties acted on their own convictions and did not ask for guidelines from their CC. In the m ost general terms, however, it appears that the Left SRs were the most radical and “revolutionary” party, opposed to the Bolsheviks for what they believed was a betrayal of workers’ self-rule, one of the m ain principles of “the October revolution.” T he SRs at this juncture were in the midst of an intense debate within the party over whether the Bolsheviks or the W hites were the worse enemy. They seem to have favored the strikes as a legitimate workers’ weapon in their struggle for their rights, but they were preoccupied m uch more with the idea of a peasant m ovem ent directed against both enem ies— the Whites and the Reds. T he spread of the G reen m ovement demonstrated that their ideas were not illusory. O f all the opposition parties the Social Democrats were the most cautious. In several cities they called on the workers to stop the strikes and go back to work. This policy can be explained partly by their desire to preserve the legal status of the party, partly by their belief that strikes would hinder the war effort against the W hites, and partly by their own experience that strikes seldom led to the satisfaction of workers’ demands. An almost autom atic arrest of socialists after every strike naturally made them wary about the usefulness of strikes. As a result events overtook them in several cities. A remarkable new elem ent in the spring of 1919 was that totally unknow n com m on workers, members of the SD, SR, or Left SR party, cam e forth as leaders of the strikes. These were local leaders who had the courage to articulate workers’ grievances, despite the risk to their jobs and even their lives. Unfortunately, only a few of their names are known. They considered themselves members of one of the three opposition parties, yet they acted on their own without asking guidance from above. T he rank and file 146 Brovkin, The Mensheviks after October, pp. 183 and 260-61.

themselves becam e leaders of the protest m ovem ent, and the official party leaders’ role was considerably diminished. O ne can argue that this was the birth of a true workers’ m ovem ent in Russia, free from the intellectuals’ guidance, a m ovem ent Russian intellectuals had dreamed of at the turn of the century. It was an irony of history that this workers’ m ovem ent arose in protest against a party that claimed to be the proletarian vanguard. Reports of local organizations, articles in Pravda, and com m unications of top Bolshevik leaders all attest that the Bolsheviks knew very well that workers were expressing anything but support for the C om m unist party. In order to cover up real social and political attitudes, the Bolsheviks invented new label­ ing. A strike was seldom referred to as a strike. It acquired now a coded label: a M enshevik provocation, counterrevolutionary sabotage, or W hite Guardist conspiracy. T h e Bolsheviks employed a variety of measures in dealing with the strikes. Yet certain measures stand out as a repetitive pattern. In all cases known the initial Bolshevik response to strikes was to ban public meetings and rallies (Moscow, Petrograd, Tver, Tula, Bryansk, Sormovo, and Astrakhan). In sev­ eral cities (Petrograd, Sormovo, Tula, and Astrakhan) the authorities confis­ cated strikers’ food ration cards in order to suppress the strike. In at least five cities out of the eight considered the Bolsheviks occupied the striking plant and dismissed the strikers en masse: Moscow, Petrograd, Tula, Bryansk, and As­ trakhan. In two cities the Bolsheviks took hostages from among the socialists during the disturbances: Orel and Bryansk. In all cases known the Bolsheviks resorted to arrests o f strikers: in Petrograd 225, in Moscow perhaps 12, in Tula 1,000, in Tver an unknow n num ber, in Bryansk 152, in N izhni Novgorod (including Sormovo) 115, in Astrakhan several hundred (at least). And finally, in four cities the Bolsheviks resorted to executions o f striking workers: in Mos­ cow, Petrograd, Bryansk, and Astrakhan. Data on the overall num ber of workers and others killed or executed on the internal front during the period considered are rather sketchy. T h e num bers certainly do not include those killed in battles between the Greens and the Bolshevik forces or those killed in street fighting. Yet a few examples are available. In Petrograd and Astrakhan the estimates of those killed or executed reached several thousand. In Orel and Bryansk the suppression of rebellions m ust have dem anded at least as m any casualties. According to M artyn Latsis, during an anti-Bolshevik rebellion in Smolensk in M arch 1919 one hundred people were killed.147 T he American consul wrote to the State Departm ent: “Reports from Moscow estimate the num ber of executions by the order of the Extraordinary Comm ission as 7000 for the first quarter of 1919.148 147 M artyn Latsis, “K zagovoru Levykh E serov,” Izvestiia (21 M arch 1919), I. 148 Im brie, V yborg, F in la n d (I I F ebruary 1920), Records, dispatch 861.00.6346. Itis notew or­ thy th a t the State D e p a rtm e n t reacted to this inform ation by responding: "W h a t is the source of info rm atio n regarding executions first q u a rte r 1919?" (dispatch 861.00.6346), to w hich Im brie replied: “O u r agent S m olny [i.e. in Sm olny] reported regarding M oscow executions. His statem en t

It is n o t surprising th at th e Bolsheviks tried to stop the strikes at this tim e of great danger, especially since the W h ite arm ies were launching successful offensives. W h a t is rem arkable, though, is that the Bolsheviks treated the workers as simply another enem y in the civil war— an enem y on the internal front. A ttem pts to fulfill workers’ dem ands were few. T h e suppression o f strikes was conducted as a m ilitary operation o f the civil war, only it was on the internal front. It required the occupation o f plants, arrests, executions, and systematic purges. T h e Bolshevik response to workers’ protests reveals the tri­ um ph of a new m entality. T h e C o m m u n ist party now perceived its task as fighting on all fronts. Everyw here there were arm ies, com m anders, offensives, traitors, and deserters who had to be crushed. T h e rise of this m ilitaristic approach to politics, and the replacem ent o f bargaining and com prom ise with surveillance n o t only o f workers’ actions b u t also o f their political views— all this represents the om inous ingredients of a system w hich was later called Stalinism . T h e record o f workers’ strikes explains why the Bolsheviks felt com pelled to abandon th e New C ourse. As soon as they tried to curtail the Red Terror and relaxed th eir control over political activity, a workers’ protest m ovem ent ignited with new vigor. Bolshevik rule had to rem ain a dictatorship or disappear. In the central R ussian provinces around M oscow the C om m unists crushed the m ove­ m ent of the “backward m asses” before the W hite arm ies could exploit the favorable situation. In the Urals and in U kraine they were less fortunate, and widespread rebellions o f peasants, deserters, and in som e places workers m ade it possible for th e W hites to pour into those areas, w hich had already been u p in arms against the Bolsheviks. being based on report o f M oscow E xecutive C o m m itte e ” (16 F ebruary 1920), Records, dispatch 861.00.6362.

3 The White Tide

P e r h a p s o n e o f t h e m ost im p o rtan t characteristics o f the frontline war be­

tween th e Reds and the W hites in 1919 was its extraordinary dynam ism . T h e political an d m ilitary situation changed quickly and dram atically. W ith in a year, from D ecem b er 1918 to D ecem ber 1919, the Bolsheviks overran U kraine, lost it, and overran it again. T hey conquered the Urals, lost them , and overran th em again. T h e speed o f offensives and retreats belied the expectations o f all participants. In early 1919 G eneral D enikin w ould have been surprised to know th at by O ctober h e was going to be w ithin two h undred m iles o f Moscow. As late as M ay 1919 h e still considered A dm iral Kolchak as his superior and accepted his authority. Yet w ithin one m o n th K olchak’s forces were on the run w hile D e n ik in ’s were co n tin u in g their offensive toward Moscow. Sim ilarly in late 1918 th e Bolsheviks believed that the civil war would soon be over, since the Red Arm y had recaptured the Urals in the east and U kraine in the south. Yet in M ay 1919 they seriously considered abandoning Petrograd, and in O cto ­ ber M oscow itself was th re a te n e d .1 In the spring o f 1919 L enin tho u g h t th at it w ould take at least two years to defeat Kolchak. However, by July the Siberian W hites were in an irreversible retreat. T h ese dram atic fluctuations ca n n o t be attributed to m ere m ilitary luck or to any n u m erical superiority o f troops. T h e irony o f the situation was th at the W hites, u n d er both Kolchak and D enikin, won their m ost spectacular victories w hen th eir arm ies were vastly outnum bered by the Reds, and they were d e­ feated at th e tim es w hen their arm ies were at full strength, lacking n either food n or first-class m ilitary supplies and w eaponry provided by the Allies. Sim ilarly the R eds’ successful advance into U kraine in the spring o f 1919 was carried out by poorly organized peasant detachm ents, inferior in skills and weaponry to the W hites, and conversely the Reds’ defeats in U kraine in the su m m er o f 1919 unfolded despite the ever growing strength o f the regular Red Army. If th e w ar had developed in accordance with the logic of arm y strength, D enikin w ould n o t have had a chance to advance into central Russia with a 60,000-strong V olunteer Army, as h e did in M ay 1919.2 Sim ilarly, Kolchak could n o t possibly have defeated the superior Red Arm y and taken 20,000 1 Liberm an, B uildm gL enin s Russia, p. 36. Liberm an, a functionary in Lenin’s government at that tim e, claims that lists of those to be evacuated from Moscow were made. 2 G eneral Staff A. E. F ., The M ilitary Situation in Greater Russia, Bulletin o f Information, no. I (5 February 1919), 15.

prisoners in January 1919 with a force in the field of only 80,000 soldiers. Yet he did. H alf a year later the opposite occurred. Despite the fact that Kolchak’s army was alm ost 300,000 strong, it was defeated by a sm aller Red force.3 M ilitary and strategic factors are far less im portant than popular attitudes in a civil war. If an army is welcomed by the local population, its resources and strength are auto­ matically increased. If, on the other hand, it is unw elcom e, its strength is tied up in pacifying and policing the conquered territory. A nother explanation often cited for the W hites’ success is the aid provided by the Allies. Indeed, this aid was substantial. D enikin’s army received tanks and airplanes, field hospitals, and tons o f am m unition and m ilitary hardw are.4 T h e irony of history, however, is that, as a recent study shows, D enikin won m ost of his victories before Allied help arrived. He m ade it on his ow n.5 And it was despite trem endous Allied help that the W hite offensive collapsed in the fall of 1919. It is im possible to explain the vicissitudes of the frontline civil war by focusing on external and m ilitary aspects alone. T h e offensives and retreats, victories and defeats of the parties on the front lines were intrinsically con­ nected with the internal stability or weakness o f the warring regimes. Armed struggle in both the cam paign on the eastern front between the Reds and Kolchak and the cam paign on the southern front between the Reds and Denikin w ent through the same basic cycle: the first stage was an offensive o f the Reds in the winter of 1918-19, followed by a counteroffensive of the W hites in spring an d /o r sum m er and ending with a new offensive of the Reds and the W hites’ subsequent defeat by the end o f the year. T h e significant difference between the cam paigns in the east and in the south was that although they went through the sam e cycle, they were out of phase with each other. In the east the Red offensive phase was relatively short. T h e Reds were able to overrun parts of the Urals, culm inating in the capture of Ufa on 30 D ecem ber 1918. Exactly at that tim e K olchaks troops went on a counteroffensive and captured Perm. This W hite offensive lasted throughout the spring and cam e to a halt in May. From May to D ecem ber Kolchak’s troops were in perm anent and irreversible retreat across Siberia. In the south and west the Red offensive stage was m uch longer, from D ecem ­ ber 1918 to April 1919. T h e Reds captured the Baltic states, all of Ukraine, and the D on Host area. D enikin’s forces were locked in Kuban and the N orth C aucasus, their base for over a year. His cause seemed to be hopeless in April. And yet D enikin began his historic offensive in May 1919. At that tim e Kol­ chak’s troops had already been halted. D enikin’s offensive developed through­ out the sum m er and reached its apogee in O ctober at the tim e w hen the Red 3 N .G .O . Pereira, “W h ite Power during the C ivil War in Siberia (1 9 1 8 -1 9 2 0 ): D ilem m as o f Kolchak’s “W ar A n ti-C o m m u n ism ,” C a n a d ia n S lavon ic Papers, vol. 29, n o. I (M arch 1987), 56. 4 F o rsp ecific figures on British aid, see U llm an , A n glo-S oviet R elation s, 1 9 1 7 -1 9 2 1 , vol. 2, B ritain a n d the R u ssian C iv il W ar, pp. 3 6 5 -6 8 . 5 M awdsley, T he R u ssian C iv il W ar, p. 167.

Arm y was deep in Siberia pursuing the defeated Kolchak forces. T h e W h ite generals could n o t coordinate their efforts, because their victories and defeats were, to a large extent, the result o f social processes beyond their control. In unraveling th e causes o f th e vicissitudes in the frontline civil war o f that tu m u l­ tuous year, it is essential to answer the question, W h a t m ade the W h ites’ offensives possible?

The W hite Tide in the East In D ecem b er 1918 the m ilitary and political situation of the W hites in the Urals did n o t p o rten d any hope o f an offensive against the Reds. Adm iral K olchak had b een in pow er only a few weeks after overthrow ing the D irectory, a m ultip arty civilian governm ent. T h e SRs had vowed to fight his regim e from w ithin. T h e Red A rm y was co n tin u in g to advance and was capturing city after city. In February 1919 W estern m ilitary observers w ho were quite sym pathetic to th e W hites did n o t believe th at Kolchak w ould be able to m o u n t a successful offensive.6 H e could co u n t on his side a 40,000-strong Siberian arm y whose w orthiness against the Reds was yet to be proved and a 20,000-strong collection of form er P eople’s A rm y detachm ents whose loyalty was to the C o n stitu en t Assem bly and th e SRs. T h e ir w orthiness and loyalty to Kolchak were suspect. In ad d ition there w ere 30,000 C zechoslovak troops. T h u s the total of antiBolshevik troops n om inally u n d er K olchak’s co m m an d in early 1919 was ap ­ proxim ately 9 0 ,0 0 0 .7 T h e C zech troops, however, used to be allied to the SRs and th e C o n stitu en t A ssem bly’s P eople’s Army, b u t now u n d er Allied pressure they had to cooperate w ith the “Russian governm ent” of Kolchak. Like the P eople’s A rm y d etachm ents, their loyalty to the W hites was questionable. In fact som e C zech u nits resisted the W h ites’ executions o f SRs an d even consid­ ered ren dering arm ed resistance to the W h ite putschists in N ovem ber, C learly this m ilitary and political situation reflected disarray rather than a readiness to co n tain , let alone roll back, the Reds’ advance. T h e Allied assessm ent was prudent, b u t it proved to be w rong prim arily because it lacked inform ation on the situation behind the Bolshevik lines. T h e unfolding events o f the next four m onths belied anybody’s expectations: Kol­ ch ak ’s troops w ent on a counteroffensive, and by April they h ad advanced to a p o in t o n e h u n d re d m iles from th e Volga. T hey w ere close to w iping o u t all the gains m ade by th e Bolshevik offensive since the su m m er o f 1918. T h e Bol­ sheviks were in a panic as they prepared for the defense o f K azan, N izhni N ovgorod, and th e approaches to Moscow. 6 G en eral Staff A. E. F., T h e M ilita ry S itu a tio n in G reater R ussia, B u lletin o f Inform ation, no. I (5 F ebruary 1919), 3 -4 . 7 W estern intelligence estim ated K olchak’s forces a t 96,0 0 0 in January 1919, ibid, 16. Soviet official history’s figure is low er, approxim ately 80,000. Istoriia G razhdanskoi voiny, vol. 3., p. 354.

T here were three m ain factors which m ade Kolchak’s advance possible. T he first was an unexpected discovery that the suspect units of the People’s Army, particularly the detachm ent of Izhevsk workers, were actually the best fighters against the Reds.8 Izhevsk workers had overthrown C om m unist rule in August 1918 and supported the C onstituent Assembly government in Samara. W hen the Reds took their city in November most of them retreated, fearing ίοτ their lives if they fell into the C om m unists’ hands. W hen Kolchak overthrew the C onstituent Assembly governm ent they had to make a difficult choice: follow the appeal of the SR C entral C om m ittee and cease armed struggle against the Reds, or ignore this appeal and recognize the authority of Admiral Kolchak as the new ruler of the non-Bolshevik territory. An absolute majority of the Izhevsk workers’ detachm ent decided to fight on. T heir decision should not be interpreted as an expression of support for the admiral. Rather it showed their desire simply to keep fighting the C om m unists and retake their native Izhevsk and Votkinsk in Vyatka Province. In this they were successful, and in M arch their detachm ent, now a part of the W hite army, entered Izhevsk. They m ade a count of all the victims of Red Terror from the tim e they had abandoned the cities in November 1918 to M arch 1919: the total of those killed or executed was seven thousand.9 T he second factor that m ade Kolchak’s advance possible was the neutrality of the Czechs. Like the Izhevsk workers who adapted to the situation and pursued their own goals, the C zech Legion did not rebel against Kolchak, because the fate of Czechoslovakia was being decided by the Allied powers in Versailles. T he Czechs could not afford to pursue a policy contrary to that of the Allies in Siberia. They were content to guard the trans-Siberian railroad, which was their lifeline to the port of Vladivostok and to Europe. T he third and most im portant factor that propelled the W hites’ advance, once it had started, was the weakness of the Bolshevik regime. T he W hites were moving into areas which had been under Bolshevik rule for up to two, three, four, or five m onths, depending on the specific province. T h e Volga basin provinces and the Urals were the first large areas the Bolsheviks overran in the frontline civil war. T heir policy had been to bring these provinces under total control of the C om m unist party. These policies, as we shall see, generated widespread resistance.

Red Terror in the Urals Bolshevik policy toward workers in the Urals was even tougher than in Moscow or Petrograd. Partly this was due to Bolshevik bitterness over the Izhevsk and Votkinsk workers’ armed resistance. T he Bolsheviks suspected workers at other 8 “Dva generala,” Goios m inuvshego na chuzhoi storone, no. 1/14, (1926), 189-201. 9 Bernshtam , ed., Ural i Prikam e, noiabr 1917 ‘ianvar’ 1919, p. 471.

plants in the Urals to be sympathetic to the struggle o f the Izhevsk and Votkinsk plants against the commissars. This is why the Com m unist authorities strived to establish an iron discipline at the plants in the Urals. Mensheviks and SRs were persecuted. Any workers’ disagreement with the authorities, let alone criticism or demand, was treated as subversive counterrevolutionary activity that had to be stamped out. T he Votkinsk newspaper Red Thought described these disciplinary measures. Workers who did not show up for work would be drafted for hard labor at the railroad for two weeks. After a third warning they would be tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal as saboteurs.10 Under this ruling any slowdown or strike qualified as “labor sabotage” and was punishable by the “laws of wartim e.” In plain language this m eant execution. Despite such stringent disciplinary measures, strikes in the Ural plants broke out just as they did in M oscow and Tula. A rare docum ent has survived which portrays the workers’ disposition at an important metallurgical plant in M otovilikha in Perm Province in Decem ber 1918, on the eve of Kolchak’s advance: 1. About Food Supply. We, the hungry workers, dem and an increase in our ration of bread, and not the kind that even pigs would not eat, but bread made of flour . . . as well as all other additional food products, such as m eat, cereals, potatoes, and other foods. As of 6 D ecem ber [ 1918], we dem and an increase of food rations, and if they are not going to be increased, we will be compelled to stop work. 2. We dem and that leather jackets and caps be immediately taken away from the commissars and be used to m anufacture shoes. 3. We dem and the speediest possible acquisition of felt boots and warm clothes and their distribution to citizens. 4. We dem and that commissars and employees of Soviet institutions receive the same food rations as workers, and that there be no privileges for bureaucrats. 5. We dem and that threats with pistols against workers at the meetings be abol­ ished, and that arrests be abolished too, and that there be freedom of speech and assembly, so that there be a true power of soviets of peasants’ and workers’ deputies, and not of the Chekas. 6. We dem and an abolition to the taking away of food and flour from the hungry workers, their wives and children, and an abolition to imposing fines on those peasants who sell [foodstuffs] and who deliver [food to cities] and who let [workers] stay overnight [in the countryside], and we dem and freedom to bring up to one and a half pud of food. 7. W e dem and that the Province D epartm ent of Food Supply, if it cannot provi­ sion the population with food, pass over that authority to the Motovilikha [plant] D epartm ent of Food Supply so that it can work independently. 8. W e dem and the convocation of an all-plant general m eeting to take place on 5

10 “T rudovaia distsip lin a,” Petrogradskaia Pravda, no. 14 (19 January 1919).

D ecem ber at noon with the participation o f the Regional D epartm ent o f Food Supply. 9. W e dem and that all appointees be removed [from their posts]. T hose elected by the people m ust take their place. 10. W e dem and pay for the tim e we spent at the m eetings if they took place in work time. 11. W e dem and an abolition o f fines for the tim e workers spent in search o f food'. 12. W e dem and an abolition o f com m issars’ taking rides on horses and also in autom obiles. 15. W e dem and an abolition o f the death penalty w ithout trial and investigation. There must be justice. 14. W e dem and that the comm issars be for the people and not the people for the commissars. (Electric workshop) [resolution] AU 14 paragraphs have been adopted unanim ously. Chairman: L uchnikov11

This workers’ resolution reiterates many familiar them es of workers’ com ­ plaints in other cities. As in Tula and Moscow, workers grum bled over the privileges of commissars and the pistol waving, rudeness, and com m andeering tone of the new bosses. T hey com plained that authority was in fact in the hands of the C heka and not of the soviets, and that peasants were not allowed to sell grain due to the Bolshevik class struggle against the bourgeoisie and capitalism. The resolution is, in effect, a m icrocosm of local politics in the newly occupied Bolshevik Urals. As in Moscow and Tula, the strike at the Motovilikha plant was brutally suppressed. T h e British consul in Ekaterinburg reported on 3 M arch: “Laborers opposing the Bolsheviks were treated in the same m anner as peasants. O ne hundred laborers were shot at the Motovilikhi plant near Perm’ in Decem ber 1918 for protesting against Bolshevik conduct.’’12 T h e Bolsheviks removed everything valuable from the area im mediately adjacent to the front line, obviously as a precaution against a possible seizure o f equipm ent and supplies by the W hites. D ue to the sudden and unexpected m ovem ent of General A. N. Pepeliaev of the Siberian army, however, Perm was taken in the early days of January 1919. T he entire stock of w hat the C om m unists were planning to evacuate was captured by the W hites. A detailed description of that materiel was made by Allied observers. T hey were astonished by the sheer quantity and diversity of goods the Bolsheviks were planning to ship out of PeTm. Viceconsul Palm er reported to the U .S. D epartm ent of State: “Judging from the 11 Nasha zaria, no. 185 (26 August 1919). 12 Sir C. E liot to Earl C urson (5 M arch 1919) from consul in Ekaterinburg (3 M arch 1919), Collection o f Reports on Bolshevism in Russia, p. 54, hereinafter referred to as Collection o f Reports. T h esam ed ataap p eared inV . M iakotin, “Z hutkaiakniga,” N a chuzhoi storone, no. 7(1924), 2 6 7 68.

goods seen at the station it would appear that the Bolsheviks had practically looted the city and packed their plunder in these 5000 cars with the intention of evacuating it. But their plan was frustrated by the rapid m ovement of Cossacks who took part to cut retreat in the rear.”15 T he capture of Perm in January 1919 and of other cities in the Urals later that spring allowed Western observers for the first tim e to examine an area which had experienced C om m unist control. Ufa was taken by the W hites in early M arch, and several American officials traveled to the extreme western areas close to the front line with the Reds, beyond Ufa, in late M arch and early April 1919. They were able to conduct interviews with local inhabitants about Bol­ shevik rule. T heir reports depict lawlessness and terror. Several American officials reported that they had docum entary proof that the Bolsheviks had been engaged in the systematic extermination of propertied classes “including doc­ tors, priests, shopkeepers, peasants.” T he Com m unists were hated by the local population. M any victims of the Red Terror showed signs of m utilation and torture before d e a th .14 Alarming reports were coming from different people in the field and different regions at the same time. An official of the American Red Cross, Dr. Teusler, telegraphed the following: “Have seen this district. Exten­ sive proof savage cruelty, BoIsheviki occupation. Over 2000 civilians, m en women m urdered locally in cold blood without warning or trial, m any peasants and small shopkeepers. Som e bodies show fearful m utilation before death. Bolsheviki evidently attempted no constructive work, although in power here seven months. Entire population against them , complaining bitterly their mob rule, cruelty and destructiveness.”15 Those identified by Western observers as belonging to the educated classes, as well as m erchants and property owners, were of course labeled as “bour­ geoisie” by the Com m unists, who m ade no secret that the bourgeoisie as a class was going to be smashed. Another contemporary report on the Red Terror in Ufa claimed that several hundred local residents had been shot.16 W hat is surprising in the Western observers’ reports is the plain, vivid, and cruel reality of what “class struggle” meant. For example, the Bolsheviks made no secret that the “bourgeoisie” were drafted to do hard labor for the “proletarian” state: dig trenches, wash soldiers’ barracks, and so on. W hat we learn from the Western observers’ testimony is that women from am ong the “bourgeoisie”, that is, the educated classes, were raped systematically when they were drafted to wash the n To Secretary of State from Omsk (19 January 1919); the dispatch is signed Harris. T he first sentence is “Vice C onsul Palmer under instruction from me visited Perm and reported in sub­ stance," Records, dispatch 861.00.3699. 14 D epartm ent of State (7 April 1919), from Paris, received from Teusler, Red Cross official. Records, dispatch 861.00.4255a. 15 D epartm ent of State (5 April 1919), from W. H. Anderson. T he first sentence is: “Doctor Teusler of Red Cross telegraphs me the following,” Records, dispatch 861.00.4204. 16 “T h e Terror,” Bulletins o f the Russian Liberation Comm ittee, no. 9 (April 1919), 2.

barracks. Bolshevik law did n o t defend them , because they were representatives of the “exploiting classes.”17 T h e treatm ent of captured officers suspected of being sym pathetic to the W hite cause was even worse, according to a British observer: “T h e n u m b er o f innocent civilians m urdered in Ural towns runs into hundreds. Officers taken prisoners by the Bolsheviks here had their shoulder straps nailed into their shoulders. . . . Som e civilians have been found with their eyes pierced out, others w ithout noses, whilst two priests were shot at Perm, Bishop A ndronick having been buried alive th ere .”18 W hat emerges from these reports can be sum m arized as follows. D uring a short period of rule in the Urals, the Bolshevik adm inistration had antagonized the workers and the educated classes by its policies of iron discipline, labor conscription, requisi­ tions, and “class struggle.” N o wonder the W hites were greeted as liberators. T h e fact that the W hites found a sym pathetic urban population still does not explain how a small army of 40,000 m anaged to defeat the Bolshevik force of 80,000 and take 20,000 prisoners of w a r.19 In this regard it is interesting to com pare the analysis of W estern observers with that of Stalin and D zerzhinsky’s com m ission, dispatched by Lenin to investigate the causes of the fall o f Perm. According to an A m erican m ilitary observer, the 20,000 captured PO W s “were a poor lot of m en, badly fed, m ost o f them young and forced to fight.”20 In other words they were no t very eager defenders of the Bolshevik cause. Stalin and D zerzhinsky’s report essentially stated the sam e bu t w ent m u ch further. It described the situation as a “com plete disintegration of the arm y” (polnyi razval armii) caused by a lack o f reserves, a bad com m and structure, and the counter­ revolutionary disposition o f reserves that arrived by the tim e o f the fall of Perm. Red Arm y units were unreliable and unw illing to fight. T h e report returned to this problem three times, w hich clearly indicates the weightiness of this cause over others. Stalin and Dzerzhinsky adm itted th at reserves in the E ighth and T hird armies “w ent over to the side o f the enem y with joy.” T h e problem was worsened by the fact, wrote Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, th at the new recruits which had been assembled in the neighboring Vyatka Province were not only unreliable but were actually “awaiting the W hites.” Stalin and Dzerzhinsky decided to split the precious, loyal Cheka forces and leave 2,000 of them in the rear with the unreliable reserves in case of em ergency and send another 400 Cheka agents to the front to infiltrate unreliable units. T hey also proposed 17 “Siberia T oday,” The T im es (12 February 1919). T his has also been reported in M r. Alson to Mr. Balfour, Vladivostok (14 January 1919). T h e first sentence is: “I have received the following from the C onsul in E katerinburg, date 13 January 1919,” docu m en t 22, in Collection o f Reports, p. 32. 18 Ibid. 17 T h e figure of 20,000 Bolshevik PO W s was reported to the State D epartm ent. Records, dispatch 861.00.3622b, dated 10 January 1919. T h e total strength of Soviet troops according to Soviet and W h ite sources is very close. T h e Soviet source states 82,000. Istoriia Crazhdanskoi voiny, vol. 3, p. 354. T h e W h ite so u rce o f 80,000 is in N a sh a gazeta, no. 23 (12 Septem ber 1919). 20 Records, dispatch 861.00.3622b, dated IO January 1919.

98

THE WHITE TIDE

creating army Cheka units and internal barriers such as roadblocks and check­ points to stop retreating troops. 21

Peasant R ebellions on the Volga Stalin's and the Allied observers’ reports make it clear why the Reds were defeated in the Urals. W hat needs to be explained is how it was possible for a small Siberian army to unfold its offensive toward the Volga. Stalin’s report discussed the “weakness of the rear,” which m eant the weakness of the Bol­ shevik hold on the countryside. T he crop in the Volga basin and the Urals had been sown under the SR administration. T he task of the Bolshevik m ili­ tary authorities was to remove as m uch grain as possible. Vyatka C om m u­ nists reported to the Bolshevik CC: “The causes of the dissatisfaction with the soviets and the party were the closeness of the frontline . . . uncoordinated and uncontrolled requisitions, which can even be called robbery of the population by the military units, as well as actions and mistakes of soviet and party workers, as well as the drafting of hay, bread, cattle, and people.”22 T he peasants of course resisted, attacked requisition detachments, withheld horses, hid grain, and tried to avoid the draft. Local Com m unists complained that the peasants were sympathetic to deserters. 23 For that they were labeled “kulaks” and coun­ terrevolutionaries, and punitive detachm ents were dispatched to “pacify” them . T h e result was peasant rebellions. Local Com m unists reported from Vyatka Province: “kulak rebellions flared up frequently in the frontline zone. ”24 T h e Russian liberal observers’ report was similar: “T he province of Vyatka is a hotbed of insurrection, as the peasants have been completely worn out by requisitions.”25 As is clear from other sources, any W hite advance or rum or of such an advance triggered peasant insurrections. This was due in part to the fact that the local Bolsheviks tried to collect as m uch food as possible to pre­ vent it from falling into enemy hands, and in part the result of peasants’ los­ ing their fear and gaining confidence in the feasibility of overthrowing the Bolsheviks. As on most occasions the uprising in the vicinity of Syzran’ was set in motion by the arrival of requisition detachments. According to the classified report of a 21 I. V. Stalin and F. E. Dzerzhinsky, O t C hlenov pravitelstvennoi kommissii po rassledovaniiu prichin sdachi goroda Permi” (13 January 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, pp. 182—83. O n dem oralization in the Red Army, see also “O t Ufimskogo Gubernskogo Komiteta” (27 April 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 299. 22 “O t Viatskogo Gubernskogo Komiteta, Doklad” (May 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 397. 23 Ibid., p. 398. 24 “O t Vyatskogo Gubernskogo Komiteta, Doklad” (April 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 161. 25 "T heB olshevikR earand A rm y,”Bulletins o f the Russian Liberation Comm ittee, no. 9(April 1919), 2.

special com m isson to investigate th e rebellions in Sim birsk and Sam ara prov­ inces, “th e arrival o f requisition d etach m en ts caused peasants’ anger. ” T h ey started ringing c h u rc h bells a n d killing off th e C o m m u n ists.26 Peasants cap­ tured food supply com m issars an d the local C heka and set up their own m ilitary headquarters. O n the next day neighboring districts rose up in rebellion too. A ccording to an exhaustive recent study: “At its zen ith , during the second week in M arch , the uprising had spread to at least 24 o u t o f 45 volosti o f Syzran' D istrict. . . . It was a m ajo r presence in the neighboring districts of Ardanov, Alatyr’, B uinsk, Sim birsk, Sam ara, B uzuluyk, and B u g u ru slan .”27 Local C o m m u n ists described peasant uprisings in Sim birsk and Sam ara provinces as a conspiracy o f kulaks w hich w ould e n h a n c e th e Kolchak offensive.28 T h ey stated th a t “deserters w ho had ru n away from the front line took a great p a rt in the re b e llio n .”29 It was difficult to restore order, com plained the report, and deserters were sh o t on sight. In o n e village every fifth apprehended deserter was executed. T h e special com m issio n ’s report stated th at in Syzran’ Tow nship the local authorities "had to arrest all Red A rm y soldiers whose parents had been forced to pay an extraordinary food levy.”30 C learly these soldiers were u n reli­ able. B u tth e se m e a su re so n ly a d d e d oil to th e fire, and just a few days later local C o m m u n ists reported new rebellions in th e area, rebellions “m arked by severe cruelty.” T h e special com m isssion reported 1,000 rebels k illed.31 T h e strength o f the rebels was estim ated at 3,000 in just one uezd (district) o f Sim birsk P ro v in ce.32 In an o th er uezd (Vol’sk) th e G reens, m ade up m ostly o f deserters, n u m b ered 8 ,9 4 7 .33 In the Syzran’ area, at the height o f the rebellion, the peasant arm y grew to 22,000 m e n .34 Local C o m m u n ists reported th at peasant soviets were in fact taking p art in rebellions35 and th at th e peasants’ fram e o f m in d in th e su rro u n d in g provinces was ala rm in g .36 T h e Sam ara Province 26 “Doklad VTslKu osoboi kommissii po revizii povolzh’ia pod predsedatel’svom P. G. Sm idovicha” (A report of the Special C om m ission to C E C chaired by P. G . Smidovich), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docum ent 363(1). 27 Figes, Peasant Russia, C ivil War, p. 327. 28 “Telegram m a iz Syzrani o raskrytii zagovora i podavlenii vosstaniia miatezhnikov v uezde” (20 M arch 1919), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 1235, VTslK, O pis' 94, docum ent 490. 29 “O t Syzranskogo Revoliutsionnogo Komiteta (Simbirsk Province)” (17 M arch 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 399. 50 “Doklad V TslKu osoboi kommissii po Tevizii povolzh’ia pod predsedatel’svom P.G. Sm idovicha,” T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docum ent 363(1). 31 Ibid. 32 “O t Syzranskogo Revoliutsionnogo Komiteta (Simbirsk Province)" (21 M arch 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 419. 33 "Doklad Vol’skogo uezdnogo ispolkoma” (15 October 1919), cited in Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War, p. 317. 34 Ibid. 35 “O t Simbirskogo Gubernskogo Kom iteta, Doklad” (May 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 497. 36 O t Ruzaevskogo Uezdnogo Komiteta (Penza Province) Ezhem esiachnyi O tchet” (May 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 353.

Executive Com m ittee admitted in a classified report to Moscow that “initially, even after the suppresssion of the uprising, even the m iddle-incom e peasants were waiting for the arrival of Kolchak’s arm y.”37 According to V. Bobrov, a Socialist Revolutionary who traveled extensively in the Urals and the Volga area at the tim e of the W hites’ offensive, peasants rebelled against the Bolsheviks at the approach of the W hites. He estimated the total num ber of peasant rebels in the Urals-Volga basin at 150,000.38 His estimate was remarkably accurate, since the classified report of the special commission concluded: “T he num ber of rebels, according to various sources, was 100,000 to 150,000. ”39 T he W hite forces thus broke into an area which was already in rebellion against the Bolsheviks. T h e W hites’ very advance propelled peasant insurrec­ tion, and the insurrection aided the advance. T h e result was that the offensive acquired a m om entum of its own. T hat is why the W hites could defeat a more num erous Red Army and continue to advance toward the Volga. Kolchak used this favorable situation to conduct a general army draft in the newly occupied territories. T he draft was initially successful, and by April the admiral had built a 150,000-strong army.40 Allied help was pouring in. T he population was welcoming the W hites. By the end of April the W hite army was within a twoday m arch of the Volga.41

T h e W hites’ Breakthrough in the South T he collapse of Red rule in the south followed essentially the same pattern as in the east. Largely due to the Bolsheviks’ own policies, their former allies turned into foes and cleared the way for D enikin’s offensive. Yet the cycle of events in the south differed from the one in the Urals, since a diverse array of political and military forces were involved in Ukraine: the Ukrainian national indepen­ dence governm ent and its small army; the volunteer peasant formations which were nom inally under Bolshevik com m and but were in fact autonom ous and uncontrollable; the Don and Kuban cossacks; and D enikin’s W hite army. AU these forces pursued their own objectives, and the civil war between them was m ultidim ensional. From the Ukrainian point of view only the war between the 37 Predsedatel’ A. Sokol’sky, “Doklad Samarskogo Gubernskogo Ispolnitel’nogo Komiteta o martovskom vosstanii i o poJozhenii vderevne, v Sovet Narodnykh Kommissarov" (I 3 May 1919) (C hairm an A. SokoTskii to the C ouncil of People’s Commissars, “A report on the March uprising and on the situation in the countryside by the Samara Province Executive C om m ittee”), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docum ent 363(2), p. 58. 58 V. Bobrov, “Po Sibiri i U ralu," Narod, no. I (17 August 1919). It is remarkable that the estimate of the recent W estern researcher was the same. Figes, Peasant Russia, C ivil War, p. 327. 39 “Doklad VTsIKu osoboi kommissii po revizii povolzh’ia pod predsedatel’svom P.G. Sm idovicha,” T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docum ent 363(1). 40 Bor'ba za Ural i S ib ir , p. 12, and Istoriia Grazhdanskoi voiny, vol. 4, p. 50. 41 Bor'ba za Ural i Sibir’, p. 131.

Ukrainian forces, that is, the peasant formations and the nationalists, could be called a Ukrainian civil war. T h e wider war involving both the Moscow C om ­ munists and the W hites against various Ukrainians they perceived as a war of aggression by a non-U krainian outside force. After the withdrawal of the G erm an occupation troops, the puppet regime of Hetm an P. P. Skoropadsky in Ukraine began to collapse. It was replaced by a Ukrainian governm ent which tried to balance its course between left-wing socialist programs and a dem ocratic, m ultiparty parliamentary structure.42 As in 1918, the invading Red Army from the north threatened the republic of independent Ukraine. W hat weakened the Ukrainian government was that not all volunteer peasant detachm ents were on its side. In fact two of the largest ones, led by Atam an Nikifor Grigoriev and by Nestor M akhno, for the m om ent accepted the authority of the Moscow Bolsheviks. These units were incorpo­ rated into the advancing Red Army.43 T h e D on and Kuban cossacks wanted to preserve their own local government and local autonom y from the Ukrainian government, from the Moscow Bol­ sheviks, and later from the W hite officers. For the m om ent, in early 1919, the cossacks were leaderless and in disarray. Atam an Petr Krasnov’s D on govern­ m ent collapsed after the departure of the Germ ans, and cossack lands were falling under Bolshevik occupation. T h e W hite Volunteers of General Denikin saw their goal as recreating a Russia “united and indivisible. ” In practical terms this im perial position im plied a struggle against the Bolsheviks and the Ukrai­ nian “separatists.” In early 1919 the W hites were only one of many forces and not the strongest one by far. O nly a very fortunate com bination of circum ­ stances could have enabled the W hites to com e out on top. In January-M arch 1919 the W hites, the cossacks, the Ukrainian independence forces, and peas­ ant bands were disunited and pursuing their own separate goals. T he Reds were pouring into an area affected by political chaos and a military vacuum . M ore­ over, the Bolshevik forces were spread very thin. In a short time, however, the Bolsheviks m anaged to set just about everybody— the cossacks, the peasants, the workers, and the nationalists— against them . T heir policies threatened the security, customs, and very identity of these social groups. This was the begin­ ning of a disaster that brought D enikin’s army to the gates of Moscow. T he Bolsheviks themselves created a com bination of circumstances favorable for Denikin’s success.

Decossackization W hen the Red Army began overrunning the territory of the D on cossacks in February 1919, an anim ated discussion broke out in the Bolshevik party over 42 For a discussion of U kraininan politics in 1919, see L incoln, Red Victory, pp. 302-29. 43 Arshinov, History o f the M akhnovist M ovem ent, pp. 9 4 -9 5 .

policy toward the cossacks. T h e C P Don Bureau had long-running squabbles over authority in the occupied territory with the com m and of the southern front and ultimately with Trotsky. Was the Don area going to be administered by the civilian departm ent of the southern front com m and or by the Don CP Bureau, which was to be expanded into an Executive Com m ittee of Soviets? In other words the argum ent was over the question of whether “Soviet power” would be in the form o f a m ilitary dictatorship of the army com m and or a dictatorship of the C om m unist party as everywhere else. Both sides in the debate wanted, as they put it, to prevent the mistakes of the past. They referred to a short period in 1918 w hen the Bolsheviks had occupied the D on area. T he mistake then was that the C om m unist party allowed the soviets to be freely elected.44 These soviets showed no support for the Com m unists, and no one wanted to enlist in the Red Army. T h e D on Bureau frankly admitted that in the countryside there were no Com m unists at all.45 To correct these mistakes, the C P decided to abolish the soviets altogether and to create “Soviet power” without soviets. Instead, special commissars with unlim ited authority were appointed in the occupied okrugs (a cossack district equivalent to the uezd). This was the begin­ ning of the notorious decossackization campaign. For the Com m unists the cossacks were class enemies. They were rich and well arm ed, and they opposed the soviets, the committees of the poor, and any other C om m unist administrative innovation in the countryside. Decossackiza­ tion m eant the confiscation of large cossack landholdings, and the resettlement or exile of “alien” and “bourgeois” elem ents.46 T he general thrust of the Bol­ shevik campaign was to dispossess the cossacks, redistribute their land among loyal peasant migrants, and “mercilessly clear the Don area of cossack atamans and officers.”47 As a m atter of first priority the C om m unist commissars, with their unlim ited authority, issued orders to the local population in every occu­ pied stanitsa (cossack settlement) to surrender arms. Special commissions to collect arms were set up. Those who refused were shot on the spot.48 T he cossacks had borne arms for centuries. An order to surrender arms was about as insulting to them as it would be to an American cowboy in Far West. Cossacks and peasants began to hide guns and rifles in fields and wells. T heir patience was running out. Yet the Bolsheviks’ plan for the D on continued to unfold. They were not content with merely disarming the population and establishing strict party control. This was only the beginning. T he social revolution was to follow. 44 O t K om m issara po K azach’im de la m M akarova (February 1919) O rganizatsiia Sovetskoi vlasti n a D o n u ,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 321. 45 Ibid. 46 A d em o g rap h er, M ikhail B ernshtam , m ad e som e im p o rta n t calculations in his “Storony v grazhdanskoi v o in e ,” V estnik Russkogo khristiainskogo dvizheniia, no. 128 (1979), 300. 47 O t K om m issara po K azach’im delam M akarova (February 1919) O rganizatsiia Sovetskoi vlasti na D o n u ,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 323. 48 "O t Rev. V oen. Soveta lu zh n o g o fro n ta ,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 482.

T he C om m unists’ goal was the total destruction of cossack landholding, and on 16 February cossack landholding was abolished.49 T he ancient cossack administrative division, the okrug, was abolished too, and plans were made to split up the D on area into several new administrative units. As Sergey Syrtsov, a m em ber of the D on Bureau, reported to Lenin, the northern parts of the D on Host were to be incorporated into Tsaritsyn Province so that the proportion of the cossack population would decrease.50 T h e cossack circle assemblies, a traditional form of cossack self-government, were abolished as well. Cossack lands were to be settled with peasants from central Russia, loyal to C om m u­ nism, and two trains o f settlers had actually arrived in the Don area.51 It is clear from Syrtsov’s report that he was im plem enting party policy. T he scheme was to confiscate land from the cossacks, divide it am ong the peasants and grateful settlers from Russia, and thus create a social base of support in the area. Syrtsov explained: “T h e general conditions are such that they force us to m eet the aspirations of peasants and make them a source of support in the task of liquidating the cossackry.”52 These plans to colonize the D on Host with settlers from Russia cannot be dismissed as an initiative of Syrtsov or the Don Bureau. Top secret docum ents of the C ouncil of People’s Commissars leave no doubt that detailed plans for the colonization were worked out and signed by Lenin in a decree of 24 April 1919.55 In their classified correspondence the Bolsheviks made no secret that they m eant to destroy not just rich cossacks but cossacks as a distinct social group.54 Disarm ing the local population and Russian colonization went hand in hand with the most im portant part of the policy: mass terror. It was set in m otion by the notorious resolution of the C P C entral C om m ittee of 24 January: In view o f the experience o f the civil war against the Cossacks, it is necessary to recognize the unique correctness o f the m ost m erciless struggle against the upper strata o f the Cossacks by their exterm ination to a man. N o com prom ises and no half­ measures would do. Therefore it is necessary to conduct mass terror against rich Cossacks by exterm inating them to the last m an . 55 49 O t Donskogo Buro RKP(b)” (5 M arch 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 370. 50 “Dokladnaia zapiska chlena Donskogo biuro RKP(B) Syrtsova o rabote D on biuro. V sekretariat RKP(b),” T s.P.A ., Fond 17, RKP(b), O pis’ 6, docum ent 83. See also O t Donskogo Buro RKP(b)" (I I February 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 287. 51 T. Sedel’nikov, “Kak iskorenit’ V andeiu,” Izvestiia, no. 173 (7 August 1919), I. 52 “D okladnaia zapiska chlena Donskogo biuro RKP(B) Syrtsova o rabote D on biuro. ” Ts. R A ., V sekretariat RKP(h), Fond 17, RKP(b), O pis’ 6, docum ent 83. 53 T h e decree was called O s o b o e polozhenie o kolonizatsii byvshei Donskoi oblasti” (Special regulations on the colonization of the form er D on Host area). T h e entire text is in Svodka, no. 7, Ό deiatel’nosti otdela grazhdanskogo upravleniia na mestakh s 1 -15 m aia 1919,” T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K, O pis’ 3, docum ent 363(2). 54 Z im in, U istokov S ta lin izm a , p. 332. 55 T his d ocum ent is reproduced in two sources: Aleksandr Kozlov, “Raskazachivanie,” Rodina, no. 7 (1990), 44, and Starikovand Medvedev, Philip M ironov and the R ussia n C ivil War, p. 111.

W h at is striking is the degree of openness in the Bolsheviks’ reports on the mass killings they committed. T here is not even a hint in Syrtsov’s report that there was anything wrong with the ruthless executions. They were simply a fulfillm ent of the plan. In his report to Lenin he wrote: the decossackization o f the cossacks, som ething they were so m uch afraid of, has begun. T h e punitive detachments [karatel’nye otriady] have taken hostages in the areas adjacent to the rebellious districts. T hese hostages were handed over to the volost’ revolutionary com m ittees and were slaughtered.”56

T he extent of the Red Terror was revealed by A. A. Frenkel’, a m em ber of the Don Bureau, to the Eighth C P Congress: T h e uprisings show that until there is an iron Soviet regime in the D on area, the terrorist tactic o f exterminating the greatest possible num ber o f Cossacks will not o f itself suffice, since you can’t exterminate all the Cossacks. 57

Special commissars in every stanitsa set up their so-called revolutionary tribu­ nals and launched a campaign of arrests, exiles, and executions.58 According to an eyewitness: Most o f the tim e the tribunals dealt with cases on the basis of lists. Som etim es it took only a few m inutes to consider a case. And the sentence was almost always the same: shooting. . . . Old Cossacks from various families were shot, officers who had volun­ tarily laid down their arms were shot. Even Cossack wom en were shot. 59

In some villages there were mass executions, and mass graves were later discov­ ered. A m em ber of the D on Revolutionary Com m ittee, Valentin Trifonov, reported to Lenin that in the cellar of the Morozovskii District Revolutionary C om m ittee they discovered “sixty-five m utilated corpses of cossacks,’’ and in Veshensky District they executed six hundred Cossacks.60 This was perhaps one of the bloodiest campaigns in the territories conquered by the Bolsheviks. As a result the Don cossacks rose en masse in M arch 1919. They armed themselves with weapons hidden in rivers, wells, and cemeteries. They also seized weapons which had been confiscated by Soviet authorities and “m any warehouses with a variety of supplies for the Eighth Army and its divisions.”61 They immediately formed regular military units, sent out patrols, and carried out a draft of all m en from the ages of sixteen to fifty-five in the liberated area. W hat is perhaps 56 “Dokladnaia zapiska chlena Donskogo biuro RKP(B) Syrtsova o rabote D on biu ro ,” Ts. R A ., V sekretariat RKP(b), Fond 17, RKP(b), O pis’ 6, docum ent 83. 57 Starikov and Medvedev, Philip Mironov and the Russian C ivil War, p. 125. 58 O t Rev. Voen. Soveta Iuzhnogo fronta,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, pp. 481—82. 59 Starikov and Medvedev, Philip Mironov and the Russian C ivil War, p. 115. 60 “Predsedateliu Soveta Oborony L en in u ,” signed by “M em ber of the D on Rev. C om . T ri­ fonov,” T s.G . A. O .R ., Fond 130, SNK1 Opis’ 3, docum ent 363, p. 79. 61 O t Donskogo Biuro RKP(b)” (21 April 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 268.

surprising is that revolutionary com m ittees w hich had been appointed by the Bolsheviks from am ong th e local people w ent over to the side of the insurgents. As Syrtsov explained: “Local Rev. Corns in villages and ham lets received orders [from the cossacks] on the insurrection and m obilization. O n those orders they m ade a mark: ‘accepted to be fu lfilled .'”62 Syrtsov ordered the execution of such revolutionary com m ittees.63 Rebel cossacks tried to raise popular insur­ rections in adjacent areas and sent ou t telegrams all over the D on region and even to th e neighboring V oronezh Province. T hey wrote: “We are not against the soviets. W e are for the people to elect the soviets themselves. W e are against C om m unists, and the com m unes, and the Jews. W e are against requisitions, robberies, and executions.”64 R eporting on the insurgent cossacks’ attem pts to attract all cossacks to their cause, Trifonov wrote to Lenin: “I consider it im por­ tant to inform the C entral C om m ittee that in their own agitational appeals the insurgent cossacks were dissem inating circulars and instructions w hich had been issued to the C o m m u n ist party cells and organizations concerning the policy of terror in regard to the cossacks. T hey also used the telegram of Kolegaev, m em ber of the M ilitary R evolutionary C ouncil of the southern front, on the merciless exterm ination of the cossacks.”65 T h e ranks of insurgents grew, and by m id-April they represented a form ida­ ble force of 30,000, w hich equaled roughly one-third of th e total Red Army strength in U kraine.66 T hey were well-trained fighters with an experienced professional m ilitary com m and. T hey operated in the rear of the Red Army, which was fighting the W hites and the Kuban cossacks farther south. T h e only response to cossack rebellion the Bolsheviks adopted was to intensify the terror against th e local population. I. E. Yakir, an Eighth Army M ilitary C ouncil m em ber, ordered: In the rear of our forces rebellions would ignite again if measures are not undertaken which root out the very thought of a rebellion. These measures are: extermination of all those who raised the rebellion, execution on the spot of all those in possession of arms, and even extermination of a certain percentage of the male population.67 At the end o f April, Syrtsov adm itted that all attem pts to suppress the rebellion were unsuccessful largely due to, as he pu t it, “the political unreliability of 62 “D okladnaia zapiska c h len a D onskogo biuro RKP(B) Syrtsova o rabote D on b iu ro ,” Ts. P. A ., V sekretariat RKP(b), Fond 17, RKP(b), O pis’ 6, d o cu m en t 83. 63 O t Donskogo B iuro RKP(b) (21 April 1919),” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 269. 64 "D okladnaia zapiska c hlena D onskogo biuro RKP(B) Syrtsova o rabote D o n b iu ro ,” T s .P. A., V sekretariat RKP(b), Fond 17, RKP(b), O pis’ 6, d ocum ent 83. 65 "Predsedateliu Soveta O borony L e n in u ,” signed by “M em ber o f the D on Rev. C om . T ri­ fonov,” T s .G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K, O pis’ 3, d o cu m en t 363, p. 79. 66 lstoriia G razhdanskoi voiny, vol. 4, p. 71. 67 A ccording to a contem porary Soviet historian, this d o cu m en t is in the R ostov-on-D on Party Archive (PARO), Fond 12, O pis’ 23, d o cu m en t 51, p. 11, cited from Aleksandr Kozlov, “R askazachivanie,” R odina, no. 7 (1990), 43.

regim ents dispatched to suppress the rebellion. ”68 T h e Red co m m and deployed 14.000 troops against the rebel cossacks w ithout success.69 As on the eastern front, m obilized peasants did no t w ant to fight in a Bolshevik civil war. A ttem pts to suppress the rebellion tied u p Red forces, w eakened the Red front, and th u s co ntributed to th e breakthrough of th e W hites. W h e n in M ay th e K uban cossacks, allied w ith D enikin's V olunteers, began pushing the Reds o u t o f th e D o n region, they found th eir m ost enthusiastic allies am ong the D on cossacks. O n 7 Ju n e th e W h ite forces and the rebel cossacks m et, an d the south front o f the Red A rm y was broken. F rom 60,000 the W h ite arm y grew to 100.000 overnight. T h e cossack rebellion on the D on was one o f th e m ost im p o rtan t causes o f the collapse o f Red rule in U kraine. Two others were an outbreak o f p easan t rebellions and the C o m m u n ists’ failure to win over the cities to th eir side.

M akhno, Grigoriev, Z elenyi, and Others M u ch has been w ritten ab o u t the peasant m ovem ent led by N estor M akhno. It has been exam ined in its relationship to the U krainian struggle for in d ep en ­ dence, as a m o v em ent o f anarchists, and as a social m ovem ent o f peasants.70 O f great im p o rtan ce here is the question, W hy did N e sto rM a k h n o , N ikifor G ri­ goriev, Z elenyi (real n am e D an il Terpilo), and other leaders of peasant volun­ teer form ations break w ith th e C o m m u n ists in th e late spring o f 1919? It seems th at th e U krainian peasants and the M oscow C om m unists had very different objectives w hen they both proclaim ed Soviet power in U kraine in January 1919. T h e m o re clear it becam e to the peasants th at the C o m m u n ists’ Soviet pow er was n o t th eir kind of Soviet power, the stronger was their disposition for insurgency. M oscow C o m m u n ists saw th e task o f Soviet Power in U kraine, as in Russia, as o n e o f strengthening the “dictatorship o f the proletariat,” w hich m ean t, in practical term s, the political hegem ony o f the cities generally and o f th e C o m m u n ist party in particular. T h e role assigned to th e countryside both in Russia an d in U kraine was to supply recruits to th e Red Arm y and food to the new regim e to enable it to win the civil w ar against th e W hites. T h e m ost efficient way to produce a steady flow of food, the C om m unists reasoned, was large-scale agricultural enterprise. O n e o f the C o m m u n ists’ eco n o m ic planners, V. P. M iliu tin , wrote: “A socialist society m ust possess factories o f bread, m eat, and m ilk sufficient to em ancipate it econom ically from dep en d en ce on th e petty p ro d u c er.”71 To achieve this em ancipation, the 68 O t Donskogo Biuro RKP(b)” (21 April 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 269, 69 Istoriia Grazhdanskoi voiny, vol. 4, p. 174. 70 Sysin and Pali], The Anarchism o f Nestor M akhno, and M alet, Nestor M akhno in the Russian Civil War. 71 M iliutin, Sotsializm i sel’skoe khoziaistvo, cited in K ubanin, Makhnovshchina, p. 59.

107

THE WH I T E T I D E

TABLE I N u m b er and L an d Area o f State Farm s (Sovkhozes) in U kraine by Province Province

Sovkhozes

D esiatin o f L a n d

C hernigov

95

32,750

D onetsk

19

9,000

Ekaterinoslav

140

297,000

Kharkov

196

110,000

40

11,954

250

350,000

P o d o l'e

32

108,000

Poltava

219

85,896

V olyn'

194

100,000

Kiev Nikolayev

C o m m u n ist governm ent in U kraine initiated two policies: first it decided to convert all landlords’ lands into sovkhozes, or state farms, w here farm ers w ould be em ployed like workers. T hese advanced farms were supposed to stabilize the food supply regardless o f the “sabotage” o f “petty producers.” O ver a m illion desiatin (a desiatina is equal to 2.7 acres) of land were distributed to hundreds of state farms, as seen in table 1. 72 T h e second policy was to encourage peasants to join the co m m u n es, as th e collective farms were called. M achines and tools were to be provided as a priority to these com m unes. T h e C o m m u n ists’ agrarian policy in U kraine was consistent with th at in Russia in 1918. It failed dism ally there, and the Bolsheviks were aware o f it, since they abolished com m ittees o f th e poor in Russia in D ecem ber 1918. Yet in early 1919 they started on th e sam e suicidal course in U kraine. W h a t m ade these sam e policies m ore ruinous in U kraine was th at traditions o f hom estead farm ing were stronger there, and the dictatorship of the city over the country­ side was perceived in U kraine as a dictatorship o f the Russians and Jews, the two d o m in an t national groups in the cities.73 M oreover, the export o f foodstuffs to Russia w ith essentially no com pensation generated a strong national feeling of being robbed by the M uscovites.74 “Soviet power” appeared in U kraine in the 72 “O tc h e t N arkom zem a U kS S R P iato m u S’ezdu Sovetov U krainy,” Z b im ik spravozdan N arodnikh K om issariiativ, p. 12, cited from K u b an in , M akhnovshchina, p. 132. 73 A ccording to K u banin, 68% of the u rb an p o p u latio n in U kraine were n o n -U k rain ian , an d of them 59% w ere Russians and Jews. K u b an in , M akhnovshchina, p. 27. 74 See a d etailed d o c u m e n t com posed by th e U krainian SRs on th e a m o u n t o f goods taken o u t of U kraine by th e Bolsheviks: “Pis’m o k partiinym tovarishcham ” (K am enets-PodoI sk 1920), PSR Archive, file 2022.

form o f Red A rm y troops, com m issars setting up collective farms, and the C heka. R equisitions, collective farm s, com m issars, and terror instead o f land and “power to th e soviets” generated widespread protest, as in Russia. T h e igniting effect o f Bolshevik policies was am plified by the very fact th at they were carried o u t in U kraine.

Peasant A ttitudes in Ukraine Like the cossacks, U krainian peasants had a strong tradition o f independence from central governm ent. T h ey differed from the D on cossacks in th at they had no hostility to th e Bolsheviks, at least initially. Indeed they were attracted by the populist appearance of Bolshevism. T h ey liked the idea o f self-rule from below. T h ey liked th e idea of soviets an d agreed th at political power should belong to th e people them selves. U nlike the D on cossacks, M ak h n o ’s followers c o n ­ sidered th e W h ites their enem ies, w hom they associated with the old regim e. T h a t is why in early 1919 they were quite willing to support the Bolsheviks w hen they entered U kraine. L enin on his part instructed his lieutenants in U kraine, G . L. Piatakov, V. A. A ntonov-O vseenko, and L. B. K am enev, to be diplom atic w ith th e volunteer peasant form ations and to forge alliances with th em against the W hites: “W ith the troops o f M akhno it is necessary to be diplom atic, tem porarily, u n til Rostov is taken. W e have to send A ntonov there and m ake h im personally responsible for the troops o f M a k h n o .”75 T h is policy was very productive. M ak h n o and G rigoriev’s revolutionary peasant bands accepted th eir status u n d er general Red co m m and. In early April it was G ri­ goriev’s bands th at took Odessa and forced the F ren ch to abandon their illconceived in terv en tio n .76 In reality Bolshevik co m m an d over these forces was nom inal. P opular leaders am o n g th eir m en , G rigoriev and M akhno cherished th eir in d ep en ­ d ence and resented Bolshevik attem pts to incorporate th em fully into the Red Army. In th e course o f th e spring it becam e increasingly apparent th at the peasant volunteers understood the notion o f Soviet power very differently than th e C o m m u n ists. In ideal term s they understood Sovietpow er as freedom from a cen tralized state, as their own power, the power of peasants to rule them selves th ro u g h local elected councils and their elected m ilitary leaders— atam ans. T h ey interpreted Soviet pow er in accord w ith their traditional notions of freedom . E qually interesting and consistent with the peasant m entality were their views on the land question. In February 1919 at the Second C ongress o f 75 V. I. Lenin, “Telegramma L. B. K am enevu,” Polnoe sobranie Sochinenii1 vol. 50, p. 307. 76 For a well-documented study o f the French debacle in Odessa, see Kantorovich, F rantsuzy v Odesse. No date is indicated— received in Harvard University library in 1923.

Peasants, Rebels, and W orkers o f th e G uliay Pole area (M akhno’s hom e base) a resolution on land stated: “Since land is nobody’s and since only those w ho till it should have th e right to use it, all land m ust be owned by the laboring peasantry of U kraine and distributed freely an d equally. ”77 T h e peasants wanted to till it individually and n o t in collective farms. T hey w anted all the land and felt cheated th a t th e C o m m u n ist governm ent kept the landlords’ land and essen­ tially becam e th e new landlord in the countryside. A ccording to N . P liusnina, a fun ctio n ary in th e Bolshevik Food Supply C om m issariat, “they [the peasants] reckoned th at they w ould receive all th e landlords’ lands. A nd w hen they did not get th em , they began to wreck state farms in all possible ways. T hey stole hay and crops in the fields. T h ey destroyed houses . . . it was dangerous for C om m unists to appear in isolated villages.”78 A resolution adopted at th e C ongress o f Peasants, Rebels, and W orkers on 10 April 1919 illustrates well th e substance o f their differences with the C o m m u ­ nists. T h e congress represented 72 volosti (sub-uezd adm inistrative units) in the area aro u n d G uliay Pole, the cen ter of the M akhno m ovem ent. T h e Bolsheviks banned th e congress, and Pavel D ybenko, a Bolshevik division com m ander and M akhno's superior, sent a telegram : “Any kind of congresses convened by the G uliay Pole R evolutionary H eadquarters, w hich I have dissolved, are c o n ­ sidered truly counterrevolutionary. T h e organizers o f such congresses will be subjected to m ost repressive m easures including pronouncing them to be o u t­ side th e law [vne zakona}. I order [you] to take m easures im m ediately n o t to allow such occurrences. ”79 T h e M akhnovites read this telegram at the congress and responded th a t th e Bolsheviks h ad no business telling th em w hether to convene congresses or not. T h e resolution w ent on: “T h e cu rren t situation in Russia and in U kraine is characterized by the seizure o f power by the political party o f C om m unists-B olsheviks w ho do n o t balk at anything in order to preserve and consolidate th eir political power by arm ed force acting from the center. T h is party is conducting a crim inal policy in regard to the social revolution and in regard to th e laboring m asses.”80 T h e n the resolution listed specific grievances. T h e Bolsheviks were accused of having m anipulated elec­ tions to th e T h ird Congress o f Soviets in U kraine. T h e M akhnovites dem anded that all appointed com m issars be rem oved an d the principle o f electability of civilian and m ilitary co m m anders be restored. T hey dem anded that grain requisitions be stopped and people’s cooperatives opened (the M akhnovites did not w ant private trade w ith grain). T hey also dem anded freedom for left-wing

77 P rotocols o f th is congress cited in K u b an in , M a kh n o vsh c h in a , p. 55. 78 N . P liu sn in a, “N eskol’ko epizodov iz perioda grazhdanskoi voiny na U k rain e,” Staryi Bol’shevik, vol. 4, no. 7 (1933), pp. 8 4 - 1 0 0 , h ere p. 88. 79 “M aterialy i D oku m en ty : K istorii M akhnovskogo d v iz h e n iia ,” N a chuzhoi storone, no. 8 (1924), pp. 229. 80 Ib id ., p. 2 2 9 - 3 0 .

political parties and personal inviolability for leaders of these political parties. O n top of it all, point num ber 3 read: We protest against the reactionary habits o f Bolshevik rulers, commissars, and agents o f the Cheka, who are shooting workers, peasants, and rebels, inventing all kinds of excuses, and that is confirmed by the docum ents we have. T h e Cheka which were supposed to struggle with counterrevolution and with banditry have turned in the Bolsheviks’ hands into an instrument for the suppression o f the will o f the people. They have grown in som e cases into detachments of several hundred armed m en with a variety o f arms. W e demand that all these forces be dispatched to the front.81

T h e political position expressed in this resolution echoed the themes in the resolutions of the Left SRs, SRs, and Mensheviks. Soviet power under the Bolsheviks was not the power of elected soviets but the power of appointed commissars and the Cheka. As a result of this open act of defiance, the friction between the Bolsheviks and M akhno’s peasants intensified. T he geographical base of the M akhno m ovement was centered on the steppes o f the southeastern Ukraine, northeast o f the C rim ean peninsula and southwest of the D on cossacks’ lands. Peasants in other parts of Ukraine shared the same views, as evidenced by the ever more alarming tone of telegrams from local Com m unists to the government and the military comm and. Poltava: Peasants' disposition is antisoviet although there are no open rebellions as yet. 82 Kharkov: In som e volosti o f the province there were peasant rebellions in connection with the m obilization.85 Aleksandrovkii U ezd, Ekaterinoslav: T h e political situation in the uezd is hard. T he influence o f anarchists and Left SRs is very strong, which prevents im plem entation o f the m obilization. Propagandized peasants refuse to deliver grain and food to the cities.84

M akhno’s and Grigoriev’s followers were generally suspicious of the W hites. Yet this does not m ean that peasants in other provinces had the same disposi­ tion. W riting to the SR Central Com m ittee, which was m uch concerned with peasant political attitudes, a Socialist Revolutionary wrote: “In the entire space between Gom el and Chernigov, the peasants’ political disposition is unquesSi Ib id ., p. 230. 82 In the open atm osphere o f the 1920s, K ubanin published very revealing docum ents from the In fo rm atio n D e p artm en t o f the C entral B ureau of C o m m u n ic atio n s of the W ar C om m issariat of U kraine from th e Red Arm y A rchives o n internal c onditions in U kraine. T h e d o c u m e n t cited here is B iulleten', no. 27 (30 April 1919), T sentraT noe biuro sviazi pri N arkom voene Ukrainy, Arkhiv Krasnoi A rm ii, cited from K ubanin, M akhnovshchina, p. 48. 85 Svodka, no. I (T sentral’n o e b iu ro sviazi. Inform otdel N arvoenkom ata, 3 M arch to 17 April 1919), Arkhiv Krasnoi A rm ii, cited from K ubanin, M akhnovshchina , p. 48. 84 Ibid.

tionably anti-Bolshevik. T h ey are w aiting for the arrival o f D enikin eagerly.”85 S um m arizing the trajectory of peasant attitudes, a Bolshevik observer co n ­ cluded in Izvestiia; “Before each o f ou r retreats, one can observe a profound cooling off of the sym pathies of local populations toward Soviet power in grainrich provinces, due to th e activity of our food supply agencies.”86 Indeed, after only two m onths of Bolshevik rule, U krainian peasants had had en o u g h .87 T h e first serious rebellion broke out at the end of M arch. A band of two thousand peasants, arm ed w ith two field guns and eight m achine guns, attacked Aleksandrovsk in Ekaterinoslav Province. T h e C om m unists sent o u t a cavalry d etach m en t o f three h u n d red against the rebels, b u t the detachm ent joined th em . Red C o m m an d er Skachko reported to headquarters: “T h e atti­ tude o f M akhno h im self to this uprising is n o t clear. T h e re is a danger th at it m ay em brace th e entire region w here M akhno’s troops are situated. . . . It is necessary to undertake u rgent m easures. . . . For the suppression o f the upris­ ing it is necessary to send only Russian or international units. Local troops are n ot fit for this task.”88 Foreigners, also called Internationalists, had to be deployed against the rebels. B ut this was only the beginning. Peasant bands began to spring u p like m ushroom s after the rain all over U kraine, and n o t only the detachm ents of M akhno and G rigoriev but dozens and dozens o f bands in every province or, as L enin p u t it, in every uezd in U kraine.89 M akhno’s m ovem ent centered in the southeastern corner o f U kraine, and G rigoriev’s rebellion em braced three prov­ inces in central U kraine. Z elenyi’s band, 15,000 strong, operated in Kiev Province. Struk’s band controlled the north ern part o f Kiev Province, and west o f it was th e band of Sokolovskii. In th e area around Belaia Tserkov a band of Yurii M arurenko was active, w hich called itself an A ll-U krainian Rev. C om jittee]. A round Berdichev there were Petliura’s independence detachm ents: around U m a n ’, the band o f S hogrin.90 M o sto f these rebel bands stayed close to their h o m e area. T h e peasants supported them with food and supplies, and the rebels defended the peasants from C o m m u n ist requisitions. T h e rebels’ m ost frequent targets were grain collection agencies and the Cheka. G rigoriev’s bands were reported to have seized cloth from the Bolsheviks and distributed it freely to the peasants.91

85 “Vseukrainskii komitet partii ESER, O tchet o poezdke v Chernigov," Ts.P.A ., TsKa PSR, Fond 274, Opis’ I, docum ent 19, pp. 45-49. 86 T. Sedel’nikov, “Kak iskorenit’ Vandeiu?” Izvestiia (7 August 1919), I. 87 See Volin, M erisheviki na Ukraine, p. 89. 88 Shtab Ukrainskogo fronta, Operativnyi otdel: “Banditskoe Vosstanie v Aleksandrovskom uezde,” delo no. 30 701, Arkhiv Krasnoi Armii, cited in Kubanin, Makhnovshchina, p. 47. 89 Lenin, “Rech ob obm ane naroda lozungam i svobody i ravenstva” (19 May 1919), Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 38, pp. 333-65. 90 lstoriia Grazhdanskoi voiny, vol. 4, p. 176, and Kubanin, Makhnovshchina, p. 5. 91 “O t Odessy do Tiflisa,” Bor ba, no. 146 (July, 1919), 2.

According to Christian Rakovskii, the Boishevik ruler of Ukraine, threefourths of the m em bership of the bands were poor peasants. T he entire Ukrai­ nian countryside was united against the Com m unists. This is clear from the C om m unists’ own assessments at the Fifth AU-Ukrainian Party Conference: “It is hard to distinguish between the kulak and the poor peasant in the M akhno m ovem ent. It is a mass peasant m ovem ent. We do not have anything in the countryside, anything we can hold on to, anybody who can be our ally in the struggle with the bandits.”92 A Soviet scholar wrote in the liberal atmosphere of the 1920s, reflecting on the situation in 1919: “By the middle of 1919 the entire peasantry, all of it with all its com ponents, was against Soviet power. . . . Peasants were . . . against fixed deliveries of grain, against the Cheka, and against the policy of socialist land use. . . . These attitudes were typical for all strata in the countryside. ”93 M ore and m ore often the peasants’ slogans were Down with the C o m m u ­ nists! or Soviets without the Communists! T he bands’ popularity grew, and thousands o f peasants flocked to join them . In April alone there were ninetythree separate arm ed rebellions against Soviet power in Ukraine.94 Grigoriev’s army num bered as m any as 15,000 m en ,95 Zelenyi's army up to 7,000, and M akhno’s was at least 20,000 in the late spring of 1919.96 Even if we lim it our total to the known num ber of rebels, it would be about 45,000 fighters. This was a formidable military force, equal to about half of the Red Army’s strength in Ukraine. T h e actual num ber of rebels in all bands was definitely m uch higher, and their com bined impact devastating.

R ed Army Soldiers’ A ttitudes T he line of dem arcation between the peasant rebels and the regular Red Army troops was blurred in Ukraine. After all, M akhno’s and Grigoriev’s detachments were technically a part of the Red Army. As we learn from secret reports on the morale of the Red Army, the soldiers’ disposition was very similar to that of the M akhno troopers. No wonder m any of them so often joined the rebels. Here is a characterization of the political attitudes in the regiments of the Second Divi­ sion of the Ukrainian Red Army: “Anti-Semitism is high in the regiment. Red Army soldiers’ are set [nastoeny] against the Com m unists. Drunkenness and card playing are everyday occurrences. Red Army soldiers conduct un92 la. A. Iakovlev, Ό bor’be s banditizm ov,” speech at the Fifth All-Ukrainian Party Confer­ ence in 1920, cited in Kubanin, M akhnovshchina, p. 61. 93 Ibid., p. 63. 94 Hunczak, ed ., The Ukraine, 1917—1921, p. 266. 95 Istoriia G razhdanskoi voiny, vol. 4 , p. 176. 96 “Petliurovtsy i dobrovol’tsy,” N a chuzhoi storone, no. 8 (1924), 231. O n M akhno’s strength, see Arshinov, H istory o f the M akhnovist M ovem ent, p. 138.

authorized searches and requisitions. D iscipline is low .”97 Such attitudes were widespread in th e entire Red Army. AU reports indicate that the soldiers dis­ played any th in g bu t a desire to fight in the civil war. T h e ir disposition seems to have been to fend for them selves. A Socialist R evolutionary in a report to his party’s C entral C o m m ittee m ade the following observations: “I had an occasion to witness how sm all groups o f soldiers were ru n n in g away from the front after C hernigov fell. O n e tim e I saw a group o f such runaways m arching and singing a song”: I am playing a harmonica

I igraiu na baiane

And underneath is slippery

A pod baianom sklizko

Run away comrades

Udiraite tovarishchi

Cause D enikin’s near.

A to Denikin blizko.98

R u n away, fend for yourself, who cares w hat com es next— these attitudes, captured in songs, seem to depict accurately the spirit of Red Army soldiers. It is certainly n o t surprising that desertion rates am ong them were very high indeed. In just one regim ent com posed of draftees from Kiev Province, 50 percent of the soldiers deserted en route from Kiev to their destination.99 T h e local Bol­ shevik authorities fulfilled orders from M oscow and m obilized reluctant peas­ ants into th e army. Yet they could n o t supply the draftees even with the barest essentials. T h e report on th e political situation in the N inth Army frankly stated that “soldiers often w ent w ith o u t boots.” T hey had n o t been paid for th e second m onth in a row, and the food supply was ap p allin g .100 Soldiers were often hungry and blam ed the com m issars and th e Jews for their m isfortunes. T h e soldiers’ frustration was com p o u n d ed by the fact that their superiors on the front lines had a very com fortable life. D ivision com m anders and especially army headquarters custom arily requisitioned from the local population whatever they th o u g h t they needed. As a report to the M ilitary R evolutionary C o u n cil of the N in th Arm y explained: On 9 July 1919 at 9 P.M. a car o f comrade Smirnov drove up to house no. 7 on Nagornaia Street. Smirnov, an aide to comrade Balanzin, member o f the Revolu­ tionary Military C ouncil o f the N inth Army, stated that by 10

a .m

. the following

morning all the residents o f the house should abandon the premises and leave behind all furniture, blankets, pillows, etc. T hey were allowed to take with them only their personal clothes. W hen I indicated to comrade Smirnov that this was an unjust

97 Biulleten , no. 26 (30 April 1919), Tsentral’noe biuro sviazi pri Narkomvoene Ukrainy, delo no. 10341, Arkhiv Krasnoi Armii, cited in Kubanin, Makhnovshchina, p. 50. 98 “Vseukrainskii komitet partii ESER, O tchet o poezdke v Chernigov,” T s.P.A., TsKa PSR, Fond 274, Opis’ I, docum ent 19, pp. 45-49. 99 “Politsvodka 9oi arm ii" (20 July 1919), T s.G .A .S .A ., Fond 192, Opis’ I, docum ent 53, “Osobyi Otdel pri R ew oensovete 9oi armii. ” 100 Ibid., 29 July 1919.

decision and that the Province Party C om m ittee and Executive C om m ittee would not allow it, he responded that they did not fear either o f those and that they had been doing this in all the cities where they happened to pass som e tim e. 101

Q uite aware of the methods of their commanders, the com m on soldiers helped themselves to local residents’ property. Dozens of reports describe Red Army soldiers looting, confiscating pigs and horses, even robbing those working in the fields.102 As a result hostility to the Reds increased.

T h e Three Blows to the Reds C om m unist authorities suffered three crushing blows from peasant rebels w hich ended C om m unist rule in Ukraine. T he first was the rebellion of G ri­ goriev’s forces in May. T he second was the rebellion of M akhno’s forces in June and July, and the third was the partisan warfare of Zelenyi’s bands near Kiev in August. W ith the evacuation o f Odessa by the French and the conquest of most of Ukraine by April 1919, the C om m unist Ukrainian government and the Red Army com m and were planning to continue their advance into Moldavia and even to H ungary.103 But peasant rebel divisions incorporated into the Red Army refused to m arch to Moldavia. Grigoriev was the leader of this mutiny, w hich very quickly escalated into an armed rebellion and spread to three provinces by early May. W ith astonishing speed Grigoriev took Ekaterinoslav, Kherson, Nikolaev, and K rem enchug.104 In a num ber of cities the garrison cam e over to the side of Grigoriev without a fight (Cherkassy, for example, and Kremenchug). As a Soviet historian put it: “In some cities, as soon as a detach­ m ent of Grigoriev’s forces appeared, the garrison declared itself neutral and the city went over under the authority of Grigoriev’s atam ans.”105 Literally in a m atter of days Soviet power ceased to exist in a large part of Ukraine. M ore and m ore units were going over to the side of Grigoriev. A protracted and bitter struggle started, a war on an unexpected front inside the supposedly Soviet territory. T he Red C om m and deployed 20,000 troops against Grigoriev.106 At the end o f April and in early May military arithmetic was turning against the Reds. A 100,000-strong southern Red Army faced D enikin’s army of 60,000, added to 30,000 Kuban and Terek cossacks. In addition 30,000 rebel D on cossacks were fighting behind the Red lines at that ιοί “V R ew oensovet9oi arm ii,” (9 July 1919), T s.G .A .S .A ., Fond 192, Opis’ I, docum ent 26. 1 0 2 Telegramma v Shtab 9oi arm ii ot: Predsedatelia Gubernskogo Revoliutsionnogo Komiteta (19 July 1919), T s.G .A .S .A ., Fond 192, Opis’ I, docum ent 26; 103 Istoriia Grazhdanskoi voiny, vol. 4, p. 70. 104 Ibid., p. 177. 105 K ubanin, M akhnovshchina, p. 71. 106 lstoriia Grazhdanskoi voiny, vol. 4, p. 177.

tim e as well as 17,000 o f G rigoriev’s rebels. T h e effect o f the rebels however, was not m erely in num bers. T h ey were tearing apart the Soviet adm inistration from w ithin, paralyzing co m m u n icatio n s, m obilization, and supply services. N ot only did th e rebels m ake D en ik in ’s advance possible; they were the decisive factor in its success. In May, M akhno did n o t join Grigoriev. At least publicly he deplored the anti-Jewish pogrom s and decided to distance h im self from Grigoriev. Barely a m onth later, however, M ak h n o ’s own break with the C om m unists becam e unavoidable. S ince M ak h n o ’s troops co n tin u ed to draft resolutions critical of the C o m m u n ists and the C heka, V ladim ir A ntonov-O vseenko, the Bolshevik com m ander in chief, recom m ended th a t they “reorganize [M akhno’s] brigade, strengthen the C o m m u n ist co m p o n en t, neutralize the influence o f the an ar­ chists, and decisively c u t off the b andit ele m en ts.”107 O n 19 M ay D en ik in ’s forces lau n ch ed th eir offensive to the n o rth toward Kharkov and to the west toward central U kraine. T h e th irteen th Red Army, o f w hich M akhno’s brigade was a part, was badly b a tte re d .108 According to the supporters of M akhno, their defeats a t the front were the result o f the fact th at they were not supplied with am m unition. M akhnovites believed th at the Bolsheviks deliberately threw them into battle w ith o u t supplies in order to weaken their forces. Som e o f them even suggested th at the Bolsheviks had decided to sacrifice the rebel territory to the W h ite s .109 W h e th e r or not this was the case, the fact rem ains th a t by the beginning of Ju n e the rupture betw een the Reds and the M akhnovites was com plete. Trotsky wrote in his fam ous article “M akhnovshchina” th at it was high tim e to p u t an end to th e M akhnovites once and for all. A ccording to m ost Soviet sources, M ak h n o ’s bands com m itted an act of treason w hich had a devastating effect on the front line against the W h ite s.110 M akhno’s forces were reported as having disintegrated and exposed the front, w hich m ade the W hites’ breakthrough possible. T h e Petrograd Izvestiia reported th a t a Revolutionary Tribunal chaired by G. L. Piatakov had decided to execute M akhno (if they could capture h im ) because the W hites had broken through the front line held by his forces. T h e paper continued: “th e M akhno m ovem ent em braced the neighboring [Red] arm y, and this predeterm ined the defeat o f the Red Army.”111 So according to this source, it was n o t so m u ch M akhno’s treason that caused th e defeat of th e Red Arm y b u t the fact th at a “M akhno m ood” had seized th e Red Army. T h e ru p tu re betw een M akhno and the Bolsheviks had a devastating effect o n th e course of th e frontline civil war. D enikin’s forces broke through in early Ju n e, threaten in g Kharkov and all o f central U kraine. O n June 2, barely ten days before D enikin m arched into Kharkov, the city 107 Rakitin, V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, p. 235. 108 lstoriia Grazhdanskoi voiny, vol. 4, p. 178. 109 “Pravda o M akhno,” Odesskii nabat, no. 7 (16 June 1919). 110 lstoriia Grazhdanskoi voiny, vol. 4, p. 178. 111 “M akhnovshchina,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta, no. 189 (July 1919).

soviet debated the crisis. High-ranking Com m unist speakers— G. L. Piatakov, Andrei Bubnov, and Artem [Fedor Sergeev]— saw the causes of the collapse of the front in the shameful retreat of the “M akhno bands.” The Left SR speaker, Vasiliev, pointed out in his speech that the defeats were a result of the decom ­ position of the Red Army and uprisings in the rear of the front line. The workers and peasant masses had become disillusioned with Soviet power. He con­ dem ned the terror, the Chekas, and the food supply policy and demanded new elections to the Kharkov soviet. T he Menshevik speaker Ber (B. N. Gurevich) seconded Vasiliev and said that in order to “dissipate anti-Soviet attitudes in the countryside” the idea of com m unes and committees of the poor had to be abandoned. An end had to be put to the dictatorship of the CP. A new all­ socialist m ultiparty government had to be created. T h e Bolshevik answer to these recom mendations is most revealing of what they perceived to be the causes of the catastrophe at the front. Kliment Voroshilov replied that the Mensheviks and SRs were trying to turn a difficult situation to their own advantage. T here was no need to change Soviet policy in any way. T he cause of the setbacks lay in the Left SRs’ and Mensheviks’ counterrevolutionary agita­ tion. Another high-ranking Bolshevik, Iosif Kosior, continued: “We know the needs of workers and peasants not worse than the Mensheviks. But at the current critical m om ent it is untim ely to present unfulfillable demands, as the Mensheviks do. By their demagogic agitation they corrupt and darken the consciousness of workers.” Zorin, speaking as a representative of the Petrograd soviet, continued in the same vein: “Yes it is necessary to change Soviet policy, but in the direction opposite to the one recom mended by the Mensheviks. For the self-defense of the working class and the socialist revolution it is necessary to strengthen our extraordinary institutions— the C heka.”112 O n the eve of their departure the Bolsheviks still believed there was nothing wrong with their policies. M akhno did not in any way want to help the W hites. For him they were enem ies as well, and before long M akhno would launch his famous partisan warfare, this time against D enikin’s forces. In July and August, however, M akhno’s detachm ents continued to attack the Chekas, grain collection agen­ cies, and other attributes o f C om m unist rule. M akhno’s detachments crushed the Bolsheviks in central Ukraine from within, and Denikin took full advantage of this. T h e W hite army took Kharkov in June, overran central Ukraine in July, and was well on the way to Kiev by August 1919. Zelenyi’s guerrilla warfare against the Reds in Kiev Province predetermined the Reds’ departure from Kiev at the end of August. During the last weeks of Bolshevik rule in Ukraine in the late sum m er of 1919 it was hardly possible to draw a line on the m ap that would delineate the Red-controlled territory from that of the W hites. T he territory from Odessa to Kiev was a mosaic of rebel 1,2 Izvestiia K harkovskogo Soveta, no. 128 (3 Ju n e 1919).

detachm ents. U krainian indep en d en ce units of Sim on Petliura were active in the west, an d scores of sm all partisan anti-Bolshevik detachm ents were every­ w here to th e east and n o rth . A ccording to N . P liusnina, w ho served in the Bolshevik food supply adm inistration in Odessa, “the kulaks” blew up the bridges in the direction o f Kharkov. T h a t m ade it impossible for the Bolsheviks to evacuate valuables from O dessa. N o one knew for sure w here the rebels were and w h eth er a train could reach Kiev, let alone Moscow. A ccording to Pliusnina, th e last session of the Province C o m m ittee in Odessa discussed the results of the suppression of the kulak rebellion. 113 As it turned out, it had n o t been com pletely suppressed, since peasant rebels c u t off the Reds’ retreat from Odessa an d trapped m any o f th em . As in so m any instances earlier, they cleared the way for D en ik in ’s army. T h e peasant rebel m o vem ent played a crucial role in the collapse o f Red rule in U kraine. Its profound weakness, however, was th at peasants did n o t and could n o t hold and adm inister territory cleared of the Bolsheviks. T hey were partisan h it-an d -ru n bands. T h e y sim ply destroyed the attributes o f Bolshevik power and o f state power as such. It was a rebellion o f the countryside against the cities. A nd since the cities were the symbol of C o m m u n ist, R ussian, and Jewish rule, these m ovem ents were a n ti-C o m m u n ist, anticity, anti-R ussian, and anti-Jew ish. As it often happens, th e Jewish residents of sm all towns and cities— m ostly craftsm en, petty traders, and workers— were to suffer. T hey were accused o f supporting the Bolsheviks and bore the b ru n t o f peasant antiC o m m u n ist rage. G rigoriev’s bands were particularly notorious for th eir po­ groms. In th e towns o f Cherkassy an d Elisavetgrad there were three thousand victims in each. A M enshevik paper reported: There was no street in Cherkassy where a member of a [Jewish] family had not been killed. . . . In a sm all place Sm ela during the first pogrom on 11 March , eleven people were killed. . . . T he trains following to Cherkassy did not give mercy to those remaining and beginning with 15 May seized victims on the streets, took them away from their hom es into a special railcar at the station. T hentheyordered those arrested to run. Fifty-six out o f sixty were cut down by m achine-gun fire. Four survived by chance. . . . Blood was spilled not only in the towns and cities. M any people were killed on the road between Nikolaev Krem enchug and Razdelnaia. O n these railroads Jewish passengers were thrown out o f the train at full sp eed .114

Pogroms were also reported to have taken place near N ikolaev' 15 and Kiev by a variety of witnesses w ho were politically at odds with one another: M ensheviks, Kadets, an d even C o m m u n ists. T h e Political D irectorate of the Red Army 113 N. Pliusnina, "Neskol'ko epizodov iz perioda grazhdanskoi voiny na Ukraine,” Staryi BoVshevik, vol. 4, no. 7 (1933), p. 90. 114 Nash golos, no. 116 (3 June 1919). 115 ‘‘Rezoliutsiia protesta Iugprofa protiv Evreiskikh pogromov,” first published in Kolesnikov, Professional’noe dvizhenie i kontrrevoliutsiia, pp. 40 2 -3 .

reported to Moscow: “T he wave of [anti-Jewish] pogroms has embraced almost all of Ukraine. Bandits of all kinds conduct blatant anti-Semitic agitation.”116 T he situation in m any Ukrainian villages and towns in the sum m er of 1919 can be best described as bezvlastie: without any authority, or a power vacuum. T he Bolsheviks were on the run and did not venture far from railroad tracks. Bands of all kinds would come and go with the speed of a kaleidoscope. Some of them had political ideals, others were indistinguishable from crim inal gangs. Sometimes posing as Grigoriev’s detachments, other times as Cheka units, they stopped trains and systematically robbed passengers, referring to this as a “requi­ sition” from the bourgeoisie. Turm oil, upheaval, anarchy, and jacquerie were words used to describe the Ukrainian countryside. T he W hite forces of General D enikin were not num erically large, but they had a trem endous advantage over peasant rebels in that they strove to administer the territory they took. A small but well-armed and organized W hite force overran all of Ukraine.

Red Terror in Ukraine Few people would be surprised by the evidence that the peasants rose up against the Com m unists. Yet a myth persists that in the cities the Com m unists had a loyal constituency. Indeed, when the Com m unists entered Ukrainian cities in January and February 1919, the Russian part of the population was favorably disposed to them . Hetm an Skoropadsky’s rule was discredited as having been too closely associated with the Germans, and the Directory governm ent of independent Ukraine was disliked by the Russian educated society, which tended to regard Ukraine as a part of Russia, an insult to U krainians.117 C om m unist rule in Ukraine in 1919 was somewhat different than in Russia. First, it was established by military conquest. Political discourse in the soviets rem ained m ultiparty in character but was devoid of any practical m eaning. T he soviets and other electable institutions were set up from the top down, and elections were held rarely or under the threat of force. Second, the Com m unist party was very weak even in the cities, let alone the countryside, and relied not so m uch on the soviets and party committees as on the Red Army and the Cheka. Third, the record of C om m unist policies during this period was a replay of the excesses of 1918 in Russia proper: requisitions, indem nities, hostage taking, and executions. T h e duration of Bolshevik rule varied from city to city. In Kharkov it lasted from January to June and in Odessa from early April to mid-August, but the overall pattern seems to have repeated itself tim e after time. Upon entering a 116 O t Politupravleniia Narkomvoena Ukrainy” (29 M arch 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 522. 117 “V Kieve,” Delo naroda, no. 4 (23 M arch 1919).

city the C om m unist authorities would disband the dum a and the courts, na­ tionalize banks, and proclaim a dictatorship of the proletariat.118 As in 1918 their first priority was to place workers under C om m unist party control. Trade union boards where the Mensheviks were strong were arbitrarily disbanded, and C om m unist officials replaced them . Elections to the soviets, when they did take place, were conducted in an atmosphere of pressure and under direct supervision of the Cheka. T he Menshevik paper in Kharkov, for example, published a telegram of the C om m unist chairm an of the electoral commission: “It has been suggested that the local Chekas take upon themselves the most energetic electoral agitation in the elections to the Ukrainian Congress of Soviets. . . . Instructions are to be received at the local committees of the C om m unist party. AU resolutions at the rallies and meetings are to be tele­ graphed to the Information D epartm ent of the Vecheka.”119 T he Mensheviks protested this Cheka supervision of the electoral campaign and asked why the political police had to know the opinions expressed at rallies and plants. After several weeks of Bolshevik rule, the Mensheviks and SRs were expelled from the soviets and forced underground in most Ukrainian cities.120 (The Left SRs remained, however, and their political influence was enorm ous.) Here, for example, is a C om m unist report from Elisavetgrad on local politics: In the Elisavetgrad soviet the C om m unists have a minority. T h e Executive C om m it­ tee consists o f forty people. T h e SRs are everywhere, even in the m anagem ent. It was possible to remove them only by force. Because o f this abnormality the party com m it­ tee decided to conduct new elections to the soviet on 26 March. . . . Two months have passed by since the seizure o f power in Elisavetgrad, but our work has not yet been set right. T he most important reason for this is anti-Semitism. A m ong the workers o f the largest o f the Elisavetgrad plants and am ong the railroad workers agitation is going on against Soviet power as the power o f the Jews. . . . It is unlikely that new elections will have positive results.121

T he C om m unists were aware of their weakness and tried to preserve at least the neutrality of workers. Even though most factories in Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkov were idle, workers were still paid their wages. M any were recruited into the Red Guards or the Cheka and thus obtained privileged food rations. As in Russia, those who rem ained on the factory floor began to grumble because life was becoming ever more costly. A curious pattern, repeated in all Ukrainian cities, was that as soon as the Com m unists entered, food prices tended to rise. 118 G rin fe l’d, Iz v o s p o m in a n ii o bor’be za svobodu i narodovlastie vO desse, 1 9 1 8 -1 9 2 0 , p. 22. 119 “V seukrainskii S ’ezd Sovetov i V seukrainskaia C h e k a ,” N ash golos, no. 42 (25 F ebruary 1919). 120 “O t O dessy do T iflisa, ” Bor’ba, no. 146 (July 1919), 2. See also “K onferentsiia Nikolaevskoi organizatsii R S D R P ,” P u t’ S o tsia l D em okrata, no. 164 (16 M arch 1919). 121 Svodka otd ela osvedom leniia Sovnarkom a U kS S R (3 A pril 1919), cited in K ubanin, M akh n o vsh ch in a , p. 48.

This surely reflected the insecurity of traders. T he first thing the Bolsheviks did was to prohibit private trade. T h at of course severely limited the food supply and pushed food prices up even more. Bolshevik policy in Ukraine in regard to the soviets, socialist parties, and workers was hardly different from the policy in Russia. T h e Bolsheviks tolerated opposition parties in some cities and drove them underground in others. They m anipulated elections and disbanded independent trade unions. They shut down opposition newspapers and arrested popular socialist leaders. AU that had been practiced in Russia as well. W hat distinguished C om m unist rule in Ukraine was the role assigned to the Cheka in what was then called the “class struggle.” T he Cheka in Ukraine was even less accountable to any authority and m ore prone to resort to executions than in Russia. M artyn Latsis, a highranking Cheka boss, discussed the defects of the Ukrainian Cheka in his letter to the local Chekas. T here were too many cases when Cheka personnel used items confiscated from speculators for personal consum ption. T here were too many comrades habitually drunk. Cheka agents were too rude even with workers. They did not respect the religious feelings of the population. As a result, Latsis concluded, “Instead of the broad support of the population, we find almost exclusively hatred. . . .B u titisin a d m issib le th a ta lm o stth e e n tirep o p u la tio n is set against Soviet power.”122 Such misdeeds listed by Latsis pale in compari­ son with the Cheka atrocities reported in a variety of sources: testimony by the Mensheviks, SRs, and Kadets, and eyewitness accounts of foreigners, both G erm an and Allied, who happened to be in Ukraine. Some skeptics are likely to dismiss this evidence as biased. None of these witnesses were admirers of the Bolsheviks. Yet an attentive reading of these accounts shows that m any people who could not possibly have known one another, and never m et, wrote what they knew at the same tim e and repeated in their testimony specific details of the Cheka terror in Odessa, Kharkov, and Kiev. These details and patterns recur with such regularity that it is difficult to dismiss them as coincidental. Many of the stories involve war requisitions and indemnities. T h e defeated party in a war is often forced to pay an indemnity. T he bour­ geoisie was a defeated class, according to the Com m unists. Kiev, Kharkov, and Odessa were not rich cities by the spring of 1919. Yet in comparison with Petrograd and Moscow they were rich indeed. M any of the Russian intelligentsia— lawyers, professors, and entrepreneurs— had fled to the south in 1918. Now m any of them were caught by the Red advance in these cities. As soon as the C om m unists took Kharkov, Kiev, and Odessa they made it known that the bourgeoisie in each city were to pay an indemnity. In Odessa they were to raise 500 m illion rubles.123 A G erm an soldier who stayed in Odessa and a Georgian 122 M. Latsis, “Vsem Chrezvychainym Kommissiiam po b o r'be s kontrrevoliutsiei na Ukraine,” in “Rabota C heka,” N a chuzhoi storone, no. 5 (1924), pp. 168-72, here p. 168. 123 “O f odessy do Tiflisa,” Bor'ba, no. 146 (July 1919), 2. See also N iem ann, F u n fM o n a te Obrigkeit von Unten, p. 10.

M enshevik (who had never m et) each described the indem nity cam paign in identical term s. T h e Bolsheviks took hostages from am ong the bourgeoisie and threatened to execute th em if their fam ilies did not raise the funds. T h e n the cam paign to expropriate valuables from the “bourgeoisie" in favor o f the “entire people” broadened. Red G uards an d th e C heka began searching block after block, a p a rtm e n t after ap artm en t, confiscating clothes, food, and valuables. By m id-M ay th e Odessa Bolsheviks decided to regularize this mass expropriation and published an order: In accordance with the decision o f the workers’ soviet, today on 13 May registration of property will begin according to a special questionnaire with the aim o f expropriating from the propertied classes foodstuffs, shoes, clothing, m oney, valuables, and other items w hich are needed by the entire working people. . . . Everyone is obligated to render assistance to this sacred task. . . . T hose who will not abide by this directive must be arrested immediately; those who render resistance must be sh o t.124

T hen followed a list o f item s subject to confiscation: m e n ’s suits and bicycles, blankets in excess o f o n e per bed, sheets in excess o f two per bed, and so on. T h e only problem the com m issars ran into was that workers’ wives raised a row w hen their soup bowls were expropriated, an d workers staged a rally to defend their proletarian property. 125 Several sources testify th at those labeled “the bourgeoisie” were evicted from their ap artm ents an d drafted to perform hard labor for the “worker and peasant governm ent.” T h e O dessa Izvestiia wrote: “If we shoot several dozen of these scoundrels an d fools, if we force th e m to clean the streets and their wives to wash Red A rm y barracks (an h o n o r for them ), then they will understand th at our au thority is firm and they should n o t pin their hopes on the E nglish.”126 System atic searches o f apartm ents and confiscations o f furniture and clothes were also reported from Kharkov. 127 Forcing the wives o f the “bourgeoisie” to wash barracks m ust have been a widespread practice, since there was a refer­ ence to it in Kharkov, Kiev, an d even Perm Province as well. A recurring them e in m any reports is th at “bourgeois” w om en were abused by Red Army soldiers in the barracks. In p lain English, th e Bolshevik rulers were thieves and rapists. A typical scene at th e tim e was th a t a C heka d etachm ent w ould burst into the apartm ent of a lawyer, doctor, businessm an, or an officer with guns pointed at the ow ners and, after a search, would confiscate valuables, take hostages, and 124 “D e n ’ m irn o go vosstaniia,” izvesfzia O desskogoSoveta rabochikhdeputatov, no. 36(13 M ay 1919), I. 125 “O t O dessy do T iflisa ,” Bor’ba, no. 146 (July 1919), 2. 126 M elgunov, “K rasnyi terror” v Rossii, 1 9 1 8 -1 9 2 3 , 2d e d ., p. 49. 127 T h is is a n ex ceptionally detailed an d w ell-d o cu m en ted d o c u m e n t on industry, politics, and the civil w ar, titled “ K har’kov. ” T h e a u th o r is n o t identified. It is clear from th e contents, how ever, th at th e d o c u m e n t was w ritten in th e su m m e r o f 1919 after K harkov was taken by D en ik in ’s arm y and th at th e d o c u m e n t was a n attem p t to survey the eco n o m ic an d political situation in th e area. A copy was sen t to th e Allies. C ited h e re from a copy in Records, dispatch 86 1 .0 0 .7 7 9 1 .

draft w om en for “hard w ork."128 It was com m on knowledge that C heka agents kept m u ch o f th e expropriated booty for them selves.129 In Kiev the C heka em ployed several hundred m en. It had its own trucks, m ach in e guns, and plenty of w eapons and m oney. AU sources indicate that executions started a couple o f weeks after the Bolshevik takeover and intensified progressively as the C o m m u n ists’ hold on the country was threatened. A ccording to the G eorgian M enshevik, 200 people were executed as counterrevolutionaries during his o n e-m o n th stay in O d essa.130 Sergey M elgunov cites the figure of 2,200 for the three su m m er m o n th s .131 T h e G erm an soldier’s report shows the highest figure for the total n u m b e r o f victim s in Odessa— 13,000 for the entire five-m onth period o f Bolshevik ru le .132 T h is w ould suggest that the lio n ’s share o f execu­ tions took place d u rin g the last weeks before their departure. Indeed, the policy of Red T error was officially proclaim ed in U kraine after the fall of Kharkov in Ju n e 1919. T h e first page of the C heka new spaper bears evidence, with its poem s praising terror and threatening “class en em ies,” to the fact that the C o m m u n ists m ade no secret o f their mass terror. T h e Odessa Izvestiia p u b ­ lished o n e o f m any threats to the bourgeoisie: “T h e Red T error has been set in m otion. A nd it will start hitting the bourgeois neighborhoods. T h e bourgeoisie is going to crack u n d er the bloody blows o f Red T erro r.”133 C heka agents usually m ade arrests at night, never said anything about the charges, sent th e “case” to the C heka collegium , an d sim ply filled in a verdict on th e form , such as “an agent of Grigoriev and D enikin” or “a well-known co u n terrevolutionary,” and th en suggested th at the accused sign it. If the ac­ cused refused, h e was beaten and tortured. H e had to sign a confession and n am e his acco m p lices.134 Officially the m ass executions before the Bolshevik dep artu re w ere called a cam paign to unload the prisons. O n 8 June in Kharkov, two days before ab andoning the city, the Bolsheviks began to “unload ” the local prison. A ccording to a survivor, they dug a huge trench and executed seventyn in e p eo p le.135 T h e prisoners were m ade to undress before execution, and their clothes were distributed to Red A rm y soldiers. A ccording to an o th er witness, th e C heka cells were worse than the prison. Fifty people were executed there as 128 Ibid., p. 22. 129 T h at is clear from the Latsis letter, “Vsem Chrezvychainym Kommissiiam po bor’be s kontrrevoliutsiei na U kraine,” in “Rabota C heka,” Na chuzhoistorone, no. 5 (1924), 168-72, here 170. no “O t Odessy do Tiflisa,” Bor'ba, no. 146 (July 1919), 2. 131 Melgunov, Krasnyi terror v Rossii, p. 49. 132 N iem ann, F iinf M onate Obrigkeit von U ntent p. 10. A ccordingtoK enezC TheB olsheviks had carried o ut m ore than a thousand bloody murdeTS during the last days of their rule [in Kharkov],” C ivil War in South Russia, vol. 2, p. 157. 133 Melgunov, Krasnyi terror v Rossii, p. 49. 134 “Khar’kov,” Records, dispatch 861.00.7791. 135 Ibid. p. 19; identical data is in “Kharkov under Red T error,” Bulletins o f the Russian Liberation Committee, no. 35 (18 October 1919), 3.

“enem ies o f the people” (another familiar label). These were primarily “sabo­ teurs,” hostages from the “bourgeoisie,” and “counterrevolutionaries.”136 W hen the W hites marched in, the graves were opened and bodies identified and photographed.137 It was determined that most o f the victims had been killed with a shot to the back o f the h ead .138 In Kiev, Red rule lasted longer, until 28 August, and the number o f victims was greater. It is significant that an account of the Red Terror in Kiev, made by Red Cross Sisters of Mercy, reiterates many of the essential procedural details reported from Kharkov. These sisters had never been to Kharkov and could not have known what other witnesses reported, yet their testimony is similar. A c­ cording to their report: “Continual executions took place. They went on every night during June, July and August. But this last week was one o f wholesale slaughter.”139 As in Kharkov there was a concentration camp for counter­ revolutionaries with several hundred inmates, in addition to those kept in the Cheka itself. Beginning on 8 August the terror intensified, since the Bolsheviks began to fear that they would have to abandon Kiev. A special com m ission was set up to review cases quickly and to pass verdicts. According to the sisters’ testimony: T h e exam iners— two m e n an d one w om an arrived at th e C o n c e n tra tio n cam p. T h ey were q u ite u n ed u c ate d people. T h e prisoners w ere called o u t in alphabetical order and presented to these individuals w ho h ad th e right to liberate th em , transfer th em to the category o f hostages, or shoot th em . T h e re existed no p relim in ary exam ination m inutes, n o statem en t o f th e case to g uide these revolutionary exam iners. T h ey were only in possession o f th e prisoner’s identity card. It con tain ed n a m e , age, class, profession o f th e prisoner an d th e category to w hich h e had been previously assigned, som etim es a b rie f qualification o f th e crim e. T h e n th e exam iners were confronted w ith a living m an . H e was subjected to a h u rried exam ination. T h e com m ission worked from 12 to 5 an d reviewed 200 people, consequently giving only o n e or two m in u tes to each . T h e sentences w ere p ro n o u n ced w ith lig h tn in g rapidity. T h e re was no o ne an d now here to appeal to. T h e sentence was fin a l.140

Anyone familiar with the style o f Cheka collegium work in Russia would recognize this procedure as typical. It is better known in the context of the 1930s, and yet it was used in 1919. 156 “Khar’kov,” Records, dispatch 861.00.7791, pp. 26-27. 157 Photographs and documents were delivered to the Allies. See “Atrocites Bolchevistes,” compiled by Bureau de la Presse Russe a Constantinopol. The U.S. high commissioner added the following to the documents: “The information contained herein as well as innumerable other evidence of the horrors perpetrated by the Bolshevist regime in Russia are vouched for by many impartial observers of various nationalities arriving here from time to time in Constantinopol,” rear admiral, U.S. Navy-U.S. high commissioner in Turkey to Department of State, Records, dispatch 861.00.6277. 138 “Khar’kov,” Records, dispatch 861.00.7791, p. 37. 139 In the Shadow o f Death, p. 44. 140 Ibid., p. 46.

To the Red Cross sisters it appeared that the victims condem ned to death, and those lucky ones freed, were chosen arbitrarily. They could not understand why M r. Mankovsky, who used to own 6,000 desiatin of land before the revolution, had to be shot. He had not com m itted any crime. T he reason that the sisters could not understand the Com m unists’ rationale was that they ap­ plied the criteria of individual guilt, com m on in civilized countries. The Bolsheviks, however, rejected “bourgeois civilization” and applied their own “class criteria.” It was irrelevant what M r. Mankovsky had or had not done. By definition he was “a class enemy. ” It did not m atter that he did not have any land now. In his consciousness he was a kulak, hence an enemy of the proletarian revolution, and hence he was condem ned to be shot. T h e fate of another m an, M r. Birsky, was decided after only one question: “Were you the mayor of G om el?” “Yes. ” He was to be executed simply because he represented the ruling establishm ent of the overthrown “bourgeoisie.” A similar case was that of Mrs. Bobrovnikova, a landowner from Chernigov Province. T he sisters described her last days: “She was informed on by her servant and imprisoned together with her infant child. W hen M me. Bobrovnikova realized that death was inevitable, she flung herself on the floor weeping, tore her hair and implored mercy for her child’s sake.”141 T he “class” approach was practiced many times by the Cheka and its suc­ cessor organizations. As recent research has shown, the same procedure and the same questions and categories were used when the Red Army overran western Ukraine in 1939. Anybody who was a mayor, a policem an, or repre­ sented the “overthrown bourgeois” order in any capacity was either shot or exiled to Siberia.142 In Kiev in 1919 some victims were executed not on the basis of class origin but simply as a result of administrative fiat or personal arbitrary actions of Bolshevik rulers. “O ne was a Soviet employee, Mariia Gromova, a young and intelligent woman. She was a Socialist, but probably not a Bolshevist. Her honesty rebelled against the cupidity and corruption of the commissars. Apparently she had attempted to bring charges against some­ one and was imprisoned for that. During the last few days she was terribly agitated. Her forebodings proved correct. She was shot by the Com m unists. ”143 In the last days of Bolshevik rule a huge trench was dug behind the house on Sadovaia Street No. 5. According to the sisters’ report, “T he prisoners were led out stark naked in batches of ten, placed on the edge of the ditch and shot.”144 (The same procedure was reported by a different source from Kharkov.145) W hen the W hites entered Kiev, they found 123 bodies in that d itc h .146 O ne 141 Ibid., p. 47. 142 Gross, Revolution from Abroad. 141 In the Shadow o f Death, p. 46. 144 Ibid., p. 47. 145 “Kharkov under Red Terror,” Bulletins o f the Russian Liberation Committee, no. 35 (18 O ctober 1919), 3. 146 In the Shadow o f Death, p. 48.

thousand eight h u n d re d victim s were executed in Kiev in the last weeks before the Bolshevik dep artu re, and th e total n u m b e r of those executed from February to A ugust was estim ated at th ree th o u s a n d .147 N o w onder all the accounts depict an enthusiastic reception in the streets w hen th e W h ite arm y was m arch in g in. A ccording to a M enshevik journal, no friend to th e W hites, crowds poured into th e streets in Kharkov blessing spasiteli i izbaviteli, saviors an d deliverers.148 T h e sam e picture was witnessed by an A m erican observer in Odessa and reported to the State D e p a rtm e n t.149 M ost surprisingly, th e Bolsheviks them selves wrote th at “petit bourgeois” crowds greeted th e W hites w ith enthusiasm as far n o rth as O re l.150 By early Septem ber the Bolshevik occupation o f U kraine was finished, and the front line was rolling northw ard toward Kursk and O rel. T h e W hites were well inform ed on the Bolsheviks’ dom estic troubles, and th at clearly entered their calculations in the prosecution o f the w a r.151 T h e Bolsheviks were essen­ tially at w ar w ith all groups o f th e population in U kraine except for som e categories of workers. A nd yet w ith o u t th e m ovem ent o f the W h ite arm y all these diverse anti-B olshevik forces would probably n o t have been able to over­ throw th e Bolshevik regim e. T hese forces were too disunited to act in accord. T here was little in co m m o n betw een the D o n cossacks, who had been counting on D en ik in ’s support, and M ak h n o ’s rebels, w ho fought the W hites after they finished w ith the Bolsheviks. W h a t was there in com m on betw een the M e n ­ sheviks an d SRs, longtim e opponents o f the Bolsheviks, and the cossacks, who disliked any socialists? W h a t was there in co m m on betw een the M ensheviks and SRs an d M a k h n o ’s rebels, even th o u g h all o f th em were left-wing socialist opponents of Bolshevism ? T h e M ensheviks and SRs were R ussian, Jewish, and urban. A nd that gap could n o t be overcom e. T h e re was n o u n derstanding even betw een M akhno and Grigoriev, w ho represented socially an d politically the sam e peasant constituency. T h ere was no understan d in g betw een M akhno an d the U krainian nationalists either. M akhno’s forces had fought against the independent U kraine governm ent on the side o f the Bolsheviks. T h e U kraine o f 1919 had a heterogeneous society 147 “Eshche o Kievskikh Cheka v 1919 godu,” a letter dated 13 January 1921, N a chuzhoi storone, no. 10(1925), 2 20-21, and In the Shadow o f Death, p. 23. Seealso reprints from a variety of Ukrainian newspapers on the Red Terror: “Les Tchrezvytchaikas (Commission Extraordinaires Bolchevistes), ” La Russie Democratique, no. 8 (17 Decem ber 1919). 148 “K sm ene vlasti,” M ysl' (June 1919). See an identical account in “In Liberated Regions,” Bulletins o f the Russian Liberation C om m ittee, no. 24 (2 August 1919), 3. 149 To the D epartm ent of State, Constantinople, 11 Septem ber 1919. T h e text starts: “T he following inform ation has been received by special messenger from T hom as W hittem ore who went to Odessa on first Russian relief ship after the evacuation of the Bolsheviks," Records, dispatch 861.00.5203. iso “Belye v O rle,” Izvestiia (13 November 1919), 3. 151 T h e extent of the W hites’ knowledge is clearly revealed in the following docum ent: “Svodka razvedyvatelnogo otdeleniia po dannym k 19 oktiabria 1919 goda. V nutrennee polozhenie Sovetskoi respubliki.” Wrangel Archive, Delo 147, Arkhivshtaba Glavnokom anduiushchegovooruzhennym i silami na iuge Rossii.

splintered into conflicting groupings. They all detested the Bolsheviks and yet were unable to overthrow them on their own. T he m ovem ent of the W hite army provided a catalyst from outside that finally toppled Bolshevik rule. An army of 100,000 could not possibly have taken control of a territory with a population of 40 m illion people in three m onths if there had not been a universal resentm ent of the preceding administration. Septem ber—October 1919 was perhaps the brightest m onth in the history of the W hite m ovem ent. T he army continued its victorious offensive; one city fell after another. It was now in Russia proper; Tsaritsyn, Voronezh, Kursk, and Orel were taken. Dispatches of local authorities in these cities betray a sense of hopelessness. Now they wrote to Moscow how weak the Bolshevik party really was. T h e Bolshevik city party com m ittee in Orel, for example, reported that at the approach of the W hites in early O ctober all the comm ittee could come up with was a detachm ent of 250 m en, half of whom were Com m unists, imported from Kursk and Yaroslavl. In the entire city of Orel there were only 87 C om m u­ nists. 152 In Voronezh, which fell on 30 September, the situation was even more catastrophic. T he local C om m unist com m ittee wrote in panic that m any highranking officials had simply disappeared. Soviet power was disintegrating be­ fore the arrival of the W hites, and party officials escaped ahead of the retreating Red Army units. T h e Voronezh Com m unists telegraphed: “T he Voronezh Province Party C om m ittee and Soviet Executive C om m ittee have abandoned the city on 30 Septem ber under the artillery shelling of the enemy. We consider it im portant to inform you that two days before abandoning the city, members of the city party organization began to flee w ithout any authorization. In spite of all efforts to stop them , by the time we abandoned the city there were not more than 30 or 40 people left out of 350. ”*53 N o one was willing to defend Soviet power. T he W hite offensive acquired a m om entum of its own. T he mere rum or of the W hites’ advance set the C om ­ munists running and the peasants welcoming the liberators. Allied aid was arriving in great quantities: airplanes, tanks, am m unition, and field hospitals. T h e crop in Ukraine was out of the Bolsheviks’ hands. Victory seemed to be close in those days in September—October 1919. Allied reporters arrived to cover D enikin’s trium phal entry into Moscow. It was only two hundred miles away. 152 “V T sK a RKP(b)” (2 0 November 1919), T s.R A ., Fond 17, RKP(b), Opis’ 6, docum ent 197. 155 Priakhin, “V TsKa RKP(b),” T s.P. A., Fond 17, RKP(b), Opis’ 6, docum ent 48.

4 O n the Internal Front: T h e Greens

A m o n g h i s t o r i a n s of Soviet Russia, th e term civil war is autom atically associ­ ated w ith th e frontline civil w ar against th e W hites. Historians have been preoccupied w ith arm ies, headquarters, front lines, and governm ents. B ut the dram atic offensive of the W h ite forces toward the center of Russia has over­ shadowed an o th er kind o f civil w ar going on at the sam e tim e. It was a civil war w ithout a clearly defined front line that was waged in virtually all provinces of European Russia u n d er nom in al Bolshevik control, a war of peasant rebels against state authority. D ozens of peasant rebellions and dozens o f Red Army m utinies took place in provincial Russia in 1919. D etachm ents of Red Arm y deserters, hiding in th e forests of E uro p ean Russia (hence the n am e G reens) joined peasants and m u tineers to engage C o m m u n ist governm ent forces on a vast internal fro n t.1 Peasant rebels did n o t generate archives, and their actions, m otivations, and behavior patterns rem ained unrecorded in n u m erous cases. T he available evidence suggests, though, th a t the m agnitude o f the Bolshevik war against peasants on th e internal front eclipsed by far the frontline civil war against the W h ite s.2 M ore im portant, in term s o f its im pact on Bolshevikpeasant relations and th e structure of local Soviet governm ent— the behavior patterns it established and rou tin ized -—this war had an enorm ous effect on the future o f Soviet Russia. Bolshevik troubles w ith peasant rebels are associated prim arily with the m ovem ent of N estor M akhno in U kraine an d A leksandr A ntonov in Tam bov Province. Since th e A ntonov uprising started only in 1920 and the M akhno m ovem ent unfolded in eastern U kraine, som e historians have assum ed th at no peasant rebellions o f any significance took place in Russia itself in 1919.3 Leopold H aim son w ent even furth er and suggested th at peasants in central Russia were actually supporting th e Bolsheviks during the height of the civil war against th e W hites in 1919. T h ey form ed “in n e r redoubts” w hich stopped the W hites’ assault against central Russia.4 Several historians including Aleksandr Nekrich, R obert C o n q u est, an d Peter S cheibert, however, have pointed out that peasant insurgency in Bolshevik Russia was a serious problem , a view 1 M artyn Latsis used this expression in his D va goda bor’by na vnutrennem fm nte. See also “Na V nutrennem Fronte, ” Pravda (27 May 1919), 2. 2 Robert C onquest has put forward this view, which I share, in The Harvest o f Sorrow, p. 50. 5 T his is exactly what Evan Mawdsley wrote in his recent Russian C ivil War, p. 174. 4 Leopold Haim son, “T he Problem of Social Identities in Early Twentieth C entury Russia," Slavic Review, vol. 47, no. I (1988), 1-21, here 11.

diametrically contrary to that o f H aim son.5A truly revisionist Russian historian has also expressed this unorthodox view: “T he majority of historians, both Soviet and foreign, reduce the civil war to the struggle between the Reds and the W hites, the difference being only in judgments. T he facts show, however, that there was a third force upon which fell the biggest blow— the peasant insurrec­ tionist m ovem ent. In different periods to a differing degree this movem ent joined either the W hites or the Reds, but it rem ained a relatively independent force. ”6 T h e purpose here is to examine the nature, scope, and character of the peasant insurrectionist m ovem ent in Russia in 1919, to assess its impact on the frontline civil war against the W hites, and to reflect upon the long-term conse­ quences of that experience for Bolshevik-peasant relations. It is an attem pt to create a typology of peasant protest, to distinguish between the Greens, other deserters, various types of peasant itinerant detachm ents, and anti-C om m unist rebels. Most importantly, it is an attem pt to define peasant attitudes toward, and perceptions of, C om m unist authority on the one hand and the administration of the new local Bolsheviks on the other.

The Historical Setting Peasant insurgency in 1919 was a continuation of an upheaval which began in 1917 and 1918. Psychologically it was the same phenom enon, a rebellion against state authority. W ithin these parameters the actual causes, scope, and character of peasant rebellion changed profoundly in the course of the revolu­ tionary years. As m any contem porary observers have pointed out, the C om m u­ nist revolution in Russia was a realization of the peasant desire to divide up the landlords’ lands.7 It was rooted in the peasants’ belief that land, like the air, was G od’s and that they, the peasants, had a right to till it and divide it periodically and justly.8 In 1917 the brunt of the peasants’ blow was directed against the landlords.9 Not only did the peasants seize landlords’ lands with Bolshevik encouragem ent and against the cautioning of the SRs, but they also tried to obliterate any shred of the landlords’ presence in the countryside by burning the 5 H eller and Nekrich, Utopia in Power, pp. 98 -1 0 2 ; Conquest, The Harvest o f Sorrow, p. 50; and Scheibert, Lenin an der M acht, pp. 153-56. 6 Vasilii Seliunin, “Istoki,” N ovyi mir, no. 5 (1988), 162-90, here 166. 7 A. N. Potresov, “Nash Prizyv k kapitalizm u,” Novyi den’ (7 April 1918), I. 8 See an interesting discussion of peasant attitudes on justice in Cathy Frierson, “C rim e and Punishm ent in the Russian Village: Rural Concepts of Crim inality at the End of,the 19th C en­ tury,” S la vie Review, vol. 46, no. I (1987), 55-69. 9 For an analysis of peasant upheaval in 1917 see Ferro, The Bolshevik Revolution, especially “Revolution in the C ountryside,” pp. 112-40.

landlords’ estates.10 T h e re was to be no bar in (master) in the countryside anym ore. T h e rift betw een the Bolsheviks and th e peasants unfolded during the spring and su m m er o f 1918. T h e traditional interpretation m aintains th at facing an acute shortage o f agricultural products in th e big cities, “the regim e was forced to rely u p o n a policy o f com pulsory requisitioning.” 11 Som e historians believe it was this mistake o n L e n in ’s part th at led to the civil war against the peasants.12 O thers support the view o f official Soviet propaganda th at L enin em barked upon th e construction of socialism by establishing a “dictatorship o f the prole­ tariat in the co u n try sid e.7,13 It has been argued th a t L en in ’s decision to establish com m ittees o f the poor and to requisition grain by force was dictated n o t so m u ch by ideological considerations as by political trends in Russia in 1918.14 T h e m ost im p o rta n t o f these was th a t the Left SRs were increasing their share o f representation in peasant soviets at th e expense of the Bolsheviks during the spring of 1918. Secondly th e soldiers, w ho in 1917 had been the bulk of Bolshevik support, retu rn ed to their villages and were largely reabsorbed into the co u n try sid e .15 T h ey identified w ith the peasant desire to own the land and to sell th eir products freely. C onsequently the Bolsheviks’ social base in the country was on th e decline, and th a t o f the Left SRs, the M ensheviks, and the SRs was on th e rise. L e n in ’s new policy in th e countryside was in response to this political situation. By granting dictatorial power to com m ittees o f the poor over the property of others, L en in created a social group in the countryside w hich h ad a stake in supporting th e Bolsheviks. Political concerns certainly prevailed, regardless o f th e eco n o m ic consequences. T h e m ost im portant of these was th e w ithdraw al o f peasants from th e national m arket econom y. Peas­ ants were increasingly interested in producing for personal consum ption only. T hey fiercely resisted intrusion from outside, and in 1918 they began to attack requisition detachm ents. M artyn Latsys, the C heka boss w ho com posed weekly reports to L en in on peasant insurgency, cites th e figure of 245 peasant rebel­ lions in 19 1 8 .16 T h ese were sporadic outbursts of peasant anger, directed pri­ m arily against outside forces— th e requisition detachm ents established in June 1918. By th e b eginning o f 1919, however, all political parties were weakened by repressions to such an extent that they could no longer challenge Bolshevik rule, and th e ineptitude o f th e com m ittees of the poor was so glaring th a t the 10 H aim son, “T he Problem o f Social Identities,” Slavic Review, vol. 47, no. I (1988), 13. 11 H ough and Fainsod, How the Soviet Union Is Governed, p. 91. 12 Medvedev, The October Revolution, pp. 165-66, here p. 168. 13 Viola, Best Sons o f the Fatherland, p. 12. 14 Brovkin, The Mensheviks after October, pp. 99-104. 15 H aim son, “T h e Problem of Social identities”, Slavic Review, vol. 47, no. I (1988), 13. 16 Latsis, Dva goda bor'by na vnutrennem fronte, p. 75.

Bolshevik governm ent announced a change of course in the countryside once again. T he committees of the poor were abolished in Decem ber 1918. In his speeches and articles of early 1919 Lenin continually repeated that peace with the m iddle-incom e peasants was the m ain task of the C om m unist party. It was natural that the peasants wanted to sell their products at a fair price. T he Soviet government, Lenin said, would buy from peasants at a fair fixed price. Since industry was in disarray, however, at that m om ent the government could not pay adequately for peasants’ labor, and by fixing grain prices on a low level it was in effect taking a loan from the peasants in order to feed the hungry workers.17 Peasants needed reassurance that they would be able to sell their grain. T h e propaganda campaign “Peace with the Peasant” in the spring of 1919 was designed to allay peasants’ fears by assuring them that the crop o f 1919 would not be requisitioned as in 1918. But as before, free private trade was ruled out as unacceptable. W hen Lenin was making conciliatory speeches to peasants in the spring of 1919, the strategic situation looked favorable for the Bolsheviks. Germany was defeated in World W ar I, and its forces evacuated Ukraine. T he Bolshevik forces quickly overran Ukraine and seized the crop of 1918, which had been planted under the Germans. T he W hite forces of General Denikin had been locked in the N orth Caucasus for a year already, and the French landing in Odessa was proving to be a total fiasco. T he Allied forces, so feared at first, turned out to be a paper tiger. In early 1919 the Bolsheviks believed they were enjoying a second breathing spell, and they did not anticipate that the next halfyear would bring the W hite forces within the approaches to Moscow.

Policies of the Bolshevik Government Despite conciliatory pronouncem ents the Bolshevik policy toward peasants in early 1919 did not change significantly from that of 1918. Grain requisitioning rem ained the centerpiece of that policy. From Kostroma, Anatolii Luna­ charsky, acting as L enin’s personal envoy, wrote, “We would like to pum p out by all m eans 200,000—300,000 pud [one pud equals 36 pounds] of grain from over there [the eastern part of the province], which are doubtless in surplus in these uezdy. T h e peasants resist and are greatly em bittered.”18 Pum ping out m eant forced requisitions. T he low fixed price was not even m entioned in this com m unication. T he area was identified as "kulak,” that is, prosperous, and L enin’s envoy had far-reaching authority to obtain grain however he saw fit. In contrast to Lunacharsky’s direct methods another of L enin’s envoys, L. B. 17 Lars Lih discusses the politics of this “loan” in his “Bolshevik Razverstka and W ar C om m u­ n ism ,” Slavic Review, vol. 45, no. 4(1986), 67 3 -8 8 , here 678. 18 O n general staff requisitions, see Anatolii Lunacharsky, “Doklady L en in u ,” Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, vol. 80, p. 384. This report is dated 11 May 1919.

K am enev, tried m aterial incentives during his trip across several southern prov­ inces in search of food supplies in th e spring o f 1919. H e had brought with him cloth, salt, and oth er products the peasants needed. In exchange for grain deliveries these products were sent to village soviets. It appeared th at a peaceful exchange of com m odities had been organized. At one point, however, Ka­ m enev asked how th e village soviets distributed the products am ong the peas­ ants. It tu rn ed o u t that th e village soviets were no thing b u t renam ed com m ittees of the poor and th at they distributed cloth and salt am ong the needy. K am enev objected th a t if th a t w ent on, gTain deliveries would stop, w hereupon a local official told him th a t how th e village soviets distributed products was n o t the food supply workers’ business. K am enev insisted th at only those peasants who m ade food deliveries should get paid in k in d .19 In this instance the local official refused to cooperate w ith the m oderate approaches o f L en in ’s envoy. T hese examples suggest that Bolshevik policy varied a great deal, depending on the geographic location o f the area in question, on its social structure, on estim ated stocks of “surplus” grain, on the dem ands of the front at the m om ent, on the structure of local governm ent, and on the inclinations o f specific individuals in charge. T h e food supply cam paign in the black earth region and U kraine in the spring o f 1919 can best be described as chaotic. Several com peting agencies were in charge o f “p u m p in g o u t” grain: the People’s C om m issariat o f Food Supply in M oscow, th e Food Supply C om m ittee of the D onbass region, T sentrosoiuz, th e C o u n cil o f W orkers’ Cooperatives o f the South, and Red Army supply agencies. T h ere was no coordination between local and central or betw een m ilitary and civilian authorities. Local soviets, railway authorities, the U krainian Soviet governm ent, and th e M oscow Soviet governm ent all issued conflicting decrees and orders, m ost of th em ending w ith the words “in case of nonfu lfillm en t— to be sh o t.” U krainian local soviets and the central govern­ m en t of U kraine, just installed in the wake o f the Red Army conquest, tried to slow dow n, if n o t stop altogether, th e rem oval o f foodstuffs from U kraine, b u t M oscow authorities tried to rem ove as m u c h as possible by w hatever m eans available. T h e target ap p o rtio n m en t for U kraine was set at 100 m illion p u d .20 S im ultaneously the food supply agencies o f the Red Army acted on their own and requisitioned food from th e countryside regardless of the policy o f civilian authorities. T h e N in th Arm y headquarters’ assessm ent of the political situation openly said th a t arm y units requisitioned food from peasants w ithout any com pensation and th a t as a result th e peasants were hostile to the Red A rm y.21 K am enev com plained to Lenin: “T h e arm y of Pavel Dybenko and the troops 19 “Ekspeditsiia L. B. Kameneva dlia prodvizheniia prodgruzov k Moskve v 1919 godu,” P roleta r s k a ia r e v o liu ts iia , no. 6(1925), 116-54, here 129. 20 Ibid., 125. 21 “Polit. Svodka 9oi arm ii” and O so b y i otdel pri Rev. voen. sovete 9oi arm ii” (24 July 1919), T s.G .A .S .A ., Fond 192, Opis’ I, docum ent 53.

under M akhno [at that tim e still nom inally under Soviet command] were providing for themselves. . . . T h e one to get bread was the one who possessed superior m ilitary force.”22 O n 27 April Kamenev visited the areas where the Red Army had requisitioned food from the population. He appealed to Trotsky to issue an order to the southern front to ban unauthorized requisitions. But even if the order had been issued, there was no one to enforce it. Similarly Lunacharsky wrote to Lenin that the general staff “took away from local peas­ ants almost all horses, having thus undercut the agriculture of the entire [Ko­ stroma] province.” Furtherm ore, Red Army soldiers wrote in a Petrograd paper that on m any occasions they requisitioned food from peasants for their girlfriends.23 T he requisitions for the army were basically of three types: the high com ­ m and itself issued orders to requisition from peasants; local comm anders en­ couraged license am ong their troops, contrary to orders from above; and army units engaged in pillaging on their own. AU the Bolshevik agencies took it for granted that under the dictatorship of the proletariat the Russian countryside had to support the cities at terms unfavorable to the peasants. In 1919 Lenin's governm ent requisitioned 242 m illion pud of grain from peasants, twice the total of 1918 despite reassuring promises to middle peasants. T he official rheto­ ric said it was for socialist construction, but peasants perceived nothing but a ruthless collection of tribute as in medieval times. This caused famine in some areas as early as 1919.24 W hat seems to have angered the peasants most was that they were treated as serfs who were ordered to deliver what they believed was rightfully theirs. T his reckless requisitioning campaign was one of the m ain reasons for the peasant rebellions.

R equisition D etachm ents T he most hated symbol of this campaign was the local C om m unist requisition detachm ent. In contrast to the military authorities, who were interested in fulfilling a quota and not necessarily in class struggle, these requisition detach­ ments were set up as instruments to promote class struggle in the countryside and to dispossess the elusive “kulak” class. They were well armed and had virtually a free hand in the countryside. T he peasants’ unanim ous wrath was directed against them . As a local correspondent acknowledged: “W hatever Lenin and Trotsky write about peasants, our N izhni Novgorod food supply 22 “Ekspeditsiia L. B. K am eneva dlia prodvizheniia prodgruzov k M oskve v 1919 g o d u ,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, no. 6 (1925), 124. 23 L unacharsky, “D oklady L e n in u ,” L itera tu m o e N asledstvor vol. 80, 386; on Red A rm y sol­ diers’ requisitions for girlfriends, see “B ol’noi vopros,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo S o veta, no. 129 (12 Ju n e 1919), I. 24 S cheibert, L e n in a n der M a c h tr p. 143.

agents do n o t care. T h ey have their own policy.”25 Pravda described a typical case in th e behavior o f requisition detachm ents. U pon arrival in a village they w ould m ove into th e house o f their choice and dem and to see the ch airm an of the village soviet. T h ey would dem an d th a t h e bring m eat, bread, m ilk, sour cream an d honey. After eating, they would get down to business. “T hey shoot in th e air, poin t rifles at th e chests o f peasants. In a m ain square they install a m ach in e g u n .” Searches, threats o f arrest, beatings, and lawless requisitions would follow. T h ey w ould eat and drink as m u c h as they wanted, and the peasants, com plained the au th o r, blam ed the Bolsheviks. In one village of N izh n i Novgorod Province th e village soviet sent a tearful petition (sleznaia) to the uezd authorities, asking th em to protect th em from the hated detachm ents (■otriadniki), b u t th e uezd authorities were powerless to do so .26 In another village, in Kaluga Province, th e d etach m en t took away cows from peasants and opened m ach in e gun fire.27 T h e party plenipotentiary on grain collection in Sim birsk Province, P. K. K aganovich, was th e au th o r o f instructions on how to collect grain. T hey explain how a relatively sm all m ilitary apparatus was able to procure large quatities of supplies from the entire rural population. A ccording to these in­ structions, a d eta c h m e n t of arm ed m en w ould set up headquarters in an uezd town an d order th e local soviet to m ake sure volost’ soviets delivered th eir share of grain; otherw ise they w ould be dealt with as saboteurs. T h e volost' soviet would organize a sim ilar team for each village and in each village for each h o u seh o ld .28 T h is system allow ed arm ed force to be directed into critical areas where peasants refused to deliver. S uch a systematic state-sponsored robbery of the rural population is usually associated w ith the grain p rocurem ent cam paign of 1932, yet it started in 1919. T h e requisition detachm ents had as their counterparts the antiprofiteering detachm ents (zagraditel’nye) w hich the Bolsheviks assigned to the railroads. T hese d etach m en ts too were created in 1918 to fight grain “speculators”, th a t is, those who w anted to sell food at free m arket prices. T h e actions o f som e of these detachm ents hardly differed from plain robbery. A railway worker com plained in his report th a t at his railway station a d etach m en t o f two h u ndred m en were receiving full food rations and a m m u n itio n , and all they had to do was search and requisition food from two trains passing through the station daily. T hey did not give any receipts to those on th e trains whose belongings they requisitioned. T hey sim ply robbed the passengers.29 T h ese misdeeds reveal m u ch about the 25 “Po Rossii, V N izhnegorodskoi g u b e rn ii,” Pravda (28 M a rch 1919), 4. 26 “Po Rossii, N izhnegorodskaia g u b e rn iia ,” Pravda (27 M a rch 1919), 4. 27 “Protokol N o. 37 (21 July 1919), Svodki o p artiin o i zh izn i. K alu g a.,” T s.P .A ., F ond 17, RKP(b), O p is’ 6, d o c u m e n t 114, p. 139. 28 K aganovich, K ak dostaetsia khleb. 29 I. C hekhovskii, “E konom icheskaia z h iz n ’. Iz deiatelnosti zagraditel’nykh otriadov,” Vsegda V pered (F ebruary 1919), 2.

early relationship between the urban centers of Bolshevik rule and the country­ side. O ne cannot take at face value the claims of either Bolshevik propaganda or later Soviet official history that heroic, class-conscious proletarians organized by the C om m unist party were fighting class enemies for control of the food supply. T he dictatorship of the proletariat in the countryside upon closer look takes the appearance of a reimposition of feudal relations in which agents of the tsar or khan collected tribute from the peasants and kept some of the spoils for themselves. Peter Scheibert compared this to the medieval system of kormlenie. 30

Local G overnm ent in the Countryside Al] these antiprofiteering detachments, requisition detachments, army units, food supply agents, and special emissaries from Moscow were transitory forces in the countryside. N o m atter how m uch their requisitions hurt the peasants, the peasants knew that sooner or later they would be gone. These were city folks, outsiders. Even though it may seem paradoxical, the peasants’ greatest enem y was their own local administration. It would be misleading to define power relations in the countryside in terms of political parties in 1919. Party politics had ended in 1918 with the destruction of fair and contested elections. In 1919 family clans and intervillage networks were m uch more im portant than political parties. T he term kumavstvowas often used to describe power relations in the countryside in 1919. Pals and relatives of local rulers would be placed in all the key positions from the village soviet to the uezd Cheka. These cliques were the true masters in the countryside. Peasants were still able to elect their own representatives to the village soviets, which in practice were revivals of the old-time meetings of the com m unes.31 Still, election results should be treated with caution because free and fair elections were no longer possible. An eyewitness described, for example, “elec­ tions” to the soviet in the village of Turki, Saratov Province. T he new soviet was supposed to replace the previous com m ittee of the poor. T he comm ittee that supervised the new elections was appointed from above by the uezd soviet. It consisted of the most “active" m embers of the old com m ittee of the poor. They drafted a list of people to be elected to the new soviet in advance, and everything went sm oothly.32 Elections to the volost’ and uezd soviets were such a mockery that even Pravda published a num ber of documents depicting the fraud. In 30 Scheibert, Lenin an der M acht, p. 150. 31 O rlando Figes, “T he Village and Volost’ Soviet Elections of 1919,” Soviet Studies, vol. 40, no. I (January 1988), 21 -4 6 . 32 Aleksei Dmitrov, “Iz derevenskoi glushi, Turki: Saratovskoi gubernii,” Delo naroda, no. 10 (30 M arch 1919), 4.

num ero u s cases local cliques “elected” them selves to positions of authority because they h ad support from protectors at a higher level. In N erekhta, Kostrom a Province, th e uezd Congress o f Soviets decided to dism iss th e director o f th e u ezd Food Supply D ep artm en t, Barabanov, for his misdeeds. B ut Barabanov was a friend of the provincial com m issar of food supply, K aganovich, w ho issued an order to the N erekhta Uezd Executive C o m m ittee to restore Barabanov to his position. T h e uezd E C disobeyed and confirm ed th e dismissal. Soon th e uezd E C received a telegram that upon the initiative o f th e com m issar of food supply, the provincial organization o f the C o m m u n ist party had decided to disband th e N erekhta Uezd E C for disobeying the o rd er. 33 By th e letter of the law, the uezd Congress of Soviets was account­ able to the provincial Congress o f Soviets, and the provincial party com m ittee had no authority to issue orders to th e local soviet assembly. In practice, E C s of Soviets at the volost’, uezd, and provincial levels were sim ply appointed from above. T h e com m issars issued orders co n cerning w ho should be elected and who should not: To Voinovsky village soviet, Vladimir Province: T h e uezd Departm ent o f Administration orders that you conduct new elections o f the village Executive C om m ittee urgently. . . . T he following persons must be elected: Nikita Riabov as the chairman, Ivan Solov’ev as a member o f the Executive C om m it­ tee, and Aleksandr Krainov as a secretary. Since they qualify for these positions, these persons must be elected in any case. For violating this directive, those guilty will be brought to account. 34

O n ce established in a position of authority, these local activists gave free reign to an exercise of power th a t peasants perceived as a new petty tsardom . For th em , to exercise power was n o t to provide leadership for the betterm ent o f their co m m u n ity b u t to force others to treat th em w ith awe. Even in the judgm ent of the Bolshevik C en tral C o m m ittee, som e o f th e local C o m m u n ist “tsars” treated peasants n o better th an the tsarist policem en. In Dolm atovskaia Volost’, Pronskii U ezd, R yazan Province, for exam ple, m em bers o f the volost’ soviet and m em bers o f th e local party cell beat peasants with a w hip . 35 A nd in Buguruslansky U ezd o f Sam ara Province th e Bolsheviks arrested the local police chief because he w hipped peasants system atically. 36 In Bogorotsk, Tula Prov­ ince, “th e local authorities conducted unlaw ful requisitions. U nder the guise of 33 “Po Rossii, Nerekhta, Kostromskoi gubernii,” Pravda (20 February 1919), 4. 34 T h e docum ent is reproduced in its entirety in the article “Kak v kaple vody,” Delo naroda, no. 3 (22 M arch 1919), 2. 35 “Riazanskomu gubernskom u komitetu (29 ianvaria 1919),” docum ent 41, Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 5, p. 38. 36 “Doklad Samarskogo Gubernskogo Ispolnitel’nogo Komiteta. Predsedatel’ A. Sokol’sky. V Sovnarkom” (13 May 1919), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130 SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 363(2), p. 57.

collecting for the prisoners of war, they requisitioned children’s and wom en’s clothing.”37 Countless complaints reached Moscow that these “little tsars” requisitioned peasant property for their personal use. In N izhni Novgorod Province, wrote Pravda: “such “C om m unists,” and m any of them joined the Soviet institutions in the provinces, take away even from the poorest peasants all kinds of household items such as samovars, boots, clothing, and so on under the guise of ‘requisitions’ and ‘confiscations’ and appropriate them for their personal use.”38 T he peasants were defenseless, concluded the author, because the unlawful requisitions were done by their own local authorities.39 At the Eighth Party Congress in M arch, Osinsky defiantly declared: “A great num ber of peasant rebellions have broken out recently primarily as a result of the misdeeds of local commissars, that is, of our provincial bureaucracy. ”40 Entire regional governing bodies were guilty of such misdeeds. According to Osinsky, the executive committees in the countryside were nothing but unaccountable cliques, guilty of bribery, bureaucratic hierarchy, nepotism, and corruption.41 T h e redistribution of wealth in the provinces in favor of the new masters started in 1918 as a part of L enin’s campaign to “loot the looters.” Just as in a regular war, the defeated party had to pay indem nity to the victors. In the class war which the Bolsheviks unleashed, the vanquished class had to pay indem ni­ ties to the victorious proletariat. During the first campaign after October 1917, 739 m illion rubles were raised by imposing indem nities.42 In 1919 the practice continued unabated at the local level. “Little tsars” wanted to be rich and powerful. In their behavior they imitated the old barin. They enjoyed being feared. They loved issuing orders and threats. They wanted to show that now their time had come. From one province came a report of a commissar’s wedding: In the best house in the village an orchestra was playing, sentries were guarding the entry, and a lavish meal was served, followed by rides on horses. T he new barin had appeared in the village: the comm issar.43 T he author, writing in Pravda, was horrified: “Is it really so that in our C om m unist family we are witnessing the birth of a new privileged class?”44 Peasants called the commissars a new estate, or a commissars’ estate (kommissarskoe soslovie). Izvestiia described the life-style of commissars in Tsaritsyn Uezd: “Commissars 37 T h e Bolshevik C C reprimanded the T ula party organization for that, but ended the letter nevertheless with comradely greetings. “T u l’skomu gubernskomu komitetu (4 fevralia 1919),” docum ent S3, Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 48. 38 A. Kurliandskii, “Po Rossii. Nizhnegorodskaia guberniia,” Pravda (4 April 1919), 4. 39 See also docum ents from the Soviet press collected by Sokolov, Bol’sheviki o bol’shevikakh, p. 18. 40 V osm oi S ’ezd RKP(b), p. 190. 41 Ibid., p. 88. 42 Scheibert, Lenin an der M acht, p. 193. 43 “Po Rossii. Kommissary guliaiut,” Pravda (4 February 1919), 4. 44 A. I. Zhigunov, “Po Rossii. Iz V oronezha,” Pravda (7 February 1919), 4.

were riding in luxurious carriages harnessed w ith three or even six horses. T hey had a countless n u m b e r o f aides-de-cam p and a retinue o f accom panying com m issars. Plenty o f trunks. T h e y tre a tth e w o rk in g p o p u la tio n in the m an n er of a governor [under the old regime]: harsh bellows and beatings. It is typical for th em to fling th e ir m oney about. In som e houses the com m issars lose incredi­ ble sum s o f m oney at g am b lin g .”45 T raditional form s of authority reem erged in rural Russia. T h e new local autocrats defined th e ir status in th e countryside in term s fam iliar to the peas­ ants. In Sapozhnikovskii U ezd, R yazan’ Province, for exam ple, a com m issar K restiannikov began his address in every village in w hich h e appeared by saying: “I am your tsar an d God! Pray for m e and bow to m e. I will give you every­ th in g .”46 For this com m issar, C o m m u n ist party m em bership was m erely an opportunity to proclaim h im self tsar and lord. T h e “Bolshevism ” and “activ­ ism ” o f these local tsars was not a desire to build socialism b u t a desire to rise over others, to be a new [khoziaiti] m aster in the countryside. Itw asco n v en ien t to h id e b eh in d th e facade of “dictatorship o f the proletariat,” because it allowed the application o f force. T h e “bourgeoisie” and “kulaks” could be abused with im punity, an d their property could be requisitioned for the use o f the “represen­ tatives o f th e dictatorship o f th e pro letariat.” H ow did these local tsars m anage to keep them selves in power? After all, they lived in th e m idst o f thousands of peasants w ho could rebel against them . T h eir m ain w eapon was th e peasants’ fear th a t in case o f disobedience the rulers would call in a punitive d etach m en t from the provincial capital. All they had to do was to label those w ho com plained “kulaks,” and in case o f resistance to report a “kulak uprising. ” T h e provincial authorities would show their vigilance in th e face o f th e plotting class enem y and dispatch a punitive detachm ent. In som e cases com m anders of such p unitive detachm ents saw the real situation and reported it as such to th eir superiors; in other cases they fulfilled their “revolutionary d u ty ” jointly w ith th e local authorities. In the su m m er o f 1919 a punitive d etach m en t was su m m oned to suppress such a “kulak rising” in Roslavl’ U ezd o f Sm olensk Province. U pon arrival, its co m m an d er reported to his superiors th at the entire volost’ was “terrorized by the actions o f local m em bers o f the C o m m u n ist c e ll.” T h e ch airm an o f the volost’ E xecutive C o m m ittee, Fesov, and his deputy A ntip, w ho was his rela­ tive, “m ercilessly requisitioned and confiscated n o t only luxury items b u t also sugar, dishes, an d so o n .” W h e n A ntip confiscated dishes from citizen Sem entsev, the report co n tin u ed , h e adm itted th at he was taking them for him self and said: “ You’ve had a good life, now it is my tu r n .” A ntip and Fesov also often 45 Izvestiia (18 January 1919), cited from Sokolov, Bol'sheviki o bol'shevikakh, p. 18. S eealso a similar account in A. Troianovskii, “Sovetskaia Vlast’ i krestianstvo, ” Vsegda Vpered, no. 13 (22 February 1919), I. 46 E. Denisov Krasnoarmeets, “Kto vinovat?” Delo naroda, no. 10 (30 M arch 1919), 3.

referred to them selves as tsar and G od. T h e local p opulation h ated Soviet power and identified it as a rule o f those like this An tip .47 In spite o f this frank appraisal o f the situation th e d etac h m en t co m m an d er fulfilled his duties, fought the G reen “kulaks” in th e surrounding forests, took hostages, and the like. No action was taken against A ntip. N o m atter how intolerable the Soviet rule was, the peasants should no t have risen in arm s against it. O n c e they did, they h ad to be crushed even if th eir grievances were legitim ate. P unitive detach m ents from the center acted in full accord with the “little tsars.” As an eyewitness described in Pravda, in the village of Pokrovskoe, C h u rin sk aia volost’, R yazan Province, a com m issar was killed. T h e local soviet su m m o n ed a punitive detachm ent. U pon arrival in the village, th e co m ­ m an d er of th e d etach m en t, com rade Eglit, ordered everyone into the m ain square. T o in tim id ate th e peasants, he ordered his m en to fire their m achine guns. B eating peasants w ith a w hip, shouting, and threatening, h e dem anded th at th e peasants su rrender those w ho had killed the com m issar. S om eone from the crowd pointed at five peasants, w ho were sum m arily led to a nearby forest and executed im m ediately. An indem nity was im posed on the entire volost’, an d th e uezd Executive C o m m ittee praised the actions o f the punitive detach­ m e n t.48 As th e M oscow Bolsheviks adm itted, the shooting of peasants by p u n i­ tive d etachm ents requested by local C om m unists was not exceptional, b u t a system atic p ractice.49 In m ost cases subsequent investigation showed that the peasants’ com plaints were justified an d th at the only guilty party had been the local C o m m u n ists. N evertheless, the provincial authorities were all too eager to suppress a “kulak” uprising if such was reported by the uezd or volost’ C o m m u n ists. In one instance in th e village o f Sem enovka, Sergachevskii U ezd, N iz h n i N ovgorod Province, a punitive d etach m en t arrived to suppress a “kulak” uprising. Local C om m unists handed a “list o f counterrevolutionaries” to th e c o m m an d e r and all of them , fifty-five people, were executed. 50 S im ­ ilarly, M oscow ’s special em issary reported from Yaroslavl that the c h ief o f the province C heka, com rade Frenkel’, custom arily executed people upon arrival in suspect villages to instill obed ien ce. 51 T h e u nderstanding betw een Executive C om m ittee leaders and com m anders of th e punitive detachm ents was often based upon their personal friendship or fam ily ties. In Saratov Province “fam e” ab o u t the atrocities o f a “gang o f four” reached th e provincial Executive C om m ittee. A com pany of pals in Serdobskii 47 B. Ardaev, “D o n esen ie R oslavl’skom u U ezdvoenkom u (6 Avgusta 1919),” Sm olensk A r­ chive, file W K P 119, Roslavl’, hereinafter “D o n e se n ie," S m olenskA rchive. 48 “Po R ossii,” Pravda (4 F ebruary 1919), 4. 49 A. K urliandskii, “Po Rossii. N izhnegorodskaia g u b e rn iia,” Pravda (4 April 1919), 4. 50 Ibid. 51 “D oklady u p o ln o m o c h e n n o g o TsK a RKP(b) i V T siK D obrokhotova o sostoianii p artiinoi i Sovetskoi raboty i provedenii m obilizatsii v Yaroslavskoi g u b e rn ii,” T s .G .A .O .R ., Fond 1240, O pis’ I, d o c u m e n t 3, pp. 1 -3 7 .

Uezd had “terrorized the p o p u la tio n ,” as Pravda p u t it, with requisitions and confiscations. T h e y included the uezd com m issar, Tuseev; the chairm an of th e C heka, Sergienko; the co m m an d er o f the requisition detachm ent, Serezhnikov; and his deputy, Fom ichev. T ogether they had em bezzled ninety thousand rubles. 52 T h ey covered u p each o th er’s m isdeeds, helped each other in the case o f a “kulak” uprising, an d reported to their superior authorities the intensification of class struggle in the countryside. A Bolshevik report from Vyatka Province described sim ilar atrocities. T he co m m an d er o f the punitive d etach m en t “killed peasants, took away their horses, rode on those horses w ith w om en, and finally burned two villages.”53 T h e Bolshevik C entral C o m m ittee was so alarm ed by the actions of T am bov C om m unists that in an extraordinary letter it adm onished th em for their “p er­ vasive d ru n k en n ess.” In som e areas, th e C entral C o m m ittee wrote, “the popu­ lation was terrorized by the m em bers o f th e party.”54 T h e sheer n u m b er o f contem porary published docu m en ts on the abuse of power suggests that it was a widespread p h e n o m e n o n all over Bolshevik Russia. As Viktor N ogin o f the M oscow party organization p u t it at th e E ighth C o m m u n ist Party Congress: “in that com m ission [of the C en tral C o m m ittee on party developm ent] we have received such an endless n u m b e r o f horrifying facts on drunkenness, deb au ch ­ ery, bribery, robbery, and reckless actions on the part of m any officials th a t it was sim ply hair-raising. ”55 Bolshevik critics dismissed such abuses o f power as unavoidable violations of socialist legality. W h a t defines th em as n o t m erely exceptions b u t the rule is their ideological content. T h e reports m ade it clear that these “little tsars” had convinced them selves th at they indeed were fighting a class en em y and th a t a merciless struggle against the rich, the bourgeoisie, and th e kulaks was the first duty o f a C o m m u nist. In th e atm osphere of class hatred propagated from M oscow it is n o t surprising th at local functionaries defined the words “m erciless struggle” literally. A ccording to one Cheka agent, readiness to kill a class enem y w ith o ne’s own hands was an essential attribute for a C o m m u n ist in som e situations. H e him self was asked to prove his dedication to the revolutionary cause by personally executing the co u n ter­ revolutionaries arrested th e day before. H e called this a “thirst for execu­ tions.” T h e atm osphere was such, he wrote, that “anyone who considered execution w ith o u t investigation crim inal inevitably w ould have been seized as a counterrevolutionary. ”56 S om e M oscow Bolsheviks were appalled by w hat was going on in the c o u n ­ tryside, as evidenced by the stream o f articles in Pravda condem ning the 52 “Po Rossii. Serdobskii u ezd Saratovskoi g u b e rn ii,” Pravda (5 F ebruary 1919), 4. 55 “Po Rossii. Vyatskaia g u b e rn iia ,” Pravda (6 July 1919), 4. 54 “T am b o v sk o m u gubern sk o m u kom itetu (I m arta 1919),” d o c u m e n t 126, Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, pp. 1 2 2 -2 3 . 55 Vos’m oi S ’ezd R K P (b), p. 169. 56 “Po Rossii. S k o p in ,” Pravda (12 F ebruary 1919), 4.

atrocities. They coined a new term to explain the problem: “hangers-on” (primazavshiesia) were to blame. T he solution to the problem adopted at the Eighth Party Congress was to purge the party. Every provincial party organiza­ tion was ordered to cleanse itself of “hangers-on." A total of 50,000 o ut of 350,000 were expelled from the party.57 This was, however, only a partial solution. It addressed the problem in terms of cadres only, not in terms of institutional change. T he congress did not restore multiparty elections, abolish the Cheka, restore people’s independent courts, or order an end to requisition­ ing. AU these measures, advocated by the Mensheviks and SRs, were con­ dem ned as counterrevolutionary. T he central Bolshevik authorities could not survive w ithout requisitioning and without the Cheka. T h e second reason why the Bolsheviks could not afford to introduce struc­ tural change in local government in the countryside is that they were weak numerically. T he socioeconomic structure in most areas of the country was petit bourgeois, not proletarian. Dozens and dozens of uezdy along the Volga and in the black earth region, the grain producing areas, were kulak by Bol­ shevik definition. Despite Bolshevik pressure, at the village level peasants gov­ erned themselves through the m ir assembly renam ed as the village soviet. House owners and rich peasants, kulaks by Bolshevik definition, were in charge of those soviets. Bolshevik power came from the uezd level when it needed som ething from peasants. In a typical agricultural province the local Bolshevik organization was only several thousand strong. For example in Voronezh Prov­ ince there were 3,620 Com m unists, in Samara 7,000, in Saratov 2,213, and in Kazan 1, 348 in M arch 1919.58 M ost of them were concentrated in the provin­ cial capital and in uezd towns. This m eans that in a province of about ten uezdy, in a typical uezd, there would be approximately one hundred C om m u­ nists. At the volost’ and village levels there were none. T he central Bolshevik governm ent had to live with the “little tsars” because it had no other instrum ent to rule over the countryside. In other words “terrorizing of the population” (to use the Pravda terminology) was a manifestation of the Bolsheviks’ weakness in the countryside.

Peasant Attitudes Both Bolsheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries paid close attention to peas­ ants’ political attitudes and m onitored them regularly and systematically. Among the num erous questions they asked, three areas of concern stand out: the peasants' attitudes toward the distribution of land, toward the Com m unist party and Soviet power, and toward the civil war. 57 Grigorii Zinoviev, “O chislennom sostave nashei partii, ” Izvestiia (21 September 1919), 2. 58 Prim echaniia, Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 315, and docum ent 588, vol. 7.

Distribution of Land In 1919 th e SR C entral C o m m ittee sent o u t a questionnaire to its provincial organizations an d instructed th e m to assess peasant views on the revolutionary land settlem ent. W h a t is striking is th a t in th e m ajority o f grain-producing provinces peasants were n o t happy w ith it. T h is was explained partly by th e fact that no p artition o f landlords’ estates could possibly satisfy these overpopulated provinces. To m ake things worse, a m igration o f city dwellers to the countryside as a result of shrinking industry in 1918 had swelled the n u m b er of m em bers o f peasant com m u n es. As one peasant explained: “W ell, b u t before the revolution it was better co n cern in g th e land. W e got, you know, about five hundred desiatin for o u r peasant co m m u n e , b u t there are m ore eaters in the co m m u n e, about a thou san d now. So you can see for yourself. ”59 T h e governm ent was well aware th at land repartition had not substantially enlarged peasant landhold­ ings. T h e p eople’s com m issar o f agriculture, Sem en Sereda, referred to the 1 9 1 7 -1 8 land repartition as a dissipation [raspylenie] of resources. “Peasants in fact did n o t get anything through this repartition." Even though 23 m illion desiatin w ere distributed am ong the peasants, the increase o f landholding as calculated by th e n u m b e r of desiatin per n u m b er o f eaters was negligible: in Kostrom a Province 0.13, in Vyatka 0.04, in Yaroslavl 0 .1 6 .60 Nevertheless, peasants associated the Bolsheviks w ith the land repartition o f 1917-18. T hey perceived th e Bolsheviks as a party th at had given land to them . T his m yth was actively propagated by th e Bolsheviks them selves, and it was quite widespread.

The Communist Party and Soviet Power T h e peasants’ positive im age o f th e Bolsheviks contrasted sharply w ith their negative im age of C o m m u n ism . C om m u n ists were associated with grain requi­ sitioning, collective farm ing, and the b anning of trade. In certain areas peas­ ants devised elaborate theories to explain th e difference betw een the Bolsheviks and th e C o m m u n ists.61 Som e believed that there were in fact two political parties, th e Bolsheviks and th e C o m m u n ists. T h e difference betw een th em was 59 N. Shmelev, “V derevenskoi glushi,” Narod, no. I (17 August 1919), 4. 60 These data ares from the proceedings of the First Party Conference on the Party work in the countryside in 1919. M inutes are a bibliographic rarity: Pervoe Vserossiiskoe Soveshchanie po partiinoi rabote v derevne. Cited here from a detailed analysis by Viktor Chernov, who kept a copy of the m inutes in his archive. Viktor Chernov, “Bolsheviki v derevne,” Nicolaevsky Collection, series 7: Party o f Socialist Revolutionaries, box 10, folder 14, hereinafter Chernov, “Bolsheviki v D erevne.” 61 For a good early Soviet analysis of this phenom enon, see Selishchev, Iazyk revoliutsionnoi epokhi. For a serious W estern study of the peasant com prehension of Bolshevik political term inol­ ogy, see E lbaum , R hetoricand Fiction, pp. 13-50.

that the Bolsheviks recognized peasant ownership of land and their leader was Lenin, explained the chairm an of the volost’ Executive Com m ittee in Ukraine, whereas the C om m unists did not recognize such ownership. They, peasants said, were the party of the Jews, and their leader was Trotsky. T h e two parties were believed to be at war with each other. T he Com m unists were so m uch hated in the Ukrainian countryside, attested a C om m unist functionary of the Land Com m issariat who talked to the volost’ chairm an, that “it was dangerous for them to appear in outlying villages.”62 In other areas peasants drew a distinction between Soviet and C om m unist power in the following way. At a peasant meeting in the small town of Klin, Novgorod Province, a C om m unist propagandist proposed a resolution in sup­ port of the C om m unist party. T he proposal was turned down by the local peasants: “W hy should we trust the C om m unist party and not Soviet power? . . . Soviet power gave us land, and the C om m unist party is only requisitioning, and pushing us into collectives.”63 From Samara Province peas­ ants wrote on the SR questionnaire that they could not understand what would happen if all peasants joined the C om m unist collectives, as the Com m unists were urging. “From whom will they requisition grain then, because that is the m ain task of the collectives?”64 In Roslavl uezd of Smolensk Province peasants did not make a distinction between the Com m unists and the Bolsheviks, or between Com m unists and Soviet power. They identified all of the above as “K om m uniia”— a rule of local cliques. T hat was the only Soviet power they knew, explained the com m ander of a punitive detachm ent, and they hated it profoundly.65 From Kazan Province local Com m unists informed the Central Com m ittee that “peasants’ attitudes have taken a sharp turn to the worse lately.”66 And from Kursk Province Moscow’s envoy reported: “O ne can ob­ serve widespread resentm ent with local authorities. Moreover this resentment is on the rise. In some localities there are frequent uprisings. They hate local Com m unists, and in m any localities they are looking for an opportunity to kill a Soviet functionary. ”67 A C om m unist report from Vyatka Province in the Urals was remarkably similar: T he peasants were most hostile to Soviet power in areas where requisition detachm ents had done their work.68 And in Kaluga Province a local functionary admitted: “T here are scores of deserters in Likhvinsky Uezd. T here is fam ine. T he attitude of the population to Soviet power is 62 N. Pliusnina, “Neskol’ko epizodov iz perioda Grazhdanskoi voiny na U kraine,” Staryi Bol’shevik, vol. 4, no. 7 (1933), 84-100, here 88. 63 Vorob’ev, “Kommunisticheskaia Partiia i Sovetskaia vlast’, ” Sovet rabochikh i krest’ian, no. 30 (7 November 1919). 64 “D erevnia nashikh d n e i,” Delo naroda, no. 10 (30 M arch 1919), 4. 65 “D onesenie,” Smolensk Archive. 66 O t Kazanskogo gubernskogo komiteta (10 m arta 1919),” docum ent 412, Perepiska Sekretariata, vol 7, pp. 379-80. 67 M aizel’, “Doklad o polozhenii v Kurskoi gubernii,” V last’ Sovetov, no. 3 -4 (M arch 1919), 18. 68 “Po Rossii. Vyatskaia guberniia,” Pravda (6 July 1919), 4.

negative, especially since some Soviet functionaries have compromised them ­ selves by drunkenness.”69 T he word hatred can be found often in the C om m u­ nists’ reports. If the authors were provincial Com munists, the local hatred of Com m unists would usually be attributed to the "kulaks.” In the reports of Moscow’s envoys and in the speeches of Com m unists in the capitals, poor peasants’ attitudes are reported. Com rade Volin summarized the situation at the Eighth Party Congress: “In some provinces the word C om m unist rouses great hatred not only am ong the kulak strata but also in the milieu of the poor peasants and middle peasants as well, because we are ruining them .”70 T he C om m unist party was so alarmed by the peasants’ anti-C om m unist attitude that it sum m oned a special party conference at the end of 1919 to discuss party work in the countryside. Reports of the delegates from the prov­ inces gave Lenin and the other people’s commissars an opportunity to hear alarming descriptions of the tyranny of local C om m unist cells, and of growing peasant resistance. As a delegate from Tver Province put it: “Peasants identify Com munists as people with rifles who come to take away a cow and a horse, who come to confiscate their property. . . . From here stems their hatred.” A representative from Vyatka Province related a familiar peasant complaint: “T he attitude to C om m unists is hostile. This we m ust say openly. O ur comrades are coming to the localities, to address meetings and declare: ‘I am your authority. I can do with you whatever I please. ’” T he picture of rural life that emerges from proceedings of the conference suggests that in all provinces C om m unist party cells abused power and aroused the peasants’ hatred. To purge all the guilty, one would have had to dissolve most of the provincial organizations. The C om m u­ nist party in the countryside was a party of petty tyrants and local cliques. T he conference sum m ed up the situation in the following conclusion: “In the countryside the party does not lead the working masses of peasantry. Quite to the contrary. In the absolute majority of provinces the Com munists are looked upon with resentm ent [nepriiazn] and even with hatred.”71 Finally, the Cheka instruction to the local Cheka organizations likewise frankly admitted: “Instead of the broad support of the population, we encounter only hatred.”72

The Civil War As is widely known, the Russian peasantry, who m ade up the bulk of the old Imperial Army, did not want to fight in World War I. Peace Now! was their 69 T sentral’naia kommissiia po borbe s dezertirstvom. Protokol no. 32 (10 June 1919) Kaluga Gubkom , T s.P.A ., Fond 17 RKP(b), Opis’ 6, docum ent 114, p. 130. 70 Vos'moi S'ezd RKP(b), p. 204. 71 Pervoe Vserossiiskoe Soveshchanie po partiinoi rabote v derevne, p. 19 in original, cited here from Chernov, “Bolsheviki v D erevne.” 72 M . Latsys, “Vsem Chrezvychainym Kommissiiam p o bor’be s kontrrevoliutsieina U kraine,” in “Rabota C heka,” from the docum ents of the Denikin Com mission to Investigate the Atrocities of the Bolsheviks, N a chuzhoi storone, no. 5 (1924), 168-72, here 168.

slogan, and by 1917 they eageily supported the Bolsheviks' call for peace. Peasants rem ained indifferent in 1917 to Menshevik and SR appeals to defend the nation. T he fundam ental fact about peasant attitudes in 1919 is that they still opposed fighting in a war, this tim e in a civil war for the Bolsheviks, for the W hites, or for anybody else. This attitude was partly rooted in the peasants’ local identity. W hen they were asked who they were, they never answered they were citizens of the Soviet Republic or that they were a class of toiling peasan­ try. Som e would not even have answered that they were Russians. In Tambov Province, for example, they would say: “we are T a m b o v t s y T h e peasants’ horizon was limited. It did not stretch beyond their province and in most cases beyond their uezd. Peasants were not interested in the construction of socialism or in the defeat of the cossacks. They simply wanted to be left alone.73 For peasants, war m eant endless requisitions, mobilizations, and troubles. In some central Russian provinces, when the SRs tried to induce peasants to resist the W hites, the peasants expressed indifference: “Shed our blood for the C om m u­ nists? Let them fight for themselves!”74 In other provinces where hatred of the Com m unists was particularly acute, they welcomed the W hites— in Tambov, Orel, Voronezh, Vyatka, and Perm provinces, for example. Lunacharsky re­ ported to Lenin that peasant-deserters in the eastern part of Kostroma Province m ight prove to be allies of the advancing troops of Admiral Kolchak.75 C om ­ m unist propaganda constantly reiterated that the victory of Kolchak would bring about a restoration of tsarism and of the landlords’ rule. But responses to an SR questionnaire attested that such anti-W hite propaganda sometimes had the opposite effect of the one intended. T h e peasants did not know m uch about Kolchak or his rule. They knew that their local Com m unists spoke of him as an enemy, and therefore they reasoned he could not be so bad. Landlords’ hold­ ings had not been oppressive there, and the return of the tsar was awaited eagerly. “It was better under the tsar!” peasants were saying. T he SR observer concluded that in the Urals and the Volga region “peasants are waiting for Kolchak, and they place their hopes in h im .”76 In the Urals, the Volga basin, the black earth area, and Ukraine the frontline civil war with the W hites affected peasants directly. Some of the provinces in these areas changed hands several times. T he general pattern of popular atti­ tudes in these areas seems to be that peasants always preferred the administra­ tion on the other side of the front line. As one Western observer on the scene put it: “W hen the Bolshevists rule them they welcome the [white] Volunteer Army with enthusiasm . After a m onth or two, they are ready to welcome the Bolshe­ vists again, all old scores being already forgotten. In another m onth, they wish 75 Haim son, “T h e Problem of Social Identities," Slavic Review, vol. 47, no. I (1988), 17. 74 N . Shmelev, “V derevenskoi glushi,” N a rod, no. I (17 August 1919), 4 and N. Sviatitskii, “Edinyi front revoliutsii,” ibid., I. 75 Lunacharsky, “Doklady L en in u ,” Literatum oeN asledstvo, vol. 80, p. 386. 76 “Kto idet?” Delo naroda, no. 5 (25 M arch 1919), I.

th e V o lu n te e rs h a d sta y ed .”77 A n aly z in g th e cau ses o f th is p a tte rn , a C o m m u ­ nist a u th o r w rote in Izvestiia in 1919 th a t in th e areas a d ja c e n t to th e fro n t lin e th e C o m m u n is t a u th o ritie s req u isitio n e d as m u c h a n d as q u ick ly as possible. If the R ed A rm y was a d v a n cin g , food a n d horses w ere req u isitio n e d to p ro p el th e offensive. If it w as retrea tin g , as m u c h as possible w as rem o v ed to p re v e n t it from fallin g in to e n e m y h an d s. As a resu lt th e lo cal p o p u la tio n g reeted th e W h ite s as lib e ra to rs.78 G rig o rii Z in o v ie v d escrib ed th e cycle o f p o p u la r a tti­ tudes: “In th e b e g in n in g a co n sid e ra b le p a rt o f th e p o p u la tio n dissatisfied w ith o u r po licy h o p e s th a t th e W h ite G u a rd s w ill b rin g re lie f to th e m . A n d c o n se ­ q u e n tly a p a rt o f th e p o p u la tio n greets th e W h ite G u a rd s sy m p ath etically ; th e o th e r p a r t d oes n o t re n d e r resistan ce a t an y ra te .”79 Several tim es, w rote Z inoviev, h e observed this p a tte rn . W h e n th e R ed A rm y was a d v a n cin g in to U k ra in e in th e sprin g o f 1919 it was g reeted w arm ly, “b u t after a very sh o rt period o f tim e th e m o o d c h a n g e d drastically. ”80 In a civil w ar p o p u la r a ttitu d es tow ard p o litica l a u th o rity are o f tre m e n d o u s sig n ifican ce. If a n a d v a n c in g arm y is greeted as lib e rato rs, its ad v a n c e is easier; if o n th e o th e r h a n d it o ccu p ies territo ry w ith a h o stile p o p u la tio n , its offensive m ay bog d o w n in p ac ifica tio n an d fo rag in g ca m p a ig n s. B oth th e R eds an d th e W h ite s w en t th ro u g h this cycle.

The Greens T h e record o f p ea sa n ts’ ac tio n s co rro b o rates th e ir p o litical attitu d es b etter th a n reports by B olshevik or S R observers. T h e m o st im p o rta n t m a n ifesta tio n o f p ea sa n t resistance in 1919 was th e rise o f th e G re e n m o v e m e n t. Its ta rte d in th e spring o f 1919 a t th e tim e w h en th e C o m m u n is t g o v e rn m e n t was c re a tin g a large c o n s c rip t a rm y .81 T h e G re e n m o v e m e n t c a n b e d efin e d as a p e a sa n t defense m e c h a n is m to w ith h o ld fro m th e C o m m u n is t g o v e rn m e n t w h a t it w an ted to ex tra ct fro m th e co u n try sid e: rec ru its, horses, a n d g rain . It w as a m o v e m e n t to avoid serving th e c e n tra l g o v e rn m e n t, a m o v e m e n t ag ain st p a rtic ­ ip atio n in th e civil w ar, a n d a m o v e m e n t in d efen se o f lo cal interests. It was essentially a R u ssian social m o v e m e n t. T h e G re e n s w ere p e a sa n t rebels in th e 77 T h is was th e view o f all observers— Bolshevik, SR , an d foreign diplom ats. B echhoferRoberts, In D e n ik in s R ussia, p. 77; V iktor C h ernov, “M oskva, 27 m a r ta ,” D elo naroda, no. 7 (27 M arch 1919), I. See also N . Rozhkov, “Sovetskaia vlast’ i krestianstvo,” M ysl', no. 1 -2 (1919), 3 1 -3 2 . 78 “Kak iskorenit’ V a n d e iu ,” Izvestiia (7 A ugust 1919), I. 79 G rig o rii Z inoviev, “N asha p o litik av o sv o b o z h d e n n y k h m e stn o stia k h ,” V /ast’ Sovefov, no. 7 8 (Ju n e —A ugust 1919), 2. 80 Z in o v iev ’s assessm ent is very sim ilar to th a t of D . D . Protopopov, w h o w rote to P. B. S truve in early 1919 th a t w orkers’ a n d peasants’ attitudes m a d e a significant shift to th e right. S ee A m bassade de Russie. arkhiv. delo n o. 4 3, Nicolaevsky C o llectio n , no. 10, box I , file 3(1). 81 V o n H ag en , “S ch o o l o f th e R e v o lu tio n ,” p. 78.

forests of central Russia and in Siberia, where forests also provided cover. In Ukraine peasant rebellions developed in a slightly different form, but evidence of the Greens’ presence is available for every province of European Russia under Bolshevik control. T he majority in the Green detachm ents were desert­ ers from the Red Army, but there were others. Peasant rebels joined Green detachm ents as well. There are no precise data on the num ber of Greens by province. Data from only some provinces are available, and they reflect only the num bers appre­ hended by the authorities. For such provinces of central Russia as Tver,82 the official C om m unist sources say 50,000 G reen rebels were captured, and for Ryazan, 54,697.8* In Tver Province 5,430 Greens were apprehended during the first two weeks in October 1919; 3,329 Greens were caught in Moscow Province during one week in September, and 4,900 in N izhni Novgorod Prov­ ince during the m onth of April. This equaled roughly a third of all m en drafted into the Red Army during that period in this province.84 In the black earth region, just in the province of Orel, 5,000 Greens were apprehended during the m onth of May, and in small Vladim ir Province next to Moscow, 1,529 during just one week in September. These figures are incom plete, but they suggest that dissatisfaction with Bol­ shevism and desertion from the Red Army to the Greens were widespread. T he num ber of those apprehended during short sweeps fluctuated from province to province, generally between 2,000 and 5,000. T he official and incomplete SoviettaIly of the total num ber of deserters captured by Sovietauthorities by 21 August 1919 was 500,000,85 which yields an average of 20,000 deserters per province by that date. According to one study, from the sum m er of 1918 to the sum m er of 1919, 576,000 deserted from the Red Army, and during the latter half of 1920 another 500,000. For the entire civil war period the figure is of 3,714,000 deserters.86 D enikin’s army had 150,000 soldiers, Kolchak’s army had 120,000, and the northern W hite army had 30,000. T he figure of half a m illion captured Greens in 1919 is higher than the com bined strength of all W hite armies fighting the Bolsheviks.87 According to Western intelligence, in September 1919 there were 120,000 Red Army soldiers on the eastern front (the Urals), 180,000 on the southern front (the black earth region south of Mos82 C iting Tverskaia Pravda, these data are in Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta, no. 240 (22 O ctober 1919). 83 Lafsys, D vagoda bor’by, p. 73. 84 N. A. Semashko, “Kratkii otchet ot upolnom ochennogo ot TsKa RKP(b) i VTsIK po Nizhegorodskoi G ubernii (20 Aprelia 1919),” docum ent 377, Perepiska Sekretariata1 vol. 7, p. 2S6. 85 “D eiatel’nost’ poezda V echeka,” Izvestiia (21 August 1919). 86 O rlando Figes, “T h e Red Army and Mass M obilization during the Russian Civil War, 1918— 1920,” Past and Present, no. 129 (November 1990), 199. 87 A .E.F. G eneral Staff, The M ilitary Situation in Greater Russia, Bulletin ofInform ation, no. I, second section (February 1919, for official circulation only), pp. 13, 15, 16.

147

THE GREENS

TABLE 2 Published E vidence on th e N u m b er o f G reens in 1919 by Province

Province Ivanovo-V oznesensk

G reens A pprehended

D a te

T otal N u m b e r o f Greens

July

10,000

3,000

Kaluga 3,329

Sept.

1,500

Ju n e

N izhni N ovgorod

4 ,9 0 0

Apr.

O rel

5,000

M ay

M oscow

Petrograd

65,000

Ryazan

54,697

Saratov

35,000

Sm olensk (B el'sk only)

2,600

Ju n e 6 0 ,0 0 0

T am bov Tver

5,430

O ct.

V ladim ir

1,529

Sept.

Yaroslavl

July

50,000

9 ,500

Sources: Orel: “Massoryi vozvrat dezertirov,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta, no. 138 (23 June 1919), 2; Moscow: O d u m a lis ’, ’’ Pravda (3 July 1919), 3; Petrograd, Novgorod, and Tver: “S um ­ mary of the Bolshevik Situation from Data Gathered in Switzerland by the American Military Attache during the Week E nding M arch 8 ,” Records, dispatch 861.00.4233; Saratov; Scheibert, Lenirt an derM acht, pp. 398 and 392; Kaluga: “Protokol no. 37 (21 July 1919) Svodki o partiinoi zhizni," T s.P.A ., Fond 17, Opis’ 6, docum ent 114, p. 139; Tambov: “EzhenedePnye svodki Vecheka L eninu” (1 -7 February 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis' 3, docum ent 414, p. 11. AU the rest are in Latsys, Dva goda bor’by, pp. 7 3 -7 4 .

cow), 35,000 on the northern front (Pskov), and 130,000 on the western front— in Belorussia— a total of 465,000 troops.88 If we compare the strength of the Red Army in 1919 with the number of captured Green deserters, it is clear that as m any deserted as served in the entire Red Army. This seems the best evidence that the peasants did not want to fight for the Bolsheviks. How m any Greens were not caught? C om m unist sources provide the total number o f Greens for just two provinces in 1919. If in an average province of 88 British Military Mission, Reval, “Strength of the Red Army: Report on Bolshevism, Appen­ dix X .” This report was sent to the D epartm ent of State. A note attached to the cover letter said: “Inform ation has been received from Berlin that this report was written by Lieutenant Colonel Wilson, British M ilitary Observer at Reval,” Records, dispatch 861.00.7847.

central Russia th e num bers were the sam e as for those two provinces, there were ab out 30,000 u n ca u g h t deserters (50,000 deserters m in u s 20,000 caught), then for th e w hole o f E uropean Russia “controlled” by the Bolsheviks the total n u m b e r o f u n cap tu red G reen deserters w ould be one m illion (30,000 X 35 provinces). T h is is exactly the figure cited by a W estern authority.89 A recent W estern source, how ever, p u t the n u m b er o f u ncaptured deserters higher, at 1 .4 2 6 .0 0 0 .90 A certain n u m b e r o f Red A rm y deserters w ent over directly to the other side of th e front line and joined the W hites. An A m erican consul reported to W ashington on the situation at the n o rth ern front against G eneral Youdenich: “M an y regim ents o f Soviet soldiers have gone over to the W hites, thus constitu­ ting th e sole m eans o f the W h ites’ recruiting. ”91 A nother report from a different source o n th e n o rth ern W h ite arm y stated: “they are largely m ade up of Bol­ shevik deserters having grown w ithin a very short tim e from 2,500 to 30,000 m e n .”92 R eports on the situation o f the Red Arm y at the front confirm ed this assessment: “Trotsky has interrupted his offensive [against A dm iral Kolchak] because of dem oralization o f Soviet troops. E ntire battalions refuse to fight.”95 N o t all deserters who were hiding in the forest, however, were necessarily active rebels against C o m m u n ist rule. For m any o f th em going over to the G reens (u iti v zelenye) was a way o f life; it was an alternative to conscription. If the C o m m u n ist authorities did not bother them , they would not attack the authorities; b u t w hen the authorities tried to draft th em into the arm y or requisition th eir cattle, they would defend them selves. R eporting on countless engagem ents w ith the G reens-deserters, Derevenskaia Bednota described one in K ostrom a Province: “T h ey form ed an arm ed band, w hich prevented other deserters from retu rn in g to the army. T h e E xtraordinary C om m ission was obliged to send punitive detachm ents. A skirm ish ensued in w hich fifty deser­ ters were killed and sixty o f their leaders were shot. ”94 In th at sense the deserters co m p o n en t o f th e G reen m ovem ent was defensive in character. Its goal was not necessarily to oust the C o m m u n ists from power b u t to defend th e local area 89 John E ricson w rote in this regard, “at o n e p o in t in 1919 th e n u m b e r o f deserters alm ost equaled the c o m b a t strength o f the Red A rm y, as set dow n in Vatsetis’s strength re p o rt.” John E ricso n ’s figure from Soviet sources on desertion is one m illion. See T he Soviet H igh C o m m a n d , pp. 78 a n d 685. See also von H agen, “School o f the R evolution,” p. 81. 90 M awdsley, T h e R ussian C ivil W ar, pp. 1 8 2 -8 3 , and M ikhail B ernshtam , "S torony v G razhdanskoi v o in e ,” V estnik Russkogo khristianskogo dvizheniia, no. 128, 299. See also von H agen, “ School o f the R evolution” p. 78 (1,7 6 1 ,1 0 4 deserters). 91 Im brie, V yborg, F in lan d , to the D e p artm en t o f State, “Political and M ilitary S ituation of Soviet Russia as E videnced by E vents from I April to 11 July, 1919,” Records, dispatch 8 61.00.4696. 92 A m erican L egation, C o p e n h ag e n (15 July 1919), Records, dispatch 861.00.5041. 95 “S u m m ary o f the Bolshevik S ituation from D ata G athered in Sw itzerland by th e A m erican M ilitary A ttache d u rin g th e W eek E n d in g 8 M a rc h ,” Records, dispatch 861.00.4233. 94 "Increased D esertion from th e Red A rm y,” B ulletins o f the R ussian Liberation C om m ittee, no. 26 (8 A ugust 1919).

from state authority, if it was attacked. Red A rm y soldiers were reported as saying: “I’ll q u it and go join the G reen Army. ”95 In N izhni Novgorod they were called G reen G uards, like the Red G uards or the W h ite G uards. In Saratov Province two nam es were used interchangeably: th e U nion of D eserters and the G reen army. U nder this n am e— G reen arm y— the peasant rebels and de­ serters were know n in Tver, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, and other n o n —black earth provinces. 96 T h e second co m p o n en t in the G reen m ovem ent was that o f sim ple peasant rebels w ho also were hiding in the forests and attacking local C o m m u n ist authorities. T hese were officially referred to as kulak bands or bandits. G reen detachm ents seldom ventured outside th eir local area. T hey stayed close to hom e and, as som e reports tell us, visited their hom es frequently, once every several days or on ce a week. As a defense against requisitions, they often took to the forests valuables, horses, som etim es even cattle. T h eir m ilitary and strate­ gic tasks were local as well. E nem y n u m b er one was a requisition detachm ent; enem y n u m b e r two; the local C om m unists and the uezd C heka. T h e G reens were very well inform ed w hen a requisition d etach m en t was expected in their area. T h ey b urned bridges, dism antled rail tracks, am bushed requisition de­ tachm ents, and killed the m ost hated C om m unists. M ore than one source relates th at several com rades were buried alive by the “kulaks. ”97 In a word they were engaged in partisan warfare against C o m m u n ist authorities.

The Greens’ Organization and Tactics In Tver, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, and N izh n i Novgorod provinces the G reens were fairly well organized. D etachm ents had com m anders, discipline, and even intelligence o f their own. Som e com m anders were even issuing passports to their envoys asking th e local population to assist so- and -so traveling w ithin the territory controlled by th e d eta c h m e n t.98 A Socialist R evolutionary reported from N ovgorod Province: “T h e deserters had their own orderly organization w ithout any leadership from outside. T hey had their own center w hich drafted lists o f available deserters. . . . T h ey did not p u t forward any overtly political slogans. T h e G reen rebels had close contacts with the village soviets, and in some areas they had th eir inform ers in the volost’ and uezd and even provinciallevel adm inistration. From Penza Province a M oscow envoy reported that 95 “Dezertiry v N izhnem Povolzh’e," Listok “Dela naroda,” no. 2 (Sum m er 1919), PSR Ar­ chive, file 2003. 96 “Zelenaia arm iia,” ibid. 97 Lunacharsky, “Doklady L en in u ,” Literatum oe Nasledstvo, vol. 80, p. 384. 98 “Vesti iz derevni,” Listok “Dela naroda," no. 4 (Sum m er 1919), 4. 99 “Krestianskie nastroeniia Novgorodskoigubernii” (February 1920), T s.P.A., Otchetydoklady mestnykh SR organizatsii, Fond 274 PSR, O pis' I, docum ent 25, p. 41.

som e volost’ executive com m ittees refused to co n d u c t an arm y draft. H e asked for a m ilitary d etac h m en t to deploy against deserters and issued an order that th e executive com m ittees o f soviets be tried by a m ilitary c o u r t.100 Cases of direct cooperation betw een the local Soviets and the G reens were reported from Kaluga and T am bov provinces. In Kaluga th e n u m b e r of G reens was estim ated as colossal (kolossal’naia tsifra). T hey got to be so brazen an d their power so pervasive th at som e of th em were elected as ch airm en o f the local executive com m ittees. T h ese ch airm en ignored instructions from the center to intensify the struggle w ith deserters. Instead, “they w arned their friends” w hen a detach­ m e n t was sent o u t to “liquidate the nest o f counterrevolutionaries. ”101 T h e situation was even worse in T am bov Province in this regard. A M os­ cow envoy reported: “M any executive com m ittees at the village and volost’ level w ith o u t party affiliation are in fact in the hands of kulaks, and they definitely take p art in the harboring of deserters.” As usual the envoy rec­ o m m en d ed th e m ost m erciless m easures, including shooting such executive c o m m itte es.102 D o cum ents in the Sm olensk Archive likewise attest th at large areas w ere regarded by the Bolsheviks as “bandit” c o n tro lle d .103 Mass desertion reached catastrophic proportions there, and village soviets cooperated w ith the “b an d its.”

Bolshevik Antidesertion Measures In th e su m m er of 1919 the G reen m ovem ent acquired such m enacing propor­ tions th at th e C o m m u n ist governm ent adopted a n u m b er o f antidesertion m easures. In all provincial capitals special com m issions for the struggle with desertion a n d /o r banditry were form ed. T hese com m issions created special an tidesertion d etachm ents run by th e C heka. O n 28 M ay 1919 these were reorganized into special troops for internal operations and consisted alm ost exclusively o f C o m m u n ist party m em bers and activists.104 Later in 1919 these detach m en ts received th e right to dispense punitive m easures (executions) on the spot. O n e m o re institution could now practice arbitrary rule in the country­ side. In practical term s these detachm ents were given a free h an d to stam p out 100 N. Osinskii, O t upolnom ochennogo TsKa RKP(b) po PenzensJcoi gubernii,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 437. 101 Iaroslavskii, “O dezertirakh,” Pravda (17 June 1919), I. 102 V. N. Podbel’skii, O t upolnom ochennogo TsKa RKP(b) po Tambovskoi gubernii (29 maia 1919),” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 479. 105 “Rognedinskaia Volost’ is considered counterrevolutionary . . . clearly seen sympathy of the population toward desertion and to banditism ,” “D onesenie,” Smolensk Archive. 104 For a brief description of the composition of these troops and docum ents in Soviet archives describing their activity, see A. I. Aleksentsev, “O b uchastii voisk vnutrennei okhrany v bor’be protiv belogvardeitsev i interventov v 1918-1920 godakh,” Krasnye arkhivy, no. 4(1971), 69—75, here 69.

desertion. M any o f th eir atrocities will rem ain unknow n. Yet som e docum ents on th eir m ethods were filed w ith th e M oscow authorities. In Kaluga Province, for exam ple, antidesertion detachm ents com m itted so m any acts o f violence that a special com m ission of th e M oscow M ilitary C om m issariat felt obliged to investigate. It collected extensive evidence on corporal p u n ish m en t, torture, and abuse. T h e protocol o f intergoration o f o ne o f the deserters read: My name is Fedor Bobkov, twenty-one years old, a deserter. I was captured on 7 October by the chief of the antideserter detachment. When they brought me to the headquarters, one of them started beating me with a rifle butt. Together with me they also brought two other comrades. They were beaten too. . . . Then the chief of the detachment came and with him ten men. They told us to go out to the garden. The chief started asking us if there were any inciters among us. Then he ordered [us] to undress and they formed two lines facing each other. We were all lined up and ordered to come up one by one. W hen I came up they started beating me from both sides with sticks and whips and rifle butts. They hit me about thirty times until I fell unconscious. W hen I regained consciousness I saw how they were beating others.105 T h e proceedings o f a regional party conference in Sm olensk Province reveal a debate am o n g local leaders on the struggle against desertion. A C o m m u n ist speaker stated th at th e problem had started right from the beginning o f m obili­ zation in M arch 1919. By June 1919 in Bel’sk uezd alone 2,600 deserters were apprehended. For th e struggle against desertion the speaker, Lobanov, recom ­ m ended confiscating cattle, executing the m ost active deserters, and sending punitive detachm ents into th e d istricts.106 Kursk Province conducted a “week of the d eserter.” 107 Prom ises to pardon those w ho returned by a certain date were com bined w ith threats to a n n ih ilate for those w ho did not. T h e C om m u n ist press was full of articles praising the “return o f deserters en m asse.” 108 Clearly if masses were returning, masses had to have deserted first. T h e Bolshevik C entral C om m ittee was alarm ed th at even C om m u n ists were am ong those w ho de­ serted. 109 Sam ara C om m u n ists declared a “crusade against deserters,” w hich m ust have b een successful since they reported to M oscow th at as a result “the num ber of deserters quickly d ecreased.”110 At the provincial party conference in Tver local officials adm itted th a t the struggle against desertion took “a great 105 "Protokol doprosa 16 Oktiabria sledovatelem Moskovskogo voenno-okruzhnogo kommissariata,” T s.P.A ., Fond 17 RKP(b), Opis’ 6, docum ent 114, p. 343. 106 Piataia Bel’skaia konferentsiia RKP(b), Smolensk Archive, file W KP 254. 107 “Vesti iz derevni,” Listok “D e/α naroda,” no. 4 (Sum m er 1919), 4. i°8 “Massovyi vozvrat dezertirov,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta, no. 138 (23 June 1919), 2. Also “O dum alis” ’ Pravda (3 July 1919), 3, and “Kak odum alis’ dezertiry,” Izvestiia (I July 1919). 109 “O dezertirakh,” Pravda (17 June 1919), I, and “Vsem organizatsiiam RKP(b),” Izvestiia TsKa RKP(b), no. 4 (9 July 1919), I. 110O t Pugachevskogo uezdnogo komiteta RKP(b) (Samarskaia guberniia) (24 Maia 1919) Otchet i kratkie svedeniia,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 464.

deal o f their tim e and energy. 11 W h at the Bolsheviks were m ost afraid o f was a situation in w hich bands of deserters could channel the peasants’ w rath and lead general peasant insurrections. To prevent such an eventuality, the Voro­ nezh Province party com m ittee ordered the following: “C lose cooperation is to be established betw een the C heka, the special departm ents, and com m issions for th e struggle against desertion in order to prevent the concentration of deserters and m ass insurrections of kulaks. O n e should not balk at adopting the m ost repressive m easures in case o f a counterrevolutionary unrest or insur­ gency. In such a case it is ordered [that local com m ittees] declare a state of em ergency and take hostages. ”112 T h e Petrograd C om m unists were even more explicit ab out th eir m easures against the rural population as a whole: in those cases when the parents and the brothers o f these [voluntarily returning] deserters were taken as hostages, these latter will be set free; . . . those who in the course o f the specified dates, that is, up to 20 July, com e back voluntarily will be enlisted in the ranks of the Red Army, in case they are fit, without any punishment; and those whose relatives were taken as hostages by that time would be released and the confiscated property will be returned. . . . All those persons, regardless o f their sex, older than twelve years of age who are found in the forests during the search after the date indicated . . . and those who do not have a special permit will be regarded as those in hiding and will be subject to being shot on the sp o t.113

T his d o cu m en t also reveals that taking hostages from the civilian population was a widespread practice. Indeed the entire family was to suffer if one m em ber of th e fam ily joined the G reens; the entire village was to suffer if one fam ily in the village helped the rebels. A nother order issued by the Petrograd authorities defined the term forest b a n d its: “A nyone w ho is caught after the date indicated in th e forests listed above and in the nearby localities will be considered a forest b an d it and will be shot. 14 T his clearly indicated th at entire areas were consid­ ered “b an d it” and the population in those areas was held responsible for antiC o m m u n ist insurgency. As far as the civilian population was concerned, the order continued: “Residents of the nearby villages caught sheltering deserters after th e date indicated, or if they are known n o t to report in a tim ely m an n er to th e local soviets ab out all deserters known to them , are also subject to execu­ tio n .” T h e order concluded: “If it is found ou t that a village supplies those h id in g in th e forests w ith food or if that village is a place for their gathering, such 1,1 “Shestaia Gubemskaia Konferentsiia RKP(b),” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta, no. 261(17 November 1919), I. 112 “Voronezh; lnstruktsiia dlia otvetstvennykh upolnom ochennykh G ub.kom .part," Ts.P.A,, Fond 17, RKP{b), Opis' 6, docum ent 48, p. 212. 113 O t Chrezvychainogo komiteta revoliutsionnoi okhrany Korel’skogo uchastka,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta, no. 155 (12 July 1919), I. 114 “O t Chrezvychainogo komiteta revoliutsionnoi okhrany Korel’skogo uchastka,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta, no. 138(23 June 1919), I.

a village will be b u rn ed entirely.” In this assertion of collective responsibility, the Bolsheviks adm itted th a t w arlike m easures were to be applied to the entire population o f a given area, n o t just to individual deserters, a policy w hich rem inds o n e of reprisals from an enem y arm ed force against a conquered p o p u la tio n .115 An order signed by L enin and published in all newspapers on 15 June required the confiscation of property from the fam ilies o f known deserters, fines, and “com pulsory hard la b o r.”116 O n n u m ero u s occasions C o m m u n ist com m anders reported th at the last detachm ent of G reens had been an n ih ilated in their province, and yet new detachm ents appeared over and over a g a in .117 M ore often th an not energetic measures antagonized th e po pulation and generated new recruits for th e G reen detachm ents. A C heka official described such energetic m easures. In this instance a special C heka task force was dispatched from M oscow on a tour of the black earth provinces on a C heka train. T rium phantly b u t som ew hat pre­ maturely, a C heka spokesm an wrote in Pravda: “In general we can state that lately the liquidation of desertion, particularly in the frontline provinces, has been co m p le te d .” T h e au th o r touched only briefly upon the m easures the agents on th e C heka train adopted to “liquidate” desertion. Som e deserters were executed. Also executed were a sm all group of hostages from the civilian population, because in th a t village three C om m unists had been killed. A lto­ gether during the to u r o f the provinces the C heka executed “only forty people, ” some o f th em C heka agents, for abuse o f power. To com bat desertion, the report co n tin u ed , the C heka had created new concentration camps. Special detachm ents were dispatched to affected areas to liquidate the deserters’ ban d s.118 To facilitate the success o f the search-and-destroy missions of special detach­ m ents, th e Bolshevik high co m m an d deployed all m eans at its disposal, in clu d ­ ing the air force. A rou tin e pilot’s report on a com bat m ission described opera­ tional details. Intelligence at th e N in th Army headquarters had identified Tavolzhanka rail station n ear Balashov tow nship, Saratov Province, as being captured by the G reens on 14 July. Pilot M ikhailiuk was ordered to attack the G reens from th e air. H e took w ith h im six bombs. U pon com pletion o f the mission he reported th a t crowds n u m b erin g ten to fifteen thousand were ap ­ proaching from th e station o f L o p a tin o .119 T h e reference to crowds suggests 115 T h is is exactly h o w a B olshevik fu n ctio n ary described th e situation. T h ey were c o n q u erin g the h ostile co u n try . See von H agen, “S chool o f th e R evolution, p. 93. 116 V. U l’ian o v (L enin), “D ezertirstvo b u d e t u n ic h to z h e n o ,” K rasnaia g azeta (15 Ju n e 1919), I.

117K .! . L an d er, O t u p o ln o m o ch en n o g o TsK a RKP(b) po S m olenskoi i M inskoi guberniiam (27 m aiia 1919),” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 477. 118 “D e ia te l’n o st’ poezda V ech ek a,” Izvestiia (21 A ugust 1919). 119 “R aport. O t: V oennogo K om m issara polevogo upravleniia aviatsii pri shtabe 9oi arm ii (14 July 1919 P en za),” T s .G .A .S .A ., F o n d 192, O p is’ I , d o c u m e n t 55.

that these were insurgent peasants rather than well-organized bands of Green partisans. This report, like dozens of others, describes routine daily operations, the m ovem ent of troops, bom bing missions and artillery shellings of villages. O ne may almost forget that the enemy in that regular war was not some army but crowds o f peasants. T he enem y could appear anytime and anywhere. T hat is why, perhaps, some Bolsheviks developed a sense of insecurity, of being surrounded by enemies. A docum ent in the Smolensk Archive describes the operations of a punitive detachm ent. Sum m oned by the local Com m unists, the detachm ent arrived in the village of Rognedino on a search-and-destroy mission. T he com m ander noted in his report that the population in the area sympathized with the Green “bandits.”520 Upon arrival, the detachm ent was m et by a deputy chairm an of the soviet, Antip. Local peasants feared him and hated him so m uch, according to the com m ander, that children were frightened when they even heard the nam e Antip m entioned. Antip showed the com m ander the houses where “ban­ dits” lived. But there were so m any of them that, with the available force, he could not surround them all. They ambushed some houses nevertheless and sent out small detachm ents to the outlying households. It was decided that at a given signal, two shots into the air, the detachm ent would begin the attack on the “bandits’” houses. Antip gave a signal too early, while it was still dark, and a “bandit” ran out of his own house. T he m en of the detachm ent opened fire as more villagers escaped. T he cavalry which had surrounded the village was ordered to pursue the “bandits. ” Com rade Nikolaev, the.report continued, was shot in hot pursuit. T he Greens managed to escape to the forests. T h e com m ander suspected foul play on the part of Antip, because he com plained that the detachm ent would leave and he had to stay and risk his life. It is quite possible that types like Antip were serving both the Com m unist authorities and the Greens at the same time. Antip acted as a guide and inform ant for the punitive detachm ent, and he may also have informed the “bandits” that the detachm ent was coming. T he docum ent makes it clear that these “bandits” were not bandits at all but simple Russian peasants who lived in their own houses and fled to the forests only when their village was threatened by a punitive detachm ent. T he com ­ m ander’s report illustrates how difficult it was for C om m unist authorities to fight against the “G reen bandits. ” It is also clear that the only people they could rely upon in the village were that handful of Com m unists who, upon their own repeated admission, were hated by the local population. As a m atter of course the com m ander searched some houses, interrogated some suspects, and took some hostages from the “bandit families” in a small Russian village. Itshould be noted that there were no landlords, capitalists, or foreign interventionists in this little village in Smolensk Province. No W hite forces had ever come close to that 120 “D onesenie,” Smolensk Archive.

area. And yet there was a civil war, a civil war between the C o m m u n ist au th o ri­ ties and th e peasants. T h e actions o f th e com m ander were not violations of party policy in the countryside. T h e com m an der of the punitive detach m en t in Sm olensk, and th e C heka train in Tam bov, V oronezh, Kursk, and O rel, as well as the h u n ters of deserters in th e forests of Petrograd, Tver, Novgorod, and Pskov provinces, were fulfilling the policy o f the central governm ent.

Peasant Uprisings It is im possible to d elineate precisely the differences between deserters and “bandits” or betw een the peasant partisan m ovem ent and less organized peasant uprisings. Peasant rebels were the m ain driving force in all, and their political m otivation was n o t always clear. Nevertheless, there were peasant insurgencies against C o m m u n ist authority w hich attem pted its overthrow. O n e can distin­ guish several types o f peasant uprisings by taking into account such characteris­ tics as scope, degree of organization, political program , forms of warfare, and the social groups w hich participated. In the first category of peasant uprisings one can include those that grew out of w hat the C o m m u n ists called “econom ic sabotage.” T hey typically started with peasants rendering econom ic resistance w hich then escalated into upris­ ings. Peasants w ithdrew land from cultivation and tried to produce the bare m in im u m for personal consum ption. T hey also tried to hide their crops from the a u th o ritie s.121 T hey refused to work the fields w hen they were afraid that the crop w ould be confiscated. T h ey attacked collective farms, as in T ula, or sabotaged C o m m u n ists’ attem pts to harvest th e fields. AU these actions invited repressive m easures, w hich in tu rn triggered uprisings. T his was the case in August 1919 n ear Odessa, for exam ple. Peasants feared that the C om m unists would “evacuate” the harvest to the n o rth and refused to harvest the fields. As the land com m issar related events, th e authorities m obilized Odessa’s u n e m ­ ployed an d sent them o u t to the fields to replace recalcitrant peasants. T h a t in turn ignited a “kulak” rebellion w hich had far reaching strategic consequences for C o m m u n ist rule in southern U kraine. T h e peasant rebellion trapped C o m ­ m unists in Odessa and c u t them off from oth er C o m m u n ist forces farther north and in this way helped the advancing troops of G eneral D enikin to capture O dessa.122 A no th er C o m m u n ist observer wrote that one could co u n t “tens of thousands” of cases w hen partisan detachm ents rendered help to the W hites in U k rain e.123 121 For a discussion of these trends in the countryside, see N. Rakitnikov, “Sovetskaia Vlast’ i krestianstvo,” Delo naroda, no. I (20 M arch 1919), 2. 122 N . Pliusnina, “Neskol’ko epizodov iz perioda Grazhdanskoi voiny na U kraine,” Staryi BoVshevik, vol. 4, no. 7 (1933), 84-100, here 89-90. 125I. Lantukh, “Iz istorii grazhdanskoi voiny na Ekaterinosiavshchine, ’’ Letopis' revoliutsii, no. 2(1926), 51 .

A second category included peasant uprisings w hich were usually short in d u ratio n , local in scope, violent in character with rudim entary form s o f organi­ zation, and caused by specific grievances. T hese o n e can call b u n ty rebellions, th e m ost n u m ero u s category.124 T h ey were like sm all explosions o f peasant w rath th at attacked local C om m unists an d usually invited a punitive detach­ m en t. In a typical case peasants w ould assem ble in a village square and clam or against a m obilization order. T h e gathering w ould end in a riot, and local C o m m u n ists w ould be assaulted or killed. A “kulak” rebellion would be re­ ported to provincial authorities and a punitive d etach m en t dispatched. U pon arrival, the punitive d etach m en t, consisting o f C om m unists only, as for exam ­ ple in Yaroslavl Province, w ould open fire o n a rebel village. (U pon the co n ­ quest o f this “nest of counterrevolutionaries" th e d etach m en t found portraits of L en in an d Trotsky torn into pieces). T h e detach m en t would later identify the hostages to be ta k e n .125 C ountless engagem ents like this took place all over Russia. In a report to th e C entral C o m m ittee a special envoy to V oronezh Province explained th at m isdeeds o f local Soviet functionaries, particularly of food sup­ ply agents, provoked peasant uprisings there in April and M ay.126 A ccording to Pravda, “requisitions o f cattle and grain in Sim birsk Province also triggered an uprising in M ay.” 127 F rom T ula Province an SR correspondent wrote that peasants “b u rn ed S ovietcollective farms in response to requisitions o f foodstuffs and horses.”128 Sim ilarly according to A m erican observers: “the rural popula­ tion o f th e districts o f Novgorod, Petrograd and Tver’ have recently organized a vast m o vem ent. In m ost of the districts the peasants are well arm ed an d even possess a ca n o n , m ach in e guns and han d grenades. . . . T h e reason for the rebellion is th e m obilization ordered by Trotsky, the requisition o f agrarian products and th e discontent caused by the agrarian policy of Soviet govern­ m e n t.”129 At th e C o m m u n ist party conference o f Tver Province in June 1919 local officials said: “T h e entire countryside, to a m an, was arm ed against u s .”130 T h e insurgency th ere was suppressed by the use o f artillery .131 D ifferent sources from different parts o f the country th at were in no way connected all tell a 124 See, for exam ple, “T elegram m a Efrem ovskogo Ispolkom a o kulatskom vystuplenii v sviazi s o b lazh en iem kontributsiei kulakov" (Tula 22 M arch 1919), T s .G .A .O .R ., Fond 1235, VTsIK, O p is’ 94, d o c u m e n t 58, p. 53. 125 “D okladnaia zapiska o Poshekhonsko-V olodarskom uezde Yaroslavskoi g u b e rn ii,” T s .G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K , O pis’ 3, d o c u m e n t 363, p. 87. 126 K. S. E rem eev, O t u p o ln o m o c h e n n o g o TsK a RKP(b) i VtsIK po V oronezhskoi gub ern ii” (28 M ay 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, pp. 4 8 0 -8 1 . 127 “N a V n u tre n n e m F ro n te ,” Pravda (27 M ay 1919), 2. 128 “Krestianstvo i Sovetskie khoziaistva,” D elo naroda, no. I (20 M arch 1919), 3. 129 “ S u m m ary of the Bolshevik Situation from D ata G athered in Sw itzerland by the A m erican M ilitary A ttachd d u rin g th e W eek E n d in g M arch 8 ,” Records, dispatch 861.00.4233. 150 “Shestaia G ubernskaia K onferentsiia RK P(b),” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo S o veta , no. 261 (17 N ovem ber 1919), I. n l C hernov, “Bofsheviki v D e re v n e .”

sim ilar story. In R yazan rebellion was caused by the “banditlike” behavior o f local C o m m u n ists, an d in Yaroslavl by antideserter o p eratio n s.152 A ccording to a special envoy o f the Bolshevik C entral C o m m ittee in Yaro­ slavl Province, “deserters seized w eapons and vanished in the forests.” T h e m ain body of deserters w ent into Liubim ovsky U ezd, “in w hich a peasant rebellion is raging now with astonishing fierceness.’’T h e local authorities sent out a d eta c h m e n t of seventy m en against the deserter-rebels, b u t these m en went over to th e deserters’ side. T h e n they sent another d etach m en t o f one h und red C o m m u n ists exclusively, b u t it vanished w ithout a trace. T h e sam e thing happened w ith a d etach m en t sent out against the G reens in Peshekhonsky U ezd. M oscow ’s envoy suspected th at railway workers in Yaroslavl Province had coordinated a “series o f uprisings.” D obrokhotov concluded that the mass o f Red A rm y soldiers in th e province was unreliable and “could not be counted upon in the struggle against the G re e n s.”133 T h e re were n u m ero u s cases w hen local C om m unists were locked in the building of the soviet and b u rn ed alive. Cases of arson were countless. From several provinces cam e reports th a t peasants buried C om m unists alive or skinned th e m or tortu red th em or stuffed their dead bodies with g rain. In a letter to L en in , L unacharsky described one o f those horrifying episodes in Kostroma Province: “T h e U renskoe affair is o f course n o thing b u t a nightm are. Its con­ clusion was horrible. T h e peasants killed, froze to death, and burned alive twenty-four of o u r com rades, having subjected th em to horrible tortures. B ut at the sam e tim e I am n o t com pletely sure that the blam e falls on peasants exclusively . . . it started w ith m ach in e g un fire upon th e m .”134 T h e situation in T am bov Province w ent from bad to worse in the late spring and su m m er o f 1919, and large operations against the G reens caused a rebel­ lio n .135 T h e uprising in T am bov was ignited by th e C o m m u n ists’ cam paign to capture deserters. D etach m en ts sent o u t for th at purpose were disarm ed by peasant rebels. Local village soviets were reported to be “kulak” controlled, th at is, on the side o f th e peasant insurgents. T h e uprisings spread to several volosti, and new detachm en ts were sent o u t.136 T h is insurgency took place in 1919, suggesting th at even before th e A ntonov m ovem ent gained m o m en tu m T am ­ bov had already been a hotbed o f arm ed resistance.

132 Ibid.

133 "Doklady u p olnom och en n ogo TsKa RKP(b) i VTsIK Dobrokhotova o sostoianii partiinoi i Sovetskoi raboty i provedenii m obilizatsii v Yaroslavskoi gubernii,” T s .G .A .O .R ., Fond 1240, Opis’ I, d ocu m ent 3, p. 6. 134 Lunacharsky to Lenin (May 1919, Kostoma), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K , O pis’ 3, docum ent 363(2), p. 63. 135 “D ezertiry v N izh n em Povolzh’e , ” L istok “D ela naroda," no. 2 (Sum m er 1919). Even though the title suggests that the area in question is the lower Volga, the uprising in Tam bov Province is also described here. 136 V. N . Podbel’skii, O t u p olnom och en n ogo TsKa RKP(b) i V TslK po Tambovskoi gubernii (26 maia 1919),” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 474.

Perhaps th e m ost violent rebellion was in Kostrom a and Vyatka provinces. As everyw here else, th e uprising in Varnavinsky U ezd was caused by grain requisi­ tioning. Local C o m m u n ists decided to m ake an inventory o f “surplus g ra in .” T h ey arrested “speculators” and those w ho were “hid in g ” and “h oarding” grain. As a result: “detachm ents sent o u t to collect surplus grain were subjected to cruel ex term ination. In fact som e of the d etach m en t com m anders were burned on a slow fire.”137 T h ere were m any O ld Believers in that area w ho considered th e Bolsheviks to be the com ing of the anti-C hrist. T h e rebellious peasants elected a tsar. W ith these uezdy, wrote L unacharsky “a real w ar is going on. ”138 T h e headquarters o f the eastern front co m m an d reported to Moscow: “peasants got really wild, an d w ith pitchforks and stakes and w ith rifles, singles and whole crowds clam bered tow ard th e m ach in e gun, ignoring the piles o f corpses. And th eir ferocity [iarost’] ca n n o t be described.” 139 A special report to the C entral Executive C o m m ittee stated plainly th at the masses o f deserters in Kostroma Province were protected by the entire population: “At present, the U m ansky area is n o th in g b u t a nest sw arm ing with deserters, W h ite G uardists, and counterrev o lu tio n ary kulaks. AU this threatens the eastern front m ore than ever.”140 T h e peasant insurgencies in Kostrom a and Tam bov can hardly be distin­ guished from partisan warfare. T h ey started as rebellions over specific griev­ ances and th en co n tin u ed as partisan G reen m ovem ents. T h e third category of uprisings was those th at were better organized, produced their ow n leaders, had clear political goals, and em braced large territories. In the vicinity o f S yzran’ on the Volga in Sim birsk Province a peasant uprising broke ou t in the spring of 1919 w hich coincided w ith the advance to the Volga o f the W h ite arm ies of K olchak from th e U ra ls.141 Peasants in the area were disgruntled by the prohibi­ tion o n trading grain, since th at was th eir traditional activity. T rouble would start, according to a C o m m u n ist eyewitness, w hen "kulaks” from several vil­ lages congregated in an assem bly [skhod], “At such an assembly th e ‘kulaks’ clam ored energetically against the requisitioning o f cattle an d grain and against th e violence perpetrated by som e C om m unists. T h e n they passed a sentence [prigovor].”142 T h ey disarm ed requisition detachm ents and seized their weapons. Local soviets openly w ent over to the side o f th e insurgents. E ntire areas along the Volga were “k u lak ,” according to th e author. C o m m u n ist 137 “V arnavinsky U ezdnyi Ispolkom ” (I M arch 1919), T s .G .A .O .R ., Fond 1235, V T slK , O pis’ 94, d o c u m e n t 320, pp. 7—11. 138 L unacharsky, “D oklady L e n in u ,” L ite ra tu m o e Nasledstvo, vol. 80 (1971), p. 384. T his re p o rt is dated 11 M ay 1919. O n rebellion in th at area, see also S ch eib ert, Len in a n der M a c h t, p. 154. 139 Vasilii S e liu n in , “Istoki,” N ovyi m ir, no. 5 (1988), 1 6 2 -9 0 , here 166. 140 “V arnavinsky U ezdnyi Ispolkom (I M arch 19190),” T s .G .A .O .R ., Fond 1235, VTsIK, O p is’ 94, d o c u m e n t 320, p p .7 -1 1 . 141 S cheibert, L e n in a n der M a ch t, pp. 154—55. 142 “N a V n u tre n n e m F ro n te ,” p a rt 2, Pravda (29 M ay 1919), 3.

control over th e area collapsed, since the local soviets refused to deliver grain, horses, and recruits. A ccord in g to a special report to th e C E C , this uprising was m arked by: “a high degree of organization o f the entire m ovem ent; by energy, fierce resistance, an d im pact upon the Red A rm y units, as well as the presence of considerable n um bers o f deserters from the fro n t.”143 In panic the Sam ara Province party com m ittee reported th at “alm ost the entire province was taken by th e W h ite G uards’ b an d s.” 144 By C o m m u n ist definition this was a “kulak” conspiracy against Soviet power. In fact it was a popular uprising against C o m m u n ist dictatorship. Local soviets elected new executive com m ittees an d even published their own Izvestiia, a Soviet new spaper. T h is rebellion produced a case o f Soviet power w ithout the C o m m u n ists, anticipating events at K ronstadt a year and a h alf later. T h e insurgents’ political slogans were Long Live th e Soviets b u t w ithout the C o m ­ munists! or D ow n w ith th e C o m m u n ist Perpetrations of V iolence (Nasilniki)I or D ow n w ith the C om m issars, C om m unists and Jews! A m ong the positive slogans the m ost co m m o n were: For the C o n stitu en t Assembly! For Russian O rthodox Religion! and even For the Tsar! T hese slogans were p u t forward repeatedly in m any uprisings th ro u g h o u t th e area. T h e slogan for the C o nstitu­ en t Assembly clearly indicates the in fluence o f Socialist R evolutionaries.145 T h e fo u rth category o f uprisings inclu d e those w ith political leadership and the participation o f several social groups: peasants, deserters, m utinied Red Army soldiers, and in som e cases workers. T h ere were several such cases. By the end of M arch 1919 the situation around G om el was very precarious because of the sim ultaneous rebellions o f Red Arm y units, “kulak” uprisings, and on top of it all a rebellion o f “sem iproletarian elem ents” in G om el itself.146 T h e G om el provincial party organization n u m b ered only 1,965 people and was too weak to m ain tain “Soviet pow er,” so at the end o f M arch the uezd Chekas were rees­ tablished, an d for lack o f personnel a d etach m en t of m ore than a hundred C hinese was b rought in. T h ey were dedicated to the revolutionary cause, the report w ent on , b u t they did n o t understand any R u ssian .147 T h e rebellion in G om el started w hen an attem pt to disarm “u n reliable” arm y units failed. O n 23 of M arch two regim ents abandoned their position at the front against the 143 “Doklad VTsIKu osoboi kommissii po revizii Povolzh’ia pod predsedatel’stvom P. G. Sm idovicha,” T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 363(1). i+4 “O tchet Samarskogo Gubkom a (February-Septem ber 1919),” Ts.P.A ., Fond 17, O pis’ 6, docum ent 265, p. 191. 145 See an SR source on this uprising: “Podrobnosti vosstanii v Samarskoi i Simbirskoi guberniiakh,” Delo naroda, no. 7 (27 M arch 1919), 2, and the American consul in Vyborg, Finland, reported an uprising in S aratovP rovinceatthesam e tim e, dated 31 M arch 1919. Records, dispatch 861.00.4147. O n this uprising, see also Heller and Nekrich, Utopia in Power, p. 101. He “O tG o m e l’skogo Gubernskogo Komiteta RKP(b)(23 m aia 1919),” docum ent 572, Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, pp. 452-53. 147 'O tG o m e l’skogoGubernskogo Komiteta RKP(b)(23 m aia 1919),’’docum ent 573, Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p. 461.

U krainians (Petliura), seized a train, and m oved back on G om el. Along the way the insurgents disarm ed C om m unists and searched trains, looking for Jews. T h ey seized th e G om e] rail station, prison, telephone, and telegraph. T hey form ed an insurgency com m ittee and declared Soviet power overthrow n. T h e insurgency co m m ittee sent telegram s along the way appealing to other units to join th em and asking for help to block the arrival of reliable C o m m u n ist forces. T h e insurgents arrested C om m unists, killed the chairm an o f the local C heka, blew u p bridges, and joined w ith the local “kulaks.” T h eir slogans were D ow n w ith L enin and Trotsky! an d L ong Live the Russian People’s Republic! T h e G om el R evolutionary C om m ittee and the C heka had only three hundred people at th eir disposal. As a special report to the Bolshevik C C stated, highranking Bolsheviks did n o thing during the rebellion. T hey lay low and waited for the arrival o f the outside fo rce.148 T h e m ood in the city was very antiS em itic, reported local C om m unists, prim arily because Jews were engaged in “sp ecu latio n .” T h e insurgents staged an anti-S em itic pogrom . T hey held the city for a week until a superior force retook it after intense b a ttle .149 S im ilar uprisings involving peasants, G reen deserters, and m utinied Red Arm y soldiers rolled in the spring o f 1919 across the black earth region, striking Kursk, Bryansk, and O rel provinces.150 T h e Journal o f the C om m issariat o f Internal Affairs wrote that Bolshevism in O rel was m aintained in power by arm ed force a lo n e .151 Local cliques th at had com e to power during the Red Terror consisting of friends, relatives, and drinking pals terrorized local popula­ tions. T h ey settled their own accounts with one an o th er and enriched th em ­ selves at th e expense of the unfortunate peasants. E ach requisitioning cam ­ paign “for M oscow ” brought them som e samovars and warm clothes as well. Reports on th e m isdeeds o f th e local autocrats alarm ed som e C om m unists. At the C ongress o f Soviets of Bryansk U ezd (Orel Province) in February 1919 som e C o m m u n ist speakers quoted peasants as saying that the collection o f the extraordinary food tax am ounted to plain robbery.152 T h e O rel Izvestiia was even m ore explicit: “T h ere were cases w hen peasants w ho had no t paid th eir tax were kept naked outside in the snow. . . . Som e were kept in cold and dam p basem ents for several hours, and then they were beaten by rifle butts on their naked b odies.” 153 T h e last thing these local despots w anted was a reestablish­ m en t o f som e kind of public scrutiny of their rule. 148 “Doklad TsKa RKP(b), o miatezhe v G o m ele,” T s .P. A ., Fond 17, RKP(b) Opis’ 84, Biuro Sekretariata, docum ent 17. 149 “Podrobnosti vosstaniia v G om ele,” Pravda (2 April 1919), I. 150 Information on the uprisings in Kursk and Bryansk (Orel Province) is in "Provokatorskaia rabota Eserov, ” Izvestiia (20 March 1919); on Orel, see Scheibert1Lenin a n d der M acht, p. I 55; on V oronezh, see “V tiskakh. iz krest'ianskikh nastroenii Voronezhskoi gubernii,” Listok “De/a naroda," no. 4 (Sum m er 1919), 1 -2 . 151 lu. Mikhailov, O rlovsk ii Gorodskoi Sovet,” V la st’ Sovetov, no. 2 (30 January 1919), 20. 152 A. Fomichev, “S’ezd sovetov Brianskogo u e z d a Vsegda Vpered, no. 8 (16 February 1919). 153 T his is a reprint from Izvestiia Orlovskogo Soveta (31 January 1919). See “Zverinym obychaem (po telefonu ot sobstvennogo korrespondenta),” Vsegda Vpered, no. 3 (6 February 1919).

Peasant rebellion was also provoked by the attempts to establish collective farm ing. 154 T h e Orel Cheka had to adm it later that “incorrect actions during the collection of tax pushed away from Soviet power no t only the m iddle strata of peasantry b u t also the poor peasants. 55 By m id-M arch all except two of the uezdy of Orel Province were in rebellion. Local Bolsheviks reported to their CC: “T h e end of M arch and the first half of April were a period o f kulak rebellions which engulfed to this or that extent almost all uezdy. It was also a period of Red Army soldiers’ m utinies in Orel, Bryansk, and G om el. ”156 Local C om m unists frankly admitted that peasants rebelled against collective farms and requisitions. Deserters and priests were the m ain organizers o f rebellions. T h e province was declared to be in a state of siege. This empowered the Cheka to act w ithout restraint, to conduct executions and seize hostages, as specified in the Decree on Red Terror. A Soviet historian cites a description of the suppression of a peasant uprising in Livny, Orel Province: “T h e city suffered comparatively little. Now they are removing bodies of those killed and wounded from the streets. Am ong reinforcements which arrived later casualties are comparatively low. But the courageous Internationalists suffered heavy casualties. They have literally created m ountains with the bodies o f W hite Guardists covering the whole street. ”l 57 Orel Province was certainly no excep­ tion. As the Am erican consul reported to the State Departm ent: “Peasant uprisings are now so num erous and universal, that it is impractical to report them any longer.”158 Maps of the civil war usually depict the territory of central Russia in red— territory supposedly controlled by the C om m unists— and beyond the front line are areas marked as W hite-controlled territory. Som ething im portant is left out in this traditional presentation of the civil war: the Greens and peasant rebels. T he front line of the civil war was not only an external front against the Whites. T h e enem y could be anywhere, wrote a C om m unist author in Pravda in an article titled “O n the Internal Front. "159T here was in every province an inter­ nal front of the civil war: a front against the peasants, the Greens, and the “bandits” as they were called. T heir num bers were larger than the W hite and Red armies com bined, and they were the only truly volunteer popular army in Russia. T h e num ber of G reen rebels exceeded by far the num ber of C om m u­ nist party members in the countryside. But they were dispersed over a huge territory, they were poorly armed and poorly organized, and most im portantly 154 O t Orlovskogo Gubernskogo komiteta (18 Maia 1919)” and “Doklad o rabote Orlovskogo Gubernskogo Komiteta RKP(b) za aprel’ i pervuiu polovinu m aia,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 416. 155 “Vypiska iz Svodki no. I Inform , chastiosobogootdelapri O rlovskom G ubC heka,” T s.P .A ., Fond 17, O pis’ 6, d ocum ent 197, p. 109. 156 “v TsKa RKP(b). Doklad o rabote Orlovskogo G ubkom a za Aprel pervuiu polovinu Maia 1919,” T s.P.A ., Fond 17, O pis’ 6, docum ent 197, p. 67. 157 VasiIii Seliunin, “Istoki,” Novyi mir, no, 5 (1988), 162-90, here 167. 158 Im brie, Vyborg, Finland (26 May 1919), Records, dispatch 861.00.4587. 159 “Na V nutrennem F ronte,” Pravda (27 Mav 1919), 2.

they did not see their task as overthrowing Com m unists all over the country. Unlike the Greens, the C om m unists did see their strategic objective as destroy­ ing every single G reen detachm ent anywhere in the country. C ontrolling the railroads, the cities, the conscription m echanism and the state apparatus, the Com m unists clearly had the advantage. T he problem , wrote a Russian histo­ rian, was that “an army consisting of the peasants had to suppress peasant rebellions.”160 And that is why Red Army m utinies were so frequent. Com m unists had to be vigilant and decisive against an internal enemy. “Kulak” soviets were disbanded and reliable comrades installed in power. Searches, ambushes, interrogations, artillery fire against “nests o f counterrevo­ lutionaries”— that is, Russian villages— these were the measures employed against the enem y on the internal fro n t Families of kulak "bandits” were seized as hostages. Indem nities were imposed on entire villages after enemy territory was overrun, and deportation of the counterrevolutionary population began. T he civil war on the internal front was m uch more costly, m uch more bloody, and m uch m ore devastating than the relatively quick offensive against Denikin. Thousands of small engagements, ambushes, m opping up operations, raids across the countryside, artillery shellings of villages, roundups in the forests— these were the scenes of war, the war that is associated with the term civil war in the national memory. T here were no W hites in central Russia, but there was a civil war. !6° Vasilii Seliunin, “Istoki,” Novyi mir, no. 5(1988), 162—90, here 167. This view corresponds to a Western analysis of peasant behavior which m aintained that peasants in the Russian civil war “were involved only as reluctantly coerced conscripts.” See T heda Skocpol, “Social Revolutions and Mass M ilitary M obilization,” World Politics, vol. 40, no. 2 (January 1988), 147-68, here 156.

5 W hat Is to Be D one? Soviet Parties Face the C hallenge of the W hites

In t h e f i r s t h a l f o f 1919 the popular m ovem ents in E uropean Russia, U kraine, and the Urals inadvertently played into the hands o f the W hites. T he rebels were n o t for the W hites b u t for themselves; yet uprisings against C o m m u ­ nist rule m ade th e W hites appear stronger than they really were. T h e rebellions also dim inished outw ardly th e in d ep en d en t character of workers’ and peasants’ m ovem ents led by the m oderate socialists. T h e SDs and SRs had always claim ed to defend workers’ an d peasants’ interests against any dictatorship. W ere they now to lead a popu lar insurrection against the Bolsheviks, at the risk of helping th e W hites? H ow did they respond to th e astonishing success o f the W hites against th e Reds? H ow did th e socialists and the C om m unists define their place in th e civil war?

The Menshevik Assessment of the Situation In m id -1919 th e SD s were indeed in a difficult situation. As the workers’ strikes of spring had show n, m any workers were far m ore restive, radical, and antiBolshevik th an th e S D leaders. T h e M ensheviks’ actions had to be oppositional to reflect the m ood of the party’s constituency and at the sam e tim e n o t so inflam m atory as to risk helping th e successful offensive of the W hites. It is in this context th at th e SD leaders form ulated a new positive program : W h at Is to Be D one? It analyzed th e causes o f popular discontent and the sources of the W hites’ successes and offered som e policy recom m endations w hich the M e n ­ sheviks believed w ould strengthen the Soviet regim e internally and lead to the end of th e civil w ar (both w ith th e W hites an d w ith the G reens). T h e program W h a t Is to Be D one? was worked o u t in the late spring of 1919 by F. A. C h erev an in , V. G . G ro m an , and other econom ists in the E conom ic C om m ission o f th e M enshevik C C . Its recom m endations were presented in July. T h e urgency o f the M enshevik appeal was underscored by two factors. In the east th e Red Army was doing well, and the question arose as to w hat policies the Soviet authorities w ould pursue in the Urals and Siberia w hen Soviet rule was reestablished there. In the south, on th e other h an d , the Reds had suffered one defeat after ano th er, and th e need for a constructive dom estic policy to prevent any fu rth er advance o f the W hites was evident. Fedor D an defined the

problem in this way: “Now, after two years of the Bolshevik dictatorship we are convinced m ore than ever before that the absurdities of the Bolshevik econom ic policy and their system of terror are capable of only one thing: to prolong fam ine, cold, and decay, to disorganize, weaken, and lead the workers to despair, to create a gulf between them and peasants, and to resurrect autom at­ ically the W hite G uards’ counterrevolution, w hich is defeated in one place today and w hich arises in another place tom orrow .”1 In other words the prob­ lem was that the Bolsheviks generated popular unrest w hich the W hites skill­ fully used for their own purposes. T h e M ensheviks unequivocally agreed that the m ain task of the day was to defeat the W hites. But, they continued: “we have to p u t an end to such a situation as has been seen in Ukraine, in the Urals, on the D on, in the Volga basin, and in Siberia w hen broad popular masses greeted with jubilation the revolutionary authorities who liberated them from the landlord W hite G uardist counterrevolution and after only two m onths began to call for the return of the landlords and W hite Guardists, who would free them from the lawlessness and violence w hich is com prom ising the revolution.”2 T h e only rem edy the M ensheviks saw was a radical change of the entire Bolshevik policy. It was necessary to m ake the Soviet regime m ore attractive in the eyes o f the masses. It was imperative to p ut an end to lawlessness and violence, w hich generated peasants’ wrath and m ade them welcome the W hites. To that end the com m ittees of the poor had to be abolished, the requisitioning of grain stopped, and a system of grain purchases based on a negotiated price introduced. T h e SDs recom m ended that the Soviet govern­ m en t remove all restrictions on private trade, disband all antiprofiteering de­ tachm ents, and guarantee the inviolability of private ownership for land the peasants had seized in 1917.3 I n a word it was essential to respect the peasants as a class of small producers. To make trade m eaningful, they urged abandoning the system o f class rationing and abandoning the direct distribution of goods and services by the state. Everything that the state was not capable of running had to be sold into private hands. O ne should not be afraid of returning enterprises to their form er owners, the M ensheviks argued, if they were to improve production. Foreseeing Bolshevik objections that this would am o u n t to a restoration of capitalism in Russia, M enshevik observers wrote that it was foolish to pretend that capitalism had ceased to exist. Capitalism in the form of private enterprise was alive and well in C om m unist Russia.4 M illions of petty traders and bag­ m en, despite all the obstacles and bans, were shuttling between the countryside 1 In D an, ed ., in Oborona Revoliutsii i Sotsial D emokratiia, p. 9. 2 T h e full text of C hto D elat' is in Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 6, M aterialy TsKa, box 5, folder 16. 4 Ibid. 4 P. Kolokol’nikov, “Sotsializm i Kapitalizm v Sovrem ennoi Rossii,” M ysl', no. 12 (May 1919), 4 7 5 -8 0 , here 477.

and th e cities trading grain. O n e had to face the existing reality in order to proceed. T h e SD s reiterated th at Soviet power in the form of a one-party dictatorship had generated an u n acco u n tab le rule o f cliques and the unco n tro l­ lable excesses o f th e C heka. T h e people would defend Soviet power as their own against th e W hites only if th e dictatorship o f one party were abolished and a system o f m ultiparty, freely elected soviets reestablished.5 T h ese were reasonable proposals. T h e very fact th at they were m ade and seriously considered by all, including th e Bolsheviks, suggests th at there were alternatives to W ar C o m m u n ism in 1919. N o doubt an o th er econom ic policy could have been pursued, as one was in 1921. B ut alas, the M enshevik policy would have u n d e rc u t the power of all those com m issars and agents w ho had acquired a vested interest in the non m ark et collection of grain w hich allowed th em to en rich them selves in the process. T h e M ensheviks hoped th a t in July 1919 their proposals w ould be heeded, because they felt that they had been proven right. D ecossackization in th e D on, the rule o f terror in Kharkov and Kiev, and the reckless requisitions in U kraine had caused widespread uprisings against Soviet rule. T h e Bolsheviks’ course was suicidal. If they w anted to w in against th e W hites, they had to reform . T h is was the essence o f the M enshevik message. Som e Bolshevik leaders found this program acceptable at least in its eco­ nom ic recom m endations. Inform al talks betw een som e influential m em bers of the M enshevik C C and som e influential m em bers of the Bolshevik party started in M oscow .6 In July 1919 it was rum ored that the SDs would be legalized and perhaps invited to join th e Soviet governm ent. Fedor D an was supposed to becom e vice-chairm an of the C o u n cil o f People’s E conom y.7 T h e Bolsheviks apparently encouraged the rum ors, b u t M artov rejected these overtures firmly until an d unless political and econom ic reform s were im plem ented. At the sam e tim e th e M enshevik C C decided to dem onstrate its support for the Red Army in its struggle against the W hites. T h e party C C opened a m obilization cam paign am ong th e M ensheviks aim ed to encourage them to volunteer for the Red Army. T h e M ensheviks were ready to abandon the slogan D ow n w ith the Civil War! T h is new M enshevik readiness to side unequivocally with the Reds am o u n ted to a significant change o f policy in com parison w ith February 1919. N ow they believed th e ir m ost dangerous opponents were the W hites, since their victory w ould have led to a restoration of the old regim e, w hich the M ensheviks had been working all th eir lives to overthrow. 5 “W h a t Is to Be D o n e? T h e M enshevik P ro g ram ,” in A scher, e d ., T h e M ensheviks in the R ussian R evo lu tio n , pp. 1 1 1 -1 7 , here p. 115. Extensive parts o{ C h to D ela t’ w ere also published in V ardin, R evo liu tsiia i m e n ’shevizm , pp. 1 0 8 -9 . 6 “K o vsem O rg anizatsiiam P artii Sotsialistov R evoliutsionerov” (a typew ritten appeal) (su m m er 1919), P S R A rchive, folder 2003. 7 D . lu . D a lin , “O bryvki v o sp o m in an ii,” in A bram ovitsch, e d ., M a rto v i ego blizkie, pp. 103—

166

W H A T IS T O B E D O N E ?

T h e new M enshevik policy was strengthened by inform ation th at th e C C received on th e political situation u n d er Kolchak. In early July 1919 Boris N icolaevsky re tu rn ed to M oscow from his extended trip in S iberia o n b e h a lf o f th e M en sh ev ik C C . S ince c o m m u n ic a tio n w ith S iberian com rades h ad been broken for m an y m o n th s, N icolaevsky’s firsthand a c c o u n t aroused great p ublic in terest a n d p ro d u ced an en o rm o u s im pression on th e C C .8 T h e M ensheviks o rganized a rally and m ade N icolaevsky’s revelations public. H e was reported to h ave said th at th e K olchak regim e was u n p o p u lar, th at requisitions a n d acts o f v io lence w ere an tag o n izin g workers an d peasants, an d th at th e W h ite officers’ arro g an t b ehavior and w hippings o f peasants had ignited p easan t sym pathy for Soviet power. T h e K olchak regim e was internally weak, an d th e people w ould greet th e Red A rm y as a liberator w hen it ca m e to Siberia. N o w onder L enin was ju b ila n t w h en h e h eard this re p o rt.9 B ut Izvestiia did n o t publish th at N icolaevsky h ad added: “If you try to forcibly im p la n t the com m ittees o f the p o o r in Siberia, you will e n c o u n te r there th e sam e kind o f rebellion w h ich now confronts K o lch ak.”10 It was a w arning to th e Bolsheviks n o t to miss this o p p o rtu n ity to co rrect th eir policy tow ard peasants, especially since po p u lar attitudes in th e east w ere tu rn in g against the W hites. In his co m m en ts on NicoIaevsky’s speech, L en in adm itted th at a few m o n th s earlier peasants in th e Urals and Siberia had been set against the C o m m u n ists, a n d th a t now they were w aiting for Soviet pow er b ecause o f the W h ites’ atro ci­ ties. L en in in terp reted this as evidence th at th e m asses, having com pared the two regim es, had opted for th e S o v iets.11 T h e M ensheviks im plied th at the m asses were cho o sing th e lesser o f two evils and th a t only political an d eco­ n o m ic reform co u ld w in th eir support. T h e S D party leadership saw its own task in th e given circum stances, n o t in leading the disgruntled workers’ protest m o v em en t for d em o cratizatio n as it h ad in 1918, b u t in persuading these workers th a t th e W hites were worse. After th e nearly total collapse o f industry and disintegration o f the working c lassin 1919, th e few branches o f industry w hich were in operation were related to w ar p ro d u c tio n . T h e se w ere state plants in Petrograd, T u la, Sorm ovo, B ryansk, K olom na, an d som e others— exactly the plants, as we have seen, th at 8 A detailed account of the M enshevik m eeting discussing the report of a com rade from Siberia was published in "M en’sheviki i K olchak,” Izvestiia (5 July 1919), I. 9 V. I. L enin, “O sovrem ennom polozhenii i blizhaishikh zadachakh Sovetskoi Vlasti” (4 July 1919), in Belov, ed., Jz istorii Vecheka, p. 307. 10 D uring the work o f the Inter-University Project on the History o f the Menshevik M ovem ent conducted in the 1960s by Leopold H aim son, several discussion sessions were held w here M en­ sheviks discussed work in progress. D uring these discussions many revealing details and facts on Menshevik activity were m entioned. T h e episode o f Nicolaevsky’s mission and return to Moscow was discussed at the obsuzhdenie of Grigorii A ronson’s book, K istorii pravogo techeniia sredi Menshevikov. Cited here from a copy o f obsuzhdeniie in the Aronson family archive, pp. 27—28. 11 L enin, “O sovrem ennom polozhenii i blizhaishikh zadachakh Sovetskoi Vlasti” (4 July 1919), in Belov, ed., Iz istorii Vecheka, p. 307.

had been strongly affected by anti-Bolshevik disturbances. Printers, railroad workers, and m etalw orkers in the defense industry tended to be critical of, if not o utright hostile to, th e Bolsheviks. After th e fall of O rel it was widely believed that D enikin’s offensive would c o n tin u e toward T u la and th en Moscow. T h e loss of T ula would deprive the Red Arm y o f one o f its m ost im p o rtan t m unitions plants and would m ake the defense of M oscow difficult. In both T ula and Bryansk the M ensheviks had only recently held m ajorities in the city Soviets before they were expelled, and they had a large and old constituency o f supporters. T h e SD leaders decided to cam paign actively to arouse workers against D enikin in these industrial cities sou th of M oscow. By th e fall of 1919, however, th e T ula M ensheviks were driven u n derground. T h e y were n o t allowed to cam paign for anything in T ula, n ot even for Soviet power. T h e T ula C om m unists were so frightened by the strikes o f th e previous spring that no oppositional activity of any kind by the local SDs was tolerated. T h e M enshevik C C delegation arrived in T ula on 11 O c to b e r.12 T h e T ula authorities were suspicious and hostile. After three days o f difficult negotiations it took special intervention from M oscow to force the T ula C o m m u n ist au thori­ ties to allow the M oscow M ensheviks to cam paign for Soviet power. T h e M ensheviks discovered that workers knew very little about the official S D party position on the civil war: they were surprised to hear th at the C C called on them to fight against D enikin. W orkers had been told by the C o m m u n ist press that the M ensheviks were counterrevolutionaries like D enikin. O n e worker ex­ plained that the workers did not know D enikin or w hat he stood for. But they did know the M ensheviks. So if the M ensheviks supported D enikin, workers reasoned, he could n o t have been so bad— a conclusion contrary to the one intended by Bolshevik p ro p ag an d a.13 W h eth er L enin was aware of this M en ­ shevik assessm ent o f th e T ula workers’ political outlook, he m ust have shared it, since on 20 O ctober he wrote to the T ula Bolsheviks: “T h e masses in T ula are far from being for u s.” 14 T h e M oscow SDs patiently explained to the workers the dangers D enikin's victory posed for th e cause of th e revolution. Fedor D an in his appeal to workers defined th e W h ite regim e as an alliance of declasse officers, w ho had been led to an an im al hatred of th e Bolsheviks by th e repressions they had been subjected to, w ith a grouping o f landow ners, industrialists, and liberal politicians who cared least of all ab o u t workers or th e Russian revolution b u t first and forem ost about th eir lost position in society, their property and privileges. T h eir victory, according to D an, could signify only a defeat of the Russian revolution. He 12 "T ula," a report of the SD delegation to the C C (19 November 1919), in Dan, ed., Oborona Revoliutsii i Sotsial Demokratiia. 15 A Report of the SD delegation to the C C (19 November 1919), ibid. 14 Lenin to G. N. Kaminsky, D. P. O s’kin, and V. I. M ezhlauk (20 October 1919), Polnoe sobranie so ch in e n ii, vol. 51, p. 65.

called on the workers to defend the Russian revolution, not the Bolshevik dictatorship.15 Alas, the effects o f this campaign were meager. In its report to the C C , the delegation regretted that it was impossible to achieve m uch in such a short period of tim e. W orker audiences seemed to have been bored and uninterested when lectured about the dangers of the W hites. They had heard it all before from Agitprop (Agitation and Propaganda D epartm ent) function­ aries. They tended to liven up w hen M enshevik speakers m entioned that the SD party rem ained in opposition to the Bolsheviks, and they urged it to intro­ duce political reforms. T he report stated that the majority of workers seem ed to be indifferent to the fate of Soviet pow er.16 And some favored the arrival of the W hites. Undisguised sympathy to Denikin was evident am ong the workers, especially in areas where the Cheka was particularly brutal. D. A. Erm ansky’s report on the attitudes of workers in Tver was remarkably sim ilar.17 Since the M ensheviks’ goal was to arouse anti-W hite feelings, their admission that antiC om m unist attitudes persisted and sympathy to the W hites was com m on merits attention. T h e political atm osphere in these provincial cities tended to underscore how naive it was for the M ensheviks to expect dem ocratic political reforms from the C om m unists. T he Cheka agents watched carefully what the M ensheviks were saying. T h e parts of their speeches critical of the Bolsheviks were not reported by the C om m unist press. Most speeches were not published at all. AU requests to allow local M ensheviks to resum e their activity or publications were rejected. T h e M ensheviks’ report suggests that their party, the one that claimed to be a party of workers’ opposition to the Bolshevik dictatorship, was out of touch with the workers. They had little to offer the workers other than hopes of dem ocrati­ zation under the Bolsheviks, the same Bolsheviks who had shot strikers only a few m onths earlier. This encounter between official party leaders and the workers, in cities that used to be bastions of M enshevik support, illustrates a m ore general problem we will encounter again and again, namely, a gap between the leaders o f all parties and the masses during the civil war. T he masses had their own fears and hopes, struggles and interests. They were not interested in the civil war against the W hites but in their bread rations and their rights. T h e party leaders, in this case Bolshevik and M enshevik, appeared to them as outside agitators who wanted som ething from them but were not offering anything but promises in return. Despite the workers’ strikes and widespread anti-Bolshevik uprisings, the M enshevik leaders decided to support the Reds even if their own worker constit­ uency was reluctant to do so. It was not the first tim e in post-October history th at party policy was not in tune with the m ood o f the masses. Imm ediately after O ctober 1917 workers had been in a euphoric pro-Bolshevik m ood, and 15 D an, ed., Oborona Revoliutsii i Sotsial Demokratiia, p. 10. 16 T h e Bryansk region, excerpt from the local organization’s report (November 1919), ibid. 17 Ermansky, “In Tver’, ” a report o f the S D delegation (O ctober 1919), ibid.

the party leadership’s critical view of the Bolsheviks was unpopular. N ow the situation was reversed. It was th e party leaders w ho were taking a pro-Bolshevik position and it was th e workers w ho were reluctant to follow the M enshevik urging to support th e C om m unists.

The Right Mensheviks T h e official position of the M enshevik C entral C om m ittee did n o t of course reflect the views o f all those who considered them selves to be M ensheviks. T h e old division o f 1917 betw een th e defensists and the internationalists w hich had developed into a division betw een R ight an d Left M ensheviks in 1918 co ntin­ ued in 1919 as well. In 1918 the Right M ensheviks controlled num erous provincial party organizations and com peted for the leadership o f the entire party. In 1919, however, after the long m onths o f Red Terror, any Right M ensheviks w ho had escaped arrest were underground. T hey could no longer exist legally, let alone com pete for a m ajority in the C C . T h ro u g h o u t 1919 an intellectual and philosophical debate betw een the Right and C enter-L eft Social D em ocrats co ntinued unabated, despite the seem ing u ntim eliness of such debates d uring the civil war. Yet for Social D em ocrats of all countries the issues o f the future o f capitalism and socialism were o f trem endous im portance. T h ey to u ch ed upon the very essence o f their political philosophy, their very raison d ’etre. W ere capitalism and dem ocracy irreconcilable? Was th e industrialized world entering the stage of C o m m u n ist revolutions? H ad capitalism as a system exhausted its potential? Was Soviet C o m m u n ism reform able in th e direction o f dem ocratization? T h e Right M en ­ sheviks gave no as the answ er to all four q u estio n s.18 T h e only proposition w hich th e Right M ensheviks shared with M artov was th at after th e end o f W orld W ar I th e industrialized world had entered a new historical epoch. U nlike M artov, the Right M ensheviks did not believe it was going to be an epoch o f socialist revolutions. “T h ere can n o t be and will n o t be any C o m m u n ist revolution in W estern E u ro p e ,” wrote the Right M ensheviks, b u t w hat there will be is a progressive dem ocratization o f W estern societies on the basis o f c ap italism .19 Revolutions had occurred only in defeated countries, and even there, w ith th e exception of Russia, one witnessed cooperation be­ tween the working class and th e bourgeoisie. “W e think, therefore, th at in 18 T h e re are two im p o rta n t d o cu m en ts o f R ight M ensheviks in this context: “Proekt osnovnykh p o lo zh en ii platform y," a typew ritten d o c u m e n t (D ecem b er 1918, early 1919), series 6, box 5, folder 36. A h an d w ritten inscription a t th e bo tto m o f the page identifies as au th o rs Potresov an d his g ro u p . See also “O po lo zh en ii v Sovetskoi Rossii. D oklad pravykh m e n ’shevikov,” series 6, box 5, folder 27, an d a letter o f Potresov to B ranting, a Sw edish S ocial D em o crat, “Bud T ill B ran tin g ,” M organ T id (8 Jan u ary 1956, S tockholm ), series 6, box 5, folder 34. AU o f these d o cu m en ts are in th e N icolaevsky C o llectio n . 19 Ib id ., “Proekt osnovnykh po lo zh en ii platform y.”

Europe there will be not a final struggle between the proletariat and the bour­ geoisie b ut a process of healing the wounds of war. ”20 T h e working class in all cultured countries will becom e a partner in the dem ocratic political process: “therefore the power o f the proletariat can only be realized in a properly elected governm ent backed by the m ajority of the population.”21 T his assessment o f political trends in E urope after the G reat W ar suggests that these orthodox Russian Marxists were in the m ainstream of the intellectual developm ent of E uropean social democracy. They cam e to reject the very necessity of a proletarian revolution, given the potential for dem ocratization in the West. W here they differed from the W estern SDs was in their judgm ent of Russian Bolshevism. W hereas in E urope the m yth would exist for decades that the C o m m u n ist revolution had ushered in the rule o f workers in the one and only proletarian state, the Right M ensheviks regarded Bolshevik rule as neither socialist nor proletarian. Bolshevism in Russia, according to their analysis, was the result o f Russia’s devastation in W orld W ar I. Socialism im plied a stage of developm ent superior to C apitalism , whereas in Russia the C om m unists had seized power not because of Russia’s superior developm ent but because of a lack of developm ent of higher forms of capitalist production. 22 Similarly, C o m m u ­ nist rule was not proletarian because: "the proletariat, in whose nam e Russia is being led to ruin now, partly has withered away since the m ain branches of industry have been destroyed; partly has becom e a pensioner, supported by com m issaraucracy; partly it has entered the ranks of the new bureaucracy. In all cases it has becom e corrupted and has ceased to be a class in the E uropean sense o f the word. ”23 T h u s the Right M ensheviks, who were supposed to believe in the savior role of the working class in history, rejected this Marxist prem ise as well. They considered it a m ockery that the Bolsheviks claim ed to have created a new society. “T h e Bolsheviks have created not a new society but the old one upside down. T h eir new building differs from the old one only in that the class privileges have passed on from the bourgeoisie to the so-called ‘worker and peasant governm ent.’”24 T h e new ruling elite, according to the Right M en­ sheviks, was m u ch worse than the one under the old regime because it usurped control over the entire country, not just over the m eans of production, b u t also over the army, the police, the econom y, and even the thought of citizens. T h e C om m unist party elite was turning into a “new estate” [soslovie] or a new privileged class. W h at we are witnessing, wrote the right M ensheviks is an 20 Ibid. 2' Ibid. 22 O t Petrogradskoi gruppy M en ’shevikov Shvedskim T otarishcham ” (a typewritten docum ent, m ost likely written at the end of 1918 or early 1919 by Petrograd M ensheviks grouped around Potresov). Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 6, box 5, folder 36. 25 Ibid., “Proekt osnovnykh polozhenii platform y.” 24 S. D evdariani (San), “K sm ene vlasti,” M ysl', no. 14 (June 1919), 589—94, here 591.

em ergence of a system unforeseen by M a rx ism .25 N either did the Right M en ­ sheviks believe in th e capacity o f th e Bolshevik governm ent to organize the econom ic life of th e country. In a M ay Day 1919 leaflet they proclaim ed: Everywhere, where Soviet power appears: in central Russia, on the Volga, in the Urals, in Odessa, and on the D o n , as if by magic food disappears, the prices o f all com m odities rise incredibly, and rail traffic stops. Life com es to a standstill. Hatred is incited. Blood is being spilled. . . . T h e Bolsheviks have disgraced socialism. . . . There cannot be any peace between the murderer and the victim. There cannot be any reconciliation between the conscious proletariat and the power w hich oppresses him . There is nothing more ruinous for the country than Bolshevism . 26

T his leaflet ended w ith th e slogans D ow n w ith Soviet Power! L ong Live the C o n stitu en t Assembly! T h e Right M ensheviks’ political analysis of th e p o st-W o rld W ar I trends of developm ent was serious and innovative. A pplying M arxist criteria o f social analysis, they cam e to th e co nclusion th at the new regim e had the om inous features o f an unpreced en ted system th at was neither capitalism nor socialism as these concepts were understood in E u ro p ean thought. T h e Right M en ­ sheviks cam e close to defining w hat was going to be called totalitarianism m u ch later. O n e o f the reasons th at th e R ight M ensheviks could n o t offer easy solutions to the platform : W h a t Is to Be D one? was th at they, unlike M artov, did n o t believe in th e possibility o f Soviet reform an d were un certain about the prospect of th e W h ites’ victory. T h ey regarded the civil war betw een the Reds and the W hites as an extension of th e civil w ar o f both w ith the G reens. Peasants resisted both th e Reds’ requisitioning and the W hites’ attem pts to restore lan d ­ lords’ holdings: T he civil war is sucking the last drops out o f the econ om ic organism o f the country. That it is so protracted can be explained precisely by the fact that the interior o f the country rests upon the clods o f the anti-C om m unist peasantry. And if Kolchak and D enikin ’s officers and volunteers had not yearned to restore the old regime, which fills the peasantry with apprehension for the fate o f the lands now in its possession, the Red Army would not have been able to crush the W hites, just as it is unable to crush the peasant insurgency. 27

T h e sym pathies o f the authors o f this d o cu m en t are clearly on the side of the peasants, an d o f th e three contesting forces they would clearly have sided with 25 “O polozhenii v Sovetskoi Rossii. Doklad pravykh m en ’shevikov,” Nicolaevsky Collection, series 6, box 5, folder 27. 26 A M ay Day leaflet of the underground group of Right Mensheviks, Stepan Inanovich (Portugeis) Archive. 27 “0 polozhenii v Sovetskoi Rossii. DokIad pravykh m en’shevikov,” Nicolaevsky Collection, series 6, box 5, folder 27.

th em . B ut u n lik e th e SRs, th e R ight M ensheviks did n o t strive to organize p easan t rebel arm ies, because as u rb a n intellectuals or as p ro p o n en ts o f the w orking class a n d capitalism they feared a p easantization o f R ussia, w h ich in th eir view co u ld retard capitalist develo p m en t an d h e n c e progress itself. In general term s th e R ight M ensheviks' platform suggested th a t th e SD s were to su p p o rt h ea lth y forces in society w h ich w ould lead tow ard a restoration o f all th a t th e Bolsheviks h ad destroyed: n o rm al ec o n o m ic activity, capitalist e n te r­ prise, th e w orking class as a class o f producers, political parties, th e press, and p arlia m e n ta rian ism . “It is necessary to restructure th e en tire policy a n d to ch oose as a g u id in g p rin cip le th e inevitability an d necessity o f c a p ita lism .”28 S in ce capitalism was bein g restored u n d e r the W h ites, since som e sem b lan ce of n o rm ality was retu rn in g to th e areas u n d e r D e n ik in , especially in th e early stages, so m e R ight M ensheviks ca m e to th e co n c lu sio n th a t if they h ad to ch oose betw een th e R eds an d the W h ites, they w ould relu ctan tly prefer the latter, in th e h o p e th at the bourgeoisie an d workers w ould find a way to ho ld the generals in c h e c k . 29 In o th er words these R ight M ensheviks preferred to work w ith in th e system established by th e W h ites in order to d em ocratize it in the fu tu re. T h e M en sh ev ik C e n tra l C o m m itte e was very w orried by such trends in the party. It w rote to th e local organizations: “In som e parts o f U kraine o ccupied by D e n ik in ’s forces, som e m em b ers o f th e R S D W P are c o n d u c tin g an o p p o rtu n is­ tic policy w h ich is clearly designed to adapt to D e n ik in ’s regim e in hopes, in cre d ib le as they are, o f its d e m o c ra tiz a tio n .”30 T h e C en tral C o m m itte e c o n ­ sidered this policy inadm issible an d th rea ten ed to expel from th e party those w h o p ro m o ted it. B ut th e label o f o p p o rtu n ism was unfair. Left Social D e m o ­ crats w ho h a p p e n e d to b e on R ed territory or R ight SD s w ho h ap p e n ed to b e on W h ite territo ry co u ld p u rsu e th eir political objectives u n d e r sem ilegal c o n d i­ tions. It was m u c h m o re risky to do so for R ight M ensheviks in Petrograd an d for Left M ensheviks in Kharkov. S ince rank-and-file SD s risked th e ir lives to su p p o rt a R ight M enshevik position on R ed territory or a Left M enshevik position on W h ite territory, it w ould appear th a t they u p h e ld those views sincerely a n d n o t o u t o f a n op p o rtu n istic adap tatio n to local conditions. H ad it n o t b een for th e offensive o f th e W h ites, o n e w ould have h ad the im pression th at th ere w ere hardly any R ight M ensheviks left by 1919. Yet w hen D e n ik in overran hu g e territories in th e so u th , the co n stellatio n o f political forces in th e c a m p o f th e socialist parties did n o t look as far tilted to th e left as it app eared to be on th e R ed-held territory. W e learn from a letter o f M artov to a 28 Ibid. 29 S uch sentim ents were expressed in several Right M enshevik publications, for example in S. D evdariani (San), “K sm ene vlasti,” M ysl’, no. 14 (June 1919), 58 9 -9 4 , and in “Na Perelom e,” Nachalo (29 June 1919), I. 30 "Rezoiiutsiia TsKa ” (30 August 1919), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 6, box 5, folder 3.

colleague th a t an intense struggle betw een th e Left and R ight M ensheviks was going on th ro u g h o u t 1919. It becam e sharper, he wrote, w hen the C C decided to take the side o f the Reds in the arm ed struggle against the W hites: “In the cen ter an d in th e n o rth the Right [Mensheviks] as a general rule rem ained in the position o f a ‘loyal opposition’ criticizing us b u t refraining from im p lem en t­ ing o u r policy. N eith er did they try on a grand scale to carry o u t their own policy. T h a t is why in this region we got away w ithout a party split.”31 In the east and south, M artov w ent on, it was m u ch worse. T h e Central C o m m ittee expelled th e entire Saratov party organization for actively opposing the line o f the C entral C o m m ittee. In Kharkov, San and S. M . Zaretskaia (form erly C C m em bers) openly split from the left-w ing city SD organization and supported the W h ite adm inistration. In Ekaterinoslav a group o f party m em bers q u it th e party in protest against an appeal to fight D enikin. In Odessa, adm itted M artov, th e entire organization was right-wing, the sam e as it was in R ostov-on-D on. T h e Right M ensheviks also controlled local organizations in S am ara, K azan, and A rkhangelsk.32 T h e R ight M ensheviks would have con­ trolled at least h a lf o f the party organizations had open and dem ocratic elec­ tions to a party congress been possible. In certain cases the distinction betw een Right and Left M ensheviks was blurred, however. All R ight M ensheviks shared a negative view o f Bolshevism, b u t since th e W hites had instigated pogrom s, som e Right M ensheviks followed the Left M ensheviks’ call to enlist in th e Red Arm y and fight the W hites. S olom on Shvarts later recalled th at even such an outspoken leader o f the Right M ensheviks as M ark L ieber, an ardent oppo n ent of Bolshevism, favored join­ ing th e Red A rm y in order to fight th e W h ite s.33 O n th e other han d there were left-w ing M ensheviks w ho generally favored M artov’s view o f a possible Soviet dem ocratization, b u t having experienced th e atrocities of the C heka in Kharkov, for exam ple, on the eve of Soviet departure in June 1919, they changed th eir m inds, now firm in their belief that “n o thing” could be worse. T h is did n o t convert them into supporters of the W hites. T hey were against both. As G rigorii A ronson explained: “I defended the p o int o f view th at we had to be neutral in this civil war. U nfortunately, we can n o t be for the W hites, because they are instigating pogrom s. A nd we can n o t be for the Reds, because they are also instigating v io len ce.”34 T h e frontline civil w ar betw een the Reds and the W hites c u t across the M enshevik party. AU M ensheviks detested both dictatorships, b u t som e were w illing to side w ith th e Reds w hereas others found this im possible and in fact were m ore inclined to accept th e rule o f th e W hites. T h e SD party as a w hole, it 31 Iu. O. M arto v to E. L. B roido (26 Ju n e 1920), ib id ., series 17, box 51, folder 9. 32 D a lin , M z n s h e v ix m v period Sovetskoi vtasti, p. 115. 33 O b su zh d en ie, A ronson A rchive, p. 27. 3·* Ibid. p. 58.

can be argued, split along new factional lines over the issue. T he party factions found them selves on opposite sides of the Red-versus-W hite barricade. This weakened the independent role of the M ensheviks in the frontline civil war.

T h e SRs and th e W h ite Threat Across the huge expanse o f Russia, Ukraine, and Siberia, an SR party m em ber could have been encountered in a variety of roles during the civil war: as a Red Arm y soldier drafted against his will, as a soldier in a W hite army, as a G reen rebel fighting against the Reds or the W hites, as a m em ber of a city dum a on W h ite territory in opposition to the W hites’ adm inistration, as a m em ber of a workers’ soviet (in very few places) in opposition to the Bolsheviks, as a leader of an underground network under Kolchak in O m sk or Irkutsk or under L enin in M oscow or Tam bov. T h e diversity o f the SRs’ political roles poses the question, D id this party have a stand in the civil war? How did its policy contribute to the unfolding of the political and m ilitary situation? After a period of repressions in the spring of 1919 and following their ill-fated “legalization,” the SRs were able to convene a party conference in M oscow in June. T h e Bolsheviks had to stom ach this anti-C om m unist gathering because the SRs were still a powerful political force in Siberia and repressions against them in M oscow could have had an adverse effect on the SRs’ resistance to the W hites. Delegates from twenty-five provinces were represented at the confer­ ence, mostly from C om m unist-held territory. T h e N inth SR Party Conference showed that even though the SR party had becom e sm aller com pared with its size in 1917, w hen it boasted one m illion m em bers, it still had a huge constitu­ ency. T h e exact statistics were not provided for security reasons, but data on the provincial delegations suggest that the SRs had large peasant organizations in the countryside that num erically could well challenge the Bolshevik o n es.35 O n e of the m ost im portant questions on the agenda was the policy toward the C om m unists in view of the W hites’ offensive. O n the one hand the C o m m u ­ nist Red Arm y was fighting the hated W hites. O n the other hand the Red Army was fighting peasant rebels, the G reens in Soviet Russia. W ho was the party to support: the peasants against the C om m unists or the C om m unists against the W hites? W hat was the party to do in this triangular civil war? T h e resolution of the SR party conference on Bolshevism was even m ore critical than that of the right Mensheviks: “Having rejected the key principles of socialism — freedom and dem ocracy— and having replaced them with the dictatorship and tyranny of a tiny m inority over the m ajority [of the population], the Bolsheviks have 35 “Deviatyi Sovet Partii Sotsialistov Revoliutsionerov,” Dela naroda, no. 2 (no date indicated, underground publication, su m m er 1919), PSR Archive, folder 2003.

crossed themselves out from the ranks of the socialists. In the people’s con­ science they have become enemies who have enslaved the people. ”36 Like the Right Mensheviks, the SRs saw the cause of the country’s economic catastrophe in the C om m unists’ doctrinaire attem pt to destroy capitalism and the free market. T he Bolshevik ban on trade led to a situation in which the entire country was engaged in petty trade. Large-scale capitalist trading houses were destroyed, but millions of petty traders were the only source of food supplies. Bolshevik economic policies were ruining the country and prolonging the civil war. T he Bolsheviks had no agrarian policy at all, only a food supply policy. Peasants were merely a source of “surplus” grain. They got nothing in return. The SRs saw the m ain contradiction in the political setup under the C om m unists in the fact that the only productive class in the country was the peasantry; all other classes were decimated and had withered away. Yet the peasants were the class in Soviet Russia that had no political rights. 37 They had to silently accept the “proletarian” dictatorship and for worthless paper feed the cities which the Bolsheviks had ruined with their policies. T h e peasants had to pay for Bolshevik blunders, and when they refused, their villages were shelled with artillery. N or did the SRs believe that peasants suffered because of a proletarian dictatorship. From their point of view workers had turned into serfs of the state bureaucratic, barracks-like capitalism which the Bolsheviks somehow decided to call C om m unism . T he Bolshevik “pseudo—class dictatorship was inevitably turning into a party dictatorship.”38 These definitions explain why the SR conference rejected any cooperation with the Communists. They had been and remained an enemy with whom a temporary truce was established. Clearly the wording at the June conference was m uch sharper than earlier. T he conference resolution explained: “T he rejection by the [SR] party of armed struggle against the Bolshevik dictatorship is determined by the current political situation. It cannot be interpreted as an acceptance, even a temporary one, of the Bolshevik dictatorship. It m ust be interpreted as a tactical decision, dictated by the current situation and by the more advantageous utilization of the party’s and the peo­ ple’s forces.”39 This resolution did not exclude the possibility of resuming armed struggle against the Com m unists sometime in the future. For the time being, however, the SRs decided to lim ittheir struggle against C om m unism to political means only. T he ultim ate goal was democracy and a Constituent Assembly. Unlike the Menshevik C C , the SR party conference did not put m uch hope 36 D eviatyi 37 Ibid., p. 38 Ibid., p. 39 Ibid., p.

sovet Partii i ego rezo/iutsii (iiun 1919), p. 5. 20. 14. 12.

on the possibility of reform ing Bolshevism. T h e SRs were not trying to persuade Lenin to change his course or to influence “liberal” C om m unists. T h e SRs regarded C om m unism as unreform able: “Agreem ent with them is impossible w ithout their ceasing to be w hat they are. ”40 T h e SR party policy was m uch m ore uncom prom ising than that of the Social Dem ocrats. In its public pro­ nouncem ents, however, the PSR expressed solidarity with its old-tim e ally, the Social D em ocrats. T h e C C of the PSR claim ed it wanted to do all it possibly could to establish the closest cooperation, “above all with the RSDW P. Joint work with that party throughout the course of the Russian revolution on the basis o f consistent dem ocratism gives hope that conditions will arise w hen it will be possible to put on the agenda the question of form ing a united socialist party in R ussia.”41 T h e SR C entral C om m ittee proposed to the M enshevik C entral C om m ittee to set up a perm anently functioning interparty inform ational bureau. T he Social D em ocrats declined, thus signaling that they wanted to disassociate themselves from the explicitly anti-C om m unist stance of the PSR. In an inter­ nal party com m unication the SR Central C om m ittee subjected the M enshevik policy to severe criticism .42 O f course one could only welcome M enshevik appeals to the Bolsheviks to restore free elections, to soften terror campaigns, and to dem ocratize the Soviet regime. T h e problem , explained the SR C entral C om m ittee was that all these appeals and recom m endations were useless. It is impossible to reason with the C om m unists. T h e SR C entral C om m ittee wrote that the M enshevik C C adm itted in a letter to its local organizations that until now all negotiations with the C om m unists had been fruitless and that the C om m unists were not disposed at all to grant any concessions.45 According to the SRs, in trying to convince the C om m unists, the M ensheviks m ade all kinds of ideological and tactical concessions: “This course is rather risky for their own party. M ost likely, all their readiness to make concessions will lead to a situation w hen they will achieve no concessions from the Bolsheviks but blur the clarity of their own position, and the purity of their own views. ’,44 T h e SRs obviously m eant that the M ensheviks had abandoned the com m itm ent shared in 1918 by both parties to restore universal suffrage and the C onstituent Assembly. Now the M ensheviks under M artov were willing to accept their lim ited Soviet fran­ chise as a tem porary lim itation on democracy. T h e SRs were clearly upset by M enshevik ideological concessions to the Bolsheviks. Still they recom m ended that the rank and file should regard the 40 Ibid., p. 5. 41 Ibid., p. 23. 42 “V sem O rganizatsiiam PSR” (A letter of the C C to local organizations), Biulleten TsKa PSR (3 D ecem ber 1919), PSR Archive, folder 2004. 42 Ibid. 44 “V sem organizatsiiam PSR” (9 Septem ber 1919), T s.P.A ., Fond 274, PSR, O pis’ I, docu­ m en t 2.

M ensheviks w ith “friendly neutrality. ” T h e path o f concessions was unaccep t­ able to th e SRs, however, w rote th e C C , because peasants w ould never accept such a policy. T h e M ensheviks, explained the C C , were expressing the will of urban workers, and these were in total dependency on the Bolshevik state. T h e workers received food rations and a m yriad o f “class” privileges in a hierarchical system o f privilege distribution from the state. T h e defense o f workers’ interests had p u t th e SDs in th e position o f a loyal opposition rather than an irreconcil­ able enem y o f the C om m unists: “T h e logic of th eir situation attunes them to reform ist tactics, w hich can be characterized as ‘civilizing B olshevism .’ ”45 T h e M ensheviks’ long-term goal, according to the SRs, was to civilize the Bolsheviks, to prove to th em that their utopian path was a mistake and th at only a return to Social D em ocratic policies w ould lead Russia o u t o f a dead end. T h e SR C C wished success to the SDs in their project b u t rejected it as a course of action for its own party. At th e sam e tim e the SRs were m u c h m ore confident than the SDs in their own strength and in the ability o f their party to triu m p h over the Bolsheviks in the long run. T h is confidence was based on their assessm ent o f econom ic and political trends in the country. T h e facts were, they believed, th a t the peasantry was em erging from the civil w ar num erically and econom ically as the strongest class. It was th e only class th a t possessed its ow n m eans of production— land, w hich th e C o m m u n ists would n o t be able to take away. M oreover, attem pts to take away the products of th e peasants’ labor had generated a powerful popular insurgency against th e C om m unists: “It is im possible to suppress this m ove­ m ent by force. A nd if it is suppressed it will reignite w ith stronger force. ”46 T h e only way the votes of m illions o f peasants could be rendered m eaningless was u nder the conditions of dictatorship. T h e Bolsheviks could not rule other than by dictatorship, an d th e peasants were n o t going to accept this. T herefore in the long ru n a resolution o f the struggle betw een the peasants and the C om m unists was inevitable, an d th e peasants and their party w ould prevail. Sim ilarly, th e SRs did n o t believe th at the W hites could achieve their goals. To reverse th e results of th e Russian revolution and to take away land from peasants an d restore it to form er landlords w ould be im possible. In “Civil W ar and D ictatorship” V ictor C hernov, the party leader, wrote th at it was very difficult if n o t im possible for dem ocracy to preserve state power u n d er the conditions o f a civil war. Indeed m ilitarist and radical forces on the right and left had m anaged to seize pow er.47 Both were m inority regimes that could not have gained pow er in free elections: “N eith er the Bolshevik dictatorship here, 45 Ib id ., “V sem O rganizatsiiam P S R ,” B iulleten T sK a P SR (3 D ece m b e r 1919), P S R A rch iv e, folder 2004. 46 “R ab o ch ie, K restiane, Soldaty K rasnoi A rm ii,” u n d erg ro u n d leaflet o f th e P S R C C (July 1919), P S R A rc h iv e , folder 2015. 47 E d ito rial, D elo naroda, no. 9 (29 M a rch 1919), I.

nor the dictatorship o f Kolchak in Siberia, enjoyed the people’s recognition.”48 According to this analysis the civil war between the Reds and the W hites was a war im posed on the people by two dictatorships. T h e protracted character of the Russian civil war, C hernov reasoned, stem m ed from the fact that both the Reds and the W hites were tem porary beneficiaries of popular uprisings against the other side. W hen peasants rebelled against the Reds, the W hite army poured in, and w hen peasants rebelled against the W hites, the Red Army broke through the front line. “T h e people then, will stop resorting to arm ed resistance only w hen they are able to express their will by m eans of free voting, and when they are able to say w hat kind o f authority they need and w hat kind o f system they prefer.”49 In other words rebellions were not a sign of pro-W hite or proBolshevik attitudes but o f a striving for self-rule, that is, democracy, w hich the Reds and the W hites exploited. “In such a war either one side or the other interchangeably enjoys victory. T h e victorious [side] is not the one whose army is stronger but the one whose arm y is less affected by desertion.”50 Both dic­ tatorships were weak and unpopular, argued Chernov. Both held on to power not by popular consensus but by violence and terror. “O nly the people them ­ selves know w hat is better for them . N either Kolchak nor D enikin nor the governm ent o f the commissars recognize this right of the people. Both w ant to be above the people, w ant to rule over the people, both are inim ical to the people.”51 T his analysis of the nature o f the civil war explains why the SRs were not willing to join the Reds against the W hites and then afterward work for a dem ocratization of the Bolshevik regim e, as M artov’s M ensheviks did. T h e SR party conference decided that in the civil war between the Reds and the W hites, the SR party would act as a third force: “By their entire policy the Bolsheviks generate an attraction of the people to reaction. T h e demagogic adventurists utilize this attraction for their own ends. O nly a third force can lead Russia out of this evil circle.”52 O n Red territory the SRs would wage a political struggle, and on W hite territory, an arm ed struggle, against both the Red and the W hite dictatorships.53 T h e SRs were going to struggle against Kolchak but not with the Red Army. T hey were going to do it by themselves, and not from Soviet territory but on W hite-held territory from within. As early as M arch 1919 C hernov prophetically predicted that the Kolchak regim e would be overthrown from w ithin, a statem ent that m ust have seemed 48 Editorial, Delo naroda, no. 8 (28 M arch 1919), I. 49 “R abochie, Krestiane, Soldaty Krasnoi A rm ii,” underground leaflet of the PSR C C (July 1919), PSR Archive, folder 2015. 50 Editorial, D elo naroda, no. 7 (27 M arch 1919), I. 51 “R abochie, Krestiane, Soldaty Krasnoi A rm ii,” underground leaflet of the PSR C C (July 1919), PSR A rchive, folder 2015. 52 "Rezoliutsiia Deviatogo Soveta P S R ,” T s.P.A ., Fond 274, PSR, O pis’ I, docu m en t I, p. 37. 53 “D eviatyi Sovet Partii Sotsialistov Revoliutsionerov,” Delo naroda, no. 2 (n .d ., underground publication, sum m er 1919), PSR Archive, folder 2003.

overly optim istic at th e tim e o f an impressive W h ite offensive in the Urals toward the Volga R iv er.54 In internal party com m unications with local party organizations, th e C entral C o m m ittee constantly instructed local party m em ­ bers n o t to join the Reds against th e W hites or the W hites against the Reds: “T h e party has m obilized its m em bers for a struggle against both dictatorships, both o f th e m ru in o u s for the country. A defeat, even a tem porary one, o f one o f them m u st lead to a strengthening of struggle against the o th e r.’’55 In one of these letters a long-term plan o f th e SR party leadership was revealed. After the arm ed overthrow o f Kolchak in Siberia, it w ould be possible to reopen the “front of the C o n stitu e n t Assembly against the C o m m u n ists.”56 T h e conference elaborated a party structure and organizational principles suited for its new task. In view of th e C heka attention to these matters the details were n o t revealed. A bureau o f th e Socialist R evolutionary C C in M oscow coordinated party work in C entral Russia, a southern bureau in U kraine and the N o rth C aucasus, an d an o th er bureau in S ib e ria .57 T h e m ain focus o f SR activity was directed to th e villages. T h e SRs were building “peasant brother­ hoods” and trying to organize peasants u n d er the slogan N either for the Reds nor for th e W hites!58 T h e peasant m o v em en t was regarded as th e m ost powerful weapon the party still had in its struggle against the Bolsheviks and the W hites. If properly coordinated, this insurgency could lead to the C o m m u n ists’ being locked in th e starving cities an d u n ab le to govern the country. T h e SRs’ exact plans rem ained secret. Yet th e entries in the protocols o f the SR C entral C om m ittee leave no d o u b t th a t th e SRs were involved in the m ovem ent of the G reens. O n 18 Septem ber the protocol entry read: “Heard: Inform ation o f com rade S. K. ab o u t th e plan of work in th e G reen arm y.”59 T h e SR C C was aware of th e im m en se difficulties they faced in leading such a m ovem ent: We should not hide from ourselves that the popular insurgency which is likely to break out in Ukraine soon will contain in itself much that is chaotic, blind, and disorderly. There will be a tendency toward banditry, and a deviation from revolu­ tionary order to pogroms, and a deviation from the struggle for freedom to anarchic denial of all authority and of all order. . . . we should not close our eyes to the backside of the future popular movement. . . . We are not sentimental idealizers of the people. But neither should we let ourselves be frightened by these excesses. We believe in the people as realist politicians for whom believing in the people means to 54 Editorial, Delo naroda, no. 7 (27 M arch 1919), I. 55 "Ko Vsem Organizatsiiam Partii,” Listok “Dela naroda," no. 6, PSR Archive, folder 2003. 56 “Thesis Adopted by the Plenum o f the PSR Central C om m ittee,” an underground publica­ tion in the Nicolaevsky Collection, series 7, box 8, folder 14, p. 16. 57 “Partiinaia Z hizn’,’’ Listok “Dela naroda, ” no. 6 (Septem ber 1919), PSR Archive, folder 2003. 58 “Rezoliutsiia Deviatogo Soveta PSR ,” T s.P.A ., Fond 274, PSR1O pis’ I, docum ent I, p. 42. 59 “Zasedanie TsKa PSR 18 sentiabria 1919 goda,” Ts.P.A ., Fond 274, PSR, Opis’ I, docu­ ment 7.

be able to rely on the positive sides of people’s character in a struggle against its negative sides.60 T h e PSR created special local m ilitary com m issions whose job was to coordi­ nate SR work am ong peasant soldiers in the Red A rm y.61 D ue to the secret nature o f this work no details were revealed, except th at the SRs tried to prevent the use of Red Arm y units against peasant rebels, as is clear from the following passage: “In each party organization, a m ilitary com m ission should work in order to m ain tain co m m u n icatio n with the arm y u n its.”62 From the SR point o f view the party’s task was to prevent the C om m unists from using the state m ac h in e to subjugate the peasants. A ccording to a top secret C heka report to the C o m m u n ist C entral C om m ittee, the SRs and especially the Left SRs p u t a serious effort into organizing bands o f deserters into a coherent peasant selfdefense force. T h e deputy chairm an of the C heka’s Secret D epartm ent cited from a Left SR party docum ent: “As far as deserters are concerned, it was decided to organize them into detachm ents, to try to becom e their m ilitary leaders, an d to try to restrain these detachm ents from overt m ilitary engage­ m ents. T hey were to be used prim arily to render resistance to grain requisition­ ing in every village.”65 At the end of D ecem ber the C heka claim ed to have discovered an SR conspiracy in Tam bov Province proving the involvem ent of the local SRs in th e arm ed struggle of the “G reen bandits.”64 Obviously, the doctrine of the third force was hard to im plem ent in practice. W h a t was the party to do, for exam ple, if a peasant rebellion against the Bolsheviks broke o u t in an area threatened by the W hites, as indeed happened in T am bov in the su m m er of 1919 w hen the W h ite G eneral Κ. K. M am ontov’s cavalry broke through Red lines and even occupied th e city for a few days?65 W ere peasant rebels supposed to stop fighting the C om m unists for the duration o f the W hites’ threat? A nother apparent contradiction was between the party leaders’ reasoning and the practical policy guidelines. T h e SRs’ reasoning was th at the Reds and the W hites were equally alien to dem ocracy. W hy th en was arm ed struggle against the W hites encouraged and against the Reds prohibited? Indeed in an internal co m m u n icatio n with local party organizations the SR C entral C om m ittee adm itted that m any local organizations on W hite-held 60 “V sem O rganizatsiiam PSR ” (A letter o f the C C to local organizations), Biulleten TsKa PSR (3 D ecem ber 1919), PSR A rchive, folder 2004. 61 Sovremennyi M om ent v otsenfee Partii Sotsialistov Revoliutsionerov (February—M arch 1919), p. 23. 62 “R ezoliutsiiap o tek u sh ch em u m o m e n tu /’T s.P .A ., Fond 274, PSR, O pis’ I, d o cu m en t I, p. 57. 65 “V O rg. B iuro RKP(b) o t Sekretnogo O tdela VeCheka Z am .Z av. Sekretnogo O tdela M. Rom anovsky” (17 Septem ber 1919), T s.P .A ., Fond 17, TsKa RKP(b), O pis’ 84, B iu ro Sekretariata, d o cu m en t 43. 6-1 “Aresty sredi pravykh S R ,” Izvestiia (30 D ecem ber 1919), I. 65 F o ra n interesting description o f G eneral M am ontov's cam paign, se e M . I. Izergin, “Reid na L bishchensk,” G rant, no. 151 (1989).

territory did not want to fight against the Whites, because that would have am ounted to rendering help to the Communists. T he C C explained in this letter that the N inth Conference had decided to cease armed struggle against the Reds and to intensify it against the W hites, and it urged their comrades to follow the party decisions. At the same time, however, the C C itself exhibited the same kind of reservation as the local comrades it had reprimanded. T he CC decided against mobilizing of party volunteers into the Red Army during the height of Denikin’s successes in the fall of 1919 precisely because it did not want to render aid to the C om m unists.66 It was difficult to be consistent when anything the PSR did could have rendered assistance either to the Reds or to the Whites. Given the poor com m unications in 1919, and especially since the SRs concentrated on work in the villages, local SRs had to interpret party policy themselves. W hat hurt the consistency of policy even more was a serious internal rift over the tasks of the party in the civil war. By the fall of 1919 there had occurred a profound realignment of political forces in what once was a united party of Socialist Revolutionaries. T he Left SRs, who had been competitors and near enemies in the first half o f 1918, then coalition partners of the Bolsheviks, had become de facto allies of the parent party again by the sum m er of 1919. Like the mainstream SRs, the Left SRs now condem ned the C om m unist dictatorship in no uncertain terms and called for armed struggle against the Whites. T he Left SRs had been subjected to venge­ ful and systematic persecution in 1919 at a time when the SRs were left alone due to Bolshevik tactical considerations. T he positions of the Left SRs and SRs were no longer far apart. In some respects the Left SRs had become even more uncompromisingly anti-Bolshevik than the SRs.67 T he Left SRs were not opposed to armed struggle against the Com munists, especially peasant armed resistance to Bolshevik detachm ents. In fact the SRs criticized the Left SRs for excessive readiness to resort to armed insurrections.68 T he real challenge to the SR Central Com m ittee came this time from another group which consisted of people who had until recently been among the top leaders of the party and of the Constituent Assembly government, a group called Narod, or the People. T he origins of this group are clearly seen in the Ufa delegation, which had negotiated a truce with the Bolsheviks in January 1919. Volsky, Burevoy, Rakitnikov, and other leaders of Narod defined their group as a current inside the PSR.69 They were not interested in splitting the 66 “Vsem Organizatsiiam PSR” (A letter of the C C to local organizations), B iulleten’ TsKa PSR (3 D ecem ber 1919), PSR Archive, folder 2004. 57 For a discussion of interfactional struggles within the Left SR party, see Izvestiia TsKa L SR (26 Novem ber 1919), PSR Archive, folder 2021. 68 “Rezoliutsii 9ogo Soveta PSR. Grazhdanskaia voina i zadachi PSR,” Ts.P.A ., Fond 274, PSR, Opis’ I, docum ent I, p. 40. 69 K. S. Burevoi published his account of the history of the “Narod” group in his R aspad. See also Μ . N . Petrov, “T h e Rise and Fall of the Minority Party Socialist Revolutionaries,” Soviet Studies in History, vol. 23, no. 2 (Fall 1984), 12-33.

party, and at th e early stages o f this rift, in the spring o f 1919, their differences w ith the C entral C om m ittee were expressed in a respectful and com radely tone. Yet as tim e w ent on and the danger o f the W hites to central Russia during the su m m er m o n th s increased, so did the im patience of the N arod leaders with the “passivity” o f th e party C entral C om m ittee. At the h e a rt of the m isunderstanding betw een the leaders o f N arod an d the M oscow -based SRs were their different priorities, different experiences, and different constituencies. T h e Ufa delegation leaders witnessed th e defeat of th eir party in the east due to, as they believed, an excessive willingness of the C C to cooperate w ith tsarist generals for the sake of the anti-Bolshevik struggle. T hey saw their priority as fighting against the Kolchak putschists. In order to defeat th e W hites they were w illing to join the C om m unists. T h e M oscow -based SRs on the other han d had the peasant constituency of central Russia in m in d , and any kind o f coalition w ith the C om m unists was unaccept­ able to them u n til and unless the C om m unists changed their policy in the co u n try sid e.70 T h e N arod leaders m ade a n u m b er of appeals in the spring and su m m er of 1919 to th e rank-and-file SR party m em bers. T hey tried to bridge the gap betw een the com m itm ents o f the PSR and the reality o f Soviet Russia as m u ch as possible. T h e SRs were urged to recognize tem porarily the necessity o f a dictatorship o f the soviets and were prom ised a “struggle” for the eventual equalization o f the voting rights o f workers and peasants. Soviets were portrayed as institutions that w ould becom e dem ocratic. T h e PSR had to m ake these sacrifices, argued th e N arod leaders, in view of the danger o f the W h ite c o u n ­ terrev o lu tio n .71 Appeals like these were perceived by the SR C entral C o m m it­ tee as an attem pt to u n d e rm in e its authority and to propagate p ro-C om m unist positions am ong the rank and file. Som e SR leaders believed the Narod leaders were sim ply taking part in a C heka operation to subvert the PSR. Indeed at this tim e o f repressions against the PSR, in the spring and su m m er of 1919, Narod enjoyed a privileged status. Izvestiia published all their appeals.72 T h e C o m ­ m unists even allowed th em to publish their own newspaper; they were trying to prom ote discord in the PSR by pu n ishing their opponents, such as the C C , and rew arding their proponents. T h e N arod group, however, were n o t going to play the role the Bolsheviks had assigned to them . It saw their role not in prom oting th e Bolshevik cause but in bridging the SR and Bolshevik positions. T h a t is why they tried to convince n o t only the SRs to support Soviet power but also the C om m unists to change 70 “G od zh izn i partii S R ,” Narodovlastie, no. I (1919), 55—63, 58—59. 71 “Ko V sem C h le n a m Partii Sotsialistov Revoliutsionerov ot gruppy chlenov P S R ,” Izvestiia (8 M ay 1919), I. 72 See for exam ple “Novyi Eserovskii D o k u m e n t Izvestiia (4 S eptem ber 1919), 3, and O b rashchenie K C h len am Partii Sotsialistov Revoliutsionerov o t gruppy chlenov P S R ,” Izvestiia (10 A ugust 1919), 2.

their policies. In August 1919 the Narod newspaper wrote that to achieve victory over the W hites, the Bolsheviks had to win the support of the people. T he Cheka terror had only led to a strengthening of “hatred among the popula­ tio n .” T he paper stated that “pum ping out” grain from the countryside had generated anti-C om m unist peasant uprisings and that the workers were no longer supporting the Com m unists either.73 One-party dictatorship had to be abolished; freedom of elections, the press, and the courts had to be guaranteed. T he Narod leaders also published an “Appeal of the SR Central Com m ittee to the Leaders of Soviet Power. ” By doing this they were clearly trying to exert pressure on the C om m unists to follow a path of reform. Their message to the C om m unists was: “If you really m ean Soviet power and not party dictatorship, we can bring the SR party to support Soviet power.” T he appeal of the SRs expressed a willingness to let freely elected soviets resolve the differences be­ tween Soviet political parties: “Abandon the system of terror, abolish the party dictatorship. Schedule true elections, free from any pressure, intimidation, and m anipulation. Let there be elections with complete freedom of assembly, meetings, freedom of the press and of speech.”74 It seems the SR Central Com m ittee was convinced that the Com munists would not allow such elections, and the issue of whether free soviets were better than the C onstituent Assembly was taken off the SR agenda. T he SR CC wanted to show to the party the meaninglessness of the Narod efforts. They were right. Not only were no free elections held but the Narod paper was closed for making such appeals. T he Bolshevik bluff was called, and the Narod’s attempt to be a go-between failed. O ne would think that at this stage the Narod leaders m ight have abandoned their efforts and supported the SR Central Com mittee. In fact the opposite occurred. W hen pressed on both sides by the C om m unists and its own C C , Narod decided to split from the SR party. T he group published an open letter calling on the C C to support the Red Army in view of the successful offensive of General D enikin.75 T he CC's position remained unchanged: armed struggle against Denikin, yes, but not under C om m unist control. Narod called on SR members to volunteer for the Red Army. T he C C refused to mobilize party members, and it is over this issue that the split formally occurred. For violating party policy, the C C declared the Narod group expelled from the party.76 As was the case with Left SRs, Narod activists then started campaigning inside SR 73 Editorial, Narod, no. I (17 August 1919), I. 74 O b ra sh c h en ie T sK a PSR,"N arod, no. I (17 August 1919), I. 75 “Pis’m o k TsKa PS R ,” Prilozhenie k Listok “Dela naroda,” no. 6 (Fall 1919), PSR Archive, folder 2003. 76 “Ko vsem partiinym organizatsiiam ” (25 October 1919), Prilozhenie k Listok “Dela naroda,” no. 6; “Vsem organizatsiiam partii,” Listok “Dela naroda,” no. 4, PSR Archive, folder 2003; and “Protokoly Zasedaniia TsKa PSR ,” Session of 23 October 1919, T s.P.A., Fond 274, PSR, O pis’ I, docum ent 7, p. 22.

party organizations against the C entral C om m ittee, w hich only contributed to the confusion and disorganization. M u ch later it becam e clear that the Narod group had been infiltrated by C heka agents from the very beginning and that this split was prom oted, if n o t engineered, by the C heka in order to weaken the SR party.77 In this the C om m unists were successful. N evertheless the party o f Socialist Revolutionaries seems to have defined an in d ep en d en t role in the Russian civil war. As subsequent events have shown, the SR course of action was partly successful. N um erous peasant rebellions were led by the SRs. Peasant rebels posed a serious danger to the Bolsheviks and the W hites b u t were un ab le to prevail. T h e SRs did not succeed in restoring the front o f the C on stitu en t Assembly as in 1918. However, the Kolchak dictator­ ship was overthrow n by the SR-Ied underground m ovem ent at the end o f 1919 before the Red Arm y overran all o f Siberia. Partisan peasant detachm ents which had been fighting the W hites co n tinued their fight in 1920 against the Reds.

F ighting o n AU th e Fronts It has been suggested earlier th at in the spring of 1919 the Bolshevik reform course failed largely due to popular upheavals, strikes, and uprisings w hich frightened the CP. W e have also seen that L enin adm itted that Siberian peas­ ants supported the W h ite s.78 T h e question th en is why, after this bitter experi­ ence, did the Bolsheviks not follow a m ore reasonable policy along the lines suggested by the M ensheviks and SRs? T his question is particularly intriguing since L enin continued to talk about peace w ith m iddle peasants. Nevertheless the fact is th at despite the unprecedented mass desertion o f peasants from the Red Army, despite n um erous workers' strikes and peasant uprisings and Red Arm y soldiers’ m utinies, no change in dom estic policy was m ade. Private trade was still banned, w hile grain requisitions co n tin u ed and indeed intensified.79 Red T error was broadened to include n ot only unreliable urban strata but peasants as well. C orrespondence between the C o m m u n ist C C and local party organizations suggests th at the central party leadership was very m u ch in con­ trol, that it initiated and supervised these policies. H ow th en explain this contradiction betw een L en in ’s words and deeds? It can be argued that L enin h im self had n o t resolved this contradiction in his ow n m ind. O n the one h an d L enin constantly talked about attracting peasants to th e side of Soviet power, since he realized that the Bolsheviks were ru nning a risk of losing the civil war if the peasants con tinued to defect en masse and if peasant rebellions w ent on. O n the other hand L enin was a dam ant that private 77 “Iz nedr bol’shevistskoi ok h ran k i,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 35—36 (1925), 8—10. 78 L enin, “O sovrem ennom polozhenii i blizhaishikh zadachakh Sovetskoi V lasti” (4 July 1919), in Belov, ed ., I z istarii Vecheka, p. 308. 79 Scheibert, L enin an der M a c h tr p. 143.

trade should n o t be allowed an d peasant “speculation” not tolerated. In one o f his speeches L enin m ade it clear that he was responding to the proposals o f the M ensheviks and SRs and o utlined w hat now are considered to be the ABCs o f L en in ism . 80 T h e M enshevik and SR appeals to restore dem ocracy were nonsense, Lenin said, because there was no such thing as dem ocracy in abstraction. O n e had to regard th e question of dem ocracy or dictatorship in a class context. In the capitalist W est dem ocracy was a sham , since it was a dem ocracy o f the rich and for the ric h .81 Freedom was a sham because it m ean t freedom to exploit the working classes. 82 “Freedom , if it contradicts the cause o f liberation o f labor from the oppression of capital is a lie. ”83 In Soviet Russia there was no dem oc­ racy for the bourgeoisie and those w ho supported them . T h e Soviet state could n ot allow itself th e luxury to let its enem ies engage in subversive propaganda. 84 T herefore no freedom o f speech or assem bly was going to be allowed u n der the dictatorship o f th e proletariat, as long as class struggle against the bourgeoisie, the class enem y, was still going on. “W h en only workers are left in th e world and th e people forget th at o n e can be a m em b er of society and not be a worker (this will not be soon . . . ) th e n we will be in favor of the freedom of assembly for everyone. B ut now the freedom o f assem bly is a freedom o f assem bly for capitalists and counterrevolutionaries. W e are struggling w ith them . . . and we declare th at we abolish this freedom . ”85 At this p o in t L en in did not object to the prospect of dem ocracy for the working people after th e “bourgeoisie” were defeated. T h e dictatorship was still defined as som ething tem porary, extraordinary b u t necessary. However, L enin sim plified th e situation som ew hat. His M enshevik and SR opponents were talking n o t ab o u t dem ocracy in abstraction b u t about Soviet dem ocracy, free­ dom s ostensibly guaranteed by th e Soviet C onstitution. L enin was also aware that his C heka was suppressing not th e bourgeoisie (there were no bourgeoisie left in Soviet Russia) but workers’ and peasants’ strikes and protests. Lenin distorted the picture to fit it into his ideological class struggle schem e, but since he an d his party knew the real situation and his political opponents knew the real situation, this ideological apology for dictatorship did n o t sound very convincing. R esponding to an SR charge on the inequality o f workers and peasants, L enin said: “W h e n they say to us . . . ‘You violated the equality of workers and peasants . . . you are crim in als,’we answ er:‘Yes, we have violated the equality of workers and peasants, and we affirm th at you w ho are for this 80 L en in , “R ech ob o b m an e naroda lozungam i svobody i ravenstva 19 m aia [1919],” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 38, pp. 3 3 3 -7 3 . Si Ib id ., p. 350. 82 Ib id ., 83 Ib id ., 8·* Ib id ., 85 Ib id .,

p. p. p. p.

351. 346 349. 350.

equality are on th e side o f K olchak.’ ”86 T h a t was because, explained L enin, th e transition to socialism had to take place u n d er a dictatorship o f the prole­ tariat, w hich im plied th a t th e workers' power w ould be greater than th a t of anyone else. D iscussing the M ensheviks’ and SRs’ econom ic proposals, L enin reiterated again and again th at these proposals were n othing short of Kolchakovite schem es. A restoration o f private trade w ould a m o u n t to a restoration o f capital­ ism .87 A nd destroying capitalism and private enterprise and private ow nership was the very essence of the socialist revolution. W hen the supporters o f capitalism, be they representatives of bourgeois parties or Mensheviks and SRs, when they say to us: ‘Abandon state monopoly, stop collecting grain by forcible methods, by fixed prices,’ we answer: ‘You, dear Mensheviks and SRs, you are probably well-m eaning people, but you defend capitalism, you express the prejudices o f the old petit bourgeois democracy, which has not seen anything but free trade and which stands aside from the intense struggle with capitalism .’. . . we are talking about a final and decisive struggle with capitalism, not allowing any conciliation.88

M arx taught th at private property was the root of all evil and it had to be destroyed. T h e M ensheviks and SRs were calling on the Bolsheviks to wipe out everything they had achieved. T his was totally unacceptable. T h e place for those com rades was beh in d the front line w ith K olchak.89 To be specific, the Bolshevik C en tral C om m ittee sent a circular to local C o m m u n ists defining the party line in regard to the M ensheviks and SRs: “[send] to prison all those who h elp K olchak consciously or unconsciously,” but utilize som e socialists for technical work u n d er strict supervision.90 N o guidelines defined w hat exactly “h elp K olchak unconsciously” m eant. Judging by L e n in ’s own speeches any­ one w ho advocated freedom o f trade could be labeled an advocate of Kolchak. T h e problem w ith this circular is n o t only that it is arbitrary b u t that it m ade it possible to throw any critic into prison by labeling him or h er a Kolchakovite. T h e vigor and the power of L e n in ’s conviction com e forth very clearly in these docum ents. It is as if L enin was trying to convince him self th at if w hat his party was doing m ade any sense in historical perspective, if all the sacrifices were n o t to be for nothing, the C om m unists had to stick to their goal of destroying the capitalist m ode of production and all its proponents. L enin as a 36 Ibid., p. 354. 87 Ibid., p. 355. 88 Lenin, “Rech o prodovol’stvennom i voennom polozhenii” (30 July 1919), Polnoesobranie sochinenii, vol. 39, pp. 118—30, here p. 124. 89 Lenin, “Plany stat'i Ό svobodnoi torgovle khlebom ,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 39, pp. 4 4 9 -5 1 . 90 “Tezisy TsKa v sviazi s polozheniem vostochnogo fronta,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 7, p.

theorist of M arxism was convinced, b u t L enin as a pragm atist and the head of a besieged governm ent had reservations. L enin the M arxist was in a struggle against L enin the statesm an. T h e re is no doubt th at in 1919 L enin was still convinced that w hat he called the “socialist” m ethod of nonm arket, state col­ lection o f grain was th e only acceptable o n e for the CP. It took an o th er year and a h a lf of peasant rebellions to convince L enin to adopt a M enshevik/SR policy and to sound a retreat from w hat he called ‘C o m m u n ism ’ into the N EP. In the m ean tim e th e rhetoric o f peace was going to be com bined with the intensifica­ tion o f war. At th at critical m o m e n t L enin preferred, as in the past, to rely on force. Any m eans were adm issible to achieve victory over Kolchak and D enikin. Peasants had to be forced to fight in and supply the Red Army, and opposition parties throw n into prison. L en in signed the infam ous orders on the peasants’ collec­ tive responsibility for deserters, and on his orders the Red Arm y shelled Russian villages identified as “nests of the G reen bandits. ” T h e Lenin-Trotsky strategy of defeating D enikin was not to seek a rapprochem ent w ith peasants, workers, and opposition parties b u t to forcibly conscript reluctant peasants into the Red Army and mercilessly suppress any discontent. M ost orders of that tim e ended with threats to shoot or execute: “Severe p u n ish m e n t for cowards and egoists. T hose retreating in disorder are to be executed on the spot. T ribunals m ust so function that executions take place im m ediately after the passing of sentence. C om m anders, com m issars, C om m unists! H onest soldiers are ordered to see that traitors should not corrupt our ranks; provocateur agents and those bringing about panic m ust be an n ih ilated on th e spot. ”91 T h e paradox of history was that L enin an d Trotsky, w ho had been propelled to power two years earlier largely d ue to their leadership o f the workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ popular m ove­ m ent, now i n the fall o f 1919 were busy crush ing this sam e popular m ovem ent. T h ey coun ted n o t on pop u lar support for their survival b u t on bad weather to stop th e W h ite advances and on executions to force a peasant conscript army into battle. T h ey hoped th at the num erical superiority o f the Red Arm y would suffice, despite desertions, to contain D en ik in’s offensive, until bad weather and cold exhausted the W h ite cavalry. T h e order to the frontline provincial com m ittees (Tula, Kaluga, Ryazan) explained: T h e raid o f [G eneral] M am ontov, the fall o f Kursk, and the co n tin u ed advance o f th e en em y to th e north poses a serious threat to the M oscow central region [M oscow and T ula] in th e n ext m on th or m o n th and a h a lf un til th e au tu m n bad roads [rasputitsa] stop th e m o v e m e n t o f th e e n e m y cavalry. T h e m ain m ilitary and political task during this m o n th is to con tain D e n ik in ’s offensive at w hatever cost and to defend T ula w ith her plants and M oscow by whatever m ean s available, no m atter w hat sacrifices this 91 “O rd er from T rotsky,” first published in Petrogradskaia Pravda (4 N ovem ber 1919), cited here from M em o ra n d u m on the Bolshevist or C o m m u n is t Party in R u ssia a n d Its R e la tio n to th e T h ird o r C o m m u n is t In te rn a tio n a l a n d the R ussian Soviets (a collection o f docu m en ts), p. 30.

may entail. And then, when D enikin’s cavalry is tied up by bad roads [rasputitsa] to go on a counteroffensive using our superiority in infantry.92

T h e Bolsheviks preferred to rely exclusively on m ilitary m eans to achieve victory over D enikin. T his reflected their general approach to politics dating back to th eir seizure o f power by m ilitary m eans in O ctober 1917. L e n in ’s and Trotsky’s actions were perfectly consistent w ith Bolshevik tradition. “L iberal” Bolsheviks tended to agree privately w ith the M ensheviks th at reform s and concessions w ould win over the hearts of the masses and u n d e rm in e the W h ites’ appeal. Yet even they added that any talk o f reforms had to be post­ poned u ntil the final victory over the W hites. W h a t th e m oderates perhaps did n o t realize was th at the course th eir party had chosen, a course of reliance on naked force, was strengthening num erically those institutions and agencies in th e party-state w hich were created to conduct a “m erciless w ar.” It strengthened the hard-liners in the C P w ho displayed no relu ctan ce or hesitation or m oral restraint w hen applying extraordinary m ea­ sures “at w hatever co st.” T h e civil war w ith the G reens, th e civil war w ith the W hites, and the m ilitary and police needs o f these wars, were altering the social fabric o f the C o m m u n ist Party. T h e Bolshevik press in 1919 frequently dis­ cussed bureaucratization, th e party’s d e tach m en t from the masses, and the rise of a privileged elite in the CP. Z inoviev com plained th at a wall now existed betw een the workers and th e C o m m u n ists and that workers were reluctant to enter the CP. Z inoviev revealed th at m any party m em bers who were officially listed as workers in fact used to be workers; m ost C om m unists were now fu n c­ tionaries in all sorts o f bureaucracies. O u t of 15,000 C om m unists in Petrograd in 1918, for exam ple, little m ore th an 7,000 rem ained by 1919 due to all sorts o f m obilizations for war. M ore than 2,000 o f those few were expelled in the spring of 1919 for m isdeeds, so th at slightly over 5,000 C o m m u n ists rem ained in the su m m er before a new m em bership drive. T h u s in a typical Petrograd district there were no m ore th an 200 to 300 C om m unists left. Zinoviev continued: Looking through the lists o f these members attentively, we becam e convinced that am ong those 200 to 300 remaining names the majority belonged to workers and em ployees who were permanently employed by the Sovietpower apparatus. I remem­ ber I was looking through the list of names o f party members who remained after the reregistration in the Petrograd District. There were two or three hundred names only. And in the paragraph “profession” one could read all the tim e— Soviet em ployee, a commissar o f food supply, a commissar o f such and such a regiment, a commissar of such and such a warehouse, and so on. And only very seldom could we read in this paragraph: a worker from the Geizler plant, or a worker from some other plant. We 92 “T sirk u lia rn o G u b k o m a m ,” Izvestiia T s ka R K P fb J j n o . 6 (30 S e p te m b e r 1919), I.

think we will not be mistaken if we say that approximately the same is the situation in other districts of Petrograd and M oscow .95

C o m m u n ist Party m em bership in th e provinces was even m ore thinly spread and h a d even less to do w ith th e proletariat. In K azan, for exam ple, o u t of the total n u m b e r o f only 1,348 C om m u n ists, 337 lived in the city of Kazan and only 1,011 in th e uezdy.94 T h e provincial C P was largely connected w ith the adm inistrative, police or m ilitary apparatus. T h e com m anders of all those special d etach m en ts, th e C h ek a, th e antiprofiteering detachm ents, the requisi­ tioning detach m en ts, special Internal Security troops, local cliques, and the huge bureaucracy th at ran the “class ratio n ing” system— this was the m ain body o f th e C P in 1919. AU o f th em prospered u n d er the conditions of civil war, both against the W hites and th e G reens. Civil war gave them m ore autonom y from th e center, m o re freedom of action to apply extraordinary adm inistrative m easures. In o th er words it gave th em as individuals or gave their agencies m ore power an d control over others. L en in an d Trotsky’s course o f action tipped the balance betw een the h ard ­ liners an d th e m oderates in th e CP, precarious as it was in th e spring of 1919, in favor o f those w ho profited from th e w ar— die-hard W ar C om m unists. No longer was th e discussion in th e C P whether to abolish the C heka, b u t how to exterm inate all enem ies o f Soviet power m ore effectively. T h e C P was now increasingly a w ar m ach in e, a conglom eration of bureaucracies whose sole purpose o f existence was to run th e army, th e police, the food supply, and the econom y, to fight against real an d im aginary “class e n em ies.” For m any de­ cades to com e, indeed u n til its very collapse, th e C P was to define its raison d’etre in this. T h e Bolsheviks’ “class" approach to politics, w hich tended to attribute p at­ terns o f class behavior to groups of th e population depending on their occupa­ tion, property, ed ucation and other factors, com bined with their m ilitary ap ­ proach to politics, produced a new kind o f m entality, today com m only known as Stalinist or totalitarian. T h is m ean t that entire groups o f the population or even classes w hose loyalty to th e C P was suspect were to be treated as enem ies. In an intern al co m m u n icatio n printed in th e su m m er o f 1919 the Bolshevik C C wrote: “W e know th e social m ilieu th a t nourishes and generates co u n ter­ revolutionary undertakings, outbursts, conspiracies, and so on. W e know it very well. T h is m ilieu is bourgeois, that is, o f the bourgeois intelligentsia, and in th e villages o f kulaks. Everyw here this is the so-called ‘nonparty’ public of the SRs and the M ensheviks. It is necessary to triple and to strengthen tenfold 95 G . Z inoviev, Ό c h isle n n o m sostave n ashei p a rtii,” Izvestiia, no. 210 (21 S ep tem b er 1919),

2. 94 “W h a t P ro p o rtio n o f th e P opulation Follows th e B olsheviki,” citing Izvestiia in Struggling R ussia, no. 1 6 (2 8 J u n e 1919).

surveillance over this social m ilie u .” T h e C C list included in the “bourgeois m ilie u ” printers, railway workers, and an undefined “p art of the urban and village p o p u latio n ” because they supported the M ensheviks. T h e word “bour­ geois” was used rather flexibly and applied to anyone w ho happened to oppose the Bolsheviks. Local C om m unists were called upon to be vigilant and draft lists o f those belonging to hostile social m ilieus and send those lists to the C heka. T h e duty o f a C o m m u n ist was to take part in system atic and wide-scale political surveillance over entire groups o f the population. T h is task was fo rm u ­ lated not in 1937 b u t in 1919. T h e narrow stratum of C om m unists w ho had som e kind o f a link to a m ore civilized or h u m a n e interpretation of “C o m m u ­ nist c o n stru ctio n ” was getting progressively sm aller w ithin the L eninist CP. T h e instructions to th e local C o m m u n ists continued: “som e from am ong the ‘left’ M ensheviks like to express indignation over the "barbaric,” in their view, prac­ tice of taking hostages. Let th em be indignant. But it is im possible to co n d u ct a war w ithout this. A nd u n d er conditions of sharpening danger it is necessary to broaden the application o f this practice and to use it by all m eans, m ore often."95 T h is m ilitary and class approach to politics dictated the necessity to destroy the perceived enem y by all m eans available. It excluded neutrality. E ith er you are with us o r against us. It predeterm ined categorical judgm ent and the appli­ cation o f terror, rationally explained and justified. T h e instruction quoted above asked a rhetorical question: Is it better to allow Kolchak and D enikin win or, “Is it better to capture and im prison and even execute hundreds o f traitors from am ong th e Kadets, nonparty people, and M ensheviks who take up arm s against Soviet power, or agitate against m obilization, w hich m eans for D e n i­ kin, as the printers and railroad workers do?”96 T h e answer to th at question was deem ed self-evident. T h e C om m unists m ade rational choices am ong other options, choices w hich had an im pact on the structure o f their party and on the ideology itself. It was not accidental that th at party m ade the choices it m ade. A party o f centralized econom ic bureaucracies, C heka networks, Red Arm y co m ­ m anders, and local cliques was not likely to w elcom e the idea of restoring the m arket, private property, private trade, and free elections. O n the contrary every setback, every uprising, and every advance of D enikin this party inter­ preted as a signal to double its decisiveness in crushing all enem ies of Soviet power. T h e policies it pursued form ed its social structure, and its social struc­ ture strengthened the forces th at shaped hard-line policies. T h e Bolsheviks had tu rn ed the m ilitan t M arxism o f 1917 into totalitarian Stalinism by 1919, even th o u g h the term was n o t in use then. T h is transition took place in the course of the civil war. T h e W h ite tide brought new challenges to all Soviet political parties. All 95 “Bor’ba s kontrrevoliutsiei v ty lu ,” Jzvestiia Tska R K P (b), no. 4 (9 July 1919), I. 96 Ibid.

three parties were against the W hites. AU three were losing touch with the social constituency they claim ed to represent, although for different reasons. A nd all th ree w ent th ro u g h a profound change u n d er the im pact of the civil war. T h e M ensheviks were in a deep ideological crisis as intraparty debate surfaced an d they lost to u ch w ith th eir constituency because the workers were m ore anti-B olshevik th an they were. T h e Bolsheviks lost touch w ith the masses because they had turned from a political party into a m obilization agency for the war effort an d self-preservation. O f th e three, the SRs and Left SRs were closest to th e aspirations o f th e ir constituency, the peasants, w ho truly did not w ant to fight for eith er the Reds or the W hites. B ut factional infighting and ideological inconsistency h am pered the SRs’ efforts. T h e SRs’ attem pts to lead peasant resistance were successful, b u t they did not portend any hope of w in­ n in g over the Bolsheviks m ilitarily. In addition to the frontline civil war against the W hites and an unknow n civil war against th e G reens, th e Bolsheviks were conducting yet an o th er civil war, an invisible civil war against th eir political opponents, the M ensheviks and SRs. T h e C heka violated the SR legalization decree in a m atter o f days, and it did n o t o ccu r to any single Bolshevik to protest. T h e C P led a private w ar of th eir own party on other political parties using th e instrum ents of state. As w ith everything else, they approached th e task o f political struggle against the social­ ists as a m ilitary operation. T h e ir task was to prevent the socialists from leading popular mass m ovem ents against th e C om m unists. T h ro u g h com prom ise and repression, arrests, executions or oth er form s o f intim idation, mass surveil­ lance, and terror they succeeded in their m ain objective. T h e socialists did not or could n o t im p lem en t their alternative program u n der the conditions of war.

6 The Red Tide

of the C om m unists in the civil war against the W hites is usually attributed, am ong other factors, to social support for the Bolsheviks. It is often argued th a t after som e hesitation the workers and peasants took the side of the Reds. D espite setbacks, it is argued, the Bolsheviks m anaged to create a w in­ ning c o m b in a tio n .1 O ther analysts have pointed to a n u m b er of m ilitary, strategic, econom ic, and geographical factors th at contributed to the Reds’ final victory regardless of social support. T h e Bolsheviks operated from the center of the country and had larger resources o f m anpow er, a larger industrial base, and a dense netw ork o f railroads. T hey created an effective Red Army, w hich despite desertions, was larger than that of the W hites. In short, the Bolsheviks created a superior regim e for m obilization th at was able to concentrate all the resources at its disposal.2 H istorians o f the W h ite m ovem ent have shown the internal weaknesses of the W h ite regimes. T h e W hites had a poor civilian adm inistration, a selfdefeating agrarian policy, disruptive labor relations, and im perialist attitudes toward nationalities. All this undoubtedly contributed to their defeat.3 Yet the Bolsheviks suffered from the sam e kinds of problem s. T hey too had a selfdefeating agrarian policy; they too antagonized the workers, let alone the prop­ ertied classes. T hey too had a poor civilian adm inistration. And yet they won. T h ere are other factors that m ust be considered in order to explain the outcom e of the frontline civil war. T h e victory of the Reds over the W hites was not necessarily th e victory o f a strong and popular regim e over a weak and u n p o p u ­ lar one; it could have been a victory of one weak and unpopular regim e over an o th er weak and unp o p u lar regime. T h e W h ite offensive and victories in the spring and sum m er of 1919 were the result of a fortunate com bination of circum stances. Diverse forces (peasants, cossacks, and workers) had tu rn ed against the Bolsheviks and cleared the way for the W hites. W h e th e r these forces w ould rem ain neutral or tu rn against the W hites depended on the new adm inistration’s policies. T h e outcom e of the frontline civil war m ay well have been determ ined by the fluctuations in alleT h e v ic to ry

1 M oshe Lew in, “M ore T h a n O n e Piece Is M issing in the P u z z le ,’’ Slavic Review, vol. 44, no. 2 (1985) 2 3 9 -5 0 , here 243. 2 R em ington, B uilding Socialism in Bolshevik Russia. 5 K enez, C ivil W ar in South Russia; L incoln, R ed Victory; Mawdsley, The R ussian C ivil War; and L ehovich, W h ite against Red.

giance o f popular m ovem ents. T h ey were against both the Reds and the W hites, b u t played into the h ands o f the W hites in the spring and into the h ands o f th e Reds in th e fall of 1919.

Collapse of the Whites in the East In contrast to D en ik in ’s W h ite m o vem ent in the south, w hich had conquered a h uge territory expanding o u t o f a sm all co rn er in the N o rth C aucasus, Kolchak, the suprem e ruler of all Russia, had a n u m b er o f advantages from the very b eginning. K olchak cam e to power in an area stretching from the Urals to the Pacific O cean . H e inherited the adm inistrative apparatus o f the Siberian gov­ e rn m e n t, w hich had been in existence for m onths. H e also inherited th e entire Russian gold reserve from th e K om uch governm ent. U nlike D enikin, w ho had to bu ild his arm y as h e expanded, K olchak inherited a sizable Siberian army. At th e en d o f spring in 1919 he controlled one of Russia’s m ain industrial areas, the U rals, w ith its plants p roducing steel, field guns, rifles, bullets, and other war m ateriel. M oreover there was no shortage of food in Siberia. N or was there a land shortage. Siberian peasants were fairly well off, and feeding the arm y was n o t as difficult as in E u ro p ean Russia. Landlords’ holdings were negligible and lim ited only to th e Volga basin area. O p en access to the ocean m ade it possible to im p o rt m ilitary aid. T h e adm iral had the political and m ilitary support o f the Allies. T h e ir m issions an d troops were guarding the trans-Siberian railroad and, alth o u g h n o t involved in frontline operations, were undoubtedly an asset. T h e political landscape of Siberia was also quite favorable in the beginning. As we have seen, peasants in th e Urals and Volga basin w elcom ed K olchak’s troops an d w illingly served in th e W h ite arm y in the spring m onths o f 1919. T h e Urals workers too were n o t hostile to the W hites in the beginning. Izhevsk an d Votkinsk workers were considered m ost reliable in the anti-Bolshevik strug­ gle. M oreover, M enshevik and SR organizations in Siberia were m u ch m ore conservative th a n in E uro p ean Russia. It appeared th at Kolchak had a chance to forge a grand anti-B olshevik coalition w hich would have been a m ighty force in th e frontline civil war. N othing o f the sort was done, o f course. D espite all these advantages K olchak’s regim e collapsed well before D en ik in ’s and before the Red A rm y reached Lake Baikal in N ovem ber 1919.

The Worldview o f the Whites It is logical to assum e th a t th e leaders of the W h ite m ovem ent saw their suprem e goal as a resolute struggle against Bolshevism. Yet they were not w illing for the sake o f this suprem e goal to seek a com prom ise w ith other political forces. Bolshevism was defined broadly. As a liberal Russian historian,

Sergey M elgunov, p u t it: “the very notion ‘Bolshevik’ was so vague that one could m ean anything at all by it.”4 T h e Socialist R evolutionaries were certainly “Bolsheviks.” Peasants w ho resisted the draft were also “Bolsheviks.” W orkers w ho clam ored for higher wages were “Bolsheviks" as well. G eneral Μ . K. D ieterichs, at one p o in t the co m m an d er in chief, in a private conversation with an o th er general defined th e suprem e goal in eradicating all leftist currents. “[It is] e n o u g h to play w ith the followers o f Kerensky and C h e rn o v .”5 For D ieterichs and o th er com m anders and governm ent leaders, w hatever their disagreem ents were, the suprem e task was in restoring w hat they called order, by m eans of a m ilitary dictatorship. T hey believed th a t politicians, parties, and elections had wrecked Russia in 1917. C ivilian politicians had ruined th e R ussian arm y in 1917 because they allowed “Bolshevik” agitators to infiltrate the army. N ow the arm y w ould be above politics, and no agitators of any parties w ould be tolerated. K olchak and his associates believed that all these Bolsheviks, M ensheviks, or SRs confused the workers and peasants and cleverly m anipulated th em in all these soviets, dum as, and zemstvos. A ccording to G . K. G ins, the ch airm an o f the E conom ic C onference u n d e r the suprem e ruler, idiosyncrasies in the electoral law m ade it possible for the SRs to get absolute m ajorities in elections to the dum as and zemstvos in Siberia.6 T h e solution was n o t in com peting w ith the SRs in elections based on universal suffrage b u t in changing the electoral law in such a way th at leftist agitators w ould n o t be able to m an ip u late the electorate. It did not bother the leaders of th e K olchakgovernm ent that in Siberia the SRs had won 75 percent of all votes in the elections to the C o n stitu en t Assembly and overw helm ing m ajorities in local city dum as and zem stvos.7 G ins com plained th a t these bodies, controlled by th e SRs, had becom e centers of opposition to the Kolchak regim e.8 To cope w ith this problem , a property qualification was introduced into the electoral law. T h e “leftists” were disfranchised. T h e local police were taken away from the control o f the dum as and attached to the M inistry of Internal Affairs.9 M ilitary control over elected institutions was the answ er to Russia’s tro u b les.10 T h e leaders of the W h ite m ovem ent had already gotten rid of the Siberian d u m a, dom inated by th e SRs, in the period o f the D irectory g o v ern m en t.11 W ith th e rise to power o f the suprem e ruler, not even lip service to the C onstitu4 M elgunov, Tragediia A dm irala Kolchaka, p. 76. 5 T h is conversation of G enerals D ieterichs and Riabikov was reported by the British Intelligence officer.· “D va g en erala,” Golos m inuvshego na chuzhoi storone, no. 1/14 (1926), 189—201. 6 G ins, S ib ir , S o iu zn ik i i Kolchak, vol. 2, p. 26. 7 C ollins and Sm ele, ed s., K o lc h a k a n d Siberia, vol. 2 (intro, by Sm ele), p. xviii. 8 G ins, Sibir', S o iu zn iki i Kolchak, vol. 2, p. 14. 9 Ib id ., p. 111. 10 ib id ., p. 170. 11 O n the dissolution o f th e Siberian d u m a, see V. C hernov, “ ‘C hernovskaia G ram o ta’ i U fim skaia D irektoriia” (m anuscript), Nicolaevsky C o llection, series 7, PSR , box 10, folder 3, pp. 1 -4 9 .

e n t Assembly was tolerated. T h e very w ords— C o n stitu e n t Assembly— infuriated K olchak’s officers. T h ey associated it w ith the SRs, elections, ac­ countability, an d civilian control over th e arm y— everything they detested. A dm iral K olchak expressed this profound disdain very eloquently d u ring his interrogation u p o n his arrest: The Constituent Assembly, which we have had here and which the Bolsheviks disbanded and which replaced the International here under the leadership of Cher­ nov, generated negative attitudes on the part of the majority of people with whom I came in contact. They considered that it was artificial and partisan. This was also my opinion. I think that even though the Bolsheviks have few positive sides, the disband­ ment of that Constituent Assembly is truly to their credit. This, one should consider their positive asset.12 T h e re could be no talk o f reconvening the C o n stitu en t Assembly or convening a new one. Representative institutions had ru ined Russia once already. E nough was enou g h . Russia needed an iron h an d , a dictator. W ith regard to agrarian policy, Kolchak could n o t bring h im self to legalize th e seizure of landlords' lands. Fortunately for the W hites there were no land­ lords’ estates in Siberia. B ut there were in th e Volga basin, right in the frontline area. G ins and others argued th a t it was essential to win the goodwill o f peasants and do som ething to allay th eir fears.13 T h e best Kolchak’s m inisters could do was to prom ise th at for the tim e being those w ho tilled the land could keep it u n til th e question was settled later. T h e worldview o f the leaders o f th e W h ite m ovem ent was profoundly conser­ vative. T h ey reckoned th a t peasant conscripts would do their service, barred from politics, an d that w ould suffice to win. T hey believed they could win the civil w ar against the Red A rm y w ithout th e support of the dum as, or trade u n io n s, or peasants or workers. C learly this approach doom ed the W h ite cause from th e very beginning. A regim e th at decided to stand above all social forces and classes w ould have a ch an ce o f success only if it proved th at its rule was better th an th e chaotic m u ltiparty dem ocracy of 1917 or at leastbetter th an the arbitrary Bolshevik dictatorship o f 1918. W h a t guided K olchak’s officers was n o t so m u c h the desire to create an arm y capable o f defeating th e Reds b u t th e desire to settle scores with the hated leftists. It was an instinctive gut reaction, as one historian p u t i t .14 T hey were q uite confident th at they were superior to any kind of “worker and peasant arm y” led by Jews and com m issars. In th eir opinion the best way to strengthen th e front was not th ro u g h com prom ise w ith the dum as or SRs b u t by revenge on those w ho h ad destroyed th e Russia they knew before 1917. Victories at the 12 Cited here from protocols of the interrogation in the PSR Archive, folder 2028. 13 Gins, Sibir', Soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 2, p. 152. 14 C ollinsand Smele, eds., K olchakand Siberia, p. xviii.

front in M arch—April 1919 further convinced the W hites that Bolshevism was crum bling and that the course they had chosen was the right one. It did not occur to them that their victories were largely the result of local protests against the Bolsheviks and that the credit of popular trust they had at the beginning would not last forever.

A tam anshchina: W arlords

T h e reality of W hite rule was m uch worse than the elitist and dictatorial ideas the W hites had openly espoused. Such notions as leadership of society by the armed forces and dictatorship of the supreme ruler were no more than idealized propaganda lines. In fact the supreme ruler not only did not control the terri­ tory he claimed; he did not even control his own armed forces, even in his own capital, Omsk. Accordingto Gins, right-wing groups carried out the same kind of underground activity as the SRs. They had their own conspiratorial organi­ zations, their own intelligence, and their own people in government institu­ tions. 55 T he supreme ruler him self was no more than a figurehead. O ne can argue that there was no such thing as the Kolchak governm ent Such military com manders as I. N. Krasilnikov, who had arrested the Directory during the coup d'etat on 18 November 1918, systematically arrested and executed sus­ pected leftists however they saw fit. Outside the capital, the power of the supreme ruler did not stretch beyond Irkutsk. Ataman G. S. Semenov reigned suprem e in the Lake Baikal region and ignored Kolchak’s envoys. Well funded by the Japanese, he relied on their troops and his bands to establish a murderous regime over the local population.16 Burning villages, extracting booty, whip­ ping, flogging, and killing, Semenov represented the worst kind o f a t­ amanshchina, a free-for-all rule of local warlords. And he was not the only one. T h e bands of Ataman B. V. Annenkov controlled the Semipalatinsk region. Ataman I. M. Kalmykov reigned in Khabarovsk.17 In the west, Ataman A. I. D utov of the Orenburg cossacks operated independently of the supreme ruler as well. Even within the territory of western Siberia and the Urals, which was in theory controlled by the supreme ruler of all Russia, army officers held the actual power over the lives of people in the conquered territory, regardless of Kolchak’s laws and proclamations. Siberia under KoIchakwas like Lebanon in the 1980s, a conglomeration of autonom ous local warlords with their own armed forces, some in the pay of foreign powers and certainly independent of any government. 15 G in s, S ib ir’, S o iu zn ik i i Kolchak, vol. 2, p. 18. 16 F lem in g , T he Fate o f A d m ira l K olchak, p. 119; and G rondijs, L e C as-K oltch ak, p. 34. 17 G rondijs, ib id ., and L in coln , R e d V ictory, pp. 256—58.

The Army and Desertion O n paper th e W h ite arm y in th e east was a form idable force. A ccording to som e estim ates it had 500,000 m en. O thers believe it had no m ore than 3 0 0 ,0 0 0 .18 In fact, however, only a fraction o f this n u m b e r were at the front line. It was a large arm y in term s of officially registered “m o u th s” (edoki) b u t a small one in term s o f fighters. Figures were inflated to accom m odate thousands and th o u ­ sands o f officers sitting in all kinds o f headquarters. A ccording to a W hite officer, not m ore th an 50,000 were actually at the front line during the crucial su m m er m o n th s .19 T h e n u m ero u s headquarters were centers o f intrigue, ri­ valry, co rru p tio n , and bribes. T h e officers' treatm ent of enlisted m en resur­ rected th e worst practices of th e Im perial Army. Soldiers had to regard officers as m asters. Soldiers were beaten to instill fear and obedience. A Bolshevik u n d erg ro u n d leaflet in Ufa described how officers w hipped the new ly m o ­ bilized conscripts an d th e n spent evenings in a restaurant, drinking and singing “G od Save th e T sa r.”20 Kolchak m u st have realized th a t such practices un d erm in ed the m orale of th e army, an d he issued orders to stop corporal punishm ent. Alas, as was the case w ith m any o f his orders, these rem ained only on paper too. As one priest wrote in a private letter (w hich was intercepted by counterintelligence), an officer was told that th e physical abuse o f soldiers was prohibited by order o f the adm iral. T h e officer gave a revealing answer: “L et the order be the order, let K olchak be K olchak, and let th e m u zzle rem ain the m u z z le .”21 It seems th at arm y officers were n o t co n cerned w ith creating a m otivated fighting force. T hey believed th a t th e best law in th e arm y was discipline and obedience. A soldier should know his place. It is n o t surprising th at the Siberian arm y was plagued with desertion on a scale th at could be com pared only w ith th at o f the Red Army. A ccording to a M enshevik witness, the m orale o f the enlisted m en was very low, and they tried to desert at th e first o p p o rtu n ity .22 G ins explained that Siberian peasants hardly knew w hat Bolshevism m ean t, an d they had no m otivation w hatsoever to fight in a civil w a r.23 O n several occasions the newly m obilized conscripts rebelled. 13 Brinkley, The Volunteer A rm y and Allied Intervention in South Russia, p. 214. General W illiam Graves, C om m ander of U .S. forces in Siberia, estimated the strength of the Kolchakarmy at 100,000 in August 1919. From W. Graves to Secretary of State, Records, dispatch no. 861.00.5009. 19 Filatiev, Katastrofa belogo dvizheniia v Sibiri, p. 79. 20 “C hto Dozhdalis?” Petrogradskaia Pravda (4 May 1919). 21 Gins, S ib ir , Soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 2, p. 307. 22 A report o f a Menshevik who had arrived in Moscow from Siberia, “Z a Sovetskim R ubezhom ,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 7 (15 February 1919). 25 Gins, Sibir , Soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 2, p. 261.

In T y u m en their rebellion ended tragically. As local Bolsheviks reported to M oscow in M arch: “[The m obilization] in T yum en has led to an uprising of several h u n d red conscripts. T h e uprising ended w ith their defeat and th e exe­ cu tio n o f all insurgents. T h e m ood am ong the conscripts is definitely revolutionary. ”24 As a result o f a sim ilar m u tin y 1,050 soldiers were executed in T om sk.25 B ut repressive m easures failed to instill obedience. A ccording to an SR who had left Ufa o n 13 May, “E n tire regim ents o f conscript soldiers began to go over to the side of th e Soviet troops w ith their arm s.”26 Indeed a British report of M ay 1919 stated th at a U krainian regim ent m utin ied , killed its officers, and deserted to th e Reds across the front lin e .27 D efeats at the front during the sum m er contrib­ uted to the decom position of the Siberian army. If soldiers deserted over the front line to the Reds, officers deserted to the rear. As G eneral W. Graves reported to W ashington: “AU reports indicate that the Siberian arm y is c o m ­ pletely disorganized, dem oralized and in panic. T here is jealousy and intrigue am o n g c o m m an d in g officers. I am reliably inform ed th at a large n u m b er o f lineofficers are ab andoning th eir units and fleeing to the rear, th at a great m any have been sh o t by th e ir m e n .”28 M enshevik, Bolshevik, and SR sources, as well as reports of foreign observers, are corroborated by the adm issions of th e W h ite generals them selves. In a private conversation w ith G eneral D ieterichs, G e n ­ eral Riabikov said: “W h e th e r our arm y advances or retreats, everywhere it is the sam e picture: thievery, robbery, and the ru in of peasants. T his is w hat ou r arm y is do in g ."29 G ins w rote th at during his tour o f the Urals in the su m m er he heard co m ­ plaints from m ilitiam an that m ilitary authorities had terrorized the local popu­ lation so m u ch th at m any m ilitiam en could n o t rem ain at their posts. T hey quit and ran aw ay.30 K olchak’s arm y was guilty of system atic robbery, n o t only d uring its advance, b u t also during its retreat. Requisitions and plain robbery did n o t have any m ilitary or strategic value. T hey were yet an o th er m anifesta­ tion of revenge and senseless cruelty. A ccording to an A m erican cable to 24 “Iz D oklada chlen o v Sibirskogo TsK a, A. A. M aslennikova i M . M . R abinovicha v TsKa RKP(b) o polozhenii v S ibiri” (21 M arch 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6. pp. 4 0 6 -9 , h ere p. 408. 25 Espe [no first nam e], G od v Tsarstve Kolchaka. M aterialy po istorii rabochego dvizhertiia v Sibiri (July 1918—July 1919), p. 8, reprinted in C ollins and Sm ele, eds., Kolchak a n d Siberia (page indicated here is in original text and n o t from the pagination o f C ollins and Sm ele). H ereinafter Espe, G od v Tsarstve Kolchaka. 26 V. Bobrov, “Po Sibiri i U ra lu ,” N arod, no. I (17 A ugust 1919). 27 R eport of the British consul at O m sk to Foreign O ffice, cited in F lem in g , T h e Fate o f A dm iral Kolchak, p. 139. 28 F rom W . Graves to Secretary of State (6 A ugust 1919), Records, dispatch 861.00.5009. 29 “D va g en erala,” Golos m inuvshego na chuzhoi storone, no. 1/14 (1926), 189—201, h ere p. 196. 50 G ins, Sibir’, S o iu zn ik i i Kolchak, vol. 2, p. 371.

W ashington: “reliable reports indicate th at the Kolchak units, freed from all restraint, are looting the districts through w hich they are retreating. ”31 T h e cossack units, above all others, were notorious for their cruelty to peasants. 32 K olchak’s orders to stop th e violence against th e local population were o f course ignored.

Peasant Resistance Just as in E u ro p ean Russia u n d er the Reds, peasants in the east u n der the W hites suffered from arm y units advancing or retreating. If in M arch they greeted K olchak’s troops as liberators, they very quickly discovered that their lot was no better th an before. As G ins explained: “the population w anted peace. It was tired o f transporting w ithout end first the Reds and th en the W hites. It was tired of p e rm a n e n t m obilizations. It w anted to free itself from all th is.”33 T h e peasants w anted to be left alone. Reds or W hites appeared to them as external forces w ho were after recruits, horses, and food. First the arm y au th o ri­ ties w ould a n n o u n c e a m obilization, th en th e troops would requisition peasant property. In self-defense peasants sabotaged m obilization efforts and form ed peasant bands. In response the authorities dispatched punitive detachm ents. T h e civil war on th e internal front resum ed. T h e causes o f peasant resistance u n d er th e W h ites were the sam e as u n d er the Bolsheviks. Resistance was a protest against p articipation in the civil war. An SR eyewitness described this trajectory of peasant behavior in th e Urals: “T em porary sympathy to the W hites was quickly extinguished by th e spilled blood o f peasants during pacification cam paigns, requisitions, and robberies. T h e masses who only recently cele­ brated liberation [from th e Bolsheviks] are now getting ready for the overthrow o f th e new ru le r. ”34 G ins wrote th at usually after the work o f punitive expedi­ tions, “everybody, to th e last m an , turned into enem ies of the O m sk govern­ m e n t.”35 AU available sources testify to the growing hostility of peasants to the W h ites and th e rise o f a pow erful partisan m ovem ent of th e G reens. 36 T h e difference betw een peasants’ relations with authorities u n d er the Reds and th e W h ites was th a t th e Bolsheviks h ad a m u c h firm er grip on the countryside. T h e y had com m issars an d com m ittees of the poor, and village soviets and local “little tsars” w illing to serve the Bolsheviks. T h e W hites had no social base o f 31 From W. Graves to Secretary of State, Records, dispatch 861.00.5009. 32 Gins, S ib ir , Soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 2, p. 191. 33 Ibid., p. 212. 34 V. Bobrov, “Po Sibiri i U ralu,” Narod, no. I (17 August 1919). 35 Gins, S ib ir , Soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 2, p. 570. 36 T h e scope of the G reen m ovem ent is discussed in detail in V. Yel’tsyn, “Krestianskoe dvizhenie v Sibiri v period Kolchaka,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, vol. 2, no. 49 (February 1926), 5 48.

their own in the countryside. T hey were perceived as guardians of the old regime. T h e extent of the G reen m ovem ent in Siberia was com parable to that under the Bolsheviks. In all provinces thousands and thousands of peasant rebels form ed their own detachm ents, am bushed punitive expeditions, blew up rail tracks, and even attacked cities. According to a Bolshevik report, peasant de­ tachm ents in Kansk Uezd attacked railway stations and killed railway person­ n e l.37 In the Irkutsk area the G reen detachm ents num bered 10,000.38 A n SR party leader, K. S. Burevoi, wrote that in January 1919 a detachm ent of 3,000 G reens attacked the city of Krasnoyarsk. Peasant rebellions also flared up in M inusinsk, Kansk, Yeniseisk, and other uezdy.39 A Bolshevik report indicates that in February peasant uprisings broke out in the vicinity of Tomsk and O m sk.40 And an SR wrote that peasant rebellions em braced huge parts of the supposedly W hite-held territory in Tobolsk, Tomsk, Akmolinsk, and Sem ipalatinsk provinces.41 In the Urals near Chelyabinsk 25,000 peasant rebels operated against the W hites.42 G ins simply adm itted that “peasant rebellions were going on constantly.”43 T h e total num ber of G reen rebels in Siberia, by the m ost conservative estimate, ran over 100,000, w hich was a force at least equal to if not larger than the entire Siberian W hite arm y in the field. Robbery o f the peasant population by army units was unlaw ful in theory. Kolchak and his army com m anders did issue orders forbidding these practices. Repressive actions of punitive detachm ents on the other hand were undertaken in full accord with the directives of the suprem e ruler, as L ieutenant General Artemyev’s telegram shows: “T h e suprem e ruler has ordered an im m ediate and resolute end to the Yeniseisk uprising, not excluding the use of the most severe and cruel m easures, not only against the insurrectionists but against the popu­ lation that lends them aid. In this respect follow the example o f the Japanese in the A m ur O blast who proclaim ed that any village concealing Bolsheviks would be destroyed.”44 Specifically Artemyev ordered that local authorities them ­ selves annihilate all agitators and seditionists. For concealing Bolsheviks a fine should be imposed on the entire village, and village elders be brought to courtm artial. Point seven read: “Local inhabitants should be used for reconnaissance 37 “Iz Doklada chlenov Sibirskogo T sK a,” in Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 406. 38 T his figure is drawn from the report o f the punitive detachm ent com m ander, cited from Dotsenko, The Struggle for Democracy in Siberia, p. 93. 39 Burevoi, Kolchakovshchina, p. 29, reprinted in Collins and Sm ele, eds., Kolchak a n d Siberia. H ereinafter Burevoi, Kolchakovschchina. 40 O t chlena Sibirskogo oblastnogo komiteta RKP(b) S. N . D eriabinoi” (M arch 1919), Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, pp. 4 2 0 -2 1 . 31 Rakov, V Zastenkakh Kolchaka. Golos iz Sibiri, p. 42, reprinted in C ollins and Sm ele, ed s., Kolchak and Siberia. H ereinafter Rakov, V Zastenkakh Kolchaka. 42 L incoln, Red Victory, p. 265. 43 G ins, Sibir', Soiu zn iki i Kolchak, vol. 2, p. 152. 44 Dotsenko, The Struggle for Democracy in Siberia, p. 83.

and liaison. Hostages should be held. If the inform ation thus obtained should prove to be false or is n o t delivered in tim e or if there is treachery, the hostages should be executed and th e houses th a t belonged to them should be burned. ”45 In a n o th e r order Artem yev w ent even further. Every ten th in h ab itan t was to be shot if a village failed to deliver b an d it leaders. A nd if the peasants rendered arm ed resistance to governm ent troops, th e entire village was to be burned, the entire m ale population shot, and all property confiscated.46 T h e order re­ m in d ed field co m m anders th a t confiscated property was to be officially regis­ tered. In o th er words it was not war booty for the local com m anders. G eneral S. N . Rozanov, charged w ith guarding th e railroad in the Yeniseisk and Kansk area, also resorted to executing hostages. H e declared th at for every killed soldier of his d etach m en t h e w ould execute ten Bolsheviks held in prison in Krasnoyarsk, w ho w ould be considered hostages. Forty-nine o f th em were executed.47 T h e effect o f these m easures was th at peasant resistance intensified. Soldiers sent to pacify peasants deserted in increasing num bers. T h e governm ent had to seek m ore reliable troops for these operations, and there were n o t m any to be found. In th e spring o f 1919 a d etach m en t of the notorious I. N . Krasilnikov was sent to deal with peasant rebels. It was believed that Krasilnikov’s m en, know n for their hatred of th e leftists, w ould be reliable enough to root out “Bolshevik” bandits. As it tu rn ed out, Krasilnikov’s m en were brave only w hen d ealing with defenseless victim s. In a com bat situation these “reliable” fighters deserted by th e do zen s.48 T h e Bolsheviks resorted to exactly th e sam e m easures in E uropean Russia. T h ey too shelled villages, took hostages, and executed “b an d its.” In the spring of 1919 th e sequence of popular upheavals there favored the W hites. D u e to the peasant anti-Bolshevik m o v em en t Kolchak had a ch an ce to occupy the Volga basin and K azan. H e did n o t realize this possibility, because o f his policies. T h e factor o f th e peasant m o v em en t began to work for the Reds by m id -1919. T h e Bolsheviks had an o th er advantage in that they operated from the m ost populous p art o f th e country. It was m u c h easier for th em to p u t 150,000 m en on the eastern front, despite desertion, th an it was for Kolchak to m aintain such an arm y from sparsely populated Siberia. H e was m u ch m ore dependent on peas­ a n t goodwill th an were th e Bolsheviks. As long as he enjoyed it in the spring of 1919 he was able n o t only to hold his ground b u t to advance as well. W h en he lost th e peasants’ goodwill, he had no other resources he could fall back on. G reatly o u tn u m b ered at the front by th e Reds, Kolchak sim ply could not afford to fight o n th e intern al front against th e peasants, w ho were, after all, the source 45 Ib id ., p. 84. 46 Ibid.

47 Rakov, V Zastenkakh Kolchaka, p. 41. 48 Ibid.

202

THE RED TIDE

of m anpow er for his Siberian army. T h e war against the peasants had a devastat­ ing effect on the Kolchak regime.

The Workers Workers in the Urals were caught in the shifting front line of the civil war. T he Urals were overrun by the Bolsheviks at the end of 1918, then taken by Kolchak during M arch and lost again to the Reds in July and August. Like the peasants, the Urals workers were favorably disposed to the W hites in the beginning. This can clearly be seen in an underground Bolshevik leaflet published in Ufa under the W hites in the spring of 1919: “Have you waited long enough? You were waiting for Kolchak. Now you got w hat you wanted. He has come with all those orders, epaulets, and a whip. Now it makes you shudder. How m any people were shot yesterday at the slaughterhouse? . . . And who was it that used to say: ‘Kolchak will com e and everything will be fine. ’ It is sham eful to think, but it is true: m any of our workers used to say so.”49 M any factories and plants sent greetings to the suprem e ruler in the beginning.50 M ost likely they were not so m uch expressions of support for the Adm iral as relief at the Bolsheviks’ depar­ ture. According to an Am erican observer’s report: “At the end of the Bolshevik rule and for a tim e thereafter the majority o f laborers were distinctly antiBolshevik.”51 Indeed a peculiarity of the workers’ m ovem ent in the Urals was that m any o f its leaders were ardent anti-Bolsheviks. N ot only Izhevsk and Votkinsk workers b u t also workers in the M otovilikha plant and m any others had a storm y record o f anti-Bolshevik struggle in 1918. T h eir leaders were M ensheviks and SRs, closely associated with the SR K om uch governm ent and the People’s Army of 1918. M enshevik workers’ leaders like G. Strum ilo and I. Upovalov had been leaders of general strikes and uprisings against the Bol­ sheviks in Petrograd, Sormovo, and Izhevsk in 1918.52 Socialist Revolution­ aries associated with the labor m ovem ent had always been on the left wing w ithin their party. T hey were anti-Bolsheviks who opposed Kolchak. Right M ensheviks and SRs realized fully th at if the Reds cam e back they would be shot, just as their com rades had been shot by the Reds in Izhevsk.53 U nder the 49 “C hto D ozhdalis?” Petrogradskaia Pravda (4 May 1919). 50 For the greetings o f workers to Kolchak, see “T h e Ural W orkingmen and the O m sk G overn­ m en t," Struggling Russia, no. 16 (28 June 1919). For the discussion o f workers’ conditions under Kolchak, see “Socialist Activities and Trade U nion M ovem ents in 1919 under A. V. Kolchak. Surveyand FiveA rticles from Sibirskii R abochii,” Nicolaevsky C ollection, series6, box 6, folder I. 51 “Telegram from Tomsk to D epartm ent o f State. Subject: C onditions, W orkingmen and Factories, Siberia, 23 February 1919,” Records, dispatch 861.00.5004.12. 52 Upovalov, K ak m y poteriali svobodu. 55 U pon arrival in Britain, Z h an d arm o v an d Strum ilo publicly stated th at they would have been shot and provided data on workers’ executions by the Bolsheviks in Izhevsk. For the text of their statements: G eneral Federation o f Trade U nions, M anagem ent C om m ittee M eet Russian Trade Unionists (January 1920), 2, Portugeis Archive, Strum ilo folder.

political circum stances they faced, they tried to restore trade unions and safe­ guard workers’ eco n o m ic interests as best they could. Kolchak m ust have realized w hat trem endous strategic significance the in ­ dustrial base in the U rals had. To w in the war against the Bolsheviks w ithout it would be im possible. To w in the workers’ goodwill, Kolchak w ent as far as to allow a congress of workers to assem ble in E katerinburg in June 1919. M ost trade u n io n leaders, no friends of the Bolsheviks, com plained nevertheless of the arbitrary rule o f th e arm y officers. W orkers were autom atically suspect as sem i-B olsheviks.54 If a trade u n io n leader tried to explain th at he was a M e n ­ shevik or an SR and had fought against th e Bolsheviks, that would n o t impress an arm y officer w ho considered all those groups “leftist” and hen ce suspect. S trum ilo later referred to th e Kolchak regim e as kom endantshchina, a rule of arm y c o m m a n d e rs.55 T h e E katerinburg conference decided to send a delega­ tion to Britain to establish contact w ith the L abour party. Officially its purpose was to inform th e British ab o u t Bolshevik m isrule in the Urals. T h e unsaid reason was to gain leverage over u n ru ly W h ite officers through publicity in the W est. Public opin io n in E ngland was still o f great significance for Kolchak, and workers w anted to use this weapon in self-defense. A ccording to an A m erican observers report on industry in the Urals, workers’ conditions deteriorated slightly with the com ing of the W hites. W orkers had to work h arder than u n d er the Bolsheviks, and the pay was lower. S ince th e cost of living was constantly rising and there were no com m odities on the m arket, workers were in a state o f contin u ed unrest and discontent. Factory ow ners, co n tin u ed th e report, “are endeavoring to oppress the workers by strong d iscip lin e.” Wages were paid o n e or two m onths late in banknotes o f large d enom in atio n s th a t w ere im possible to change anywhere. W orst of all, “re­ cently the ow ners an d th e m ilitary have been trying to break up w orkm en’s u nions. A nd m eetings can be held only in the presence of the m ilitary au thori­ ties.”56 M ilitary authorities had very little patience with workers’ expressions of discontent. A case in p o in t was a strike of printers in Tomsk. T h e strikers’ d em ands were econom ic. Political issues were touched upon only briefly. As often happens during strikes, printers w anted to picket, in order to prevent n o n u n io n workers from enterin g th e premises. T h e officer issued an explicit w arning th at picketers w ould be shot on th e sp o t.57 In other places sim ilar w arnings were actually carried out. T h e editor o f a cooperative newspaper, V. M aevskii, was shot for the seditious tone of his new spaper in C helyabinsk.58 54 For the text of the resolution adopted at the Ekaterinburg congress, see ibid., p. I . 55 For the account o f the Ekaterinburg congress and this characterization of the Kolchak regime, see the m anuscript O tc h e t Delegatsii Prof. Soiuzov Urala, 1918-1919,” Portugeis Ar­ chive, Strum ilo folder. 56 “Telegram from Tomsk to D epartm ent of State. Subject: Conditions, Workingmen and Factories, Siberia, 23 February 1919,” Records, dispatch 861.00.504.12. 57 Espe, God v Tsarstve Kolchaka, p. 36. 58 Burevoi, Kolchakovshchina, p. 26.

In this atm osphere of reprisals workers withdrew into apoliticism and strictly econom ic co n cern s.59 W h en the Reds pushed into the Urals in July 1919, workers did not rise to defend the Kolchak regim e, as they had done in defense o f the governm ent of the C on stitu en t Assembly in 1918. T h e Bolsheviks could exploit other industrial regions under their control, b u t Kolchak had only one: the Urals. W h e n it was lost in August 1919, his cause becam e hopeless.

W h ite Terror O n ZZ D ecem ber 1918, barely a m onth after Kolchak had com e to power, bloody events took place in Om sk, the capital of the All-Russian governm ent. A n underground Bolshevik organization was planning an uprising to seize power in the city. Because o f last-m inute arrests, the Bolsheviks canceled the uprising. Nevertheless in the K ulom zino industrial district outside O m sk the uprising w ent ahead. It is not clear w hether the Bolsheviks in K ulom zino failed to receive the message that the uprising was canceled or w hether they decided to go ahead anyway.60 O n e of the few things the insurgents m anaged to accom ­ plish was to send a detachm ent to the O m sk prison, disarm the guards, and release political prisoners. M any arrested m em bers of the C onstituent Assem­ bly, pro m in en t SRs, were am ong them . Som e of them found friends, col­ leagues, and m oney and m anaged to escape. O thers had now here to go. O n the next day the uprising ended in tragedy for those unfortunate workers who had supported the Bolshevik adventure. H undreds of them were brutally killed.61 T h e city authorities issued an order for all those political prisoners w ho had escaped to return to prison. T hey would not be harm ed if they returned volun­ tarily. If they failed to return, they would be shot on sight. A n u m b er of pro m in en t SRs, som e accom panied by their wives, voluntarily returned to prison. W h a t followed was perhaps th e m ost scandalous episode of W h ite terror under Kolchak. D uring the night a detachm ent of I. N. Krasilnikov arrived in the prison and took the prisoners away. T h eir m utilated corpses were later found on the banks o f the river Irtysh.62 T h e case was presented to the public as a crim inal violation of justice by a detachm ent of Krasilnikov. T h e London Times wrote: “Needless to say the governm ent was innocent o f any intention to break faith and Adm iral Kolchak profoundly regrets the in cid en t.”63 59 C oiiins and Sm eie, e d s., Kolchak a n d Siberia, p. xxi; Sm eie, “L abour C onditions and the C ollapse of the Siberian E conom y u n d er K olchak, 1918—1919,” S bom ik: T he Journal o f the S tu d y G roup on the R ussian R evolution, no. 13 (1987), 3 1 -5 9 . 60 “lz D oklada chlenov Sibirskogo T sK a,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 408. 61 C ollins and Sm eie, eds., Kolchak and Siberia, p. xvi 62 Official telegram s on the m u rd er are in Rosett, The R ise o fa N ew Russian Autocracy, pp. 21— 6’ “Bolshevist Position Im perilled,” Tfte Tim es (4 January 1919), 8.

According to SR sources, however, the detachm ent arrived at the prison with valid docum ents.64 T he massacre was not just a violation of legality but m urder sanctioned by the top leaders of the Kolchak regime. T he bodies showed that the victims had been tortured before death. T he body of Nil Fomin, one of the leaders of the Kom uch government, had thirteen wounds. His executioners had tried to cu t off his arm s.65 Neither was this m urder an isolated incident. Indiscriminate terror against all leftists started in the very first hours of the new regime. According to a report on the coup d’etat by the members of the C onstituent Assembly, on 18 November 1919 assembly members held a m eet­ ing in the Palais Royal hotel in Ekaterinburg, the seat of the Congress of the C onstituent Assembly. T he main question on the agenda was how to react to the news that Admiral Kolchak had seized power. T he report went on: “At nine in the evening, a detachm ent of two or three companies of the Fifth Urals Regiment, under the com m and of drunk officers, arrived in the hotel. . . . D uring the assault they threw a bomb, and they tried to kill Chernov with bayonets.”66 Chernov, the chairm an o f the C onstituent Assembly, managed to escape thanks to the help of the Czech guards. In Decem ber 1918 Kolchak sent out a special detachm ent with instructions to capture Chernov, dead or alive.67 Hundreds and thousands of SRs, Mensheviks, and Bolsheviks were seized by the officers. Some were executed on the spot. T he mayor of Kansk, a Socialist Revolutionary, was hanged.68 Many others filled the jails. Only very prom i­ nent ones, and very few of them , were released upon the insistence of foreign diplomats or under the pressure of the C zech Legion officers, who had close bonds with the SRs from the days of joint struggle against the Bolsheviks on the Volga in 1918. According to the SRs, at least 30,000 political prisoners were held in Siberian jails.69 U nder Kolchak there was no one central agency, like the Cheka under the Bolsheviks, to exercise political terror. Like everything else, terror was perpe­ trated by officers and military commanders. It was decentralized in the sense that military com m anders acted on their own, ignoring not only civilian au­ thorities but also their military superiors. T he arbitrary m urder of leftists (broadly defined) was not a violation of norm al procedure but rather the essence of that regime. Melgunov described what was a typical scene on the railroad. A military patrol would check the documents of passengers. Some suspects would be arrested and led away. After that one would never find any trace of them. 64 E. E. Kolosova, “Kak Eto Bylo? (Massovye ubiistva pri Kolchake v dekabre 1918 goda v Om ske),” Byloe, no. 21 ( 1923), pp. 250-98. 65 Rakov, V Zastenkakh Kolchaka, pp. 18-21. 66 “O t Prezidium a S’ezda C hlenov U chreditel’nogo Sobraniia” (19 Decem ber 1918), Ts.P.A ., Fond 274, TsKa PSR, Opis’ I, docum ent 2, p. 15. 67 T schernow [Chernov], M eine Schicksalle in Sowjet R ussland1 p. 12. 68 Burevoi, Kolchakovshchina, p. 26. 69 V. Bobrov, “Po Sibiri i U ralu,” Narod, no. I (17 August 1919).

People sim ply disappeared.70 A ccording to som e Bolshevik reports, W hite counterintelligence agents widely practiced torture to extract inform ation from captured Bolsheviks or SRs about their contacts, com m unications, plans, and so o n .71 D isappearances of leftists, death squads, and executions w ithout trial were com m onplace occurrences under K olchak.72 In addition to counterintelligence and arm y officers who were under the co m m an d of Kolchak, at least in theory, wide-scale terror was practiced by cossack atam ans such as Sem enov, B. V. A nnenkov, and other warlords, who held virtually unlim ited power over the population in their fiefdoms. T h eir reign of terror w ent further th an disappearances o f leftists. T hey staged fullscale massacres: 670 were shot in Ufa by cossacks; 348 were slaughtered in C hita by Sem enov.73 In Ekaterinburg in July an anti-Jewish pogrom claim ed 2,000 casualties.74 By their rule o f terror the W hites succeeded in only one thing. T hey drove all social groups and all political parties into opposition. According to Gins: “the rule of m ilitary cliques, oppressive censorship, arrests, and execu­ tions, all this disappointed even the m oderate dem ocratic circles w ho had earlier supported A dm iral K olchak.”75 T h e W hite terror under Kolchak can be characterized as the unrestrained lawlessness o f war chieftains who vented their hatred and thirst for revenge.

P olitical Parties At first glance the spectrum of political opinion in Siberia consisted of th e same fam iliar nam es as elsewhere in Russia: m onarchists, Black H undreds, Kadets, SRs, M ensheviks, and Bolsheviks. Yet under the im pact of Kolchak’s rule their political attitudes differed from groups belonging to these parties and m ove­ m ents elsewhere in Russia. T h e right wing in Siberia, that is, the officers and warlords and the adm iral him self, were slightly m ore reactionary than D enikin and his m en in the south. Kolchak and his clique behaved as if they were an AllRussian governm ent. T hey acted as if they had already won the war against the Bolsheviks and the tim e had com e to settle accounts with their political opponents. T h e Kadets in Siberia too were to the right of the m ainstream in their party. Partly this was because they were so weak as a party in Siberia. If in E uropean cities the Kadets had com peted well with the SRs in elections and had won m ajorities in som e cities in 1917, in Siberia they had no chance. T h e SR 70 M elgunov, Tragediia A dm irala Kolchaka, p. 78. 71 “Iz D oklada chlenov Sibirskogo T sK a,” Perepiska Sekretariata, vol. 6, p. 409. 72 “K om itet U chreditelnogo Sobraniia i K olchak,” Vsegda Vpered, no. 5 (12 February 1919), I. 73 Flem ing, T he Fate o f A dm iral Kolchak, p. 146. 7'* L incoln, R ed Victory, p. 263. 75 G ins, Sibir', S oiu zn iki i Kolchak, vol. 2, p. 139.

majorities in the dumas and zemstvos were overwhelming. T hat made the Siberian Kadets favor military dictatorship. O f all the political parties in Siberia the SRs played the most im portant role. T he SRs had won 75 percent of the Siberian vote in the elections to the C onstituent Assembly. T heir strength was reflected in the fact that even under Kolchak they held majorities in most city dumas and zemstvos.76 T he SRs also had an asset which no other party could match. They were the leaders of Tsentrosoiuz, a rich peasant cooperative that had substantial financial resources. Moreover, the SR leaders m aintained close contact with the C zech troops, their allies of 1918. They were clearly the strongest party in the region. O n the one hand it was due to the SRs’ willingness to compromise that the Kolchak dictatorship had come into being in the first place. O n the other hand it was largely due to the SRs' role that the Kolchak regime was overthrown before the arrival of the Reds in Irkutsk. T he tragedy of the SR party in Siberia and in the rest of Russia as well was that that party united heterogeneous groups with conflicting identities. It united true socialists and revolutionaries, like Chernov, and people who had long abandoned being revolutionaries or socialists, like N. D. Avksentiev. T he SRs could never agree on a course of action. As we have seen, throughout 1919 on Bolshevik-held territory the party was torn by the struggle of the Narod group with the Central C om m ittee over the issue of cooperation with the Bolsheviks as opposed to an independent struggle against Kolchak. On Kolchak’s territory similar divisions plagued the party. Right after the coup the Komuch leaders declared Kolchak a crim inal, whereas the Siberian Regional Party Com m ittee (Kraikom) did all it could to dam pen active struggle with Kolchak.77 Chernov and the party center denounced the Right SRs for excessive willingness to cooperate with the right-wing officers during the Directory period.78 T he Right SRs N. D. Avksentiev and V. M. Zenzinov saw an agreem ent with the right as the only way to succeed in a struggle against the Bolsheviks.79 They relied on the Kraikom, backed by conservative SR politicians in the dumas, zemstvos, and cooperatives. Clearly one cannot expect unanim ity in any political party while it is con­ fronting crucial decisions during a civil war. AU Russian political parties dis­ played a wide range of opinions and factions. However, the differences in the SR party were m ore profound than in the Menshevik or Bolshevik parties. T he SR party was a microcosm of Russian society at large, with all its contradic­ tions. T h e leaders of the SR cooperatives, or dumas or zemstvos, naturally 76 Grondijs, Le Cas-Koltchak, p. 43. 77 V. Chernov, “ ‘Chernovskaia G ram ota’ i Ufimskaia Direktoriia” (manuscript), Nicoiaevsky Collection, series 7, PSR, box 10, folder 3, pp. 1-49, here p. 8. 78 V. C hernov discussed this policy in his “O taktike obvolakivaniia,” Delo naroda, no. 4 (23 M arch 1919), 2. 79 “Pis’m o Avksentieva k Eseram Iuga Rossii” (31 Oktober 1919), Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, no. I (1921), 115-21.

craved law, order, and norm al m arket activity. From their point of view the Bolsheviks strove to destroy everything that was m eaningful in their lives. Even though the W hites had attacked the dum as, altered the electoral law, and perpetrated arbitrary m urders, they did not reject the principle of dum as, zemstvos, and the free m arket as such. T his explains why initially som e rightw ing SRs regarded the Bolsheviks as a worse enem y th an th e W hites. It is indicative of their W eltanschauung th at the C onstituent Assembly leaders who had escaped from prison trusted the word of the O m sk governm ent th at they w ould n o t be harm ed if they voluntarily cam e back. Yet after several m onths of Kolchak’s rule even th e m oderate SRs had had enough. After the bitter experi­ ence of arrests and executions they began to see the Kolchak regim e as enem y n u m b er one. Political opinion w ithin the SR party in Siberia was shifting to the le ftth ro u g h o u t 1919. T h e party C entral C om m ittee had several plans to overthrow the Kolchak regim e so that arm ed struggle against the Reds could be resum ed and the C onstituent Assembly reconvened.80 In the sum m er o f 1919 the SR C entral C om m ittee was developing a plot to overthrow Kolchak relying on partisan peasant units and backed by the friendly C zech troops. T h e goal was to create a m ultiparty dem ocratic governm ent in Siberia w hich would be able to arrest the Red Arm y’s advance. T h e M ensheviks were invited to join the project. B ut they refused on the grounds that participation by foreign troops would discredit the undertaking. N othing cam e out o f this project in July. B ut in N ovem ber, after the Red Arm y took O m sk and Kolchak’s governm ent was collapsing, the SR-Ied Political C en ter in Irkutsk did take pow er.81 It was too late, however, to orga­ nize any m eaningful resistance to the Reds. M oreover political opinion within the SR party had shifted even m ore to the left than in July.82 T h e tho u g h t of arm ed struggle against the Reds had to be abandoned, and cooperation with them sought w ithin the confines o f the Soviet regime. T h e inconsistencies in SR policies were not m erely inconsistencies of indeci­ sive intellectuals; rather they reflected discrepancies in popular attitudes in Siberia at large. Kolchak had benefited from goodwill in the beginning am ong peasants, workers, and the educated public. N ot only did he fail to preserve this goodwill and build upon it; he was not even interested in trying. Kolchak and his cam arilla of officers paid lip service to national tasks b u t in fact were interested only in revenge and settling scores w ith the hated leftists. T hey wrecked whatever chance there was of an anti-Bolshevik struggle in Siberia. 80 “A letter of the PSR C entral C o m m itte e ,” Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 7, box 8, folder 14. 81 For discussion o f th e activities of th e Political C enter, see Μ. M . Konstantinov, “Poslednie D ni K olchakovshchiny,” in C ollins and Sm ele, eds., Kolchak an d Siberia. 82 For a survey o f political trends in 1919 w ithin the SD and SR parties, see G . Grekov, “Politicheskaia ideologiia v 1919 g o d u ,” Nedelia, no. I (I January 1920), 4—6.

Collapse of the Whites in the South In O ctober 1919 even th e m ost pessim istic of the W hite leaders would n o t have believed th at three m o n th s later the war would be lost. In O ctober one city after an o th er was falling into th e hands of D enikin’s army. As soon as it entered any city, food prices tended to fall, since food supplies were plentiful. Markets reopened, m ilitary parades were held, ch u rch bells rang, solem n services were held, and thankful citizens threw flowers onto the “saviors o f Russia” as their regim ents m arched into Kharkov, Tsaritsyn, O rel, or Kiev. T h e population was w elcom ing th e V olunteer Arm y w ith great affection everywhere. A m ajority of th e population in the cities was Russian and Jewish, and both groups w elcom ed th e W hites for different reasons. T h e educated classes, dis­ possessed and persecuted by the Bolsheviks, naturally looked to the W hites as “saviors and deliverers. ” T h e Russian workers, as we have seen, abandoned the Bolsheviks and in the beginning displayed friendly neutrality to the W hites. T h e Jews were so frightened by the endless pogroms perpetrated by various bands th a t they w elcom ed the establishm ent of law and order, prom ised by the W hites. C ontrary to widespread belief, the Jewish population, m ostly artisans and traders, was initially favorably disposed to D en ik in .85 At least som e o f the socialists, although skeptical o f the W hites, were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. M any Social D em ocrats and Socialist Revolutionaries reestablished city dum as, w hich had been disbanded by the Bolsheviks, and were eager now to engage in the restoration of norm al life. T h e W hites had a trem endous advantage over th e Bolsheviks in th at w hen they entered a city they could reestablish local adm inistration overnight. T h e re was a large pool o f intelligentsia ready to reconvene the dum as and organize the city adm inistra­ tions. Allied aid was com ing in in great quantities: tanks, airplanes, a m m u n i­ tion, field hospitals, and m u c h m o re .84 Everything seem ed to be just fine. It was widely believed that T ula would be taken shortly, and from there the road was open to Moscow. T h e re were of course a few dark clouds on the horizon. T h e V olunteer Arm y was inferior to th e Reds in num bers, b u t it got used to fighting against superior forces, and w inning. T h e Kolchak arm y in the east was now in irreversible retreat in Siberia. B ut the consolation was that the Red units in Siberia were so far away from the E uro p ean theater o f war th at the Bolshevik high com m and could n o t transfer th em to th e south quickly. T h ere were also som e disturbing signs o f d iscontent am ong th e cossacks, an d the “bandit” M akhno’s “crim inal” 83 See th e greeting o f th e Jew ish co m m u n ities leaders to D en ik in in H eifetz, T h e Slaughter o f the Jews in the U kraine in 1919, p. 100. 84 F o rd a ta on allied m ilita ry aid, see L in c o ln , R ed V ictory, p. 200, an d M awdsley, T h e R u ssia n C iv il W ar, p. 167.

bands were a serious problem . But he was far from the front. T his was the reasoning o f the W hites. It was based on the assum ption that a fortunate com bination o f circum stances would rem ain and negative trends would be rendered irrelevant. A peculiarity o f the civil war was th at an advancing side could not afford to stop and recuperate. D enikin was under com pulsion to co n tinue the offensive. H e could not afford to let the initiative pass to the Reds; this w ould have had an adverse effect on the m orale o f his troops, on Allied support, and on confidence in his leadership. His offensive could have been sustained, however, only if the cohesion o f the V olunteer Arm y and the cossack troops had rem ained intact, if a w ell-functioning adm inistration had quickly been established in newly occu­ pied territories, if the railroads to the ports had functioned properly, bringing supplies to the army, and if the arm y itself had been replenished constantly with new recruits dedicated to the cause. D enikin’s offensive was a gam ble from the very beginning. H e had his share of luck due to Bolshevik blunders. His continued success depended on not m aking too m any blunders of his own. As we shall see, he m ade many.

State O rder D enikin vowed to convene a new C onstituent Assembly after the victory over Bolshevism. It would decide the future of Russia’s state order and settle the land and property question. In th e m eantim e an advisory Special C onference of the C o m m an d er in C hief, elected by no one, prom ulgated laws on liberated terri­ tory, laws that were a clear throw back to pre-F e b ru ary 1917. T his situation did not instill confidence in D enikin’s co m m itm en t to electoral politics. To judge from the tone of the official press and from pronouncem ents of key leaders in the Special C onference and the N ational C enter politicians w ho stood behind it, it was very doubtful indeed that any form of representative governm ent was likely to be established in Russia anytim e soon. Papers like Z h izn wrote that in order to avoid arbitrary selection of a state order, a long period of dictatorship— a rule o f “blood and iron”— was necessary.85 D en ik in ’s regim e claim ed that it stood above parties. In fact, o f course, political parties played an im portant role. Kadet politicians were advisers to the Special C onference and to D enikin himself. T hey did not exactly shape D en i­ kin’s policy, b u t neither were they com pletely w ithout an input. Som e critical decisions were taken under their influence or persuasion. D enikin decided, for exam ple, to subm it to the authority of Kolchak in June 1919, largely swayed by the argum ents of Petr Struve.86 O n the other hand the Kadets were now here 85 “A rm iia i vlast’,” Z h izn (28 O ctober [8 November] 1919), 2. 86 Pipes, Struve, p. 276.

close to being a ruling party. As tim e w ent on, liberal-m inded Kadets found them selves in th e role o f critics o f th e W hites rather th an supporters. In any case the truly loyal press hailed th e independence o f the W h ite m ovem ent from the parties. In “A rm y an d Pow er,” for exam ple, the new spaper Z h izn wrote: “It is the h eig h t o f injustice to lay u p o n the arm y only sufferings, difficulties, and responsibilities and to deprive her representatives o f a possibility to influence th e process of constructing th e state order of the fatherland w hich they are saving. . . . Faced w ith th e incom parable heroic deeds of the army, political parties m ust step aside not only o n paper b u t in real life as w ell.”87 T h e W hites never form ally b anned th e Socialist R evolutionary party or the Social D em ocrats. T h e SDs had a m o re powerful influence on D enikin-held territory, and the SRs in Siberia u n d er Kolchak. T his was because the M en ­ sheviks had their social base of support in the cities and industrial centers, and the SRs relied on th e peasantry. Even though individual party m em bers were harassed by arm y officers, party organizations co ntinued to exist, assemble, publish newspapers, organize trade unions, and participate in local elections. In fact they could do m ore u n d e r D en ik in ’s dictatorship in the south than u n der th e C o m m u n ist dictatorship in th e n o rth . T h e right-w ing press argued, how ­ ever, th a t political parties had wrecked Russia once and th at salvation lay in a dictatorship o f th e saviours and deliverers, the W h ite army. T h e newspaper G reat Russia wrote: “Let us n o t be afraid o f words. To let the Socialist Revolu­ tionaries com e to power m eans to let the gang of Bolsheviks com e in through a n o th er door. T h is is as clear and sim ple as the m ultiplication tables. ”88 D e n i­ kin h im self shared these views. For him th e SRs and the M ensheviks were only slightly better th a n th e C om m unists. T h e y could not be trusted, and they had to be w atched closely.89 W h e n th e Reds took a city durin g th e civil war, th eir goal usually was to establish total C o m m u n ist control over all spheres o f life and to restructure social, econom ic, an d political relations. W h e n the W hites took a city, their goal was to restore th e original relations. Property was returned to owners. O ld nam es, th e old calendar, and old institutions were reinstated. However, these policies u n leashed a right-w ing backlash o f such proportions th at the leaders of th e W h ite regim e could n o longer control or contain it. As a result, the W hites’ policies in th e cities pushed away the very social groups— liberals and m oderate socialists— w ho were w illing to support them . To their chagrin, th e socialists discovered th a t by “old institutions” the W hite officers m e a n t not pre-Bolshevik b u t pre—February 1917 ones. W h ere civilian 87 “Arm iia i vlast’,” Z h izn ’ (28 O ctober (8 November] 1919), 2. 88 Reprinted in V. Arkhangel’skii, “Stavka na sil’nykh,” N a rubezhe, no. I (1919), 9. 89 This is clear from the report o f the Proganganda D epartm ent o f the Special Conference on Political Parties and Organizations, "Sekretnaia svodka otdela propagandy Osobovo Soveshchaniia o politicheskikh partiiakh i organizatsiiakh,” T s.G .A .O . R., Fond 446, Denikin, Opis’ 2, docu­ m ent 8.

adm inistration was restored, it was not to the elected city dum as but to the appointed city boards (uprava). In m any cases the governors were old-regime tsarist officials. Som e o f them were outspoken supporters of a resolute struggle against w hat they called the Bolshevik-Jewish conspiracy against Russia. V. Obolenskii, then a m em ber of a zemstvo board and a supporter of D enikin, described the people in the local W hite adm inistration: “In the localities we saw in power bureaucrats, careerists in the best case, and in the worst, m alicious, vengeful, and cruel restorationists [of the old order], who settled accounts with their political opponents; or sim ply people corrupted by the chaotic times, that is, speculators and crooks, who strove to use their power to enrich themselves at the expense of the people or the treasury.”90 From the socialists' and liberals’ point of view, the kind of people to w hom the officers handed over civilian adm inistration were reactionaries. As if to dissipate any lingering doubts as to D enikin’s intentions, the Special C onference of the C om m ander in C h ief prom ulgated a law on elections to the new dum as w hich heavily favored prop­ erty owners and disfranchised broad categories o f workers.91 W hen even that did not help, the W hites simply disbanded city dum as, as they did in Kharkov.92 D enikin’s regime appeared to be a right-wing m ilitary dictatorship. Yet this is inaccurate because the word dictatorship implies a certain degree of control, as with the Bolshevik dictatorship. T h e W hite regime did not control m uch. Most of D enikin’s orders and the laws of the Special C onference rem ained on paper. If the W hite regime had lived according to the laws it prom ulgated, it would have been a step backward in com parison with the provisional governm ent and a step forward in com parison with the dictatorship of the C om m unists, simply because a bad rule of law is better than no rule of law. T h e reality under D enikin was that arm y officers were above the law. No civilian was going to tell them w hat to do. Army officers acted increasingly as a superior caste to w hom all of Russia had to be grateful.95 Even well-wishers of the W hite regime, including its m ain supporters on the international arena like Struve, grew increasingly disillusioned with the progressive degeneration of the W hite army from an elite well-organized force into a gang of looters.94 M any took advantage of the chaotic conditions of the civil war to enrich themselves. C orruption was pervasive. Tons and tons of am m unition, uniform s, and field hospitals never reached the front. According to D im itry V. Lehovich, a sympathetic biogra­ pher of Denikin: “Illegally acquired m erchandise— foodstuffs, salt, canned 90 V. O bolenskii, “Krym pri D enikine,” N a chuzhoi storone, no. 8 (1924), 5 -5 5 , here 16. 91 For the text o f the electoral law, see "Pravila o proizvodstve vyborov v glasnye gorodskikh D u m ,” in “D enikinshchina i rab o ch ie,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, vol. 5, no. 28 (1924), 6 6 -6 7 . 92 “Razgon K har’kovskoi D um y,” Nachalo, no. I (17 August 1919), 3. 95 M iakotin, “Iz nedavnego proshlogo,” N a chuzhoi storone, no. 9 (1925), 2 7 9 -3 0 3 , here 2 9 3 94 Pipes, Struve, p. 279

goods, liquor, clothing, lin en , uniform s from G reatB ritain , all these were sold and resold on th e black m arket by speculators. ”95 Allied observers were appalled to see Allied m ateriel surface on th e black m arket in great quantities. “V ictory over Bolshevism , ” “N eeds o f th e front”— these were just words from newspaper editorials. In reality the provincial officials’ hatred of Bolshevism did n o t stop th em from robbing their own defender, the W h ite army, the only hope they had. Im m ediate gain was m u c h m ore im p o rtant th an victory over Bolshevism. A ccording to G eneral V. Z . M ai-M aevsky, o n e o f the key leaders of the W hite arm y, corru p tio n was not lim ited only to the adm inistration in the rear: “T here is robbery on a grand scale o f governm ent property captured from the Bol­ sheviks an d o f th e private belongings o f th e peaceful population, perpetrated by individual arm y m en , sm all bands, an d w hole m ilitary units, w ho often oper­ ate w ith the connivance and even the approbation of their com m anders.”96 T h e W h ite m o vem ent as a m ov em en t of honest, patriotic, dedicated officers w ho had won victory after victory against superior Bolshevik forces was lim ited to several thousand m en. As to others— rearguard officers, m erchants, finan­ ciers, investors, landlords, governors, and adm inistrators, the crowd that filled restaurants in R ostov-on-D on— they were mostly, according to V. O bolenskii, “Robbers, extortionists, insulters of dignity and ho n o r, this scum o f war fronts, this gangrene o f th e rear, w hom th e population encountered at every step. Looking at th em , th e population judged the V olunteer Army as a w hole.”97 T h e W h ite regim e established by the W h ite m ovem ent was a conglom eration of self-seeking, corrupt, ancien regim e careerists and bureaucrats, m otivated by personal gain, social fears, and n ational prejudices.

Workers It is often m ain tain ed th at if there was one social group th at rem ained loyal to th e Bolsheviks u n d er D enikin it was the workers.98 In the U krainian cities workers were a diverse group. T h ere were Russian workers and U krainian, workers at sm all enterprises and at large plants, workers prejudiced against Jews and workers w ho supported U krainian nationalists or the V olunteer Arm y or th e Social D em ocrats. In fact workers’ attitudes varied from city to city and also changed over tim e. A ccording to th e Social D em ocrats, “in the initial period, considerable groups o f th e proletariat in Kiev em braced the appeals o f the ideologue o f the V olunteer A rm y.”99 An SR worker wrote w ith regret th at in the beginning o f 95 96 97 98 99

L eh o v ich , W h ite a g a in st R ed, p. 347. Ib id ., p. 326. V. O b o len sk ii, “Krym pri D e n ik in e ,” N a chuzhoi storone, no. 8 (1924), 16. L in c o ln , R ed V ictory, p. 223. K u ch in -O ra n sk ii, D obrovol’cheskaia zuba to vsh ch in a , p. 12.

W hite rule the predom inant attitude am ong workers was that “with this govern­ m ent it is possible to live. ”100 At num erous enterprises workers sent telegrams expressing their support for the V olunteer Army: “T h e m eeting o f the workers of the tram park sends greetings to G eneral D enikin7 the leader of the people’s Russian V olunteer Army7 for its heroic deeds for the sake of the Russian lan d . ”101 A workers’ delegation from the locom otive plant took part in the citywide celebration during General D enikin’s entry into Kharkov. 102 Several thousand workers greeted D enikin in Odessa. 103 In their num erous speeches to workers W hite leaders em phasized Bolshevik atrocities, promised better living conditions, and extolled patriotism and a sense of duty (Denikin him self spoke to worker audiences in Kharkov and Odessa) .104 In V oronezh7 for example, an arm y officer addressed railway workers w hen the Reds were approaching the city w ith these words: “If you believe in us, if you believe in our righteous and sacred task, help us, com e with us. Struggle with us n o t for some socialist b u t for our Russian m otherland, for Holy Russia, for our Russian state." 105 T h e workers started shouting hurrah and joined the W hite battalion. G ener­ ally speaking, the patriotic appeal o f the W hites was a powerful propa­ ganda weapon. AU worker pro-W hite organizations began with a patriotic tu n e but soon ended with rabid anti-Sem itism . In Kiev and Odessa m ore workers were involved in right-wing workers’ organizations than in Kharkov and Ekaterinoslav. 106 Kiev becam e the center of a pro-W hite, anti-Sem itic workers' organization led by K. F. Kirsta, and Kharkov was the base of the Menshevikled C ouncil o f Southern Trade Unions. Kirsta’s O rganizational C om m ittee was set up in early Septem ber, im m e­ diately upon the departure o f the Reds. It claimed to represent twenty-six enterprises in Kiev. T h e M enshevik-led Provisional Bureau of Trade Unions in Kiev claim ed an equal num ber, but the real m em bership figures cannot be verified. T h e m ain point of Kirsta’s ideology was Russian nationalism and m ilitant anti-C om m unism . Kirsta’s paper, Put’ Rabochego, argued that the Bolsheviks and semi-Bolsheviks (Mensheviks) had ruined Russia and that only in national and patriotic unity lay salvation. “T h e workers’ m ovem ent in our country m ust be national in character. . . . we workers m ust openly say that we are R ussian. ”107 T h e paper recruited workers for the Volunteer Army. A few weeks later Kirsta’s paper turned increasingly anti-Sem itic. It was not just the 100 PaveI D ergachev, “V Tsarstve Belykh,” Naroci7 n o .2—3 (10 M arch 1920), 7 —10. 101 K uchin-O ranskii, Dobrovorcheskaia zubatovshchina, p. 14. 102 Kolesnikov, Professional'tioe dvizhenie i kontrrevoliutsiia, p. 250. 103 Ibid., p. 251. 104 D . Kin, “Kirstovshchina i M en ’sheviki,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, no. 4 (1926), 125—57, here 135-36. 105 “V oronezhskie rabochie,” Azovskii Krai, no. 13 (20 D ecem ber 1919). 106 Kin, “Kirstovshchina i M en ’sheviki,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, no. 4 (1926), 130—33. 107 K uchin-O ranskii, Dobrovol'cheskaia zubatovshchina, p. 43.

Bolsheviks who had ruined Russia but the Bolsheviks and the Jews, the Interna­ tionalists, and the semi-Leninists (meaning the Social Democrats). Attacking the Menshevik C ouncil of Southern Trade Unions, Put’ Rabochego wrote: “These are shirye Talmudists, who cannot part with their yarmulkes on their heads. They, together with the Com m unists, have led Russia and the Russian workers to the abyss.”108 Kirsta’s columnists kept asking the Social Democrats what their attitude was to the Volunteer Army which had liberated Kiev from the Bolsheviks. They stressed the point that under the W hites workers could elect representatives to their own independent unions but under the Reds that was impossible. T he Mensheviks found themselves on the defensive and avoided the issue alto­ gether. They attacked the Kirsta unions for splitting the workers’ m ovement but not for supporting the Volunteer Army. Kirsta’s unions liked to present them ­ selves as defenders of workers’ needs. Even though Kirsta and the Social D em o­ crats never missed a chance to exhibit their m utual hostility, what they wanted to do for workers was remarkably similar: both wanted to help the unemployed, restore production, and set favorable wage tariffs. AU the Mensheviks could do was to offer old-fashioned trade unionism. But in this case patriotic and Russian nationalist unions backed by the authorities gave them strong competition. T h e C ouncil of Southern Trade Unions was a m oderate socialist organiza­ tion. Although the Menshevik Central Com m ittee favored a resolute struggle against the W hite regime, including armed struggle, the union leaders had other priorities.109 Most of them were old-time Social Democrats who had been involved in trade union work since 1905 or earlier. Their priority was not to lead workers to the barricades for a reunification with Soviet Russia but to defend the workers’ social, economic, and political rights. They set up mutual aid funds for the unemployed and arbitration boards. They established a work­ ing relationship with entrepreneurs and opened workers’ clubs focused on bargaining and compromise. T h eto n e o fm o st of their declarations, letters, and everyday business com m unications shows that their m ain concern was to im ­ prove the workers’ plight amid unem ploym ent, changing currencies, tem por­ ary administrations, and unpredictable shifts of the front line. From the Bolshevik point of view they were hirelings of the bourgeoisie. The Bolsheviks later accused these SDs of collaboration with the W hite regim e.110 From the Moscow Mensheviks’ point of view they were not revolutionary 108 Kolesnikov, Professional’noe dvizhenie i kontrrevoliutsiia, p. 121 109 “Rezoliutsiia TsentiaYnogo komiteta R SD R P ” (30 A ugust 1919), PSR Archive, R SD R P Collection. 110 For the text of the Bolshevik charges and proceedings o f the trial of Kiev Mensheviks in 1920, see Partiia m enshevikov i Denikinshchina, here pp. 11-15; “Delo Kievskikh M en’shevikov,” Izvestiia TsIK (24 M arch 1920). For the M ensheviks’ defense o f their actions, see “Le ‘C om plot’ de Kiev. Declaration du Com itd Central du parti m encheviste,” La R ipuhlique Russe (18 October 1920), 3.

enough in their opposition to the W hites. T h e C C w ent as far as to expel the Odessa and Rostov-on-Don organizations from the party.111 T h e Moscow Bolsheviks’ and M ensheviks’ wrath was addressed to the wrong quarters. T h e u n io n leaders simply reflected the interests o f their constituency. Later the SDs adm itted that, after the rule of the Cheka, workers did not want to hear anything about socialism or “political struggle.” At the trial of Kiev Mensheviks in 1920 the Bolshevik prosecutor asked: “Have you called upon workers to struggle with D enikin? Have you called upon the working class to help Soviet power? Answer: It was out of the question to call upon workers to struggle, because when D enikin’s adm inistration arrived our comrades, who were generally well known and respected am ong the workers, could have been beaten up for a call to struggle against D enikin. Workers would not listen to any of this. 12 It was the workers themselves, not the M ensheviks, who showed apoliticism , lack of involvem ent, and withdrawal into local and professional concerns and even partly into anti-Sem itic nationalism . If there was danger that a pro-W hite, anti-Sem itic workers’ m ovem ent m ight arise, the W hites themselves paradoxically did m uch to undercut it. T h e W hite leaders were always suspicious of workers as secret sympathizers with the Bol­ sheviks. T hey were reluctant to believe that Bolshevism am ong the workers was gone, at least for the m om ent. Yet they were swayed by argum ents advanced mostly by the Kadets that to com bat “Bolshevism ,” the workers’ econom ic situation should improve. New labor laws were supposed to address the workers’ social and econom ic needs in the hope that workers would stay away from politics.113 T h e C om m ission on Labor Legislation under the Special C onference of the C om m ander in C h ief invited representatives of the business com m unity and of the trade unions to take part in the preparation of the new laws. W orkers’ delegates were elected at the Congress of Southern U nions in early August and agreed to take p art in the work of the Com m ission on Labor Legislation. M ost of them were representatives of trade unions united in the C ouncil of Southern Trade U nions led by the Mensheviks. T h e com m ission opened its work in Rostov-on-Don in Septem ber. T he workers’ delegation presented its declaration: T h e Special C onference o f the C om m ander in C h ie f o f the Armed Forces in the South o f Russia is a consultative legislative institution under military authority and therefore cannot be recognized under any circum stances as authorized to express the ,1J Volin, M en sh eviki na Ukraine, p. 131. 112 Partiia men'shevikov i D enikinshchina, p. 28. 115 G uidelines of this policy are in D enik in ’s letter to the chairm an of the Special Conference, G eneral Dragom ilov, “Pis’m o D enikina po fabrichno-zavodskomu zakonodatel’stvu na im ia predsedatelia Osobovo Soveshchaniia G enerala D ragom ilova,” T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 439, D enikin, O pis’ I, docum ent 41.

interests o f the people. In view o f this, the workers’ delegation rejects in advance any responsibility for the result o f work in the Com m ission on Labor Legislation created under the Special C onference. Having received a mandate from workers’ organiza­ tions in the south o f Russia to defend working-class interests in this com m ission against encroachm ents on the part of the ruling classes and state authority, the workers’ delegation states that the proletariat o f Russia will not abandon under any circum stances its demand for freedom o f association, an eight-hour day, and for all other achievem ents o f the February revolution. 114

After two sentences th e speaker was interrupted, and the delegation walked out in protest. T h e generals wanted to m ake one point very clear. T hey were willing to tolerate workers’ bargaining for better wages and working conditions but not their involvem ent in politics. T h e p art of the trade un io n s’ declaration that was not allowed to be read m akes clear why the generals did n o t w ant to hear it: Under the pretext o f the struggle with Bolshevism, arbitrary actions against workers’ organizations, unlawful interference in their activity, arrests, and summary acts o f violence against labor leaders do not stop. In Poltava the [local chapter] presidium o f the C ouncil o f [Southern] Trade U nions was arrested for discussing whether to take part in the work o f the C om m ission on Labor Legislation. T he union members were arrested and beaten up. In Krem enchug several trade union leaders were arrested despite the fact that the Society o f Factory and Plant Owners as well as other organizations vouched for them . In Ekaterinoslav the chairman o f the Factory C om m ittee of the Bryansk plant was shot and killed for an “attempt to flee.” 115

U nder th e W hites, paternalistic speeches by D enikin were com bined with the arbitrary rule o f local com m anders. A strike was im m ediately labeled sabotage, and the troublem akers were labeled Bolsheviks. O bolenskii recalled that Ya. A. Slashchev, th e governor-general o f C rim ea, once told him that he had six arrested Bolsheviks w ith h im on th e train. H e intended to bring them to the front line and let them go. T h a t frequently m ea n t being shot either by the W hites or by the Reds. O bolenskii inquired who these Bolsheviks were. Two of the nam es were fam iliar to him . T h ey were well-known M ensheviks in C rim ea. H e explained to Slashchev that the arrested m en were M ensheviks, not Bolsheviks, that they were very popular am ong the workers, and that the surest way to cause a strike was to arrest them . Slashchev agreed to release them if the trade u n io n leaders prom ised in return that there would be no strikes. 116 Slashchev, n o t the court, decided who was a Bolshevik and w ho was not, who was to be sh o t and w ho spared. 1H “K om m issiia po R a b o ch em u Z ak o n o d atel’stv u ,” Iuzhnoe slovo, no. 18 (26 S eptem ber 1919). 115 C ited from Pokrovskii, D en ikin sh ch in a , pp. 8 9 -9 3 . 1,6 O b olenskii, “K rym pri D e n ik in e ,” N a chuzhoi storone, no. 8 (1924), 4 5 -4 6 .

D enikin's adm inistration quickly lost credit am ong the workers, for the sim ple reason that one could not eat patriotism . T h e econom ic situation in the W hite-held territory declined rather than improved as tim e went on. T h e exchange of currencies hit workers badly. Rising prices and ever worsening chaos with the food supply and railways makes one wonder how anything could have worked at all. Increasingly workers went on strike. T h e W hite adm inistra­ tion responded with antistrike laws, arrests of troublem akers (“Bolsheviks”), and arbitrary executions. T h e sym pathetic neutrality with w hich workers had wel­ com ed the W hites gave way to anxiety and later to frustration and anger.

The Countryside T h e W hites inherited the social problem w hich had earlier bedeviled the Bolsheviks. T h e Ukrainian countryside was in upheaval. Partisan warfare be­ cam e alm ost a way of life for m any peasants. T h eir local bands had becom e their only guarantee against the possible arbitrariness of the central govern­ m ent. T here had been so m any of them in Ukraine: the G erm ans, H etm an Skoropadsky, the Ukrainian Directory, the Soviets, and now the W hites. Itwas not an easy task for any adm inistration to win enough confidence from the peasants so that they ceased arm ed struggle and supported the new regime. T he peasants’ instinctive reaction to changing adm inistrations was to hold on to their arms and see w hat the new authorities were up to. T he W hites’ social policies, however, quickly dispelled the peasants’ wait-and-see attitude, and guerrilla warfare resum ed, now against the W hites. T here were two factors in the record of the W hites that brought about the peasants’ discontent: the agrarian legislation and the actual behavior of m ilitary com m anders in the countryside. T he Special C onference of the C om m ander in C h ie f prom ulgated a law based on the principle of inalienable private prop­ erty of land. T h a t m eant that the lands seized in 1917 from the landlords had to be returned to their legitim ate owners. T h e C onstituent Assembly, which would be reconvened after the victory over Bolshevism, was going to settle the agrarian question in its final form. Such a prospect certainly did not instill m u ch enthusiasm for the W hites am ong the peasants. Furtherm ore, they were ordered to deliver one-third of their 1919 crop to the landlords.117 T his was a clear indication that the W hites represented the old regime and would restore the peasants’ hated obligations to the landlords. According to General A. S. Lukomsky: “T here were, unfortunately, . . . cases where form er landlords, assisted by sym pathizing officers and m em bers of the local adm inistration, and protected by troops, not only recovered from the peasants the agricultural 117 Pokrovskii, D enikinshchina, p. 171.

im plem ents and cattle stolen from them , but vented their vengeance in reprisals.”118 T h e W h ite arm y was m oving so fast that it was difficult if not impossible to organize a properly functioning supply system. In fact this was not even tried. T h e W hite com m and decided that the army should supply itself from the local population. As an A m erican observer explained: “D uring D enikin’s advance in August and Septem ber 1919 the service of supply was neglected and becam e so inefficient th at the troops had no other resort except to live off the country. Official permission to do so quickly degenerated into licence and the troops were responsible for all kinds o f excesses. Localities that welcomed them as deliverers w ithin a m onth cam e to detest th e m .”119 Even if requisitioning had been orderly and proper, with receipts and com pensation later, it would have been a difficult undertaking. It was hard for peasants to part with their horses or carts for a piece of paper. Attempts to requisition food under com pulsion, however, very often degenerated into plain robbery. V olunteer and cossack regim ents took whatever they pleased w ithout any account or receipt.120 They acted like conquerors who had no bonds to the land or its people. T his was the case in both the Ukrainian and the Russian provinces. Disorderly requisitions and the threat o f force led to arm ed resistance, as the Bolsheviks had found out and as the W hites were about to. As an eyewitness described: “T h e advance of D enikin was at first hailed with great joy by the population, and flowers were showered on the troops in the liberated cities. T h e W hite terror, however, w hich followed, caused the population to change its attitude and even to go against the W hites, forming partisan detachm ents in the rear of D enikin’s arm y.” 121 Perhaps th e m ost notorious case of plain robbery was G eneral Κ. K. M am on­ tov’s raid into Bolshevik-held provinces, particularly in Tambov. Conceived as a m ilitary operation to disrupt the Red Army rear, the raid quickly degenerated into a self-enrichm ent cam paign. T here was an air of carnival about it. As in the T im e of Troubles, it was a free-for-all now. Join the band, ride a horse, take whatever you want. Kill the enemy, life is short, enjoy it now — these were the motifs often heard. M am ontov’s cavalrym en seized gold and icons and sam ­ ovars and so m any goods that their transport was sixty kilometers lo n g .122 They 118 L ehovich, W hite against R ed, p. 331. For a discussion o f the landlords' cam paign to seize their estates by force from peasants, see also “D on, K uban’, T erek,” Listok “Dela naroda,” no. 6 (1919), PSR Archive, folder 2003. 1,9 From R earA dm iral N ew ton A. M cCully, U .S . Navy, to Secretary of State, 19 May 1920, Records, dispatch 861.00,7082. 120 Mawdsley, T he R ussian C ivil War, p. 208. 121 T h is is from a report of a Latvian Red Cross official, Andreas Friedenberg, filed with the Office of the C om m issioner of the U .S. for the Baltic Provinces of Russia, Riga, 14February 1920, Records, dispatch 861.00.6630. 122 L ehovich, W h ite against R ed, p. 290.

had to abandon some of their loot because they did not have enough carts to take it along. It did not look like an army liberating the population from the Bolsheviks but rather like a large horde out to loot the peasants. At that tim e some uezdy of Tam bov Province had already been in rebellion against the Bolsheviks. O n e m ight have expected that they would support the W hites. Yet M am ontov’s deeds and countless rapes of peasant girls had the effect only of slowing down peasant desertion from the Red Army and even brought some deserters back into the ranks. Self-enrichm ent and robbery of the population on behalf of state authority was not, o f course, a m onopoly o f the W hites. As we have seen, the Bolshevik Cheka practiced this on a grand scale as well. T h e difference between the two was that although m uch loot rem ained in the hands o f the Cheka agents, they passed som e along to the state. T h e riches seized from the propertied classes did contribute to sustaining the Bolshevik adm inistration. T h e loot taken by M a­ m ontov and other W hite com m anders for the most part rem ained in the hands of the looters. It did not contribute to the sustenance of the W hite adm inistra­ tion. T he high com m and discouraged such practices but was powerless to prevent them . T he W hites got a bad nam e and no tangible gains. As a result peasant resistance to the W hite adm inistration flared up in sev­ eral regions. T h e m ost well-known case was that of Nestor M akhno. His band, it should be recalled, had fought against the Bolsheviks and, once they were gone, against the W hites. T his band had about 15,000 rebels, a for­ m idable force of m ounted fighters, about a fifth of the entire W hite army stren g th .123 M akhno’s band created havoc in all o f central Ukraine behind the W hites’ front line. T hey seized entire cities: Aleksandrovsk, M ariupol, and even Ekaterinoslav. T h e rebels disrupted com m unications, railroads, and tele­ graph lines. T hey m ade huge parts of the supposedly W hite territory ungovern­ able. T h e W hites had to divert precious fighting units from the front against M akhno. M akhno’s peasant bands defeated three regular regim ents of the W hite arm y and took 500 soldiers and 120 officers prisoners o f w ar.124 T he W hites had broken into central Ukraine largely due to M akhno’s rebellion against the Bolsheviks. Now the roles were reversed. T h e Bolsheviks were the beneficiaries of M akhno’s fight against the W hites. Equally im portant but far less known were the G reen bands of peasant rebels in the Black Sea coastal a re a .125 Som e of them were Russian peasants, others descendants of U krainian cossacks. They were as bitter about W hite rule as M akhno. T h eir strength was at least 20,000, and although deep in the rear of the W hite territory their m ilitary significance was enorm ous because Allied war m ateriel was com ing to Novorossiysk port and had to be shipped along the only 123 K ubanin, M akhnovshchina, p. 84. I2·* Ibid., p. 86. 125 N . V oronovich, “M ezh Dvukh o gnei,” Arkhiv Russkoi Revoliutsii, vol. 7, pp. 53 -1 8 4 , here pp. 102—3. V oronovich was one of the leaders o f the Greens.

railroad to Rostov, Kharkov, and the front line. T h e partisans frequently dis­ rupted this rail link, causing a lot of dam age.126 In th e area around Kiev and Odessa, D enikin’s forces cam e in contact with U krainian national units of Sim on Petliura. T hey too had fought against the Bolsheviks. Now they faced the W hites in an uneasy truce, w hich in some places exploded into open warfare. From the point o f view o f the W hites, Petliura’s forces were at best separatists and at worst traitors to Holy Russia. T he W h ite high co m m and fought for Russia, united and indivisible, and Ukraine in th eir m inds was a part o f Russia. T hey did not w ant to use the nam e Ukraine and referred to it as Small Russia. T his was of course insulting to the Ukrai­ nians. In Odessa the W hite and Ukrainian forces coexisted with each other som ehow, but north o f Kiev the W hites deployed troops badly needed against the Bolsheviks against Petliura instead. N either could D enikin establish a true partnership with the only ally he had— the cossacks. T h eir contribution to the W hite cause was crucial, perhaps decisive. T h e Kuban cossack lands had been the base o f the W hite arm y since the very beginning of the arm ed struggle in 1918. And it was the uprising of the D on cossacks in the spring of 1919 th at cleared the way for the V olunteer Army toward the Volga and central Russia. Both the W hites and the cossacks under­ stood th at they were dependent on each other. Since the cossacks were so im p o rtan t to the W hite cause, the W hite com m and kept a close watch over the political life of the cossackry and felt a need to control it. T h e cossack leaders resented this tutelage and constantly tried to assert their own autonom y. W hen the V olunteer Arm y was locked in cossack lands in early 1919, it was very accom m odating to the cossack leaders. T h e m ore territory the W hite army gained, however, the m ore it felt itself an all-Russian army, superior to the “regional” force o f the cossacks. T h e cossacks, on the other hand, held on ever m ore tenaciously to their local parliam ent (called the “C ircle” on the D on and the Rada in Kuban), w hich defended their autonom y vis-a-vis the W hite high com m and. T h e paradox o f the situation was that the greater were the successes o f the W hites at the front, the greater was their pressure on the cossacks to com ply with w hat they called “all-Russian” tasks and the weaker was their alliance. Som e politicians in the D on cossack C ircle and the Kuban Rada were con­ sidering the idea of creating a Southern Russian U nion, a federal structure based on equal status o f representative institutions of the areas liberated from the B olsheviks.127 T h e plan was not to separate from Russia but to create a m odel for dem ocratic unification of Russia after victory over the Bolsheviks. T h e approach underscored the fact that the Rada recognized D enikin’s m ilitary authority as com m ander in chief but no t his civilian authority over elected 126 M . D obranitskii, “Z elenye partizany,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, no. 8 (1924), 7 2 -9 8 . 127 For discussion o f the Southern Russian U nion project, see a report o f the local SRs to the C C , “D o n , K uban’, T erek,” Listok “Dela naroda," no. 6 (1919), PSR Archive, folder 2003.

regional parliam ents. It postulated that the role of the arm y in unifying Russia was lim ited to com bat only and that elected institutions would take charge of political affairs. This plan am ounted to a direct challenge to the civilian author­ ity o f the V olunteer Army. W h at had an even m ore devastating effect on relations between the W hites and cossacks was that the chairm an of the Kuban Rada, N . S. Riabovol, was m urdered by unknow n officers who were never caught. Since Riabovol de­ fended the principles o f federal and republican order w hich the W hites were trying to curtail, the m urderers of the cossack hero were perceived as defenders of the W hite cause. M ore than anything else this m urder underm ined the m orale of the cossack units at the front. 128 Political differences between the W hites and the cossacks were well expressed in a letter to the Kuban Rada by a m em ber o f the D on C ircle Assembly, P. M . Agaev. A lthough the W hites perceived cossack leaders who advocated republican order alm ost as Bolsheviks, the letter makes it very clear that the Kuban and D on cossack leaders were ardently anti-Bolshevik. T h e letter put it this way: “It is a fact that the cossacks . . . already for two years have carried on a hard struggle against the traitors to the m otherland, with the worst enem ies o f the laboring Russian people— the C om m unists, commissars, people’s comm issariats, councils on economy, rev­ olutionary com m ittees, Chekas, and other creatures and wolves of Soviet para­ dise. ”129 T he letter argued that the cossacks had proved their dedication to the cause of saving Russia from Bolshevik despotism and expressed indignation at the labels pinned upon the cossacks by the W hites, labels calling them semiBolsheviks and separatists. T h e cossacks’ so-called separatism, the letter claim ed, was in fact their desire to protect their legislative assemblies from the encroachm ents of the Special Conference o f the C om m ander in Chief, an institution w hich no one had elected or empowered to issue orders or laws to the cossacks or anybody else. If instead o f the overthrown dictatorship o f the proletariat you try to establish som e other kind o f dictatorship, we will not subm it to it, because we have risen in revolt against on e dictatorship in the nam e o f freedom for us and for the w hole people and n ot for the sake o f another dictatorship. . . .W eh a v estru g g led a g a in stth ev io len ceo f the Bolsheviks for the sake o f freedom o f our m otherland. And the C onstituent Assem bly freely elected by all citizens we consider to be the only sym bol o f this freedom . 130

T h e letter defiantly attacked the land legislation of the Special Conference. It said the interests of the people were being sacrificed to the interests of the 128 “O nastroenii na K ubani v sviazi s ubiistvom R iabovola,” T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 446, D en i­ kin, O pis' 2, d ocum ent 5. 129 Pokrovskii1 D enikinshchina, p. 233. 130 Ibid., p. 234.

landlord class. Agaev condem ned the arbitrariness of the counterintelligence agency, w hich perpetrated arrests “not only of the Bolsheviks, but also and prim arily o f democrats, cooperative workers, and Socialist Revolutionaries. ”131 This explicit defense of Socialist Revolutionaries and of the C onstituent As­ sembly is a clear indication that the center-left wing of cossack political leaders perceived m oderate socialists as political allies. O ne would not have expected political sympathy from the cossacks for Nestor M akhno, a form er ally of the Bolsheviks. Yet Agaev’s letter criticized the W hites for fighting M akhno instead of seeking political accom m odation with him . Furtherm ore Agaev sharply attacked the antinationality policy of the W hite com m and. T h e Ukrainians were friends and allies of the cossacks, the letter stated. T h e Petliura forces fought heroically against the Bolsheviks. Yet instead of regarding them as allies, the W hite com m and opened up yet another front of the civil war, this one against the Ukrainians. Agaev reiterated ideas popular in Kuban, in favor of federative bonds with liberated areas including Ukraine and Georgia, for a com m on alliance of self-governing regions and republics which would serve as a basis for the unification of the whole country. T h e letter prophetically warned the W hites: "In the nam e of our true love for united and indivisible Russia, we ‘separatists’ are telling you: abandon your reckless play in estate privileges and caste prejudices, because otherwise you who m onopolized the idea of patriotism run the risk of ruining the cossackry and losing united and great Russia forever. ”132 Agaev’s letter was read aloud at the Kuban Rada Assembly and greeted with thunderous applause. It was printed in tens of thousands of copies and disseminated widely in Kuban. As an act of defiance the place of the m urdered chairm an of the Rada, Riabovol, was left vacant. T h e high com m and perceived this as an act o f rebellion and decided to deal with the Kuban “separatists” sternly. 133 Twelve Rada m em bers who had propagated “separatism ” were arrested. O ne “separatist” was hanged. General Wrangel pressured the Kuban Rada to change its constitution. T he cossack assembly com plied, but the sense of being hum iliated rem ained, and the strain between the allies intensified. Hostility to the W hite officers was on the rise, and cases of desertion in the cossack regiments increased. U nder the conditions of continued success at the front, the strain between the cossacks and the W hites was containable. But the first defeats exposed m utual hostility. W h en the Red cavalry successfully pierced the front in N o­ vember, the cossacks stalled. O nce out of danger of W hite retribution, m any units withdrew from the front and began a unilateral retreat toward their hom e­ lands. They lacked neither am m unition nor horses. They abandoned positions because their confidence in W hite leadership had broken after the first defeats. 151 Ibid., p. 235. 152 Ibid., p. 236. 155 G eneral Filim onov, “Razgrom Kubansboi Rady,” Arkhiv Russkoi Revoliutsii, vol. 5 (1922, reprint Moscow: Terra, 1991), 32 2 -2 9 , here 329.

A British observer reported: “A strange paralysis crept over K uban’ Cossacks who deserted from the front in large num bers exposing their own country to attack. T hey were not Bolshevists. They were simply unw illing to fight. "J34 T he W hites treated the cossacks as provincial separatists and showed no understand­ ing or appreciation of their traditions and dignity. T he paradox of history was that the W hites achieved their greatest successes thanks to the contribution of the cossacks, and they suffered their worst defeats in large m easure because cossack dedication to the W hite cause was shaken. 135 Alm ost everywhere on the territory occupied by D enikin (Ukraine, the N orth C aucasus, and southern Russian provinces: Tsaritsyn, V oronezh, Kursk, and Orel) the countryside was in upheaval: the G reens along the seacoast in the south, the grum bling Kuban and D on cossacks to the north, M akhno’s rebels in the center, and Petliura's Ukrainian forces in the west. T he W hite leaders themselves realized that they faced a hostile population. T h e D epartm ent o f Propaganda under the Special Conference (OSVAG) reported in the fall that am ong those drafted in the arm ed forces there were “hidden Bolsheviks” who could not be trusted at the front. OSVAG proposed to deploy them in the rear for construction work. 136 State authority could sustain that hostility for a long tim e and even suppress it under conditions of external peace, but it could not sustain an offensive with that kind of a rear during a civil war. T h at is actually why, once the W hites began to retreat, there was now here to stop and nothing to hold on to. T h e countryside under D enikin’s control was extremely diverse. Various strata of peasants opposed the W hites for their own reasons, but there was no unity am ong them either. T h e m ain lines of conflict were between the cossacks and the Russian peasants who had settled on cossack lands. T hey were called inogorodnie, outsiders. These outsiders had actually lived on cossack lands for several generations but still were not considered cossacks and were deprived of electoral rights in the Circle or Rada assembly. T h e hostility between the cossacks and the outsiders was exploited by both the Bolsheviks and the W hites. T h e Bolsheviks recruited m any outsiders to their armies, profiting from the peasants’ hostility to the cossacks. T he W hites and their supporters am ong the cossack leadership accentuated the cossacks’ superiority over outsiders and thus resisted any concessions to them . T h e predicam ent of the peasant party, the SRs, on D enikin’s territory was that it was caught in the m iddle of social tensions that had nothing to do either 134 "T he Tragedy o f D enikin," The Tim es (30 M arch 1920), 13. 135 Mawdsley does not think the break with the cossacks was a m ajor cause o f defeat. See The R ussian C ivil War, p. 209. A ccording to Lehovich, D enikin did. See W h ite against Red, p. 350. 136 O td e ! propagandy Osobogo Soveshchaniia” (9 Septem ber 1919) and "Prilozhenie k politicheskoi svodke no. 22 5 ,” signed by Statskii Sovetnik Shum akher. T h e do cu m en t was sent to W ashington. See Records, dispatch 861.00.6320.

with the W hites or with the Bolsheviks. Secret correspondence of the SR Central C om m ittee with local organizations in the cossack lands suggests that the SRs’ strategy was to try to overcome the division between the cossacks and the outsiders. T he SRs’ prem ise was that both social groups did not like either the Bolsheviks or the W hites. It was in the interests of both to safeguard the autonom y and self-rule of their regions. T h e left wing in the Rada was working for broadening the franchise to include the outsiders as well. It was not an easy task, because cossacks cherished their privileges. Yet political trends in the Kuban Rada in the late fall o f 1919 imply that some kind of settlem ent between the cossacks and the outsiders was possible, because the Kuban Rada passed an SR draft on land u se .137 T h e left-wing cossack politicians who had com e to dom inate the Kuban Rada in late fall were not acting on behalf of the SR C entral C om m ittee. O n the other hand their speeches, decrees, and federative plans for Russia, and especially their ardent defense of the C onstituent Assem­ bly, are unm istakably in accord with the SR political platform. Equally difficult for the SRs was the problem of M akhno's and Petliura’s bands. M akhno was in open rebellion against Denikin, and Petliura’s Ukrai­ nian forces tried desperately to preserve peace with him . In a letter to local organizations the SR C entral C om m ittee wrote that since the PSR favored arm ed struggle against the W hites, peasant bands were their natural allies. As far as Petliura was concerned, the C C explained to local organizations that they should not be afraid of playing into the hands of Ukrainian separatists. Petliura relied on the masses of Ukrainian peasants, and therefore the SRs should not oppose him . T h at did not m ean that they had to agree with all of Petliura’s goals. T he SRs could campaign for a federation of Russia with Ukraine at the future C onstituent Assembly. In the m eantim e the slogan of the day in regard to the Petliura bands was “Go Separate Roads, but Be Together.”138 T hat m eant that since Petliura was an opponent of the Bolsheviks and the W hites, he was an ally of the SRs. T h e SRs wanted to act as a unifying force am ong the cossacks, the outsiders, M akhno’s peasant rebels, and the Ukrainians. T he secret Central C om m ittee letters to local organizations m ade it clear that the SRs hoped to overcome the W hite dictatorship from within. W ithout the W hites the self-governing re­ gions, united in a federation, would have becom e a m agnet and a m odel for others to follow in overthrowing the Bolsheviks. T he plan was never realized largely due to insurm ountable hostility between all those forces in the country­ side who opposed both the W hites and the Bolsheviks: Petliura versus M akhno, cossacks versus outsiders, and M akhno versus cossacks. 1.7 “D on, K uban’, Terek,” Listok “Dela naroda,” no. 6 (1919), PSR Archive, folder 2003. 1.8 PSR C C letter to local organizations, “Vsem organizatsiiam PSR ,” Biulleten TsKa P SR (3 D ecem ber 1919), PSR Archive, folder 2004.

Terror As soon as the W hites captured a city, a search for “Bolsheviks” would com ­ m ence. In Kiev, for example, by the tim e the W hites came, an underground officer organization had composed a list of “Bolsheviks. ” O ne hundred fifty were seized. 159 It was enough for someone to point a finger, “He is a Bolshevik,” and army officers would shoot the suspect on the spot. W hat is striking about the W hite terror is its arbitrary, chaotic, ill-conceived, and poorly organized but bloody character. In many cases W hite terror was a result of the free-for-all chaos prevalent in the “liberated” territory. As the Bolsheviks labeled their political opponents W hite Guardists, so did the W hites label their opponents Bolsheviks. In fact often they were not Bol­ sheviks at all, but Mensheviks or SRs. It was simply convenient to label some­ one a Bolshevik in order to execute him quickly. Two Menshevik trade union leaders in Kharkov, Hofman and Babin, were thus executed. 140 In Kiev an SR city dum a m em ber, a Jew, was killed at point blank range. O f course no one was ever punished for this murder. No one was safe. Dozens of arbitrary executions w ithout trial or any investigation were reported in a variety of docum ents. 141 A denunciation that someone was a hidden Bolshevik was often enough for that individual to be arrested and to disappear. Field officers and especially counter­ intelligence could do whatever they pleased without account to any authority. V. Obolenskii, who served at that tim e as a chairm an of the zemstvo board in Crim ea, recalled that when the W hites took Crim ea, a schoolteacher came to him complaining. She had joined the People’s Socialist party and had never supported the Bolsheviks. Someone informed the counterintelligence that she was a “socialist.” She was arrested, and an army officer ordered two soldiers to whip her in his presence. 142 Those who had been members of local soviets at whatever level were charged with state crime. Flimsy definitions of what consti­ tuted “Bolshevism” generated all kinds of settling of accounts, denunciations, and total disregard for legal procedure. Obolenskii recalled num erous examples of people simply disappearing or being killed arbitrarily by the counterin­ telligence death squads. Obolenskii wrote m em orandum s to General Denikin on num erous occasions. Denikin responded: “Yes, I know, I know all this. But what can I do? T h e entire Russian people is corrupted now. And since it is corrupted, it is stealing and behaves disgracefully. We struggle against it, we do 139 “Zhestokaia R oza,” Narodnaia gazeta, no. 122 (28 August 1919). H0 “Rasstrely Khar’kovskikh rabochikh,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta, no. 155 (10 July 1919), 2. H1 See “Pis’m a s lu g a ,” Delo naroda, no. 10(30 M arch 1919), 3;“D on, K uban’, Terek,” Listok “Dela naroda," no. 6 (1919), PSR Archive, folder 2003; “Rabota Ukrainskikh Belykh,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta, no. 138 (23 June 1919), I; “Razgon Khar’kovskoi D um y,” Nachalo, no. I (17 August 1919), 3. Hz Obolenskii, “Krym pri D enikine,” N a chuzhoi storone, no. 8 (1924), 10.

all we can, but to root it out will be possible only after the end of the civil war. ”1« As has often happened in Russian history, Jews were blam ed for all the m isfortunes that befell Russia. Food prices rose in Rostov; the Jews were to blam e. T h e press blam ed speculators, implying that the speculators were Jews, the allies of the Bolsheviks. This kind of reasoning clearly incited pogrom s.144 Particularly notorious in this regard was the newspaper Kievlianin, edited by Vitalii Shulgin in Kiev. Countless cases were reported in which army officers and soldiers were involved in arbitrary m urders o f Jews. An eyewitness de­ scribed a scene on the railroad to Kharkov. T hree soldiers entered the train and asked: “Are there any Jews?” They began searching, arrested an old m an, and took him to the com m andant of the station. “W h at are you accused of?” he asked. “T h at I am Jewish. ” T h e com m andant let him go. But at another station the unfortunate Jew was dragged out again, while another soldier described how he never asked anything o f the com m andant but m ade short shrift of Jews him self.145 Upon entry into a small Ukrainian town the cossacks would begin a system­ atic plunder of Jewish neighborhoods, accom panied by rape and murder. Usually this was done either upon taking a city from the Bolsheviks or before departure. Entire regiments of both the Volunteer Army and of cossacks staged pogroms. In some cases these scenes were described not as blind rage or revenge but as entertainm ent. W hat is most disturbing is that the local population, both in Russia and in Ukraine, on m any occasions eagerly took part in the pogroms. According to a Bolshevik source, “Orel is a very narrow-m inded, gray, and musty town. Even D enikin’s officers were surprised by the Black H undred—type disposition of the local inhabitants. . . . And they participated eagerly and actively in the pogrom, plundering everything in the Jewish neighborhood. ”146 D uring the pogrom in Ekaterinoslav almost all Jewish shops were looted, hundreds of wom en raped, and hundreds m urdered.147 Equally bloody was the pogrom in Kiev. It was a result of the Reds’ breakthrough toward Kiev in midOctober. For five days the Reds “ruled” Kiev and then were forced to retreat. T h e W hites returned, and a search for “collaborators” began. T he “patriotic” paper Kievlianin started writing articles about Jews helping the Reds, and angry 145 Ib id ., p. 15. 1 « "Priicaz V oisku D o n s k o m u ,” Z h iz r i (2 6 O cto b er [8 N ovem b er] 1919), P S R A rch ive, folder 2054. 145 Pokrovskii, D e n ik in sh c h in a , p. 108. 146 “B ely e v O rle," Iz v e s tiia , n o . 2 5 4 (13 N o v em b er 1919), 3. I f th e B olsh evik so u rce had p in n e d th e b la m e o n th e W h ite officers on ly, it w ou ld h ave fitted better w ith the B olsh evik propaganda lin e . T h e fact that th e lo ca l p op u lation w as b lam ed as w ell m akes it u n -B o lsh ev ik and p la u sib le. 147 D . Z akharov, ‘“ N a tsio n a l’naia p olitik a’ i p o g ro m y ,” N a ru bezh e, n o . 4 ( 1 6 D e c e m b e r 1919), 6 -9 .

W hite officers staged a pogrom .148 Jewish neighborhoods were pillaged, women raped and killed, and even the liberal U nion of Liberation, usually friendly to the W hites, sent a deputation to Denikin to protest against lawless­ ness. 149 This ordeal was repeated over and over again in dozens o f Ukrainian towns. According to the Red Cross Com m ittee, in a small town of Fastov: “T he Volunteers searched all the Jewish houses. T he furniture was dragged out of the houses or destroyed. W om en were violated. AU imaginable kinds of tortures and cruelties were perpetrated on the Jews. Even children of six weeks were slaughtered. T h e num ber of dead am ounts to from 1,500 to 1,800."150 Pogroms were very m uch a part of the free-for-all kind of anarchy prevailing in Denikin-held territory. They were results not so m uch of official policy as expressions of the profound anti-Sem itism of certain categories of officers, cossacks, and the urban social strata. T he Menshevik-led C ouncil of Southern Trade Unions sum m arized the situation in its protest declaration: A new wave o f horrors, similar only to those in the M iddle Ages, has rolled across the south o f Russia, tormented as it has been by a two-year-long civil war. From various cities and shtetls in the former Jewish pale news is com ing in about pogroms, rob­ beries, and savage violence com m itted upon the defenseless Jewish population. T h e press is deprived o f the possibility to present these facts to the public. Sinister rumors are spreading am ong the populace about more and more pogroms. Statistical data on pogroms are on the rise. Facts abound w hich stagger the hum an mind. An absolutely unbearable atmosphere has been created, poisoned by the evil o f hatred o f people, naked violence, and total im punity for the most horrible o f crim es— the murder of the in n ocen t. 151

T he council claim ed that the pogroms were instigated by W hite officials and that none of them had been brought to justice. T he wave of pogroms in the sum m er of 1919 was perhaps the worst Russia had experienced up to that time. According to a scrupulous, detailed, and heartbreaking study, based on inter­ views o f survivors and extensive docum entation submitted to the Allies by the All-Ukrainian Relief Com m ittee, 120,000 deaths were recorded as a result of pogroms perpetrated by Denikin’s Volunteer Army. To those victims tens of thousands m ust be added who suffered at the hands of cossacks and atam an bands, and even greater num bers of those raped, injured, or robbed. Hundreds of thousands, well over a m illion Jews, went through this agonizing experience of pogrom s.152 H8 A. A. G ol'denveizer, “Iz Kievskikh vospom inanii,” Arkhiv Russkoi Revoliutsii1 vol. 6, pp. 161-304, here p. 269. 149 K uchin, Dobrovol'cheskaia zubatovshchina, pp. 90 -9 3 . 150 Heifetz, The Slaughter o f the Jews, p. 111. 151 “Rezoliutsiia protesta Iugprofa protiv Evreiskikh pogromov,” in Koleskikov, Professional’noe dvizhenie i kontrrevoliutsiia, pp. 40 2 -3 . 152 Heifetz, The Slaughter o f Jews, pp. 180 and 182. T h e official nam e of the com m ittee in question was the A ll-Ukrainian C om m ittee for the Victims of Pogroms, under the auspices of the

As in so m any other respects, D enikin’s approach to social and political problem s was to pretend that they did not exist. Later things would improve, was his m otto. He adopted the same attitude in regard to Jewish pogroms. M any of the Jewish leaders pleaded with him to issue a strongly worded declaration denouncing the pogroms. D enikin responded that this would be m isun­ derstood as his taking the side of the Jews. Rum ors would start spreading that D enikin had “sold him self to the Jews,” and in the end worse pogroms m ight o c c u r.155 W hatever the validity of this reasoning, Denikin continued to issue warnings and appeals but never fought anti-Sem itism resolutely. A decent m an, D enikin was a weak political leader. He failed to enforce his own moral standards on the army he led and on the adm inistration he headed.

Agony T h e speed of the collapse of the W hite regime in the south was truly extraordin­ ary. W hen the Red cavalry broke through the front line at the end of Novem ber 1919, the retreat of the W hite regiments turned into a rout, an unstoppable roller coaster all the way to the ports. Kharkov fell on 12 D ecem ber, Rostov-onD on on 10 January 1920, Odessa on 9 February, and Novorossiysk in M arch. W ithin three m onths it was all over. A huge territory populated by over 40 m illion people from the Black Sea to Orel was lost. Only in C rim ea the rem ainder of W hite army m anaged to survive for a year. In a bitter letter to General D enikin, General P. N. W rangel, who replaced him as com m ander in chief, explained: At the very tim e w hen the V olunteer armies were victoriously advancing on M oscow and your ears were listening to the sound o f the bells o f Moscow, in the hearts o f m any o f your subordinate com m anders alarm crept in. T hese armies, without training, and subsisting by robbery, afflicted with drunkenness, in w hich its chiefs led, and disor­ ganized by their exam ple, were not the armies to save Russia. W ithout an organized rear, w ithout on e prepared position or chain o f com m unications, retreating through places where the population had learnt to hate it, the Volunteer army, on ce the retreat began, was forced to m ove precipitously. 154

T he departure of one regime and the establishm ent of another was usually the most painful and traum atic period for a province or town in question. International Red Cross. See also the same figures in D. Zakharov, “ ‘Natsional’naia politika' i pogrom y,” N a rubezhe, no. 4 (16 D ecem ber 1919), 6—9. A nother source cites the figure of 100,000 for 1919; see K uchin, OobrovoVcheskaia zubatovshchina, p. 75. 153 Lehovich, W hite against Red, p. 329. 154 A copy o f this letter, dated 18 [28] February 1920, was enclosed in a dispatch to W ashington: “From R earA dm iral Newton A. M cCully, U .S . Navy, to Secretary o f State, 19 May 1920,” Copy “A ," Records, dispatch 861.00.7082.

D eparting officers lost all restraint in th e ir panic and fear and settled accounts on the spot. In Kharkov ab o u t two tho u san d people were executed before the W hites ab an d o n ed th e city .155 In Kiev five h u n d red were hastily ex ecu te d .J 56 A typical scene in those hectic days o f D ecem ber 1919 in m any southern cities was bodies h anging from lam pposts am id chaos at the railway stations, cluttered roads, rum ors o f all kinds, p anic, an d hopelessness. T h e cossack population was especially frightened by th e prospect o f a return o f the Reds. T h ey were going to pay dearly for th eir alliance w ith the W hites. T ho u san d s and th o u ­ sands o f local residents in D o n an d K uban lands took off on foot, fearing C o m m u n ist reprisals. A British pilot observed from the air the flight o f refugees in K uban. As to the sentiment generally of the cossacks with regard to the Soviets, about 100,000 of them fled from their homes when Red forces occupied the territory to Eastward of the sea of Azov. This num ber is quite well verified not only by reconnaissance of aviators who reported a stream of refugees sixty miles in length, women, children, cattle, pigs and whatever could be taken along, fleeing southward in the middle of March 1920. From other sources, the fact undoubtedly existed. It is the only definite fact bearing on the attitude of the populations toward the Reds, and whether they were justified or not in doing so, nevertheless this number of peasant population of the cossack territories believed themselves in such danger from the Reds that they abandoned everything they could not carry along and fled from their hom es.157 V andalized cities, corpses hanging from lam pposts, pogrom s and terror, and tens o f thousands o f refugees— these were th e images o f the agony of the W h ite cause. D espite su ch chaos an d confusion, th e m ain ingredients of the political situation in m any so u th ern cities durin g th e last days o f the W hites were rem arkably sim ilar. State au thority ceased to exist. If there was any authority at all, it passed on to organizations like the d um as or trade unions, w hich tried to m ain ta in a sem blance of order, disrupted as it was by the debauchery of drunk en arm y units an d by all kinds of gangs, thieves, and robbers. In Odessa, according to an A m erican observer, a powerful organization, the C entral C o u n c il o f T rade U nions or “M ensheviks” as it was called, em erged as a rallying cen ter o f authority. It established co n tact w ith Allied representatives in an effort to p revent violence and assure orderly evacuation, and it appealed to the A llied au thorities to prevent th e execution of political prisoners by the collapsing W h ite adm inistration. 155 Pavel Dergachev, “V Tsarstve Belykh," Narod, no. 2 -3 (10 M arch 1920), 7 -1 0 . 156 Kin, “Kirstovshchina i M ensheviVi," Proletarskaia Revoliutsiia, no. 4(1926), 125-57, here 154. 157 “Present C onditions in D on, Kuban’ and Terek” (19 May 1920), Records, dispatch 861.00.7081.

The city was full of rumors that the lives o f detained prisoners were in danger, that lists had been made of prisoners who were to be shot in case the authorities should leave the city, and that the intention was to take away all political prisoners who were to be punished to som e other place, more convenientfor this purpose. . . .T h e C o u n c ilo f Trade U nions o f Odessa thinks that it is its duty to apply to the authorities to prevent the possibility o f such events. Any violence toward unprotected prisoners might have very undesirable results and in case of a change in regime would provide an extra pretext to kill everyone suspected o f having supported even indirectly the actual situation. In order to protect the security o f all classes o f the population in Odessa, the council insists that no death sentences should be carried out. 158

In the first days o f February 1920 it becam e known that a Red detachm ent of eleven thousand was advancing toward Odessa from the direction of Nikolaev. T h e V olunteer Army, or w hat was left of it, num bered two thousand. T hreefourths of the officers retreated “w ithout keeping contact with the advancing Reds. ” Even in this situation of utm ost danger the W hite officers in Odessa did n o t organize any m ilitary effort to defend the city. T h e prevalent m ood am ong them was apocalyptic resignation. A British officer described their feast during the plague: “Odessa was full of officers, variously estim ated at tens of thousands and they appeared to be spending all their tim e in restaurants and cafes. M any took to drinking and carousing to such an extent that the peaceful inhabitants were as m u ch afraid o f them as they were of the Bolshevists. ”159 T h e only arm ed force willing and capable of defending Odessa was the Allies. B ut the cru m ­ bling W hite authority failed to do anything to assist them in their effort. A ccording to the Allied report, six arm ored trains under British officers, “fully m an n ed , gradually becam e functionless” because they had no coal. Gangs of thieves and bandits ransacked Jewish neighborhoods. “Shops of Jews were often broken into, usually by V olunteer arm y officers, and in several instances these officers were caught and shot on the spot.”160 In this atm osphere of chaos the local Bolsheviks rose up w hen the Red units were two miles from the city. Odessa was plunged into panic, from w hich there was no recovery. According to an A m erican officer, a m ajority of th e Odessa population were against the Bolsheviks and wanted only law and order, while the V olunteer Arm y was “poor in m orale, corrupt in affairs, disloyal, unpatriotic and rotten to the co re.”161 It was every m an for him self now, even at the expense o f wives and 158 O b ra s h c h e n ie Soveta Professional’nykh Soiuzov” (5 February 1920) was enclosed in a dispatch to W ashington. See “From R ear A dm iral Newton A. M cC ully, U .S . Navy, to Secretary o f State, Subject: O dessa, Fall of, m ade by L ieutenant C o m m an d er H am ilton Bryan, R eport on the E vacuation of Odessa (30 J a n u a ry -9 February 1920),” Records, dispatch 861.00.6649. 159 “A Russian Exodus: T h e ‘W h ite’ C ollapse,” The Tim es (20 April 1920), 13. 16 ° “F to m Rear Adm iral N ew ton A. M cC ully, U .S . Navy, to Secretary of State, Subject: O dessa, Fall of, m ade by L ieutenant C o m m an d er H am ilton Bryan, R eport on the E vacuation of Odessa (30 J a n u a ry -9 February 1920),” Records, dispatch 861.00.6649. Ibid.

children. Thousands o f people were trying to board several Allied ships to escape Bolshevik retribution. A British officer of the SS Rio Negro described the scene at the Odessa port in those last hours before the Bolsheviks’ arrival: I shall never forget the m om ent we shoved off from the wharf in Odessa. AU the m orning the firing in the town continued to increase, particularly m achine-gun fire, and it was obvious that soon the harbour would be untenable. At 11 a . m . we were ordered by the naval authorities to leave the harbour as quickly as possible, and our M arine guard w hich had been lent to guard our gangways were ordered to return to their ship. T his they proceeded to do at the double, and we have since heard that they had to fight their way back. T he w harf was, of course, crowded with people who had not been able to get on board, and it was dreadful to see women standing there imploring to be taken off, even going on their knees and raising their hands in supplication. After we had cast off and were actually moving away from th e wharf a lady held up a little boy o f perhaps five or six years old, and was apparently begging us to take him . I had a rope thrown on to the wharf, and she m ade it fast to the boy’s shoulders and threw him into the sea, and we hauled him on board very frightened indeed, but otherwise no worse. And so we left Odessa; we were the last British ship to leave except, of course, the cruiser, w hich left immediately after us, and of the unfortunate people who were left on the quay it is reported that several hundred were massacred, the Bolshevists deem ing the fact o f their being there with baggage as sufficient evidence of their being anti-revolutionaries. 162

Obviously the Allied ships could not possibly evacuate all who wanted to leave, and strict quotas were established for each ship. According to an American report: It is estimated that not less than 12,000 women and children and 6,000 m en, women, and children of the literary, scientific and professional classes who should have been evacuated, were left b eh in d .163

T he population’s fears o f the Reds were justified. Hundreds of officers caught in the city were executed, even those wounded and in the hospitals. 164 Reports from various cities all depict the same picture of the arrival of the Reds. It was a massacre of officers, rape o f “bourgeois” wom en, robbery of “bourgeois” neighborhoods, and settling o f accounts with all those who “collab­ orated with the W h ites.” W hen S. M . Budennyi’s cavalry took Rostov, it was allowed to plunder “bourgeois” neighborhoods for three days. As in Odessa, W hite officers who had stayed in the city were seized in the streets and in their 162 “Rescued from Odessa: Escaping the Red T error,” The Times (25 May 1920), 12. 163 “From Rear Admiral Newton A. M cCully, U.S. Navy, to Secretary of State, Subject: Odessa, Fall of, m ade by L ieutenant C om m ander H am ilton Bryan, Report on the Evacuation of Odessa (30 Ja n u a ry -9 February 1920),” Records, dispatch 861.00.6649. 164 Bechhoffer-Roberts, In D enikin s Russia, p. 134.

hom es and executed on the spot. W ounded officers were finished off in the hospital. Som e “class enem ies” were burned alive. Shops were looted.155 Red Arm y soldiers had not seen such well-stocked stores since before 1917. T hey discovered that workers in Rostov were paid 50 percent higher wages than in the land o f the victorious proletariat. Prices for all com m odities im m ediately rose, shops closed, and sem istarvation rations were introduced, as in the rest of Russia. A few days later the C heka established its headquarters, and a m ore systematic terror against “the enem ies of the revolution” was launched. T he chaos o f the W hites was replaced by the iron rule of the C heka for a very long tim e.

The Fragmentation o f Society A com parison o f D enikin’s and Kolchak’s regimes illustrates well th at even though the ruling elites of both had very little inform ation about the activities of the other and did no t consult with each other, the two W hite regimes were rem arkably sim ilar. T here m ust have been certain basic political attitudes typical am ong the ruling elite of the W hite m ovem ent w hich m anifested th em ­ selves each tim e they tried to “free” Russia from Bolshevism. T h e W hite regimes were not based on the support of law-abiding citizens dedicated to victory over Bolshevism b u t on a conglom eration of social groups out to get som e advantage for themselves and only for themselves. C ontrary to a wide­ spread m yth th at at least the propertied classes supported the W hite regim e, it is better to say th at they supported the W hites inasm uch and insofar as it furthered their interests. An SD paper com m ented: “O n e cannot really say that the broad circles o f the propertied classes actively supported the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army. N either can one say that the broad masses of workers actively support the so-called ‘worker and peasant’ power. Both of them are only waiting. Hopes replace disillusionm ent and disillusionm ent replaces hopes.”166 M erchants could n o t have cared less about state tasks and sacrifice; they tried to jack up their prices and extract m axim um profits. Factory owners tried to squeeze as m u ch as possible ou t of workers to com pensate for their losses under the Bolsheviks. T h e eight-hour day and other attributes of the revolution were throw n out the window. Now they dem anded obedience or else “hidden Bol­ sheviks” would be dealt with accordingly. Landlords wanted their property back regardless o f the im pact this would produce on the m orale of the peasantsoldiers. Landlords set up their own vigilante death squads to settle accounts w ith peasant “Bolsheviks” who had “stolen” their property.167 Eyewitness account, “Na D o n u ,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiiay no. 9 (1921), 31. 166 “V toraia G odovshchina,” Iu zh n a ia gazeta (25 O ctober [7 N ovem ber] 1919), I. 167 O bolenskii, “Krym pri D e n ik in e,” N a chuzhoi storone, no. 8 (1924), 47.

165

T h e Russian civil war was not only a conflict of ideologies, of organized armies fighting against each other and against their own population; it was not only a conflict of the center with the periphery, not only a class conflict, but also a war of society with itself, torn apart by conflicting identities. W ho are we? was the question m any social groups had a hard tim e finding a clear answer to. Are we cossacks, or toiling masses, or Ukrainians or Russians or Siberians? T he answer to that question defined what political authority one was inclined to support— Bolshevik, Ukrainian, W hite, or Green. For the D on and Kuban cossacks, the answer was clear. T hey were cossacks first and Russians second. T h e Russian state cause was subordinate to their local identity and autonomy. For the peasants of central Ukraine in M akhno’s bands the answer was not so clear. T hey defined themselves as toiling peasants and fought against the Bol­ sheviks, who had tried to establish control over them . But they also fought against Ukrainian nationalists and against “reactionary” W hites. Like the cos­ sacks, they were for themselves only. T h e workers were equally confused. T hey had once believed that they were “the toiling masses” and that the dictatorship of labor over capital was their salvation. T h en they discovered that the dictatorship of labor was in practical terms a dictatorship of the Cheka. T hen they encountered the W hite regime in the image of the old master, the whip and an army general dictating labor laws. T h eir response was to withdraw to their narrow class identity defended by their own trade unions. T hey did not care either about “national tasks” or “prole­ tarian revolution” or Ukrainian independence. T heir group identity was their only salvation and retreat. Society under the W hites was not really a society bu t a conglom eration of social groups w ithout any unifying consensus or cohesion. From this angle the W hite regimes com e across as rather helpless victims of group egotism and of the disjointedness of Russian society. These were not dictatorships but fig­ urehead regimes claim ing to be m ilitary dictatorships. In fact they were sliding into chaos and uncontrollable anarchy. W hat appears to be isolated violations of law and order upon closer exam ination turns out to be the very nature of those regimes. AU those ruthless officers, freewheeling cossacks, and corrupt officials were a part of the whole. T hey were the system. N either Kolchak nor D enikin had enough power to enforce their policies. They could not prevent their troops from looting. T hey could not stop arbitrary murders of undesir­ ables, nor anti-Jewish pogroms perpetrated by the troops, appointed governors, and officers, n or could they put an end to corruption and bribery in their adm inistration. Acts of arbitrariness were the result not of centralized control and governm ent policy but rather of the inability of central authority to enforce law and discipline. From this point of view the W hite regimes com e across as hostages of the officer caste and as victims o f social disintegration. Fragm enta­ tion into regional or local loyalties during the civil war prevented any kind of dem ocratic unification based on consensus. Every social group was at odds with

all others. It was a society at crisis, a society at war against itself. T h e Bolsheviks won m u ch m ore due to this fragm entation than to any kind of social support. T h e W hite arm ies overran territory but not the m inds o f citizens. T hey did not m anage to un ite the people on the basis of voluntary acceptance of their authority. T h erein lay the cause o f the Red tide, not in B udennyi’s cavalry attack in N ovem ber 1919.

Part Two ___________________________________ 1 9 20- 192 I

7 T he End of Legal Opposition

The M ensheviks’ N ew Platfonn T h e collapse of Kolchak’s regim e and the defeat o f D enikin’s created an atm o­ sphere o f hope am ong the M ensheviks and SRs that the worst was now behind them and that finally a new chapter would begin in relations between Soviet political parties. T h ere was no excuse anym ore for extraordinary m easures or em ergency rule. Now, they hoped, the Soviet C onstitution w ould be observed. Elections would be held. Optim ists spoke of prospects for Soviet dem ocracy u n d er peacetim e conditions. In fact the opposite occurred. Victories o n the external front em boldened the C om m unists to tighten their grip over the c o u n ­ try. A nd that set in m otion a chain reaction o f protest and repression that ended with the liquidation o f the opposition parties. T h e fundam ental fact of life apparent to everyone in January 1920 was that the Bolshevik regim e was there to stay. T here was no m ilitary force that could defeat the m ighty Red Army. Therefore one had to seek some kind o f accom ­ m odation with the Bolshevik regime. T his was the m ainstream political opin­ ion in the M enshevik and SR parties. T h e question to be resolved was how far, not w hether, to go in this direction. In April 1920 the M enshevik C C took another step toward recognizing the legitim acy of the Soviet order. T his found expression in a report drafted by M artov to the M enshevik party conference: “W orld Social R evolution and the Tasks of Social D em ocracy.”1 This docu­ m en t reduced th e differences on matters of constitutional order between the C om m unists and the Social D em ocrats to a m inim um . T h e O ctober seizure of power was referred to as the O ctober revolution, w hich was described as histori­ cally necessary. T h e dictatorship o f the proletariat was recognized as justifiable, and the goal o f socialist construction was praised in principle. W h a t is rem arkable about this docum ent is its abstract nature. T here was little in it on day-to-day politics. It com es across as an im aginary debate be­ tween M artov and L enin on issues that preoccupied them all their lives: the n atu re of the dictatorship o f the proletariat, socialism, and democracy. M artov went o u t o f his way to establish com m on ground with L enin. T h e report agreed with th e Bolsheviks th at the world had entered the epoch o f the collapse of capitalism and th e trium ph of socialism. B ut M artov added that this would be a 1 T he full text is in “Rezoliutsii Soveshchaniia pri TsKa RSDRP,” Ts.P.A., Fond 275, TsKa RSDRP, Opis’ I, docum ent 70.

lengthy historical epoch and that true Marxists could not attem pt to skip stages in historical developm ent. In Russia some form of the capitalist m ode of production would rem ain for a longtim e. In 1920 L enin denied this, but a year later he cam e to accept this premise. Yes, M artov’s report continued, the SDs were in favor of a dictatorship of the proletariat. But it m ust be in the form of a dem ocracy of all laboring classes; it could not be a dictatorship o f one party.2 For true Marxists the dictatorship of the proletariat was inseparable from the rule of law, representative institutions, elections, and respect for the will of the m ajority o f the laboring classes. In his reasoning M artov took every precaution to prevent L enin from branding him a renegade. He wanted his message to com e across as fair, reasonable, and Marxist. He was trying to convince Lenin that the route to socialism in Russia had to take a dem ocratic path. It was also an appeal to the hearts and m inds of rank-and-file C om m unists.3 At the sam e tim e, however, the SDs claim ed that in fact the Soviet C onstitu­ tion had not been im plem ented. T here was no rule of law in Soviet Russia, nor a rule of soviets. Election rules were systematically violated, and authorities were accountable to no one. T h at was very dangerous for the future of the Russian revolution, since “a possibility is being created for the formation of a state within a state, that is, the transform ation of the organs of repression and police surveillance, generated by the civil war, into an independent and allpowerful force. ”4 T h e Mensheviks saw their m ain political goal as ensuring that the dem ocratic provisions o f the Constitution were respected.5T hey dem anded that the C om m unists adhere to Soviet laws and electoral procedures:6 “Re­ sum ption of the SovietC onstitution and its continued dem ocratization. Estab­ lishm ent of true accountability of all organs o f Soviet power before the workers and peasants’ masses. Proper functioning of and fair elections to the soviets. Freedom of assembly, speech, and association. ”7 T he Mensheviks called on the C om m unists to prove that they desired peace by renouncing the use of force against those states w hich had seceded from the Russian Em pire. In the newly elected M oscow Soviet, in M arch 1920, the Menshevik faction called on the Bolsheviks to grant real econom ic concessions to tens of m illions of peasants by 2 T his idea stands out in M artov’s article “D iktatura proletariata i dem okratiia,” Ts. P. A ., Fond 275, TsKa RSDRP, O pis’ I, d o cum ent 69. 3 RSDRP, M irovaia Sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia i zadachi Sotsial D emokratii, Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 6, box 6, folder 7. Also “R esheniia obshchepartiinogo soveshchaniia, ” Proletarii7 no. 5 (25 April 1920), 2. 4 “Deklaratsiia R SD R P na 7om S’ezde Sovetov," in RSDRP, ed., Sotsial-D em okratiia i re­ voliutsiia, pp. 2 0 -2 2 . 5 See the sum m ary of the M enshevik party line in “Taktika RSD RP v Sovetskoi Rossii” ( 13 July 1920), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 6, box 5, folder 17. 6 “Deklaratsiia fraktsii R SD R P v Mossovete” (6 M arch 1920), in PSR Archive, RSD RP file, d o cu m en t 2020. 7 “Ko vsem Kievskim rabochim i rabotnitsam ,” Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 6, box 6, folder

ren o u n cin g the use of force in its food supply policy. T h e Mensheviks d e­ m anded th at the trade unions rem ain independent workers’ organizations.8 In other words the M ensheviks adopted the position o f constructive and friendly critics. T h eir message to the Bolsheviks was clear: live up to your own C onstitu­ tion, and there w on’t be any grounds for our opposition. T h en one could envision cooperation am ong all socialist parties. T his policy of loyal, legal opposition m ade it difficult for the C heka arbitrarily to arrest opposition leaders for a word of criticism . A significant num ber, if no t the majority, of M enshevik organizations w elcom ed this policy because it gave them a chance to survive, preserving their separate political identity. T h e M ensheviks’ new policy toward Bolshevism was not solely a m atter of political opportunism . T h e course o f the Russian civil war forced M artov to draw conclusions that moved him closer to Lenin. In a frank letter to his old friend and teacher Pavel Axelrod he lam ented that w hat he called Russia’s petite bourgeoisie (that is, the peasantry) and its party, the SRs, had proved incapable of preserving dem ocracy after the Bolsheviks were overthrown in various parts of the country. E ach tim e, political power had slipped from the dem ocrats to the generals. “U nder such conditions the im m ediate suprem acy o f dem ocratic principles in the country now, after a long period of Leninist dictatorship and terror, w ould have produced doubtless a counterrevolutionary situation.”9 In other words Bolshevik terror generated universal hostility toward all socialists. A m ajority of the Russian people were counterrevolutionary, or better to say antisocialist. T herefore, reasoned Martov, the Social D em ocrats had no choice b u t to struggle for dem ocratization of the existing Soviet regime, not for its overthrow. At the root of his reasoning was his fear of peasants, a view shared by m any M ensheviks. As urban intellectuals preoccupied with M arxism , socialism, and the working class, the SDs feared the unbridled and unpredictable fluctuations in peasant political behavior. T h e peasants had welcomed the Bolsheviks in the fall of 1917, then w ithdrew from national politics in 1918, then rebelled against the Bolsheviks and welcomed the W hites as liberators in som e areas, and then rebelled against them shortly thereafter. T h e Mensheviks welcomed conces­ sions to peasants bu t feared the one-m an, one-vote principle. T hey seemed to acknowledge th at the wild gam ble L enin had em barked upon in 1917 could work. A workers’ revolution in Russia could succeed by the resolute leadership of a revolutionary m inority. H ence they were ready to work with the C o m m u ­ nists in a fair system, dom inated by workers, under the rule of law. T heir optim ism was based on the assum ption that the Bolshevik dictatorship and proletarian dictatorship were one and the sam e thing. Yet the Mensheviks 8 Fedor D an , “Revoliutsionnaia Sotsial D em okratiia i professional’nye soiuzy” (speech at the T h ird A ll-Russian Congress of T rade U nions), Proletarii, no. 6 (I M arch 1920), 2. 9 Iu. O. M artov to P. B. Axelrod (23 January 1920), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 17, box 51, folder 2.

themselves on num erous occasions in the past had asserted that the Bolshevik commissars had disfranchised the workers and that the supposed ruling class had no rights in L enin’s Russia. It seems that the Mensheviks shared the view that the Bolshevik dictatorship had nothing in com m on with a workers’ dic­ tatorship. Yet they held on to the fiction of a C om m unist-led workers’ dictator­ ship as a kind of ideal model one should strive for, since that would have opened a way for dem ocratization of the Bolshevik regime through the involvement of the masses of workers. T h e working class had some kind of miracle-making capacity to lead the Russian revolution toward socialism. M uch in the M en­ sheviks’ new platform was a product of wishful thinking and boundless fears. T h e Bolsheviks, on their part, responded favorably to Menshevik concilia­ tory pronouncem ents. Rumors circulated in Russia and abroad that Martov and D an would be offered posts in L enin’s governm ent.10 T h e American embassy in London informed the State D epartm ent: “A wireless message from M oscow asserts that the Soviet government decided that representatives of other political parties will take part in negotiations. Thus the Soviet government affirms their determ ination to conform to the will of the whole nation.”11 M artov felt obliged to com m ent in a letter to Axelrod: “By the way it goes w ithout saying that all the rumors to the effect that I, Fedor Il’ich, and others are going to enter the government are pure nonsense deliberately spread by the Asiaticdiplom atLitvinov. N everhavetherebeen any negotiations or even hints at negotiations.”12 T he Bolsheviks had their own reasons for spreading these rumors. W hether the Mensheviks actually entered the government or not was unim portant. But the impression that the Bolsheviks were conducting negotiations with other political parties helped their image in Europe. M ultiparty democracy and free laboring masses were associated with L enin’s Russia, and reactionary generals and foreign imperialists with the W hites. This at least was the image the Bolsheviks tried to convey to Europe. They needed a positive image in the spring of 1920 in order to pursue their foreign policy goals. O n the one hand they wanted to force Western governments to cease all aid to the W hites and recognize the Soviet regime instead. O n the other they were preparing for the proletarian revolution in the West. It was essential for the Bolsheviks to sustain their claim to be the leaders of the international workers’ movement. They were trying to convince left-wing Socialist and Social Dem ocratic parties that Soviet Russia was in fact the land of the victorious proletariat and that they should send their representatives to the T hird International in Moscow, the headquarters of the com ing world proletarian revolution. For these reasons the Bolsheviks 10 "E n Russie des Soviets,” La Republique Russe, no. 7 (I April 1920), 3. 11 To Secretary of State, “C om pilation W ireless News M arch 1 -2 0 ” (Warsaw, 5 M arch 1920), Records, dispatch 861.00.6638, p. 4. 12 Iu. O. M artov to P. B. Axelrod (23 January 1920), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 17, box 51, folder 2.

abolished the death penalty in February 1920, allowed the Mensheviks and SRs to take part in local elections to soviets, tolerated M enshevik leadership of several trade unions, and prom ised permits for the resum ption of an opposition press.13

Successes and Perils T h e policy of loyal, legal opposition was good for the survival of the SD party. It was attractive to certain categories of workers who felt loyal to the idea o f Soviet power but were angered by the hardships imposed on them by the system of m ilitarized labor. Especially in the south of Russia and those parts of Ukraine just cleared of the W hites, where M enshevik organizations were strong and not yet decim ated by the C heka, the M enshevik political platform was very popu­ lar. This was m anifested in the spring of 1920 by the election returns to the local city soviets. T h e Mensheviks were the clear w inner am ong the workers in Kharkov. T h ey also did very well in Rostov-on-Don, Kiev, and m ost other Ukrainian cities. In their traditional strongholds in Russia, such as Tula, Sormovo, and Bryansk, they showed a remarkably strong vote am ong workers. Even in Moscow the Mensheviks won 50 seats to the city soviet. AU except two of their candidates were elected. M artov wrote with jubilation to a colleague: “Everywhere, where we were able to nom inate candidates, despite the lack of freedom of cam paigning, our candidates w ent th ro u g h .” T h e party gained 50 seats in Moscow, 205 in Kharkov, 120 in Ekaterinoslav, 78 in Krem enchug, 30 in Poltava, 11 in Nikolayev, 30 in Kiev, 20 in Bezhitsa, 50 in T ula, 8 in Tver, 20 in G om el, 15 in Vitebsk, 30 in Smolensk, 20 in Sam ara, and 30 in Irkutsk.14 In a report on the elections the M enshevik C entral C om m ittee inform ed local organizations that the m argin o f M enshevik victories would have been m uch greater if elections had been conducted properly and fairly. In num erous cases the Bolsheviks applied a winner-gets-all rule if they were leading but propor­ tional representation if the Mensheviks were leading. In some cities the party could cam paign unim peded, as in Kharkov, whereas in other cities, such as Iuzovka, Taganrog, and scores of others, no cam paigning at all was possible.15 M enshevik C C secretary B. Skomorovsky wrote to Axelrod about a worker in Moscow, Zaitsev, arrested on the eve o f elections and held in prison w ithout any charges. “T hey have simply removed a com petitor who would have been 13 For the text o f D zerzhinsky’s order on abolition o f the death penalty, see “Vsem G ubcheka. Novye usloviia bor’by s kontrrevoliutsiei,” in Dzerzhinsky, Izbrannye proizvedeniia v dvukh tom akh, vol. I, pp. 199-200. 14 Iu. O. M artov to E. L. Broido (26 June 1920), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 17, box 51, folder 9. 15 “D okladnaia zapiska G lavnogo Kom iteta RSD RP na U kraine” (9 August 1920), ibid., series 6, box 5, folder 46.

elected to the soviet. ”16 Nevertheless, the C C report concluded: “In spite of the difficult and abnorm al conditions the Social Democrats had to face during the election cam paign, elections to the soviets, consum er cooperatives, trade unions, and worker conferences have given our party enorm ous success in the workers’ m ilieu w hich has surpassed all our expectations.”17 M enshevik successes in elections, however, did not and could not bring any tangible participation in local affairs or guarantee the personal security of those elected. T h e soviets in the provincial cities did not have even vestiges of politi­ cal power, and the C om m unists were no longer embarrassed by this. These cities were firmly in the hands of the local CP, the Cheka, and the military, be it in the form of a revolutionary com m ittee, executive com m ittee, or some other com m ittee. AU the M ensheviks could do in a city soviet was to offer a cautious critique o f C om m unist policy, w hich would be voted down immediately. Nev­ ertheless the election returns were im portant for everyone concerned. They gave confidence to the Social Democrats that they had a constituency, that it was a workers’ constituency, and that it was growing. And this rem inded the Bolsheviks that if elections were free and fair the Mensheviks, as in the past, would offer strong com petition. Despite this public affirmation that the SD party was alive, the policy of m aking ideological and political concessions contained serious perils for the M enshevik party. M artov him self m entioned two of them in his letter to Ax­ elrod. T h e first peril was that, with the acceptance of the Soviet system in principle, the M enshevik identity as a political party that stood for a different political and m oral order was severely underm ined. Was it worth all the trouble and hardship of being a m em ber of an opposition party w hen few matters of principle distinguished the opposition from the ruling party? Was it not m ore effective to join the C om m unists and offer criticism from within? Since C om ­ m unist party m em bership guaranteed privileges and above all personal secu­ rity, whereas m em bership in an opposition party brought only perils, many Mensheviks defected to the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1920. M artov lam ented that defections had acquired the proportions of a flood.18 L. M . Khinchuk, the form er chairm an of the Moscow soviet who had denounced the Bolshevik seizure o f power at the Second Congress of Soviets back in October 1917, Ivan Maisky, form er C C m em ber and a m inister of labor in the SR-Ied government of the C onstituent Assembly in Sam ara in 1918, and m any m any other prom i­ n en t old-tim e Social Dem ocrats now switched to the Com m unists. Fedor Dan, in a letter to Axelrod, explained that a “simple desire to participate in social and political life pushed m any active party m em bers to the Bolshevik ranks.”19 Dan 16 B. Skomorovsky to P. Axelrod (25 June 1920), Axelrod Archive. 17 S b o m ik rezoliutsii i tezisov Tsentral'nogo Kom iteta R S D R P i partiinykh soveshchanii, p. 4. 18 Iu. O. M artov to E. L. Broido (26 June 1920), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 17, box 51, folder 9. 19 F. I. D an to P. B. Axelrod (31 January 1920), ibid., series 16, box 45, folder 9.

implied that these people were not content to lim ittheirpolitical career to ritual readings of protest declarations which were ignored and forgotten within m inutes. T h e second peril, according to Martov, was a decline of Menshevik influ­ ence on workers despite electoral successes. As he explained to Axelrod: Tnsofar as we tried to act, we found ourselves in the sad situation which any party defending moderate ideas against fanatics and sectarians encounters in a period of sharp civil war. T hat is, w e had a sympathetic audience, but it was always by far to the right o f us. Follow ing a healthy instinct, all those w ho were suppressed by the Bolsheviks w illingly supported us, as the bravest opponents o f Bolshevism. But what suited them in our preaching was only that part which condem ned and exposed Bolshevism . As long as we condem ned the Bolsheviks, they applauded us, but as soon as we went over to arguing that another regime was necessary for the purpose o f a successful struggle with D enikin and for the final victory o f the international prole­ tariat over reactionary forces, our audience turned cold and even hostile. 20

To retain the support of workers exasperated by the militarized labor system, the Mensheviks needed to sharpen their criticism of Bolshevism; yet to avoid re­ pressions, they needed to m oderate their tone. M artov’s policy was to continue this balancing between the two options, b ut before long it would break down. M artov did not m ention several other perils his policy contained. T h at was done by his critics, the Right Mensheviks. In frank letters to Axelrod, Boris Vasiliev, a party m em ber from its very foundation and chairm an of the Don party com m ittee in Rostov-on-Don, and S. M. Zaretskaia, a C C m em ber in 1917, subjected M artov’s policy to devastating criticism. W hat worried them most was that for the sake of political survival M artov’s policy had led the party to abandon its ideals. Ideological concessions to Bolshevism, argued Zaretskaia, did not and could not secure the party’s survival, because its suc­ cesses in elections were due to its oppositional stance. T he m ore the M en­ sheviks blurred their difference from the Bolsheviks, the less attractive they would becom e for the workers.21 Ideological concessions bred intolerance of criticism and the adoption of dictatorial policies toward critics within the party. Vasiliev wrote: “This manifests itself in the fact that any word of criticism is perceived as a personal insult, and the person who thinks differently is im m e­ diately noted as a ‘suspicious’ person.”22 AU the leading positions in the party, he claimed, were divided am ong M artov’s supporters. T h e composition of the Central C om m ittee did not correspond to the range of political opinion in the party. T h e fear of anything that could smack of “counterrevolution” went so far that party m em bers who spoke openly about Bolshevik atrocities were os20 Iu. O. M artov to P. B. Axelrod (23 January 1920), ibid., series 17, box 51, folder 2. 21 S. M . Zaretskaia to Pavel Axelrod (28 June 1920), ibid., series 16, box 45, folder 12-13. 22 Boris Vasil’ev to P. B. Axelrod (6 August 1920), Axelrod Archive.

tracized. H e cited the case o f A. Lockerm an of the D on com m ittee, who, after serving a jail sentence, cam e to Moscow. T h e M oscow SD party com m ittee refused to include him in the party roster because in 1918 Lockerm an had published a brochure describing Bolshevik atrocities in R ostov-on-D on. His criticism o f Bolshevik rule in 1918 was held against him in 1920, even though in 1918 his accusations had been supported by the party. Vasiliev contended th at the so-called left political position was for m any M ensheviks nothing m ore th an careerist opportunism : Moral unscrupulousness went so far that young men who had been summ oned by the party and sent to all kinds of [civil war] fronts accepted posts of investigators in the revolutionary tribunals (Lande and Yakubson). Moreover functionaries of the first caliber like I. Shtern, member of the Main [party] Comm ittee in Ukraine, turned out to be chairmen o f the Captured Enem y Materiel Comm ission, whose job it was to count the stolen goods. Moreover they were seen riding in the automobile of Budenyi, Voroshilov, and others [Red Army commanders] exactly at the tim e when a pogrom orgy was still going on in the devastated cities.23

T h e instinct for survival had guided these m en, and the weakest of them had defected to the C om m unists. Intolerance and dictatorial practices went so far that entire party organizations of cities and provinces were disbanded, no t by th e Bolsheviks, but by the M enshevik C entral C om m ittee, thus helping the C heka to destroy the party. For disagreem ent with official party policy, M en ­ shevik city organizations in Rostov-on-D on, Odessa, and Saratov were dis­ banded. M oreover, the Right M ensheviks had been arbitrarily expelled from the city organizations of Petrograd, Kharkov, and Ekaterinoslav. M any factory workers, old-tim e SD party m em bers, quit the party in protest against these repressions. Vasiliev characterized the official Social D em ocratic party as a party of grum bling bureaucrats. T hey were aware of the fact that they had detached them selves from the workers, bu t they blam ed the workers and not themselves for this. Vasiliev continued his indictm ent: “In fact official Social D em ocracy has spent its revolutionary enthusiasm , lost not only its political but also its m oral values, and detached itself from the popular m ovem ent. F urtherm ore it is proud o f it, counterpoising its revolutionary spirit and the ostensibly reaction­ ary spirit of the m asses.”24 In other words the official party line was th at the masses were dark and reactionary. In order to defend the “revolution” one had to defend the existing order. In fact, claim ed Vasiliev, they defended the exist­ ing order because they had gotten used to it and were relatively com fortable u n d er it. Vasiliev did n o t share M artov’s view that the masses were reactionary. He 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid.

believed that the official party leadership had invented this myth to justify its capitulation to the Bolsheviks. T here was nothing reactionary in condem ning Bolshevism and rising against it in struggle. It was absurd to m aintain that workers going on strike against the m ilitarization of labor were reactionary whereas the Bolshevik order, propped up by the Cheka terror, was revolution­ ary. For Right Mensheviks like Vasiliev the Bolsheviks’ record since October 1917 had already demonstrated that to expect democratic socialism from them was no less than to engage in self-delusion. T hat is why, when Red Army troops entered Rostov-on-Don in February 1920, the local Social Democrats adopted, as they put it, an “irreconcilable position. ” They protested against the robberies and killings by the conquerors. As a result of the supposed “liberation,” the military clique of the W hites was replaced by that of the Reds. Vasiliev was elected to the city soviet. At the opening session he read the declaration of his party. A newspaper account described the scene: Vasiliev takes the floor. T h e C om m unists prick up their ears with hostility. T he im patient ones shout out. Vasiliev continues. T h e words are flowing and suddenly the words “C onstituent Assembly.” And a hubbub rises. S om eone screams hyster­ ically. All o f this C om m unist mass rumbles and roars. An old C om m unist com es out. H e proposes to exile Vasilievto Crimea, D enikin’s country. Again rumbling. Inexpli­ cable joy and jubilation. Gurvich, a [Menshevik] internationalist, breaks through to the podium: “We protest. You insult the soviet!” Vasilievforces his way through to the podium as well. Hissing and whistling. H e has to leave. They vote for his expulsion and exile.25

T h e SD D on com m ittee was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Vasiliev was sentenced to five years im prisonm ent.26 To make things worse, the M en­ shevik C C disbanded the legitimately elected and supposedly legal SD Don comm ittee. For VasiIiev this am ounted to a total break with the ideals and principles he had served for a quarter of a century in the good old Social Dem ocratic party. T hroughout the civil war years the Right Mensheviks displayed m ore ideo­ logical consistency than the official party. They had always been unanim ous in their rejection and condem nation of Bolshevism. They were equally adam ant in rejecting M artov’s recognition of the legitimacy of Soviet power. In another bitter letter to M artov the Right Mensheviks wrote: “W e consider that the acceptance of the governm ent of Bolshevik Chekas is tantam ount to acceptance of the enslavem ent of the Russian proletariat in the clutches of the Bolshevik C heka.”27 25 “V Sovete,” Proletarii, no. 4(21 April 1920), I. 26 N o title, a letter from Butyrki jail, dated 19 September 1921, to the Editorial Board of Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia. It is clear from contents that the authors of the letter are members o f the imprisoned D on com m ittee o f the RSDRP, PSR Archive, docum ent 2047. 27 A letter to M artov (18 February 1921), Stepan Ivanovich (Portugeis) Archive.

Yet there was no unanim ity am ong the Right Mensheviks on many aspects of ideology and politics. As Vasiliev reported to Axelrod, throughout 1920 the Right Mensheviks drafted several declarations trying to elaborate their views on the nature of the social and political transform ation in Russia.28 A group of Right Mensheviks drafted a plan of developm ent for Russia from “com m u­ nism ” to what they called state capitalism, a system which would rest on the three pillars o f political democracy, the rule of law, and a mixed econom y of private and state enterprise. T hey proposed to abandon altogether the term “dictatorship o f the proletariat. ” It put the working class above others. W hat was needed was not som ething divisive but som ething to unify the nation. They saw the historical mission of Russian Social Democracy as resolving Russia’s na­ tional tasks. T hey rejected a “class” approach to politics and stressed all hum an values. T hese Right Mensheviks went so far as to suggest that it was futile to endeavor to analyze the existing so-called Soviet system of social, political, and econom ic relations by Marxist methodology. Marxism was not applicable any longer. T h e Soviet system was “unforeseen” by Marxism. the overall policy o f Soviet power em erges m ore and m ore as a struggle against any manifestations o f democracy, a curbing o f political rights, a liquidating o f civil liberties, a suppressing o f the activities o f all those who are not regim e supporters, a bureaucratizing o f governm ent, and finally a m ilitarizing o f the entire social order that com b ines bureaucratic rule with the absence o f civil rights for the population. W hat is being created now is a new form o f barracks-like socialism , unforeseen by M arxism . 29

T h e so-called proletarian revolution in Russia not only did not abolish exploita­ tion but exacerbated it. T he Soviet ruling class was unlike any other. It was not even a class in the Marxist sense, since it could not be defined in terms of ownership of the m eans of production. T he new elite did not own them but controlled them as a collective entity, each of whose m em bers could be de­ prived o f his or her privileged position at any time. It was not a class but a new C o m m u n ist estate with lim ited tenure. W hat thrives in such abnormal conditions is boundless arbitrary rule, bribery, and corruption. In the end, w hen people are deprived o f civil rights and subjected to repression, a new privileged estate o f C om m unists rises over the rest o f the popula­ tion. T h is estate has the exclusive right to enjoy the benefits o f life and, closed to the public eye, w illingly uses its dom inant position to make arrangements o f all kinds, unbound by any legal constraints. 30 28 For a discussion o f the Right Mensheviks’ declaration, see V ardin1 Revoliutsiia i m en’skevizm , pp. 126-29. 29 "R eport of the R ight M ensheviks,” no date or author, Nicolaevsky Collection, series 6, box 5, folder 29, published in E nglish in Brovkin, ed., D ear Comrades, p. 230 30 I b id ., p . 231.

W ith this kind of thinking, these right Mensheviks embarked upon the same intellectual road that m any W estern Social Dem ocrats would take later in the century. In so doing they foreshadowed ideas expressed in the late 1980s by M. S. G orbachev and his group of reformers. In the context of 1920, however, this line of reasoning was nothing but seditious counterrevolution, not only for the Bolsheviks but for the official M enshevik party leaders as well. Such a sharp and perceptive critique of the Soviet system could have implied that the Right M ensheviks would not be opposed to a revolutionary struggle against Bolshevik oppression, at least in principle. However, only some of them adopted this position. These were usually Social Dem ocrats who had broken with the official SD party. T heir May Day leaflet in Petrograd showed neither fear of, nor com prom ise with, the Bolsheviks: T h e country is in fam ine, the population is dying out, the workers are dying too. But we are told: “Everything for the front. ” . . . W hat is it that prevents peace with other countries? O nly the Russian C om m unists. W hat does the clique ruling over Russia want? It wants d om ination, recognition, and preservation o f its power at whatever cost! 31

T hey cam e out in support of the Kronstadt rebellion in M arch 1921 and endorsed strike actions by Petrograd workers. But the official SD party leader­ ship wanted nothing to do with the workers’ and peasants’ anti-C om m unist m ovem ent. At the end o f 1920 the SD M ain C om m ittee in Ukraine cam e to the following decision: By their policies the Bolshevik authorities have isolated the proletariat in the extreme and have caused hostility to it on the part o f the nonproletarian elem ents (petite bourgeoisie and peasants). T his makes possible and even probable the rise o f a petit bourgeois m ovem ent w hich may involve and has already begun to involve large masses o f anti-C om m unist proletariat. As a m ovem ent o f nonproletarian classes directed against the ugly Bolshevik dictatorship, peasants’ and soldiers’ upheavals even under the most favorable circum stances would objectively lead to the elim ina­ tion o f the possibility o f directing the course o f the Russian revolution toward socialism . 32

Surprisingly some Right M enshevik groups, mostly those who had rem ained w ithin the SD party, were just as opposed to a revolutionary overthrow of the Bolshevik regime as was the M enshevik C C . Vasiliev cited a letter of the southern Right Mensheviks w hich “denounced any kind of solidarity and con­ nection with the popular m ovem ent of masses directed against [Soviet] power," because counterrevolutionary forces would be the beneficiaries of sueh up­ heaval. It seems that the Mensheviks were m esm erized by the experience of 31 “Gruppa Sotsial Dem okratov (M ay 1920), Stepan Ivanovich (Portugeis) Archive. 32 G lavnyi K omitet R SD R P na Ukraine (I D ecem ber 1920), R SDRP Archive.

1917, when the workers’ m ovem ent had spun out of control, propelled by those w ho shouted louder and dem anded ever m ore, and had ended up with a dictatorship of the self-proclaimed “vanguard of the proletariat.” As a result of the 1917 experience the Mensheviks and the SRs distrusted the masses and feared great social upheavals. They would rather suffer under the Bolsheviks than venture into the unknown whirlpool of popular wrath.

The Left SR Factions T h e only exception to this fear of the masses was the party of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Like other opposition parties in 1920 the Left SRs faced a vexing dilem m a: How could they preserve their party w ithout com prom ising their principles? Two factions fought each other over this d ilem m a.33 T he faction led by Isaak Steinberg held views hardly different from those of M artov’s Mensheviks. T hey condem ned armed struggle against the Soviet regime, sup­ ported the Red Army in the war with Poland, aspired to take an active part in socialist construction, and mildly criticized the Bolshevik food supply policy. A majority o f the Left SR C C favored this course. A minority, however, led by M ariia Spiridonova, exhibited a revolutionary rejection of Bolshevism. For Spiridonova no com prom ise with the Bolsheviks was possible, since they had abused Russian peasants worse than the old regime. In a letter to a colleague Spiridonova wrote: “T h e Bolsheviks are the assassins and executioners o f free­ dom , and they m ust be overthrown as speedily as possible.”34 O f all th e opposition parties the m inority Left SRs were the m ost un co m ­ prom ising critics of the Bolsheviks in 1920. For them the Bolsheviks were traitors to the O ctober revolution and to the ideals they themselves had sworn allegiance too. T heir hatred of the C om m unists exceeded even that of the Right M ensheviks, who argued that they had always known the true nature of Bol­ shevism. T h e Right M ensheviks were detached and cool in their selfrighteousness, but the m inority Left SRs were passionate and vehem ent. For them the Bolsheviks had turned into a parasitic bureaucracy which exploited the Russian peasants. Spiridonova wrote to a colleague in Lithuania: “I do not know what your Bolsheviks are like, but in the south of Russia they have rapidly adopted the usual m ethods of governm ent and are threatening to shoot thou­ sands of peasants. . . . It is impossible to describe the depths to which individ­ ual officials have fallen . . . who have been given full power over the people. If you only knew how the Bolsheviks get drunk, how im m oral they are, how dissolute, how m endacious and caddish they have grow n.”35 In the war with 33 O n the Left SR party split, see “Partiinaia Z h iz n ’. Ko vsem chlenam partii levykh S R ,” Izvestiia (26 O ctober 1920), 4. 3^ “A Letter by M ariia S piridonova,” Struggling Russia, vol. I, no. 50-51 (6M arch 1920), 798. 35 “Socialists’ D en o u n cem en t of Bolshevism,” B ulletins o f the R ussian Liberation Com m ittee, no. 46 (10 January 1920), 3.

Poland the Bolsheviks used Russian peasants as cannon fodder for their adven­ turous plans of conquest. In a protest leaflet the m inority Left SRs spoke of “a shameful alliance of Soviet bureaucrats, tsarist generals, and Leninist com m is­ sars which is trying to lay the foundations of a so-called socialist order in Poland. ”36 T he minority Left SRs condem ned the commissars’ privileges, their reliance on naked force, and their suppression of civil liberties. In contrast to Steinberg’s Left SRs and the m ainstream SRs, who for the tim e being, at least publicly, rejected arm ed struggle against the Com m unists, Spiridonova’s Left SRs declared that they would take up arms in defense of peasants. T he people had a right to rise against despotism. For a long tim e details of the Left SRs’ revolutionary struggle against the Bolsheviks have remained unknown. T he Left SRs themselves never made them public due to the covert nature of their activity. T he Bolsheviks kept the docum ents they had in folders marked top secret. Yet we can now learn from a report to Dzerzhinsky by a Cheka infiltrator into the Left SR party leadership that he had attended Left SR Central C om m ittee meetings regularly and duti­ fully recorded what was being said. T he Left SRs discussed their links with Green bands of peasant rebels in Tambov, Voronezh, and other southern Russian provinces. They discussed setting up a supply system for the Greens and organizing deserters, and they talked about num erous specific cases of local peasant rebellions. They were the organizers of m any peasant unions in the countryside. T he m ain thrust of their activity was to lead peasant masses if they rose in rebellion against the Bolsheviks.37 As we shall see, they played an im portant and perhaps the leading role in the peasant war against the Bol­ sheviks which flared up with new vigor in the fall of 1920. Political alignments in Soviet Russia in the spring of 1920 were the opposite of early 1918. T he Bolsheviks’ allies then, the Left SRs, now turned into bitter enemies, while the Bolsheviks’ bitter enemies then, the Mensheviks and m ainstream SRs, sought accom m odation.

T he Balancing A ct Breaks Down: T h e Affair with the British D elegation M artov adm itted that in the spring of 1920 his party reduced its criticism of the Com m unists to a m inim um . Everything was done to preserve the Menshevik party’s legal status. Yet unanticipated developments led to a breakdown of this balancing act. T h e Mensheviks were compelled to take a stand, which in turn 56 Reproduced in “Tsirkuliarnoe pis’mo Vecheka,” in Nicolaevsky Collection, series 89, box 143, folder 5, here p. 19. 37 “N achal’niku Sekretnogo Osvedomitel'nogo Otdela. Svodka no. 27 agenturno osvedomitel’nykh materialov po doneseniiu osvedomitelia Voinova” (6 M arch 1921) (To the chief of the Secret Intelligence D epartm ent. Report no. 27 of the intelligence materials based on the report of agent Voinov), T s.P.A ., Dzerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, Opis' 3, docum ent 167.

led to a new cycle of repressions and a virtual decim ation of the party by the C heka. T h e C om m unists’ two m ain objectives in the international arena that spring were to force the Allies to abandon their econom ic sanctions against C o m m u ­ nist Russia and to position themselves as the leaders of the international workers’ m ovem ent. For that they needed to split W estern European Socialist and Social D em ocratic parties and to create C om m unist parties. Spring 1920 was the season of foreign delegations arriving in Soviet Russia. A British Labour party delegation arrived in May and was followed by French, Italian, and G erm an delegations in June and July, to m ention only a few. Feverish activity was going on in preparation for the Second Congress of the T hird C om m unist International. T h e role that the C om m unists assigned to the Mensheviks in this grand design was to assist them in portraying Soviet Russia as a country of the victo­ rious proletariat, a m ultiparty dem ocracy where all currents of socialist thought were am icably com peting with one another. M artov’s April theses and a reso­ lute cam paign for Allied recognition of C om m unist Russia seemed to be in tune with the Bolshevik requirem ents. Even the incorrigible SRs reiterated their rejection of arm ed struggle against the C om m unist regime. It was one thing, however, to defend the Soviet C onstitution and international recogni­ tion and quite another to participate in the Bolshevik propaganda show. T h e M ensheviks and SRs, including M artov and Chernov, did not want to be used by the Bolsheviks in duping W estern European socialists. T h e arrival of W est­ ern delegations gave the Mensheviks and SRs the first opportunity since O cto­ ber 1917 to m ake their voice heard in Europe on w hat was actually going on in Russia. Martov, D an, and C hernov were widely known in European socialist circles. T h eir evidence could not simply be brushed aside as bourgeois propaganda. T h e British delegation of trade unionists and Labour leaders was the first to arrive in May 1920. T h e C om m unists hailed their visit as a great victory. T he delegation was taken to various commissariats and lectured on the achieve­ m ents of socialist construction. Carefully selected worker collectives greeted them on behalf of the Russian working class. Orchestras played, and im portant m eetings, processions, and banquets were held. Sum ptuous delicacies were served at these receptions, the kind of food Russian workers had not seen for years.58 T h e Bolshevik propaganda m achine did its utm ost to impress these foreign dignitaries of the labor m ovem ent and to insulate them from the Rus­ sian workers. Ben T u rn er’s speech was censored beyond recognition in the Soviet press. To make sure that no unw anted inform ation reached the British, the C heka strictly controlled access to them . Dozens of letters by com m on 38 Raphail A bram ovich to P. B. Axelrod (22 July 1920), NicoIaevsky Collection, series 16, box 45, folder 5.

workers addressed to the British delegation were intercepted by the watchful Cheka, and their authors were dealt with accordingly.59 As the Mensheviks later found out, the interpreters provided for the British delegation were also Cheka informers. Yet the Com m unists could not prevent Raphail Abramovich from greeting the British delegation on behalf of the SD party at the session of the Moscow soviet, since the Mensheviks had a duly elected faction there.40 Abramovich used this opportunity to propose that the British delegation familiarize itself with all political currents of socialism in Soviet Russia. T he British felt it was only natural to hear out all points of view, and they willingly m et with the M enshevik and SR central com m ittees.41 As Abramovich later put it: “To their detailed questions we gave our detailed answers,” in the form of a volum inous report on conditions in Soviet Russia.42 T he SR Central C om m ittee submitted its own report to the British, which differed markedly from that of the M en­ sheviks.43 T here was no praise there for the proletarian dictatorship or opti­ m ism about its future dem ocratization. For the SRs the Russian Com m unists had “quickly and easily cast off the outward gilding of Scientific Socialism, showing underneath the Asiatic nature of enlightened despotism with a C om ­ m unist lining.” For the SRs, Russian C om m unism was an unfortunate heri­ tage of Russian history: O ur regim e is a strange m ixture o f n ew and old. In it you can see the trium ph o f a bureaucratically cen tra lized system o f barrack-discipline— w ith its h eir lo o m b e­ q u eath ed by the war— th e infernal eq u ality o f all before th e face o f fa m in e, requisi­ tion s, labor con scrip tio n , food , railway, and m ilitary dictatorships; yo u w ill see its in d ifferen ce to h u m a n life, its system o f im p riso n m en t and terror, o f u n an im ity coercively im p osed o n c itizen s, its ab olition o f personal and p u b lic freedom and its suppression o f representative o rg a n iza tio n s.44

M embers of the British delegation asked the SR Central Com m ittee members and particularly Chernov if the Bolshevik charges were true that the SRs sup­ ported arm ed struggle against Soviet government. According to the protocol of the m eeting, C hernov responded that the SRs would not rise against the Bol39 “Les Missions Socialistes dans la Russie des Soviets,” La Repubhque Russe, no. 19 (18 October 1920), 2. 40 “Inostrannye Sotsialisticheskie delegatsii v Sovetskoi Rossii,” Volia Rossii (16 September 1920), 4. 41 Iu. O. Martov to P. B. Axelrod (30 May 1920), Nicolaevsky Collection, series 17, box 51, folder 2. 42 “Memorandum TsKa RSDRP Angliiskoi delegatsii,” ibid., series 6, box 5, folder 38-40. 43 “Rech Abramovichak Angliiskoi delegatsii,”T s.P .A ., Fond 275, RSDRP, Opis’ I , document 68 . 44 Cited here from an excerpt in English in British Labour Delegation to Russia, 1920, Report, pp. 8 6 -8 7 . T he full text is in “Predstaviteliam Angliiskogo proletariata,’’Ts.P.A., Fond 274, TsKa PSR, Opis’ I, document 2.

sheviks as long as there was danger from the W hites. M oreover, on num erous occasions the PSR had appealed to the C om m unists to resolve their differences by elections either to the soviets or to a new C onstituent Assembly. T he Bol­ sheviks had ignored those appeals, said Chernov, because they knew that they would be a m inority party. T h e British interlocutors then asked C hernov what the PSR policy would be if and when there was no m ore danger from the W hites. C hernov’s answer sounds prophetic indeed, showing his remarkable political foresight. He explained that w hat was going to happen in the near future in Russia was an arm ed popular rebellion against the Bolsheviks in the countryside if the C om m unists persisted in their policies. In that case, said Chernov, “W e will be with the people. ”45 T h e Bolsheviks were aware of these meetings b u t did not dare to prevent them , since that would have undercut their claim th at all political currents o f socialism had the right to exist. Similarly it would have been embarrassing to ban a m eeting of British trade unionists with leaders of Russian trade unions. T h e Printers' U nion was one of the three rem aining ones whose leadership was still Social Democratic. O n 23 May a historic m eeting sponsored by the Printers’ U nion took place in Moscow.46 A bout four thousand printers were present. Speeches were given in honor of the British working class and the Russian revolution and socialism. After reiterating m ajor points in the SD platform against Allied sanctions, A. F. Deviatkin, the printer's leader, uttered a few critical notes on the conditions of printers in C om m unist Russia. M. A. Kefali, another printer, referred to the C o m m u n ist bosses as the new bourgeoisie w hich oppressed the workers.47 Fedor D an spoke for the Menshevik C C and went even further in his criticism. But what later caused both a sensation and a scandal was the speech by a mysterious, bearded representative of the Socialist Revolutionary party. This speaker also greeted the British but urged them not to believe the rosy picture that the official propaganda was painting for them . In fact, he said, the ruling party had turned into a network of bureaucracies, the workers could not express themselves freely, and police terror had acquired m onstrous proportions: “C ould the workers have im agined that instead of socialism they would get a new despotism, this tim e of the paTty; that this socialism of a special kind would put a m uzzle on them , and that in its administrative system it would impose an oligarchical bureaucracy, and in its methods of governm ent a barracks-like socialism, a kind of Arakcheev C om m unism in a new guise?”48 T he speaker 45 “Protokol svidaniia C hernova s chlenam i Angliiskoi delegatsii” (Protocol o f C hernov’s m eet­ ing with the British delegation) (23 June 1920), T s.P.A., Fond 274, TsKa PSR, O pis’ I, docum ent I, p. 63. 46 See appendix 5, “T h e Printers’ M eeting at Moscow and the Printers’ Trade U n io n ,” in British L abour Delegation to Russia, 1920, Report. See also a detailed account by B. Voytinsky, “Sotsialisty Z apada v Sovetskoi Rossii,” Bor Ba, no. 226 (6 O ctober 1920). 47 “Les Anglais chez Ies Ouvriers Typographes,” Les Informations Democratiques, no. 19 (Sum m er 1920). 48 T schernow [Chernov], M eine Schicksalle in Sow jet Russland, pp.4 1 -4 2 .

characterized the evolution of L enin’s socialism from 1917 to 1920 as a move­ m ent from Pugachevshchina (that is, incitem ent to free-for-all violence) to Arakcheevshchina (that is, a bureaucratic military dictatorship of the state). N either version of L enin’s socialism had anything to do with real socialism. Addressing the workers, the speaker called on them to dem and free elections and overcome their fear, “as I did, whose party comrades are in prison.” The hall exploded with a stormy ovation. No one seemed to know who the m an with a beard was. They shouted from the floor: "Identify yourself.” AU of a sudden the speaker pulled off his glued-on beard and said, “I am C hernov,” and disappeared from the stage. T here was com m otion in the hall. T he C om m u­ nists were puzzled and embarrassed. As Chernov later related, a dozen SRs blocked all the exits, and he escaped before the watchful Cheka could seize him . C hernov’s dram atic appearance at the printers’ rally and the fact that the chairm an of the disbanded C onstituent Assembly feared arrest was carried by m ajor European newspapers. T his incident attracted more attention than the long and detailed data in the M enshevik report. W hat m ade the scandal even m ore damaging for the Com m unists was their own admission that the Cheka was trying to capture Chernov. T h e scandal at the printers’ and other meetings with the British delegation had devastating consequences for the M enshevik and SR parties. It was proba­ bly after the British delegation affair that C om m unist leaders (if we are to judge by their actions) decided to destroy completely what was left of the opposition parties. M artov sensed this acutely, since he wrote to Axelrod on 30 May: “T here is no doubt that devastation awaits us, either in the form of expulsion from the Moscow soviet (by the way, in the provinces they have already expelled us [from the soviets] in Odessa, Gom el, and Nikolaev) or in the form of mass arrests. ”49 Provincial Chekas did not wait for a go-ahead from Moscow. M ostof their reports on their policy toward the opposition parties demonstrate a system­ atic extraction of active politicians throughout 1920. Provincial Cheka reports to the All-Russian Cheka leave no doubt that they saw their duty as reporting any signs of M enshevik o t SR/Left SR political activity. For example provincial Chekas reported: “Penza: Left SR propaganda materials were noticed among the peasants. Searches have been m ade at the right SRs’. A m em ber of the PSR Central C om m ittee, who arrived here for party work, has been detained. D ur­ ing a search an SR resolution on the current situation was found. Kharkov: A part of the organization of the SRs decided to split away and join the Narod group. ”50 A regular subtitle in their reports was Measures Undertaken, which suggests 49 Iu. O. M artov to P. B. Axelrod (30 May 1920), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 17, box 51, folder 2. 50 “Informatsionnaia svodka sekretnogo otdela VeCheKa, tovarishchu L eninu” (1 -1 4 February 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis' 3, docum ent 414, p. 4.

that th e provincial Chekas had the authority to undertake m easures such as arrests and deportations o f active politicians w ithout clearing them with M os­ cow first. T h e Cheka kept a close eye on the activities of opposition parties and tried to stop them as soon as it perceived danger. Indeed the Bolshevik press exploded with a hysterical cam paign. “Informers of Lloyd George! Traitors! Spies! Wreckers!”— these were the m ost frequent epithets. No sooner were the British gone than the Cheka went to work. O n 30 May the All-Russian Cheka published an order to all local Chekas authorizing “merciless reprisals” against the “informers of Lloyd G eorge.”51 T h e fact that local Mensheviks somewhere in Ukraine m ay not even have heard about the 23 May rally of the Printers’ U nion did not matter. O n I June, clearly endorsing the Cheka action, the Moscow city C P com ­ m ittee published its theses stating that the governments of the Allied powers, in order to weaken the m ovem ent of the international proletariat in defense of Soviet Russia, had sent a trade union delegation to Russia to collect com pro­ m ising m aterial. T h e Mensheviks and SRs were portrayed as accomplices of foreign spies. O n the next day the M enshevik caucus in the Moscow soviet tried to dispel these groundless accusations, rem inding com rade C om m unists that they themselves had given speeches in honor of the representatives of the British proletariat. In response B ukharin insisted that there were supporters of Lloyd George in the British delegation and that the Mensheviks and SRs were guilty of transm itting in form ation.52 In 1920 Bukharin thought that was crim inal. From then on, for seven long decades, it becam e a crim e to pass on critical inform a­ tion to foreigners. Raphail Abram ovich was deprived of his seat in the Moscow soviet. T he workers who had elected him were told to recall him or else their food rations would be cut, and they com plied.52 Fedor D an, who had spoken at the printers’ rally, was conscripted as a physician and exiled to Ekaterinburg. O n 17 June, late at night, the C heka arrested eleven people, the entire Executive C om m it­ tee of th e Printers’ U nion. Its headquarters were occupied by the Cheka, and everyone who cam e in was detained, with some arrested. T he Moscow printers went on strike in protest, w hich gave the C heka a pretext to arrest the strikers and decim ate an independent union in C om m unist Russia. W ithout any trial the C heka collegium sentenced the arrested printers to various terms of intern­ m ent in a concentration ca m p .54 Special treatm ent was reserved for Victor Chernov. T h e Cheka m ust have 51 “M ouchards de Lloyd G eorge," La Republique R usser no. 19 (18 O ctober 1920), 2. 52 “Pis’m o TsKa RSD RP Angliiskoi delegatsii,” Nicolaevsky Collection, series 6, box 5, folder 37. See also “U n D ocum ent. Lettre du C o m M C entral du parti Social D em ocrat de Russie a la delegation du L abour party,” P o u rL a Russie, no. 12 (13 O ctober 1920). 53 “Les M issions Socialistes dans la Russie des Soviets,” Ltr Republique Russer no. 19 (18 O ctober 1920), 2. 54 “La Suppression du Syndicat des Typographes de M oscou, ” La Republique Russer no. 19(18 O ctober 1920), 3. T h e details of this case are in an open letter to the C E C by the printers “Z aiavlenie” in “Sovetskaia vlast’ i rabochie,” Reyoliutsionrtaia Rossiiar no. 5 (April 1921), 2 4 -2 5 .

perceived his appearance at the printers’ rally as an insult to its efficiency. For m onths the Cheka had been doing all in its power to capture Chernov. A m ­ bushes were placed in the apartm ents of friends, relatives, and party comrades he was known to visit. O n one occasion Cheka agents went around to villages in the vicinity where Chernov used to spend summers and showed his photograph to peasants, asking them if they had seen him . O f course the peasants swore that they had not and crossed themselves. T he entire area was surrounded by Cheka troops. Several times C hernov escaped these traps by sheer good luck. O n one occasion Cheka agents forged a letter to Chernov from E. M. Ratner, an SR Central C om m ittee m em ber in prison. Chernov contacted Ratner, and the Cheka provocation was exposed. Unable to capture Chernov, the Cheka seized his wife, hoping that his daughters, left all alone, would try to contact him and provide the Cheka with a good lead. They did not and were seized as hostages as well. In prison they were interrogated persistently on C hernov’s whereabouts. Cheka agents were placed in their cell, pretending to be friends who would pass on a message to Chernov upon release. These disgusting methods led Chernov to write a bitter letter, full of sarcasm, to Lenin: I congratulate the C ouncil o f People’s Commissars on the occasion ofits great success on the internal front. A few days ago your agents arrested my wife and three daugh­ ters, the oldest being seventeen and the youngest, seven years o f age. . . . I realize, o f course, that m addened by repeated failures and embittered by the futile hunt after m e, that worthy institution has to vent its spleen on som eone. I also realize that sick w om en and children make a fitting object for vengeance at the stage o f moral develop­ m ent to which it is but natural for the m inions and gendarmes o f degenerating regimes to fall. I congratulate you on this manifest proof, this vivid illustration o f that state to w hich your rule and its bearers have sunk. 55

Chernov's friend Ida Germ us approached Kamenev and Lunacharsky, asking them to do som ething to release C hernov’s family. She reported Kamenev as saying: “They will be kept as hostages.” Kamenev’s wife, Olga, however, knew C hernov’s wife well from the better days of their acquaintance in Paris before the war. She decided to take Ariada, the youngest of Chernov’s daughters, to stay with the Kamenevs in their apartm ent in the Kremlin. T h at moved C her­ nov to write another indignant letter, now to Kamenev dem anding that all his children be handed over to the International Red Cross. Chernov continued to evade Cheka capture. But five other mem bers of the SR Central C om m ittee— M . A. Vedeniapin, E. M . Timofeev, A. R. Gots, M. S. Tseitlin, and F. D. Rakov— were less fortunate. They were seized and imprisoned in June and July w ithout any charges. 56 C hernov was not the only one whose family was taken hostage. In a letter to 55 T schernow [Chernov], M eine Schicksalle in Sowjet Russland, p. 33. See also the text of the letter in “V ictor C hernov’s Family Taken as Hostages,” Information Bulletin, no. 10—12 (23 O ctober 1920), 6—7. 56 CheKa (1922), p. 179.

the British trade unionists, arrested socialists wrote that the wife o f another Socialist Revolutionary, A. T. Kuznetsov, had been seized as well "and flogged in prison for refusing to divulge her husband’s w hereabouts.”57 Arrests in Moscow were im itated in the provinces. According to the Printers’ U nion, three hundred printers were arrested in the afterm ath of the British delegation visit. In Nikolayev eleven deputies to the city soviet, Social Democrats, were expelled from the soviet at the very first session after elections for “abstention at the vote for com rade Lenin. ” T h e fact that this was a violation of the C onstitu­ tion and of electoral law did not bother them or the Moscow Bolsheviks.58 In Ekaterinburg twelve Mensheviks, including D alin, a C entral C om m ittee m em ber, were arrested during the election campaign. In Simbirsk the entire M enshevik party com m ittee was arrested after a workers’ strike in protest against a ten -h o u r workday at a m unitions factory. In Sam ara a printer, Alekseev, was sentenced by the Revolutionary Tribunal to ten years in a forced-labor cam p for “participating in the strike of printers.”59 In Petrograd a worker, Shpakovsky, a m em ber of the city soviet, was sentenced to one year in a forced-labor camp because the factory adm inistration had found M enshevik leaflets on the occa­ sion of May Day, even though officially the Menshevik party was legal. As hundreds of workers and socialists were taken hostage and special units burned Russian villages as “counterrevolutionary nests” of Green bandits, the Second Congress of the T hird International opened in Moscow to celebrate the com ing of the world proletarian revolution. Speeches about international workers’ solidarity and the achievem ents of socialist construction in Russia were followed by parades of happy worker collectives, banquets, and the singing of the “Internationale.” T h e Bolsheviks showed to foreign C om m unists a master­ piece of their propaganda art. T h e entire city of Petrograd was turned into a theater stage. T h e soldiers and sailors were turned into actors. They were told to play heroic proletarians m arching after the Bolsheviks. T he storming of the W inter Palace in 1917 was reenacted. All the chaos and unpredictability of the real event were of course forgotten; now everything went according to script. Life was becom ing indistinguishable from theater. Everybody was to follow the party script.

Other Foreign Delegations T h e British delegation affair was a catalyst for the breakdown of M artov’s balancing act. In May and June other matters of principle arose that M artov 57 T h e appeal of the im prisoned socialists “To the British W orkm en and to the M em bers of the Labor Delegation to Russia,” in Sam uel Gom pers, “Labor Victim s and the Serfs of the Soviets,” Am erican Federationist, vol. 28 (28 M arch 1921), 213. 58 “La Repression contre Ies M encheviks. E n Russie des Soviets,” L a Republique Russe, no. 19 (18 O ctober 1920), 3. 59 “Arrestations et C ondam nations des M ilitants syndicallistes et socialistes,” La Republique Russe, no. 16(1 Septem ber 1920), 4.

could n o t com prom ise on despite his willingness to seek an understanding with the Bolsheviks. T h e first was L en in ’s policy on war and peace with Poland and the second his intrigues to split W estern SD parties and attract th e leftists to the C o m m u n ist fold. M artov understood that for L enin war was the im plem enta­ tion o f policy by o ther m eans. Already in May, in his speech to the M oscow soviet, M artov was condem ning “adventures abroad” and urging the Bolsheviks to ab an d o n plans to bring a C o m m u n ist revolution to Poland with the help of Red A rm y bayonets.60 In a letter to a colleague M artov wrote in June th a t “war feeds Bolshevism, since it is an un n atu ral econom ic system and Asiatic ad m in ­ istratio n .”61 M artov believed th at L enin needed war in order to unite his party and to create a bond betw een th e cause o f Russian patriotism and the cause of the C o m m u n ist revolution. M artov w arned Kautsky th at L enin w anted to export C o m m u n ist revolution to P o lan d .62 After its occupation by the Red Army, power was to pass to the R evolutionary C om m ittee, headed by the C heka ch ief him self, Feliks Dzerzhinsky. If things w ent well, L enin was not averse to proceeding with a C o m m u n ist revolution in G erm any, led by the C o m m u n ist party. It w ould have to be created by splitting the G erm an Inde­ p en d e n t Social D em ocratic Party (U SPD ). In June and July 1920 the Bol­ sheviks co n d u cted difficult negotiations with the U SPD on the term s of its affiliation with the T h ird International. M artov saw th rough L en in ’s plans and did his utm ost to wreck them . He foresaw th at the C o m m u n ist International w ould becom e a tool for expansion­ ism in L en in ’s hands. H e wrote to Kautsky th at it was essential “to free the E u ro p ean workers’ m ovem ent from Bolshevik d o m in atio n .”63 M artov feared th at if th e cause o f the workers’ socialist m ovem ent were associated with w hat he called L en in ’s Asiatic socialism , the future of th at m ovem ent w ould be ruined. W ith his colleagues in Europe, M artov strove for the rest o f his life to form ulate an alternative to L en in ’s socialism for the left-wing labor socialist m ovem ent. His im m ediate objective was to convince E uropean left-wing SD parties not to join L e n in ’s In ternational and to create instead their own association o f socialist and labor parties that w ould have nothing to do with L e n in ’s “C o m in tern ” or with the old and, as he believed, discredited Second International. As hap­ pened so m any tim es in the tu m u ltu o u s relationship between M artov and L en in , a period of rapprochem ent was followed by a new round of bitter political struggle. M aking contact with foreign visitors was n o t easy for the M ensheviks. M ost people in these delegations arrived in M oscow for the explicit purpose o f nego­ tiating th eir m em bership in the C o m m u n ist International. T hey were not 60 “Lettre aux organisations du parti m encheviste,” L a R epublique Russe, no. 19 (18 O ctober 1920), 4. 61 lu. O. M artov to A. N. Stein (26 June 1920), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 17, box 51, folder 4. 62 lu. O. M artov to Karl Kautsky (27 Ju n e 1920), ibid., folder 5. « Ibid.

particularly interested in hearing critical voices. Each delegation consisted of representatives o f various political currents who were concerned with how their reports on the situation in Russia would be received at hom e. M arcel C achin and Louis-Oscar Frossard of the French Socialist party simply refused to m eet with the Russian socialists. M oreover7 C achin was expected to pass some letters along to M artov7 but som ehow these letters wound up with the C heka.64 T he Italian delegation, too, refused to m eet officially with the M enshevik Central C om m ittee. O nly G iacinto Seratti and Luciano M agrini m et with Martov privately and received a thick packet of materials on social and econom ic conditions in Soviet Russia. An attentive observer like M agrini did not need M artov to understand what was going on in the country. He eloquently de­ scribed th e meager food rations, pervasive poverty, injustice, and privileges in his La Catastrofe Russa. Similar impressions were reported by the Czechoslovak labor delegation. They were particularly astonished by the m ate­ rial and spiritual poverty: “Petrograd, once a bustling capital now appears altogether dead. AU shops, stores, everything is closed. AU buildings are n e­ glected and filthy . . . T here is no political life in Russia at all. It does not exist there in the sense as we know it here in Western Europe. . . . Russia is ruled exclusively by the Bolshevik party. AU other socialist parties . . . are forbidden to publish newspapers and hold meetings. ”65 In spite of their reluctance to m eet with Russian socialists and their desire to see positive achievem ents in Soviet Russia, the Western socialists’ observations were a public relations disaster for the Bolsheviks. M ajor newspapers in Germany, France, England, Italy, and central Europe published a stream o f impressions on the miserable conditions o f workers, repressions of socialists, and privileges of the C om m unists.66 M ost people in the delegation of the G erm an U SPD party were not inter­ ested in hearing what M artov or Chernov had to say either. Only A rthur Crispien m et with Martov, who confirmed his reservations about L enin’s so­ cialism .67 He left Russia determ ined to fight against the U SPD ’s proposed affiliation with the T hird International and found a valuable ally in Martov. It was during these sum m er m eetings that M artov was invited to com e to G er­ m any and address personally the crucial congress of the USPD in Halle in the fall. Well ahead of time, in July, M artov applied for a visa to go to Germany. According to some reports, the question as to w hether to grant him a visa was debated in the Politburo and it was Lenin who finally swayed his colleagues to 64 D etails are in R. A. A bram ovich to P. B. Axelrod (22 July 1920), ibid., series 16, box 45, folder 5. 65 “N ot Life b u t a C em etery” (A report on Bolshevist Russia by the Czechoslovak Labor delegation), Inform ation B ulletin, no. T l (5 M arch 1921), 10-11. 66 See, for exam ple, “Le Bolchevism e vu par Ies Italiens. Precieux T em oignages,” Les Inform a­ tions Democratique Russes B ulletin, no. 22 (July 1920), I. 67 Iu. O. M artov to P. B. Axelrod (4 August 1920), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 17, box 51, folder 2.

let M artov go. A m yth has been circulating ever since th at L enin m ade this decision because h e loved M artov and cared ab o u t his security. W hatever his feelings for M artov were, L enin was guided n o t by those b u t by reason. To deny M artov a visa w ould only have confirm ed M enshevik allegations about the dictatorial n atu re o f Bolshevism. M oreover, L enin m ust have realized that M artov sent o u t all th e inform ation he needed to send with foreign visitors, w hom the C heka did no t dare to search. T hey did search M artov’s apartm ent th o u g h .68 T h e Bolsheviks chose an o th er tactic: they w ould present their argum ent with the M ensheviks to the G erm an Social D em ocrats as a norm al disagreem ent betw een the two working class parties in Russia, the Bolsheviks portraying them selves as a m ore revolutionary and m ore proletarian party than the M en ­ sheviks, w ho, according to the Bolsheviks, were w illing to cooperate w ith the bourgeoisie. T his reasoning w ould be understandable to the U S P D labor leaders, w ho considered them selves m ore revolutionary than the m ainstream Social D em ocratic party of G erm any (SPD). T h a t was the tone of Zinoviev’s speech in H alle. As M artov recounted the horrors of the Red Terror in 1918, the persecution o f socialists now in prisons and concentration cam ps, the expulsions o f deputies from the soviets, and the suppression o f independent trade u n io n s, in d ignant G erm an u n io n leaders shouted “sham e” at Z inoviev.69 M artov’s c o n d em n atio n of th e Bolshevik regim e was as forceful as it w ould have been if it had been presented by a R ight M enshevik: “T h e system o f terror is not lim ited to mass executions only. Bans on the press and assembly, mass arrests, forced labor w ithout trial, w hich is an everyday p u n ish m en t for strikes, a p ro h ibition against workers’ electing m em bers o f certain parties to the soviets, and exile to th e front line for criticism of leaders— all this is recognized by the leaders o f th e T h ird International as an adm issible system of governm ent!”70 M artov's speech produced an enorm ous im pression and was published and republished in n u m ero u s newspapers all over E urope. Articles and interviews were solicited o n e after a n o th e r.71 Like-m inded Social D em ocrats offered assis­ tance in setting up the R ussian Social D em ocratic journal in exile, w hich indeed started to com e out in February 1921. T h e inform ation the M ensheviks and SRs provided to their E uropean colleagues had an im portant im pact on the developm ent o f these parties. Som e o f the cooler heads in the W estern Socialist and SD parties toned down their veneration o f the country of the victorious proletariat and refrained from joining the T h ird International. T h e U S P D split. L e n in ’s attem pt to bring th e entire U S P D into th e C o m m u n ist fold failed. 68 Iu. O. M artov to P. B. Axelrod (29 S eptem ber 1920), ibid. 69 iu . O . M artov to P. B. Axelrod (17 O ctober 1920), ibid. 70 “R ech ’ M a rto v a,” Volia Rossii (21—28 O ctober 1920), here cited from 22 O ctober 1920. 71 See, for exam ple, proceedings o f M artov’s and A bram ovich’s m eeting w ith the leadership of th e U S P D and B erlin trade unionists, “R usslands G egenw art u n d Z u k u n ft,” F reiheit, no. 499 (25 N ovem ber 1920), I.

The Cheka Assault on the Opposition Parties As this struggle for the hearts and m inds of European socialists was unfolding, the C heka in Russia was unleashed against the Mensheviks and SRs. O n 24 August the Cheka seized 0 . A. Ermansky, A. A. Pleskov, and A. A. Troianovsky, all of them M enshevik C entral C om m ittee m em bers.72 As Boris Skomorovsky, the C C secretary, described to Axelrod: “D uring the night on 23 August, as I was leaving the C C premises with all kinds of party docum ents from the back exit, the Cheka m en were entering through the front. They left an am bush on our premises and stayed there for a week and seized fifty people.”75 O n 20 August th e entire all-Russian M enshevik conference was arrested as soon as it assembled in Moscow. A week earlier the M enshevik party confer­ ence o f Ukraine had been arrested in Kharkov, a total of 120 people. Arrests also hit som e factories and plants. Forty workers were arrested at the Bogatyr’ factory in Moscow. T h e num ber of those arrested in Moscow alone reached several h u n d red .74 Scores of leading Mensheviks in Petrograd were arrested as well. T h e Petrograd C heka gleefully reported that the “Mensheviks becam e quiet after these arrests.”75 In O ctober and November the Bolshevik authorities be­ gan to arrest entire local M enshevik party com m ittees, often relying on election lists m ade public during the election campaigns. Twenty SDs were arrested in Mogilev, 20 in Sam ara, 12 in Vitebsk, and unknown num bers in Kursk, N izhni Novgorod, Sormovo, Vologda, and Bryansk.76 For the first tim e the C om m unists resorted to the forcible exile of opposition leaders abroad. Several leading M enshevik politicians in Ukraine were exiled to G eorgia.77 M artov wrote to Axelrod in Septem ber that his sources am ong high-ranking Bolsheviks inform ed him that a political trial o f the M enshevik party was being prepared. He repeated this in another letter as som ething quite certain.78 A complete list of all those arrested or taken hostage would have filled m any pages. According to Chernov, during the sum m er of 1920 alone over 2000 Mensheviks and SRs were seized by the C heka.79 N ot only were C entral C om m ittee m em bers and 72 Iu. O. M artovto P. B. Axelrod (23 O ctober 1920), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 17, box 51, folder 2. 73 B. Skomorovsky to P. B. Axelrod (3 Septem ber 1920), Axelrod Archive. 74 Ibid. 75 “Inform atsionnaia svodka sekretnogo otdela V eC heK a,” T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docu m en t 414(2), p. 67. 76 Iu. O. Martov, untitled (D ecem ber 1920), Nicolaevsky Collection, series 17, box 51, folder 13-14. 77 Iu. O. M artov to P. B. Axelrod (20 D ecem ber 1920), ibid., folder 2. 78 Iu. O. M artov to A. N . Stein (28 Septem ber 1920), ibid., folder 4. 79 “C hernov o sovrem ennom polozhenii,” Volia Rossii, no. 20 (5 O ctober 1920).

p ro m in en t politicians seized b u t their wives and relatives as well. M any o f the arrested SRs had been im prisoned u n d er th e Kolchak regim e as well, such as D . F. Rakov and A. T. Kuznetsov (whose wife was flogged by the Cheka), B ythe term s o f the agreem ent signed in U fa in 1919, th eS R s could not be tried for acts com m itted prior to the agreem ent. A nd yet m any arrested SRs were charged w ith supporting th e C om m ittee of the C on stitu en t Assembly in 1918, and one V. G . S hm erling was charged with defending the K rem lin in 1917 during the Bolshevik seizure of pow er.80 T h e lawless arrests of socialists and workers in the su m m er o f 1920 suggest th at w ithout bothering to p ronounce these parties ban n ed , the C heka began to h u n t down Social D em ocrats and Socialist Revo­ lutionaries n o t for any particular crim e b u t simply for being w hat they were. Obviously the overall direction of Soviet policy toward opposition parties was determ in ed by L enin. H e received a m onthly report from D zerzhinsky o n the activity o f opposition parties. T h e very structure o f these reports suggests that the C heka had a fairly free hand in dealing with the opposition. T h e reports consisted of b rief listings o f w hat constituted “counterrevolutionary activity,” such as spreading leaflets or addressing peasants or inciting workers to strike, followed by “m easures undertaken. ” T hese entries usually included such m ea­ sures as “taken u n d er surveillance,” or arrested or deported, or taken hostage. Since these reports were top secret docum ents, the Bolsheviks were quite frank ab out th eir policies. Exactly at the tim e w hen L enin was lying to the Second C ongress of th e C o m m u n ist International th at all socialist parties in Soviet Russia were legal, the C heka reports to L enin cited arrests, the taking of hos­ tages, an d infiltrations by agents provocateurs as m atters of routine practice. C heka m ethods were m u ch m ore refined th an a m ere reliance on arrests or seizures o f hostages and executions. T h e latter were only the m ore visible elem ents in the C heka cam paign to divide, intim idate, and ultim ately destroy opposition parties. T h e C heka always found a way to circum vent restrictions im posed on it. For exam ple, w hen the death penalty was officially abolished in February 1920, the C heka used the n ight before the publication of the decree to co n d u c t mass executions o f political prisoners. A ccording to the collective testim ony o f prisoners in the Butyrki jail, that night alone seventy-two people were executed, and in Saratov prison fifty-two.81 T h e C heka recom m ended to local departm ents that those to be shot should be transferred to the frontline zo n e, w here th e abolition o f th e death penalty was n o t in effect.82 A top secret letter o f th e A ll-R ussian C heka to local Chekas characterized the activity and evaluated the potential political strength of all opposition parties.83 T hey were 80 For details o f these cases, see “Iz Sovetskogo zastenka,” Volia Rossii (16 December 1920), I. 81 “Terrorizm i Sovetskaia vlast’,” Volia Rossit (12 November 1920), I. 82 Cheka docum ent dated 15 April 1920 and reproduced in “Terrorizm i Sovetskaia vlast’, ” Volia Rossii (12 November 1920), I 83 “Tsirkuliarnoe pis’mo Vecheka” (I July 1920), Nicolaevsky Collection, series 89, box 143, folder 5.

all dangerous because, “exhausted and lacking political consciousness, the worker and peasant begins to express his discontent, since his material situation has not improved. H e expresses this discontent in strikes and even in upris­ ings. ”84 Publicly the C om m unist press accused the opposition parties of orga­ nizing uprisings. In this internal circular, however, the Cheka adm itted that it was workers and peasants who expressed discontent in strikes and uprisings. H ence m easures had to be taken to prevent the parties from leading this protest m ovem ent. T h e problem with the Mensheviks, the C heka explained, was that after their legalization in 1919 they managed to cover “almost all of Russia with their organizations." T he Mensheviks were trying to establish a foothold in trade unions and other workers’ organizations. For tactical considerations, the Cheka explained, the legal status of the Mensheviks would be preserved, but local Chekas were to pay attention to Menshevik activities and take appropriate m easures.85 A nother m ethod was described in this way: “Sum m arizing the above, the Secret D epartm ent suggests that the local secret departm ents pay particular attention to the subversive activity of the M ensheviks who work in cooperatives and trade unions, particularly am ong the printers. T h e secret departm ents m ust thoroughly collect incrim inating material and try the M en­ sheviks not as Mensheviks but as speculators, inciters of strikes, etc. ”86 T h e letter spoke with alarm about the Socialists Revolutionaries, who, de­ spite all obstacles, retained num erous local organizations. T he C heka was particularly worried by the SR C entral C om m ittee decision of May 1920 to organize peasant unions in the provinces which would be able to defend the peasants’ econom ic interests in the food supply. Local Chekas were instructed to keep a close watch over all SRs, especially those arriving in the provinces from the capital, and “by decisive measures isolate the organizational capacity of the SR leaders. ” For this purpose, the instructions went on, it was essential to create a w ell-functioning apparatus of inform ation gathering. “It is necessary to improve this apparatus and by all m eans available to attract new informers [osvedomiteli] w ithout being tim id with the expenditure of m oney.”87 Infiltrating political parties was a tested m ethod of the Cheka. Provincial C heka reports routinely cite their reliance on agents provocateurs. For exam ­ ple, thanks to a valuable tip of an agent planted in the Left SR organization in T ula Province, the C heka boasted that it had discovered a m achine gun and a bom b buried in a village.88 T he group most seriously affected by this m ethod was the Narod breakaway faction of the SR party. As early as January 1920, that is, barely two m onths after the Narod faction split from the PSR, the Cheka 84 Ibid., p. I. 85 Ibid., p. 23. 86 Ibid., p. 25. 87 Ibid., p. 22. 88 “Inform atsionnaia svodka sekretnogo otdela Vecheka, Politicheskie partii i gruppy” (30 O cto­ ber 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docum ent 414(3).

inform ed Kamenev that its agents had infiltrated the Narod group “with the purpose o f inform ation gathering and disruption of its work.”89 Cheka agents provocateurs com piled lists of oppositionists, most of whom disappeared into camps later on. Details of this operation are known largely thanks to the confessions of N. A. Bespalov, who published in 1924 his story of collaboration with the Cheka. By a threat that his wife would be executed and he charged with treason, he was forced to cooperate. His job was to leak information on the Narod faction’s activities and m em bership. To enhance his stature, th e C heka created a fake local Narod organization staffed with Cheka special agents. T he ultim ate goal was to expose and extract real oppositionists and to destroy the Narod faction.90 T h e Cheka was particularly concerned about leaders. As master organizers themselves, the Bolsheviks realized that w ithout organization any protest m ovem ent would have little chance of success. Hence their top priority was to extract all im portant leaders in the opposition parties. T h e arrest of the allRussian and Ukrainian M enshevik party conferences effectively extracted all prom inent national leaders of that party. By the end of the sum m er in 1920 m ost m em bers of the SR C entral C om m ittee were in prison too. Yet there still rem ained thousands of opposition party members at liberty, m ost o f them working in key Soviet econom ic institutions. T he C heka’s purpose was to identify and extract those who showed signs of active involvement in politics. To accom plish this task, the Cheka resorted to several methods. In the spring of 1920 an old-tim e m em ber of the SR party nam ed Davydov was invited to com e by the C heka for a chat. They told him it was unfortunate that now, at a time when Polish landlords and capitalists had attacked Soviet Russia, the party of Socialist Revolutionaries was waging a struggle against Soviet power. Davydov responded that it was a well-known fact that the PSR had ceased arm ed struggle against Soviet Power a long tim e earlier.91 T he C heka officer suggested that perhaps Davydov could m eet with Chernov and convey to him that Soviet authorities had nothing against the legal and peaceful work of the SR party. Davydov was advised to raise the question of improving relations between the PSR and the RCP am ong the SR party members. For this purpose, he was told, the Soviet authorities would p u t no obstacles in the way of convening an SR party conference. Naturally Davydov wanted to do what he could for his party, so he contacted party colleagues, conveying to them what he had heard from the Cheka. Every single person Davydov contacted was arrested w ithout any charges or explanation. Seven hundred SRs were arrested as a result o f that friendly chat. Still, these were people rooted out by chance. Dzerzhinsky wanted to orga89 “Tovarishchu K am enevu otZav. Sekretnym O tdelom ” ( 14January 1920), T s.P.A., Fond 17, TsKa RKP(b), O pis’ 84, docum ent 43. 90 “Iz nedr BoVshevistskoi okhranki," Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 3 5 -3 6 (1925), 8 -1 0 . 91 Tschernow [Chernov], M eine Schicksalle in Sowjet Russland, p. 48.

nize the extraction of SRs systematically so that no one could escape. In a m em orandum to V. R. M enzhinsky he proposed: “I believe we ought to ask the Secret D epartm ent [sekretnyi otdel] or som eone else personally to make up cards for all the persons m entioned in the protocols and in the correspondence of the PSR C entral C om m ittee. T he cards should contain the following infor­ m ation: first and last nam e, a note on what is being said about him and in what context, indicating when he attended the C entral C om m ittee m eeting. This card file will m ake it possible to know w ho am ong them is already arrested and whom we should still seek, e tc .”92 But this was only the beginning. Am ong other measures Dzerzhinsky pro­ posed was drafting a list of the SRs who had been elected to the First Congress of Soviets in June 1917 and all SRs who had been elected to public office, including the soviets in Petrograd, Moscow, and all other cities, in order to extract th e m .95 In other words Dzerzhinsky wanted to arrest all SRs who had been elected, even those elected before the Bolsheviks seized power, w ithout knowing w hat they were doing at present. T heir guilt or lack thereof was of no consequence. T hey had to be removed because they used to belong or still belonged to a certain political party. In a letter to Axelrod, Abramovich expressed the view that the C om m unists were deliberately parading their arbitrariness so that some oppositionists would abandon political activity and others resort to revolutionary struggle. T hen they could be crushed as terrorists and spies.94 To judge by the C heka’s actions, that may well have been its intention. Som e oppositionists were intim idated and did drop out of politics. Others indeed went underground, especially the Left SRs. O thers defected to the Bolsheviks. M any of these used to be Right Mensheviks, like Ivan Maisky or Andrei Vyshinsky. Most likely they figured that just two options were left open: either to rem ain in an opposition party and end up in Siberia eventually, or to join the Bolsheviks and serve them loyally. T hen, who knows? C areer opportunities m ight not be closed. T he C heka’s favorite ap­ proach to turncoats from other parties was to offer them a chance to become informers, infiltrators, and agents provocateurs. In an internal Cheka com m u­ nication agent Braude described her efforts to recruit informers from am ong the SR prisoners in the Butyrki jail.95 Som e of those turncoats were eager to serve their new masters. In another m em o Dzerzhinsky wrote that some former SRs offered their services to the Cheka to assassinate B. V. Savinkov, a former terrorist and an ardent opponent of the Bolsheviks who had been expelled from the SR party in 1917. Dzerzhinsky decided against assassinating Savinkov 92 Dzerzhinsky to M enzhinsky (20 April 1920), T s.P.A ., Dzerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, O pis’ 3, do cu m en t 49. 9* Ibid.

94 Raphail A bram ovich to P. B. Axelrod (30 May 1920), Axelrod Archive. 95 O t sotrudnika poruchenii sekretnogo otdela VeCheKa Braude: R aport,” T s.P.A ., Dzerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, O pis’ 3, d ocum ent 49, p. 45.

because “they m ig h t start shooting o u r com rades” in retrib u tio n .96 However, co n tin u e d D zerzhinsky, it is necessary to use these people in order to establish surveillance over C h ern o v , V. M . Z enzinov, and o ther SR leaders. “Let them go th ro u g h th e filter and be sent ab ro a d ,” co n cluded D zerzhinsky. In ad d itio n to infiltration, in tim id atio n , m ass arrests, and intrigue, the C h ek a pro m o ted factional division am ong opposition parties. O n e of the m eth o d s reco m m en d ed for u n d e rm in in g th e M enshevik party was prom oting discord a m o n g M enshevik factions by inviting th e left-w ingers to participate in th e festivities o f th e O cto b er revolution anniversary. As soon as the C heka fo u n d o u t th a t in a M enshevik or SR or Left SR party serious disagreem ents had arisen, as d u rin g th e offensive o f G eneral D enikin in the fall o f 1919, it would bestow all kinds o f favors o n th e faction favoring com prom ise w ith th e Bol­ sheviks. T h e y w ould be allow ed to publish a new spaper and hold conferences, a n d th e pages o f Izvestiia w ould be open for th e m , all in th e ho p e th a t m em bers o f th e opposition party in question w ould be tem pted to join the dissident group in o rd er to be able to live an d work in peace w ithout h arassm en t.97 A nyone craving political activity, it was hoped, w ould rather be a m e m b er of a tolerated party, have an o p p o rtu n ity to be elected to the soviet, publish articles and interview s, an d identify his party affiliation openly. T h e N arod group was favored over the m ain stream SRs, M arto v ’s M ensheviks over the R ight M e n ­ sheviks, an d S tein b erg ’s followers in th e Left SR party over Spiridonova’s Left SRs. In each case th e C heka m eth o d was to in d u ce the parties to participate in th e ir ow n destruction. T h e C heka strove to split large opposition parties into m eaningless pieces. U sually th e h o n ey m o o n w ith the new party did n o t last long. O n c e it was over, th a t party w ould be subjected to the sam e kind of p ersecution as th e old m o th e r party. Yet th e bad relations betw een th e old factions o f th e form erly large party w ould linger and m ake th eir joint activity difficult. T h e N arod gro u p an d th e m ain stream SRs had no m atters o f principle on w h ich they disagreed in 1920, yet the return of the dissidents into the m ain stream SR party was difficult a n d painful. T h e R ight and C enter-L eft M ensheviks never resolved their differences. A nd as late as the 1960s in New York they c o n tin u e d th e ir acrim o n io u s debates. T h e C h ek a tried th e sam e approach o f divide and co n q u er in regard to the Left SR party. T h e faction led by Isaak S teinberg was to be tolerated for the tim e being, b u t th e faction led by M ariia S piridonova was to b e suppressed. A classified letter to th e local C hekas referred to Spiridonova in this way: “If we take in to consideration th a t S piridonova enjoys popularity am o n g th e petite bourgeoisie [i.e., peasants], w ho are in clin ed to greet w ith jubilation any m a n i­ festation o f o pposition against Soviet pow er, it will th e n becom e clear th a t with 96 D zerzhinsky to K h.G . (19 January 1921), T s.P.A ., D zerzhinskyA rchive, Fond 76, Opis’ 3, d ocum ent 49, p. 32. 97 Viktor Chernov, “Ikh taktika,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 3 (February 1921), 3-4 .

this group of Left SRs we m ust conduct energetic struggle.”98 T he Cheka recom m ended that all arrested Left SRs be dispatched to Moscow, where “we will extract from them m axim um use, and as happened before, we will acquire valuable personnel for the C heka from am ong th em .”99 Since some Left SRs were connected with the peasant rebels, it was imperative to “put an end to these socialist bandits once and for all. ” Everyone had his fate assigned. Some were to be w atched, others turned into informers, and still others finished off. As engineers o f social relations the Bolsheviks realized that arresting all the mem bers of all opposition parties would not remove the political and social grievances those parties articulated. T here could always appear new people who would dare to articulate those concerns. Instead of banning the opposition parties outright, it was m u ch m ore convenient to preserve their semilegal status and extract troublemakers as soon as they showed up. T he All-Russian Cheka left no doubt as to w hat the ultim ate aim of its policy was: “in regard to the antiSoviet political parties it is necessary to use the war situation and charge m em bers o f these parties with crimes such as speculation, counterrevolution­ ary activity, and abuse of authority, w hich underm ine the rear, harm the war effort, and express solidarity with the Allies and their agents.”100 So m any fam iliar Soviet traditions are recognizable in this remarkable docu­ m ent. T h e individual guilt of a person did not matter. Instruction from M os­ cow determ ined w hat categories of crimes were going to be invented to get rid of undesirable people. In a secret circular to party comrades, the C om m unist bosses did not hide the fact that wreckers, enemies, and spies were code words for critics, strikers, and opposition party politicians. T h e explicit purpose of this policy was to remove from a com m unity all political leaders. T he message to an individual was unam biguous: do not get involved in politics, be obedient, and take whatever com es, or else you’ll wind up in a concentration cam p as a speculator or wrecker. W hatever the critics of H annah Arendt have argued against her theory of totalitarianism , her concept of the atom ization of society is well illustrated by this explicitly stated C heka policy docum ent. Up to Novem ber 1920 the above-m entioned Cheka practices— infiltrating parties with agents provocateurs, seizing hostages, arbitrary arrests, exiles, and deportations— were part of a covert Cheka operation. Officially political par­ ties rem ained legal in Soviet Russia for tactical considerations, as the Cheka letter explained. In November 1920, however, this pretence was cast aside. Undisguised war was declared on the opposition parties. T he Cheka published openly a policy statem ent which said that arrested members of the opposition parties’ C entral C om m ittees would be considered hostages and that their fate would depend on the political behavior of the rank and file in those parties. A 98 “T sirkuliarnoe pis’m o Vecheka no. 5” (I July 1920), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 89, box 143, folder 5, p. 15. 99 Ibid., p. 15 100 Ibid., p. 25

governm ent agency whose official role was to investigate crimes was publicly stating that the fate of people in its custody would depend on the actions of others in the future. M ost likely this escalation of repressions, especially against SRs and Left SRs, was connected to the rising tide o f peasant war against the Bolsheviks in the fall of 1920. Dzerzhinsky was genuinely worried lest the organizational capacity of the SRs and Left SRs channel peasant upheaval into an avalanche w hich would sweep away the Bolsheviks. To his deputy, he wrote: “A m ong the S Rs there is great excitem ent now. They are collecting their forces. T hey hope that in spring power will fall into their hands like a ripe fruit.”101 T h e significance of the Bolshevik decision to take hostages has been com ­ pletely overlooked by proponents o f the “good Lenin, bad Stalin” myth. This represents m u ch m ore than an em bryo of full-fledged totalitarianism , which some scholars have denied ever existed under Lenin. This reveals that the very essence of Bolshevik political culture goes back to its underground past. T he Bolsheviks, in power, used conspiratorial and terrorist m ethods to settle scores with their rivals or opponents. T he Bolsheviks acted as a private organization w hich happened to control the instrum ents of state power. W hy is it so surpris­ ing th at a faction within the ruling clique would use the same methods and dispose of its perceived rivals by state coercion a few years later? O n e m ay conclude that the C om m unist policy toward opposition parties consisted of two levels: one of abstract law and propaganda for foreign consum p­ tion, and th e other of practical policy. O n the first level political parties were legal, and they peacefully com peted for political power in the soviets. O n the second level the C heka, as a private arm of a terrorist party in power, waged a skillful and covert war outside the law against opposition parties. In that war the C heka was largely successful in weakening the capacity of opposition parties to organize and lead a popular m ovem ent. At it turned out, however, destroying political parties was an easier task than controlling and containing the workers' and especially peasants’ protest movements. 101 D zerzhinsky to K h.G . (19 January 1921), T s.P.A ., D zerzhinskyA rchive, Fond 76, O pis’ 3, d ocu m en t 49.

8 Workers under M ilitarized Labor

Theater o f the Absurd Life in a Soviet city of 1920 can be com pared to the theater of the absurd. T here were two worlds: one was the ideal and the other real. In the ideal world reality was presented as if it were w hat it was supposed to be, as im agined by the C om m unist leaders. Newspapers reported on the heroic work of labor collec­ tives and new victories on the external and internal fronts against the bour­ geoisie and kulaks and wreckers and all the other enem ies of Soviet power. Congresses were held celebrating the com ing of the world proletarian revolu­ tion. Foreign delegations were shown the achievem ents of socialist construc­ tion. C oncerts and street shows, staged for the hungry masses, depicted carica­ tures o f fat capitalists and heroic C om m unist workers. Propaganda trains crisscrossed the country, announcing the dawn of the new era of liberated labor. In the real world factories were mostly idle, railroads barely functioned, tram lines stood still, and electricity was supplied only to party and governm ent agencies. W ater and sewage services did not function, and food rations were sinking below subsistence level by the fall of 1920. W hen the cold weather set in, furniture becam e the only source of heating for m any. 1 Cheka detachm ents systematically raided the markets to fight “food speculation” and helped them ­ selves to confiscated goods in the process. As foreign observers reported: “life in the cities is affected by absolute m oral and material m isery.”2 Society, in the Russia o f 1920, was in flux. It was a quicksand society. Peasants were runn ing away from labor obligations and grain requisitions to the G reen bands in the forests. Like the workers, they were conscripted for all kinds of labor obligations and were left with essentially a subsistence-level food allot­ m ent. O th er peasants were abandoning their ruined villages altogether and m oving in search of food and land to Siberia. Workers in a counterstream were trying to escape their miserable condition by seeking refuge in the villages. Conscripted peasants took their place on the factory floor. Boundaries between 1 “Pis’mo iz K harkova,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 2 (January 1921). 2 T h is was the conclusion of the A m erican E conom ic Section, w hich studied the report of the Italian Labor Delegation to Russia and sent a copy to the D epartm ent o f State from Rome. T h e A m erican report was dated 14 N ovember 1920, Records, dispatch 681.00.7707.

producing groups of the population were increasingly erased. T he intelligentsia were starving in the cold and empty cities, trying to survive as best they could by seeking em ploym ent in Bolshevik bureaucracies. Countless others, hundreds of thousands, em igrated abroad. M any people, it seems, were trying to escape contact with the C om m unist order by physically moving somewhere else. AU that of course only added to the chaos and disruption, the lack of specialists, lack of skilled workers, lack of locomotives, lack of energy, lack of just about everything— a fam iliar feature of Soviet reality. Society in its former sense ceased to exist. Political parties and social groups were divided from one an ­ other and from within: masses from the parties, factions from other factions w ithin opposition parties, workers from peasants, peasants in one area from peasants in another. It was a splintered and broken society. In fact the very word society is hardly appropriate here. It was a conglom eration o f regions and groups and individuals whose bonds of com m on identity and beliefs had been broken. A profound downward mobility for the majority of people in Russia had taken place as well as a profound prim itivization of life and social relations. By the fall o f 1920 most potential leaders of the com m unity had been extracted by the Cheka, and the opposition parties had been virtually deci­ m ated. In February 1921 the workers and peasants and sailors who rebelled against the C om m unists were essentially leaderless. T he Left SRs led by M ariia Spiridonova had been driven underground but vowed to continue organizing peasant resistance, including popular uprisings, despite the terror. M ost M en­ shevik and SR C entral C om m ittee m em bers were in prison, held as hostages. Fall 1920 was a season of growing worker anti-Bolshevik radicalism despite M enshevik warnings. It was a tim e of sporadic m utinies in the Red Army and Navy, and above all a new stage in the peasant war against the C om m unists. Essentially two categories of people were left in the Russia of 1920: those who produced and those who collected and distributed that which had been pro­ duced. T h e C om m unists were certainly not a political party anym ore but a conglom eration of bureaucracies and m obilization agencies. Theft, corrup­ tion, and profiteering by C om m unist functionaries went hand in hand with speeches and m arches celebrating socialist construction. Lunacharsky reported to L enin that a m ajority o f cases in the Nikolayev and Odessa Cheka involved m isdeeds of the C om m unist party adm inistration.3 And yet Lunacharsky h im ­ self kept on giving speeches on the achievem ents o f Soviet power. T he leaders of the C om m unist state knew very well that the real world was drastically different from the one they painted in their own speeches. Lunacharsky wrote to Lenin that Odessa, Nikolayev, and m ost other Ukrainian cities were “antiSoviet,” that a majority of the population there detested Bolshevik rule, and th at even workers suffered under Soviet power because due to some unexplain3 “Doklad Lunacharskogo L eninu ob obshchem polozhenii Nikolaevskoi i Odesskoi g ubernii,” Literatum oe Nasledstvo, vol. 80, p. 460.

able reasons as soon as Soviet power was established, bread prices went up. Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and others were under no illusion that the m ajor­ ity o f the population, urban and rural, was against them , that C om m unist adm inistration was corrupt and in m any cases downright crim inal, and that worsening, not improving, econom ic conditions were associated with Soviet power. T h e worse the moral and physical degradation of urban life becam e, the m ore the C om m unists shouted about victories over internal and external en e­ m ies and about strengthening vigilance. Intrigues of the capitalists, lack of political consciousness am ong the masses, conspiracies o f the Mensheviks and SRs— all were to blam e for “tem porary difficulties,” b ut not the C om m unists or their policies. T h e party could not be wrong, because the vanguard o f the working class could not be wrong. By definition whatever was wrong was done by the enem ies o f the working class. W riting to a friend in a personal letter not intended for publication, M artov remarked: “T he atm osphere, as I said, is stifling. It is so dull with no strong sensations at all, except that now and then they begin all over again, their m onotonous baiting of the Mensheviks accom ­ panied by threatening catcalls. But even these manifestations of hysteria are becom ing trite, devoid o f enthusiasm , and failing to evoke responses even in the Bolshevik masses. A profound stagnation of thought pervades Bolshevism .”4 An im portant aspect of Soviet political culture developed at that time: pre­ tending that life was a procession from one victory to another along the path of socialist construction and blam ing hidden enem ies and conspirators for “tem ­ porary difficulties.” T his political culture of w hat we call the theater of the absurd, presenting the ideal visions as if they were reality, outlived Lenin and Stalin by several m ore decades. It becam e a perm anent feature of Soviet life.

T h e M ilitaiization o f Labor T h e m ilitarization o f labor in 1920 is usually regarded as a passing episode in Soviet history. O nce W ar C om m unism was abandoned in 1921, gone was the m ilitarization of labor as well. It is seen as a tem porary aberration in the Bolsheviks' search for a path to socialism. In fact this was not the case. At the tim e of its adoption the m ilitarization of labor was thought of as the only correct M arxist m ethod o f industrialization. Not just Trotsky but the C o m m u ­ nist opposition as well accepted the principle of the m ilitarization o f labor. Even though the m ost odious attributes of this m ilitarization, such as fixing workers to their plants and instituting a food rations hierarchy, were dropped under the NEP, m any beliefs, values, and identities associated with the m ilitar4 Iu. O. M artov to S. D. Shchupak (26 June 1920). T h e original is in the Nicolaevsky C ollec­ tion, series 21, box 60, folder I, reprinted in English in Brovkin, ed., Dear Comrades, p. 211.

ization of labor becam e perm anent attributes of the C om m unist social order. T h e C om m unists’ perception of workers as objects of state action to be m o­ bilized, shaped, purged, indoctrinated (called politically educated), and disci­ plined (i.e., punished) lasted over seven decades. It is indisputable that the m ilitarization of labor is associated with the nam e of Trotsky.5 In a num ber of articles in late 1919 and early 1920 Trotsky elab­ orated his ideas on the socialist organization of industry. He presented them m ost fully in his report to the N inth Party Congress in M arch 1920. Trotsky started with the general prem ise that a hum an being is essentially a lazy being and his natural desire is to avoid work.6 U nder all systems, however, there are forces that make him work. U nder capitalism, argued Trotsky, workers have to seek em ploym ent to survive and move from one place to another depending on the availability of labor, dictated by the market. T he capitalist market fulfills the function of com pulsion. Trotsky saw the greatest achievem ent of the Bolshevik revolution in the destruction of the m arket.7 U nderthesocialist organization of industry the state plan “of utilization of labor resources replaced the m arket.” From here it followed that the state had inherited the function of com pulsion and had the right to direct labor resources where it needed them . T h at is why workers had to be fixed to the plants and notallow ed to wander around Russia in search of work. “T h e labor force is distributed in accordance with the econom ic p la n .. . . It [labor] m ust be appointed, rerouted, and dispatched exactly in the same fashion as soldiers are. T h at is the foundation of militarized labor.”8 According to Trotsky, socialism was a form of production superior to capitalism because a com prehensive state plan replaced the chaos of the market. In labor relations socialism was superior because state coercion replaced coercion by the market. Since the state was a workers’ and socialist state, its com pulsion of the workers should not be feared, because in the end it had the workers’ best interests in m ind. Trotsky's critics, such as Aleksei Rykov, G ol’tsm an, and others, feared that labor un d er com pulsion was not going to be as productive as free labor, an observation that seems axiomatic. But not to Trotsky. He argued exactly the opposite. “W e say it is untrue that com pulsory labor is unproductive under all conditions.”9 It could be very productive indeed if the workers understood that w hat they were building was a superior form o f society, a socialist state. T he purpose o f the party was to educate the workers that work under com pulsion was som ething they had to accept voluntarily and joyfully. Incentives and repressive 5 See, for exam ple, such key docum ents as “K hoziaistvennoe polozhenie respubliki i osnovnye zadachi vosstanovleniia prom yshlennosti” (January 1920), pp. 2 7 -5 2 , and “M obilizatsiia truda, doklad na tret’em s’ezde sovnarkhozov,” pp. 5 2 -5 5 , in L. Trotskii, Sochineniia, vol. 19 (1927). 6 D eviatyi s’ezd RKP(b). Protokoly, p. 93. 7 Ibid., p. 104. 8 Ibid., p. 93. 9 Ibid., p. 104.

measures were to be com bined in order to teach the workers what was in their best interest. O n e should be thankful to Trotsky for expressing the essence of the total­ itarian idea so succinctly and so openly in M arch 1920. Trotsky argued that the best m odel to use in im plem enting labor com pulsion was the army: “In the m ilitary sphere there exists a corresponding apparatus which is activated for the purpose of com pelling the soldiers to fulfill their duties. In this or that form it m ust be created also in the labor sphere.” 10 So industry should be run from a single headquarters like the army; the construction of socialism should proceed according to a general plan like a military cam paign, and workers should be utilized by the headquarters just as solders are in war. He envisioned creating territorial labor armies whose headquarters would adm inister econom ic activity in large econom ic regions of the country. T h e brave new world of C om m unist labor would look like this: O u r armies will be recast to fulfill labor needs. Labor specialists will replace m ilitary specialists at the top. . . . Operations headquarters will send out orders to the labor front: to chop wood, harvest grain, and repair locomotives. T he M obilization Directorate will com pile lists of all capable and experienced specialists. And every evening thousands of telephones will ring at the army headquarters reporting conquests on the labor front.”11 Trotsky tried to im plem ent this system in the Urals, where the T hird Army was converted into the First Labor Army. Workers received a soldiers’ ration, and m ilitary discipline was introduced.12 Conscripted soldiers were assigned to the labor front, and industrial workers were turned into soldiers. T h e difference between them was erased. T h e creation of labor armies may be seen as an extension of the Bolshevik policy of total m obilization of hum an and econom ic resources for w ar.13 T he external front o f the civil war against the W hites found its counterpart in the internal labor front. T he problem with this explanation is that the labor armies were created after the decisive victories over the W hites and partly in response to the new situation arising from these victories. Labor armies m ade it possible to utilize redundant soldiers after the defeat of Kolchak. Soldiers as workers and workers as soldiers did not have to be aroused for heroic tasks by Trotsky's oratory. T hey had to fulfill orders. T h e Bolsheviks had always displayed a utilitarian approach to what they called the masses, who were to be shown the correct path. In 1917 Trotsky did it by fiery speeches and inflam m atory rheto­ ric; in 1920 there was a shortcut, state coercion. B ut w hat about agriculture and peasants? Trotsky suggested that the peasan­ try be m ilitarized too, and here the experience of Red Army building was most 10 Ibid., p. 93. 11 “Krasnaia arm iia— arm iia tru d a ,” Krasnodrmeets, no. 1 6 -20 (February 1920), 8. 12 Trotsky to com rade SkIiansky for com rade L enin (Ekaterinburg, 27 February 1920), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, d ocum ent 482, p. 77. 13 “L’A rm ie du travail,” La R ipublique Russe, no. 7 (I April 1920), 3.

relevant. He boasted that out of “m uzhik raw m aterial” (muzhitskoe sy’rie) he had built a victorious Red Army. T he same m ethod should now be used to engage peasants in state-supervised labor through the institution of universal labor conscription. City workers should be used by the party to m ilitarize the peasant m asses.14 To some these ideas may appear as incoherent fantasies impossible to im plem ent. But in 1929 this is exactly what the party did by m obilizing and dispatching twenty-five thousand workers to the countryside with the explicit purpose of putting an end to free labor and setting up con­ trolled and supervised peasant collectives instead. Trotsky was convinced that his vision of compulsory, state-supervised labor was superior and that every C om m unist knew it. “If coercion is inim ical to productivity, then we are doom ed to face econom ic decline, no m atter what we do and no m atter how we twist and tu rn .”15 Here Trotsky proved to be prophetic. It is clear from his discourse that the creation of labor armies was m ore than a m ere utilization of surplus soldiers after the defeat of Kolchak. Labor armies were an intrinsic com ponent of Trotsky’s plan of socialist construction. W ith m inor differences in em phasis Lenin agreed with Trotsky’s ideas. His own speeches of the tim e were full of dem ands to pu t an end to the collegial system of m anagem ent and to institute strict one-m an control. T h at idea went well with his advocacy of army methods. T h e opposition to Trotsky’s m ilitarization schemes and Lenin's one-m an rule cam e from two very different constituencies in the C om m unist party. O ne was led by the dem ocratic centralists T. V. Sapronov and N. Osinsky, people who had always been concerned with party democracy or at least democratic pro ced u re.16 T hey were worried by two consequences of the m ilitarization of labor. In Osinsky’s words, “C om plete m ilitarization implies lim itation of the civil liberties and political rights o f the individual. It implies his enserfm ent in the production process.”17 Osinsky’s second concern was that army m ethods, if im plem ented in all spheres of politics and industry, would Jead to the destruc­ tion of dem ocracy in the party: “U nder the cover of m ilitarization you prom ote the rule of bureaucracy. And we do not w ant this.”18 Sapronov was even more explicit. If socialism, he argued, actually m eant the dictatorship of appointed bureaucrats who fulfill orders, why then all this talk about the dictatorship of the proletariat, w hich supposedly exists; why then all this talk about workers’ self-organization and independent activity [samodeiatelnost]? Sapronov ac­ cused L enin and his entourage of turning not only rank-and-file workers but party m em bers as well into “an obedient gram ophone” that only reproduced what had been prerecorded. W hat was being created, argued Sapronov, was a 14 D eviatyi s’ezd R KP(b). Protokoly, p. 94. 15 Ibid., p. 104. 16 See Service, The Bolshevik Party in R evolution, pp. 142-45, 17 D eviatyi s’ezd RKP(b). Protokoly7 p. 124. 18 Ibid., p. 118.

dictatorship of the bureaucracy, and a rule of oligarchy.19 M artov could not have p u t it better than Sapronov. As in the past, the concerns of som e Bol­ sheviks echoed the concerns of the Mensheviks and SRs. T he difference of course was that Sapronov, Osinsky, and others genuinely wished the C o m m u ­ nist party to succeed in its endeavors. Some of Osinsky’s and Sapronov’s fears sounded prophetic in retrospect. “I would like to pose a question to comrade Lenin. And who is going to appoint the C entral Com m ittee? O h, yes, here we have one-m an rule as well! Here too one ruler is appointed! Hopefully we will not reach that stage, but if we do, the revolution will be lost.”20 T h e only institutional grouping within the C P that supported Sapronov and Osinsky were the trade unionists. These were the people who later in 1920 would form a workers’ opposition and launch a trade union debate that almost split the C o m m u n istparty by M arch 1921. T he unionists were concerned with the fate o f the unions and by im plication with the rights of workers. They feared Trotsky’s appointed com m anders and political departm ents, and their speeches betrayed concern over their own future role. Most of them had nothing against Trotsky’s idea of a centralized plan of econom ic developm ent or against the idea of a general headquarters for industry. It is just that they wanted to be the headquarters and draft the plans. These people had nothing against labor armies either and approved their creation. N either did they protest the m ilitar­ ization of labor in principle. T hey objected only to its introduction everywhere immediately. T h e term workers’ opposition, which they later chose, does not actually depict the true colors of that opposition. In fact these people had little to do with workers. T h eir “opposition” was a voice of the trade union bureaucracy con­ cerned over its fair share of com m anding posts and worried about a possible usurpation of those posts by Trotsky’s political departm ents. Politics inside the C om m unist party were increasingly becom ing the politics of interest groups and cliques dividing up power and access to privilege. T he voices of Osinsky and Sapronov in 1920 sound like voices from the past, when people were m otivated not by institutional interests but by the principles they believed in. Despite the resistance of some C om m unists at the N inth Party Congress, the m ilitarization of labor and the labor armies schem e were approved. Over two thousand enterprises were m ilitarized.21 From then on workers had to fulfill orders and receive arm y rations. T he factory was turned into a war zone. Production was defined as fighting on the industrial front. Party leaders thought of themselves as com m anders of an army and of workers as soldiers. T he very idea of a negotiated labor dispute becam e unacceptable. Soldiers do not negoti­ ate b u t obey. T h e idea of a strike becam e synonymous with enem y attack, diversion, and sabotage that had to be crushed immediately. Pravda threatened: “those who are against labor conscription are labor deserters, supporters of 19 Ibid., pp. 5 1 -5 2 and 64. 20 Ibid., p. 52. 21 G olub, Keyoliutsiia zashchishchaetsia, p. 123.

speculation and econom ic disorder. T herefore they are enem ies o f the working class.”22 A ccording to Trotsky, 300,000 workers were listed as labor deserters in 1920 o u t of the total of 1,500,000 workers in the m ain branches o f industry.23 T h e new task o f the trade unions, according to Pravda, was to ensure the fulfillm ent o f labor conscription. “Cases of m alicious sabotage on the part of workers, em ployees, or adm inistration” they were to “pass on to the C h ek a.”24 A special new bureaucracy was created to deal with labor desertion, and ever m ore stringent m easures were adopted. T h e congress defined the task of the C P and of the trade u n ions as intensifying the struggle against labor desertion. “T he way to fight against it is to publish a list o f desertion fines, to create labor detachm ents o f deserters u nder fine, and finally to intern deserters in a concen­ tration ca m p .”25 In the course o f 1920 the system o f m ilitarized labor developed overlapping levels o f bureaucracies for inspecting, supervising, distributing and collecting. A great n u m b er of the people on a factory payroll were not workers at all. “In one factory there are 1,600 w orkm en on the payroll, b u t 600 o f them are engaged in ‘political work’ and never show u p except to draw their pay. ”26 T hese bureaucracies drafted all kinds of rules and regulations defining the new social hierarchy and behavior norm s in the workplace. It was specified w hat kind of breach o f labor discipline would lead to w hat kind of p unishm ent. A worker n am ed K hronin, from Kostrom a, described conditions at his factory: “Absolute subm ission to the director has been introduced at the works. N either inter­ ference n o r contradiction on the part of workers are tolerated.”27 A refusal to work overtim e or a no-show at the workplace w ithout perm ission from the forem an m ean t suspension o f the food ration for a specific period. Persistent refusal led to trial and conviction. N o w onder Putilov workers in Petrograd wrote in Septem ber 1920: “W e feel as if we were in a forced labor cam p where everything is regim ented except food. W e have lost ourselves as people. We have been tu rn ed into slaves.”28 22 ‘‘R ol’ profsoiuzov v bo r'b e s trudovym dezertirstvom ,” Pravda (19 M ay 1920), 2. 25 D eviatyi s’ezd RKP(b). Protokoly, p. 93. 24 “R o t profsoiuzov v b o r’be s trudovym dezertirstvom ,” Pravda (19 M ay 1920), p. 2. 25 D evia tyi s’ezd R K P(b). Protokoly, p. 415. 26 L eslie A. D avies, A m erican consul, “C onfidential R eport on C onditions in Russia” (12 May 1920). T h e consul added to his report a note: “T h e follow ing inform ation has been furnished by a British officer w ho has just co m e from Russia and I believe it is reliable.” Records, dispatch 681.00.7031. 27 K h ro n in , in M eta list, no. 13 (August 1920), cited here from G eorge S trum ilo (here spelled Stroom ilo), “Russia and the Russian W orkers u n d e r the Bolshevist R u le ,” A m erican Federationist, vol. 28 (M ay 1921), p. 392. S tru m ilo was a Petrograd worker, a M enshevik. In 1918 h e fled to the U rals and rem ained there in 1919 u n d e r the W hites. H e was th en elected as a m em b er o f the trade u n io n delegation o f the Urals M etal U nion to be sent to the U nited States. W h en he arrived, the Kolchak regim e did n o t exist anym ore. H e published nu m ero u s articles on the Red and W hite dictatorship in the U rals and Siberia in the W estern trade u n io n and labor press. 28 Boris Sokolov, “Polozhenie proletariata v Sovetskoi R ossii,” Volia Rossii (18 D ecem ber 1920), 2.

The Workers’ Economic Situation T h e Bolsheviks’ most powerful weapon over the hundreds o f thousands of conscripted soldier-workers was their control over food distribution. In the near fam ine conditions of 1920 a food ration becam e a ticket for survival. Now the Bolsheviks were going to use this weapon with skill and refinement: increased rations to some, reduced rations to others, and no rations to still others created a new social hierarchy. Just as peasants in 1918 had been divided into social categories o f rich and poor depending on their usefulness to the regime, workers in 1920 were divided into food ration categories depending on their usefulness for the im m ediate tasks of Soviet power. Lenin wrote quite frankly to Trotsky: “T he individual bread ration is to be reduced for those not engaged in transport work and increased for those engaged in it. Let thousands m ore perish, but the country will be saved.”29 Shock enterprises of vital im portance were placed in the first, or highest, food ration category. Usually these were m unitions plants. Enterprises of less vital im portance were placed into the second and third categories. By the end of 1920 eighteen different types of food rations existed.30 A huge bureaucracy was hired to collect and distribute meager grams of bread and other necessities to hundreds of thousands of workers, who were completely at the m ercy of those who distributed goods. In certain cases it was difficult to decide who and on what basis would receive, for example, a pair of boots.31 O f course the com m anders deserved m ore than the soldiers. T his system o f centralized distribution generated pervasive corruption early on. T here are countless examples from various parts of the country to the effect that food or clothing which was supposed to be distributed to workers disap­ peared w ithout a trace. Lunacharsky, am ong others, reported to Lenin about the daily theft of goods from w arehouses.32 T h e All-Russian Cheka reported to Lenin that it had discovered “massive num bers of crimes such as abuse of authority and bribery for release from the draft in Kursk Province. ”33 According to an A m erican intelligence report on conditions at the T ula arm am ents plant, only 25 percent of workers received clothing sent to the plant for distribution, the rem ainder being given to the com m issars.34 O ne m ay dismiss such abuses of power as violations of socialist legality, as Lunacharsky did. But whether Lunacharsky realized this or not, these were not m ere violations but the very essence of the Soviet order, because abuse of power was m ade possible by access 29 L enin to Trotsky (I February 1920), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, docum ent 445, p. 22. 30 “Interview du cam arade A bram ovitch,” La Republique Russe (I February 1920), 21-25. 31 “R abochaia Z h iz n ’. S hkum iki,” Pravda (16 D ecem ber 1920), 2. 32 L unacharsky to L enin (26 February 1921), in Literatum oe Nasledstvo, vol. 80, p. 253. 33 “Inform atsionnaia Svodka Vecheka” (1 -1 5 July 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, O pis’ 3, docu m en t 414, p. 13. 34 Office of the C om m issioner o f the U nited States, Riga, Latvia (22 D ecem ber 1920), confi­ dential m em orandum : “Tula Arms W orks,” Records, d o cum ent 861.60.27.

to privilege, and that defined the social status of the com m anders over the masses. This aspect of m ilitarized labor too was there to stay for another seven decades. According to wage scales established at the end of 1919, unskilled workers were paid from 2,200 to 3,000 rubles per m onth in 1920. Skilled workers received from 3,000 to 4,000 rubles, engineers and technicians up to 5,500 rubles, and departm ent chiefs from 6,200 to 7,000 rubles a m onth. Some top officials and Red directors were drawing as m uch as 100,000 or 120,000 rubles a m onth. In addition to a set wage scale the workers’ incom e consisted of pay for overtim e, bonuses, and nonm onetary com pensation, that is, distributions of food and clothing directly at the workplace. For a typical skilled m achine operator, for example, the regular wage plus bonus am ounted to about 6 ,0 0 0 7.000 rubles a m onth. Four or five hours of overtim e daily brought another 3,700 rubles. Such a worker could make from 10,000 to 12,000 rubles in m onetary com pensation. In addition workers in category “A” enterprises, mostly at m unitions plants, and in the “noncom batant Red Army allowance” category received a food allowance. In Petrograd, for example, it was 25 pounds of bread, 1.5 pounds of sugar, 6 pounds o f m illet, 2—5 pounds of fish, and 0.5 pounds of tobacco. At free m arket prices these items were worth from 12,000 to 15.000 rubles. So from all sources a skilled worker in the highest category of pay and food allowance received from 24,000 to 26,000 rubles worth of com pensa­ tion for a twelve-hour workday.35 W h a t could a worker purchase with his 12,000 rubles in addition to his food ration in kind? In Moscow and Petrograd the free market prices for basic com m odities were as follows: sugar 4,500 rubles, butter 5,000 rubles, and m eat 3.000 rubles a pound; a bottle of milk, 250 rubles. In other words a worker could buy with his wages either four pounds of m eat or three pounds of sugar a m onth in addition to his ration. According to a confidential Am erican m em ­ orandum on conditions at the Tula arm am ents plant, the workers' food supply from all sources was sufficient for two weeks in a m onth only.36 In a letter to L enin, Lunacharsky cited a Moscow worker complaining: “We are given a decent ration at the plant, bu t they give us nothing for our wives and children, and we return from work to hungry fam ilies.”37 C om pared with 1917, Pe­ trograd workers’ purchasing power had dim inished by twenty times, according to the calculations o f Boris Sokolov.38 Needless to say, the situation of unskilled 35 Boris Sokolov, “T h e Russian Proletariat under the Bolshevist R ule." T his is a reprint in E nglish o f a series of articles Boris Sokolov published in Volia Rossii on 1 ,4 , 8, 10, 14, and 18 D ecem ber 1920. Here, B ulletin o f the R ussian Inform ation Bureau in the U .S ., no. 2 2 -23 (15 January 1921), p. 7. H ereinafter Sokolov, “T h e Russian Proletariat." 36 Office of the C om m issioner o f the U nited States, Riga, Latvia (22 D ecem ber 1920), confi­ dential m em orandum : “T ula Arms W orks,” Records, dispatch 861.60.27. 37 L unacharsky to L enin (26 February 1921), Literatum oe Nasledstvo, vol. 80, p. 254. 38 Sokolov, “T h e Russian Proletariat,” p. 7.

workers was m uch worse. And prices soared even higher by the end of 1920. Russian workers were com pelled to subsist on starvation diets. By contrast the leaders of the “proletarian” revolution were well provided for. Martov, am ong others, wrote to a friend in a private letter not intended for publication that he had occasion to observe the life-styles of the top Bolshevik leaders. As far as the “com m issars’ estate” is concerned, its superior standard o f living is alm ost out in the open, or should I say less concealed than last year. People like Riazanov, Radek, and Rykov, w ho had earlier fought against “inequality,” now display on their tables w hite bread, rice, butter, m eat, and (at Radek’s and Rykov’s) a bottle o f good w in e and cognac. Karakhan, Kam enev, B onch [Bruevich], D em ian Bednyi, Steklov, et al. obviously enjoy life. O n ly A ngelica [Balabanoff], Bukharin, and C hicherin am ong the stars of the first caliber are still noted for their “sim plicity o f disposition.”39

Clearly this inequality generated a growing resentm ent am ong the workers. At the Geissler factory in Petrograd workers adopted the following resolution in August 1920: “W e feel provoked at seeing the C om m unists at our factory well dressed in leather jackets and trousers, also because they frequently obtain special rations and extra allowances. ”40

Workers’ Responses T h e workers’ m ost com m on response to their situation was to escape. T he flight of workers from cities is illustrated by the following com parison. T he industrial census o f August 1918 covering thirty-five provinces showed 1, 25 3,000 workers employed at 6,090 industrial enterprises. In Ju n e 1920 there were only 867,000 workers at 5,877 enterprises in the same provinces, which m eant that “from August 1918 to June 1920 the num ber of factories decreased by 3 -5 percent and the n um ber of workers by 31 percent.”41 According to various statistical data, it was prim arily the skilled workers who fled to the villages and set up all kinds of repair and artisan shops there. T he British delegation described the workers’ motivation to seek refuge in the vil­ lages. T h e delegation was inform ed “by a worker from the Kolomna works who stated that desertion from the works was frequent and that deserters were ar­ rested by soldiers and brought from the villages. . . . Also the peasants were willing to em ploy m en at m uch higher wages than they can get in the factories and workshops, plus a plentiful supply of food which the town worker does not 39 Iu. O. M artov to S. D. Shchupak (26 June 1920). T h e original is in the Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 21, box 60, folder I, reprinted in E nglish in Brovkin, ed., Dear Comrades, p. 210.

40 Sokolov, “T h e Russian Proletariat,” p. 9. 41 Ekonomicheskaia zh izn (29 O ctober 1920).

WORKERS UNDER

281

MILITARIZED LABOR

TABLE 3 D ecrease in N um ber o f Workers from 1918 to 1920 by City Province Ivanovo-Voznesensk Kostroma M oscow Petrograd Vladim ir

N u m ber in 1918

N um ber in 1920

Decrease

146,300 17,600 3 7 8 ,0 0 0 140,000 103,000

30,600 8,1 0 0 218,000 102,400 21,200

75% 54¾ 42% 27% 80%

Source: Ekonomicheskaia zh izn (29 O ctober 1920).

have.”42 By the end of 1920 the workers’ flight from the cities endangered the norm al functioning of even those few plants that were in operation. T he Bol­ sheviks responded by m obilizing, conscripting, and assigning new soldierworkers to the factories, but often these new conscripts tried to escape as well, as countless reports from across the country attest: “Working conditions at the Kostroma Plo factory are so bad as a result of the long com pulsory workday and poor nutrition that m any workers cannot stand it any longer and flee to the villages. In this way also the m achinists who were sent over here from the Kaluga factory have left as well as the Red Army soldiers assigned here from the Kostroma garrison.”43 Those workers who stayed for one reason or another developed all kinds of ways of dealing with the situation as best they could. They had to be at a factory, but they had no motivation to work hard. In this instance the workers’ m ost typical response was a slowdown, or volynka in Russian.44 It can best be sum m arized by a saying usually associated with the Brezhnev era but just as applicable to 1920: “They pretend to pay, and we pretend to work. ” T h e observations of a group of G erm an workers are particularly apt here. U nder the influence o f C om m unist propaganda they emigrated to the land of the victorious proletariat in 1920. These were skilled workers, and they were placed at the Kolomna locomotive plant near Moscow. Most of them consid­ ered themselves C om m unists. T hey were appalled by just about everything they saw: the miserable food rations, the incom petence and arbitrariness of the adm inistration, but also the work habits of Russian workers. By G erm an stan­ dards Russian workers did not work at all. Every half an hour, com plained one of them , they take a smoke break. T hen they would go from one section to 42 British L abour Delegation to Russia, 1920. Report. 4i Boris Sokolov, "Polozhenie proletariata v Sovetskoi Rossii,” VoIia Rossii (4 D ecem ber 1920), p. I. 44 For a discusssion of volynki (go-slow strikes) and specific cases, see A. Nadeschdin, “La Situation des O uvriers dans La Russie Sovietique,” Les Informations Democratiques Russes Bulle­ tin, no. 13 (M arch-A pril 1920), I.

another, talk and kill tim e and pass the day. A nother added that m any were not workers in the proper sense but conscripted peasants from nearby villages. T hey had no interest in their work whatsoever.45 T hey stole whatever they could from the plant to m anufacture knifes and saws for sale on the side. W hen the G erm an workers raised these issues, they were labeled counterrevolutionaries, wreckers, and spies. T heir situation quickly becam e untenable and they tried to leave Russia, but it was not so easy. W hat the G erm ans experienced in Ko­ lom na was com m onplace across the country. A Socialist Revolutionary re­ ported from the Urals: “T h e productivity o f labor is falling; theft is on the rise. Absolutely everybody is stealing, from the top adm inistrators down to the apprentices. Every worker is stealing whatever he can put his hands o n .”46 W hat emerges from these reports is a vicious circle in the social relations of labor. W orkers’ attempts to flee led the Bolsheviks to fix them to the plants and to introduce ever m ore stringent punishm ent. T he workers responded with slowdowns, theft, and, as we shall see, strikes; the Bolsheviks— by ever m ount­ ing repression. T h e Bolshevik solutions did not work. C onscription, control, and pu n ish m en t failed to m otivate Russian workers to work well. T heft and slow work habits were manifestations of workers’ adaptation to their situation. T hey could do little, since those who stayed in the cities had nowhere to go and any protest only exacerbated their situation. This sense of hopelessness is well expressed in a nu m ber of worker resolutions. T h e Kolpino plant workers near Petrograd wrote: “It is a sham e and deplorable that Russian workers, owing to the stupid econom ic policy of the Bolsheviks, are doom ed to extinction and half o f them have already died. In the surburbs o f towns there is an abundance of food, of bread and m eat, and yet it is unobtainable since buying and selling has been prohibited. W hat do the C om m unists care for the working m en, as long as they [the Com m unists] are well fed and clothed?”47 Food, lack of food, restric­ tions on trade with food, privileges in food distribution— in a word everything associated with food becam e the dom inant them e in all worker protests of 1920. O n e can discern the bitter com plaining tone in this resolution of the Obukhov plant workers: “At a tim e when workers have for a year already been unable, because of low wages, to buy m eat and fat, being com pelled to subsist on rye bread only, the commissars are well fed and provided for.”48 45 O riginal report o f the G erm an workers is Kolomna. Erlebnisse von 76 Kuckwanderem der Interressengemeinschaft der Auswandererorganisationen nach Sowjet R ussland (n.d.). C ited here from W ilhelm D ittm an ’s account first published in Freiheit in Berlin and a sum m ary in Peuple (4 Septem ber 1920). For D ittm an ’s report in English, see “D ittm an n ’s Description o f C onditions,” Am erican Federationist, vol. 27 (D ecem ber 1920), 1097-1101. See also “Nemetskie rabochie v Sovetskoi Rossii,” Volia Rossii (12 Septem ber 1920), 6. 46 “P olozhenie na Urale. Pis’m o iz E katerinburga,” a handw ritten letter to the PSR C entral C om m ittee, PSR Archive, docu m en t 2045. 47 George Strum ilo (here spelled Stroomilo), “Russia and the Russian Workers under the Bolshevist R u le,” Am erican Federationist, vol. 28 (May 1921), 389. « Ibid.

Clearly when people are hungry, they are concerned with food m ore than with the constitutional order. T his led Mensheviks like Abramovich to write dismissively th at “workers were sinking ever deeper into the swamp of everyday concerns, the struggle for bread, clothes, and heating.”49 He implied that workers were no longer interested in politics. O ther observers, however, noted that the bitterness and despair in workers’ voices revealed the intensity of their political attitudes. Boris Sokolov, a sociologist, cam e to the conclusion in 1920 that a “furious opposition to the C om m unist authorities” was on the rise am ong the workers.50 W hat was new in com parison with 1918 was a clear-cut distinc­ tion in identity between workers and Com m unists: “we” and “they.” T he cate­ gory “we” was associated w ith being hungry and “they” with well fed; “we” with poor clothes and “they” with leather jackets; “we” with suffering from conscrip­ tion, fines, and im prisonm ent and “they” with a gun-waving Cheka boss. Sokolov’s observations on the political nature of workers’ protests find confir­ m ation in a report to the State D epartm ent by the Am erican consul in Vyborg, a keen observer of political life in Petrograd: “At the two largest Petrograd works, nam ely Putiloff and Skorokhod, the workmen dem anded control over the factories, and the elim ination of C om m isary m anagem ent, permission to change factories, longer luncheon tim e and larger food supply. All the de­ m ands were rejected and therefore econom ic disorders on I July co ntinued.”51 T hese ostensibly purely econom ic dem ands in fact challenged the militarized labor system and, by Trotsky’s own logic, the very foundations of the socialist order. N ot only were these dem ands political; they were explicitly antiC om m unist in the context of 1920. And finally top secret, weekly All-Russian C heka reports to Lenin speak w ithout any reservations about workers’ anti-C om m unist attitudes: Petrograd: Railroad workers’ disposition is outright W hite G uardist. 52 Ekaterinoslavl: Ferm ent is noticeable am ong the workers. Using this, the Mensheviks and other counterrevolutionaries are conducting anti-Soviet agitation and are enjoying some success. Kuban: T h e dispossition o f the population is counterrevolutionary.53

Discussing the trajectory of workers' attitudes in Petrograd, a rank-and-file Socialist Revolutionary prophetically forecast in September: “profound hatred am ong the workers is rising against Soviet power. Sooner or later this hatred is going to lead to an open insurrection.”54 49 Abram owitsch (G erm an spelling of Abram ovich], D ie Z u k u n ft Sowjet R usslands, p. 23. 50 Boris Sokolov, “Pis’m o iz Butyrskoi tiur’my," VoIia Rossii (I O ctober 1920). 51 Q u arto n to Secretary of State (10 July 1920), Records, dispatch 861.50.108. 52 “E zhenedel’nye svodki Sekretnogo otdela Vecheka. T ovarishchu L en in u ,” T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, O pis’ 3, docum ent 414, p. 13. 53 Ibid. (1 6 -3 1 July 1920). 54 “Razval Sovetskoi Rossii. Moskva. O t nashego korrespondenta,” Volia Rossii (24 O ctober 1920).

Elections W h at may appear confusing at first glance is that the above-cited workers’ attitudes do not m atch the official election returns to the soviets. Almost all official Soviet data on elections to soviets in 1920 and during the subsequent seventy years show over 90 percent support for the Com m unists. If such returns accurately correspond to workers’ attitudes, then all these reports on com plaints and strikes can be dismissed as inventions of malicious Mensheviks and SRs, as the C om m unist revolutionary tribunals actually did. If on the other hand the above-cited workers’ attitudes are accurate, how then account for the Bolshevik victories? To explain this contradiction one has to abandon the assumption that official voting results reflect expressions of workers’ free will. T he com pulsion to work certainly had its counterpart in a cum pulsion to vote. Second, the votes of actual workers were diluted by the votes of representatives of various adm inis­ trations and bureaucracies. T hird, the overall size of the soviets grew constantly from 1917 onward, so that m ore and more people represented more and more bureaucracies, whereas the actual num ber of workers continued to decline. In the M oscowsoviet of 1920, for example, the enterprises voted directly for only a very small num ber out of the total of 1,500 seats. Trade unions and the army garrison officially sent their own representatives. But in fact soldiers were simply ordered w hom to vote for. T he Moscow C ouncil of Trade Unions had 96 seats alloted to it, each to represent 5,000 union members. In fact of course union m em bers never even knew who “represented” them in the soviet. So the C ouncil of Trade Unions consisting of 100 m embers sent 96 of them to the Moscow soviet.55 C om m unist bureaucracies drowned the workers’ vote in the soviets. A good example in this instance is the Petrograd soviet. From some 400-500 m em bers in 1917 and 800—900 members in 1918 it grew to over 2,000 m em ­ bers in 1920. O f those m ore then 50 percent were representatives of the army and police. T h e Bolshevik party, num bering only 22,000 in Petrograd, had alm ost 2,000 of its m embers in the soviet, which means that every tenth C om m unist had a seat in the soviet.56 A party of 3 percent of the population had 90 percent of the seats in the soviet. Such a huge assembly could not possibly have been a policy-making or even a deliberating institution. It assem­ bled primarily to acclaim decisions m ade behind closed doors. A ritual was established for the next seventy years: the party decides; the handpicked “workers” representatives applaud. W hy did the Bolsheviks bother to have elections at all? In fact in m any cities and provinces they did not in 1920. But in general elections could not be 55 " S tru k tu ra sovetov” (M enshevik C C re p o rt to th e B ritish delegation), N icolaevsky C o lle c tio n , series 6, box I, fo ld er 16(2). 56 “L e S oviet de Petrograd (A nalyse stastistique),’’ Pour la R ussie, no. 10 (6 O cto b er 1920).

phased o u t altogether, because the pretence had to be m aintained that Russia was a republic o f soviets. M oreover, w ithout any risk of losing, the Bolsheviks had an opportunity to sound ou t w hat the popular attitudes really were during an election cam paign. To stage an election th at w ould unm ask hidden M en ­ sheviks an d SRs, coerce workers to vote the right way, and produce a correct com position o f the soviet that would applaud at the right m o m en t was an art th at th e Bolsheviks perfected over m any decades. In 1920, however, they were n o t as experienced, and things often w ent wrong. T h e m ost c o m m o n practice was to co nduct elections at a collective’s general m eeting by an open show o f hands. If a director o f a factory was running, few h ad th e courage to raise their hands in opposition. At elections to the city soviet in Sm olensk, for exam ple, the provincial econom ic council was allotted a certain n u m b e r o f seats in th e soviet. A com m issar who was a candidate from th e C o m m u n ist party and the ch airm an o f the electoral com m ission and the ch airm an o f the election m eeting— and ru n n in g unopposed— was “elected” u n an im o u sly by an open show o f h a n d s.57 Yet there was a m ishap. T h e Sm olensk Province Food Supply C o m m ittee’s 1,000 em ployees were allotted 5 representatives. O nly 300 voters showed up at the election m eeting. O f those 196 voted for the M enshevik list and 70 for the Bolshevik one. Seeing this unfavorable tu rn , an election com m ittee m em ber said that h e had just received 150 votes for th e Bolsheviks from other em ployees scattered all over the prov­ ince. T h a t was clearly im possible because th e election lists were publicly a n ­ no u n ced only at this m eeting. Bolshevik votes were prepared in advance, and these “voters” could no t possibly have known w hom they had voted for, if they had voted at all. A scandal broke out. Yet the election com m ission recognized th e results as legal. A ccordingto an o th er source, delegates representing th e Red A rm y were never elected by arm y units. T h e Bolsheviks sim ply selected a list of those w ho ostensibly represented the arm y.58 T h e final victory of the C o m m u ­ nists in elections to the Sm olensk soviet was assured: 284 C om m unists, 29 no n party delegates, and only 17 M ensheviks were elected. T h e C o m m u n ists took the m atter o f elections very seriously even though the final o u tco m e was seldom in doubt; even if it were, it did n o t m atter because the soviets had no power. T h e com m unists needed the result for their theater of the absurd. T h ey needed to report to their superiors th at on their sector of the ideological front loyalty to the vanguard o f the proletariat was assured. If in tim ­ idation and m an ip ulation did no t work, the C heka was called in for m ore direct action. For exam ple, at the elections to the Petrograd soviet in D ecem ber 1919 som e SRs from th e N arod group, a legal Soviet party, m anaged to post a list of candidates only at two plants of the Nikolayev railroad. In both they won. T h e 57 “K om m unisticheskie i dem okraticheskie vybory,” Volia Rossii (10 N ovem ber 1920), 3. 58 C o m m itte e to C o lle c t Inform ation o n Russia, “Red Arm y E lection in Sm olensk,” in Report (Political a n d E conom ic), p. 34.

Bolsheviks declared the election m eeting improper and scheduled another meeting. T his time they tried to dilute the workers’ vote with activists from outside who appeared at the meeting. Yet the workers were firm and voted for their candidates again. T he next day Cheka agents appeared at the hom e of one of the SR candidates, Rudakov, and seized his wife as a hostage, a clear warning to drop out of the race.59 D uring the election campaign in Vitebsk the local Cheka arrested several prom inent Social Democrats, am ong them Karavkin and Tseitlin-Batursky, and offered them a deal: they would be freed if they promised to drop out of the race. T hey refused and were kept in jail, where Batursky died shortly thereaf­ ter.60 Sim ilarlyin Mogilev, at the soviet election in November 1920, the Cheka arrested all m em bers of the Social Democratic party com m itee and officially charged them with a crime: anti-Soviet agitation during the election campaign. T hey were sentenced to internm ent in a concentration camp for the duration of the civil war.61 Such electoral m echanics and Cheka methods make it very difficult to determ ine workers’ political preferences from election results. Yet the few instances where a detailed breakdown of the vote by enterprise is available suggest that most workers voted for the opposition parties if they had a chance to run in elections. T he Tula arm am ents plant had always been a stronghold of the Mensheviks. At the election to the Tula soviet in the spring of 1920, as Pravda attested, M enshevik appeals to return the soviet to elected workers’ representatives, to abolish the Cheka, and to abandon the one-party dictator­ ship were m et with stormy applause. Pravda lam ented that “they listen to our speakers attentively but w ithout engagem ent [bezdeiatelno]. They listen to the M ensheviks attentively also, but they applaud with enthusiasm .”62 O u t of the 320 m em bers elected to the Tula soviet, the C om m unists had 185, those w ithout party affiliation num bered 90, and the Social Democrats had 45. This result suggests an overwhelming C om m unist victory in a major industrial town. In fact the Mensheviks actually won a majority over the Bol­ sheviks in the workers’ constituency.63 Fifty percent of the C om m unist vote cam e from the army garrison and 25 percent from the trade union bureau­ cracies; that is, 75 percent of the Bolshevik members were selected and selfappointed rather than elected. Only 25 percent were in theory workers’ repre­ sentatives, but in practice only a small fraction of those were freely elected by workers. O n the other hand, of the 45 Social Democrats elected, 35 (78 percent) were representatives of the armanents and cartridge plants, and 10 59 “Vybory v Petrogradskii Sovet,” Narod, no. 2—3 (10 M arch 1920), p. 34. 60 “Persecution contre Ies social-dim ocrats," Pour La Russie, no. 46 (9 February 1921), p. 3. 61 Ibid. 62 “V Rabochei gushche. Na perevyborakh T u l’skogo soveta,” Pravda (26 M arch 1920), I. 65 B. A. Skomorovsky to Axel’rod, handw ritten (2 May 1920), Axelrod Archive.

were elected by th e trade u n io n s.64 In Kharkov, ou t of a total o f 700 soviet seats, the C o m m u n ists won 467, 240 o f w hich represented the garrison, the C heka, and th e soviet em ployees. W ith o u t the appointees o f the trade u n io n b u reau ­ cracy, w hich represented itself, the Bolsheviks had fewer th an 200 m em bers elected, and even fewer o f those elected by workers. T h e Social D em ocrats on the o th er h an d h ad 220 delegates— all elected, and all by workers.65 T h e All-R ussian C heka m onitored workers’ political attitudes attentively and systematically. N o thing escaped its attention. Every incident o f anti-Bolshevik cam paigning, every protest action, and every gathering was recorded and re­ ported to L enin every week. For exam ple, in February a weekly com pilation in clu d ed this prosaic item : “Petrograd: At the Aleksandrovsky plant, a forem an Bystrov, a M enshevik, is conducting m alicious anti-Soviet agitation.”66 L enin and th e C heka were aware th at the opposition parties enjoyed considerable support, as is clear from dozens o f item s in weekly reports to Lenin: Bryansk: T he M enshevik party represents a large and coherent group here. They work underground and enjoy the support o f workers at factories and plants.67 Petrograd: Aleksandrovsky plant: T he minority o f the PSR [Narod faction] has devel­ oped long roots in the workers’ m ilieu. They are propagating ideas inim ical to the Third International.68

In any case workers’ votes for the opposition parties’ candidates could not im prove th eir social or political situation, since the soviets had no power. T h a t is why the workers’ only m eans o f expressing dissatisfaction was to go on strike.

Strikes O n e im p o rtan t aspect of the workers’ m ovem ent in 1920 was that strikes were no longer effective in defense o f workers’ rights, b u t for reasons different th an in 1918. T h e n , workers were afraid to lose their jobs. At that tim e a strike inevita­ bly led to closure of the factory, a dismissal o f workers, and a careful screening o f those rehired to d eterm ine their political preferences. In 1920 the Bolsheviks used these m ethods as well, bu t workers feared m ost no t m erely dismissal bu t 64 “Struktura sovetov” (Menshevik C C report to the British delegation), Nicolaevsky Collection, series no. 6, box I, folder 16(2). 65 Ibid. and “Resul’taty vyborov v Khar’kovskii sovet Rabochikh i Krasnoarmeiskikh deputatov,” Proletarii, no. 3 (2 April 1920), I. 66 “E zhenedel’nye svodki Sekretnogo otdela Vecheka. Tovarishchu L eninu” (7-14 February 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docum ent414. 67 “E zhenedel’naia svodka Sekretnogo otdela Vecheka. Svodka no. 81 Tovarishchu L eninu” (25 August 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 414(2), p. 68. 68 “Politichaskie partii i gruppy. Svodka lnformatsionnogo Otdela, Sekretnogo otdela Vecheka. Tovarishchu L eninu” (10 August 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 4, docum ent 268(2).

internm ent in a concentration cam p. U nder the conditions of m ilitarized labor a strike was considered an act of desertion from the labor front. T h e Bolshevik press treated strikes with the same vehem ence as if they were a m atter of state treason. Pravda was full of headlines such as this: “Stab in the Back!” “Agents of D enikin,” “Yellow M osquitoes!” (that is, the strikers). It was imperative to free the working class from inciters. T h e only good place for a striker, Pravda threatened, was in a concentration cam p.69 Resortingto a strike in 1920 was an act of desperation rather than a bargaining technique, as in 1917. Workers knew th at nothing good awaited them if they struck. And yet they did, usually in response to unexpected repressive measures. According to official statistics of the C om m issariat of Labor, during the first six m onths of 1920 there were strikes in 77 percent of the m edium - and largesize enterprises of Russia. Ninety percent of all strikes took place at state enter­ prises and 10 percent at private enterprises. At such plants as Obukhov, Skorokhod, and Izhorsky (Kolpino) several strikes took place during this period. T h e largest num ber of strikes was in the metal industry, the smallest in the chem ical industry.70 These calculations suggest that a linkage existed between the degree of m ilitarization and the degree of workers’ unrest. T h e unhappiest workers in Russia were at large state metal industry enterprises and railroad plants. These were the m ost im portant sectors of industry, hence heavily m il­ itarized and potentially explosive. T h e voices of the strikers and Bolshevik commissars tell us more about the nature o f social relations in C om m unist Russia than the official resolutions of fake workers’ congresses drafted by the C om m unist propaganda m achine. In M arch 1920 a group of workers in Ekaterinburg submitted a petition to Trotsky, who was then in the Urals setting up his labor armies. T he authors of the petition tried to collect workers’ signatures and called on them to express no confidence in the soviet, party, and trade union organizations. Strong language referred to them as being like a gendarm erie and the old regime. Som e workers supported this petition and stopped work. From the C om m unists’ point of view a grave crim e had been com m itted. T h e text of the verdict of the Revolutionary T ribunal of the First Labor Army, chaired by G. L. Piatakov, gives a good idea of what Trotsky, Piatakov, and C om pany considered to be crim inal activity. T h e substance of the charges against Fedor Illinykh, one of the authors of the petition, was that he had “composed a petition o f an obviously W hite Guardist character aim ing to discredit completely the power of workers and peasants.” Four other authors were accused of “an attem pt to inculcate in workers a false understanding of the tasks of Soviet power and its directives.” T h e tribunal resolved: “By com m itting this grave crim e against the Soviet Republic, Illinykh has definitely revealed him self as an enem y of the toiling people and deserves 69 See, for exam ple, “Rabochaia zh izn ’. Na chistuiu vodu,” Pravda (16 January 1920), or “Professional’noe dvizhenie,” Pravda (15 February 1920), or “U dar v spinu,” Pravda (12 February 1920). 70 Boris Sokolov in Volia Rossii (18 D ecem ber 1920), 2.

th e h ig h est degree o f p u n ish m e n t— execution by firing sq u a d .”71 It is so m e­ w h at iro n ic th at th e S talinist sentence p ro n o u n c e d against Piatakov and others so m e years later used the sam e vocabulary. Illinykh’s sen ten c e was reduced to a five-year term in a co n c en tratio n cam p. N o th in g was said in th e verdict, how ­ ever, ab o u t th e fate o f th e o th er eighty workers arrested in c o n n e ctio n w ith this affair. T h e ir fate rem ain s u n k n o w n .72 O n e ca n cite d ozens o f sim ilar verdicts passed by revolutionary trib u n als all over R ussia an d U k raine in 1920. Expressing a critical o p in io n an d calling for a strike w ere th e m o st co m m o n charges in all cases. T h e R evolutionary T rib u n al in Sim birsk ch arg ed twelve workers o f th e cartridge p la n t w ith a g a m u t of crim es, su c h as: “th e accused carried o u t m alicio u s sabotage in th e form o f an ‘Italian strike’ by m eans o f co u n terrev o lu tio n ary speeches; guilty o f m alicious agitation against Soviet pow er d u rin g the strike; charged w ith system atic in cit­ ing o f th e m asses, playing o n th e ir lack o f political consciousness; charged with false in terp retatio n o f th e Soviet tariff p olicy.”73 O n e can d educe from these charges th a t th e accu sed workers publicly criticized low wages, an o rder to work w ith o u t pay on a Saturday, an d th e privileges o f C o m m u n ist party m em bers. T h e trib u n a l fo u n d N ikolai Filipov, a w orker a n d m e m b e r o f th e SR party, guilty. His sen ten ce was execu tio n by firing squad, suspended for a year so th at h e co u ld “prove his loyalty to Soviet p o w e r.” M ikhail Kiselev, a M enshevik worker, was sen ten ced to ten years im p riso n m e n t, replaced by im m ed iate d ispatch to th e front lin e against Poland. O th e r workers were sen ten ced to various term s o f h ard labor or in te rn m e n t in co n cen tratio n cam ps. T h e C o m m u n ists w ere co n vinced th a t all they h ad to do to en su re th a t th e m asses obey was to rem ove troublem akers. For exam ple, in July th e C heka rep o rted to L en in th a t tw enty-tw o strikers in Petrograd w ere rem o v ed .74 A nd in O c to b e r after a sim ilar strike th e C h ek a rep o rt specified th a t an investigation was b eing c o n d u c te d in o rd er to “identify th e organizers o f th e strike.”75 L u n a ­ charsky, obviously in full accord w ith such m ethods, gleefully reported to L en in th at in th e city o f N ikolayev in so u th ern U kraine th e N aval’ p lan t was “clean sed ” perfectly. “It tu rn ed o u t th a t o n e had to cleanse th e p lan t only lightly. It was sufficient to rem ove eighty people for th e p la n t to becom e ‘silky.’”76 L u n ach arsky explained w hat th e word silky m ean t. A t least h a lf o f those p resen t at th e p lan t m eetin g w ere M ensheviks, yet a resolution was 71 A photocopy o f the original verdict was published by the SRs in “Za kulisami pravitel’stvennogo m ekhanizm a. Proletariat vne zakona,” R ev o liu tsio n n a ia R ossiia, no. I O ( Jul y 1921), 28. 72 “P olozh en ie na Urale. Pis’m o iz Ekateri nburga,” handwritten letter to the PSR Central C om m ittee, PSR A rchive, docu m en t 2045. 73 “I2 khroniki B ol’shevistskogo pravosudiia,” SotsiaHsticheskii V e s tn ik , no. 3 (1 M arch 1921). 74 “Inform atsionnaia svodka Sekretnogo otdela Vecheka Tovarishchu L eninu” (1 - 1 5 July 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K , O pis’ 3, docu m en t 414. 75 Ibid. ( 1 - 1 0 O ctober 1920), p. 7. 76 “D oklad Lunacharskogo L eninu ob obshchem polozhenii Nikolaevskoi i Odesskoi gub ernii,” L ite r a tu m o e N asledstvo, vol. 80, p. 460.

adopted unanim ously that the C om m unist party was the only genuine leader of the working class. Lunacharsky m ade no secret that he knew, as did everyone else, that such declarations of loyalty were m ade under com pulsion, as a result of fear after the “cleansing” of the plant. T h e commissar of enlightenm ent praised such subtle m easures highly. T hey had a long-lasting educational effect. In Ekaterinburg and Simbirsk workers did express political opinions. Yet in m any other cases, as in Nikolayev, they did not dare to venture into politics but concerned themselves with specific situations at their factories. A strike at the Aleksandrovsky locomotive plant of the Nikolaevsky railroad in Petrograd was set in m otion in August by an order to work overtime. Twenty-eight workers did not show up. T h e com m issar o f the plant, Firsov, deprived them of their Red Army food ration for seven days and yelled at them: “Hey you, scoundrels. You’ll see what its like stopping work! You scoundrels, should have been thrown out long tim e ago. ”77 Workers elected delegates to discuss the matter, but they were arrested. T h en they appealed to the m em ber of the Petrograd soviet who represented their constituency, one Bystrov, an SR. They asked him to com ­ m unicate to the Petrograd soviet the following demands: that all those arrested be released and their fines rescinded, that a prison railcar be removed from the premises, since workers had been incarcerated there for all kinds of trivial offenses, and finally that a custom ary form of punishm ent, exile to the north, be abolished. Until these dem ands were m et, workers w ent on strike. Bystrov tried to intervene in the Petrograd soviet on behalf of the strikers, but to no avail. T h e strikers were fired. At night Bystrov him self was arrested along with thirty other workers. T h at same night the Cheka arrested some workers at the Rechkin, M etal works, and O bukhov plants, as a precaution or a threat. T he C om ­ m unist party cell at the Aleksandrovsky plant proposed that the workers elect some other, nonopposition party representative to the soviet. Some workers refused and walked out of the m eeting. Those who walked out were arrested im mediately, 150 people. Some were exiled to the north and others transferred elsewhere. It is hard to disagree with the SR report that the Cheka used the opportunity offered by the strike to remove politically active workers and their leaders, m em bers of opposition parties.78 In Ekaterinburg, Simbirsk, and Petrograd the initiative belonged to the workers. T hey drafted a petition or a list of demands. In m any other cases it was the C om m unists, paradoxical as it may seem at first, who deliberately provoked strikes in order to “unm ask enemies of Soviet power.” A case in point was the strike of workers of the Ryazan-Urals railroad. O n 7 May 1921 the Cheka arrested a railroad worker nam ed Mikhailov, a Socialist Revolutionary popular Petrograde,” R evoliutsionnaia Rossiiar no. 10 (July 1921), 21 -2 3 . 78 “Pravda o sobytiiakh v Aleksandrovskikh masterskikh Nikolaevskoi zheleznoi dorogi,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 4 (M arch 1921), 25-26. 77 « V

am ong the workers. It was clear from the start that railroad workers were not going to acquiesce to M ikhailov’s arrest. T hey instructed their deputies to the M oscow soviet to dem and M ikhailov’s release. T hey did and were arrested in tu rn by th e M oscow C heka. W orkers sent another delegation to the local Ryazan C heka, b u t this delegation was also arrested. Every attem pt to negotiate was cut short by repressive and illegal measures. Angry workers m arched to the local C heka and were just about ready to storm it w hen they found out that M ikhailov and others had been transferred to Moscow. T h e workers then went on strike dem anding the im m ediate release o f all those arrested. T h e authorities sh u t down the depot, brought in troops, and arrested another hundred workers. AU workers at that depot were dismissed, and only those who agreed to sign a promissory note to the effect that they would henceforth support Soviet power were allowed to return to their jobs. T hree hundred workers were not rehired.79 In a letter to Axelrod, B. A. Skomorovsky, the secretary of the M enshevik party, who had handled correspondence with the local party organizations and had at his disposal a vast am o u n t of inform ation on labor conflicts, cited examples w hen C om m unist authorities pushed workers to strike as part of a deliberate policy to purge the m ost outspoken and independent from the workers’ ranks.80 In som e cases the C om m unist authorities created a special institution, a com m ission for the purging of the plant. Such a com m ission handled the strike at the Kharkov locom otive p lan t.81 W h en the strike broke out, the authorities let the workers draft their dem ands and allowed a protest rally. O nly a day later all those w ho spoke at the rally and drafted the dem ands were arrested. W orkers w ho were seized in these purges could not be held as strikers. They had to be labeled. T h at im m ediately resolved the question as to the causes of the strike and m ade it possible to apply force w ithout restraint. If a strike broke out, it was autom atically labeled a W hite G uards’ conspiracy. Labeling was becom ing one o f the m ost im portant features of Bolshevik political culture. Labeling guaranteed that the authorities were always right and the protesters always wrong. It im m ediately defined a labor conflict not in term s o f two equal parties in a dispute bu t in term s o f loyalty to Soviet power. T he authorities, no m atter how corrupt or incom petent, appeared as defenders of socialism, and the protesters as its opponents. C om m unist bosses needed labeling to cover up their misdeeds. It was their best defense against the control and supervision im posed by superior state authorities. A m ong the num erous so-called W hite G uards’ conspiracies of 1920 was the workers’ protest at the Izhevskand Votkinskplants in the Urals. In the Bolshevik 79 “L okaut na R iazansko-U ral’skoi zheleznoi doroge,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 10 (July 1921), 24. 80 B. A. Skomorovsky to Pavel Axelrod, handw ritten (25 June 1920), Axelrod Archive. 81 “K har’kov,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 8 (May 1921), 25.

m ind the very nam e of these plants evoked an image of a counterrevolutionary conspiracy, since the workers at these plants rose in rebellion after the Bol­ sheviks had lost elections and disbanded a newly elected M enshevik- and SRIed soviet in August 1918. It was all the m ore convenient, then, to label any labor dispute at these plants another W hite G uards’ conspiracy. W hat really happened in 1920 was that workers drafted a list of dem ands, just as they did in Ekaterinburg, Petrograd, and Kharkov.82 Like most workers’ dem ands these prim arily concerned econom ic issues. Workers wanted “all types of food rations equalized” and the leather boots they were supposed to receive actually deliv­ ered to workers and not the bosses. Only the last item in the list expressed a political opinion, the dem and that the m ilitarization o f labor be abolished. It is not known how the Bolsheviks dealt with this particular expression o f discon­ ten t labeled a “conspiracy.” But a few m onths earlier, in response to an indus­ trial action elsewhere caused by the Izhevsk workers, Lenin wrote in a classified message to Siberia: “Paikes reports that there is m anifest sabotage on the part of the railway workers. . . . T hey suspect sabotage by Izhevsk workers. I am surprised th at you are putting up with this and that you do not shoot for sabotage.”83 L enin’s, Trotsky’s, Piatakov’s, Lunacharsky’s, and the All-Russian C heka’s instructions to local officials on how to deal with labor protest leave no doubt that repressive measures against workers were not examples of the ex­ cesses of local autocrats but a part of the officially sanctioned policy. C onfronting an overwhelm ing force, dismissal, exile, or even execution, workers internalized their hostility and were reluctant to display it. But if and w hen it erupted, it could not be stopped. In these m om ents workers seemed not to care what m ight come. T h e strike in Tula in June 1920 is an example of such an em otional response o f nonviolent character. T he Menshevik caucus in the T ula soviet followed scrupulously M artov’s policy of strictly observing Soviet law and avoiding confrontation with the Com m unists. From the experience of strikes in 1919 th e T ula Mensheviks drew the lesson that any strike actually played into the hands of the Cheka. Strikes ended invariably with arrests and the exile o f SD leaders and active workers. T he Tula Mensheviks defined their political role as mediators between the workers and the plant m anagem ent. T hey agreed with the Bolsheviks that strikes had harm ed production at a crucial m unitions plant b u t added that in order to avoid strikes the social and econom ic concerns of workers had to be addressed. T hey skillfully used the Bolsheviks’ own rhetoric that everything in Soviet Russia was for the workers, that it was a 82 “Zagovor v Sovetskoi Rossii,” Volia Rossii (12 O ctober 1920). 83 L enin to the M ilitary Revolutionary C ouncil of the Fifth Army, Sm irnov (29 January 1920), top secret. Everything except address coded. Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, d ocum ent 444, p. 20. It is notew orthy that in L en in ’s so-called Com plete Works, where L enin refers to form er Izhevsk workers who had been transferred to O m sk, the sentence on shooting was om itted. See L enin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 51, p. 127.

workers’ state, and that the soviets were working class organizations, w hich, according to L enin, represented a superior form of democracy. T herefore it was the soviet and n o t the C heka th at should have the last say in city affairs, argued the M ensheviks. It was hard for the Bolsheviks to object publicly to this reason­ ing. T h e M ensheviks acted as if Bolshevik pro-worker propaganda and the Soviet C onstitution were for real. T hey clung to their status o f a legal opposi­ tion party and stayed clear of any involvem ent in w hat the Bolsheviks could label a W h ite G uards’ conspiracy. A strike usually presented the Mensheviks with som e very difficult choices: How could they preserve the allegiance of their constituency and avoid decim ation by the Cheka? Unexpectedly in June 1920 a small incident escalated into a strike w hich revealed w ith utm ost clarity the mentality, political culture, and social relations in a Russian industrial city.84 O n Sunday, 6 June, the workers in the tool shop q u it work and dem anded that a general m eeting take place. T hey disagreed with an order o f the plant adm inistration to work overtim e on Sunday, because that Sunday was a religious holiday. T hey also objected to the conscription of w om en for work on Sundays, because w om en usually went to the surrounding villages to purchase food from peasants on Sundays. It is im portant that workers did n o t object to being ordered to work overtime on Sundays in principle but only on th at particular Sunday. T hey did not object to their wives being con­ scripted for work in principle but only on Sundays. In other words they refused to com ply w ith additional burdens unexpectedly imposed on them . T here were also rum ors at the plant th at a Red Arm y u n it that had received a shipm ent of guns from the Tula works had sent some flour and fat for the Tula workers but the C o m m u n ist bosses had divided these goods am ong themselves. A representative o f the plant adm inistration, Arsent’ev, cam e to the tool workshop with a C heka detachm ent and dem anded the im m ediate resum ption of work. T h e workers started clam oring and insisting that a general m eeting be sum m oned to h ea r their com plaints. T h e Cheka m en arrested a m ajority of the tool shop workers and led them under guard to the C heka headquarters. T he news quickly spread to the rest o f the plant. O ne after another all workshops stopped work. M any dem anded an explanation from Arsent’ev and insisted in tu rn th at a general m eeting of the plant be sum m oned. T h e plant adm inistra­ tion refused and declared a state of em ergency for the entire plant. A special troika was formed to deal with w hat was called sabotage. T h e troika’s first an n o u n c em en t was th at it had discovered a counterrevolutionary conspiracy at th e plan t engineered by Polish spies and Black H undreds in order to weaken the m ight of th e Red Army. It rem inded th e workers that a strike constituted labor desertion and that the culprits would be dealt with using all the strictness of 84 For a sh o rt account, see “T h e Persecution of Socialists by the Bolsheviks during 1920,” Inform ation B ulletin, no. 31 - 3 3 (26 M arch 1921), 12.

w artim e, up to and including execution. A military tribunal under the Tula C heka was set up to deal with “conspiracy and treason,” as the strike was officially referred to now. O n the next day the scene at the tool shop was repeated over and over again. A representative of the plant adm inistration dem anded in each workshop that workers resum e work immediately, and those who did n o t were led away by the C heka. T h e n um ber of those arrested by the end of the second day of the strike reached several hundred. In response to these mass arrests the workers of the cartridge plant went on strike in solidarity with the arm am ents plant workers. Up to this point the chain o f events in Tula played out like dozens of strikes across Russia. But then som ething new and unusual happened in Tula. T he M enshevik report on the event characterized it as mass hysteria. Yet it is better to call it mass nonviolent resistance. T his m ovem ent was started by the Tula wom en. In large groups they began to congregate in the streets, watching the C heka lead their arrested husbands to its headquarters. T h en some of them pleaded with the C heka to be arrested as well. This request the Cheka did not turn down. M ore and m ore wom en followed this example and volunteering to be arrested. T h en m en workers followed suit by publicly expressing solidarity with the arrested workers and volunteered to be arrested as well. In the first four days o f the strike the num ber of those arrested, including volunteers, clim bed to at least 10,000 people. T h e troika had now overplayed its hand. It could hardly claim that 10,000 T ula workers and their wives were all Polish spies and Black Hundreds. T h e way the All-Russian Cheka reported these events to Lenin is quite revealing: “Tula: Strike activity has resumed. T he workers’ dem ands are selfish and greedy [shkumicheskie]. It is impossible and inadmissible to fulfill them . T he province C heka has adopted tactics of decisive action against the strikers. A num ber of them have been arrested.” 85 T h e report never m entioned what these dem ands were. It failed to reveal the actual num ber of arrested workers, adm itting to having detained only 3,226. M ost im portantly the tone o f the report suggests that the C heka had the authority to decide, w ithout asking the opinion of the head of governm ent, w hat kind o f workers’ dem ands were admissible. T h e C heka had th e authority to arrest thousands of workers and only then to inform the leader of the “proletarian” revolution how m any were to be shot, drafted, or exiled. It is logical to suggest that if the Cheka had had reason to expect a restraining reaction from Lenin, it would have presented its catalog of repres­ sions as a proposal rather than as an accom plished fact. T h e M enshevik faction of the Tula soviet legally assembled for an emergency session in the building of the soviet. T hey drafted a set of proposals to the soviet on measures to be undertaken to end the strike peacefully by engaging the soviet 85 “Inform atsionnaia svodka Sekretnogo otdela Vecheka. T ovanshchu L eninu’’ (1 -1 5 June 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K, O pis’ 3, docum ent 414, p. 3.

and the trade unions. They pointed out that workers did not want to strike but were provoked by the actions of Arsent’ev and the Cheka. Some Bolshevik members of the soviet were swayed by this reasoning and were ready to accept the Menshevik proposals. But that would have put responsibility for the strike on the shoulders of Bolshevik functionaries. To make things worse for them ­ selves, the Mensheviks hinted to the troika and the Cheka that they would inform M artov in Moscow and he would make it public knowledge what was really going on in Tula. T he entire fifteen-member Menshevik faction in the soviet was arrested. Even those who did not attend the meeting were seized in their hom es at night.86 T he Bolshevik leaders now had a stake in proceeding with their m ade-up charges that the strike was in fact a conspiracy. T hat was their only defense against the wrath of Moscow over the work stoppage at the m unitions plant. T he troika and the Cheka needed to undercut the Menshevik initiative lest it gain m om entum am ong the rank-and-file Bolsheviks. T hat could best be ac­ complished by discovering that the counterrevolutionary nest of conspiracy was in the M enshevik faction of the soviet. Indeed the All-Russian Cheka reported to Lenin that “active Mensheviks” and the “organizers of the strike” had been arrested and exiled.87 W ith the Mensheviks arrested as conspirators and spies, any Bolshevik repeating their arguments on how to achieve a peaceful settle­ m ent of the strike could be unmasked as well, as a hidden sympathizer with an internal enemy. O ne does get an impression that the top people in the soviet, the Cheka, and the factory administration worked well together and covered for one another. Labeling played a social function for them: it secured their uncon­ trollable dictatorship in Tula. They were in fact members of what one historian has called early Soviet provincial cliques.88 G. N. Kaminsky, the chairm an of the city soviet Executive Com m ittee, cut short any discussion of negotiations. He was particularly worried by the behav­ ior of C om m unist workers. M any of them had volunteered to be arrested as well. In fact he admitted that C om m unist workers were more outspoken in this instance than the Social Democrats. T he frame of m ind of this chairm an of the “Soviet of Workers’ Deputies” Executive Com m ittee is well revealed by his own words: “It is necessary to put an end to this once and for all. It is essential to force the workers to subm it blindly and obediently to the demands of the authorities." 86 T his account is based on the extensive report of the Menshevik party comm ittee to the M enshevik C entral C om m ittee. T h e original is “Dokladnaia Zapiska,” in Nicolaevsky Collection, series 6, box 5, folder 52. Published in English in Brovkin, ed., Dear Comrades, docum ent 36, pp. 198-208. 87 “Svodka Informatsionnogo otdela Sekretnogo otdela Vecheka Tovarishchu Leninu. Politicheskie partii i gruppy” (10 August 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 4, docum ent 268(2), p. 5. 88 T. H . Rigby, “Eariy Provincial Cliques and the Rise of Stalin,” Soviet Studies, vol. 33, no. I (January 1981), 3—28.

Any concessions to workers, he said, m ight produce a harm ful illusion in their m inds that all they had to do if they had a grievance was go on strike. T h e C heka’s m ain task was to present the case to Moscow as a conspiracy. To judge by its resolute response to the strike from the very first m om ents, when a refusal to work m eant im m ediate arrest, it is strange that the Cheka did not arrest the Strike C om m ittee im m ediately as well— strange, that is, if the strike leaders were dangerous anti-C om m unists. But the Mensheviks could not have been the leaders of the Strike C om m ittee for two reasons. First, elected M en­ shevik leaders had already been arrested, and second, they had no inclination to support th e strike. In a confidential m em orandum on the strike to the M en­ shevik C entral C om m ittee the Tula Mensheviks denied any involvem ent in the Strike C om m ittee. It is possible that some rank-and-file workers, m em bers of the M enshevik or SR or even C om m unist parties, played a role in the Strike C om m ittee, b u t it is m ore likely that the Strike C om m ittee was set up by the Cheka. Probably the role the Cheka assigned to it was to act as an agent provocateur, that is, to attract active and outspoken workers in order to unm ask and remove them later. W h eth er or not the Strike C om m ittee was an instrum ent of the Cheka in the difficult task of unm asking enem ies, the C om m ittee for the Liquidation of the Strike was. T his com m ittee interrogated hundreds and then thousands of workers on their personal involvem ent in the strike. Each individual was asked to identify the inciters and troublem akers am ong the workers who had engi­ neered this case of internal sabotage and subversion. Most workers were re­ leased, b u t they had to.sign a confession: “I, the undersigned, a stinking dog and the greatest crim inal to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Red Army, repent for my sins and promise. . . .”89 T h e Revolutionary T ribunal, chaired by the Cheka chief, tried those identi­ fied as inciters and troublem akers and sentenced 28 of them “to hard labor for the duration of wars threatening Soviet power.” According to other sources, however, about 200 workers were exiled from T u la.90 T h e M enshevik faction of the soviet was kept in prison w ithout any charges for at least several m onths. W hen and if they were released cannot be ascertained. T he Tula Mensheviks’ report on the strike to their own party C entral C om m ittee, not intended for publication, stated that as a result of the strike the Tula workers were hiding their anger against the C om m unists but it could erupt again. T h e T ula strike m anifested all the elem ents of the Bolshevik m ode of action in regard to strikes that we have observed in other cases. T h e strike was pre­ sented as a conspiracy of foreign agents and counterrevolutionaries; it was used as a pretext to arrest legally elected m em bers of the city soviet; no concessions or negotiations were even considered; independent-m inded workers were interned 89 “Dokladnaia Z apiska,” in Nicolaevsky Collection, series 6, box 5, folder 52. 90 B. A. Skomorovsky to Axel'rod (25 June 1920), Axelrod Archive.

in a co n cen tratio n cam p; and the rem aining workers were forced to confess their sins and swear loyalty to the regim e. It is difficult to estim ate how m any Russian workers were arrested or dealt with by adm inistrative order for strike actions or expressions o f political opinion in 1920. In th e few cases we have considered, 80 workers were rem oved in E katerinburg, 180 railroad workers and 150 metalworkers in Petrograd, 100 rail workers a t the R yazan-U rals railroad line and 103 a t the Kursk line in Moscow, 152 m etalworkers in Bryansk after a strike there, and over 200 in T u la .91 A few m o n th s later a screening and purge was carried out at the Arsenal plant in Kiev. O u t of 1,700 workers 600 were dism issed.92 T his list is certainly not com prehensive. Secret d o cu m en ts of the local C heka in Sm olensk Province dem onstrate th at a growing hostility to the Bolsheviks worried the C heka there too. Its special d ep artm en t in Roslavl’, Sm olensk Province, reported th at “counterrevolution was rearing its head am ong the masses. ”93 Every week a C heka official in every uezd wrote a report to his superior on the political attitudes of the p o pulation.94 Local party cells were instructed to becom e auxiliary networks o f the Cheka. T hey discussed all the details o f mass surveillance quite openly. T h e Roslavl’ U ezd C P co m m ittee in Sm olensk Province resolved “to entrust secret work in the garrison to th e C P com m ittee m em ber com rade Baranov. T h e presidium is entrusted with the task o f assigning the necessary n u m b er o f com rades for the purpose o f identifying and extracting all undesirable [neugodnye) elem ents.”95 Itw as also decided th at specific C P com m ittee m em bers would conduct general conversations on political topics in order to facilitate the exposure of hostile elem ents. In a word the party’s task was to identify politically unreliable people, and th e C h ek a’s task to extract th e m .96 A clear pattern em erges from this evidence on the workers’ protest m ovem ent in different parts o f the country: (I) It was explicitly a response to the C o m m u ­ nist m ilitarization o f labor. (2) It was prim arily a defense against abom inable eco n o m ic conditions, m alnutrition, and exploitation. (3) By the beginning of 1921 it acquired an explicitly political character rem iniscent o f 1918, whereby questions o f constitutional order overshadowed purely econom ic dem ands. (4) T h e relationship betw een the ruling party and the workers changed profoundly. It was a relationship of com m anders and soldiers on the labor front, as the 91 D ata on Kursk is cited from "U dar v s p in u ,” Pravda (12 February 1920). 92 “K h ro n ik a,” Z n a m ia truda (the paper o f the Left SRs), no. 7 (20 June 1920), I. 93 “From : N ach al’nik Sekretnoi O perativnoi C hasti C heka, to: U ezdnyi K om itet RKP(b)gorod Roslavl” (7 O cto b er 1920, top secret), Sm olensk Archive, W K P no, 119. 94 “Svodka o nastroenii m ass uezda za m ai m esiats,” ibid, 95 “Protokol zasedaniia Roslavl’skogo U ezdnogo Kom iteta RKP(b)” (10 O ctober 1920), ibid. 96 T h e above cited decisions o f the Roslavl’ C heka and the Roslavl’ C P C om m ittee were apparently m ade in response to the A ll-Russian C heka letter to all provincial C P com m ittees, suggesting th a t they intensify th e struggle against enem ies o f Soviet power. T h e original is “Vsem G u b k o m am RKP (b)” (8 O cto b er 1920), ibid.

Bolsheviks put it, or of masters and serfs as some workers saw it. (5) And lastly the workers’ m ovem ent of 1920 displayed a variety of worker responses to their situation, such as withdrawal from politics, escape to villages, nonviolent resis­ tance, and organized industrial action. T h e C om m unists never negotiated with strikers. It seems their policy was to teach them to obey unconditionally. Those who had seized power in 1917 in the nam e of the politically conscious proletariat were in fact weeding out all those conscious workers. T he C om m unist rulers felt increasingly isolated in what they saw as the petit bourgeois sea of Russia. H ence their desperate attem pts to control, intim idate, suppress— and to teach submission. Repres­ sion m ay indeed have been a m anifestation of the insecurity and weakness of the C om m unist party in Russia. But increased repression did not have the desired effect, at least not in 1920. By the fall popular anger was growing not just in the countryside bu t in the cities as well. As happened so m any times during the Russian revolution, a prevailing mood of despair was followed by a rebellious spirit am ong the Russian workers. Cases of hostile outbursts against the C om m unist regime were reported am ong the Putilov plant workers in Petrograd, who were angered by the conviction of 152 workers after the M arch 1920 strike. Anti-Bolshevik sentim ent was also reported am ong the sailors of Kronstadt and Red Army soldiers, even in the Moscow garrison.97 As in 1918, workers and sailors established contact. T heir slogan became: For Free Soviets, and some added W ithout the Com m unists. As is well known, these slogans becam e very popular during the crucial strikes at the end of February 1921. M any observers sensed that a serious popular upheaval lay ahead. In October 1920 M artov, in a public interview, predicted prophetically: “W inter will al­ m ost definitely provoke an upheaval. Local revolts may easily coalesce and grow to result in grave consequences.”98 It is widely acknowledged that the Bolshevik regime faced a grave crisis in the w inter of 1920—21, a crisis o f W ar C om m unism . W hat is often m isunderstood, however, is that this upheaval was not a manifestation of W ar C om m unism but rather a crisis of w hat can be called postwar C om m unism . It was a crisis of the econom ic and political system established after the collapse of the W hites for a postwar period. T h e system of industrial relations the Bolsheviks introduced in 1920 was intended to stay for a long historical period to ensure the “n orm al” functioning of Soviet industry. This system should not be confused with W ar C om m unism , an im provisation established during the height of the frontline 97 “La proletariat de Petrograd et Ies Bolsheviki, ” L a R epublique Russe (I A ugust i 920), 3, and Maslov, Rossiia posle chetyrekh let revoliutsii, p. 109; on sailors’ discontent, see “Vosstanie m atrosov v Petrograde,” Volia Rossii (7 O ctober 1920), 3; on the Moscow garrison disorders, see Sakwa, Soviet C om m unists in Power, p. 241; on PetrogTad garrison m utinies and executions, see A m erican consul in Vyborg to D epartm ent of State (17 N ovem ber 1920), Records, dispatch 861.00.7715. 98 “U n Interview de M artov,” L a R epublique Russe (27 O ctober 1920).

civil war with the W hites in 1918 and 1919. T he Com m unism of 1920 vintage had little to do with the C om m unist theories of Karl Marx or even of the Lenin of 1917. T h e k e y fe a tu re o fC o m m u n ism in 1920 was not so m uch nationaliza­ tion but the militarization of labor. It was a system that reminded observers of the Russian scene of serfdom or of convict labor. T he militarization of labor in 1920 m eant, in practice, a system of labor exploitation for subsistence rations by a privileged state bureaucracy excluding free markets and trade. Some of its key elem ents rem ained perm anent features of Soviet life. T he Bolshevik revotion that claimed to have liberated labor led in fact to labor being perceived as punishm ent and to the notion that one’s obligation to the state was a burden to be avoided. Hence the culture of stealing and cheating and ripping off the state, which in the end led to the paralysis of the Com m unist order in the late 1980s. It was against this perm anent, postwar C om m unism that workers, peasants, and sailors rebelled in February 1921. T h ey ear 1920, therefore, m ust be seen as a year of the winding down of the civil war with the W hites and m ounting peasant rebellion in the countryside amid escalating strikes in the cities. T h e Bolshevik attem pt to establish C om m unism , later called War C om m u­ nism (in fact postwar Com m unism ), failed. T he party was too small to take on such a gigantic task as controlling and supervising every aspect of economic activity in Russia. Yet it never abandoned the claim to be the organizing and leading force in society. It was forced to change the m ethod and speed of its m ovem ent toward that goal in M arch 1921, and that saved it from disaster. In D ecem ber 1920, however, it was far from clear that the Bolsheviks would come out of this crisis as survivors. A collapse of the C om m unist order was a realistic possibility. But before we consider the events of February 1921, it is essential to follow the developm ent of the peasant war against the Com m unists. It was fairly easy to surround factories with Cheka troops and dem and obedience. It was far m ore difficult to do that in thousands of Russian villages. T he peasant war against the C om m unist dictatorship was entering one of its most powerful stages.

9 T h e G reen T ide

I n e a r l y 1920 the civil war was supposed to be over. According to official historiographers, the young republic of workers and peasants was now ready to turn all its attention to socialist construction. T h e worker and peasant alliance strengthened under the leadership of the vanguard party.1 T he attention of W estern historians was focused on the Russo-Polish war, the Red conquest of C rim ea, and the econom ics of W ar C om m unism . C ontinued peasant upris­ ings such as in Tam bov and in southeastern Ukraine have been treated as isolated incidents that did not fundam entally change the accepted chronology of the Russian civil war. Som e recent studies have shown, however, that the peasant war in Tam bov Province had its counterpart in the Volga area, in Saratov and Simbirsk provinces.2 O thers have m entioned an enorm ous peasant uprising in Siberia, which in its m agnitude exceeded that of T am bov.3 Nev­ ertheless all these uprisings have been relegated to regional history, and 1920 is still perceived as a year of peace on the internal front. N othing could be further from the truth. As the Bolsheviks were claim ing that “the civil war” was over and trying to convince W estern democracies to lift econom ic sanctions against the “young Soviet Republic of workers and peas­ ants, ” their war on peasants was entering one of its bloodiest stages. O ne cannot p u t it better than Peter Scheibert: “T he real civil war kept on going even after the defeat o f the W hites.”4 N ot only in Tambov and southeastern Ukraine, the lower Volga basin and Siberia, but also in central and western Ukraine, Smolensk and Belorussia, Novgorod, Tver, and other provinces outside the black earth region— in a word, everywhere— the peasant war went on. In some areas it ended with burned villages, mass deportations, and famine: a catastro­ phe from which the peasants never really recovered. N ineteen twenty should properly be called the year of the G reen tide. T he m ain question therefore is, W hy did the civil war on the internal front have to go on? In early 1919 the Bolsheviks did not expect that by O ctober the W hites would take Orel on the approaches to Moscow. Similarly in early 1920 they did not 1 T his traditions! Soviet interpretation has been repeated even in the perestroika-era scholar­ ship. See M olodtsygin, Raboche-Krest'ianskii Soiuz, 1918-1020; L ynn Viola has also written about the worker-peasant alliance during the civil war in Best Sons o f the Fatherland. 2 Figes, Peasant Russia, C ivil War. 3 H eller and N ekrich, Utopia in Power, p. 103, and C onquest, The Harvest o f Sorrow, p. 52. 4 Scheibert, Lenin an der M acht, p. 158.

reckon that they would have to face a wide-scale peasant war. They certainly did not intend to launch a crusade against the countryside as they did in 1919 against the cossacks or would do in 1929 against the kulaks. From the Bolshevik perspective their intentions in 1920 were peaceful. They simply wanted to introduce “socialist" relations in the countryside. Peasant war was a by-product of their “peaceful” intentions.

Bolshevik Intentions Bolshevik policy in the countryside in 1920 pursued essentially one objective. T he central governm ent tried to devise a system that would guarantee a stream of food to the cities and to the army. N ot all m eans were acceptable to achieve this objective. T h e better-off peasants should not benefit at the expense of starving workers. T he working class and the cities had to assert their hegemony over the countryside. T he influence of market forces had to be reduced to a m inim um and if possible eliminated altogether. These fundam ental objectives had not changed since 1918. T hen, the committees o f the poor and class war am ong peasants were supposed to undercut the grip of the better-off peasants. After a miserable fiasco those policies, it should be recalled, were abolished, and in 1919 the m ain instrum ent of grain collection became prodrazverstka, which can be defined as a centralized system of grain collection in which a specified target am ount of surplus grain is geographically divided into smaller am ounts to be levied on each province, district, and village.

Razverstka and Other Obligations It is sometimes postulated in scholarly literature that the Bolsheviks had to resort to a target collection system because trade was underm ined to such an extent that peasants would not have delivered anything to the cities of their own free will. T he Bolsheviks had to take food from the peasants, by force if neces­ sary, in order to feed the hungry workers. This was a war emergency, a kind of loan, that later would be repaid. Target collection is conceptualized not as requisition or confiscation but almost as a tax with deferred compensation for “surplus grain. ”5 In fact target collection was neither a tax nor a mere confisca­ tion. It was a war against a “class enem y.” T he Bolsheviks resorted to a target collection system, that is, requisitioning an arbitrarily set am ount of “surplus grain,” because the alternative was free trade, which m eant a food supply outside their control. To control the cities, they needed to control the distribu5 For this view, see Lih, “Bolshevik Razverstka and W ar C om m unism ,” Slavic Review, vol. 45, no. 4 (W inter 1986), 67 3 -8 9 , here 678.

tion of food. To do that they had to requisition from the peasants. To allow free trade m eant to tolerate an independent and rich political force in the country. C onsiderations of political power dictated the choice of econom ic policy in the countryside and n o t some ideological com m itm ent to utopian visions. An attentive exam ination of the food supply process in 1919 and 1920 suggests that there were alternatives to target collection, bu t these were u n ac­ ceptable to the Bolsheviks. Let’s us consider the m echanics of the target system by th e example o f grain-rich Simbirsk Province. Before the war this province exported 12 m illion pud of grain. So in the sum m er of 1919 the Bolsheviks apportioned 12 m illion pud of grain to be raised by a variety of means. T he Province Food Supply C om m ittee m anaged to collect only 40 percent, or close to 5 m illion pud o f grain, mostly because peasants refused to deliver “surplus” grain for nothing. T he Province Food Supply C om m ittee estimated that 5 m illion pud were exported from the province by private tradesmen, that is, the sam e am o u n t as that raised by the authorities. And of the latter am ount only 1,700,000 pud were sent to the center; the rest was needed to cover the needs of the province.6 M uch went to support collection detachm ents and other bu­ reaucracies. So private traders m anaged to bring m ore grain to the markets of big cities than the Bolshevik authorities, despite enorm ous efforts, intim ida­ tion, and shootings. Local authorities in Simbirsk com plained that if private trade continued unim peded, all the peasant grain would disappear into the private m arket.7 So the Bolsheviks intensified the war against private traders. T hey seized them at the stations, confiscated their possessions, interrogated them to obtain the nam es o f peasants who had sold them produce, and then confiscated the traders’ m oney and imposed heavy fines on those peasants.8 T h e act of selling becam e a crim inal offense. By these actions, of course, the Bolshevik created a reputation for themselves as people who wanted to get som ething for nothing. T his only strengthened the peasants’ dem ands for free trade. Free trade func­ tioned, and it certainly was an alternative. But then w hat would the local Bolsheviks be in charge of? In 1919 the Bolsheviks’ grip on the countryside was very tenuous. In 1920 they had a large arm ed force at their disposal after the rout of the W hites. T he gist of their policy was m ore of the same, only trying harder. T h e Bolsheviks were well aware, from the experience of 1918—19, that a reliance on poor peasants was ineffective, and they reverted to dealing with the peasant co m m u ­ nity as a whole. G rain was to be gathered on the basis of collective respon­ sibility. An entire village, as represented by leaders of the m ir, was responsible for delivering its apportioned target. T he key institution in this hierarchy was the Provincial Food Supply C om m ittee. It coordinated activities of the uezd 6 AU these data are from Kaganovich, Kak dostaetsia khleb, pp. 12—13. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., p. 15.

food supply committees, and those in turn supervised the work of volost' com ­ mittees, which dealt with each village in their jurisdiction. A prom inent Bol­ shevik, often a m em ber of the Central Com m ittee, usually headed the province com m ittee. U nder his com m and food supply detachments were dispatched to various parts of the province wherever the need for armed force arose. This system made it possible to enforce grain collection from a large area with a relatively small force. If peasants rose in rebellion, larger forces were requested from the center to suppress what was com m only referred to as a W hite Guardists’ conspiracy. Every uezd and volost’ com m ittee chairm an was personally responsible for the collection and delivery of his specified target. He faced severe penalties for failure to deliver. O n the other hand he had far-reaching authority over the lower-standing committees. He could shoot subordinate executives for “sabotage” or complicity with the G reen bandits, he could take hostages from am ong the peasants, and so o n .9 Since the target am ount was supposed to be based on the am ount of grain in the peasants’ possession, the higher the surplus, the more would be taken away. In practice the commissars had a plan to fulfill regardless of where that quota cam e from or whether the actual am ount of grain available equaled the calcu­ lated “surplus” or not. Asa result seed grain was often taken to fulfill the plan. In addition to m eeting collection targets, peasants were obligated to deliver grain to specified collection centers in their own carts, hence the term cart obliga­ tion. O n num erous occasions peasants and peasant women were mobilized for all kinds of repair projects, hence the labor obligation {povinnost’). This was in addition to the draft obligation. T he central government was worried that peasants were reducing the acreage of cultivated land. T he Bolsheviks’ solution was to squeeze m ore out of the peasants and to force them to m aintain current levels of cultivation. For this purpose in November 1920 they decided to create sowing committees. T he state would take the sowing campaign into its own hands. T he government announced that sowing would become a labor obliga­ tion for peasants, so that they would not be able to “sabotage” the sowing campaign. T he plan was called state regulation of the peasant econom y.10 Each peasant com m une was responsible for delivery of a specified num ber of young m en for the army draft. In the northwestern wooded provinces peasants were obligated to cut and deliver wood to rail stations and river ports. T he campaign to procure heating wood for the cities in the winter of 1920 is a revealing illustration of the Bolsheviks' utilitarian approach to peasants. T he Bolsheviks had a problem: there was no firewood. To create economic incen­ tives for peasants or merchants to bring it to the cities was not the Bolshevik way; 9 Kaganovich cites the list of measures, ibid., p. 32. 10 T he sowing campaign was inaugurated by Osinslcii on 27 November 1920: “Novyi experem ent kom m unistovnad krestianskoi Rossiei,” Volia Rossii(30 D ecember 1920), I. See also LarsT. Lih, “T he Bolshevik Sowing Com m ittees of 1920: Apotheosis of War C om m unism ,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian a n d East European Studies, paper 803.

to wage a m ilitary cam paign on the woodcutting front was. So the party m o­ bilized workers and sent them to the countryside to chop wood with enthusi­ asm. Peasants were simply given orders that everyone from eighteen to sixty years of age had to deliver his woodcutting obligation.11 Forests were devastated; m uch was lost on the way or could not be transported. A lot of noise, a lot of waste, and not m uch practical gain— this was the fate of m any Bolshevik campaigns. T h e central authorities also attem pted to preserve the most productive and efficient landlords’ estates in grain-producing provinces. For this purpose they created state farms in place of old estates. T h e state farms were run by stateappointed m anagers and often employed im ported labor, mostly conscripted army soldiers, because local peasants viewed state farms with hostility and stayed away from them . D uring the height of "War C om m unism ,” the Bol­ sheviks were quite enthusiastic about state farms. Well anticipating Stalin’s visions, V. P. M iliu tin d ream ed in 1919 about food “factories” producing grain, m eat, m ilk, and fodder. T hat, he believed, would free the socialist state from econom ic dependence on peasants.12 Typically in a black earth area the n u m ­ ber o f state farms hovered around 100; in Petrograd province there were 140, in Moscow 201; yet the largest state farms in acreage were in the lower Volga black earth provinces (Voronezh, Saratov, Samara). In some cases these state farms controlled and em ployed the entire population of an entire volost’, with thou­ sands of employees, form er peasants. At least in theory state farms offered a solution to just about everything. T he state would become independent of the whims o f the peasant market, m odern m echanized agriculture would replace antiquated forms of production, and peasants could be drawn toward collective and state-run agriculture. T h e C om m unist C entral C om m ittee instructed all province party com m ittees to strengthen state and collective farms as outposts of socialist agriculture.15 AU these institutions— grain collection detachm ents, punitive detachm ents, sowing com m ittees, state farms, and labor armies— were designed to elim inate the m arket m echanism in food supply and to free the Bolshevik government from w hat it perceived as peasant sabotage, that is, the ability to withhold their product. T he Bolsheviks, at the time, referred to these policies and institutions as C om m unist (as opposed to capitalist relations in the countryside, which these new institutions were supposed to replace and underm ine). Individual free choice to produce or not to produce, to sell or not to sell and at what price, was a capitalist holdover w hich had to be replaced by collective responsibility to produce and deliver at the tim e and place the state dictated. T he Bolsheviks invented the term W ar C om m unism later, when the New Econom ic Policy 11 S cheibert1 L enin an der M a ch t, p. 174. 12 Figes, Peasant Russia, C ivil War, p. 297. n “K posevnoi kam panii. Vsem gubkom am ,” V estnik agitatsii i propagandy, no. 7 - 8 (4 M arch 1920), 18.

was in place, in order to explain away their dictatorship by references to the civil war. In fact Bolshevik agrarian policies in 1920 were explained at the time not by military exigencies but as a m atter of principle. Moreover any attempts by moderates to introduce at least an orderly system of grain collection were resisted. M artov wrote to a colleague that in the sum m er of 1920 at a confer­ ence of food supply personnel, “several people made a feeble attem pt to raise the question of changing the entire system of food levy in terms of collecting a definite progressive food products tax from peasants so that they could dispose of the rest of the grain freely. But the Com m unists vetoed the proposal, and it was not even on the agenda.”14 In M arch 1921, on the eve of the New Econom ic Policy, there was no indication that C om m unist objectives in the countryside had changed. AU province committees were instructed to involve peasants in socialist construction by m eans of labor conscription, to prom ote the transition to collective agriculture, to lim it trade, and to m old a new kind of peasant (perevospitat’) by work in labor arm ies.15 Even if these institutions and policies had worked w ithout abuse and distortions, this “W ar C om m unism ” appears to be am azingly sim ilar in some of its key elements to serfdom. T he peasants had to surrender a portion of their labor and products to the landlord. Yet the practical im plem entation of “W ar C om m unism ” m ade the real conditions in the countryside, as we shall see, surpass in their brutality and arbitrariness the serfdom of the eighteenth century.

The Collection o f Tribute T h e target grain collection system, even if it functioned without abuse, was bound to lead to a decrease of cultivated land and to famine. T he problem with the Bolshevik system was that the targets were often arbitrary. As a recent study showed, collection targets were deliberately set higher than the estimated har­ vest surplus.16 In Simbirsk Province the province Food Supply Com m ittee did not know what the acreage of cultivated land was in various uezdy or what crops were sown or w hat the yields were. T he targets were assigned by intuition, attested a Bolshevik com m issar.17 T he Bolshevik authorities considered con­ ducting a search o f each and every household in Simbirsk Province, of which there were 308,743. But this undertaking was beyond their capabilities. T he easiest way out was to enforce the requisition of a target am ount from each uezd, volost’, and village. H lu. 0 . M artov to A. N. Stein (4 August 1920), Nicolaevsky C ollection, series 17, box 51, folder 13-14. 15 "Partiino-Sovetskaia Shkola. Vsem Gubkom am RKP(b). Politika Sovetskoi Vlasti vsel skom khoziaistve,” Vestnik agitatsii i propagandy, no. 7 - 8 (4 M arch 1921), 49. 16 Figes, Peasant Russia, C ivil War, p. 268. 17 Kaganovich, Kak dostaetsia khleb, p. 8.

At every level, from Moscow down to the volost’ level, targets were “ad­ justed.” As a letter from Saratov Province related, telegrams from Moscow dem anded that grain collectors “urgently send a train for the starving capi­ tals. ”18 Pressure from the center generated pressure on the local collectors. T hey in turn “adjusted” the targets for collection to suit their needs. Food collection detachm ents also adjusted these arbitrary targets to have their own cut. In Simbirsk Province, for example, m ore than five thousand m en took part in various d etachm ents.19 A grain collection detachm ent from Tula in Saratov Province was particularly notorious. It was nicknam ed “iron broom ”: “From those peasants who tried to hide even as little as a pud of grain, they took everything, to the last cup of grain. They requisitioned everything they could put their hands on. ”20 Even w hen peasants delivered 100 percent of their target allotm ent, they were no t safe. As a letter from Saratov explained, the Volga G erm ans paid everything in full. But the local authorities reasoned that if they had delivered everything right away, that m eant that they had m ore, so the Bolsheviks returned for additional tribute. “They behaved in the G erm an colo­ nies as in a conquered country. T hey were engaged in pure robbery, took away whatever they pleased in a drunken stupor, and tried to ‘court’ local girls.”21 Forty percent of the grass cereal harvest was requisitioned. C hildren were in some cases taken away and offered back for ransom .22 Local people referred to these detachm ents as new oprichniki (Ivan the Terrible’s punitive troops). In neighboring Tsaritsyn the C heka reported that the authorities were guilty of “abuse of power, bribery, drunkenness, unruly behavior [buistvo], and em bez­ zlem ent o f people’s property, as well as [extralegal] requisitions and confisca­ tions. ”23 O n e peasant from Smolensk Province wrote in a letter to his son: “T he com rades have robbed us all completely w ithout any distinction as to whether you have som ething or n o t.”24 M uch of the requisitioned property never reached Moscow, of course. A young officer wrote from Smolensk Province that collected grain was stored carelessly. D u e to negligence the losses were enorm ous. T he Cheka discovered th at large quantities o f food vanished sim ultaneously from state warehouses in Ekaterinburg, Voronezh, and Petrograd (where two suspects were detained, 18 “E sero-M en’shevistskoe vosstanie (pis’m o iz Saratova),” handw ritten letter (12 July 1921), PSR Archive, docum ent 2030. 19 Kaganovich, K ak dostaetsia khleb, pp. 7 -8 . 20 “E sero-M en’shevistskoe vosstanie (pis’m o iz Saratova),” PSR Archive, docum ent 2030. An­ other report devoted to this notorious detachm ent from T ula is by Babine; see Raleigh, ed., A R ussian C ivii W ar D iary, p. 183. 21 Ibid. 22 Figes, Peasant Russia, C ivil War, p. 272. 23 “Inform atsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu” (26 O c to b erNovem ber 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, d ocum ent 414, p. 20. 24 Scheibert, L en in an der M ackt, p. 386.

both C o m m u n ists).25 O n top o f all that Red Army units in provinces adjacent to the front line continued as in 1919 to rob peasants. L enin scribbled a note in July 1920: “A bout rations. W e m ust set about it in earnest. T h e arm y is poach­ ing outrageously.”26 L enin m ust have reached this conclusion by reading weekly C heka reports, w hich cataloged countless exam ples of willfulness and abuse by both m ilitary and civilian authorities. In the judgm ent o f the Special D ep artm en t (osobyi otdel) of the Seventh Army, stationed in the western prov­ inces: “everywhere you look, you see one uninterrupted chain of crim es. . . . Every ch ief of the Supply D epartm ent is trying to surround him self by his personal friends. . . . as a result: speculation, theft, and sabotage.” An u n id en ­ tified uezd party com m ittee in this report was defined as “a gang of hangers-on, w ho have stuck like leeches to C o m m u n ism in order to enrich them selves.”27 O n the grounds th at Kursk Province exported 15 m illion pud before the war, the collection target for 1920 was set at 10 m illion pud o f grain. B utonly half of this target was reached. Telegram s from M oscow and plenipotentiary com m is­ sars arrived. Everything was set into m otion to fulfill the “com bat m ission.”28 A nd yet m u ch o f the requisitioned grain disappeared, w hich led the C heka to report: “T h e work of the food supply agency was conducted in a crim inal fash io n .”29 Som e com m anders often referred to them selves in front of peasants as a tsar and lo rd .50 A Socialist Revolutionary observer wrote from Tam bov Province th at th e com m ander of the grain collection detachm ent told peasants th at he could do anything to them , show mercy or punish (pom iluet i pokaraet).3] T hese voices o f local com m anders are an im portant indicator o f their m o­ tivations and their m entality. It has been suggested that their zeal was a m an i­ festation o f profound co m m itm en t to the cause of the revolution.32 But the grain collectors' zeal was hardly to relieve “the starving proletariat” in Moscow or to engage in building socialism; it was, m ore prosaically, to enrich th em ­ selves at th e expense of the defenseless population. M ost of these people were 25 “Informatsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu” (7-14 February 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent414, p. 10. 26 “Exchange of Notes between Comrades Lenin and Skliansky at a Meeting” (27-31 July 1920), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, p. 234. 27 “O bzor polozheniia na Zapadnom fronte. Informatsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu” (1-15 April 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis' 3, docum ent 414, pp. 3-4. 28 “Kurskaia guberniia” (May 1921), Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 10 (July 1921), 25-26. 29 “Informatsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu” (1-15 June 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis' 3, docum ent 424, p. 20. 30 Scheibert, Lenin an der Macht, p. 386. 31 “Tambovskie krestiane i vlast,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 14-15 (November—December 1921), 31-32. 32 Figes, Peasant Russia, C ivil War, pp. 273-74·.

clear-cut opportunists who had joined the ruling party exclusively to enjoy the benefits of rule. O u t of 11,133 C om m unist party m em bers in Tam bov Prov­ ince 7,297 entered the party at the end of 1919 during an unrestricted m em ber­ ship drive.33 It seems that w hat they all wanted to dem onstrate most is that they were the vlast’, the authority. In that sense the upward mobility they gained from the Bolsheviks m ade them reliable instrum ents of the new regime. O n the other hand it seems that m ost of them acted not out of ideological com m itm ent to Bolshevism b u t out of a desire to prom ote themselves, their power over others, and their material well-being, w ithout tilling the land or standing on the factory floor. T hey preferred the role of a master, or tsar and lord as they put it. Bolshevik m ethods of grain collection necessitated a reliance on these types. T his in turn created a powerful constituency in the party-state o f people who had a vested interest in arbitrary rule. Any criticism of their actions im m e­ diately triggered accusations of treason. At the election m eeting of the Varpel’skaia volost (Tambov Province) soviet Executive C om m ittee peasants re­ sisted electing a C om m unist and insisted that “the people and not you, the C om m unists, should elect.” A C om m unist, Inshakov, yelled back: “D enikinites, Antonovites. Those like you, we will wipe off the face of the e a rth .”34 Uprisings o f “G reen bandits” and other types of exposure to danger, when reported to Moscow, m ade these com m anders seem indispensable to M os­ cow and enhanced their freedom of action. Being tough and ruthless was beneficial. T hose local com m anders, plenipotentiaries, and uezd com m ittee m em bers are an interesting social group of sem iliterate rural upstarts who were no longer peasants, but neither were they urban. T hey learned fast how to use the right phraseology o f the proletarian revolution and socialism— such as W hite Guardist, G reen bandit, petit bourgeois conspiracy, paid for by the British agents— but their tastes and behavior were not “socialist, ” whatever that means, b u t rather m anifestations of deeply internalized notions of w hat a strong vlast’ was all ab o u t.35 A strong governm ent in their view was by its very nature arbitrary and unilateral, like the power o f the tsar. Asking questions, subjecting the governm ent to scrutiny— these dem ocratic impulses they perceived as chal­ lenges to their authority. T he purpose of governm ent in their view was to ensure obedience, not the com m on good or a participatory consensus of the com m u­ nity. W e have a link here between Bolshevik “class” ruthlessness and Russian peasant-upstart dictatorial ethics. 55 R eport to the SR C entral C om m ittee from Tambov, here section O bshchepoliticheskie usloviia z h iz n i,” Keyoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 3 (February 1921), 24. 54 ‘‘K om m unisty na rabote. (Pis’m o krestianina iz Tambovskoi gubernii),” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 5 (April 1921), 2 5 -2 8 , here 26. 55 R ichard Pipes discusses peasant attitudes to authority in The R ussian R evolution, p. 119.

T h e m ore authority a C o m m u n ist had, th e m ore he tried to get out of it for him self. Agents from the province capital supervising elections to the local soviet, agents supervising the work of m ills, and other representatives of the center were often ready to sell perm its o f all kinds. In the village o f Borisovka (Tam bov Province) the inspector from the uezd center caught the mill of Fedor P u sh n in m illing w hen it was not supposed to be. H e threatened to shut it dow n b u t changed his m ind after a handsom e b rib e.36 T h e rules and regula­ tions of “W ar C o m m u n ism ” were a source of revenue for C om m unist state bureaucrats. Release from , or postponem ent of, the m ilitary draft was a standard bribe item for local functionaries. In M ordovskaia and N ovonikol’skaia volosti of T am bov Province everyone knew the prices: 80,000 rubles for a tw o-m onth draft delay and 160,000 for an indefinite release from the draft.37 And in Saratov Province the C heka reported a widespread falsification of docum ents releasing people from the arm y d ra ft.38 T h e m ore bureaucracies the Bolsheviks created, th e m ore widespread was the corruption. Pervasive corruption o f local officials was of course n oth in g new in Russia. In the decades under B rezhnev it becam e an essential feature of the Soviet system o f governm ent. T h e difference between corrupt officials in B rezhnev’s and in L en in ’s Russia is that under B rezhnev local officials understood th at enriching them selves at the expense of the state constituted theft. In 1920, however, enriching themselves at the expense o f the population u n d er their control was understood as a norm al part o f governm ent. Officials perceived their jurisdiction as their patrim ony, votchina; it was theirs to rule for a price to be delivered to Moscow. T hey had to ch eat Moscow, and they were convinced that peasants were bound to cheat th em . H en ce ruthless and firm m easures had to be applied to stamp out the peasants’ cheating and “hoarding. ” Statistical calculations dem onstrate that collection targets, for exam ple in Sam ara and Saratov provinces, deliberately exceeded estimates o f harvest sur­ pluses, on th e assum ption th at the peasantry would conceal up to 30 percent of th eir actual surplus g ra in .39 As a result stocks o f seed were depleted, cultivated acreage shrank, and fam ine struck w ith devastating consequences a year later. T h e so-called “W ar C o m m u n ism ” in the countryside, on closer exam ination, was a rule o f m ilitary and “party” cliques whose raison’ d ’etre was to “pum p ou t” grain from th e countryside for th e state and for them selves by barbaric m eans that can be likened only to a collection of tribute from a conquered country in m edieval tim es. 56 “Kommunisty na rabote,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 5 (Aprii 1921), 25-28, here 26. ” Ibid. 58 “Informatsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu” (26 O ctoberNovember 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 414, p. 22. 59 Figes, Peasant Russia, C ivil War, p. 268.

Informal, Invisible Peasant Government Two m ain changes distinguished the sociopolitical situation in the countryside in 1920. In 1918 and in 1919 Soviet power existed primarily along railroad lines. Bolshevik agents and detachm ents appeared, requisitioned, and disap­ peared. In 1920, however, provincial authorities began to unfold a network of institutions enveloping the peasant com m unity m ore than ever before. T he Bolshevik presence in the countryside, for the first tim e, could be called perm a­ nent. T h e Bolsheviks relied on the peasant com m une as a key institution to deliver th e target quantity of food. T hey m ade the village com m une collectively responsible for the failure of individual m em bers to deliver. U nder the threat of severe penalties the com m une had to enforce the dem ands of the center. T h at may have been an effective m ethod of grain collection, bu t it had an undesir­ able effect for the Bolsheviks. T h e real power of the village assembly was enhanced. So on the one hand there were scores of central and local C o m m u ­ nist bureaucracies, commissars, party cells, and detachm ents, b u t on the other the village assembly. T he best term to describe this structure of political author­ ity in 1920 is that of dual power. T he Bolshevik rural governm ent was formal and visible. T he peasant govern­ m ent was inform al and invisible. T h e village com m une should not be seen as some kind of idealized union of equal peasants who resisted in a spirit of brotherhood the invasion of the C om m unists. T his m yth of the good com ­ m u n e and the bad Bolsheviks was actually propagated by SR observers still loyal to their age-old desire to serve the great Russian narod. T h e real situation of power relations was m uch m ore complex. T h e village com m une was a network of leading families enforcing com pliance, entering into deals with local author­ ities, supporting the G reen rebels, and joining the C om m unist adm inistration. In a word they did all kinds of seemingly contradictory things, which added up to essentially one goal: to defend the existing, traditional way of life and power relations in the countryside. Clusters of leading families had all kinds of informal networks of com m uni­ cation on the level o f the volost' and even the uezd. R K. Kaganovich, a food supply com m issar in Simbirsk Province, believed that there were not m ore than five or ten leading “kulak” families in a village, whose authority was binding on all others.40 Everybody knew everybody else in the im m ediate vicinity. If an outsider appeared, he was im m ediately identified. His accent alone would reveal him . R eturned soldiers were quickly absorbed into the peasant com m u­ nity, and better-off peasants reasserted their leadership after the failure o f the com m ittees of the poor.41 For a local peasant to join the C om m unist party was 40 Kaganovich, K akdostaetsia khleb, p. 10. 41 Roger Pethbridge, “Social and Political Attitudes of the Peasantry in Kursk G uberniia at the Start o f N E P ,” SE E R , vol. 63, no. 3 (July 1985), 3 73-87, here 383.

a very risky undertaking. It was perceived as a challenge to the village assembly. It was tantam ount to a declaration of being an agent of the city authorities in the village. T h e risk of being killed was high indeed. T he village com m une lived by its own unwritten laws. Peer pressure was adequate to enforce the compliance of individual members. There are nu­ merous examples showing that those venturesome local upstarts who did join the Bolsheviks and decided to take the risk of being perceived as agents of the center in fact led double lives. They delivered a tribute to the center, enriched themselves at the expense of the local community, bribed higher-standing bosses (nachal’stvo), and at the same time m aintained links with Green rebels in the forests. A case in point we have observed in 1919 in Smolensk Province, when a local dictator warned the local Greens that a punitive detachm ent was coming to the village. T he Reds were going to leave but he had to stay, he reasoned. W arning the Greens was his insurance policy. This incident demonstrates the complex nature of power relations in the countryside. T he Bolsheviks had the power to requisition and take hostages; the Greens had the power to ambush these detachments, to be supplied, hidden, protected, and warned by “Com m unist" officials about the actions of the cen­ ter. It should not be assumed therefore that any and every person listed on paper as a Com m unist in the countryside was necessarily and exclusively an agent of the center. Even by Soviet official data there were not more than 10 percent Com m unists at the volost’ level in the countryside. In Simbirsk Province there were only three party cells at the uezd level and none at the volost' or village level.42 Most village and volost’ soviets were actually defending peasant inter­ ests, lam ented Food Supply Commissar Kaganovich. He wanted to turn them into tools of the center. Some village soviets were arrested for refusal to deliver target am ounts.43 In Pskov Province, for example, “primarily deserters were elected to the village soviets and consumer cooperatives.”44 T he village assembly was not an equal partner in the chain of authority but a hostage of the Com m unist government. Naturally in such a structure peasant leaders were going to try to do as little as possible of what was required of them by the center, and if there was some other force that would ease the burden, they would extend their patronage to that force. In some areas peasant com ­ m unes, village soviets, and deserters were all linked together, as a Cheka report from Voronezh explained: “Recently the Green army has been growing. Persis­ tent deserters are organizing themselves and are beginning to act decisively. In the neighborhood of Valuiki Township 50,000 deserters are hiding. . . . They attack units of the T hirteenth Army. . . . T he local population and local 42 Kaganovich, Kak dostaetsia khleb, p. 15. « Ibid., pp. 17-18. 44 “Informatsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu Leninu” ¢1-10 October 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 414, p. I.

authorities aid the deserters. ”45 T h at is why the G reen bands in 1920 should be seen as an arm ed wing o f the village assembly. T he lines between the two were blurred. Som e peasants went away to join the G reens in the forests, and others stayed in village soviets and helped them , as for example in Perm Province: “D esertion has not dim inished. In Uralsk Uezd armed deserters are hiding in the forests. T hey am bush food supply detachm ents, the policem en, and engage in robberies. In m any volost’ executive com m ittees the chairm en hide the deserters.46 O n the other hand local leaders of the peasant com m unity found ways of cooperating with the Bolsheviks. As one observer from Tam bov Province com ­ m ented, m ost n o n-C om m unist m em bers of the Breznigovatskaia Volost’ Exec­ utive C om m ittee “hated the C om m unists, ” and yet they tried “to make friends” with m em bers of the volost’ C om m unist cell, which m eant in practice getting drunk together.47 T he “friendship” of politically active elem ents with power holders was essentially a cooptation technique. In other cases cooptation did not work, and open clashes broke out. In Ufa Province, for example, the chairm an of the volost’ soviet and the head of the police attacked the local party cell.48 If political authority changed, these same people would start a “friend­ ship” with th e new bosses (nachai’stvo). In Kursk Province, for example, village soviet chairm en renam ed themselves “elders” (starosta) as the W hites ap­ proached in 1919.49 M oreover the sam e people who had been running “state” grain collection in 1920 for the Bolsheviks went into the private grain trade in 1921, retaining positions of leadership and influence. T heir “C om m unism ” evaporated as soon as they could go into private business. Volost’- and uezd-level C om m unists also had to adapt to the informal au ­ thority of village leaders. O f course they had the m eans to disband executive com m ittees of uezd soviets if those showed outward insubordination. They often did and appointed revolutionary com m ittees instead. Yet this was not enough to enforce com pliance. Faced with widespread “sabotage,” local au ­ thorities had to play along. As one report from a southern Russian province related, the peasants’ outright hostility to the sowing com m ittees put the local C om m unists in a tough spot. They covered up their failure to enforce com pli­ ance and reported to the center that everything had gone as required.50 T h e village com m unity showed resilience and adaptability throughout this period. 45 “Svodka VO KHRy” (troops of Internal Security), no. 298 (28 Septem ber 1920), in lnform atsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo O tdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu (1 -1 0 O ctober 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K, O pis’ 3, docum ent 414, p. 20. 46 Ibid., p. 10. 47 “K om m unisty na rabote,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 5 (April 1921), 2 5 -2 8 , here 26. 48 “Inform atsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo O tdela Vecheka tovarishchu L en in u ” (1 -1 5 August 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docum ent 414. 49 Roger Pethbridge, “Social and Political Attitudes o f the Peasantry in Kursk G uberniia at the S ta rto f N E P ,” SE E R , vol. 63, no. 3 (July 1985), 3 7 3 -8 7 , here 380. 50 “N a m estakh,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 10 (July 1921), 24 -2 5 .

Peasant Perceptions To say that th e peasant detested the C om m unists is to state the obvious. Lenin and the C heka were well aware of this sim ple fact because week after week, m o n th after m o n th, they read endless reports like these: Vyatka: Nellinskii and Glazovskii Uezd: the attitude of peasants toward Soviet power is sharply hostile. Perm: The disposition o f the population is counterrevolutionary. 51 Kuban: T he m ood o f the population is counterrevolutionary. 52 Tomsk: T he attitude toward the Communists is hostile. During the first half o f July rebellions broke out often which embraced the entire province. T he Urals: T h e attitude o f the population and o f the workers toward Soviet power is hostile. Kazan: T he attitude o f the population toward Soviet power is unfriendly due to the pum ping out o f grain. Samara: Discontent is on the rise am ong peasants. Shows itself in peasant unrest. 53 Voronezh: T h e attitude o f population toward Soviet power is hostile. 54 Tsaritsyn: In the entire province the attitude of the population toward Soviet power and the Com m unist party is relatively hostile. 55

Very often accounts o f conversations with peasants referred to their perceptions of C o m m unists as landlords (pomeshchiki). Indeed the n ature of their relations w ith the authorities rem inded peasants o f their relations with landlords. T hey had to deliver arbitrarily apportioned “surplus” grain to the authorities for n othing. Peasants knew well that the alternative was to sell it on th e free market. T h ey perceived the Bolsheviks as those who w anted to cheat them out o f just rewards for theft labor. As Kaganovich observed in Sim birsk Province: “peas­ ants crave free trade and are seriously infected by the instinct o f private prop­ erty. ”56 W h a t caused universal hatred were the labor and cart obligations. Peasants in a village in Tam bov Province dem anded at their assembly that the authorities: “p u t an end to the serfdom of horses and m en from this day onw ard.”57 E ven in the best of circum stances relations between peasants and state farms 51 “Inform atsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo O tdela Vecheka tovarishchu L e n in u ” (1 -1 5 July 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K, O pis’ 3, d o c u m e n t4 1 4 , p. 2. 52 Ibid. (1 6 -3 1 July 1920), p. 2. 53 Ibid. (1 —15 A ugust 1920), pp. 1 -2 . 54 Ibid. (1 -1 0 O ctober 1920), p. 2. 55 Ibid. (23 O c to b e r - 1 N ovem ber), p. 3. 56 K aganovich, K ak dostaetsia khleb, p. 9. 57 T h is dem and was published in Tam bovskie Izvestiia, no. 75 (1921), cited here from “T am bovskie krestiane i vlast’, ’’ R evoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 1 4 -1 5 (N o v em b er-D ecem b er 1921), 3 1 33.

were bound to be tense.58 Peasants perceived them with hostility and suspicion because outsiders, including agricultural workers and sometimes conscripted soldiers from the labor armies, were brought in to work on these farms. W hat m ade things m uch worse was that the Bolsheviks gave state farms the authority to m obilize peasants for work at the farms when needed. O f course they were needed m ost w hen the peasants had to work in their own fields. O n several occasions in Tam bov Province state farms m obilized wom en, which under­ standably generated the hostility of peasants. Conscripted peasants worked poorly on state farms, w hich enraged the m anager of a state farm in Novonikolskaia Volost’, who, according to an eyewitness, threatened the peasants on his farm with a revolver.59 Clearly Bolshevik state farms, with their con­ scripted labor and loudm outhed commissars, were very different from noble agricultural estates. In fact specialists related that, for a job that used to be done by one m an, now the m anager sent four or five labor army soldiers. However, the fram e of reference for peasants was the situation under the tsar, and even earlier under serfdom. For them Bolshevik state farms and conscription for work at “socialist” enterprises evoked images of hated serfdom. H ence their violent reaction, as the Cheka described in the case of Tam bov peasants: “D ue to unlawful and crim inal actions of the food supply detachm ents enforcing target grain collection, whereby the belongings of m any people were confis­ cated, threats and m any arbitrary arrests were m ade, the attitude of the toiling peasantry toward Soviet power is negative, and to the C om m unist party hostile. AU this is creating preconditions for widespread uprisings.”60 W hen partisan warfare flared up in the black earth region and in Ukraine, the first thing the peasants did was burn or destroy state farms as symbols of the old and the new serfdom .61 In Saratov Province, for example, during the first half of 1921 peasant insurgents destroyed fifteen kom m unii (com m unes) and thirty-four collective farm s.62 A lthough these attitudes were prevalent in all parts o f the country, regional differences in the m ode and dynamics of resistance were enorm ous. T h e key to understanding the differences is that peasant attitudes in various parts of the country reflected local conditions. T here was no one national peasant voice but rather a variety o f voices w hich reflected a variety of trajectories in peasant political behavior. In the centra] European Russian provinces peasants never saw the W hites, and the only enem ies they knew were the local commissars. O utward control o f the railways, towns, and villages was in C om m unist hands. 58 L ih , B re a d a n d A u th o r ity in R u s sia , p. 2 0 6 . 59 “K o m m u n is ty n a r a b o te ,” R e v o liu ts io n n a ia R o ss iia , n o . 5 (A pril 1 9 2 1 ), 2 5 - 2 8 , h ere 28 . 60 “In fo r m a tsio n n a ia S vod k a S e k r e tn o g o O td e la V e ch ek a to v a r ish c h u L e n in u ” ( 1 - 1 5 July 1 9 2 0 ), T s .G .A .O .R ., F o n d 1 3 0 , S N K 1 O p is ’ 3, d o c u m e n t 4 1 4 , p. I. 61 “K restianstvo U krainy," R e v o liu ts io n n a ia R o ssiia , n o . 8 (M ay 1 9 2 1 ), 2 5 - 2 7 . 62 F ig e s , P e a s a n t R u s sia , C iv il W a r, p. 3 0 7 .

T h e n ature of dual power was such that the village assembly was on the defensive trying to frustrate the onslaught o f the center. In th e outlying areas and especially in the newly conquered territories, such as U kraine, cossack lands, and Siberia, Bolshevik control was w hat it had been in central Russia in 1919, m ainly along railroad lines and prim arily in the form o f m ilitary occupation. T h e C om m unists had not had tim e to envelop these huge areas w ith a network of detachm ents, cells, and com m ittees. All the Bolsheviks could do was to appear in the countryside in force, but they did not have the resources or the m anpow er to occupy every village and install a p erm an en t adm inistration there. In U kraine and cossack lands peasant hatred for the k o m m u n iia was exacerbated by the nationality factor. As num erous observers reported, U krainian peasants perceived M oscow commissars as for­ eigners robbing their country. T h e concept “foreign” should be placed in the proper historical context here. It seems th at for peasants foreign m ean t to be no t from here, alien, no t ours. It had little to do with m odern ideas of statehood or patriotism . M uscovites were foreign because they were urban, spoke a different language (hard to understand), and were out to rob the countryside. U krainian peasant attitudes were m u ch m ore hostile to the city. Cities were perceived as enem y cam ps, headquarters of Russians and Jews. As one observer related, peasants told him th at it would be nice to “surround the cities by barbed wire and let th em all die of h unger th e re .”63 T h e U krainian countryside had been th e battlefield of G erm an and W hite and Red and Polish arm ies in 1918— 20. T his generated hostility to all “foreigners” (anyone from outside) and to any kind o f authority. T h e very word vlast’ im plied for U krainian peasants conscrip­ tions, requisitions, and all kinds of obligations. These attitudes m ade the char­ acter of U krainian peasant warfare som ew hat different from that of the Russian peasants. In K uban and in Siberia the spring of 1920 was a honeym oon between the Bolsheviks and the peasants. Atrocities com m itted by retreating bands of D en i­ kin’s and K olchak’s soldiers were still fresh in the peasants’ m em ory, and in m ost places peasants greeted the Reds as liberators. T h e honeym oon did not last long, however, and only a few m onths later partisan detachm ents resum ed their warfare, this tim e against the Bolsheviks. W e shall follow the cycles of peasant protest, so sim ilar in their stages but so m u ch ou t of tu n e with each other.

Peasant Resistance: Central Russia Peasants are very patient people. In 1920 they were mostly concerned with their farms, fam ilies, and security. W h a t they wanted mo'st was to be left alone. 65 “Krestianstvo U krainy,” Revoliutsionrtaia Rossiia, no. 8 (M ay 1921), 2 5 -2 7 .

Recourse to arm ed resistance was their last resort. In som e areas it was an act of desperation and in others a well-coordinated war effort. It is difficult to distin­ guish between peace and war in the Russian countryside of 1920. C an it be called peace w hen the central authorities took hostages, when they arrested and executed peasants routinely for failure to comply with the dem ands of the center? Was it peace w hen peasants in return sabotaged labor and arm y con­ scription, burned state estates, and disassembled rail tracks? T he best way to describe this situation is low-intensity warfare. From there it was only a small step to high-intensity war in the fall of 1920 and the winter—spring o f 1921, involving huge peasant armies and Red Army divisions, punitive expeditions, artillery shellings of villages, aerial bom bardm ents, concentration camps, and mass deportations. Peasants resorted to a variety o f traditional forms of resistance. T he most potent weapon was a peasant strike, that is, refusal to work. In practical terms it m eant a refusal to cultivate land beyond the im m ediate needs of the peasant household. Specific calculations for various provinces differ, depending on clim ate, demography, local governm ent policy, and so on. Yetthe overall trend for grain-producing Russia was unmistakable: a considerable decline of culti­ vated land. In the lower Volga region, for example, one of the most im portant grain-producing areas before the war, the am ount of land devoted to wheat, the m ain crop, fell by 35.5% in Sam ara and by 47.8% in Saratov Province by 1921.64 According to the C entral Statistical A dm inistration, the total area of cultivated land in European Russia dim inished by 28 percent, or by some other calculations by 38 percent.65 According to a calculation distinguishing be­ tween producing and consum ing provinces, the decline of cultivated land in 1919 com pared with 1917 in producing provinces was 19.3% and in consum ­ ing provinces 35 percent.66 T h e peasants’ second-favorite defense was the slaughter of anim als. From Ryazan a local observer reported: “Horses are being destroyed alm ost to the last head because of th e lack of fodder and because labor conscription has exhausted peasants. They part with a horse in order to get rid of the carting obligation. ”67 Alm ost identical reports were com ing in from other provinces. As soon as peasants heard th at a detachm ent was approaching their village, they began to slaughter cattle. An SR observer pointed to the three m ain reasons. T h e first was the general lack of fodder. (Peasants in Tam bov Province in 1920, for exam ple, were trying to get rid of their starving horses. Some were giving a horse away for a pound of salt. Corpses of horses could be seen frequently on the roads.) T h e second reason was the confiscation of cattle, both legally and illegally, by Bolshevik detachm ents, and the third, peasants’ desire to avoid the 64 65 66 57

Figes, Peasant Russia, C ivil War, p. 275. Scheibert, L enin an d erM a ch t, p. 175. O lberg, D ie B auem revolution in R ussland, pp. 61—62. “Polosa bedstvii (Iz Riazanskoi gubernii),” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 5 (April 1921), 30.

carting obligation. As one specialist calculated, in Tam bov Province during 1920 alone th e total loss ofhorses was 120,547 (30%), of cattle 46,099 (20%), sheep 165,680 (30%), and pigs 137,397 (50% ).68 A nother old-tim e defensive tech n iq u e was bribing local officials. In some places the peasant assembly selected from am ong themselves lovkachi, pushers, whose job it was to get the bosses, nachal’stvo, d ru n k .69 Bribes cost the peasants very dearly. Paper m oney and valuables they had saved in previous years quickly ran out. Peasants also engaged in w hat the Bolsheviks called wrecking and sabotage. T hey worked poorly at the state farms, set things on fire, starved cattle, assaulted bosses, and abused equipm ent. W h a t was m ore serious from the Bolshevik point o f view was that they disassem bled rail tracks, cut down trees, and laid the trunks across the track beds. In Vologda Province, for exam ple, peasants set forests on fire and killed agents of the C h ek a.70 In a word peasants m ade th e city offensive on the countryside as difficult as they could. Attacks on trains, wrecking bridges and tracks, were particularly widespread in U kraine, because Bolshevik power was perceived so m u ch there as a force that arrived along th e railroad.71

Deserters In 1919, as we have seen, the m ain peasant response to the Bolshevik onslaught was passive defense. H undreds o f thousands o f G reens, hiding in the forests, avoided the draft and attacked the Bolsheviks only w hen they felt there was no alternative. In 1920 peasants had to respond to and interact with authority in fundam entally new ways. T h ey began to attack the Bolsheviks consistently and systematically. T h e deserters’ m ovem ent entered a new stage. Provincial com m issions for the struggle with desertion tabulated statistical data on desertion m onthly for the All-Russian C om m ission (Tsentr.Dezertir). T h e overall level of desertion and the ratio of deserters to draftees increased considerably th ro ughout 1920. In jan u a ry th eA ll-R u ssian C hekaapprehended 36,000 deserters.72 In July, however, the total of apprehended deserters during one week only was 111,101, a threefold increase.75 C learly large num bers of deserters hiding in the forests were not apprehended. Provincial com m issions for th e struggle with desertion m ade estim ates o f how m any deserters there were 68 “Tambovskie krestiane i v\ast’ Revoliutsionnaia Rossiiay no. 14—15 (November—December 1921), 31-33, here 31. 69 Ibid. 70 “Informatsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu” (1-15 August 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 414. 71 “Krestianstvo Ukrainy,” Kevoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 8 (May 1921), 25-27. 72 “Informatsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu Leninu” (7—14 February 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 414. 73 Ibid. (1-15 August 1920).

in their province at a given time. T he Tam bov com m ission reported, for example, that in July it registered 60,000 deserters, of whom 12,686 showed up voluntarily during a pardon week.74 T he Novgorod com m ission reported 7,000 deserters in just one uezd in July.75 In O ctober Tam bov reported 28,375 deserters still on the loose, and Novgorod’s report, as usual, was less specific: “D esertion is widespread.”76 T he Perm com m ission reported that there were 2,000 to 3,000 deserters in each uezd on average.77 T he general pattern seems to have been that desertion increased in the spring, reached its highest levels in the sum m er, and subsided som ewhat in late fall. To counteract these trends, the Bolshevik governm ent sharpened repressive m easures in the late spring o f 1920. O n 12 May the C ouncil of Labor and Defense issued an order to the provincial commissions for the struggle with desertion to an n o u nce that if within seven days deserters returned volun­ tarily, they would be pardoned. However: “Upon com pletion of this term you m ust strengthen the punishm ent in regard to deserters who do not show up and in regard to their families and those who provide them cover and treat them as unrepentant traitors to the toiling people. C hairm an of the C ouncil of Labor and Defense: L en in .”78 Family m em bers, that is, wom en and chil­ dren, were to pay for the actions of husbands and fathers and brothers. This order am ounted to treating the village population as hostages responsible for the actions of others. Needless to say, these orders failed to stem the tide of desertion. Some provincial commissions distinguished between a no-show for the draft (draft dodgers were called deserters) and deserters from Red Army units. T he Saratov Com m ission, for example, reported that 2,859 Red Army soldiers had deserted in O ctober.79 Yet virtually all provincial reports draw a link between deserters of both kinds and the G reen rebels. Deserters were the fighting core of the G reen bands: Perm: Armed bands o f deserters. Vyatka: Bands o f deserters are m oving toward Kostroma and N izh n i Novgorod provinces. Ekaterinburg: D esertion is on the rise. Deserters are hiding in the forests and in their hom es. T h ey stage armed assaults, robberies, and killings.80 Kursk: A n uprising o f deserters has taken place.81 74 Ibid. (1 -1 5 July 1920). 75 Ibid. 7 6 Ibid. (1 -1 0 O ctober 1920). 77 O tc h e ty Permskogo gubkom a,” T s.P .A ., Fond 17, TsKa RKP(b), O pis’ 12, docu m en t 382, p. 1 -3 . 78 “Postanovlenie Soveta T ruda i O borony,” T s.G .A .S .A ., Fond 193, O pis’ I, d ocum ent 66. 79 ‘‘Inform atsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo O tdela Vecheka tovarishchu L en in u ’’ (26 O c to b e r-1 N ovem ber 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docum ent 414. 89 Ibid. (1 -1 5 August 1920). 81 Ibid. (1 -1 5 June 1920).

Saratov: In th e forests a lo n g th e banks o f th e river E la n ’ th e re is a c o n c e n tra tio n o f b a n d s o f deserters. T h e local p o p u la tio n provides s u p p o rt.82

T h e C entral C om m ission for the Struggle with D esertion sent out a ques­ tio nnaire to all provincial com m issions in an attem pt to systematize the data on desertion and insurgency levels. W e have a filled-out questionnaire from Vyatka Province w hich m atches the bits and pieces of evidence available on other provinces. As everywhere else, the overall nu m b er of deserters in m id­ su m m er was in the tens o f thousands for the entire province. In one uezd only there were 20,000 deserters who form ed several G reen detachm ents. T h e q uestionnaire asked local com m issions to com pare the level of desertion with that in 1919. T h e Vyatka com m ission had to adm it that desertion had in­ creased and th at by the end o f 1920 the nu m b er o f deserters had increased even m ore. T h e questionnaire asked them to specify w hat percentage of soldiers in the units stationed in the province had deserted, to w hich the Vyatka com rades responded th at in the spring of 1920, 20 percent deserted and by August the n u m b er had gone up to 35 percent. As in other provinces, som e deserters lived at h o m e because they m ade arrangem ents “with local m ilitary authorities, who for a considerable com pensation w ith m oney and food began to legalize deser­ tio n .” O th er deserters fled to the forests and form ed G reen bands there. T h e local com m ission felt “com pelled to send considerable force to fight them , ” and a separate report detailed weekly and m onthly operations o f eight detachm ents devoted to this special purpose.83 T h e questionnaire suggested that the com ­ rades characterize the attitude o f the population toward deserters and toward Soviet power. T h e laconic answer was: “To deserters— positive. To Soviet power— negative.” O th er questions required specifying m easures undertaken to co m b at desertion. W e learn that 5,185 families were fined for providing assistance to deserters; 3,082 families had their property confiscated for the sam e offense, and 28,879 families were subject to other forms o f p u n ish m en t.84 Even though these data are incom plete, it can be said with certainty that desertion was a broad social m ovem ent in 1920 num bering in the hundreds of thousands. It was a form of peasant resistance to Bolshevik rule. And a small core o f these deserters played the crucial role in the guerrilla warfare of the G reens.

Avengers O n e peculiarity o f the peasant war in central Russian provinces was th at the rebels did n o t hold and did not try to hold any territory. It was prim arily a hit82 Ibid. (16-31 July 1920), p. 18. 83 “Doklad ob Otriadakh Osobogo N aznacheniia,” Ts.P.A., Fond 17, TsKa RKP(b), Opis’ 12, docum ent 110, p. 160. 84 O tc h e t o deiatel’nosti Viatskoi gubernskoi kommissii po bor'be s dezertirstvom,” Ts.P.A., Fond 17, TsKa RKP(b), Opis’ 12, docum ent 110, pp. 1-3.

and-run type of warfare. This was a period dom inated by small detachm ents of mstiteli, or avengers. In virtually all provinces small bands of peasant partisans, w hom the Bolsheviks called bandits, attacked requisition detachm ents, Cheka agents, and C om m unist party cells. It was a war not for territory but for power. T h e G reens constantly rem inded the Bolsheviks that they m ight have to pay for w hat they were doing. T h e war aim of the Greens was to deter the opponent from aggressive action and to deliver retribution for what had been done. In central Russia— as opposed to Ukraine, cossack lands, and Siberia— the G reens did not try to overthrow the Bolsheviks but rather to make their robbery o f the countryside impossible. Even a cursory look at the weekly C heka reports to L enin dem onstrates that not just in Tam bov but everywhere else in Russia peasant bands harassed the Bolshevik rulers: Yaroslavl: Banditry is widely spread in the entire province.85 Ryazan: Rebellions are going on connected to food supply.86 Tula: Gangs o f bandits are present.87 V oronezh: In 20 verst from Borisoglebsk a band of G reens is operating num bering 400. Vitebsk: T h e bandits are well organized. In the four uezdy they num ber 3,000. Pskov: O pochka region: a band of 300 is active. Petrograd: Yamburg Uezd: G reen bandits are active. Gdov Uezd: a band of armed deserters is active.88

In Ivanovo-Voznesenskaia Province, bordering on Moscow Province, a de­ tachm ent of fifty G reen rebels was operating, led by Stulov and Yushko. “This detachm ent does not have any political slogans. As a rule they do not rob the peasants, b u t opustoshaet lay waste to cooperative and state warehouses as a m eans o f self-supply. ”89 In other provinces as well rebels attacked food supply detachm ents, C heka headquarters, C om m unist party cells, and state farms. T hey burned archives and all records they could find and all other attributes of C o m m u n ist rule. In Tam bov Province, as Radkey observed: “the deserters went after the m ilitary service records and the peasants got rid of those upon which the levies and contributions were based.”90 T h e very word the peasants used, mstiteli, suggests that the G reen rebels saw their mission in hitting back at their oppressors rather than overthrowing them altogether. T h eir attacks were sporadic. They would burst out in one province, then die down, then break out in another province. T h eir political horizon was 85 “Inform atsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo O tdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu" (1 -1 5 June 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, d o cum ent 414. 86 Ibid. (1 -1 5 July 1920). 87 Ibid. (1 -1 5 August 1920). 88 Ibid. 89 “Ivanovo-Voznesenskaia guberniia,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 10 (July 1921), 24. 90 Radkey, The U nknown C ivil W ar in Soviet Russia, p. 102.

lim ited to their volost’ or uezd, and only in rare cases did it stretch to the entire province or several provinces. Sm all detachm ents o f avengers consisted o f parttim e peaceful farm ers and part-tim e G reen rebels. An eyewitness described a typical scene in a sm all town in Kursk Province: “T h e natural consequence of the entire situation is the appearance of local avengers. [Recently] they led across tow n about a dozen peasants with their hands tied behind their back, and b eh in d th em forty-five carts full of their possessions, plows, dishes, etc. These are hostages and confiscated property from the village, where three brothers were hiding who had been avenging [misdeeds of] the authorities. In vain do they send detachm ents; nothing can be done. T h e avengers are im possible to capture. T hey defeat detachm ents, shoot com m issars, and then disappear. ”91 In Kursk Province, the C heka identified one of the leaders of peasant bands as A tam an S h ch etkin. 92 Very little is know n about these local peasant leaders, just a few lines in C heka reports. In Livensky Uezd o f O rel Province, for exam ple, all we know about the leader o f the peasant gang o f “bandits” is the n am e M ishka, w ho called him self com m an d er.93 In Sim birsk it was “the wellknown b an d it Ukhachev, the leader of a gang of deserters.”94 In M oscow Province it was gang c h ief (g la v a r ) E m elianov, nicknam ed M ountain Eagle.95 And in Sam ara the G reens’ leader called him self the “peasant A tam an M edvedey” who chaired the C entral H eadquarters of the U nion to Save R ussia.96 In V oronezh the C heka did not know the nam e of the com m ander of the “G reen arm y,” as it was called, b u t concluded that his appeals were written by a literate h a n d .97

Spontaneous Rebellions Peasant rebellions (b u n ty ) were som ew hat different in character from the war­ fare o f th e G reens. T h e G reens did their fighting as a way o f life. T hey were either part-tim e or full-tim e partisans. Peasant rebellions, on the other hand, usually involved an entire peasant com m unity, an entire village or several villages, or an entire volost’. In som e cases, as in K azan/U fa, Tam bov, Sar­ atov/S am ara, and Siberia, as we shall see, those rebellions spread to an entire province or even several adjacent provinces. Local rebellions were usually short and bloody explosions of peasant frustration caused by the actions of requisition 91 “Na m esta k h ,” R evoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 10 (July 1921), 25. 92 “Inform atsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo O tdela Vecheka tovarishchu L en in u ” (1 -1 5 August 1920), T s .G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, d o c u m e n t 414. 95 Ibid. (1 6 -3 1 July 1920), p. 18. 94 Ibid. (1 -1 5 A ugust 1920). 9^ Ibid. 96 Ibid. (1 -1 0 O ctober 1920), p. 10. 97 Ibid. (1 6 -3 1 July 1920), p. 5.

detachm ents. A Cheka report from Kursk described what m ust have been a scene repeated all over Russia thousands of times: “At the approach o f the requisition detachm ent a crowd of peasants gathered, num bering about a th o u ­ sand people. T h e detachm ent retreated into the field accom panied by shouts and shots from the crow d.”98 In som e cases angry peasant crowds pursued detachm ents, killed the C om m unists, and even m arched to a province capital. A Socialist Revolutionary reported from Novgorod: “T h e peasants tried to throw off the yoke of authorities by resorting to spontaneous rebellions, by m arching toward the city and smashing the soviets along the way. . . . As a result they faced failure and cruel executions.”99 A small detachm ent of fifty to a hundred rebels was clearly a m inority in a peasant com m unity. This was the core of a fighting force which snowballed into detachm ents of several thousand at different times in different provinces, following the dynamics of local conditions. T he paradox of the situation was that w hen a core rebel detachm ent acted on its own in small units, it actually did m ore harm to the authorities than when it swelled into a huge peasant crowd. In other words the peak times of peasant hatred, when a protest move­ m ent crystallized into a mass peasant uprising, were in fact the times when the peasants were m ost vulnerable. Large masses of peasants attacking local ware­ houses and C om m unist party cells were defenseless vis-a-vis punitive expedi­ tions and regular troops. Such upheavals were easy to localize and suppress. Nevertheless the political and psychological effect of these rebellions was per­ haps even greater than that of organized partisan warfare. These rebellions involved the entire population. They had the potential of snowballing out of control and leading to a sudden and total collapse of Bolshevik Tule. Spontaneous rebellions were most dangerous for the Bolsheviks when they involved Red Army soldiers or sailors. An unknown rebellion of this type took place in N izhni Novgorod in O ctober 1920. Trouble started at an army confer­ ence in which the soldiers passed a resolution against the C om m unists de­ m anding better food rations, free soviets, and free trade. T he C om m unists panicked and arrested the presidium of the conference. In response a rebellion broke out. T h e entire garrison of seven thousand took part. Soviet power ceased to exist in N izhni Novgorod. T he rebels pillaged all the warehouses and killed all the com m anders and C om m unists to the last m an. T h e C heka report did not elaborate on their political agenda. Yet it is clear that this was an explosion of m obilized peasants’ frustration over miserable food rations.100 This top secret report added that one of the commissars lived in a m ansion of twelve rooms 98 Ibid. (1 -1 5 July 1920), p. 7. 99 “Krestianskie nastroeniia. Novgorodskaia guberniia (February 1920) O tchety, doklady mestnykh organizatsii PS R ,” T s.P.A ., Fond 274, PSR, O pis’ I, docum ent 25, p. 35. 100 “Doklad o Nizhegorodskikh sobytiiakh. ” To the chairm an of the Vecheka, Dzerzhinsky; to the chairm an o f the Special D epartm ent o f the Vecheka, M enzhinsky (31 O ctober 1920), T s.P.A ., D zerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, O pis’ 3, docum ent 22.

luxuriously furnished. T h e soldiers m ust have perceived him as a new barin, and they did to th e C om m unists w hat they had done to the landlords in 1917.

Large-scale Uprisings Peasant rebellions in central E uropean Russia followed the peasant calendar. T h e first wave was in spring, and the second and even m ore powerful in the fall. In April 1920 an A m erican consul cabled to W ashington: “It is reported that in eleven central provinces there was in progress on April 12, a general uprising of peasants against the Bolshevik rule, induced by lack o f seeds for sowing o f new crops and th e requisition decrees. Red army soldiers sent to suppress uprisings have in m any instances gone over to the counterrevolutionaries.” 101 Peasants were m ost effective w hen they were well organized into relatively sm all, wellarm ed detachm ents with capable and experienced m ilitary leaders and w hen a m ajority of th e local peasants, especially better-off ones, supported them with provisions and m anpow er. Large num bers o f deserters in provinces adjacent to the form er front lines o f the civil war provided an influx o f m ilitary expertise into the G reen m ovem ent. T h e area between the Volga and the Urals was saturated with deserters from the Red and W hite armies. T h e presence of deserters, th e involvem ent o f Tatars and other non-R ussian peasants, and the influence of th e SRs were the elem ents that distinguished the rebellion in this area from others. T h e rebels referred to their war against the Bolsheviks as the W ar of Black Eagle and the F arm er.102 T h e m ain cause of the rebellion in February—M arch 1920 was the excessive and brutal collection o f food tribute. T h e uprising was sparked, like so m any others, by the arrival o f a requisition d etach m en t in a sm all village. T his one, Novaia E la n ’, Troitskaia Volost’, was n o t far from M enzelinsk. T h e detachm ent com m ander dem anded that the peasants deliver th e assigned target am o u n t o f grain and threatened to arrest the entire gathering if the target was not m et. Peasants com plained to the volost’ Executive C om m ittee. In retaliation the detachm ent com m ander declared a state o f em ergency and seized twenty hostages, including w om en, from am ong the peasants. O n the next day, 7 February, the peasants dem anded that the hostages be released. T h e com m ander refused. T h e peasants attacked the de­ tachm ents and sent ou t delegates to neighboring com m unities asking for help. O n 9 February the C heka chief, the police chief, and other soviet and party functionaries w ere killed in N ovaia E lan ’ by rebellious peasants. T h e uprising began to spread. In Zainsk Tow nship the rebels formed their headquarters, chaired by a deserter nam ed M ilovanov, and killed off the C o m m u n ists.103 101 Im brie to Secretary o f State, Vyborg, F inland (21 April 1920), Records, dispatch 861.00.6792. i ° 2 Figes, Peasant R ussia, C ivil W ar, p. 333. 105 Litvin, K azan, p. 158-59.

Zainsk and M enzelinsk (between Ufa and Simbirsk) becam e the center of the uprising. Peasant rebels killed twenty-eight m em bers of a workers’ food collec­ tion brigade from Petrograd and a local Cheka boss who was known for his merciless war against local deserters hiding in the forests. O n 13 February the chairm an o f the Kazan Province soviet wrote in a m em o: “T h e rebellion has been going on for four days [and is] already inspiring others. We ought to show them that we have enough strength and that we are not kidding. W ould you please send sufficient armed force for suppression.”104 T h e uprising spread like fire, and by m id-M arch sixty volosti were actively supporting th e insurgents. Upon arrival in neighboring villages, rebels would gather th e local residents and announce a m obilization of the m ale population. T h e rebel draft in the liberated area yielded a 26,000-strong army. T he rebels were poorly armed. O nly some of them had rifles. Yet they showed a rem ark­ able degree of organization. Elected peasant chieftans formed headquarters and quickly set up a system of food supply. T he influence of the SRs and deserters manifested itself im mediately, since the rebels tried to organize a functioning adm inistration. T he total num ber of rebels reached 4 0 ,0 0 0 .105 In m id-M arch parts of Ufa, Kazan, and Simbisrk provinces were under rebel control. O n 2 M arch N. N. Krestinsky cabled to Trotsky: “T he M uslim peasant uprising in Kazan and Ufa provinces is growing.”106 T h e rebels’ political slo­ gans also betrayed a strong SR influence. T hey echoed the SRs’ official doctrine o f the third force in the civil war: Down with the W hites and Down with the Reds, Long Live Peasant Power! Tatar, Russian, Bashkir, and M ordovian peas­ ants participated in this m ovem ent. T hey systematically destroyed all attributes of Soviet power and killed 600 Soviet officials. T h e Bolsheviks sent out punitive detachm ents w hich suppressed this rebellion mercilessly, as a Socialist Revolu­ tionary reported: “In just one M enzelinskii Uezd of Ufa Province which be­ cam e a part of the Tatar Republic they arrested or executed up to 20,000 people, mostly m en. Driven into frenzy [istupleniie] by the local autocratsC om m unists, the Tatars went against m achine guns with axes and pitchforks. H undreds of them were mowed down, and entire villages were devastated.”107 T h e brutality of the Bolshevik suppression of this uprising was reported by another eyewitness. Boris Skomorovsky, a secretary of the M enshevik Central C om m ittee, wrote to Axelrod: “Just today a com rade has arrived from Ufa. He has described to m e (upon my request he will write it down and I shall send a copy to you) how the Bolsheviks pacified the peasants in M arch this year. They 104 C ited from ibid., p. 161. 105 Ibid., p. 160. 106 Secretary to the C C of the RCP, Krestinskii to Trotsky (classified) (2 M arch 1920), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, d o cum ent 488, p. 84. 107 “B um azhnaia avtonom iia (korrespondentsiia iz Kazanskoi gubernii),” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 7 (May 1921), 31.

were b u rn in g entire villages: a typical picture o f punitive expeditions. A ccord­ ing to his account, there were several thousand killed am ong the peasants.”108 A ccording to official Bolshevik data, they seized 3,235 rebels after the supression. O f those 1,683 were deserters.109 T h u s all sources agree that peasant casulaties d uring the suppression of the uprising were in the thousands. T h e n am e Black Eagles becam e so fam ous that in m any neighboring prov­ inces peasant rebels used that nam e. In the Urals near Ekaterinburg deserters from th e Red Army led G reens who nam ed them selves Black Eagles. In June the C heka reported that a peasant uprising broke out in Ekaterinburg Province due to a large concentration o f deserters and anti-Soviet agitation by kulaks, M ensheviks, and S R s.110 A resident in Ekaterinburg saw one of their leaflets. T h ey called on Red Arm y soldiers to desert and join the G reen arm y in the forests. Peasants o f Irbitskii Uezd and Krasnoufimskii Uezd joined them in rebellion. As everywhere else they killed local C om m unists and food supply ag en ts.111 T his uprising was also suppressed relatively quickly, b u t the defeat of the Black Eagles did n o t m ean the end of the insurgency. Peasant warfare reverted to the previous pattern o f sm all groups of avengers terrorizing local C o m m u n ist adm inistrations. It is clear from this survey of rural conditions in Bolshevik Russia th at social and political trends did not portend anything good for the Bolsheviks as the year 1920 progressed. As we have seen, the governm ent was inform ed well ab o u t the atrocities o f local functionaries and the disposition of the population. It had plenty of w arnings, yet L enin and the C o m m u n ist party leadership had no in tention whatsoever o f retreating from the chosen course of action. In fact th eir policy in the countryside was to try harder, to increase violence and repression, and to force the peasants to obey. As a result they reaped peasant wrath. It has long been assum ed th at in Russia proper only Tam bov was affected by this peasant war. T h e evidence presented above suggests that every province in Russia was affected by peasant insurgency. Civil war was raging in every uezd and every volost’ of Russia, and th at was after the W hites h ad been crushed. T h e images o f this war m entioned above have rem ained com pletely unknow n u n til now: T atar and Russian peasants w ith pitchforks being m owed down by m ach in e guns, Novgorod peasants m arching on the province capital, Red A rm y soldiers in m utiny in N izhni Novgorod exterm inating the C om m unists, and hundreds o f sm all rebellions upon the approach o f requisition detach108 Boris Skomorovsky to P. B. Axelrod (6 July 1920), Axelrod Archive. A n o th e rso u rce on the suppression o f this uprising is V. M iakotin, “Z hutkaia K niga,” N a chuzhoi storone, no. 7 (1924),

268 . 109 Litvin, K azan, p. 162. 110 “Inform atsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo O tdela Vecheka tovarishchu L en in u ” (1 -1 5 June 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K, O pis’ 3, d o cu m en t 414. 111 “Polozhenie na U rale (pis’m o iz E katerinburga” (29 N ovem ber 1920), R evoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 4 (M arch 1921), 3 0 -3 2 .

ments. T his was the reality of day-to-day life in rural Russia in 1920. And yet this devastating war in central Russia pales in com parison with the intensity of peasant war in Ukraine and the cossack lands. Furtherm ore, the Green tide of 1920 was only an introduction in comparison with what was going to unfold in Tambov, the Volga basin, and Siberia in the winter of 1920 and spring of 1921.

10 T h e Peasant W ar in U kraine and Cossack Lands

Bolshevik Agrarian Policy in Ukraine To judge by their agrarian policy, the Bolsheviks did not draw any lessons from their defeat in U kraine at the hands of insurgent peasants in 1919. U pon the third conquest of U kraine in January 1920 they began introducing the achieve­ m ents of “socialist construction” all over again, such as requisitions of “surplus” grain, th e C heka, and food supply armies. T h e additions o f 1920 were labor conscription, horse and cart service obligations, collective farms, and com m it­ tees o f the poor. If one had to devise a policy to provoke the peasants to rebellion, this was the policy. Since Ukraine happened to be in the frontline zone, it had to carry an additional burden o f unscheduled requisitions for the needs o f the Red Army. As the T h irteen th Arm y com m issar reported: “Agents of the Food Supply C om m ittee and troops passing through confiscate cattle, fodder, and produce, for w hich they pay nothing. At present the cavalry arm y is m obilizing horses and giving ou t receipts for th e m .”1 A nother army report frankly adm itted that about 50 percent o f requisitioned fodder was rotting. Haste and negligence and a policy o f first confiscate, then think how to use it, contributed to th e growing irritation o f the U krainian countryside. As special d epartm ents o f the arm y m onitoring popular political attitudes in southeastern U kraine reported: “Political attitudes of the population in the front line are M akhnovite. Protest is noticeable in connection with the possible labor co nscription.”2 W ith the arrival of the Bolsheviks and the resum ption of “socialist construc­ tio n ," trade in U kraine suffered a severe setback. As is clear from official Bolshevik data, hardly any m anufactured goods seeped down to the country­ side. T h e food supply com m issar for U kraine, Μ . K. Vladim irov, lam ented th at even if the authorities had a com m odity as basic as salt to send to the villages, they could not be sure that it would reach the peasants. C orruption was 1 “Svodka nachuprevkom a 13 arm ii ot 18/11 1920” (R eport of th e chief of th e Revolutionary C o m m ittee o f the 13th Army), D oklady i svodki v Revvoensovete 13 arm ii, Arkhiv Krasnoi Arm ii, no. 18, p. 89, cited here from K ubanin, M akknovshchina, p. 125. 2 "Svodka osobogo otdela 13 a rm ii” (2 5 -2 6 August 1920), D oklady i svodki v Revvoensovete 13 arm ii, Arkhiv Krasnoi A rm ii, no. 18, p. 89, cited here from K ubanin, M akknovshchina, p. 127.

pervasive, and huge quantities of goods disappeared from state distribution networks into the free m arket.3 Requisitioned cattle died at rail stations because nobody cared to feed them . W h at was requisitioned could not be transported; w hat had to be distributed vanished w ithout a trace. Abuse of power by com pet­ ing civilian and army authorities generated widespread discontent within two m onths o f the Bolshevik arrival. T h e target grain collection system was m uch m ore difficult to im plem ent in Ukraine than in Russia. T h e Bolsheviks had no institutional infrastructure. T h e countryside on the other hand was organized and armed. T hree years of partisan warfare had produced autonom ous and virtually self-ruling peasant areas. To break the established m ilitary and political power in the Ukrainian village was the Bolsheviks’ m ain task in early 1920. As is well known, the Bolshevik solution was to m obilize the masses and prom ote class struggle. T he party m obilized 10,576 fighters to storm the countryside on the food supply front in the sum m er of 1920. T heir mission was to underm ine the power of the “class enem y” in the countryside and to extract “surplus” grain. M ore than 1,000 o f them were killed by peasants during the first nine m onths of 1920.4 T h e effectiveness of these storm troopers was rather low. They managed to extract only 9,721,000 pud of grain from all of Ukraine, com pared with a 10 m illion collection target for an average Russian province. Actual collection as a percentage of the target by province was Volyn’ 2.69%; Podol’ 4.9%; Aleksandrovskaia 3.5% , Chernigov 16.6% .5 These figures show that despite an allout effort the Bolsheviks failed to establish control over the Ukrainian country­ side in 1920. Realizing how weak they really were, the Bolsheviks reverted to their old and well-tested m ethod: divide and rule. By a decree o f 18 May com m ittees of the poor were revived or introduced in Ukraine, only under a new Ukrainian nam e. T h e plan was to divide the Ukrainian countryside by class lines and to seek an alliance with the poor peasants, a policy that had been pursued in Russia in 1918 and failed. According to Rakovskii, the head of the Ukrainian governm ent, the Bolsheviks did not have m uch of a choice. T hey had no m eans to enforce target collection. An additional impetus for this policy was the fact that in 1919 poor peasants were a majority in the anti-Bolshevik bands. Accord­ ing to Rakovskii, rich peasants stayed in the village and paid poor ones to fight. Poor peasants were the hired army of the kulaks. T h e Bolsheviks decided to hire them as their army against the kulaks. T he decree specified that the poor com m ittees would receive from 10 to 25 percent of requisitioned grain.6 3 Μ . K. V lad im iro v , “K rupnye i novye u s iliia ,” K o m m u n is t, n o . 5 (1920), cited h e re from K u b a n in , M a k h n o v sh c h in a , p. 128. 4 S h o m ik O tc h e to v N a ro d n ykh K om m issarov, cited in K u b an in , M a k h n o v sh c h in a , p. 130. 5 Ibid. 6 O n th e ku lak s’ h ire d arm y, see Rakovskii, “D oklad n a K harkovskoi g u b p artiin o i k o n fe re n tsii,” I 5 /I ! (1921), p. 21, cited h ere from K u b a n in , M a k h n o v sh c h in a , p. 136; for d ata on co m m itte e s o f

In view of the universal hostility to state farms the Bolsheviks scaled down th eir presence som ew hat in 1920. As a people’s com m issar of land explained: “In th e eyes o f peasant masses the state farm was a new form of ‘panshchina’ [rule by landlords] under w hich only the ow ner changed; the old one was replaced by th e state.”7 Instead o f state farms they cultivated now collective farms, conceived of as collectives of poor peasants turned rich after expropriat­ ing the kulaks. By this policy the Bolsheviks tried to kill two birds with one stone. By transferring kulak property to poor peasants they wanted to destroy the econom ic base o f private enterprise and political opposition and at the same tim e to create a class o f grateful laborers who would be happy to work under party guidance, thus freeing the party from reliance on the market. T h e best aspect of this policy for the Bolsheviks was that it did not cost them anything. T h ey paid for it with kulak property. O u t of the total of 790 volost’-level com m ittees of th e poor, 608 confiscated land from “kulaks.” T h e total quantity of confiscated Iandw as 285,000 desiatin. In 1919 there were only 300 collective farms in Ukraine; in 1920 the n u m b er grew to 1,428, and by 1922 to 3,778. Just as in Russia in 1918 the policy failed. Peasant leaders, indeed often better-off peasants, took control over the form ation o f the poor com m ittees them selves.8 And if those com m ittees served the Bolsheviks, their m em bers were mercilessly killed. By Ju n e—July 1920 the Bolshevik war with the peasants was in full gear in U kraine. T h is tim e it was called “class struggle against the kulaks.”

O ccupation Policies in the D on Host and Kuban W h en in early 1920 the Red Arm y overran the cossack lands of the D on and K uban, having driven the defeated W hite arm y to C rim ea, the new C o m m u ­ nist authorities were well aware that they were now in hostile country. D on and Kuban cossacks had been the backbone of the W hite armies. T h e tone o f the Bolshevik authorities was that of conquerors in an occupied country. T h e cossacks had to pay the price for their “collaboration" with the W hites. M any cossack villages (stanitsy) were forced to pay an indem nity to the victors, some were earm arked for liquidation, and the cossack population was deported to the n o rth .9 T h e cossacks, dem oralized by defeats, tired o f war, and viewed with hostility by R ussian peasants (the so-called outsiders, settlers who had com e to

the poor in U kraine by province, see O b z o r organizatsii kom itetov nezam ozhnikh selian” (izdanie NiCVD U krainy, 1921), p. 6, cited here from K ubanin, M akhnovshchina, p. 137. 7 O t c h e t narkom zem a Piatom u s’e z d u ,” ibid., p. 133. 8 O tc h e tT s K a KP(b)U” (15 N ovem ber 1920)p rilo z h en ie n o . 5 t o K o m m unist, cited h erefrom K ubanin, M akhnovshchina, p. 139. 9 “Predkavkaz’e pod Sovetskoi vlast’iu (Iz Terskoi oblasti i Stavropol’skoi gubernii),” R evoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 7 (M ay 1921), 25—27, here 25.

cossack lands from central Russia), displayed passivity and resignation. M any stanitsy, although suspicious of the Bolsheviks but resentful of the W hites as well, tried to show loyalty to the new authorities. Som e cossacks, however, fled to the m ountains o f the N orth Caucasus in anticipation of what they believed to be an inevitable new cossack insurgency against the Bolsheviks.10 T h e peasant population on the other hand welcomed the Reds as their liberators, since they had had no representation in the cossack C ircle Assembly of the D on or the Kuban Rada (parliament). Excluded from representation, they naturally re­ garded the Bolsheviks as their protectors. In Kuban and especially on the Black Sea coast, it should be recalled, retreating armies o f G eneral Denikin were harassed by peasant detachm ents of Greens, who saw themselves as allies of the advancing Reds. Local peasants in Stavropol Province even elected their own soviets and proudly declared to the Reds that they had created their own Soviet power before the Reds arrived.11 In the cities workers, Mensheviks and SRs, and even the Kadet intelligentsia, although distrustful o f Bolshevik intentions, greeted the Red Army, if not with enthusiasm , then with a cautious welcome. At least the war was over, they reasoned. Perhaps the new authorities would be better than D enikin’s counter­ intelligence officers. Both the SR and M enshevik local organizations went through agonizing factional infighting as to w hether to persist in oppositional politics in regard to the Bolsheviks or to give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that a new start of peaceful labor democracy was at hand. Indeed the Revolutionary W ar C ouncil of the N inth Army in Kuban and the Revolution­ ary C om m ittee o f the province announced that no reprisals against cossacks for past "collaboration” with the W hites or for participation in the W hite armies would follow .12 It seemed that Moscow was trying to avoid repeating its mistake of 1919, w hen upon entry into the D on country it started its rule with a massive terror cam paign of decossackization w hich led to a universal cossack rebellion, clearing the way for G eneral D enikin’s offensive. T h e Bolsheviks faced a favorable sociopolitical situation. Y e titseem sth atth e new masters decided not to appeal to the initial cooperative m ood of the local population b u t to instill fear and obedience. T he Bolsheviks treated the area and its people as a source o f revenue. They were going to get what Soviet power needed or else force would be applied. In a frank but rather cynical cable to G- K. O rdzhonikidze, a m em ber of the Rev. Com . for N orth Caucasus, Lenin adm onished him on the eve of Soviet occupation of the N orth Caucasus: “We need oil desperately [do zarezu]. Work out a declaration to the population saying that we will slaughter all of them if they set fire to or sabotage the oil and 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 “Prikaz Revvoensoveta 9oi arm ii i K ubansko-Chernom orskogo Revkoma” (2 July 1920), T s.G .A .S .A ., Fond 192, PoIitotdei 9oi arm ii, O pis' I, docum ent 240.

the oil wells, and conversely that we will grant life to them all if M aikop and particularly G roznyi are handed over in tact.”13 T h e Bolsheviks distrusted all groups of the local population. T heydisbanded the peasant soviets, just as they had disbanded the Rada and the local cossack assemblies, and replaced all these locally elected bodies with revolutionary com m ittees. Instead of the disbanded Kuban Rada, the Bolsheviks announced elections to th e province Congress of Soviets. T h a t in itself was an affront to local pride, w hich was exacerbated by the fact that not the soviets bu t the B olshevik-appointed revolutionary com m ittees were represented at the co n ­ gress. And on top of th at it had no power. T h e real m aster of the province was the K ubchernom or [Kuban/Black Sea coast] Rev. C om . Instead of enhancing divisions betw een peasants (outsiders) and cossacks, the Bolsheviks prom oted th eir solidarity by their policies. T h e Bolsheviks distrusted not only peasant soviets and cossack assemblies b u t also those cossacks and peasants who h ad led the resistance against the W hites. T hey were not inclined to tolerate any ind ep en d en t force. T h e leaders o f anti-W hite G reen detachm ents discovered to th eir astonishm ent th at the Bolsheviks, w hom they had considered allies, now w anted to destroy them . In Stavropol and on the Black Sea coast the new authorities arrested leaders o f the anti-W hite m o v em en t.14 T h e priority o f the new masters was to pum p ou t as m u ch food from the conquered country as possible. As an order of the Kuban C heka threatened: “In order to guarantee peaceful life for the laboring cossacks and peasantry and for th e supply of central Russia with grain, Soviet power will no t stop before any m easures and sacrifices. AU acts o f W hite-G reen bands will be suppressed with m erciless cruelty.”15 T h e Statistical D epartm ent of Kuban calculated that th e collection targets for the province were simply impossible to fu lfill.16 In the D on H ost th e new authorities decided that the cossacks were too rich by the standards of central Russia. Fam ilies that had three pairs of bulls were allowed to retain only one; those who had six horses could keep four. In central Russia, they said, peasants had none. T h at m ay well have been true, bu t the result was th at cossacks could no t and did not w ant to cultivate as m u ch land as they custom arily did. T h e collection target for the D on H o stin the sum m er of 1920 was set at 36 m illion pud o f grain (com pare with 10 m illion for an average 15 L en in to Sm ilga and O rdzhonikidze (28 February 1920), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, do cu m en t 486, p. 80. 14 T h is inform ation is from th e official statem ent o f N . V. V oronovich, the deputy chairm an of the C o m m ittee o f L iberation of the Black Sea C oast, an organization of p easant rebels w ho had fought the W hites in 1919: “Krestianskoe dvizhenie na C h e rn o m o r’e, ” VoIia Rossii (21 D ecem ber 1920), 3; also see ib id ., V olia Rossii (22 D ecem b er 1920), 2. 15 O b ra s h c h e n ie Vecheka k naseleniiu Kabanskoi oblasti i chernom orskogo poberezh’ia” (O c­ tober 1920), cited here from “Krovozhadnyi m anifest,” R evoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 7 (May 1921), 30. 16 “V sovetskoi K u b an i,” R evoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 12—13 (S ep tem b er-O cto b er 1921), 43.

province in central Russia). By the sum m er m onths the cossack population had already been stripped of m ost of its possessions, so the m ain blow now fell upon the peasants, who had welcomed the Bolsheviks a few m onths earlier. As a local observer reported: In the course o f three—four m onths undisguised robbery was going on, senseless, w ild, and persistent. T h ey took everything, literally cleared ou t the grainaries. You want facts? Every village, every farm. T h ey took away the seed grain as well. For nondelivery they arrested hostages [otvetchiki], com pletely innocent people, w ho had given everything they could. T h ey kept them in barns and basements; they kept them there for a week or a m onth and then tried them for som ething. And this was happening in alm ost every village. T h ey imprisoned entire executive com m ittees of soviets if those were from the local people. Arrests were conducted rudely and cyn i­ cally [vozm utitelno], and the only cause was that a village could not, was not able to deliver. It sim ply did not have any more grain. 17

Collection targets in Kuban and Don included not only grain, cattle, and vegetables but also pillows, clothes, shoes, and other types of personal property. Observers called this a systematic robbery of the population. Needless to say, m uch of the requisitioned property was divided am ong the local bosses (■nachal’stvo) . 18 As in central Russia, the new authorities set up state farms and imposed all kinds of labor obligations on peasants and cossacks, who for the first time found themselves on the same side of the barricades. Peasants were con­ scripted to cart all kinds of requisitioned goods for no pay at all. Any protest or refusal to work was qualified as insurgency against Soviet power. This regime of occupation and plunder in just one year led to the pauperization of one of Russia’s richest agricultural areas. Abuse of authority was widespread because it was uncontrollable. Some operations of the new masters were not even disguised as being for the benefit of the “starving workers of Moscow and Petrograd. ” It was plain robbery, as is clear from a report of the adm inistration subdepartm ent of the Kuban Province Revolutionary C om m ittee: “After the appearance of [Green] bands in Tem nolesskaia Stanitsa the punitive detachm ent no longer bothered to determ ine the behavior of the population. Under the guise o f a search for weapons the detachm ent robbed the population, took away horses and stole clothes from the residents by breaking their trunks, etc.”19 In some cases the cruelty of punitive detachm ents was so blatant and senseless that it moved even some Cheka officials to object to Moscow. O n e report of a special C heka plenipotentiary in the region characterized the party and Soviet rulers of Stavropol Province in 17 “Na D o n u ,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 9 (June 1921), 31. 18 “Na K ubani,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 5 (April 1921), 29. 19 "Svodka no. 127 Inform atsionno-Instruktorskogo podotdela Kubansko-Chernom orskogootdela upravleniia” (7 O ctober 1920), T s.G . A .S .A ., Fond 192, Politotdel 9oi arm ii, O pis’ I, docu­ m ent 240,

scathing terms: “a group o f highly placed officials have bogged down in the m ud o f petty concerns. T hey have neglected their duties in the province, w hich caused a rise in counterrevolutionary attitudes. T h a t in turn necessitated a punitive expedition, w hich ruined a peaceful settlem ent. T h e Rev. C om . decorated th e co m m ander of the expedition w ith the O rder of the Red Banner, b u t the C heka found him guilty of senseless violence against the population. ”20 N ot only punitive detachm ents in the field b u t also civilian Bolshevik institu­ tions helped them selves to the property of the defenseless population. As a m atter o f course they requisitioned the best houses in cities and towns. In Vladikavkaz they evicted residents from the entire neighborhood around the C heka head q u arters.21 A ccording to a top secret report by the plenipotentiary of the C heka w ho inspected the activity of the C heka in that region: “T h e C heka and the special departm ents in the C aucasus do no t understand their tasks in th e context o f the general situation in Soviet Russia. Persons in positions of authority are engaged in either officially sanctioned or disguised robbery, e n ­ riching them selves. . . . O r else they are m aking their careers and are looking for W h ite G uardist organizations everyw here.”22 If this dam ning inform ation had been reported by a Socialist Revolutionary or M enshevik, it would proba­ bly have been dism issed as an invention o f Bolshevik foes. Yet we learn from this internal C heka report to the C entral C om m ittee that the chairm an o f the Stavropol C heka, one Generalov, was keeping several h undred arrested peas­ ants in the C heka cellar w hile upstairs banquets were held in his honor “with d ancing and co n sum ption o f alcohol. ” G eneralov appointed his personal bud­ dies to all im p o rtant posts, including chairm an of the Secret D epartm ent. F u rth erm o re for the entire sum m er G eneralov lived in Piatigorsk, a town in the m ountains, dealing in cocaine. O n top o f that G eneralov turned a num ber of secret apartm ents for C heka business in the city into “entertainm ent houses.”23 It would be difficult to believe that types like G eneralov were devoted to social­ ism. C heka bosses like him sim ply liked power and exploited the opportunity presented by th e Bolshevik dictatorship to set themselves up comfortably. Local dictators were very inventive in creating pretexts for robbing the popu­ lace. In early 1921 the Ekaterinodar authorities decided to celebrate the an n i­ versary of the Paris C o m m u n e by a new attack on the “bourgeoisie.” AU city 20 Lander, “Iz doklada o polozhenii del na Severnom Kavkaze,” Ts.P.A., Fond 17, TsKa RKP(b), Opis’ 84, Biuro Sekretariata TsKa, docum ent 75 (10 October 1920), p. 19. 21 “Predkavkaz’e pod Sovetskoi vlast’iu (Iz Terskoi oblasti i Stavropol’skoi gubernii),” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 7 (May 1921), 25 -2 7 , here 26. 22 A. N. Latsis, “Dokiad o deiatel’nosti upolnom ochennykh Vecheka i Osobykh Otdelov Vecheka na Severnom Kavkaze i o sostoianii Cheka i Osobykh Otdelov na mestakh” (25 December 1920) (Report on the activity of the plenipotentiaries of the Cheka and the special departments of the Cheka), T s.P .A ., Fond 17, TsKa RCP(b), Opis' 84, Biuro SekretariataTsKa, docum ent75, pp. 58-59. 23 Ibid.

residents had to fill o u t a questionnaire specifying their profession and social origin. At nig h t arm ed detachm ents o f th e C heka and Red Army burst into the apartm ents o f all those identified as “bourgeoisie”: form er m erchants, officers, lawyers, professors, an d engineers. After a search they confiscated, better to say appropriated, clothes, m oney, an d other valuables from the “class enem y” and shoved th e u n fo rtu n ate “socially hostile elem ents" into carts. Som e were incar­ cerated in a co n cen tratio n cam p, others dispatched to hard labor on the C as­ pian Sea. Several h u n d red fam ilies were affected by this operation.24 For the local population in th e D on H ost an d K uban the G erm an presence o f 1918 or even th e W h ite rule of 1919 were harm less com pared with the Bolshevik occup atio n o f 1920. As early as th e su m m er of 1920 the peasant w ar flared up w ith new vigor.

Peasant Rebels: Ukraine Political au thority in th e U krainian countryside in 1920, wrote a m anager o f a sm all factory in Kiev Province, was in th e hands of partisan detachm ents. T h e ir power was p erm an en t and th e Bolsheviks’ transitory. Partisan bands m oved unim peded th ro u g h o u t Kiev, Podol’e, V olyn’, and o th er provinces. Village elders were th eir m en on th e spot. T h ey fought th e Bolsheviks u n d e r yellow and blue U krainian flags, posted appeals to the local population condem ning for­ eigners and outsiders, M uscovites an d Jews.25 T h e higher the degree of organi­ zation an d coordination, th e m ore powerful was the peasant rebel m ovem ent. M ost U krainian bands were led by experienced m ilitary leaders, form erly ju­ n io r officers, m ostly from the U krainian arm y o f Petliura. T hey m aintained m ilitary discipline in their detachm ents, espoused a co h eren t ideology of U krainian ind ep en den ce, and operated in an area w ith few Bolshevik institu­ tions and no local Bolsheviks. T h e population was n o t as rich as in previous years, b u t certainly well-off by Russian standards, and provided generous sup­ port. It was for these obvious reasons th at the Dobrodii (U krainian partisans) m aintain ed de facto control over the U krainian countryside. In a classified co m m u n icatio n Trotsky adm itted as m uch: "Petliura’s m en have a proper, strong, and purely m ilitary organization in the rear, stronger than that o f Soviet power. ”26 A ccording to classified data of th e H eadquarters for the Struggle with Insurgency in U kraine, twelve partisan d etachm ents were active in Kiev Prov­ ince alo n e at the end o f 1920 and th e early m onths o f 1921.27 At least half o f the 24 "V sovetskoi Kubani," Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 12-13(Septem ber-O ctober 1921), 43. 25 Iv. Derevensky1 “Bandity (Ocherki perioda grazhdanskoi voiny),” By/oe, no. 24(1924), 252— 73, here 252. 26 Trotsky to Skliansky {I I May 1920, Nezhin), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, docum ent 540, p. 176. 27 This is a Bolshevik classified docum ent based on reports o f the Special Headquarters for the Struggle against Insurgency in Ukraine for January, February, and March 1921. “Povstancheskoe dvizhenie na U kraine,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 11 (August 1921), 23-25.

atam ans listed recognized the leadership o f A tam an Struk and coordinated their m ilitary actions w ith him . Struk him self was a form er officer. Five other atam ans were identified as form er officers and three as peasants. AU detach­ m ents consisted o f a core o f p erm anent fighters w hich at least doubled in size for m ilitary missions; Struk’s detachm ent of 1,000 m en grew to 4,000 for co m b at missions. A tam an Z elenchuk had 100 m ounted fighters and 200 infan­ try. T h e strength o f other detachm ents varied from as few as 50 to 300 or 400 p erm an en t fighters. All detachm ents increased considerably for m ilitary m is­ sions. T h e total n u m b er o f p erm anent fighters for the entire Kiev Province was 3,850, and th e total n u m b er in all detachm ents at full strength was 7,950. This suggests th at at any given tim e about 5,000 peasant rebels and deserters were fighting the Bolsheviks in Kiev P rovince.28 It would no t be an exaggeration to suggest th at Soviet power did not exist in the countryside around Kiev. A C heka report to L enin adm itted as m uch: “Kiev: T h e situation in the uezdy is alarm ­ ing. Kiev U ezd is engulfed by insurgency alm ost entirely. . . . D uring one of the recent offensives o f the bands on Kiev, local authorities ran away

[razbezhalis’}.”29 Form er U krainian officer Yurii T iutiunnik's band operated in Kiev and Volyn’ provinces.30 It had a record of twelve attacks on requisitioning detach­ m ents, and five o f those detachm ents were annihilated. A band of Balakhovich in V olyn’ had four regim ents, according to the C h e k a .31 In Kherson Province, of several bands 200—300 strong, two were led by deserters from the Red Army. W ith alarm the report stated: “in the area of the detachm ents' operation, Soviet adm inistration in the villages does n o t exist at a ll.” In addition to attacks on requisition and punitive detachm ents, A tam an Sokol’s band carried out twelve assassinations of Soviet functionaries.32 T h e total strength of rebels in Kherson Province was 3 ,0 0 0 .33 In Kharkov Province one of the leaders of the three peasant bands, 400 strong each, was also som ew hat unusual. H e was a form er com m issar o f a food collection detachm ent. A nother was a Red Army deserter. T h e third band operated no t only in Kharkov but also in neighboring V oronezh P ro v in ce.34 Poltava Province, like Kiev, was one of the hotbeds of insurrection through28 T he figure o f4,000 rebels is cited in “Informatsionanaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu” (26 October—I November 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 414, p. 3. 29 Ibid. 50 Ibid. (1 -1 0 October 1920), p. 9. 31 Ibid. (16-31 July 1920), p. 18. 32 “Povstancheskoe dvizhenie na Ukraine,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 11 (August 1921), 24. 33 “Informatsionanaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela VeCheka tovarishchu L eninu” (26 O c to b e r-1 November 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 414, p. 13. 34 “Povstancheskoe dvizhenie na Ukraine," Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 11 (August 1921), 24; see also “Informatsionanaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu Leninu” (26 O ctober1 November 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 414, p. 13.

out 1920-21. Cheka reports m ention bands of Petliura, Kokot’, and Lev­ chenko fighting there m onth after month: 1-15 June: T h e band of Petliuravites are active: 20,000 strong. A state of emergency was declared in the province. 1-15 July: BanditTy is highly developed here. They have contact with the local police. 16—31 July: T h e peasantry patronizes the bands. 1-15 August: T he struggle with banditry in Poltava Province has encountered diffi­ culties. T h e bands have one unified leadership and coordinate their actions in different parts of the province. 26 O c to b e r-1 November: T he bands of Kokot’ and Levchenko are 1,000 men strong.35

T h e 2 ,500-strong detachm ent of Red Army deserters and local peasants of Atam an Shuba, a deserter from the Red Army who called him self a Left Socialist Revolutionary, was very popular: “Peasants of almost all uezdy of Poltava Province support them , and that is why the detachm ent appears u n im ­ peded in all parts of the province.”36 It distinguished itself by attacking half a dozen towns, destroying grain collection detachm ents, tallying 28 cases of rail track wreckage, and routing Red officers’ school cadets. In Podol’e Provincethere were four bands from 200 to 1,000 m en strong led, as everywhere else, by former Ukrainian officers in contact with Struk. They burned warehouses and destroyed rail tracks and fought the Reds. Ataman Podoliaka defeated two Sovietdivisions in February 1921. And Ataman Babich crushed three punitive detachm ents and executed everyone captured, to the last m a n .37 Almost all detachm ents in all provinces included a large num ber of Red Army deserters. How m any exactly cannot be ascertained because no precise records were kept. T he only references available are from Bolshevik estimates. Trotsky, for example, lam ented in May 1920 that Gomel Province, “despite proximity to the front, was swanming with deserters.”38 In some cases deserters were the m ain core of rebel detachm ents. Zelenchuk’s entire cavalry were former Red Army m en. M atveenkos 400 fighters were all Red Army deserters. O n the other hand Petrenko’s 1,000 were all local peasants.39 O ut of Ataman Levchenko’s 1,000 partisans half were Red Army deserters. Ataman Mat35 “Povstancheskoe dvizhenie na U kraine,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. I l (August 1921), 24. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Trotsky to the C C o f the CP, Moscow (10 May 1920, Gomel), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, docum ent 539, pp. 175-76. 39 "lnform atsionanaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu” (1 -1 5 July 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docum ent 414.

veenko’s band was reported as having “m any sym pathizers” in the Red Army garrisons of K rem enchug. T h e presence of so m any deserters had two im por­ tan t im plications. It suggests that the loyalty o f Red Arm y units was question­ able and th at th e rebel detachm ents benefited from the presence of m en with m ilitary experience and training. T h e deserters’ valuable contribution to the rebel cause was intelligence inform ation on the units they had deserted from. Red Arm y deserters also played a p rom inent role in M akhno’s army. It had a core o f 2,000 m en , 600 of them cavalry, arm ed with eighty m achine guns, ten pieces of field artillery, and two arm ored cars (one nam ed “D eath to C o m m u ­ nists and C om m issars”). D uring m ilitary missions this core expanded to 12,000 m en , 2,500 o f th em cavalry.40 It is m ore appropriate to call this force no t a d etach m en t b u t at least a division, if no t an army. T h e Bolsheviks adm itted that th e entire population o f Ekaterinoslav Province supported M akhno. His units g u nned dow n 450 cadets o f Red officers’ schools and successfully engaged the cavalry arm y of Budenyi. O n another occasion they took prisoner an entire Red Arm y division.41 Reports o f the T h irtee n th Army headquarters are full of descriptions o f countless engagem ents like this: “According to intelligence data, on th e internal front the M akhnovites have spread their forces 4,000 strong along the front to the no rth o f the railway line from Pism ennaia station to U l’ianovka. T h e arm ored train 'Soviet Russia’ entered the com bat at midday, pushing them away from the railroad. A nother arm ored train, ‘Red C ossack,’ entered the battle. As a result the band suffered heavy casualties. 8 June 1920.”42 Soviet power in southern U kraine was weakened so m u ch by M ak h n o ’s forces that it becam e possible for W rangel to defeat the Reds and occupy southeastern U kraine, the hom e base of M akhno. T h e cycle o f 1919 seem ed to have repeated itself. U nlike peasant rebels in K azan, arm ed with pitchforks and axes, U krainian detachm ents had a plentiful supply of rifles, m achine guns, and even light artillery pieces. E ach detachm ent operated in a rather small area. T h e report of the C om m ission to Struggle with Insurgency listed nam es o f villages consid­ ered “nests,” actively supporting their local rebel detachm ent. T h e num ber of villages varied from a dozen, a base supporting A tam an M ordalevich, to 120 supporting A tam an Struk. T h e nu m b er of fighters in a detachm ent, com pared with th e n u m b er o f villages listed as its “nests,” suggests that a typical detach­ m en t o f 300 or 400 core fighters relied on a dozen or so villages for food supply and tem porary infusions of fighters for large operations. From other sources it is 40 “Povstancheskoe dvizhenie na U k rain e,” R evoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 11 (August 1921), 25. A ccording to the C heka report, M akhno had 15,000 fighters in June 1920. See “Inform atsionanaia Svodka Sekretnogo O tdelaV echeka tovarishchu L e n in u ” (1 -1 5 June 1920), T s .G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K 1 O pis’ 3, d o c u m e n t 414. 41 K ubanin, M akhnovshchina, p. 148. 41 “Z h u rn a l voennykh deistvii 13 arm ii za iiu n ' mesiats 1920 goda,” Arkhiv Krasnoi Arm ii, D elo no. 6986, p. 3, cited here from K ubanin, M akhnovshchina, p. 147.

clear th a t entire villages and volosti were bou n d by collective responsibility, a sort of inform al vow of loyalty. It was very difficult for the C heka to penetrate this “secret peasant governm ent. ” T h e attitu d e o f th e population to th e D obrodii was a com bination of re­ verence an d fear. Young m e n particularly were m ost eager to join the bands. As a C heka report noted: “Masses o f young people have deserted and joined the b a n d s.”43 For som e, noted an observer, this n o t only signified patriotic de­ fense o f M o th er U kraine b u t also opened u p prospects for adventure, valor, and th e heroic exploits everyone talked so m u c h about. Partisans were very popular am ong young w om en in the village.44 For m any young m en , entering a village o n horseback w ith a saber o n th e side, u n d er a yellow and blue flag, after sm ashing the Bolshevik garrison, was the fulfillm ent of th eir highest aspirations. T h e rebels’ m ost desirable target was a requisitioning detachm ent. U pon a successful attack they had a source o f food supply for them selves and could distribute requisitioned grain to local peasants. Z e le n ch u k had n in e successful attacks on requisitioning detach m en ts in three m onths. H e bu rn ed w are­ houses, trains, an d railway stations an d destroyed rail tracks. Levchenko blew up a bridge. V ictory in an engagem ent usually ended w ith the total exterm ina­ tion of th e Bolshevik d etach m en t. V oloshchenko defeated and destroyed two m o u n ted punitive d etachm ents, Z elen ch u k seized and destroyed an arm ored train, and Struk “co n d u cted successful engagem ents w ith three Soviet divisions and set conscripted peasants free.”45 Som e detachm ents seized sizable towns and cities for a lim ited duratio n . T h is was usually accom panied by the exter­ m in atio n o f C o m m u n ists and frequently anti-Jew ish pogrom s. All d etach­ m ents were reported to have displayed exceptional cruelty to C om m unists: “If on th e ir path they e n c o u n te r a sm all C o m m u n ist d etachm ent, it w ould vanish w itho u t a trace. T h e re were cases w hen dozens o f C o m m unists were buried alive.”46 A tam an Sirko executed th e entire local C heka at Borodianka railway station, an d Z elen ch u k 's b and buried captured C o m m unists alive. T h e Reds responded in kind. W h e n the band o f A tam an K ushch was defeated in M arch 1921 in K herson Province, sixty prisoners o f w ar were executed. T h e Bol­ sheviks did n o t have th e excuse o f the rebels: th at they could n o t provide for captured Reds. By 1921 th e Bolsheviks’ undisguised policy was to an n ih ilate “bandits” on th e spot. T h e Bolshevik high co m m an d was seriously alarm ed by the effect the Ukrai45 “Inform atsionanaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu” (26 O c to b e r-1 Novem ber 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum en t4 1 4 , p. 3. 44 Iv. Derevensky, “Bandity (Ocherki periodagrazhdanskoi voiny),” Byloe, no. 24(1924), 2 5 2 73, here 259. 45 “Povstancheskoe dvizhenie na U kraine,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 11 (August 1921), 23-25. 46 “Krestianstvo Ukrainy,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 8 (May 1921), 26.

nian partisan and deserter m ovem ent was having on the war against Poland. In the su m m er o f 1920 the situation appeared to be rather om inous. T h e Bol­ sheviks effectively did no t control the provinces in the war zone. Classified reports on soldiers’ political attitudes showed that even those soldiers who rem ained in the Red A rm y ranks were unreliable. C om m ander in C h ief Μ . V. F runze cabled to Lenin: “In Kharkov itself I do not have a single dependable u n it now. T h e m ood o f the reserve units, w hich are alm ost w ithout clothing and are badly fed, is positively vile. I feel that I and the F ront H .Q . are surrounded by hostile turm oil [stikhiia].”^1 Soldiers did not w ant to fight peas­ ants; m any units did not w ant to fight anyone, including W hites. O ne report noted th at th e m ost popular song at the front was: “I was born as a deserter, and as a deserter will I die [Ια rodilsia dezertirom, dezertirom i um ru].” Red Army soldiers identified with the deserters and did not perceive them as having com m itted an act of treason. T hose who rem ained in the ranks engaged in all kinds o f trade in stolen goods or in arm y uniform s, food rations, and weaponry. T his acquired such proportions th at the All-Russian C heka issued an order to all provincial Chekas: “In view of the widespread resale of Red Army property in mass quantities [it is imperative] to strengthen surveillance over buying and selling. T hose engaged in buying and selling are to be brought to trial.”48 Lack of proletarian revolutionary zeal am ong Red Arm y soldiers is n o t sur­ prising. T h ese were conscripted peasants forced to fight for the Bolsheviks. O ne w ould expect th at the Bolshevik elite, the com m anders and the com m issars, at least, w ould have show n dedication to the cause o f their party. Yet a top secret report to L enin m ade it clear that the behavior even of Red Arm y com m anders at th e front was appalling: “T h e facts are: undisguised self-seeking. [C om ­ m anders and commissars] receive the best food rations and uniform s, double or triple the norm al quantity. . . . T hey appear in front of ragged soldiers in beautiful new boots and snow white jackets. T hey live with their wives at the front line. T h ey have drinking bouts and wild parties; they steal and spill m ilitary secrets with their drinking b uddies.”49 A nd som e units were fraterniz­ ing with the enem y. In M arch 1920 the Bolshevik C C ordered a mass surveil­ lance o f the political attitudes o f soldiers: “For the sake o f the speediest and m ost radical liquidation of the counterrevolution, the C entral C om m ittee orders first and forem ost th at it is the duty of all C om m unists and commissars who work in the arm y to becom e perm anent inform ers to the special depart47 Frunze to Lenin (top secret, 3 October 1920), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, docum ent 627, pp. 324-25. 48 “PrikazTsentr.K om .D ezertir” (13 D ecember 1919), T s.G .A .S.A ., Fond 193, Opis’ I, docu­ m ent 66. 49 Biuro Obrabotki materialov Vecheka, “O bzor polozheniia na Zapadnom fronte” (8 June 1920), Informatsionnaia svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu Leninu, T s.G .A .O .R , Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 414, p. I.

m e n ts.”50 In Ju n e th e C entral C o m m ittee decreed m ore enhanced and strin­ gent m easures against deserters. M ost curious in this decree is a handw ritten postscript by L enin: “By all m eans strengthen the m easures o f reprisals [rasprava] against all elem ents u n d e rm in in g th e defensive capability of the Soviet R epublic in its struggle against th e new alliance o f W h ite G u ard s.”51 L enin was fond o f th e word reprisals, rasprava. It cam e u p over and over again in his classified co m m u n icatio n s. D zerzhinsky organized an elaborate system of su r­ veillance an d repression in th e countryside headed by the local chiefs o f the rear. T h e ir purpose was to terrorize th e population into su b m issio n .52 O n paper th e Bolsheviks had a 3-m illion-strong army. In reality in m id su m ­ m er 1920 they co u ld n o t spare a single division. G eneral W rangel broke o u t of C rim e a an d resum ed offensive operations in so u thern U kraine. L enin asked O rdzh o n ik id ze to send som e troops from A zerbaijan, now conquered by the Red Army. B ut O rd zhonikidze responded: “I have to report th at the situation at the present m o m e n t is such th at it is n o t possible to w ithdraw from here a single soldier. T h e G a n d z h a uprising has b een suppressed, b u t the uprising in the province is still underw ay. . . . O nly th e presence o f the entire E leventh Arm y and an absolute guarantee th a t units will n o t be w ithdraw n from here for the present can reassure us as regards B ak u .”55 T h e Bolshevik forces were spread thin. T h e y desperately tried to decide w hat their priorities should be: to fight against W rangel or against Poland or against th e U krainian peasants or against the A zerbaijany ones. T h e Red A rm y could not handle them all at the same tim e. L enin was w orried th at in the worst-case scenario Latvia m ight join the war on th e side o f Poland. R om ania an d F in lan d m ight follow suit. H e was thinking of ways to discourage Latvia and E stonia from joining the war, and his conspir­ atorial m in d fo u n d a solution. “M ilitary m easures are to be taken, i.e ., try to pu n ish Latvia and E stonia by m ilitary m eans (for instance penetrate across the frontier right on B alakhovich’s [peasant leader] heels for perhaps a verst and h an g 100 to a 1,000 of th eir officials and rich m e n .”54 A nd to teach Poland a lesson L en in h ad a sim ilar plan: “A B eautiful p lan. F inish it off together w ith D zerzhinsky. U n d er the guise o f th e G reens (and we will pin it on them later) 50 TsKa RKP(b), “Vsem G ubkom am RKP i politotdelam armii i flota” (2 M arch 1920), Politrabotnik, no. 4 (May 1920), 13. 51 “Postanovlenie Politbiuro TsKa” (4 June 1920). T h e cited passage is marked as a handwritten addition by L enin, Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, docum ent 557, p. 212. 52 Chiefs of the rear, in Russian, Nachalniki tyla: this was a network of m ilitary administration over the civilian population in provinces considered to be close to the front line against Poland or W rangel. T hey coordinated the activity of the C heka and the special Internal Security troops. T he text of the decree is in “Terror na U kraine,” Volia Rossii (22 D ecem ber 1920), I. 53 O rdzhonikidze to Trotsky (Baku, 2 June 1920), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, docum ent 552, pp. 2 00 - 2 0 1 .

54 Notes exchanged between comrade L enin and com rade Skliansky (not later than 25 August 1920), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, docum ent 596, p. 273.

we shall go forward for ten or twenty versts and hang the kulaks, priests, and landlords. Bounty: 100,000 for each m an hanged.”55 Psychiatrists m ight say that the leader of the world revolution was obsessed with hanging kulaks and bourgeois officials. L enin rem ained a conspirator and a terrorist at heart. M ost o f his orders dem anded th e same: m erciless rasprava. O n e can alm ost predict w hat he was likely to do in a difficult situation: m ore propaganda and m ore violence.

D on and Kuban Resistance As early as th e sum m er of 1920, barely three m onths after the Bolsheviks’ arrival, sm all spontaneous uprisings broke out in the D on Host and Kuban. A ccording to a C heka report: Kuban: Uprisings took place in the follow ing towns: Yeisk, Armavir, and in a num ber o f stanitsy. T h e uprisings have been suppressed. D on: T h e bands are active. Soviet officials have been k illed . 56

Fearing retribution, hundreds of cossacks fled to the m ountains seeking to join the G reen detachm ents rum ored to be there. T h e G reen detachm ents in the m ountains were loosely connected with one another. T hey num bered from 300 to 3,000 fighters. T h e total nu m b er of G reen rebels in Kuban Province was at least 3 0 ,0 0 0 .57 W h a t u nited th em all was a profound hostility to th e occu­ piers (zavoevateli). T h e friction between peasants and cossacks seems to have subsided, now th at they all faced a com m on enemy. Yet their appeals and especially their conduct in the sum m er of 1920 reveal at least three political groupings. T h e first, detachm ents of Stavropol peasants, were a new form ation. T hey were still distrustful o f the cossacks and sought contact with the peasant organizations o f the Socialist Revolutionaries. In M edvezhenskii Uezd of Stavropol Province peasants cam e to the local SRs and said: “W e have started, now com e along with u s.”58 It is not known w hat the SRs answered, b u t reports on SR activity in Kuban suggest th at the party organization there was loyal to the C entral C om m ittee and opposed arm ed struggle with the Bolsheviks.59 T h e other two groupings were Kuban cossacks. Both espoused liberation of 55 A note from com rade L enin to com rade Skliansky at a m eeting (August 1920), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, d o c u m e n t 601, p. 278. 56 “Inform atsionnaia svodka Sekretnogo O tdela V echeka,” T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K, O pis’ 3, d o c u m e n t 414 (1 6 -3 1 July and 1 -1 5 August 1920), pp. 7 -8 . 57 Ibid. A n o th erso u rce citing this figure is “Le M ouvem ent In surrectionel,"P ourla Russie, no. 9 2 (1 8 A ugust 1921), 2. 58 "Predkavkaz’e pod Sovetskoi vlast’iu (Iz Terskoi oblasti i Stavropol’skoi gubernii),” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 7 (M ay 1921), 2 5 -2 7 . 59 “P olozhem e na K ubani,” R evoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 4 (M arch 1921), 27—28.

their native land from the Bolsheviks. Some Kuban cossack detachm ents dis­ trusted the W hites and blam ed them for the defeat of 1919. W rangel was especially unacceptable to them because it was he who in November 1919 hum iliated the Kuban Rada and arrested some of its leaders. These people were the heirs of the left wing in the Kuban Rada, inimical to both the Reds and the W hites. T heir espoused goal was to drive the Bolsheviks out of Kuban and to create their own state, until the Bolsheviks were overthrown in the rest of Russia. T h e leaders of the Kuban Rada exiled by the W hites to the West promoted this idea in Europe as early as 1919. “We don’t want to m arch to Moscow,” the cossacks in the m ountains were quoted as saying, but only to the northern borders of the D on Host. These people reasoned that Kuban had already contributed m ore than its fair share to the liberation of the whole country from Bolshevism. Now their goals were m uch more modest. Kuban cossacks would spill their blood only for Kuban. Some Kuban cossacks, however, were willing to join hands with the W hites once again. This third grouping m aintained contact with General Wrangel in C rim ea and coordinated military operations with him. T he Military C ensor­ ship D epartm ent of the N inth Red Army cited, among other things in its m onthly report, a letter of a soldier: “Now all W hite cossacks have become G reen ones and are hiding in the m ountains.”60 These were cossack leaders from the center-right factions of the former Rada. These people believed that if there was any realistic chance to dislodge the Bolsheviks from Kuban, it was in an alliance with Wrangel. Aspecial plenipotentiary of the Cheka, K. I. Lander, described the N orth Caucasus in his report as the “bastion of counterrevolu­ tion” in the region: “Here the defeated bands of Khvostikov are hiding. Here the two military headquarters have been formed and a political center (the C om ­ mittee of Salvation). Here all the bands and all detachm ents are being formed, supplied with funds and weapons and horses via Georgia. ”61 Most likely Lander was referring to the SR-oriented and W rangel-oriented Green detachments and organizations. “W e have h ere,” concluded the report, “a force of 20,000 out­ side of our control.” Political differences between the Green bands’ leaders should not obscure their relative concord. It seemed that the recriminations of the past November were behind them . They all agreed that the Bolshevik regime was m uch worse than anything they had experienced hitherto. T he execution of one Kuban Rada m em ber and the exile of several others by the W hites in November 1919 seemed like m inor offenses compared with the systematic devastation of their 60 V oenno-Tsenzurnoe otdelenie Rewoensoveta 9oi armii, “Politsvodka 9oi armii za aprel 1920” (M ilitary Censorship D epartm ent of the Revolutionary War C ouncil of the N inth Army, Political report of the N inth Army for April 1920), T s.G . A.S.A ., Fond 192, O pis’ I, docum ent 137. 61 Lander, “Iz doklada o polozhenii del na Sevemom Kavkaze” (10 October 1920), handwrit­ ten, T s.P.A ., Fond 17, TsKa RKP(b), Opis’ 84, Biuro SekretariataTsK a, docum ent 75, p. 16.

land by the Bolsheviks. An im partial observer from independent Georgia, who sym pathized n either with th e W hites nor w ith the Reds, described the political clim ate un d er W rangel in the late sum m er of 1920: In order to be able to understand what is happening in Crimea now, it is essential to comprehend the following, self-evident from our viewpoint: The victorious march forward by General Wrangel’s comparatively small army is not a result of its strength or of the wisdom of its leaders, but rather a result of the kind of political attitudes that are prevalent now in Crimea and all of Ukraine. These attitudes are doubtless antiSoviet, and they were expressed best by the words of a peasant at the congress of peasants in Melitopol’: “Let the devil himself, let anybody come, only not the Bolsheviksl”62 G eneral W rangel and the leaders of the D on cossack C ircle Assembly and K uban Rada w ho had fled to C rim ea seem to have drawn appropriate conclu­ sions. For th e first tim e th e W hites decided to address social and econom ic problem s in earnest. T h e leaders of the D on cossack C ircle Assembly likewise prom ised th at peasants (outsiders) would receive generous allotm ents o f land and their rights w ould be equal to those o f the cossacks. W rangel tried to reach a m odus vivendi with the Poles, putting an em phasis not on their differences involving the borders of U kraine but on their shared goal o f defeating the co m m o n enem y in Moscow. W rangel even w ent as far as sending out feelers to Nestor M akhno, bu t his plenipotentiaries were killed.63 M akhno would have no th in g to do with the W hites. But som e o f M akhno’s affiliated bands decided otherwise. T h ey joined the growing alliance with W rangel on the condition th at they preserve com plete autonom y o f their area after victory over the Bol­ sheviks.64 M ost im portantly W rangel inaugurated a land reform in C rim ea w hich generated gen u in e peasant support for the W hites for the first time. AU these policies were in fact an attem pt to correct the failures of 1919. In m any ways they followed the recom m endations eloquently expressed by P. M. Agaev in his fam ous letter to the K uban Rada back in 1919. It was an attem pt to u n ite all th e anti-Bolshevik forces o n the basis of m utual concessions and com prom ise. Was it too late? W hite leaders were well inform ed on developm ents in the D on and Kuban. As early as April 1920, barely over a m o n th since they had evacuated to C rim ea, a detachm ent o f eighteen cossack officers sailed from C rim ea to the n o rth ern shores o f the Azov Sea in the D on Host country. C olonel Nazarov led the expedition. His m ission was to collect inform ation on Bolshevik rule, establish contact with cossack and peasant G reens, and prepare 62 I. K ochuiushchii, “Pis’m a iz Kryma. (ot nashego korrespondenta),” B o f ba, no. 231 (12 O ctober 1920). 63 K ubanin, M akhnovshchina, p. 151. M Ibid.

for an in surrection w hich w ould coincide w ith the breakthrough of the W h ite forces from th e C rim ean p en in su la back into th e D o n and K uban country. N azarov proceeded to R ostov-on-D on, stayed there two weeks, and established contact w ith officers an d cossacks there. T h e C heka claim ed to discover N azarov’s conspiracy, b u t he safely returned to C rim e a .65 O n 17 A ugust, exactly in th e sam e fashion as in A pril, a 4,500-strong W hite force lan d ed on the Azov Sea coast, only this tim e its m ission was n o t recon­ naissance b u t a m ilitary operation designed to link w ith th e cossack and G reen rebels an d drive th e Bolsheviks o u t of th e K uban and D on area .66 A t first everything w ent as plan n ed . G reen detach m en ts descended from the m o u n ­ tains an d attacked th e Bolshevik forces at the tim e o f the W hites’ am phibious landing. A special p lenipotentiary o f th e C heka, L ander, sent a telegram to L enin an d Trotsky on 26 August: “T h e enem y has m ade an am phibious landing 50 versts from Novorossiisk, n u m b e rin g 6,000. T h e W hites have advanced to a p o in t 30 versts from E katerinodar. ” T h e situation, the telegram co n tin u ed , was critical, since th e W hites and th e G reens had joined forces; m any Red Arm y u n its ab an d o n ed th eir positions and ran away.67 Initially th e landing appeared to be successful, and the Bolsheviks were set on the run. In p anic they prepared to abandon E katerinodar. Before th eir depar­ ture, how ever, they did n o t forget to execute all prisoners held by the C heka, a total of 1,600. As a witness described: “F rom th e K uban C heka and the Special D e p a rtm e n t they m oved prisoners across th e river in groups o f one hu n d red , and th ere sh o t th em w ith m a c h in e guns. In prisons they did the sam e in front o f the walls, an d th e n published lists o f those executed u n d er the title “R etribu­ tio n ,” only th e lists were som ew hat shorter th a n th e true n u m b e r o f those k illed .”68 T h e Bolshevik defeats in K uban threatened to c u t off all C o m m u n ist forces to the south on th e Black Sea coast from those to the n o rth and west in the D on country. If th at were accom plished, large stores of a m m u n itio n and foodstuffs could have fallen into th e hands o f th e W hites. T h e next m ove would have been an advance on R ostov-on-D on and into the friendly D on cossack country. W rangel broke o u t o f the C rim ean penin su la and occupied m ost o f so u th ­ eastern U kraine. A lin k u p w ith th e cossacks at R ostov-on-D on w ould have revived th e w ar fortunes o f the W hites. O ptim ists hoped for a linkup w ith the U krainian detach m en ts fu rth er west, as they did in 1919. T his bold action of 65 “Cossack Risings on the D on and the Kuban’, ’’ Information B ulletin, no. 5 (4 Septem ber 1920), 3 -4 . See also Melgunov, Krasnyi tenor v Rossii, p. 71. 66 Evan Mawdsley, The Russian C ivil War, p. 268. 67 Lander to Osobyi Otdel Vecheka, TsKa RKP(b), Krestinsky, Lenin, Trotsky (26 August 1920), T s.P.A ., Fond 17, TsKa RKP(b), O pis’ 84, Biuro Sekretariata TsKa, docum ent 75. 68 T here are two independent sources on this execution. Cited here from “Polozhenie na K ubani,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiiat no. 4(M arch 1921), 27-28; see also an eyewitness account by a survivor in M elgunov, Krasnyi tenor v Rossii, p. 64.

W rangel and the Kuban G reens caught the M oscow Bolsheviks by surprise. Lenin's reaction upon receiving the cable o f 26 August from the C aucasus betrayed a clear sense o f panic: “T h e O rgburo [of the C C ] m ust be requested to draw up . . . em ergency m easures for com bating the danger o f an uprising, and to m obilize a sufficient n u m b er of troops, Chekists, and party m em ­ bers. . . . If we get an uprising on the K uban o u r entire policy (as discussed in th e C C ) will be ru in e d .”69 T h e Bolsheviks did get an uprising in K uban, w hich m ade it im possible to repulse W rangel’s landing at o n c e .70 A few days after the landing G eneral W rangel m ade a statem ent: “T h e nest o f reaction is in Moscow, T here the oppressors are who are treating the people like cattle. O nly blindness and unscrupulousness could regard us as reactionaries. We are fighting to free people from a yoke the likes of w hich they have never seen in the darkest period of their history.”71 H e spoke of th e atrocities of the C heka and prom ised free elections and self-determ ination. It was a serious attem pt to change the image of the W hites in the eyes o f cossacks, Ukrainians, and especially peasants. For a couple o f weeks it looked as though fortune was on the side o f the W hites once again. T h e fact that this attem pt failed does no t m ean that it had no chance whatsoever. O n the contrary in August 1920 it m ust have been possible to reconcile all the divergent social currents in U kraine and the D on-K uban lands (with a possible exception of M akhno) simply because they all realized that co n tin u ed Bolshevik rule would lead to econom ic devastation and the destruc­ tion of any m anifestation of local autonom y, let alone self-rule. T h e C heka had, in effect, recruited supporters for the W hite cause once again. Yet the num bers worked against W rangel. E ven in 1919 the W hites and cossacks fought against vastly superior forces. Now in 1920 a com bined 35,000-strong W h ite arm y plus 30,000 G reens faced at least 200,000 on the Red side (133,000 regular Red Arm y plus 50,000 Internal Security troops [Vokhra]). T h e m iracle did no t happen, and the W hites’ last attem pt to seize the initia­ tive failed. W h at followed was bitter fighting at the isthm us of C rim ea and defeat. O n 11 N ovem ber, Red com m ander F runze offered the W hites reasonable term s of surrender, w hich guaranteed pardons for all participants in the civil war and a perm it to leave for those who wished to do so. W rangel suppressed this offer. B ut m ost interesting is the reaction of Lenin: “I have only just learned of your proposal to W rangel to surrender; I am extremely surprised at the excessive leniency of the term s . . . if the enem y does no t accept them , we m ust n o t in m y opinion repeat them . It is necessary to m ake short shrift of them 69 L enin to D zerzhinsky (not before 28 A ugust 1920)]. T h is is official dating. Itm ay w ell be that the d o c u m e n t was drafted a day or two earlier. Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, d o cu m en t 599, pp. 2 7 4 -7 5 . 70 “Ulagaevsky dessant,” C razhdanskaia Voina i Voennaia Interventsiia v S S S R , p. 620. 71 “W e Are Fighting for Liberty: A S tatem en tb y G eneral W rangel,” Inform ation B ulletin, no. 5 (4 S eptem ber 1920), 3.

[ra sp ra vitsia ] mercilessly.”72 It is not clear whether the massacre in Crim ea after the conquest was on explicit instructions from Lenin or merely in the spirit of this recom m endation. At any rate thousands of people labeled bourgeois and counterrevolutionary were killed. T he “crim e” of most of them was that they had dem onstrated, by being in Crim ea, that they preferred the Whites. Accord­ ing to M elgunov’s calculations, at least 50,000 people were massacred.73

Subjugation T h e Bolshevik war behind the front lines in Ukraine and the D on and Kuban lands entered a new stage after the failure of the W hite am phibious landing and the final defeat of General Wrangel in November. O ne could have expected that the fighting would die down in view of the hopelessness of the rebels' position. In fact exactly the opposite occurred. Fighting intensified everywhere in Ukraine and the cossack lands. T he Bolsheviks directed the full strength of theft military m ight against the peasant and cossack rebels. In southern Ukraine they broke an agreem ent they had signed with M akhno which had recognized limited autonom y and self-rule.74 In the Leninist tradition agree­ m ents were but a cover for military action. Now that M akhno had been used to defeat W rangel, special Internal Security troops were sent to crush Makhno. T h e Bolsheviks were determ ined to stamp out any sign of independence or autonom y in the Ukrainian countryside. Rakovskii, the head of Bolshevik government in Ukraine, published explicit orders: 1. AU W h ite G u ard s are declared to be outside th e law. A nyone w ho renders resistance to Soviet pow er will be sh o t o n th e spot. 2. C losest relatives o f insurgents w ill be taken hostage an d placed in co n cen tratio n cam ps. . . . 3. V illages w hich rendered assistance to th e insurgents by providing horses, carts, an d reinforcem ents are d eclared to be u n d e r m artial law an d will be subjected to the follow ing reprisals: (a) confiscation o f food supply stocks, (b) m o n etary indem nity, (c) confiscation of property, (d) b o m b a rd m e n t o f th e village, (e) final an n ih ilatio n o f th e village [unichtozhenie], 72 Lenin to the Military Revolutionary Council of the southern front (top secret) (12 November 1920), Trotsky Papers, vol 2., document 642, p. 356. 73 Melgunov, Krasnyi terror v Rossif, p. 105. The figure of 50,000 also appears in the report of the Kharkov committee of the PSR to its Central Committee in an underground journal: Kharkovskii Komitet PSR, Golos Sotsialista Revoliutsionera (May 1921), PSR Archive, document 2016. For the repressions against the Greens in Crimea after the defeat of Wrangel, see Cheka, p. 121.

74 The text of the agreement is in Maximoff, The Guillotine at Work, vol. I, The Leninist Counterrevolution, pp. 124-25. See also a collection of documents on the Makhno movement from the Archives of the Institute for Social History in Amsterdam edited by Van Rossum in International Review o f Social History, vol. 13, part 2 (1968).

4 . AU chiefs o f th e rear and all officials o f S oviet power in the localities are to draft a list o f villages w h ich are the centers o f counterrevolution and to apply the m easures listed above in regard to th ese villa g es.75

Since m ost rebels were identified as local peasants rather than Red Army deserters, th e Bolsheviks began to deal with the root o f the problem , the peas­ a n t p o p ulation at large. In Podol’e Province the peasants of Mogilevskii and Iam p o l’skii uezdy showed too m u ch zeal in their support of the rebels and had to suffer th e consequences. T h ree villages— D zhurak, Berezovka, and C hernovtsy— were burned. Five other villages in Podol’e Province also suf­ fered this fate. In Poltava Province a punitive detachm ent devastated villages identified as “counterrevolutionary nests.” In one case two hundred m en were executed every day for two weeks.76 T h e escalation of war on the battlefield brought its brutality to the villages them selves. Relations between the atam ans and the local peasants changed for th e worse in th e w inter of 1920—21. T h e Bolsheviks declared rebel areas hos­ tage and increasingly practiced mass reprisals on civilian populations. T his in turn generated m ore hatred of the Bolsheviks and of Jews, who were identified in th e m inds o f rebels as Bolshevik collaborators. Indeed, after the unending waves of pogrom s in 1919, m any am ong the Jews began to regard the Bolsheviks as their only salvation. T h e enthusiasm am ong Jews for the Bolsheviks was particularly strong am ong the youth. From the atam ans’ point o f view this was pure and sim ple treason, and the rebel detachm ents practiced their vengeance. Fortunately, after the pogroms of 1919, large num bers of Jews had abandoned sm all towns and m oved to larger cities, w here they felt safer. An eyewitness recalled th at in a sm all village in Kiev Province very few Jews rem ained. Local peasants got along with them fine. These were “their” Jews, poor artisans. A ccording to this source, local peasants disapproved of the rebels’ cruelty to Jews and on m any occasions hid them in their houses. W h en asked if they had hid any Jews, they would indignantly swear th at they would never hide a Jew. And yet w hen a rebel detachm ent passed through, local peasants did hide Jews, risking their lives. O n one occasion rebels cam e up to a house where a Jewish fam ily lived and, seeing it was locked, started breaking the lock. Upon entry they searched for w hatever items m ight be useful to them , throw ing other things out through a window. Local w om en were quick to pick these item s up and carry th em away. Yet the Jewish fam ily that lived in that house was hiding at th e tim e w ith an o ther local U krainian family. O nly one old m an stayed in the room , swaying an d praying. H e was stabbed and killed. His only crim e was that 75 T h e text o f the order is in “La T erro re n Russie C ontre Ies Paysans ,"P o u rla Russie, no. 34(29 D ecem b er 1920), I. 76 T h e nam es of villages are in “ Povstancheskoe dvizhenie na U k rain e,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 11 (August 1921), 2 3 -2 5 ; on daily executions, see O lberg, D ie B auem revolution in R ussland, p. 62.

h e was an “old Jew ,” as a rebel leader explained. After this all five o f the rem ain in g Jewish fam ilies m oved to Kiev.77 O n e perceptive contem porary observer pointed o u t th at the U krainian peas­ a n t insurgency m o v em en t reflected th e com plexities o f U krainian national and regional identity. H e p u t it this way: “T h e re occurred a profound change in the m ass psychology of peasants, a change w hich could be called ‘psychological atavism . ’ It is as if they have m entally returned to the beginning of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, to the tim es o f ‘a wild field’ [i.e., open fron­ tier], to th e tim es o f T atar raids [on U krainian lands], to the slave m arkets in Istanbul, as if they h ad to fight once m o re for the right to live on th e land w atered w ith th e blood o f th eir ancestors.”78 W h a t th e au th o r probably m ean t was th a t th e U krainian peasantry experienced insecurity and vulnerability as a result o f a ch ain o f invaders constantly replacing each other: G erm ans, B ol­ sheviks, W hites, again Bolsheviks, Poles, and again Bolsheviks. T h is caused autarky an d hostility to all foreigners an d to cities, seen as outposts of foreigners. S ince m an y u rb an residents were Russian and Jews, hostility to these groups intensified. If th e Jews were accused o f collaboration w ith the Reds, com m on U krainian peasants soon found them selves in a situation in w hich both sides accused them o f collaboration. T h e Bolsheviks m ade it clear th at peasants had to pay for the actions o f “their" bandits. A t first this generated even m ore resolve to fight the “M uscovites,” and new waves o f young m e n joined th e atam ans’ detachm ents. In the spring of 1921, how ever, the first signs o f division appeared in the U krainian countryside. A vivid illustration was a situation witnessed by a Russian outsider in o n e village. News arrived th at rebels had killed thirteen soldiers from a Red p unitive d etach m en t n o t far from a neighboring village. O n e “Bolshevik” was seen w ounded and still alive in the fields. W h at to do? If th e villagers helped th e w ounded Red, they would have to answ er to the rebels. As it was, they ran th e risk o f Red retribution for th e killings in their vicinity. S om e peasants broke dow n and reported on the location o f the rebels. T his, as usual, led to rebel retribution for “treaso n .”79 Reds on th eir p art kept b u rn in g rebel villages, “nests o f counterrevolution­ aries,” as they were called. R ealizing th a t they had failed to divide U krainian villages along class lines, th e Bolsheviks’ strategy for conquest seems to have been based on in d u cin g peasants to participate in their own self-destruction. T h e threat o f outright an n ih ilatio n , by bu rn in g th e village, was com bined with establishing a netw ork o f inform ers an d local officials w ho knew that if rebels returned they would be killed. T hey, as Bolshevik hostages, had a stake in Bolshevik victory. T h u s th e Bolsheviks essentially turned hostages into instru77 Iv. D erevensky, “B andity,” Byloe, no. 2 4 (1 9 2 4 ), 2 5 2 -7 3 , h ere 2 5 6 -5 7 . 78 “K restianstvo U k rain y ,” R evo liu tsio n n a ia Rossiia, no. 8 (M ay 1921), 2 5 -2 7 . 79 Iv. D erevensky, “B andity,” Byloe, no. 2 4 (1 9 2 4 ), 257.

ments of local control. T heir task was made easier by the response of the atamans. Like Antonov in Tambov, they began to attack not only Cheka headquarters and punitive detachments but everyone connected with the So­ viet administration in any way and also their families. Thus the most innocent clerk at a sugar factory would automatically be perceived as a Red collaborator. Since the Com m unist presence in the countryside was intensified as the m onths went on, more and more people had to enter into all kinds of relations with the occupation authorities. Rebel attacks on them as traitors and enemies actually played into the Bolsheviks’ hands by dividing the community and forcing it to submit at gunpoint.

A Reign of Red Terror in Kuban In the fall of 1920 the Green movement in the Don and Kuban region entered a new stage, similar to that in western Ukraine. T he final defeat of the W hites did not lead to the end of hostilities but intensified them. This was the bloodiest, most cruel, and merciless stage of the civil war. The Cheka reports to Lenin clearly indicate the intensification of guerilla insurgency: Ekaterinodar: T h e bandits carry out daring assaults on the stanitsy. Black Sea coast: T he bandits from among the cossacks and former officers number

8, 000 . Vladikavkaz: During September the W hite-Green bands have made numerous as­ saults, shelled trains, and wrecked bridges along the entire rail lin e. 80

In October 1920 a Green detachm ent of about 200 appeared in the vicinity of Rostov-on-Don. They killed some local Com m unists, and others ran away, the usual story. T hen a Com m unist detachm ent of 350 was sent out against them. Most of them joined the Greens, and others disappeared.81 T he peasant war went on. Emboldened by their victory over Poland and Wrangel, the Reds were deter­ mined to root out “counterrevolutionaries” by a massive Red Terror against the entire population in this rebellious country of cossacks. Commissions for the struggle with banditry were set up with virtually unlimited authority. Imposing collective responsibility on the entire comm unity and hostage taking were their favorite means. An appeal, in fact a threat, of the Cheka plenipotentiary for the N orth Caucasus, Lander, to the population of Kuban and Back Sea coast 80 “Informatsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu” (26 O c to b e r-1 November 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, O pis’ 3, docum ent 414, p. 15. 81 “T he Situation in the Caucasus (A Russian Consular Report),” Information Bulletin, no. 6 (11 September 1920), 4 ;see also“Polozhenie na K ubani,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 4{March 1921), 27 -2 8 , and “V Sovetskoi K ubani,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 12—13 (September— October 1921), 42-43.

provinces acknowledged that “under the influence of the agitation of W rangel’s agents, arrogant bands of W hites and Greens, spread out across Kuban and the Black Sea coast, have begun in recent times to com m it bandit assaults on villages and stanitsy, seizing cattle [and] weapons, and to terrorize Soviet per­ sonnel. . . . Recently these attacks have multiplied. We know that some vil­ lages and kulak stanitsy provide support to the bandits and supply them with food and people. This m ust end.”82 T he appeal called on the population to inform Sovietauthorities about the location of W hite-G reen bands. T he popu­ lation was urged to take an active part in the struggle against the bands, by arresting their local ringleaders and inciters, by reporting all suspicious persons hiding in villages and all raids of the bands, and by aiding the authorities in their liquidation. To make clear that the appeal was not merely a recom m enda­ tion, the Cheka chief threatened: In cases w hen this demand is not fulfilled or in cases when aid of whatever kind is rendered to the W hite-G reen bands, the most cruel punishm ent [rasprava] awaits the guilty, specifically: 1. Stanitsy and villages hiding W hites and the Greens will be destroyed [unichtozheny], the adult population executed, and property confiscated. 2. AU persons w ho have rendered aid to the bands will be shot. 3. T h e majority o f Greens in the m ountains have left behind relatives in the villages. AU o f them have been registered [vziaty na uchet], and in case o f an offensive o f the bands all adult relatives o f those fighting against us will be shot and minors will be exiled to central Russia. 4. In cases o f mass insurrection of certain villages, stanitsy, and cities we will apply mass terror: for every Soviet official killed, hundreds o f residents o f these places will pay. Our warning is not an empty threat. Soviet power possesses adequate forces to im p lem ent all this. October 1920 Lander.83

In his report to the Bolshevik Central Com m ittee, Lander sum m arized the pacification campaign in Kuban as a well-thought-out social policy. Hostile social groups and stanitsy were identified and their residents “extracted”: “T he Special D epartm ent has carried out a campaign of extraction of officers. Two thousand were extracted in this fashion. T he Special D epartm ent sanctioned the execution of W hite officers who had been detained in the camps, as well as of serious hostages. . . . T he entire Kuban was divided into six sections, and each section into smaller subsections, so that each subsection included from ten to twenty stanitsy. A special troika, chaired by the representative of the Cheka, directed the diasarming and cleansing of each subsection.”84 T he task 82 “Krovozhadnyi m anifest,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 7 (May 1921), 30. 83 Ibid. 84 Lander, “O Polozhenii Del na Severnom Kavkaze” (10 October 1920), T s.P.A., Fond 17, TsKa RKP(b), O pis’ 84, Biuro Sekretariata TsKa, docum ent 75, p. 38.

of the troikas, continued Lander, was to confiscate all weapons from the Cos­ sacks, to extract rich cossacks and officers, and “to execute on the spot those found to have supported the W hites. ”85 T h e operation, concluded Lander, was carried out quickly and with great success. It is clear from L ander’s report to the Bolshevik C entral C om m ittee that these m easures were n o t acts of arbitrariness by local officials. L ander was supervising th e im plem entation of a policy approved by the C C . He skipped in his report details o f atrocities com m itted under his supervision. Fortunately another C heka agent, A. N. Latsis, who worked u nder Lander, filed his own report with M oscow on the details o f the successful operation. According to Latsis’s report, L ander unleashed a cam paign of terror on the entire cossack population. T h e key new institution L ander introduced was the punitive troika, a three-m an com m ittee: “O n 6 O ctober [1920] in Ekaterinodar com rade Agranov, a repre­ sentative of L ander, in the presence of the chairm an of the Kuban C heka and the c h ie f o f the Special D epartm ent, adopted the statute on punitive troikas to the effect th at the political bureau and special departm ents were to send out these troikas right after the m ilitary units [of occupation]. T hese troikas were going to execute active elem ents on the spot, and their families would be taken as hostages and their property confiscated and dispatched to E katerinodar.”86 Officially the death penalty had been abolished; the W hites were defeated, but the statute of punitive troikas reintroduced mass execution w ithout trial o f those considered “active elem ents,” exactly as they had been executed a year earlier d uring the decossackisation cam paign. N othing was said about investigation or even inquiry on th e involvem ent o f particular people in anti-Bolshevik activity. T his really did n o t m atter. T h e purpose was to decim ate the cossacks “as a class. ” M oscow ’s envoy in K uban ordered to be shot any leaders o f the co m m u ­ nity whose only crim e was “being active.” T h e statute on punitive troikas was im plem ented. In his report Latsis calm ly describes th e executions and the taking o f hostages. O n e paragraph suggests that even he, th e C heka boss, was moved by the suffering o f the cossack hostages: “B rought over to M aikop by various troikas, the hostages— w om en, children, and old m en — lived in terrible conditions. In O ctober they were living in m ud and frost, som e in a barracks at the station and some under the open sky. T here they were giving birth and contracting disease, and there they were dying.”87 T his im provised death cam p was set up prim arily for w om en and children whose m en had been shot earlier. T h eir only crim e was that they were family m em bers o f “active elem en ts.” 85 Ibid. 86 A. N. Latsiss, “Doklad o deiatel’nosti upolnom ochennykh Vecheka i Osobykh O tdelov Vecheka na Severnom Kavkaze i o sostoianii C heka i Osobykh O tdeIov na m estakh” (25 D ecem ber 1920) (R eport on the activity o f the plenipotentiaries of the C heka and the special departm ents of the C heka], T s.R A ., Fond 17, TsKa RKP(b), O pis' 84, Biuro Sekretariata T sK a1 do cu m en t 75, p. 56. 87 Ib id ., p. 57.

W om en in the camp, continued Latsis, were ready to do anything to obtain their release. Some Red Army soldiers guarding the camp asked permission to m arry some o f those unfortunate hostages. But first they m ade inquiries as to whether the prospective “wife” had any property to pay for the "marriage” deal and for a possible release. T he chairm an of the Maikop Political Bureau asked Lander what to do. Lander waved his hand and said: “All right. Let Russian blood mix with cossack blood.” According to Latsis, this was understood as license to trade with the hostage cossack women: “And the bacchanalia of trade with hostages took off. T he women agreed to marry anyone in order to have a chance to break out of the camp. There was a case of a young girl, who had already been released, refusing to marry a Red Army soldier. And he pulled her back into the cam p. ”88 O n another occasion a m ilitiam an came to the Political Bureau and said: “You have to release such and such a woman for me from the cam p.” Hostage wom en paid Red Army soldiers for their release with whatever possessions they still had after confiscation of their property, and the soldiers in turn paid camp officials a bribe for the release of their “slaves. ” If this report on the sexual exploitation, degradation, and slave trade of hostage women in the death camp had appeared in the opposition press, it would have been dismissed as a wild fantasy that could not possibly have taken place. Yet Latsis wrote about all this in a report on the activities of his team and his superior. He did not condem n the atrocities but simply listed them am ong other policies conducted by the Cheka. We will never know all the crimes com m itted by the Bolsheviks in Kuban, simply because m any of them were not recorded. W hat we have are only bits and pieces of the testimony o f eyewitnesses and survivors. According to an eyewitness in one village, the Cheka executed several women for failure to report on their husbands who had fled to the m ountains.89 Cases of hostages being executed in retribution for attacks of the Greens were literally countless. In some cases the Cheka executed every tenth or every twentieth person in a village.90 W hen the chairm an of the Piatigorsk Cheka, Zemtsov, was killed in an am bush on a m ountain road, m any hostages were executed, and the local paper published their names in an article titled “Blood for Blood. ”91 In contrast to W hite officers and rich cossacks, whom the Bolsheviks exterminated as class enemies, the executed hostages in Piatigorsk were chance people who were not guilty of anything at all. 88 Ibid., p. 58. 89 “Predkavkaz’e pod Sovetskoi Vlast’iu ,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 7 (May 1921), 26. 90 “V Sovetskoi K ubani,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 12-13 (Septem ber-O ctober 1921), 42; and Olberg, Die Bauem revolution in Russland., p. 62. 91 “Predkavkaz’e pod Sovetskoi Vlast’iu ,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 7 (May 1921), 26. T he author o f this report to the SR Central Com m ittee added that the newspapers describing these events were enclosed.

T hanks to L ander’s report the details of this operation have com e to light. A ccording to Lander, th e Piatigorsk C heka decided to stage a Day of Red Terror after their chief, Zem tsov, was assassinated. Lander wrote that h e had issued a categorical ban on this action and proposed instead that they “seize valuable hostages and execute them , or rather speed up executions o fW h ite spies, chiefs of [W hite] punitive expeditions, and other persons found guilty of counter­ revolutionary activity.”92 T h e Piatigorsk C heka, however, decided to go ahead w ith the Day of Red Terror anyway. T h u s L ander presented the atrocities that followed as having occurred contrary to his orders. His report continued: “T he question on Red Terror was decided in Piatigorsk in the affirmative, and it was settled in a sim plified fashion. It was decided to execute 300 people in the M ineral W aters region. T his n u m b er was divided am ong all the towns and stanitsy. A ccording to this target apportionm ent [razverstka], Kislovodsk had to deliver 30 people, Piatigorsk 50, and so on. Political bureaus and party cells were instructed to draft and confirm the lists.”95 If L ander’s report accurately describes th e procedure of drafting the lists of those to be executed, it would appear th at the C heka was issuing orders to the local party and n o t the other way around. It also suggests that the local C hekas in Piatigorsk and elsewhere had no reservations ab out disobeying the orders of their chief. T hey felt them selves to be com plete masters in their region and were confident th at they could do whatever they wanted. L ander’s report confirm s this observation by pointing out th at th e lists of victim s were draw n arbitrarily “on the basis o f settling personal acco u n ts.” T h ere were cases, h e w ent on, w hen Red officials were executing sick people. In Kislovodsk, for exam ple, they carried them out on stretchers from the hospital “and finished them off outside.” T h e total num ber of executions fell short of the set target: 256 people were shot.94 It is notew orthy th at L ander, describing the executions, used the sam e word, razverstka, as was custom ary in regard to grain requisitioning. It reveals the same approach to a party task. Be it grain or “enem ies” to be unm asked and executed, the target to be reached was to be apportioned am ong local com m unities. T h e C heka tried to invent new ways of “unm asking hidden enem ies.” As several in d ep en d en t accounts testify, the Bolsheviks som etim es staged a mock arrival of G reens or W hites in a suspect area. Local residents would welcome th e liberators and thus expose their political inclinations. “For exam ple a cossack stanitsa is unexpectedly besieged by a cavalry detachm ent led by officers in epaulets. T h ey arrest the C om m unists who did not have tim e to flee, antiC o m m u n ist authority is proclaim ed, and woe to those who did not notice a provocation here and expressed sym pathy to the new power. T h e m ost ruthless 92 TsKa 93 94

L ander, “O Polozhenii D el na Severnom Kavkaze” (10 O ctober 1920), T s.P .A ., Fond 17, RKP(b), O pis’ 84, B iuro Sekretariata TsK a, d o cu m en t 75, p. 33. Ibid. Ibid.

reprisals and im mediate executions await them . Such staged ‘conspiracies’ and their ‘unm asking’ grow like mushroom s after a rain, supplying new victims to the C heka.”95 In this fashion the Cheka “unmasked hidden enemies” and executed them mercilessly. Some stanitsy were burned, their residents dis­ patched to camps in the north, and the “requisitioned” property divided up am ong party and Cheka personnel.96 An SR reported to his Central C om m it­ tee: “I myself witnessed how in Novomalorossiiskaia Stanitsa they made short shrift of the ‘counterrevolution.’ They staged an armed insurrection and then ‘suppressed’ it by arresting 150 of the best people from the local population, and executed 75 of them right here on the spot before sending the rest to the rail station called Tikhoretskaia. This was in the first half of August.”97 T he Cheka thus waged a war not only on rebels and their families and their villages but also on the political sympathies of the local population. M ore than any other this m ethod demonstrates that the C om m unists’ goal was to wipe out even potential leaders of a com m unity and to train the population to forget how to express its political preferences. T h e Green rebels on their part broadened their attacks to include not only Cheka personnel, Red Army units, and requisition detachm ents but also their families and any officials connected with Soviet power. A Socialist Revolution­ ary described an incident that took place in early 1921 in the north of the Don Host country. A m ounted detachm ent [of about thirty] encountered on the road two employees o f the cooperative, several C om m unists, and a priest who was with them . T h e rebels checked the docum ents o f the traveling party. As a result som e Com m unists were executed, but others managed to escape. T h e priest pleaded with the detachm ent [commander] to spare the cooperative em ployees, because they did not belong to any party. T h e rebels answered: “W e know what we are doing. T hey help the C om m u ­ nists to organize the system . ”98

T he two unfortunates were executed. As in Russia, cases were reported of Soviet food supply agents found on the side of the road near Rostov-on-Don with their stomachs cut open and stuffed with grain.99 Murders of Soviet officials reached a particularly high rate in Decem ber 1920-January 1921. T he rebels were ruthless when attacking state and collective farms. Those who had encountered the rebels reported that they were saying that they were “looting the looters.” T h e peasant/cossack war continued in the Don-Kuban country well into

95 96 97 98 99

“V Sovetskoi K ubani,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 12-13 (Septem ber-O ctober 1921), 42. “Na K ubani,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 5 (April 1921), 29. “Polozhenie na K ubani,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 4 (M arch 1921), 28. M. Pokrovsky in Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 12-13 (Septem ber-O ctober 1921), 42. “Na D o n u ,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 9 (June 1921), 31.

1922, as in U kraine. T hose who traveled through the cossack lands in 1921 reported th at there were vast areas of devastation, burned villages and stanitsy, uncultivated fields in som e areas, and depopulation. Rev. Corns and C heka headquarters replaced cossack circle assemblies. T h e cossacks’ way of life, traditions, and agriculture were wiped out. A ccording to one study, the dem o­ graphic losses of th e cossack population were staggering. In the M akhno area of operation, in southern U kraine, the n u m b er o f peasants shot or m utilated in 1920 alone reached 200,000. T h e sam e nu m b er were d ep o rted .100 C om bined losses in the D on-K uban cossack lands, including the decossackisation o f 1919, losses in civil war com bat, and the Red retributions o f 1920, were 2 m illion, alm ost h alf o f th e total p o p u la tio n .101 T h e D on Host country and K uban never recovered from the blows of the Bolshevik conquest. After the second and even m ore devastating blow o f “collectivization” of 1929—1934, the nam e cossack lands no longer applied to the D on and Kuban. T h e above data dem onstrate that the entire U krainian countryside, along with th e D o n Host and K uban cossack lands, were in rebellion against the Bolsheviks in the w inter of 1920 and spring of 1921. In fact it is m ore appropri­ ate to regard the partisans there not as a party in a civil war bu t rather as a national liberation m ovem ent against Russian occupation. W hile the Bol­ sheviks were busy with the Polish front in the west and the C rim ean front against W h ite G eneral W rangel in the south, U krainian partisans in central and western U kraine held an upper hand over the C om m unists. Som e of them had am bitious plans o f taking Kiev and driving the Bolsheviks away, as they had driven th e A ustrians and G erm ans in 1918 and the F rench in 1919. T h e breadth and m agnitude o f this m ovem ent has been underestim ated. T he Bol­ sheviks had no illusions that they were fighting no t som e “kulaks” or foreign agents or W h ite G uards b u t the U krainian peasantry as such, residing in hundreds o f villages listed by nam e. D espite th e outw ard sim ilarity am ong various provinces, the peasant m ove­ m en t in U kraine rem ained internally divided. T here was very little in com m on betw een Nestor M akhno, who still kept talking about self-governing peasant co m m u n es, and A tam an Struk, who saw his goal as restoring U krainian state­ hood. It seems th at in Kiev, Podol’e, Volyn’, and Poltava, the old historic U krainian core, m ost band leaders shared Struk’s views. In Kharkov and Ekaterinoslav th e spirit o f the m ovem ent was closer to that of a Russian anar­ chic uprising against all authority rather than that of a m ovem ent b ent on replacing a Russian-Bolshevik authority with a U krainian one. Similarly, in the D on country and K uban, old divisions between cossacks and peasants, and betw een pro-SR and pro-W rangel G reens, played into the Bolsheviks’ hands. 100 Skirda, Les Cossaques de la Liberte, p. 216. 101 M ikhail B ernshtam , “Storony v G razhdanskoi v oine,” V estnik Russkogo khristianskogo dvizheniia, no. 128 (1979), 3 0 0-301.

Just as in 1919, divisions between western, central, and eastern Ukraine pre­ vented its psychological let alone military unification against its m ain foe. Greens everywhere displayed a regional identity and allegiance. T h e peasant movement, regional and local, still represented a grave danger to the Bolshevik regime if it engulfed many provinces at the same time. This is exactly the situation the Bolsheviks had to face in the winter of 1920—21. In addition to Ukraine and the Don and Kuban lands they had to divert consider­ able forces to Tambov, Saratov, Samara, Tobol’sk, and of course Kronstadt. T h e W hites were gone, but the civil war was not over. W hat the BoIshevib had tried in Ukraine and the cossack lands they would repeat in Tambov, Saratov, and Tobolsk. In fact the worst in death tolls and devastation was yet to come.

11 Sovietization o f the Countryside: Tambov, Saratov, Tobol’sk

As t h e y e a r 1920 was drawing to a d o se, the Bolsheviks celebrated victory once again. AU th e enem ies of Soviet power seem ed to have been defeated: Poland, G eneral W rangel, M akhno, and the cossacks. Plans were being m ade for th e conquest of Georgia. T h e war seem ed one m ore tim e to be over. And yet th e peasant war co ntinued in 1921. M oreover it entered its bloodiest stage. Peasant rebellions erupted in the heartland o f agricultural Russia, Tam bov and V oronezh and th e provinces o f the lower and m iddle Volga, Saratov, Simbirsk, Sam ara; an enorm ous peasant insurrection broke o u t in western Siberia; and on top of it all cam e the sailors’ revolt in Kronstadt.

Tambov T h e rebellion of th e T am bov peasants o f 1920—21 is one of the better-known and tragic chapters o f the Russian civil war. A nd yet it rem ains at odds with the m ainstream W estern view. For those who are preoccupied with explaining the visionary Bolshevik construction of the future, the Tam bov rebellion appears as a reactionary p h en om enon: backward peasants resisting the m arch of Bolshevik m odernization. T hese views echo Soviet official historiography, w hich pre­ sents th e T am bov rebellion as the work of counterrevolutionaries, kulaks, b an ­ dits, and o ther subversive elem ents inim ical to socialist construction. For highranking Soviet officials on the spot like V. A. A ntonov-O vseenko, Μ . N. Tukhachevsky, and others it was clear that the rebellion was rooted in the misdeeds of local C o m m u n ist functionaries w ho ostensibly distorted the party line and generated resistance, no t just of ephem eral kulaks, but of the broad strata of th e peasantry. For the S Rs, who had strong local organizations in T am bov dating from the turn of the century and who had won elections to the C o n stitu en t Assembly in that province, the participation o f the broad strata of the peasantry was self-evident. For the SRs the causes lay no t only in the m isdeeds b u t in the very n ature of the Bolshevik exploitation of the country­ side. T hey tended to view the peasant war as a m ovem ent inspired by SR ideology w hich got ou t of control and failed. T hey saw the m ain weakness of the m ovem ent in th e absence o f a positive program. But why should peasants have a program ? W hy is a program of keeping

things th e way they were w ith o u t th e C o m m u n ists any less of a program th a n “constructing socialism ” in th e countryside? W h y is a program o f destroying state farm s, sowing com m ittees, volost’ C o m m u n ist cells, and all other attri­ butes of the outsiders’ dictatorship any less legitim ate a program than “restoring Soviet pow er” in th e countryside? T h e m ainstream concentration on program s and Bolshevik suppression m akes th e peasant war seem an episode w ithout lasting consequences. It is possible, however, to approach the m atter from a som ew hat different perspective, to focus not on th e question o f w ho won and w ho lost an d u n d er th e banners o f w hat ideology b u t rather on the question of th e intern al spirit o f th a t m ov em en t, its driving force, and m ost im p o rtan t the kind o f legacy it left for th e Bolsheviks an d the peasants.

The Causes Statistical data on peasant landholding, social stratification, Bolshevik grain collection targets, th e n u m b e r of collective farm s, or any other indicators of eco n o m ic and social order in T am bov Province suggest th at it was like any other su rro u n d in g province. As a result of the 1917 revolution Tam bov peasants becam e m ore hom ogeneous. T h e re were fewer poor peasants and fewer rich peasants. T h e peasant c o m m u n e gained power, as everywhere else. N oble land was divided up, b u t 72,000 desiatin out of 600,000 were given to state farms, n u m b erin g 150. M ost o f those cost m ore to run th an they produced. T h e grain collection target for the 1919—20 season was set at 27 m illion pud, w hich was m u c h h ig h er th a n th e 10 or 12 m illio n pud average for central R u ssia.1 T h e authorities m anaged to collect only h a lf o f the target am ount; still it was a very heavy bu rd en . As in other Russian provinces, collection targets in T am bov were set deliberately higher than th e peasants’ capacity to deliver. T h e Kirsanov U ezd C o m m u n ist party co m m ittee adm itted at its session on 5 A ugust th at the delivery targets were set too h ig h .2 It is hard to estim ate how heavy a burden th e collection targets were for an average peasant family. T h e size o f peasant plots, the quality of the earth, and th e en fo rcem en t of targets varied a great deal across the countryside. As A ntonov-O vseenko reported, even w hen th e collection target was lowered by h a lf in 1 9 2 0 -2 1 , it was still im possible to fulfill, because if peasants had delivered 100 percen t they would have had o n e pud o f grain and 1.6 pud o f potatoes left per person per year, w hereas the survival m in im u m was 17 pud. A n SR observer in T am bov Province calculated th at a typical peasant fam ily of five had slightly over 4 desiatin u n d er cultivation. T h e yield in 1920 was about 1 “T am bovskaia g u b e rn iia ” (handw ritten), in “O tchety, doklady m estnykh organizatsii S R ,” T s.P .A ,, F o n d 274, O p is’ I , PSR , d o c u m e n t 25, p. 56 . 2 “ Protokoly zased an ii Kirsanovskogo U ezdnogo kom iteta RKP(b)” (Ja n u a ry -D e c e m b e r 1920), T s.P .A ., F o n d 17, O p is’ 12, d o c u m e n t 566.

20 pud per desiatin, so the typical peasant’s crop was about 85—87 pud o f grain. From those he needed 20 pud for w inter (ozim yi) sowing, and 37 pud he delivered to the state as his distribution target. T h at left about 30 pud for a family of five. Since this was no t enough to last until the next crop, the peasants consum ed som e seed. W h en asked w hether they were worried that next year’s crop would suffer, they answered: “W hatever you sow, all the same they’d take it away. * D ispatching collection detachm ents to the villages in Tam bov, the province food supply com m issar, G ol’din, urged his collectors “not to show m ercy to anyone, n o t even to your own m o th er.”4 Entire volosti w hich failed to deliver the assigned target quantity were subjected to severe punishm ent. T h e detach­ m ents took away all grain, “as if swept w ith a b ro o m ,” as the peasants described it. T h ey also arrested the chairm en of village soviets as hostages and kept them u n til th e required grain was delivered. In som e cases hostages were executed.5 S u m m arizin g contem porary reports, O liver Radkey noted: “P lundering for private gain accom panied the food levy and rendered it still heavier.”6 In the neighboring lower Volga provinces local Bolsheviks regarded their assigned area for grain collection as their fiefdom, where they deployed their “feudal arm ies.”7 From tim e im m em orial in Russia agents o f the state had used their power to enrich themselves. An SR observer reported from Tam bov Province that m em bers o f the volost’ C o m m u n ist cell used the opportunity o f stateim posed requisitions for personal benefit: “In Talitskaia Volost’ the C o m m u ­ nists becam e so arrogant that, practicing all kinds o f robbery, they took away from peasants warm clothes and im m ediately, in the presence of the owners, put these clothes on, and sent cattle, fowl, and bread to their hom es. . . . I witnessed such a situation in the village E rem enki. AU these requisitions were over and above the state levy.”8 In Podvalskaia Volost’, the author continued, the local C om m unists requisitioned the priest’s house for the wedding o f the ch airm an . T h ey also confiscated cattle and forced the peasants to deliver (sam ogon) ho m em ad e vodka. D runkenness am ong the local C om m unists was per­ vasive. As in so m any other provinces, food supply agents in Tam bov showed ? T h e data above cited are from “V osstanie Tam bovskikh krestian (korrespondentsiia iz Rossii),” R evoliutsionnaia R ossiiar no. 6 (April 1921), 23. T h e a u th o r o f this article was n o t identified; however, Iu. N . Podbel’skii, in a protest letter to the M oscow soviet against allegations o f the C heka, identified h im self as the a u th o r of the article, w hich was finished in M arch 1921. See “Z aiavlenie predsedateliu Moskovskogo soveta,” PSR Archive, d o c u m e n t 2032, published in Jansen, ed., Partiia Sotsialistov Revoliutsionerov posle O ktiabrskogo perevorota, pp. 55 1 -5 5 . 4 O liver Radkey undoubtedly refers to the sam e m an, although his source spells the n am e as G olvin and describes m ore atrocities. The U nknow n C ivil W ar in Russia, p. 89. 5 R evoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 3 (M arch 1921), 23. 6 Radkey, The U nknow n C ivil W ar in Russia, p. 31. 7 Figes, P easant R ussia, C ivil W ar, p. 264. 8 “K om m unisty na rabote (Pis’m o krestianina iz Tam bovskoi g ubernii),” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 5 (April 1921), 2 5 -2 8 , here 25.

th eir zeal in cruel collection practices b u t th en neglected storage and transpor­ tation of th e confiscated booty. “Large n um bers of cattle perished, grain b u rn ed , and potatoes fro ze,” adm itted A ntonov-O vseenko.9 As a result: “T h e m ajority of the peasantry have becom e accustom ed to regarding the Soviet regim e as som ething extraneous in relation to th em , som ething th at only issues com m an d s, th a t gives orders m ost zealously b u t quite im providently.”10 T h is Bolshevik characterizatio n o f peasant attitudes only confirm s the gen­ eral im pression th at R ussian peasants regarded the Bolshevik regim e as a reim ­ position o f serfdom . It was only a question o f w hen and how the resistance w ould unfold, n o t w hether. In a report to L enin after the suppression o f the m ovem en t, the m ilitary c o m m an d er Tukhachevsky noted the peasants' univer­ sal dislike o f th e collection target system an d pointed to the “exceptionally cruel im p lem en tatio n o f collection targets by food requisitioning organs on th e spot” as a cause of th e Septem ber 1920 u p risin g .11 Tukhachevsky m ade a m istake, dating th e beg in n in g of th e peasant war in Tam bov in Septem ber 1920. In fact, as we have seen, th e peasant w ar started in 1919, but by Septem ber 1920 it had entered a new stage, th at o f a broadly based popular insurrection. T am bov peasants them selves, according to Tukhachevsky, called it a re v o lu tio n .12

Popular Insurrection In Septem ber 1920, w h en th e peasants’ fears for the fate o f th eir crops were at th eir highest and th e Bolsheviks’ grain collection m achinery was gearing into action, conditions em erged for an intensification of the peasant war. U sually an uprising started over a sm all in cid en t and quickly got out of control. After the Septem b er—O ctober insurrections in Ryazan Province the m ovem ent reverted to desperate attacks by sm all d etachm ents, som etim es feuding with one a n ­ other. G reen detach m en ts were reported to be engaged prim arily in hit-andrun operations. A local observer called th em gangs o f desperate people who took revenge on the Bolsheviks for th e brutal suppression o f a series of in su rrectio n s.13 S pontaneous outbursts o f peasant w rath, colorful and dram atic as they were, were necessarily sh o rt in du ratio n , entailed enorm ous casualties, and were crushed relatively quickly, unless som e degree o f coordination and organiza­ tion was introduced. As n u m ero u s observers pointed out, during the su m m er of 1920 A. S. A ntonov’s d eta c h m e n t in T am bov Province was like m any others, a 9 A n to n o v -O v seen k o , “O B anditskom dvizh en ii v Tam bovskoi g u b e rn ii” (20 July 1921), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, d o c u m e n t 707, pp. 4 8 4 - 5 6 2 , h ere p. 494. 10 Ib id ., p. 495. 11 T ukh ach ev sk ii to L en in (16 July 1921), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, d o c u m e n t 706, pp. 4 8 0 - 8 2 . 12 Ibid. 13 “Polosa bedstvii (Iz R yazanskoi g u b e rn ii),” R evo liu tsio n n a ia R ossiia, n o . 5 (April 1921), 30.

band of fifty to a hundred rebels. They were typical avengers, peasant heroes, hit-and-run partisans. As early as the summ er m onths of 1919 his band had killed close to a hundred local Bolshevik officials.14 This does not mean, however, that the num ber of peasant rebels in the sum m er of 1920 was limited to several hundred m en. In addition to Antonov’s band there were many others. In August 1920 the Kirsanov Uezd Communists reported to their CC: “During the m onth of July we have pum ped out 9,000 deserters in the uezd. One can estimate that there still are 5,000 deserters at large.”15 These figures match Cheka data for the entire province. In February 1920 the Cheka reported 60,000 deserters, the same num ber in July, and 28,375 deserters in August after a week of pardon.16 In neighboring Voronezh there were 50,000 deserters in Septem ber.17 It is also clear from these reports that the deserters were not merely hiding from the draft: “Across the province strong organizational work of bandits is going on. There is a great concentration of deserters.”18 The Kirsanov Com m unists complained that the bands were systematically killing Com m unists and underm ining the collection of grain.19 And the local C om ­ munists in the neighboring Bryansk region also reported an increase in the activity of bands of deserters.20 Peasant war in Tambov should not be seen as an exception in an otherwise calm peasant sea but rather as the most spectacular and successful movement in a sea of peasant anti-Bolshevik discontent. T he peasant movement there went beyond bands of avengers, which were typical for central Russian provinces, and developed into well-coordinated partisan warfare, as in Ukraine and Kuban. By September 1920 the political scene in Tambov included two ingre­ dients crucial for this transformation: a capable peasant leader and a network of existing peasant organizations led by the SRs. In mid-August 1920 two Socialist Revolutionaries, members of the under­ ground Tambov party committee, arrived in the village of Khitrovo in Tambov Uezd for an urgent meeting of a local chapter of the Union of Toiling Peasan­ try, an SR peasant organization. T he union had to resolve a difficult question: how to react to the alarming news that peasants in the village of Kamenka had 14 T h e original source for this cited by m any historians is B iulleten Tambovskogo G ubem skogo K om iteta R K P, no. 4 - 5 (18 January 1920), cited by Iu. N. Podbel’skii in his “V osstanie T am bovskikh krestian (korrespondentsiia iz Rossii),” R evoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 6 (April 1921), 25. 15 “Protokoly zasedanii Kirsanovskogo U ezdnogo kom iteta RKP(b),” T s.P .A ., Fond 17, O pis’ 12, d o c u m e n t 566. 16 “Inform atsionanaia Svodka Sekretnogo O tdela V echeka tovarishchu L e n in u ” ( I —7 February 1920 and 1 -1 0 O cto b er 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K, O pis’ 3, d o c u m e n t 414. 17 Ibid. (1 -1 0 O ctober 1920). ‘8 Ibid. (1 -1 5 June 1920). lq T h e session o f 3 O ctober, “Protokoly zasedanii Kirsanovskogo U ezdnogo kom iteta RKP(b),” T s.P .A ., Fond 17, O pis’ 12, d o cu m en t 566. 20 “Doklad Bryanskogo G ubkom a” (July 1 9 2 0-January 1921), Perepiska TsKa RKP(b) s Bryanskim G u b ko m o m ., T s.P .A ., Fond 17, O pis’ 12, d o cu m en t 37, p. 190.

killed seven m en from the grain collection detachm ent which had come for an additional obligatory levy. Local peasants, members of the union, wanted to join the Kamenka peasants, but under the influence of the Tambov SRs the Khitrovo chapter decided to abstain “from armed struggle against the Bol­ sheviks in view of its hopelessness under conditions lacking the necessary degree of peasant organization in other uezdy of the province, let alone in the rest of Russia.”21 T he urgings of the Tambov SRs to abstain from helping out the Kamenka rebels may well have been motivated by the fear that if armed insurrection flared up, the SRs’ leadership of an organized and planned struggle against Bolshevism could be lost to the Green bands. This is exactly what happened. O nce the uprising started, however, the Tambov SRs accepted their new role of aiding the m ovem ent rather than claiming to lead it. Later that night, after the Khitrovo peasant union m eeting was over, a punitive detachm ent arrived in the village and arrested three peasants, union members. Now that it was their own and not Kamenka villagers, Khitrovo peasants pursued the detachm ent, am bushed it, freed their m en, and killed those who "turned out to be C om m unists.” Now the Kamenka and Khitrovo peasants were in the same situation. Bolshevik action had united them . T he Kamenka and Khitrovo incidents ignited a spontaneous mass insurrection in the entire uezd. Village after village overthrew their soviets, and Verkhodenskii Volost’ soviet members were killed to the last m an. Some local soviets actually joined the rebellion.22 T he peasants decided to m arch on Tambov. C ontem ­ poraries described this colorful m arch of peasants with their axes and pitch­ forks, wom en and children— a procession both threatening and defenseless, constantly growing like a snowball as more peasants joined upon hearing church bells proclaiming the m archers’ approach.23 T he psychological effect of this m arch on the Red Army soldiers’ morale was devastating, and many peasant lads deserted to join the rebels. Yet loyal Bol­ shevik troops, most often cadets of the Red officers’ schools and Cheka troops, were not intimidated. For them large crowds of peasants were an easy target. Ten kilometers from Tambov the procession was dispersed. Dozens were killed by m achine gun fire. New punitive expeditions were sent out. Khitrovo and five other villages were burned, and collective responsibility was imposed on other villages. If any hostile action took place, the entire village would be burned. Up to this point, therefore, the insurgency in Tambov had followed the same course as in Kazan, Ryazan, Smolensk, or any other province in central Russia. But then, as one contemporary observer pointed out, the appearance of A. S. Antonov at this crucial juncture heralded the beginning of a new stage in the 21 Podbel’skii, “Vosstanie Tambovskikh krestian (korrespondentsiia iz Rossii),” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 6 (April 1921), 24. 22 Ibid. 23 Seth Singleton, “T h e Tam bov Revolt (1920-1921),’’Slavic Review, no. 3(1966), 498-512, here 503.

insurgency and a new role for Antonov. From the leader of a peasant band of avengers he turned into the leader of an invisible and invincible army.24 T he commissar appointed to suppress the rebellion, Antonov-Ovseenko, in his report to Lenin claimed that the local SRs had led the assault on the Bolshevik detachm ent in Kam enka.25 He was mistaken. The SRs had cau­ tioned peasants against violence, but circumstances forced them to side with this peasant initiative from below. O n the other hand Antonov-Ovseenko wrote: “After the crushing of the Tambov Province SR party committee by the Cheka, the m ovem ent in general ceased to be under the organizational influ­ ence of the Central Com m ittee of this party.”26

The Role o f the SRs T he degree of involvement of the SRs in the Tambov movement became a subject of considerable controversy. At the SR trial in 1922 the Bolsheviks charged the SRs with direct involvement.27 T he SRs on the other hand consis­ tently denied their participation. Oliver Radkey, in his study of the Tambov Green movement, shows that the SR Central Com m ittee indeed resisted in­ volvement and in its official policy pronouncem ents distanced itself from the Tambov insurrection. However, Chernov sympathized with the uprising, and some contacts between the Central Com m ittee and the rebels were m ain­ tained. This is confirmed in a Cheka report to Lenin of 25 August: “T he Tambov [SR] committee consists of twenty-eight people. It has perm anent quarters in Tambov, and its is subsidized by Antonov. ”28 W hatever the thinking of the Central Com m ittee was, Radkey has established beyond any doubt that the local SRs, that is, the Tambov SR Com m ittee and especially the peasant union, led and organized by the SRs, not only participated in the insurrection but actually ran the war effort for Antonov’s G reens.29 T he obvious question therefore is, Did the Tambov SRs act in accord with the wishes of the Central Com m ittee or in violation of party policy? Radkey believes that the SR Central Com m ittee did not object to the idea of armed struggle with the Bolsheviks in principle. Yet in practice it put m uch more emphasis on organizing the peasants rather than on directing the actual strug24 Iu. N . Podbel’skii, “Vosstanie Tam bovskikh krestian,” Kevoliutsionnaid Rossiia, no. 6 (April 1921), 25. 25 A ntonov-O vseenko, “O Banditskom d v izh e n ii,” Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, p. 496. 26 Ibid., p. 498. 27 Jansen, A Show Trial under L enin. 28 “Inform atsionanaia Svodka Sekretnogo O tdela Vecheka tovarishchu L e n in u ,” Svodka, no. 81 (25 A ugust 1920), T s .G .A .O .R ,, Fond 130, SN K , O pis’ 3, d o cu m en t 414(2). 29 Radkey analyzes the relationship a m o n g the SRs in The U nknow n C ivil W ar in R ussia, pp. 7 6 -7 7 , 1 1 4 -1 5 , and 1 22-26.

gle. T h e situation was never ripe for a decisive struggle som ehow . Radkey im plies th a t th e SR C entral C o m m itte e ’s repudiation o f involvem ent was a sign o f weakness and th at th e SR party leaders could n o t bring them selves to side openly w ith th e rebel peasants. T h e im age of the SR party leaders th at emerges from this study is o n e o f spineless intellectuals w ho talked of revolution but, w hen it cam e, ducked into th e bushes an d left th e peasants to their fate. T h e extent o f responsibility o f the SR C en tral C o m m ittee, according to Radkey, was lim ited to creating peasant un io n s, w hich turned o u t to be excel­ len t institutions for sustaining th e uprising. R ank-and-file SRs always w anted to do m ore th an get ready. A m ajority in the province joined the insurrection. T h e T am bov SR party co m m ittee did n o t encourage the rising, yet it did n o t aban­ don th e peasants o n ce it started, w hereas the C C did, according to Radkey. At the root of A ntonov’s break w ith the SR party earlier in the year was the Tam bov SR co m m ittee req u irem en t th at he com ply w ith the policy o f abstention from arm ed stru g g le.30 A ntonov sim ply ignored “party discipline” and preferred to act on his ow n, altho u g h he considered h im self a Socialist R evolutionary. A recalcitrant C en tral C o m m ittee, a cautious local com m ittee, and m en of ac­ tion am o n g the rank and file— this is th e profile o f the SR party, according to Radkey. In Septem ber 1920 th e all-R ussian SR party conference had to face yet an o th er in a series o f difficult choices: to support peasant rebellions or n o t to support th e m . D etails o f factional struggles are rather sketchy, b u t the overall pattern of SR responses seems to be th a t in th e areas w here peasants had already risen in revolt the local SRs were eager to support th em and lead them . T h e delegation o f T am bov SRs at th e conference was ad am ant in this regard, as were the delegations from V oronezh and K uban, w here, as we have seen, som e G reen peasant d etach m en ts were fighting u n d er the SR colors.31 O n the other han d th e SR urb an organizations w anted to preserve any possibilities they still had for legal existence and work in the soviets and trade unions. O penly taking u p th e b a n n e r of insurrection would have led to arrests and repressions. T h e leadership as usual h ad to steer a m iddle course, by not ruling out arm ed struggle against th e Bolsheviks b u t at th e sam e tim e n o t em bracing it as the party line. T h e C en tral C o m m ittee explained to local organizations: In the resolution on the current political situation the conference foresaw the inev­ itability o f resum ing armed struggle against Bolshevism. T h e Central Com m ittee also believes that possibilities o f a peaceful transformation o f Bolshevism are utopian and that the growing anger am ong the toiling masses against the pseudo-Com m unist oligarchy as well as the internal weakness o f Soviet power are creating conditions for its fall. In view of this the party o f Socialist Revolutionaries, as a defender of the social 30 Ibid., p. 118. 31 Ibid. p. 120; and Antonov-Ovseenko, “O Banditskom dvizhenii,” T ro tsk y Papers, vol. 2, p. 496.

and political achievem ents o f the revolution, will have to resume the path of direct struggle for their preservation. . . . The PSR conceives o f the possibility of such armed struggle against “Soviet power” in the future. 52

Radkey dismisses this as a com prom ise w hich fell short of defining a clear policy. H e sees th e careful form ulation of an im plied return to arm ed struggle as an inability to take on the task w ithout am biguities. Such a view does not appreciate the delicate political situation the SRs found themselves in. In A ugust 1920 alm ost the entire SR C entral C om m ittee was in prison. T he T am bov SR com m ittee had been arrested as well. As o f N ovem ber 1920 h u n ­ dreds of local SRs had been seized and kept as hostages by the C heka w ithout any charges. T h e Bolsheviks reiterated that any insurrections against Soviet power would lead to a merciless exterm ination of the hostages. It was com m on knowledge th at Bolshevik threats had to be taken seriously. To endorse arm ed insurrection openly was tan tam o u n t to suicide. T h e SR politicians found a m u ch m ore subtle approach. Appeals to party m em bers pu t an em phasis on organizing the masses. T h a t in itself was n o t a crim inal act. After all that is w hat parties usually do. Establishing peasant unions was the priority. For what purpose? T h e answer was clear: to defend peasants against Bolshevik dictator­ ship, w ith arm s if necessary in the future. T h e reference to the future was n o t an indication of the SRs’ halfheartedness bu t of cautiousness. In theory they could n o t be prosecuted for plans for the future. T h e resolution cited above was a published docum ent, that is, available to th e Bolsheviks. T h e unpublished m aterials of the SR party conference were m ore explicit: “T h e constantly growing insurrectionary m ovem ent of the popu­ lar masses against Bolshevik power reveals that people’s hatred is universal and powerful. It has reached such an extent that it can no longer be crushed and m ust end with a universal insurrection and overthrow o f the Bolshevik dictator­ s h ip .”33 T his form ulation was considered by the C entral C om m ittee as a text for its policy statem ent to local organizations but was in the end rejected as too provocative. T h e SRs’ caution in published resolutions was som ew hat useless, however, since the C heka obtained the original texts of the conference resolu­ tions, w hich were w orded m u c h m ore strongly: “Taking into consideration that a broad, popular, insurrectionary mass m ovem ent exists and its goal is to overthrow the C o m m u n ist dictatorship and establish the power o f the people, th e conference o f the PSR foresees the inevitability o f resum ing arm ed struggle against Soviet power in the future. ”34 In O ctober 1920 G eneral W rangel was far 32 P artiinaia Z h iz n ’. D okum enty sentiabr’skoi konferentsii PSR, “Ko vsem organizatsiiam P S R ” (I O ctober 1920), Nicolaevsky C ollection, box I , file 12. T his was also published in Revoliutsionnaia R ossiiar no. I (D ecem ber 1920), 2 7 -2 8 . 53 Protokoly TsKa P SR: konferentsiia 2 5 - 2 7 Sentiabria 1920 goda, PSR Archive, docu m en t 2006. 34 “R ezoliutsiia priniataia na konferentsii PSR 8 sentiabria 1920,” T s.P .A ., Fond 274, PSR, O pis’ I, d o c u m e n t I, p. 62.

from finished. T h e last thin g the SRs w anted to do was to play into his hands. A full an d u n am b ig u o u s go-ahead for arm ed insurrection w ould be possible only w hen th e W hites were defeated. T h is was th e line of reasoning of C hernov, the party leader in O cto b er 1920, w hen h e reached Estonia after avoiding capture by the C heka. H e p u t it this way: “W h e n th e bankruptcy o f the W h ite G uards’ reaction becom es evident, a new era in th e anti-Bolshevik struggle will com e. T his m o v em en t will be u n d er dem ocratic banners. T h e PSR sees its place in the vanguard o f this m ovem ent. It counts on the enorm ous forces o f the peasantry, w ho hate th e Bolsheviks an d w ho are also inim ical to the lan d ­ lords.”55 C h ern o v w ent o n to say th a t arm ed struggle w ould be protracted, difficult, and com plicated by th e rise o f “spontaneous outbursts of angry masses, b u t th ere was n o other way. ” After th e defeat o f G eneral W rangel in N ovem ber 1920 this last im pedim ent to an SR c o m m itm e n t was rem oved. D o cu m en ts in th e PSR archives suggest th a t in th e w inter o f 1 920-21 som e SR politicians were elaborating a strategy for th e peasant war. C olonel M akhin recom m ended th at th e arm ed forces o f peasants should rely only on them selves, th at is, on the co m m an d organs of territorial m ilitias. T h e exam ple he cited as worthy o f em ulation was the People’s A rm y m ilitia (opolchenia) in th e Black Sea coast area. T h e ir com m and system o f territorial headquarters precluded th e rise o f adventurers and local dictators. T h e territorial m ilitias consisted o f two tiers, active and passive. T h e passive o n e could be b ro u g h t into action w hen needed. T h e units of the People’s A rm y should avoid co m b at w ith a superior adversary. T hey were to attack th e co m m u n icatio n s an d econom ic infrastructure o f the Bolsheviks. Partisan d etach m en ts sh o u ld serve as cores of fighting forces around w hich large peasant d etach m en ts could be deployed for decisive actions. T h e m ilitary strategic objectives of the Peoples’ Army, th e d o c u m en t w ent on, should be the seizure o f im p o rtan t adm inistrative centers and the broadening of liberated territory. T h e ultim ate goal was to isolate the Bolsheviks in the cities and deny th em access to th e countryside, w hich would lead to a collapse o f the Bolshevik regim e: “Strategic logic dictates th e necessity o f starting the popular insurrec­ tion on as w ide a territory as possible, best of all everywhere. T h e strength of a sim ultan eo u s in surrection everyw here is enorm ous. N o authority is capable of coping w ith it. T h e im p act o f such an insurrection on th e m orale of the troops defending th e regim e w ould be trem endous. ”36 C h ern o v h im self was involved in trying to establish contact with the K ron­ stadt sailors and in supplying th em w ith food from Estonia in order to sustain and unfold th eir insurrection. Plans were worked on for a possible insurrection in Pskov and N ovgorod provinces w hich w ould link up with the Kronstadt sailors. O th e r projects were studied. T h e fact th at the SR C entral C om m ittee 35 V. Chernov, Ό sovrem ennom polozhenii,” Volia Rossii (5 October 1920), 2. 36 M akhin in Revoliutsionnaia Rossiiat no. 11 (August 1921), 22.

was unable to im plem ent any of these plans does not change the fact that its thinking was developing toward the idea of a general peasant insurrection, led by peasant u n ions and relying on the territorial militias. However, in its official pronouncem ents the C entral C om m ittee B ureau continued to advocate re­ straint. A breakdown of com m unications due to arrests and repressions m ade any m eaningful coordination o f party policy on the national scale impossible. Local organizations and individual SRs had to act on their own. All the surviv­ ing C entral C om m ittee m em bers could do was urge the organization and coordination o f a popular upheaval, as one of the C C leaflets o f 1921 attests: Peasant rebellions do not cease. Robbed, shot at, and decimated, the peasantry, this eternal payer [dannik], naturally rebels. It rebels spontaneously, often following the wrong path, the path of pogroms, violence, and killings. . . . The Bolsheviks know that the SRs do not cause uprisings and that only in those cases where they show a healthy character of struggle against the Communist dictatorship for the defense of people’s rights, and where they are decisively separated from the criminal elements, members of our party are marching in the ranks of the insurgents.37 T h e conclusion can be drawn that the C entral C om m ittee and the C C Bureau consistently advocated caution and restraint, although they welcomed the idea o f an insurrection. Like the M ensheviks they were skeptical of the stikhia o f the Russian m uzhik, o f a spontaneous and uncontrollable outpouring of wrath. T h ey wanted to plan and orchestrate a perfectly tim ed revolution un d er perfect conditions, at a tim e w hen real revolution was unfolding in Tam bov, Kuban, Saratov, Kronstadt, and Siberia. T he opinion of the C C B ureau was, however, not the opinion of the SR party as a whole. T h e C C did no t and could not control local organizations, and it could no t control individ­ ual m em bers. T h e record o f local organizations in Tam bov, Kuban, the lower Volga, and Siberia shows beyond any doubt serious SR involvem ent in the peasant m ovem ent. U ntil recently little was known about the Left SRs’ role. Relying on bits and pieces o f evidence, Oliver Radkey argues that the Left SRs were even m ore involved in th e A ntonov m ovem ent than the SRs. Yet few docum ents were available to highlight their policy. T h e D zerzhinsky Archive contains a curious d o cu m en t w hich m ay shed light on this m atter. It is a report o f a C heka agent who infiltrated the Left SR party leadership and, to judge by his duties, held a position of authority him self. Agent Vol’nov attended a m eeting of Left SR leaders on 6 M arch 1921. V. E. Trutovsky, B. D. Kamkov, and Raevskaia were present am ong others, all top party leaders. T hey discussed routine business of the party in the context o f the Kronstadt rebellion, w hich was then at full strength. According to agent Vol’nov, the Left SR leaders thought the Kronstadt 37 T sen tral’noe Org. B iuro TsKa PSR, underground leaflet (18 July 1921), PSR Archive, d o c u m e n t 2008.

rising was prem ature, because the countryside was to rise first in accordance with their plans. First the peasant war had to engulf all o f rural Russia, and then the cities would rise to finish off the Bolsheviks. Agent Vol’nov described a discussion of the Left SR networks of peasant unions, and of com bat detach­ ments. T heir m ain area of concentration was in Voronezh and Tambov prov­ inces as well as in Kuban and the Volga provinces. Moreover the Left SRs had strong underground urban organizations in Petrograd, Voronezh, Saratov, and N izhni Novgorod. As in the old days the Left SRs also maintained com bat detachm ents and individual terrorists {boeviki). O n e of the items on the agenda was whether to adopt a draft of text for a leaflet to be printed clandestinely. According to agent Vol’nov, Kamkov said: “T he leaflet drafted by Kurbatov is unacceptable because it definitely reveals our attitude to the Bolsheviks. It is particularly unsatisfactory in the part which makes it possible to establish that we have contacts with Antonov’s band and generally with all insurgent detachm ents which operate in Russia, including Kronstadt.”38 At the end of the m eeting everyone was assigned a specific party task. Vol’nov received addresses of conspiratorial apartments in Tambov where he would be able to find access to Antonov. His assignment was “to establish contact with Antonov, to describe to him the situation in Kronstadt, to inform him about the m ood in Moscow, and to let him know the opinion of the Central Com mittee concerning the beginning of the spring military campaign. T he insurrectionary m ovem ent m ust be carried out under the banner of the toiling peasantry.” Agent Vol’nov concluded his report expecting guidelines from the Cheka on his mission to Tambov. T his docum ent raises m ore questions than it answers. W hat was the nature o f the relationship between the Left SR Central Com m ittee and Antonov’s headquarters? How strong were the Left SR underground com bat detach­ ments? W hat is certain, however, is that in addition to invisible and invincible peasant networks, which protected rebel armies, there also were invisible urban networks of the SRs and Left SRs which tried and in many ways succeeded in helping peasant leaders organize a functioning infrastructure for their war effort.

The War Effort O n 14 November 1920, at a m eeting of the commanders of insurgent regi­ ments, Antonov was elected chief of headquarters. His control over other 58 “N acha’niku Sekretno-Osvedomitel’nogo Otdela agenturno-osvedomitel’nykh materialov. Svodka No. 27 po doneseniiu osvedomitelia Vol’nova” (6 M arch L921) (To the chief of the Secret Intelligence D epartm ent. Report no. 27 based on the report of agent Vol’nov), Ts.P.A ., D zerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, O pis’ 3, docum ent 167.

com m anders was only nom inal. And that was predicated on the very nature of the tactics he had chosen to pursue in the fall of 1920. Large peasant formations were ineffective and vulnerable. He dispatched most of the survivors of the m arch on Tam bov hom e and formed a num ber of separate detachm ents which acted pretty m uch on their own. O f course in theory they were under his com m and, and if asked to participate in a joint operation they certainly would and did. Yet the m ethods they chose for their own struggle against the Bol­ sheviks were their own. They chose whom , w hen, and how they would strike. This is not to suggest that the degree of organization among Antonov’s detach­ m ents was poor. O n the contrary. T h e reason Antonov’s m ovem ent achieved as m uch as it did was that he had an effective military organization, a guerrilla warfare operation par excellence, similar to that of Struk in Kiev Province. Antonov becam e a legend. Any ambush against a punitive detachm ent, any case of rebels distributing seized grain to peasants, m ust have been the work of Antonov. In D ecem ber the Kirsanov Bolsheviks, who found themselves in the hotbed of insurrection, described the situation: “Taking into consideration the high degree of organization and the sizable forces of bands operating sim ul­ taneously in several areas, we cannot put up serious defense.”39 Antonov could not possibly have coordinated let alone com m anded attacks at the same tim e in places separated from each other by one hundred or more versts. Peasant bands in provinces as far away as the Volga basin and Don Host referred to themselves as detachm ents of the Antonov army. Antonov’s army was, in fact, an alliance of territorial peasant militias. Each district supported its own detachm ent, which defended its territory. Peasants provided food and intelligence, joined forces for hit-and-run attacks, and then returned to their everyday routine. Most remarkable about this stage of the m ovem ent was that the peasant unions developed an intricate network of invisi­ ble governm ent that functioned remarkably well. Even though the cities were held by the Bolsheviks, peasant unions, according to Antonov-Ovseenko, were the real authority in the countryside. They managed to conduct mobilizations, rendered aid to families of the Greens, m aintained food supplies, and had a sophisticated system of intelligence gathering that stretched out to the Cheka itself in Tam bov.40 T h e rural outposts of the rebels, so-called nests, were deep in the countryside, inaccessible to the Bolsheviks, as the Kirsanov Bolsheviks noted: “In the nests no outsiders are admitted. ”41 T he distinction between the SRs and Left SRs disappeared, and the two branches of the SRs worked am ica­ bly together. For all practical purposes they fused into one again.42 Each S9 Session of 18 D ecem ber 1920, “Protokoly zasedanii Kirsanovskogo Uezdnogo komiteta RKP(b), Ts.P.A ., Fond 17, O pis’ 12, docum ent 566. 40 Antonov-Ovseenko, Ό Banditskom dvizhenii,” Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, p. 506. 41 Session of 18 D ecem ber 1920, “Protokoly zasedanii Kirsanovskogo Uezdnogo komiteta RKP(b)” (January-D ecem ber 1920), Ts.P.A ., Fond 17, Opis’ 12, docum ent 566. 42 D ocum ents on joint SR/Left SR work in Tambov are in the PSR collection: session of 16

province peasant union performed the functions of a civilian branch of govern­ m ent, and the chief of headquarters led the military branch. In practice, however, the two branches were quite autonom ous of each other. Official SR spokesmen later denied the involvement and responsibility of the SR-Ied peas­ ant unions in the Antonov m ovem ent.43 T heir denial was based on the asser­ tion that after Antonov became the com m ander, the peasant unions were no longer the same as in the sum m er of 1920. T he new unions were Antonov’s unions. T h at may well be true, but the same people except those who had been arrested were in both. In fact Boltnev, one of the SR peasant union leaders, becam e a commissar in Antonov’ army.44 T h e peasant unions had no influence, however, on the conduct of military operations. W hen a Bolshevik punitive detachm ent entered a village, the Greens abstained from outward hostility, taught by the lesson of Khitrovo. Yet once the detachm ent was outside the village, on a road in the woods, it would be am bushed and preferably executed to the last m an, so that the survivors could not supply information on the num ber of rebels, their effectiveness, weaponry, and so on. Many a Bolshevik detachm ent simply vanished in the Tam bov countryside. As in Kiev and Kuban, the Greens killed all Com m unists they seized and let soldiers go hom e. Radkey interpreted Antonov’s reluctance to attack cities as a sign of weakness. Yet it seems that this was a chosen course of action. T he Kirsanov Bolsheviks wrote on 18 December: “T he city [Kirsanov] has become completely isolated. It does not pose any difficulty for Antonov to take it. ”45 Antonov avoided cities because there his rebels would be vulnerable and exposed. By the end of Decem ber 1920 the Green rebels reigned supreme in the Tambov countryside. Not only were the Bolsheviks unable to collect their tribute; they could not be certain they would come out of this ordeal alive. Protocols of the Kirsanov Bolsheviks betray this sense of helplessness and panic: “T he bands are growing in num bers more and more. . . . We do not have our own forces at all. . . . T he bands openly do whatever they please w ithout any restraint, and do not encounter any resistance anywhere.”46 As a result of such pervasive fears the Bolsheviks began to take out their frustration on the suspect population. A license to kill without restraint was inaugurated by an order of the province Cheka of September 1920: “In regard to rebels and those hiding rebels [it is imperative] to conduct a merciless Red Terror . . . to arrest in such families all members older than 18 years of age, April 1920, “Protokoly Tska PSR. Otchety, doklady mestnykh organizatsii S R ,” T s.P.A ., Fond 274, O pis’ I, PSR, docum ent 7. 43 Iu. N. Podbel’skii, “Zaiavlenie predsedateliu Moskovskogo soveta,” PSR Archive, docum ent 2032, in Jansen, ed., Partiia Sotsialistov Revoliutsionerov posle O ktiabr skogo perevorota, p. 554, 44 Radkey, The Unknown C ivil War in Russia, p. 193. 45 Session of 18 D ecem ber 1920, "Protokoly zasedanii Kirsanovskogo Uezdnogo komiteta RKP(b)” (January-D ecem ber 1920), T s.P.A ., Fond 17, Opis’ 12, docum ent 566. 46 Ibid.

regardless o f gender, and to execute those if bandit attacks continue . . . [and] to b u rn or destroy their houses. Extraordinary indem nities should be imposed on these villages, and if they fail to pay, all land and all property should be confiscated.”47 T his was a declaration of war on the entire population. T h e collection of “indem nity” or the seizure of “bandit family m em bers” m eant in practice the freedom to loot and rape. O n e T siplukhinov raped several arrested girls. In a place called Talinki the Reds locked u p all the w om en in the church, searched and robbed the houses, and raped two girls.48 In another village they massacred fifty adolescent boys and two wom en. In another village, Krasnaia Sloboda, a Red detach m en t passing through killed one w om an, two old m en, and twentytwo adolescent boys. All of them were simply seized on the m ain street.49 A ntonov-Ovseenko adm itted in his report that local authorities “were trying to conduct Red Terror and burned villages.”50 Likewise the Cheka reported to L enin that “in areas engulfed by the bandit rebellion, the disposition of the rural population toward Soviet power is hostile d ue to the systematic plunder of our troops.”51 T hese were not m erely ruthless m easures to “pacify the countryside” or excesses of unruly com m anders, nor were they m erely acts o f vengeance on a hostile countryside. T h elo caI B olshevikpolicyw asabdication of all restraint. It was a graphic m anifestation o f the dom inant attitude: “I am your tsar and lord, and I will do with you w hat I please.” It was the ultim ate realization o f b ound­ less power over the population— a capacity to rape and kill for pleasure. T hese m easures escalated the level of hostilities. In January-F ebruary 1921 the peasant war entered a new stage. T his was perhaps the lowest point for the Bolsheviks. Rebel detachm ents swelled with new fighters. In som e villages all the m ale population went into the forests. According to Antonov-Ovseenko, the total strength o f rebels reached forty th o u san d .52 T his figure is in accord with protocols of the Kirsanov Uezd Bolsheviks: “M ilitary C om m issar Z im in has pointed out that the source of A ntonov’s reinforcem ents is the massive developm ent o f desertion in the uezd. T here are twenty thousand deserters in the uezd, and all o f them go willingly into the bands.”53 As in Ukraine, a large 47 T h is order was issued by the O perational H eadquarters o f the province C heka on I Septem ­ ber 1920, See 'T am bovskie krestiane i vlast’, ” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 1 4 -15 (N ovem berD ecem ber 1921), 32. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 A ntonov-O vseenko, Ό Banditskom dvizh en ii,” Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, p. 506. 51 “O perativno-Inform atsionnaia svodka V echeka,” (10 M arch 1921), T s.P .A ., D zerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, O pis’ 3, d o cu m en t 167. 52 A ntonov-O vseenko, “O Banditskom dvizh en ii,” Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, p. 504. 53 Session o f 18 D ecem ber 1920, "Protokoly zasedanii Kirsanovskogo U ezdnogo kom iteta RKP(b)” ( Ja n u a ry -D e c e m b e r 1920), T s.P .A ., Fond 17, O pis’ 12, d o cu m en t 566.

proportion of rebels were deserters from the Red Army. T h e Bolsheviks could n o t be certain th a t Red A rm y soldiers would n o t join the rebels, as had h a p ­ pened so m an y tim es in th e past. T h e ir fears were partly justified, because the SRs an d th e Left SRs published leaflets and appeals to workers and soldiers, as a top secret C heka report to D zerzhinsky attests: “A ccording to th e available inform atio n , th e workers o f R tishchevo station have resolved, u n d er the influ­ ence of SR propaganda, to send a delegation to the Red Arm y units of the T am bov group, located nearby, in order to negotiate a cease-fire.”54 To d im in ­ ish th e chances o f fraternization, th e Bolsheviks encouraged soldiers’ u n re ­ strained behavior. O n ce they felt they were m asters over the peasants, they w ould n o t be inclined to fraternize. T h is in tu rn led to an intensification of cruelty and reprisals by th e rebels. As in th e K uban and D on H ost areas, they began to attack n o t only th e C o m m u n ists and d etachm ents o f all kinds but also anyone associated w ith Soviet power and th eir families. It is at this point, it seem s, th at A ntonov began to lose overall control o f his forces. N ew bands m u sh ro o m ed , n am in g them selves detachm ents o f the A nt­ onov arm y in T am bov and in areas as far away as Sam ara Province. Just as A ntonov did n o t ask perm ission from th e T am bov SRs, they did not ask A nt­ onov’s perm ission for their actions. T h ey began killing C o m m unists and their fam ilies, suspected inform ers, and sym pathizers indiscrim inately. Particularly notorious were the bands o f Vaska Karas’, Selianskii, and Brusok. S uch terror against Red A rm y soldiers’ fam ilies an d C o m m u n ist “collaborators,” as in U kraine, actually u n d e rm in e d the cohesiveness o f the anti-Bolshevik m ove­ m e n t and w eakened its support am o n g th e local population. A ntonov’s head­ quarters tried to preserve control, and Brusok was executed for m arauding. But this co u ld n o t stop th e escalation o f peasant w rath into its own free-for-all. In the ju d g m en t o f A ntonov-O vseenko: “T h e struggle against m arauders, d ru n k ­ enness, an d card playing was, judging by the issued orders, doggedly pursued, b u t it yielded no results.”55 T h e ethos o f th e m o v em en t seems to have changed from th at o f a relatively disciplined and w ell-coordinated peasant guerrilla warfare in the fall o f 1920 into vengeance com bined w ith a carnival-like atm osphere in th e spring of 1921. “Life is short! Life is cheap, yours and theirs. Let’s drink and have fun!” T hese were favorite expressions o f these m en . Survival on the ru n and killing enem ies becam e a way o f life. T h e slogan o f som e detachm ents was L oot the Looters. T h e Bolsheviks had stolen grain from peasants; now it was tim e to steal it from th e Bolsheviks. T h e goal was to settle accounts, an eye for an eye, blow for blow. Observers referred to this p h en o m en o n as w arlordism (partizanshchina). It was sim ilar in its spirit to th e Bolsheviks’ L oot the Looters cam paign o f 1917—18. T h e n , peasants were incited by the Bolsheviks to loot 54 O p e ra tiv n o -In fo rm a ts io n n a ia svodka V echeka,” (10 M a rch 1921), T s.P .A ., D zerzhinsky A rchive, F o n d 76, S N K , O p is’ 3, d o c u m e n t 167. 55 A nto n o v -O v seen k o , Ό B anditskom d v iz h e n ii,” T rotsky Papers, vol. 2, p. 502.

the noble estates. Now the Bolshevik occupants o f the form er noble estates were the c h ief victims o f the new cam paign. Perhaps this profound continuity in the spirit of the Russian popular m ovem ent suggests that to seek “program s” in peasant m ovem ents is to miss the point entirely. Intellectuals and city folks com pose programs. T h e peasants’ program was no program but revenge, based on th eir own idea of justice and right order.

Lower Volga T h e lower Volga area (Tsaritsyn, Saratov, Sam ara, and Simbirsk, as well as surrounding areas toward the Urals in the east and toward Penza in the West) should all be considered as another Tambov. An uninterrupted peasant war raged in this area from the late spring of 1920 until August 1922. Like Tam bov this area was also an SR stronghold. T h e difference was that it had a m u ch m ore diverse eth n ic com position: Russians and G erm ans in Saratov, M ordovians and Tatars north along the Volga, Kirghiz in the south, and O renburg cossacks eastward from the Volga. As in Tambov, peasant war in this area was associated with specific individuals who were well known and adm ired, first with A. P. Sapozhnikov and Serov and then with V akhulin and F. G . Popov. In their political orientation these people were closer to M akhno than to Antonov. T hey were form er Soviet functionaries and Red Army com m anders. Like M akhno they broke with the Bolsheviks w hen they cam e to the conclusion that the Bolsheviks were treating the peasants unfairly. A. P. Sapozhnikov was an SRIike Antonov. T h en he becam e a Left SR and then acted on his own. Indeed defending the “toiling peasantry” from Bolshevik exploitation was one of the m ain goals of the Left SRs. From their point of view the Bolsheviks had betrayed the principles of Soviet power as the power o f the people. Therefore the people had the right to rise against the new oppressors. T his is exactly what Sapozhnikov did. In July 1920 the division Sapozhnikov led decided to rebel against Soviet power. T h e C heka reported that his detachm ent was two thousand strong. It had field artillery and m achine guns. W h a t was m ore worrisom e, continued the report, was th at “there is a real possibility that seven or eight regim ents will go over to the side o f Sapozhnikov.”56 M utinied soldiers, runaway deserters, and peasant partisans flocked to the band of Sapozhnikov. Local Bolsheviks and the C heka sent telegrams to Moscow in panic, reporting that workers in the area were passing resolutions in support o f Sapozhnikov, dem anding free elections to the soviets, free trade, and the removal o f all the Jews.57 Sapozhnikov b ecam e a leader of a broad-based m ovem ent. His proclam ations incorporated 56 “Inform atsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo O tdela Vecheka tovarischu L en in u ” (1 -1 5 August 1920), T s .G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SN K, O pis' 3, d o cu m en t 414. 57 Ibid.

th e d em ands of his constituency; they called for new elections o f the soviets, abolition o f th e requisitioning d etachm ents, abolition o f the C heka, and free tra d e .58 O n 2 A ugust, L en in instructed local com rades in a classified cable: “A ny m anifestation o f sym pathy an d even m ore o f collaboration w ith Sapozhnikov by the local population m ust be rooted o u t at once, m aking use to the full o f revolutionary authority; in cases w hen collaboration has taken place, dem an d from settlem ents lying on th e route o f Sapozhnikov’s detachm ents th at they h a n d over th e guilty ringleaders an d take hostages so as to forestall any possibility o f co llab o ratio n .”59 In the fall o f 1920 Sapozhnikov’s d etach m en t of three th o u san d was finally defeated by a superior Bolshevik force. Serov took co m m an d over the rem n an ts o f his forces. As early as D ecem b er 1920 th e Bolsheviks had to face an o th er m utiny, an o th er uprising, an d an o th er p easant arm y, this one led by V akhulin. Like Sapozhnikov, V akhulin had been a Red A rm y co m m an d er and at one p o int in 1919 served u n d e r N estor M akhno. Like M akhno, V akhulin led his cavalry battalion into m u tin y against the Bolsheviks. Cossacks, deserters, and freed political prisoners flocked to his arm y, and it grew to six thousand in less th an two m onths. In February 1921 V akhulin fell in battle and Popov, a D on cossack, assum ed co m m an d . Popov’s rebels ransacked w arehouses, killed C om m u n ists, tore u p rail tracks, and distributed som e captured goods to peas­ ants. Peasant crowds, several tho u san d strong, attacked grain storage facilities. T h e Volga D istrict Red A rm y c o m m an d er reported: “R ecently peasant upris­ ings, caused by starvation, have flared up th ro u g h o u t the district, especially in those points w here the largest quantities of grain have been extracted, and also thanks to bungling by food supply officials. A week ago Sam ara Province was in th e sam e position as Saratov is now. T h e peasants of Stavropol, B uzuluk, B uguruslan, Sam ara, and oth er uezdy were gathering in crowds up to several th o usan d strong— in som e places they exceeded ten thousand— and tried to break dow n food supply storage facilities.”60 Som e peasant uprisings were reported as triggered by fam ine. T h e Saratov Bolshevik party co m m ittee adm itted th at Soviet troops were in fact passing arm s over to the rebels.61 L unacharsky wrote to L enin in early February 1921 th at he had reached th e conclusion th a t it was necessary to dispatch arm ed forces to Saratov Province, w hich could not defeat th e G reen detachm ents on its own. 58 Figes, P easant R u ssia , C iv il W ar, p. 339. 59 “L en in to U ral’sk: for th e Rev. C o m . o f U ral’sk P rovince, an d to P resid iu m o f the E xecutive C o m m itte e o f Saratov Soviet” (2 A ugust 1920), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, d o c u m e n t 571, p. 236. 60 “C o n v ersatio n betw een 1st A ssistant C h ie f o f Staff C o m rad e S haposhnikov and th e C o m ­ m a n d e r o f th e T rans-V olga M ilitary D istrict, Kraevsky" (23 M a rch 1921), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, d o c u m e n t 67 6 , p. 416. 61 “Trotsky to C h a irm a n o f th e C o m m issio n for th e Struggle against B anditry” (M oscow, 19 M a rch 1921), copies to th e O rg . B u reau , L en in , an d S talin , Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, d o c u m e n t 674, p. 410.

T h e situation deteriorated so m uch that it threatened to turn into a war similar in scale to th at in Tam bov Province. L enin dem anded that “banditry” be liquidated and that he be inform ed twice a week on the progress of operations.62 M ost striking in the com m unications of top Bolshevik leaders is a lack of consideration of any measures other than propaganda and retribution. In M arch, Saratov authorities pleaded for help: “T he whole work o f the province is paralyzed; in those places where the bandits passed through, the Soviet regime is not recognized; towns are completely sacked by the bandits; the levies of grain cannot be met; the towns of the province are threatened by hunger riots. ”65 Lunacharsky felt it was imperative to unite the military com m and against peasant rebels “along the entire front o f Tambov, Voronezh, and Saratov prov­ inces. ”64 H e should have added Samara and Simbirsk to the north and Tsarit­ syn, Astrakhan, and D on to the south and southwest. Local com m anders com plained that there were not enough forces available to contain the n u ­ m erous bands and riots in such a huge area. According to a local reporter: “M ost likely we have entered a period o f anarchy. It is hardly possible to find an uezd or a province where there is no large or small detachm ent, wandering around in search of its task. Echoes of Antonov’s m ovem ent in Tam bov from one direction and of the m ovem ent of Popov near Saratov from the other reach our area (Tsaritsyn Uezd and Don). In addition a partisan detachm ent of Kolesnikov is operating at the border o f D on Host country and Voronezh Province. ”65 Hardly would the Bolsheviks announce the defeat and capture of one peasant rebel leader than another one’s band would appear and m enace them in an unknow n and unexpected location. Despite a large concentration of forces and a string of m ilitary victories over the rebels the overall situation continued to deteriorate for the Bolsheviks in the entire lower Volga area. A new and u n ­ known band o f Maslakov was reported to Lenin as operating in the Tsaritsyn and Astrakhan area. T h e Astrakhan party com m ittee reported to Moscow that the rebellion led by Maslakov “threatened to consum e [za n ia t’] the entire province. ”66 T h e local Cheka chief wrote that the food supply for Astrakhan was all stored in Tsaritsyn and that the band could seize it. Lenin jotted down on this report: “C om rade Trotsky, we m ust exert the utm ost pressure and 62 L enin to Skliansky (6 February 1921), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, docum ent 654, p. 372. 65 “From : Province Party C om m ittee: M artynov; Province Executive Com m ittee: Fedor Ivanov; Province Cheka: Sm idovich; to: L enin, Trotsky, and C C of the R C P,” (Saratov, 19 M arch 1921), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, docum ent 672, pp. 4 0 6 -8 . 64 Lunacharsky, “O tchet o Saratovskoi rabote" (14 February 1921), "Dokiady Lunacharskogo L e n in u ,” L iteratum oehiasledstvo, vol. 81, p. 490. 65 “S Iugo-vostoka Rossii,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 10 (July 1921), 26. 66 Pis’m a i telegram m y Astrakhanskogo G ubkom a, Ό povstancheskom dvizhenii krestian,” T s.P .A ., TsKa RKP(b), Fond 17, O pis’ 84, Biuro Sekretariata, d ocum ent 62.

destroy M aslakov.”67 So th e local co m m anders and C heka tried harder in T saritsyn, b u t new bands em erged in neighboring provinces. From the T sarit­ syn and A strakhan area M aslakov’s bands spread to the neighboring D on cossack lands. T h e C heka in R ostov-on-D on telegraphed to Dzerzhinsky: "M as­ lakov’s bands are located in the vicinity o f Orlovka Village. O u r units dispatched to liquidate this band; [350] persons have voluntarily gone over to th e side o f M aslakov. . . . T h e situation in th e D o n area we consider to be grave, requiring th e adoption of extraordinary m easures.”68 W h at was partic­ ularly w orrisom e for the Bolshevik leaders was th at Sapozhnikov, Maslakov, and other peasant leaders in th e lower Volga region attracted into their bands ever grow ing n um bers o f Red A rm y soldiers w ho had been dispatched against th em . T h e Saratov Bolsheviks reported to L enin in M arch 1921 th at “banditry in recen t tim es has em braced the entire province. T h e peasants seized three m illio n p ud o f grain from state w arehouses. T h ey arm ed them selves thanks to a flow o f w eapons received from deserters.”69 L en in ’s telegram s still insisted on a m ilitary solution, hostage taking, and th e liquidation of “b anditry.” B ut it was n o t easy. M ilitary operations docum ents clearly attest th at the arm y could n o t han d le all th e bands at the sam e tim e .70 Fronts appeared here and there and everyw here, an d keeping occu p atio n forces in faraway corners o f m any prov­ inces was n o t possible because of supply and transportation problem s. In the spring of 1921 th e lower Volga, Tam bov, and parts o f Penza and V oronezh provinces were ungovernable. T his was in addition to the ongoing peasant war in all provinces o f U kraine and in K uban. In all the provinces of the IowerVolga th e C o m m u n ists declared a state of siege.71 T h is em pow ered the C heka, p u n i­ tive detach m en ts, and Internal Security troops to shoot enem ies o f the prole­ tarian dictatorship on sight, take hostages from civilian populations to root out th eir collaboration w ith th e enem y, set u p concentration cam ps— in a word to do all those things th e Bolsheviks had already been doing in U kraine and the Cossack lands. Yet despite an all-o u t effort on the peasant front this tim e victory 67 “From: C hairm an o f the Province Cheka: Chekasskii, C hairm an of Province CP Com mittee: Riabov, to: Lenin and Dzerzhinsky” (18 M arch 1921), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, docum ent 670, pp. 4 0 2 -4 , here 404. 68 Telegram to Dzerzhinsky (3 M arch 1921), T s.P.A ., Dzerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 167. 69 Frenkin, Tragediia krest’ianskikh vosstanii v Rossii, 1918-1921, p. 119. 70 “Conversation between 1st Assistant C h ief of Staff Com rade Shaposhnikov and the C om ­ m ander of the Trans-Volga M ilitary District, Kraevsky” (23 M arch 1921), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, docum ent 676, p. 420. 71 “Kratkii otchet predsedatelia Simbirskogo Gubispolkom a o vvedenii chrezvychainogo polozheniia v Simbirskoi gubernii” (21 May 1921), T s.G .A .O .R , Fond 1235, VTslK, Opis' 99, docum ent 10, pp. 1 -2 , and “Postanovlenie Prezidium a VTsIK o vvedenii chrezvychainogo polozheniia v Samarskoi gubernii” (16 M arch 1921), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 1235, VTsIK, Opis’ 38, docum ent 15, p. 2.

eluded the Bolsheviks. In February and M arch 1921 two m ore uprisings broke o u t w hich alm ost broke the back o f Soviet power: Kronstadt and Siberia.

The Urals and Siberia W h a t is striking about the G reen m ovem ent across the country is how sim ilar the situation was in areas and provinces hundreds of m iles away from one another. Observers, participants, and eyewitnesses in Tobolsk, for exam ple, could n o t possibly have know n w hat another eyewitness wrote at the sam e tim e from K uban or D on or Tam bov. Peasant war everywhere had the same causes, the sam e recognizable stages, and the sam e unfortunate end. T h e dynam ics of th e G reen m ovem ent in the Urals and Siberia followed the pattern of the D on and K uban area alm ost exactly. W elcom e to the Reds in spring gave way to antiBolshevik insurgency in the sum m er of 1920. T h e difference was th at the peasant war in western Siberia was the m ost successful in m ilitary term s. A huge area was cleared of Bolsheviks. It was, in fact, the only area in L en in ’s Russia w here peasant rebels m anaged to seize several cities and towns, hold them for two or three m onths, and establish their own peasant political au th o r­ ity. T his makes the T obolsk uprising the m ost interesting episode in the saga of th e peasant war. Siberian peasants, like the cossacks o f the D on and K uban, had a strong tradition o f self-rule, self-reliance, and regional patriotism . T h e less they felt the presence of a central governm ent, the better a governm ent it was for them . Like the peasants o f Stavropol who had fought against D enikin, m any Siberian peasant detachm ents fought against Kolchak. M oreover, the Kolchak regime collapsed u n d er the blows of the peasant detachm ents before the arrival of the Red A rm y in Irkutsk at the end o f 1919. Initially peasants welcom ed the Red Army troops as liberators. T hey knew very little about the Bolsheviks at that tim e. T h e ir rule had been overthrow n in Siberia in the late spring and sum ­ m er o f 1918 by the C zechs and SRs, well before com m ittees of the poor or any o th er Bolshevik innovations. T h e arrival o f the Bolsheviks in January 1920 was perceived as the end of the civil war and of the arbitrary requisi­ tions and hardships the peasants had endured at the hands of the Kolchak adm inistration. For the M oscow Bolsheviks, Siberia was first and forem ost a land of plenty. T h e ir slogan was To Siberia for Bread. T hey arrived with the clear intention of p u m p in g as m u ch grain out of Siberia as possible for the “starving provinces of central R ussia.” T h e reality exceeded their expectations. By the standards of central Russia the Siberian m uzhik was rich. It was not unco m m o n for a peasant family to cultivate up to eighty desiatin of land and own a dozen cows, bulls, horses, and pigs. For the Bolsheviks, Siberian peasants were kulaks, pure and sim ple. W hy should they have so m u ch w hen the workers of central Russia

were starving? T h e Bolsheviks regarded Siberia in term s o f w hat it could give th em . So they decided to help them selves to the riches of Siberian peasants. C ollection targets were set high and were strictly enforced. A ccording to a C P C decree o f July 1920, Tom sk, O m sk, Sem ipalatinsk, Altai, E n isei, and Irkutsk provinces w ere obligated to deliver 110 m illion pud of grain from I A ugust 1920 to I M arch 1921.72 Since in 1913 Siberia had exported 400 m illio n p u d of grain, th e Bolsheviks reasoned, th e delivery target of 200 m illion pud for 1920 was a m odest figure. T h e difference of course was th at 1913 was before th e war, w hen Siberia exported grain for real m oney. In 1920 it was forced to “share” its riches facing th e barrel o f a gun. In Irkutsk Province, for exam ple, if a peasant had one cow, he had to deliver eight pounds o f butter; if he had two cows, sixteen pounds o f butter; three cows, twenty-four p o u n d s.73 R equisition d etachm ents confiscated “surplus” foodstuffs for the needs o f the “starving workers in central R ussia.” A carting obligation was introduced. Peasants h ad to cart troops, food, and even fu rn itu re for C o m m u n ist fu n ctio n aries.74 Since there was only one rail­ road in Siberia, virtually all supplies were transported by peasant carts to railway stations or river ports. As in the rest of Russia, the Bolsheviks began to set up collective an d state farm s. Peasants from surrounding villages were “conscripted” to work on these farms as a p art of their labor obligation. In som e areas the new authorities m obilized th e entire population o f villages for c o n ­ struction projects. N eedless to say, the system o f u n p aid conscripted labor and unpaid-for food deliveries generated all kinds o f abuses, especially since the enorm o u s distances from M oscow m ade control over local authorities virtually im possible. Very quickly th e im age of Soviet pow er changed. It was now seen as a rule o f requisition detach m en ts, Rev. C orns, and the C heka. As a local saying joked: “W e have exchanged Kolchak for a province C heka [promeniali Kolchaka na gubcheka].”75 T h o u san d s o f peasants were arrested for failing to deliver th eir quota. In B arnaul and Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk) several th o u ­ sand peasants were held prisoner.76 As in the rest o f Russia, peasants responded by slaughtering their cattle. In 1917 Siberia had 9,6 0 0 ,0 0 0 head o f cattle; in 1920 only 3,400,000 rem ained. After five m onths of Bolshevik rule a series of peasant uprisings began, as the C heka reported to Lenin: N ovon ik o laev sk : T h e a c tio n s o f p e a s a n t in su rg e n ts c o n tin u e . T h e u p risin g is sp re a d ­ in g a lo n g th e ra ilro a d lin e N o v o n ik o laev sk —O m sk . 72 Frenkin, Tragediia Krest'ianskikh vosstanii v Rossii, 1918-1921, p. 123. 73 “Vosstaniia v Sibiri,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 6 (April 1921), 30. 74 "Polozhenie na Urale. (Pis’m o iz Ekaterinburga),” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 4 (M arch 1921), 30-32. 75 P. T urchanskii1 “Krestianskoe vosstanie v Zapadnoi Sibiri,” Sibirskii arkhiv (1929), 67 -7 2 , here 68. 76 “Pis’ma iz Sibiri. Pis’m o iz Irkutska,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 12-13 (Septem berO ctober 1921), 4 3 -4 8 , here 44.

B a rn au l: A n ew w ave o f in su rg en cy is u n fo ld in g . T om sk: D u rin g th e first h a lf o f July reb ellio n s flared u p freq u en tly . T h e y have e n g u lfed th e e n tire p ro v in c e .77

Several peasant bands appeared in M ay 1920 in Sem ipalatinsk Province and in th e Altai M o u ntains, led by G. F. Rogov, I. P. Novoselov, and I. D. Plotnikov.78 T h e m ost serious was the uprising in Tom sk Province, in the vicinity of Kolyvan’ Tow nship. W h en the rebels seized Kolyvan', they executed all th e C o m m unists they could put their hands on, three hundred of th e m .79 Several thousand rebels were executed after the uprising was suppressed. In S eptem ber—O ctober 1920, w hen the Bolsheviks started enforcing collection targets for the new crop, several peasant insurgencies flared up sim ultaneously in various parts o f Siberia. T here were three types of rebel detachm ents in Irkutsk Province: those of the People’s Revolutionary Peasant Army, as it called itself, those o f Buriats (including the native non-R ussian population), and those led by form er Kolchak arm y officers.80 T hese partisans had nothing in co m m o n with each other, and the People's Army was openly hostile to Kolchak officers. T h e People’s Arm y was led by V. M. C hernov (not the SR party leader), said to be of peasant origin and formerly a junior officer.81 C hernov’s detachm ents controlled eight volosti in the northern part of Irkutsk Province by the end o f Septem ber 1920. T hey disbanded Rev.Corns and the food supply adm inistration and killed C om m unists systematically. T hey displayed a re­ m arkable degree of organization and carried through a m obilization in those eight volosti th at yielded six thousand fighters. W om en and children in villages exposed to Bolshevik attack were evacuated to distant villages away from m ain roads. T h e rebels’ m ain slogans were D ow n with the C ollection Target! (.R azverstka), D ow n with the C om m unists! and Long Live the Soviets, the sam e slogans th at a few m onths later w ould be heard at the other end o f Russia in Kronstadt. In late fall C hernov’s detachm ent was defeated, the rebel volosti were reoccupied, and the peasants severely punished. In early 1921, however, insurgency flared up again, this tim e sim ultaneously in a huge territory of several provinces. Several peasant detachm ents reap­ peared in Altai, in B arnaul, and in the Biisk area, again led by I. P. Novoselov and P. K. Lubkov, several thousand rebels strong.82 Defeated three times in 77 “Informatsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarischu L eninu” (16-31 July and 1—15 August 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 414. 78 For a survey of literature on this rebellion, see V. I. Shishkin, “Eshche raz o Rogove i Rogovshchine,” in Plotnikova’, ed., O ktiabr i grazhdanskaia voirta vsibiri. Istoriia, Istoriografiia i Istochnikovedenie, pp. 102-11. 79 “Informatsionnaia Svodka Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka tovarishchu L eninu” (1-15 August 1920), T s.G .A .O .R ., Fond 130, SNK, Opis’ 3, docum ent 414. 80 “Perelom v Krestianstve. (Pis’mo iz Irkutska),” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 10 ( July 1921), 27. 81 “Vosstaniia v Sibiri,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 6 (April 1921), 30. 82 "Pis’ma iz Sibiri. Pis’mo iz Irkutska,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 12-13 (Septem berOctober 1921), 43-48, here 46.

1920, Novoselov raised new detachm ents each tim e and reappeared to “exter­ m in a te ” local C o m m u n ists. T h e slogan o f Novoselov’s rebels was Soviet Power w itho u t the C o m m u n ists. By far th e m ost serious o f all was the T obol’sk insurgency. It started at a very op p o rtu n e m o m e n t for th e rebels, in February 1921, w hen the Bolsheviks were busy w ith th e K ronstadt rebellion. T h e T obol’sk uprising started sim ul­ taneously in a huge territory including th e T o b o l’sk and parts o f th e O m sk (Akmolinsk) areas. As in T am bov in Septem ber 1920, peasants from villages near T obol’sk started a m arch on th e city, attracting on their way ever growing masses o f peasants.83 Local C o m m u n ists panicked and abandoned the city, retreating tow ard T yu m en . U pon h earing th e news o f the Bolshevik overthrow one volost’ after an o th er rose and pursued th e retreating Bolsheviks. T h e absence o f good roads, th e vast distances, and the u n an im o u s support of the local population for th e rebels, in addition to the panic o f the Bolsheviks about th e news from K ronstadt, m ade it possible for the rebels to seize the initiative. T h e area controlled by th e rebels co n tinued to broaden along the banks o f Irtysh River. T h ey seized th e tow nships of Ishim , T obol’sk, Berezovo, O bdorsk, Barabinsk, Kainsk, an d Petropavlovsk. T h ey destroyed large sections o f the trans-Siberian railroad. A stream of Red Army defectors brought badly needed rifles an d even m a c h in e guns. A key role in the rebel forces was played by form er Red A rm y soldiers, dem obilized from th e Red Arm y after the Polish war. T h e y h ad com bat experience, and they were appalled by stories of abuse they h eard from th eir fam ilies u p o n their return. R etreating Bolshevik forces took hostages from the towns and villages they passed an d executed th e m u p o n retreat: in T obol’sk 20, in O bdorsk 219. As an eyewitness recalled, th e rebels initially did n o t have any political program at a ll. D ow n w ith th e C om m unists! was the entire program . Peasants were saying: “It can n o t be worse th an it is now .” All C o m m u n ist institutions were naturally destroyed an d all C o m m u n ists seized and killed. A ccording to an SR eyewit­ ness, th e rebels did n o t have any plan or any system o f adm inistration at a ll. T h e key principle was th at every volost’ was to be essentially self-governing. T h e central headquarters in T ob o lsk had very little overall control over the territory cleared o f Bolsheviks. However, com pared w ith other areas w here villages and towns were taken by G reens, such as u n d er M akhno, the T obol’sk rebels d em ­ onstrated a very high degree of organization. Tow ns u n d er M akhno were n o t governed at all. In T am bov Province th e G reen governm ent was well orga­ nized, b u t th e G reens never took a tow n. In T obol’sk peasant organizations were well organized an d led by SRs, as in Tam bov, and they did seize towns and set up an adm inistration. 83 N . A. O bran o v sk ii, “T o b o l’skoe an ti-k o m m u n istich esk o e vosstanie pervoi poloviny 1921 goda. (zam etki o ch ev id tsa),” R evo liu tsio n n a ia Rossiia, n o. 1 4 -1 5 (N o v e m b e r-D e c e m b e r 1921), 3 3 -3 7 .

C ivilian authority in the city ofT o b o l’sk was in the hands of a peasant soviet, com posed of representatives o f peasants from the surrounding countryside, city residents, and representatives of liberated volosti, two from each. T hey also form ed a Food Supply Board, w hich worked w ith the N orthern Cooperatives U nion. In the villages the peasants’ cooperatives, frequently led by SRs, quickly tu rned into agencies for the supply of the People’s army. T h e Siberian peasant un io n was th e m ain organizing force of the uprising.84 A nd the com m ander of the headquarters of the People’s Arm y in the Ishimsk-Petropavlovsk region was a Socialist Revolutionary, Vadim R odin, a teacher. As in th e Volga area, SR organizations and influence were very strong in Siberia. T h e very use of a political vocabulary— Peasant un io n , C onstituent Assembly, and People’s A rm y— m ade it clear to any contem porary th at this uprising was guided by SR term inology and values. T h e official SR party leadership tried to dow nplay SR involvem ent in the Siberian uprisings, because it disapproved o f th em and was trying to protect the party from C heka terror. Yet Siberian SR organizations, as we have seen, were m ore anti-Bolshevik than the party center, and they, especially those associated with the cooperatives, p u r­ sued their own policy. T h e rebels avoided theorizing about the political pro­ gram or state order. M ost often they said: “For right now, we are fighting the C om m unists, and after th at we’ll see.” W hatever there’ll be, it won’t be worse than u n d er the C o m m u n ists.”85 In the tow nship o f Surgut the rebels founded a Provisional C om m ittee of Public Safety, w hich replaced the city soviet. Two weeks later they form ed the Surgut H eadquarters for the Struggle against C om m unists. It was hard for an SR reporter to com prehend the intensity of peasant hatred for the C om m unists: “In general the C om m unists were destroyed with a kind o f stubborn steadfast­ ness. T h ey were looked upon as som e kind of separate breed th at had no place u n d er th e sun. D etachm ents that were form ed in the rear [of rebel territory] and going to the front exterm inated all C om m unists on their way who had som e­ how survived up to their arrival. M ore than one hundred C om m unists were killed in this way, especially nonlocal ones. ”86 Since th e Bolsheviks persecuted the bourgeoisie, the peasant rebels released th em from prisons. T h ey reasoned, “It was fine under the burzhui. A lthough they get rich they let others live as well, ” whereas the C om m unists would no t let anyone do well. T obol’sk headquarters started publishing a newspaper, “The Voice o f the People’s A rm y, devoted mostly to news from the front. In a rem ark­ ably short tim e the peasant rebels created a functioning adm inistration in a large area. T hey an n o u n c ed a m obilization of all of the m ale population up to 8+ F renkin, Tragedtia K rest'ianskikk vosstanii v R ossii, 1918—1921, p. 123. 85 N . A. O branovskii, “T obol’skoe anti-kom m unisticheskoe vosstanie pervoi poioviny 1921 goda. (zam etki ochevidtsa),” R evoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 1 4 -15 (N o v e m b er-D e ce m b er 1921), 3 3 -3 7 . 86 Ibid., p. 36.

thirty-five years of age without any means to enforce it, and yet it was suc­ cessfully carried out on a voluntary basis.87 At the peak of the rebel successes in mid-M arch 1921 the People's Army was sixty thousand strong, the largest concentration of peasant rebel forces in one area at one tim e.88 The province peasant union organized several peasant congresses over a huge territory. Plans were made for an All-Siberian Constituent Assembly. In the first months of 1921 the rebels controlled parts or all of Tyum en, Omsk, Chelyabinsk, and Yenisseisk provinces. Optimists believed that if the movement were successful and Siberia cleared of the Bolsheviks, it would serve as a model for the rest of the country. Only in April, more than a m onth after Kronstadt, did the Bolsheviks m an­ age to concentrate sufficient forces to overwhelm the People's Army. This was a time of heavy fighting. Again some Red Army soldiers refused to shoot peasants and others changed sides, but the front steadily moved northward; one volost after another was occupied by the Reds. As practiced already by that date in Kuban, the Bolsheviks executed every fifth or every tenth person in rebel villages.89 As an eyewitness testified: “The wrath of the Chekists hit the village clergy particularly hard. They were exterminated almost to the last man. In Tobol’sk Diocese [ep a rkh iia ] alone they executed more than a hundred priests. ”90 T h e exact num ber of those executed by the Bolsheviks is not known. A local resident who returned to the area half a year after the defeat wrote that in the Golyshmanovo station a Troika for the Struggle with Banditry had con­ dem ned and executed about five hundred people. T he amnesty which was announced after the suppression brought many rebels back to their homes from the forests, where they were hiding. Yet many of them were later arrested anyway. Some smaller detachments of Greens continued to assault food supply detachm ents in the fall of 1921 as well, but the movement was crushed, and some of the same Bolsheviks returned to the same Rev.Coms and Chekas.

Suppression In the Volga basin provinces particularly but also in Tambov, Don, and Kuban, Red Army soldiers, as we have seen, often m utinied and joined the rebels. This hampered the suppression of the peasant movement severely. In the course of that war on the internal front the Bolsheviks devised different kinds of armed forces to deal specifically with the insurgency. W hat they needed most were reliable troops. In Tambov they deployed cadets of the Red officers’ schools, for 87 P. T u rch an sk ii, “ Krestianskoe vosstanie v Z ap ad n o i S ib iri,” Sihirskii arkhiv (1929), 69. 88 “Pis’m a iz Sibiri. Pis’m o iz lrkutska,” R evoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 1 2 -1 3 (S e p te m b e rO cto b er 1921), 45. 89 P. T u rch an sk ii, “Krestianskoe vosstanie v Z ap ad n o i S ib iri,” Sibirskii arkhiv (1929), 71. 90 Ibid.

exam ple. B ut these were no t sufficient. T h e m ain force they deployed were the so-called units for special assignm ent (C hO N ) and Internal Security troops (Vokhra and V N U S) under the direct com m and of D zerzhinsky’s deputies. T hese troops had a large percentage of C om m unists and of foreigners: H u n ­ garians, Latvians, and C hinese. In the Urals m ilitary district, for exam ple, six brigades “servicing the area,” as a report p u t it, num bered 20,408. T h e M oscow m ilitary district, by com parison, had eight brigades with a total strength of 2 7 ,1 2 8 .91 W h a t is rem arkable, though, is that despite impressive num bers in com parison w ith the strength o f the rebels in a given area and despite control­ ling railroads, food supplies, and com m unications, the Bolsheviks were unable to stam p o u t th e G reens using Internal Security and C heka forces alone. T hey h ad to engage regular arm y units and run the risk of new m utinies. T h at is why it was a m atter o f utm ost im portance for the Bolsheviks to be inform ed about the soldiers’ political outlook. Special departm ents in the arm ed forces regularly m onitored soldiers’ letters h o m e and cited extracts from those letters in their reports.92 In Septem ber 1920 in the Urals a special conference of inform ers took place designed to perfect m ethods of inform ation gathering on the political outlook of soldiers. T h e conference generated m any new and innovative ideas on how to lift the m o n ­ itoring o f political views to new heights: “T h e congress of inform ers took place from 6 to 10 Septem ber. AU the delegates except one were C om m unists or candidates. T h e m ain item on the agenda was the question of daily com pilation o f data and m ethods o f im proving inform ation gathering in the m ilitary district. O n th e first item on the agenda, the congress found that daily com pilation is necessary . . . and a fu rth er strengthening of the inform ation apparatus is essential. ”9? So the congress resolved that in the m ilitary units it was necessary to create a special new job, ch ief o f the inform ation table. T hese chiefs “would be engaged exclusively w ith inform ation gathering and would have no other o bligations.” T h e duty o f all C om m unists was likewise to report any counter­ revolutionary views they m ight encounter. O th er inform ers were in charge of initiating conversations with soldiers and testing their attitudes. A refined and professional m in d control service dedicated to enforcing correct political atti­ tudes was in th e m aking. T h e Bolsheviks were very inventive. Since their reliance on naked force had failed to prop up the crum bling Soviet power in the countryside, they had to define a m ore effective policy for the sovietization of th e countryside. 91 “Svodka no. 314 Pom oshnika po politchasti k om anduiushchego voiskami v nutrennei sluzhby na 3 oktibria 1920 g oda,” T s.G .A .O . R ., Fond 130, SN K, O pis’ 3, d o cu m en t 414(2). 92 Extensive passages from soldiers’ letters are, for exam ple, in the “Politsvodka 9oi arm ii za aprel m esits" (Political survey of the N in th A rm yforA pril 1920), T s.G .A .O . R ., Fond 192, O pis’ I, d o c u m e n t 137. 93 “Doklady, otchety U ral’skogo G ubkom a RKP(b) i V oennogo okruga o polozhenii v gubernii” (subtitle: “osvedom itel’naia rabota”), T s .P.A ., TsKa RKP(b), Fond 17, O pis’ 12, d o c u m e n t 783, p. 41.

To extinguish the flames o f th e peasant war, th e Bolsheviks used m ethods fam iliar everywhere: m ilitary occupation, econom ic concessions, and a ru th ­ less regim e o f terror. W e have seen th a t in U kraine and K uban, Volga and Siberia, th e Bolsheviks b urned villages, took hostages, executed kulaks, and so on. T h e m ost vivid illustration o f suppression as a coherent policy was the experience of Tam bov. By M arch 1921 it was com m o n p lace for the Bolsheviks to approach social and political problem s in th e countryside in term s of a m ilitary cam paign. T his was an easy way out. It was difficult to win free elections; it was easier to open up a new front against “b an d its,” kulaks, “hirelings o f the bourgeoisie,” or Polish agents w ho displayed a petit bourgeois consciousness and un d erm in ed the proletarian cause. T h ey had to be sm ashed. O n ce “objectively” labeled c o u n ­ terrevolutionary, peasants h ad two choices: eith er to subm it or to be exterm i­ nated. In D ecem ber 1920 the co m m an d er o f Internal Security troops, V. S. Kornev, proposed to D zerzhinsky: “For the final liquidation o f Antonov's bands it is necessary to flood the area of rebellion w ith arm ed force in order to saturate it with a total occupation. T h is is exactly w hat I am doing now .”94 Indeed, T am bov Province was flooded with m ilitary units. Fam ous Red Army c o m ­ m anders were sum m o n ed . M ach in e guns, artillery, and airplanes— everything was throw n into battle on the T am bov front. A nd yet achieving victory by purely m ilitary m eans proved impossible. T h e d o cum ents available now on th e Bolshevik suppression of the T am bov rebellion provide a rem arkable expose o f th eir m entality and their attitudes to social and political problem s. W h a t is m ost striking about Bolshevik c o m m u n i­ cations o n th e subject o f suppression is their degree of openness about the specifics of violence they were about to unleash on the civilian population and their perfectly open realization that they were practicing terror n o t against som e im aginary kulaks or counterrevolutionary elem ents b u t on the entire popula­ tion. T h e m ost vicious and bloody stage of suppression is associated with the Plenipotentiary C om m ission o f the All-Russian C E C for Fighting Banditry in T am bov Province, set u p in February and led by Antonov-Ovseenko. T h e suppression of th e T am bov peasant m ovem ent was carried o u t accord­ ing to a w ell-thought-out plan w hich involved m onths of preparation and execution. A ntonov-O vseenko had to face th e fact that the local Bolshevik governm ent was inept, corrupt, and dem oralized. U p to a h alf of the local party m em bers had q u it th e party. T h e ir opponents were invisible and invincible. A ntonov-O vseenko reported on a package of m easures he referred to as the occupation and sovietization plan. Its m ain objective was to occupy m ilitarily large parts of T am bov Province, especially its southw estern part, the hom e base o f the rebels, and to sovietize the countryside by force. T h e m ilitary co m ­ m an d er of th e operation, Tukhachevsky, defined sovietization, w hich “was to be enforced by the following measures: extracting bandit elem ents im planted in 94 “Telegram m a kom anduiushchego voiskami V N U S V. S. Korneva1’ (22 D ecem ber 1920), T s.R A ., Fond 76, Opis’ 5, docum ent 147.

revolutionary com m ittees, splitting up the peasantry by m eans o f arm ing it against th e bandits w hile providing it with a m aterial interest in the shape of the property confiscated from the bandits; applying terrorist m ethods against bandit sym pathizers [and] extracting U nion o f Toiling Peasantry com m ittees.”95 T ukhachevsky's list of m easures reveals the sophisticated social surgery he perform ed in Tam bov. H e openly adm itted that certain sections o f the popula­ tion were carved out, including the SRs and peasant union sym pathizers, in addition to th e actual rebels. D u rin g th e m onths o f M arch and April 1921 the C heka was working full tim e on the first step of sovietization: preparing lists of rebels and their families. It was a difficult task, and to facilitate it a system of secret inform ers and surveillance was introduced in all organizations and agencies. “It was working very well, ” boasted Antonov-O vseenko. In M arch a province congress of soviets was convened w ith the explicit purpose o f m onitoring peasants’ political views. Angry peasant delegates com plained in their speeches that local authorities treated peasants as serfs, abusing them and their cattle. T h e m ost articulate dele­ gates w ound up on the C heka lists of unreliable elem ents. By April a list of insur­ gent families was drafted. It included ten thousand nam es. T h e C heka over­ fulfilled the plan on the peasant front by also com posing lists of suspect families. T h e next task was to split the peasant com m unity and, if possible, isolate the insurgents from the local population. To divide the com m unity, L enin’s p len­ ipotentiary created “special funds for rewarding particularly loyal villages and individual h o u seholds.”96 In addition to buying support Antonov-Ovseenko introduced preferential treatm ent for villages w hich fulfilled at least 50 percent of th eir delivery target. Salt and m anufactured goods were brought in to e n ­ courage peasants to cooperate w ith Soviet power. T h e attem pt to divide and rule by confiscating property from som e, called kulaks, and distributing to others, th e “poor peasants,” was practiced, as in U kraine a few m onths earlier. In Tam bov th e strategy of L en in ’s envoy was m ore com plex. It was to induce peasants to participate in their own self-destruction. T h e purpose was to generate hostility and suspicion between peasants and rebels. Toward this end A ntonov-Ovseenko started w hat he called a cam paign o f village assembly resolutions against the insurgents. Essentially peasants were forced to pass a verbal verdict against the G reens in full knowledge that the insurgents w ould find out and that scores would have to be settled for treason. T h is is exactly w hat L en in ’s plenipotentiary needed. To prom ote such feuds, he created so-called detachm ents of self-defense, that is, peasant detachm ents that were forced to fight the rebels if they approached the village. M ost interesting is T ukhachesky’s explicit adm ission that sovietization included forcing peasants to com prom ise them selves in the eyes o f the rebels and provoking their wrath 95 “C o m m a n d e r o f the T roops in the T am bov Province to L en in ” (16 July 1921), Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, d o c u m e n t 706, p. 482. 96 A ntonov-O vseenko, Ό Banditskom dvizh en ii,” ibid., p. 518.

for serving th e Bolsheviks. T h is tech n iq u e had been used a few m onths earlier in K uban. It was a purposeful attem p t n o t only to divide th e peasant com m unity b u t to provoke rebel reprisals against peasants in order to u n d e rc u t th e rebels’ social base. T h e taking of hostages had acquired grand proportions by the late spring of 1921.97 T h e Bolsheviks held at least five th o u san d hostages in th eir cam ps. In m ost cases th e Bolsheviks reckoned th a t these were wives and children o f rebels, and th e threat o f th eir execution was supposed to act as a deterrent. If there was a need, for exam ple, to protect a railroad, hostages were taken from the su rro u n d ­ ing countryside, an d it was m ade know n th at if the tracks were sabotaged, hostages would be executed. T his system was widely practiced, as A ntonovO vseenko adm itted, to protect telegraph lines, bridges, and rail tracks. If it was know n for sure th a t a fam ily had a m an hiding in the forests w ith the G reens, they w ould be taken hostage and th reatened w ith execution w ithin two weeks unless' the rebel showed up. I f h e did, he was som etim es shot. I fh e was lucky, his fam ily would be exiled u n h a rm e d to the no rth . A nother effective tech n iq u e used to divide th e co m m u n ity was a cam paign prom ising clem ency to return­ ing insurgents.98 Six thousand believed the prom ises and returned to their dom iciles. T h ese people were perceived as traitors by the rebels, and reprisals against th em played into th e Bolsheviks’ hands. As it tu rn ed out, “pardoned” rebels were n o t really pardoned at all b u t exiled as rebel sym pathizers and unreliable elem ents rather th a n executed as rebels. A ntonov-O vseenko re­ ported th at th e G reens’ resorting to force only weakened th em by isolating them from th e peasant masses. A ccording to Tukhachevsky, these m easures designed to split the peasant com m u n ity worked. In July h e wrote: “th e peasantry has been com prom ised in the eyes o f th e bandits”99 T h e Bolshevik hero o f the T am bov war proudly reported to L enin th at by 11 July 1921 over twenty thousand rebels had been an n ih ilated , the peasant u n io n had been sm ashed, and Soviet power restored. Yet even after this spectacular victory on th e peasant front Tukhachevsky feared th at once the occupation forces were w ithdraw n, peasants w ould start their rebellion again. H ence he recom m ended a prolonged occupation. Needless to say, n o t only was L en in fully aw are th at sovietization was a regim e o f occupa­ tion in the R ussian countryside, b u t his recom m endations to Tukhachevsky and A ntonov-O vseenko were to “press h ard er” and, as usual, “raspravitsia mercilessly. ” His plenipotentiaries did exactly that. T h e brutality of occupation is evidenced by an order signed by Tukhachevsky and A ntonov-O vseenko and published in th e Tam bov Izvestiia on 11 Ju n e 1921: Since the first of June the struggle against banditry has reestablished order in the countryside. Soviet power systematically reestablishes the peaceful work of the peas97 Ibid., p. 542. 9» Ibid., p. 528. 99 “C om m ander of the Troops in the Tam bov Province to L enin” (16 July 1921), ibid., p. 482.

ants. Thanks to the energetic actions of our troops, Antonov’s band has been defeated and dispersed, and its members fall, one by one, into our hands. In order to tear out the roots of banditry and of the movement of Socialist Revolu­ tionaries, the commission has decided to supplement the existing regulations with the following clauses: 1) AU citizens who refuse to identify themselves are to be shot on the spot. 2) In villages which hide weapons, the Political Commission of the district or of the region is to take hostages who are to be executed if the weapons are not surrendered. 3) In cases when hidden weapons are found, the order has been given to shoot on the spot and without trial the oldest member o f the family present. 4) T he family in whose house a bandit is hiding is to be arrested and exiled from the province, and the oldest in the family is to be shot on the spot without trial. 5) Families which provide sanctuary to family members of the bandits or who hide the property of the latter are to be considered themselves as families of bandits, and the oldest working member o f sueh a family is to be shot on the spot without trial. 6) If the family of a bandit succeeds in fleeing, its property is to be distributed to the peasants who remain loyal to Soviet power, and the abandoned houses are to be burned. 7) This order is to be implemented sternly and mercilessly. Itis to be read at village assemblies.100 T h e se w ere n o t m ere th reats. In a d etailed resu m e A ntonov-O vseenko reported to L en in th a t d u rin g th e last w eek o f J u n e 16,000 “d eserter-b an d its” w ere a p p re h e n d e d an d 1,500 b a n d it fam ilies extracted; 3,430 hostages an d 913 hostage fam ilies w ere ta k e n .101 T h e psychological effect o f these m easures was en o rm o u s. A n to n o v -O v seen k o w rote to L e n in th a t peasants w ere finally a c ­ q u irin g a co n scio u sn ess o f th e futility o f struggling against S oviet pow er, b e ­ cause th e Bolsheviks w o u ld sh o o t as m a n y p eo ple as necessary u n til all resis­ ta n c e was cru sh e d . T h is rem ark ab le frankness suggests th a t in c u lcatin g a slave m e n ta lity a n d b lin d o b e d ien ce based o n m erciless sh o o tin g was an objective L e n in ’s envoy shared w ith L en in . T h e final stage o f th e o p eratio n was th e d e p o rta tio n o f “hostile social e le ­ m e n ts .” T h irty th o u sa n d rebels a n d a b o u t 5 0,000 “b a n d it” fam ilies, th a t is, w o m en an d c h ild re n , w ere evicted from th e ir h o m es an d d e p o rted , according to an SR re p o rt from T am bov. M o reover th e total n u m b e r o f deportees from an area in c lu d in g su rro u n d in g rebel provinces was over 1 0 0 ,0 0 0 .102 In th e n e ig h ­ bo rin g Volga p rovinces it was fa m in e th a t broke th e back o f th e peasan t resis­ ta n c e m o v e m e n t. M illio n s d ied o f starvation a n d disease. A W estern scholar 100 T h e text o f the order was published in “Le M ouvem ent Insurrectionel,” Pour la Russie, no. 9 2 (1 8 A ugust 1921), 2. 101 A ntonov-O vseenko, Ό Banditskom dvizhenii," Trotsky Papers, vol. 2, p. 542. 102 “Le M ouvem ent In surrectionel,” Pour la Russie, no. 92 (18 A ugust 1921), 2.

wrote in 1922: “Russian agriculture has been led to a catastrophe. Terrible fam ine em braces an area w ith a population of 40 m illion people, th at is, a third of the total population o f Soviet Russia. T his fam ine is prim arily the result of th at u n fo rtu n a te an d destructive policy. ”10ϊ It was a grand rehearsal for a m u ch larger operation o f deportation and starvation w hich would run into hundreds o f thousands, indeed m illions, ten years later. 103 Olberg, D ie Bauem revolution in Russland, p. 63.

E pilogue_________ Regim e in Crisis, 1921

As t h e Bolsheviks were fighting peasant rebels in Ukraine and in D on, Kuban, and Siberia in February 1921, the C o m m u n ist regim e was to suffer one m ore blow, w hich finally forced it to sound a retreat on the internal front. T h e upheaval of February—M arch 1921 is usually presented as a m utiny of sailors at th e Kronstadt naval base near P etrograd.1 Som e add that there also were strikes in Petrograd and M oscow .2 T hese were not isolated incidents of workers’ and sailors’ discontent. N either were these the last salvos of the Bolsheviks’ civil war with the counterrevolutionaries. T h e m utiny in Kronstadt m ust be seen in the context o f other m utinies in the arm ed forces from the end o f 1920 to early 1921. And the strikes in Petrograd and M oscow were a part of a powerful strike wave th at swept across m ajor industrial cities of Russia and Ukraine. T hese were n o t isolated incidents b u t a popular upheaval th at coincided with growing peasant insurgency— a popular upheaval th at was m u ch m ore dangerous for the Bolsheviks than the W hites ever were. It was a crisis of the entire social, political, and econom ic order o f C om m unism . To pu t it in a L eninist vocabu­ lary, Russia was in a revolutionary situation. T h e lower classes refused to live u n d er th e conditions they faced, and the governm ent was unable to govern the way it used to. T h e im m ediate cause of the strikes in Petrograd and Moscow was a drastic deterioration o f food supplies. T h e Bolsheviks had to reduce bread rations for the starving workers. T h e Special C om m ission of Labor and Defense resolved: “In M oscow, Petrograd, and the Ivanovo-Voznesensk region and in Kronstadt, to reduce bread rations tem porarily from 22 January to I February, i.e ., for ten days, by one-third of the form er quantity, i.e ., to m ake two days rations last three days. T h e reduced grain supply was in turn a direct consequence o f the Bolsheviks’ war on peasants in all m ajor grain-producing areas of Russia and Ukraine. T h is offensive was no longer connected to the civil war against the W hites. T h e W hites had been finished by that date, and that is why the Bolshevik war on peasant rebels was intensified. D uring the w inter of 1920—21 the Bolsheviks seriously tried to im plem ent the system of econom ic organiza­ tion later called W ar C om m unism . T h e party m obilized the masses, and scores of bureaucracies tried to run the econom y as a war m achine. M oney lost any 1 Fitzpatrick, The R ussian R evolution, pp. 8 6 -8 7 . 2 M cAuley, Bread a n d Justice, pp. 3 9 8-411. 3 Records, dispatch 861.9 1 1 .1 4 4 (Riga, 3 February 1921).

value. M illions o f people served as soldiers or worker-soldiers in labor arm ies. O n 13 January th e A m erican consul in Vyborg reported: “T h e Petrograd Pravda o f 26 D ecem b er published an order o f the Petrograd Soviet disco n tin u ­ ing the work at all Petrograd plants to January 10, 1921. T h e explanation given is th a t work has to be stopped ow ing to several holidays in January, b u t at the sam e tim e ab o u t 12,000 w orkm en will be sent to various suburban districts outside o f Petrograd for th e purpose o f cu ttin g firew ood.”4 W orkers were m o ­ bilized to chop wood, peasants were m obilized to cart grain. A nd yet the m ore the Bolsheviks perfected their co m m an d adm inistrative system, the m ore they m obilized th e masses, an d the m ore bureaucracies they set up, the less the system seem ed to produce. In fact the econom y virtually cam e to a halt in February 1921. N oth in g worked. Railroads barely functioned. Food supplies were ru n n in g out. For th e lack o f raw m aterials m ost factories had to be shut dow n. T h e population was ab andoning the cities. T h e Bolshevik leaders were very well inform ed ab o u t the political attitudes of workers and sailors. In a classified report to Dzerzhinsky, F eldm an, th e c h ie f o f the First Special D ep art­ m e n t of th e C heka, wrote: T h e discontent o f the masses in the Baltic Fleet has been exacerbated by letters from hom e. Alm ost all o f them contain complaints about difficulties o f life and injustices w illingly or unw illingly perpetrated by local authorities. Considering that this [is] one o f the m ain causes o f discontent and not only am ong Baltic Sea sailors but in the armed forces generally, it is imperative to pay close attention to this. AU party members and nonparty sailors unanim ously refer to depressing news from hom e. Here they took away the last horse, there an old man, a [sailor’s] father, was imprisoned. In another case they confiscated the entire crop, and in another took away the last cow, and in another the requisition detachm ent took away personal belongings and clothes, and the examples go on and o n . 5

N o d o u b t institutionalized robbery, coercion, and violence against the sailors’ fam ilies co u ld n o t b u t trigger protest. Yet the underlying causes were m ore profound. News from h o m e was n o t the cause b u t a catalyst of the sailors’ rebellion. A n im p o rtan t psychological shift in public opinion occurred in the w inter of 1 9 2 0 -2 1 . D u rin g th e civil war w ith th e W hites the workers and peasants were asked to e n d u re hardships until th e end o f the war. S om eone else was always to blam e for the tem porary difficulties: th e W hites, the Allies, or the M ensheviks an d th e SRs. N ow th e W hites were finished, the Allies gone, and still there was n o bread. People were tired o f being fed with prom ises. T h e m ood in workers’ neighborhoods in M oscow an d Petrograd was rem iniscent o f O cto ­ ber 1917: e n o u g h prom ises an d en o u g h waiting. W orkers dem anded a t nu+ Enclosure in dispatch of 23 January from Helsinfors [Helsinki], Records, dispatch 861.911.133. 5 “Doklad N achal’nika Pervogo Spets. Otdela Feldm ana,” T s.P.A ., Dzerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, O pis’ 3, docum ent 167.

m erous rallies decent food rations, new elections, and fair treatm ent. T h e gloom y passivity o f the preceding m onths gave way to an outburst o f frustration and political action. As a result, as one historian pu t it: “sporadic disturbances developed into a general assault on the W ar C o m m u n ist system .”6 Alm ost sim ultaneously in M oscow and Petrograd on 22—23 February spontaneous workers’ dem onstrations took place w hich set off the chain of events that led to the K ronstadt rebellion. In M oscow strikes were provoked by a reduction o f food rations. T he striking printers m arched to a rubber factory in Kham ovniki D istrict and persuaded workers there to join them . T h en they m arched to the Red Army barracks intending to attract soldiers as well. T h e C om m unists in the barracks locked the soldiers inside and opened fire on the workers. Som e were killed and w ounded. T hey rushed to other districts of M oscow calling Bolsheviks “m urderers” and inciting o th er workers to join them in protests and m arch es.7 T h e Petrograd C heka reported to the central C heka that in the first two weeks of February 1921 “strikes took place at m any factories and plants. At the Arsenal plant workers gave speeches echoing the M ensheviks.”8 T h e C heka was alarm ed at the ap­ pearance of rum ors forecasting the “approaching end of Soviet ru le .” As a preventive m easure the Petrograd C heka arrested 266 persons.9 D espite early warnings o f the com ing earthquake, the events in M oscow and Petrograd caught all political parties by surprise. As happened so m any times before du rin g the Russian revolution, the hungry masses, not political leaders, were the makers of events. T roubles in Petrograd also started on 22 February. N um erous rallies were held at various factories and plants. W orkers protested th e reduction in food rations. Bolsheviks’ attem pts to calm the workers only ignited storm ier protests. T hey were shouted at and throw n out o f factories. T h e resolutions passed at these rallies were overwhelm ingly those sponsored by the M ensheviks and SRs. T hose called for convocation of the C onstituent Assem­ bly, free elections, an end to the Bolshevik dictatorship and the C heka, and freedom of tra d e .10 O n 23 and 24 February the Baltic shipbuilding plant and th e T u b e plan t joined the strike. T h e soldiers o f the Izmailovsky and Finliandsky regim ents at their m eetings passed resolutions in support of workers' dem ands. T h e A m erican consul in Vyborg described the beginning of unrest in his dispatch to the State D epartm ent: In P etrograd, th e u n re s t b eg an o n 24 F e b ru a ry a t 11 AM w h e n T ru b o c h n y i p la n t w o rk m en in V asilievsky islan d sto p p ed w ork a n d w ith th e ir wives a n d c h ild re n 6 Sakwa, Soviet C om m unists in Power, p. 241. 7 “Po Rossii. Rabochie volneniia v Moskve," Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 5 (April 1921), p. 23. 8 Ibid. 9 “V Sekretnyi Otdel Vecheka. Dvukhnedel’naia Informatsionanaia svodka Petrogradskoi C heka,” T s.P. A., DzerzhinskyArchive, Fond 76, Opis’ 3, docum ent 167. 10 “Les Evenements de Petrograd," Pour la Russ/e, no. 56 (16 M arch 1921).

m arch ed to L aferm tobacco factory. T h e y raised placards “D ow n w ith C o m m u n ism ” an d called for free trade. In spite o f obstructions caused by th e d etach m en ts o f m ilitary students, th e Laferm a n d Baltic [plant] w orkm en joined th e strikers as well as a n u m b e r o f R ed soldiers q u artered in barracks o f so-called F in lan d regim ent. T h e success o f uprising d ep en d ed o n steps taken by B altic

navy

sailors. BoIsheviki did all

possible to keep th em from u n itin g w ith m u tin o u s w orkm en. A tfirstsailo rs o f Poltava and G an g u t passed an “aw aiting reso lu tio n ” b u t later they w ith o th er sailors disre­ garded orders o f th eir com m issaries a n d even disposed o f som e of th e latter. T h e y th e n tried to c o m m u n ica te w ith an d assist th e w orkm en. In th e m ean tim e, com m issary A ntzelow itch tried to speak to B altic [plant] w orkm en b u t was forcibly evicted from his m o to r car. K alinin, w ho is a peasant, had m ore success an d m o b listened b u t refused to disperse. W orkm en only w ent to th eir factories an d succeeded in having others join th em . A t this m o m e n t, large patrols appeared consisting o f m ilitary students a n d trustw orthy C o m m u n ists. AU m eetings w ere dispersed b u t n o t w ith o u t bloodshed. A n extra session o f Petrograd Soviet was called. T h e city was declared u n d e r m artial la w .11

On 25 February several clashes between strikers and cadets of the Red offi­ cers’ schools took place. A Cheka report stated that workers disarmed the soldiers o f one platoon. Attempts were made to attract the Petrograd garrison to the side o f the strikers. T he workers, continued the report, put forward political demands to convene the Constituent Assembly and hold new elections to the city soviet. “T he situation is alarming. They would not let Bolsheviks speak. They demand abolition o f special departments of the Cheka and freedom of trade.”12 According to the results of an investigation, concluded the Petrograd Cheka, the Mensheviks played a prominent role in these events. T h e report o f the SRs to their own Central Com m ittee contained more details on the clashes in Petrograd. O n 24 February at 3 PM two com panies o f C o m m u n ist troops were m arch in g along th e Nevsky Prospect. W orkers from various factories an d plants, assem bled there, began sh o u tin g “D ow n w ith th e Soviets.” T h e soldiers responded w ith several salvos in th e air. A fter th a t th e workers’ crowds rushed to th e soldiers an d began disarm ing th em . S om e o f th e soldiers d ropped th e ir w eapons an d joined th e workers. T h ey all m oved to Vasilievsky Island. O n th e follow ing day by th e evening th e p o p u latio n o f Vasilievsky Island recognized th e autho rity o f th e insurgents, w ho had inform ed the B altic Sea F leet o f th e ir a c tio n .13

During these clashes 4 workers from the Obukhov plant and 8 from Putilov were killed; 18 other workers were wounded. According to the SR source, the Petrograd Cheka arrested 3 50 workers at the Putilov plant and 185 at Obukhov; 11 Vyborg, Finland (3 M arch 1921), Records, dispatch 861.00.8242. 12 “Razgovor po priam om u provodu s Petrogradom ,” Ts.P.A ., Dzerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, O pis’ 3, docum ent 167. 15 “Svedeniia o sobytiiakh v Petrograde” (handwritten), PSR Archive, docum ent 2047.

the total reached about 1,000 workers from various plants. Several thousand soldiers were reported as having abandoned their units and joined the strikers. To anyone w ho had lived through the events of February 1917, this chain of events appeared strikingly sim ilar. It looked as if a popular insurrection had begun. As in 1918, workers from various plants elected delegates to the Petrograd Assembly of Plenipotentiaries, w hich defined its tasks in a declaration: “W e, th e representatives of plants and Socialist parties in Petrograd, despite m u ch th at we disagree on, have united on the basis o f the following goals: O verthrow of the Bolshevik dictatorship, free elections to the soviets, freedom of speech, press, and assembly for all; and release of political prisoners. To achieve these objectives we call on all to launch a general political strike.”14 T h e Petrograd Bolsheviks were clearly frightened by these developm ents. T h ey could n o t easily hide the fact that w hat they had on their hands was a workers' and soldiers’, not a W h ite G uards’, m ovem ent. W hatever their propa­ ganda lines later were, their appeals to the workers on 26 February leave no doubt on th at score. T h e appeal m ade by Zinovievbetrayed a sense of panic and a desperate attem pt to buy tim e with concessions. Soviet power had already bought, he claim ed, 18 m illion pud of grain abroad, paying for it in gold. T h e Petrograd soviet had already ordered that anti-profiteering detachm ents be rem oved from rail stations. T h e soviet had already ordered th at additional trains to the countryside be put into service. T h e difficulties were tem porary. Things would be better. N ot a word was said about free elections or C heka arrests.15 If Z inoviev’s appeal was full of prom ises, the one by the Red cadets sounded like a threat: “Yesterday [24 February] we did no t shoot w ith com bat bullets. B ut we are telling you openly, push aside those scoundrels who urge you to strike, or else we will n o t be able to distinguish between those innocent and guilty. . . . To o u r enem ies we have only one kind of answer, regardless o f w hether they are at th e front or in the rear. ”16 T h e Petrograd C heka and Zinoviev tried to present p o pular unrest to the outside world and to M oscow as the work of agitators and conspirators. T h e ir discourse, however, leaves no doubt that the authorities ad­ dressed the Petrograd workers as a whole. T h e problem with the C om m unists' handling o f the crisis was that they com bined econom ic concessions with in­ tensified repression. T h eir strategy apparently was to placate the mass of hungry workers and isolate them from those expressing political dem ands. T h e im m e­ diate effect o f this policy was to radicalize the protest m ovem ent even further. In the m ean tim e the Bolsheviks began pulling available m ilitary forces to Petrograd. T h eir problem was th at they could n o t quite be certain that the troops were reliable. For exam ple on 25 February authorities in Novgorod, a city betw een Petrograd and Moscow, received an order to dispatch three regiM A m erican consulate, Vyborg, enclosure in Records, dispatch 861.911.167. 15 “Ko vsem truzhenikam i truzhenitsam Petrograda,” ibid. 16 O t krasnykh kursantov R abochim i rabotnitsam Petrograda” (25 February 1921), ibid.

m ents stationed there to Petrograd. T h is was n o t an easy order to fulfill, because the day before N ovgorod garrison soldiers had held storm y rallies protesting grain requisitioning. Soldiers w ho spoke at the rallies accused a C o m m u n ist com m issar, Epifanov, o f selling soldiers’ supplies on the black m arket. C heka ch airm an Z alkind disbanded th e rallies an d arrested forty-five soldiers and twelve Red A rm y officers. T h e next day soldiers o f one o f th e three regim ents ordered to m ove to Petrograd refused. T h ey stopped the train betw een stations and killed th e com m issars, and over seven h u n d red deserted w ith their w eap o n s.17 Local peasant partisans dam aged th e rail tracks in several places to m ake m o v em en t o f troops to Petrograd m ore difficult. B ut this was only the beginning. M u c h m o re o m inous developm ents were to follow. O n 27 an d 28 F ebruary th e crews o f several big ships of the Baltic F leet took the side o f th e workers by supporting their political dem ands. T h e A m erican consul in V yborg described th e situation in the city on 27 February: T h e extra food ration m entioned in my telegram [no. 275 on 3 March, 6 p. m .] was gradually delivered to win over the mutinous workmen. It consisted o f one pound of meat and one and a quarter pound o f bread which made quite a hole in Petrograd’s dwindling food supply. 3000 sailors at naval school rooms passed resolutions princi­ pally calling for C onstituent Assembly, free trade and traveling privileges. On 27 February streets were comparatively quiet due to the patrols and repressive measures, but only a small percentage o f factories were in operation. Som e of the workers returned to their posts but did nothing and conferences continued. A message was sent from Kronstadt office to send delegates to factories to discuss further action. T he naval com m issaries and Kalinin did all possible for the next day or two to prevent cooperation between Kronstadt and w orkm en.18

T h e worst-case scenario for th e Bolsheviks would be for the sailors to join the strikers in Petrograd. In such a case th e insurgents would have a preponderance of m ilitary force on th eir side. T his is exactly w hat happened on 28 February. At 11:00 p . m . Z inoviev sent a panicky telegram to L enin. “Kronstadt: T h e two biggest ships, Sevastopol’ and Petropavlovsk, have adopted SR /B lack H undreds’ resolutions and presented an u ltim atu m to be answ ered in 24 hours. A m ong the workers in Petrograd th e disposition is as before unsteady. Large plants do not work. W e expect th a t th e SRs are going to speed up events.”19 T h e K ronstadt sailors’ rebellion started with an act of defiance by these two ships’ crews against Bolshevik authorities. It was the next stage in the escalation of pop u lar u nrest in Petrograd. T h e resolution w hich Z inoviev characterized as “Black H u n d re d ” in fact dem anded free elections, free trade, the release of 17 “Brozhenie sredi soldat,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 5 (April 1921), 30.0 18 Vyborg, Finland (4 M arch 1921), Records, dispatch 861.00.8241. 19 Zinoviev to Lenin (28 February 1921), T s.P.A ., Dzerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, Opis’ 3, docum ent 167.

political prisoners, and equal food rations for a ll.20 It m erely reitetrated long­ standing workers’ dem ands. C om m unications between L enin, Dzerzhinsky, and Z inoviev leave no doubt that they all knew very well that they were dealing with a popular insurrection of workers and sailors, not Black H undreds or counterrevolutionaries. Yet L enin and Dzerzhinsky im m ediately decided to present the actions of Kronstadt sailors to the outside world as a W hite G uards’ conspiracy of G eneral A. R. Kozlovsky. By February 1921 this becam e an autom atic Bolshevik reaction to popular discontent. L enin dem anded that the head o f the C heka report to him on the situation in Petrograd and Kronstadt every four hours. O nly ten copies of these reports were m ade. Eight of them were for the heads of various C heka departm ents, one was m arked for the archive, and one sent to L enin. This suggests that not even all m em bers of the Politburo were inform ed of the developm ents in Kronstadt. T h e Bolshevik strategy was to prevent any news from Kronstadt from reaching other cities; to present the events there as an o th er W hite G uards’ conspiracy; to prevent K ron­ stadt sailors and Petrograd workers from taking over the city; and after that to suppress the uprising by superior m ilitary force. It was a pragm atic plan, but in the early days of M arch, w hen a R evolution­ ary C om m ittee was form ed in Kronstadt and w hen m ilitary m ight was on the side of th e insurgents, it was far from clear w hether the C om m unists were going to be in a position to hold Petrograd, let alone conquer Kronstadt. T h e workers were on strike, the garrison was unreliable, and there were only ten thousand C o m m unists in the city. Zinoviev panicked and was ready to abandon Pe­ trograd. O nly bad news was com ing to L enin every four hours in those hectic first days of M arch. M ore ships’ crews followed the exam ple o f the the first two. C o m m unists were throw n out of a general m eeting in Kronstadt on I M arch. A R evolutionary C o m m itte o f rebel sailors was form ed in Kronstadt on 2 M arch. C o m m unists and com m issars were arrested. W ith o u t a shot being fired, the Kronstadt naval m ilitary base with the entire Baltic F leet of Russia was lost to the C om m unists. T h e Kronstadt Revolutionary C om m ittee sent its representa­ tives to Petrograd in an attem pt to win over the entire Petrograd garrison to its side, w ithout firing a shot. T h e C om m unists were in real danger of losing Petrograd, and the political effect o f th at loss on the rest of Russia would be enorm ous. L enin urged D zerzhinsky to hold Petrograd at whatever cost. O n 3 M arch the A m erican consul in Vyborg described the situation in Petrograd: O ut c o u r ie r arrived h ere today at 12 n o o n . H e b r o u g h t a c o m p le te review o f th e r ec en t e v e n ts in Petrograd up to 2 M arch . S o v ie t a u th o rities by th e e x trem e m easu res h a v e su p p ressed a part o f th e u p risin g an d m u tin ie s, b u t still th e w o rk m en , sailors, a n d c o u n te r re v o lu tio n a rie s m a n a g e to co n g reg a te

in

o th er p laces. S h ots w ere still

20 T he entire text o f the resolution is in Getzler, K ro n sta dt, 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 2 1 , p. 214.

b e in g fired a n d a rrests b e in g m a d e as o f 10

p.m .

2 M a rc h , a n d th e re fo re th e S o v iet

a d m in is tra tio n d o e s n o t c o m p le te ly c o n tro l th e s itu a tio n .21

Contrary to a widespread belief that the Kronstadt sailors never even tried to coordinate action with workers, Cheka docum ents suggest the opposite. On 6 M arch the Petrograd Cheka reported to Zinoviev: “As of now we do not expect an opening of hostilities by the [Kronstadt] rebels. They are expecting an uprising of workers and the rest of the population in Petrograd, where they are sending their people for the preparation of an uprising which is expected on 6 or 7 M arch.”22 It was not a matter of a few troublemakers. Entire plants were by now hotbeds of anti-Bolshevik revolutionary activity. Support the Kronstadt Sailors! Join the Kronstadt Sailors! These becam e the most popular slogans of the day in Petrograd. O n 8 M arch the Petrograd Cheka reported to Zinoviev: “T he [Kronstadt] Revolutionary Com m ittee is expecting an uprising in Pe­ trograd, where to it is sending its own people. . . . At a rally of workers of the Arsenal plant a resolution was passed to join the Kronstadt uprising [p riso ed in it sia k v o ss ta n iiu ]. T he general m eeting has elected a delegation to maintain contact with Kronstadt. T he composition of the delegation is one Menshevik, one SR, and one anarchist. ”23 T h e Cheka report added that the said delegation had already been arrested. It seems that the Cheka did not dare at that stage to attack entire plants. Instead it concentrated its efforts on the leaders and on disrupting com m unication: all delegates to other enterprises, all Mensheviks and SRs who could be found, all speakers at rallies were being arrested day after day. T he Cheka reports cast doubt on the view that Petrograd workers explicitly eschewed political action or that their protest was limited to economic demands only. T h e workers, just as the sailors, defied Bolshevik authorities, and they were willing to join the sailors in overthrowing the Bolsheviks. T he only differ­ ence between them and the sailors was that the sailors had heavy artillery and the workers did not. They were essentially defenseless vis-a-vis the Cheka. And on 7 M arch the Cheka reported that it was launching “decisive actions against the workers.”24 A massive purge of Petrograd factories and plants began. Interrogations of individual workers, lists of speakers at rallies, forced confessions, threats of execution— all these means were used to identify anyone who had shown antiSoviet feelings. Observers reported that the Com m unists virtually terrorized the worker population into subm ission.25 T he key here is that the Com munists suppressed the workers' uprising in Petrograd in the first days of M arch.26 T he 21 Vyborg, Finland, Records, dispatch 861.00.8243. 22 “A genturnaia svodka Zinovievu” (6 M arch 1921), Ts.P.A ., Dzerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, O pis’ 3, docum ent 167. 23 “Operativno-inform atsionnaia svodka Cheka” (8 M arch 1921), ibid. 24 O p e rativ n aia svodka G ubcheka” (7 M arch 1921), ibid. 25 Q uarton, Vyborg, Finland (12 M arch 1921), Records, dispatch 861.00.8319. 26 Siegelbaum , Soviet State and Society between Revolutions, p. 77.

sailors’ uprising in Kronstadt, w hich was an outgrowth of the uprising in Petrograd, was now cut off from its larger social base and localized on a small island. From this m o m en t on the Kronstadt sailors were on the defensive. Itw as only a m atter of tim e and casualties before they would be overrun. T h e co n ten t and political message of popular appeals in Petrograd and Kronstadt changed considerably in the course o f only two weeks. If, in the last days o f February, workers’ resolutions sounded like lists of grievances focusing prim arily on econom ic hardships, two weeks later they expressed an outright rejection of C o m m u n ist rule and Soviet power as such. In a leaflet printed clandestinely despite arrests, the Petrograd Assembly o f Plenipotentiaries ap ­ pealed to th e population: You all have read appeals and orders o f the governm ent. You all understood their m eaning. T h ey respond w ith guns to the lawful dem ands o f the people. G u n s are thundering over Petrograd. It is inadm issible to wait any longer. It is tim e to act. T h e P eople them selves m ust d ecid e their fate. T h ey them selves m ust overthrow the yoke o f B olshevism . E veryone w ithout exception m ust take part in this struggle. T h e Workers have already risen. T h e villages are in flam es. Kronstadt rose in rebellion to support Petrograd workers. N o w Petrograd workers m u st rise to support Kronstadt sailors. 27

T h e revolutionary press in Kronstadt echoed sim ilar them es. T h e Bolsheviks were referred to as a party that had usurped power, “by m ethods of force, m urder, treason, and vengeance on the families of those who had risen in revolt.” T h e Bolsheviks had prom ised liberty and given workers C heka terror instead. T h ey had talked about a worker-peasant alliance bu t robbed the c o u n ­ tryside. T h e editorial continued: “But the m oral yoke of C o m m u n ism is even m ore crim inal. T hey have enchained the whole spiritual life of the laborers, forcing th em to think like them . Now the people are convinced that they have betrayed th e principles of socialism , and they will p u t an end to this tyranny. H ere in K ronstadt we are laying the cornerstone of the third revolution, open­ ing up a vista of true socialist reconstruction.”28 T hese docum ents o f free political expression, rare under the Bolshevik dic­ tatorship, are an im portant source for understanding popular attitudes in 1921. T h e Petrograd plenipotentiaries did no t know w hat the Kronstadt newspapers were writing. Yet the m ain them es o f their appeals were the sam e. And sim ilar attitudes surfaced n o t only in Kronstadt and Petrograd but in Moscow, Kharkov, T u la, Saratov, and alm ost all other industrial centers of Russia and Ukraine. Bolshevik rule was discredited and detested everywhere. Petrograd and Kron­ stadt were n o t an exception b u t a sym ptom of a general crisis of the C om m unist 27 “Ko V sem ” (11 M arch 1921), Portugeis Archive. 28 “Z a C h to M y B orem sia,” lzvestiia Vremennogo Revoliutsionnnogo K om iteta (8 M arch 1921), in H elsinfors [Helsinki] (19 M arch 1921), Records, dispatch 861.911.96.

order. A survey of provincial C heka reports on the situation in their provinces leaves one w ith n o o th er conclusion. Kostroma: T he disposition o f workers is such that strikes may ignite any m om ent now. We have arrested the leaders o f the M ensheviks and SRs. W ith the com ing o f spring we expect a worsening o f the situation in terms o f a rise o f banditry and desertion.29

W orkers struck, soldiers deserted, an d peasants form ed bands and attacked the C o m m u n ists— this was the pattern in m ost if n o t all provinces o f Russia in February 1921. Bryansk: N ew action by Bryansk and M al’tsevsky workers is expected. T he Cheka has begun arrests o f the M ensheviks and SR s.30 G om el: T h e Cheka informs that beginning with 22 January and caused by a number o f crises, banditry is on the rise. A counterrevolutionary m ovem ent am ong the soldiers and workers is noticeable.31

Follow ing th e exam ple o f Petrograd, workers in som e cities set up assemblies of plenipotentiaries. In Saratov, for exam ple, such a council grew o u t o f a strike coordination com m ittee. If and w hen soldiers’ representatives from the local garrisons joined those assem blies, the Bolsheviks had a serious crisis on their hands. A ny m ove against workers’ representatives w ould th en trigger a soldiers’ m utin y or an in surrection, as in Kronstadt. T h e C heka reported: Saratov: T h e Control C om m ission elected by the workers is rather active. It demands the inclusion o f the representatives o f the garrison. T h e workers’ disposition is agitated. T he com m ission is in fact nothing but a strike com m ittee. T he situation at the factories is agitated. O ne can expect work stoppage any m om ent now .32

T h e situation in Saratov was particularly grave, since large forces of peasant rebels were operating all over th e province. T h e political dem ands o f workers and soldiers in Saratov echoed those in Kronstadt, even though they had no know ledge o f that. T h e y dem an d ed free elections to the soviets, convocation of the C o n stitu en t Assembly, freedom for all political parties, and the release o f political prisoners. In T u la a general m eeting of workers at the two huge plants w ent further. T h e ir resolution dem anded form ation o f a m ultiparty coalition governm ent and freedom o f tra d e .33 From Kharkov an SR worker reported that they had “th eir ow n little K ronstadt,” as he p u t it, at the end of February. A t the 29 O perativno-inform atsionnaia svodka sekietno-operativnogo upravleniia Vecheka” (7 M arch 1921), T s.P.A ., Dzerzhinsky Archive, Fond 76, O pis’ 3, docum ent 167. 30 Ibid. 31 Telegram m a, M . C heK a1 lnformatsionnaia svodka, no. 6, ibid. 52 “O perativno-inform atsionnaia svodka sekretno-operativnogo upravleniia Vecheka” (7 March 1921), ibid. 33 “T u la ,” PSR Archive, docum ent 2047.

workers’ conference one after another M enshevik/SR resolutions were passed. Speakers cond em ned the “enserfm ent of the working class,” the Bolsheviks’ robbery o f th e countryside, and the privileges o f the C om m unists. T hey de­ m an d ed free trade and free elections.34 Sim ilar dem ands were presented in m any other cities. T h ree factors distinguished the popular upheavals of F eb ru ary -M arch 1921 from th e preceding ones. (I) U rban unrest erupted sim ultaneously in all m ajor industrial centers of Russia and Ukraine. W orkers, soldiers, and sailors— all pu t forward explicitly political dem ands. (2) F o rth e first tim e since the spring of 1919 workers coordinated their political activity with soldiers an d /o r sailors. T h is m ean t in practice th at the C o m m u n ist authorities could not easily deploy arm ed force against the strikers, because they could not be sure that that would n o t provoke a m utiny. (3) Workers and soldier/sailors’ unrest erupted at a tim e w hen peasant insurgency had reached its highest point up to th at date. Tens of thousands G reen rebels fought in Tam bov, Kuban, D on, the lower Volga, the Urals, and Siberia. C o m m u n ist rule was challenged sim ultaneously by peas­ ants, cossacks, U krainians, workers, and sailors. T h e Bolsheviks had m anaged to antagonize just about all groups o f the population. T hey could not sustain a protracted war on an internal front of such dim entions for long. T h e reliable forces the Bolsheviks had were spread very thin. Indeed the country was u n ­ governable in F eb ru a ry -M arch 1921. T h e governm ent was forced to grant concessions; L enin called them a retreat in the C om m unist offensive. M arket relations in trade and agriculture were going to be restored. T his was the essence o f the so-called New E conom ic Policy introduced in M arch 1921. T h e Bolsheviks’ initial reaction to popular upheaval, however, was no t re­ form b u t intransigent persistence. Provincial authorities seem ed to be trying to show to M oscow their resolve to restore C o m m u n ist control, whatever the cost. In Sim birsk local C om m unists reported to M oscow m easures they had u n d er­ taken: “M erciless struggle against all the opponents of Soviet power; im position of m ilitarized order at the cartridge plant; repressions in regard to those who broke th e norm al rhythm of work; intensification in the process of extracting surplus foodstuffs from the population, grain, anim al fodder, e tc., according to the target distribution system. ”35 In other words W ar C o m m u n ism as usual; the m easures these authorities adopted were exactly the ones that had caused popular discontent to begin with. In th e m ean tim e the Bolsheviks m ade preparations for a final assault on Kronstadt. Since the G u lf of F inland was still covered with ice, the sailors could n o t use the only advantage they had; they could not deploy big ships. Sure enough, they used the ships’ guns to pound C om m unist positions on shore b u t 34 “Na U k rain e,” handw ritten (Kharkov, July 1921), PSR Archive, d o cu m en t 2047. 35 “Kratkii otchet predsedatelia G ub. Ispotkom a o w e d en ii voennogo polozheniia v Simbirskoi g u b e rn ii,” T s .G .A .O .R ., Fond 1235, VTsIK , O pis’ 99, d o cu m en t 10, pp. 1-2 .

were u nable to undertake an offensive operation. T h e C om m u n isat leaders su m m o n ed Tukhachevsky to co m m an d operations against the fortress at K ronstadt— a huge com plex of forts. Tukhachevsky inform ed D zerzhinsky that his plan was to direct concentrated artillery fire on one fort at a tim e until it was totally destroyed, th en direct all firepower on the next fort, and so on until the entire fortress was destroyed so that a ground offensive could com m ence. For two weeks the C o m m u n ist artillery p o unded Kronstadt, followed by bloody assaults on ice across th e G u lf of F inland. T h ousands died in fierce fighting. Several assaults were repulsed. In the en d the fortress fell. T housands of sailors were captured an d executed by th e C heka. A new wave of Red Terror rolled across the entire country. T h e party line was unam biguous: forcibly remove any organized political opposition. T h e m ore dangerous th e local Bolsheviks judged the situation to be, th e harder they h it th e opposition parties. T h e m em bers o f these parties were sim ply extracted from the com m unity one by one. T h e decision by the C o m m u n ist party leaders to wipe o u t w hatever was left of the opposition parties was m ad e in direct response to the unprecedented popular upheaval of F e b ru a ry -M a rch 1921. O n 28 February 1921 the All-Russian C heka sent an order to all provincial Chekas: T he All-Russian Cheka orders smashed to pieces the apparatus o f the anti-Soviet political parties. For this purpose in the towns and villages where strikes are going on [provincial Chekas are] to im plem ent the following: 1. Extract all intelligentsia, anarchists, SRs, M ensheviks, particularly those work­ ing in the land departments and food supply agencies. 2. After that start the extraction o f active Mensheviks and SRs and anarchists working at the plants and calling for strikes and demonstrations. Deputy Chairman o f the All-Russian Cheka: [I. K.] Ksenofontov.36

In the wake of th e popular upheavals early in 1921 the total n u m b er of socialists o f all parties in L enin's concentration cam ps was estim ated in the tens o f th o u san d s.57 T h e individual role o f these people did n o t m atter. H ere we have the ingredients o f a Stalinist approach to political activity. E ntire groups of the population deem ed hostile were going to be extracted. In 1922, in connection w ith the show trial o f th e SR party, a h u n t for anyone who had ever been a m em b er o f th e SR party at any tim e was launched. Tens o f thousands were arrested an d im prisoned w ithout any trial in the cam ps in the north. Som e o f their letters and appeals reached th e W est.58 L enin called th e introduction of m arket relations in trade and agriculture a 36 28 February 1921, Prikaz Vecheka, T s.P.A., DzerzhinskyArchive, Fond 76, O pis’ 3, docu­ m ent 167. 37 PSR Archive, docum ent 2030. 38 See, for exam ple, “An Appeal to the International Proletariat from a Prison in Tobolsk,” in Brovkin, ed., Dear Comrades, pp. 237-52.

retreat from the construction o f socialism, but there was going to be no retreat in politics. T h e N E P order was certainly not a liberalization of the Bolshevik regim e, n o r was it a search for a tolerant path to socialism. AU opposition party m em bers, w hether they were active or not, were going to be removed to the cam ps. No oppositional activity of any kind would be tolerated. W ithin a few years factions of critics were going to be weeded out from the C om m unist party itself. Retreat would be replaced by a new offensive on the peasant front. H undreds o f thousands were going to be deported. And new purges of opposi­ tionists, real and imaginary, would unfold, engulfing what was left of the C o m m u n ist party in a frenzied self-destruction by 1957. It is highly naive to believe that a “bad” Stalin departed from the path of a “good” Lenin. T he tragedies o f the 1930s were merely a continuation on a grand scale o f the war on the internal front w hich was started by Lenin.

Conclusion Identity, Allegiance, and Participation in the Russian Civil War

H ow DO w e rationally explain the behavior of people in a civil war? Som e join the fighting of their own free will, others fulfill orders from the state. Still others refuse to fight but are drawn into the war defending themselves from the state’s coercion. In the Russian civil war m any diverse social m ovem ents, political parties, and state authorities fought for a variety of reasons. Som e motivations had nothing in com m on with the others. For the Bolsheviks it was a class war for a new social order, for the W hites it was a war to restore the old order, for the G reens it was a war against participation in the civil war, and for Ukrainians it was a war o f national liberation. T h e key to understanding the civil war as a whole is th at there were m any different conflicts unfolding at the same time. T h e m otivations of the Reds, W hites, Greens, cossacks, Ukrainians, or Social­ ist Revolutionaries were rooted in their identity. N ational, regional, and local identity com peted with that based on class or ideology. A heterogeneous and prem odern society clashed with the power of a new dynam ic state, guided by the goal o f destroying all old identities and creating a new identity for all— that was the essence of the Russian civil war.

Chronology o f the Civil War M ost historians accept the official Soviet chronology of the civil war: it started in June 1918 with the SR rebellion on the Volga and ended with the defeat of G eneral W rangel in Novem ber 1920. This skewed chronology makes the front ine fighting synonym ous with the civil war. It was invented by Soviet official historiography to cover up the m uch m ore im portant and long-lasting civil war between the Bolsheviks and the peasants.1 Official chronology does not ac­ co unt for the fact th at after G eneral W rangel evacuated to Istanbul in Novem ­ ber 1920, the m ost devastating stage o f the civil war with peasant rebels was just beginning. T h e real chronology o f the Russian civil war can be viewed as having three m ajor stages. N ineteen eighteen was the year of disintegration. T h e em pire fell apart. It was a period of local and regional sovereignty and the rise o f Kalugatype republics. O nly with great approxim ation can one speak of a Bolshevik 1 Vasilii S eliu n in reopened the debate o n the role o f the G reens in Russia in his remarkable article, “Istoki,” Novyi Mir, no. 5 (1988), 162-80.

governm ent in 1918. It did not really control m uch territory. Yet it put out a claim to govern all of Russia after it disbanded the Constituent Assembly. T he Bolsheviks’ m ain opponents in 1918 were not the W hites or the Greens but the socialists. T he Mensheviks and SRs challenged Bolshevik authority first in elections to the soviets and then in an uprising on the Volga under the banner of the C onstituent Assembly. It was only after the Bolsheviks disbanded the newly elected soviets in addition to the C onstituent Assembly that the SRs decided to fight back. T he Bolsheviks had lost at the ballot box but won on the battlefield on the Volga.2 T h e SR-Ied venture to restore the C onstituent Assembly failed. T h e frontline civil war of 1918 was a war of ephemeral governments whose claim to govern was on paper only. In the critical days of August 1918, when the SRs and the Czeches took Kazan, the Bolsheviks could not muster more than a 20,000-strong Red Army. T he SRs’ People’s Army was only 30,000 strong. At that stage the peasants, having divided up the land, ignored the political strug­ gles of parties and governments. T he Bolsheviks’ establishment of committees of the poor, however, generated the first outbursts of peasant resistance. From that point onward there existed a direct correlation between Bolshevik attempts to control the countryside and peasant resistance. T he harder the Bolsheviks tried to impose “C om m unist relations” in the countryside, the harder the peasants fought back. N ineteen nineteen was the year of the W hites. In 1918 they had only a few regiments wandering in the m ountains. They were not yet a contender for national power. To explain how it was possible for a 10,000-strong W hite army of Denikin to occupy a territory populated by 50 m illion people in six months, one m ust look beyond the front line, at social and political currents on Bol­ shevik territory. T h e W hites managed to do as well as they did because they benefited from peasant uprisings on Bolshevik-held territory. Nestor Makhno did not want to aid the W hites, but his actions against the Bolsheviks did contribute to the W hites’ breakthrough. T h e D on cossacks rebelled against the Com m unists and cleared the way for D enikin’s advance.5 And the peasants in the Volga-Urals basin rebelled against the Bolsheviks, involuntarily aiding the offensive of Admiral Kolchak. In the fall of 1919 the situation was reversed. Peasant rebellions on W hiteheld territory cleared the way for the Reds. T he victories of the W hites were m ade possible by the internal troubles of the Reds, and the victories of the Reds were in fact made possible by the internal troubles of the Whites. Oliver Radkey has suggested that the peasants, at least in Tambov Province, waited for the W hites to be defeated before they started their own struggle against the Bol2 B rovkin, T h e M ensheviks after O ctober, pp. 1 2 6 -6 1 . ? U n til recen tly a h eretical view, it was expressed by R ussian historians V. P. B ulgakov an d V. V. K abanov, ‘“ V oennyi K o m m u n iz m .’ Ideologiia i o b shchestvennoe razv itie,” Voprosy Istorii, n o. 3 (1990), 4 0 - 5 7 , h ere 51.

sheviks.4 In this interpretation peasants were a third force who favored the Reds over th e W hites. Indeed they were a third force, bu t they certainly did not wait for the W h ites’ defeat; rather they acted throughout this period in their ow n selfinterest against both. O n Bolshevik- and W hite-held territory alike peasants engaged th eir rulers in a war against the official frontline civil war. T h e G reens did not w ant to fight for the Bolsheviks or for the W hites or for anybody else. T hey deserted en masse to the forests. T h e G reen m ovem ent at that stage was defensive in character. T h e Reds were m ore adept at m obilizing the population th an the W hites; they were better organizers and built a better m ilitary m a­ chine. T h a t in no way suggests th at their cause was supported by th e popula­ tion. T h e widely held assum ption th at the victorious side in the frontline civil w ar m ust have had the support of the population m ust be cast aside. T h e third stage, 1920 -2 1 , was the year o f the G reens. T h e less the danger from the W hites, the greater was the Bolshevik determ ination to im pose control over the countryside. As a Russian historian recently assessed the situation: “By th e end o f 1920 the geography and scale of peasant insurrections widened. In addition to U kraine and Siberia they broke out in the southeast and in the T am bov region and in other regions. . . . At the beginning of 1921 powerful peasant insurrections rolled across various parts of the co u n try .”5 It is essential to point o u t that the assault on the countryside by all sorts of com m ittees was not a by-product o f the Bolshevik war effort against the W hites bu t rather a sign o f norm al C o m m u n ist adm inistration after the danger o f the W hites had passed. T h e peasant war o f 1920—21 therefore was a direct consequence of norm al, nonw ar-related Bolshevik policies— such as labor conscription, the carting obligation, and the sowing com m ittees cam paign— w hich were later n am ed W ar C o m m unism .

External and Internal Fronts Even th o u g h we custom arily refer to all the conflicts and fighting in the 1917— 21 period as the civil war, in fact there was not one b u t several overlapping types o f war going on at the sam e tim e. O n e can distinguish between a civil war on the external and the internal front. M oreover the participants, their num bers and war aim s, and allies and enem ies were constantly changing. T h e civil war on th e external front was between rival governm ents w hich claim ed to control a certain territory and had m obilized arm ies, a state apparatus, and som e sort of adm inistration. In 1918 the civil war betw een the Bolshevik governm ent con­ trolling a few provinces in central Russia and the cossack regional governm ent 4 Radkey, T he U nknow n C ivil W ar in Soviet R ussia, pp. 189-90. 5 V. V. Kabanov, “A grarnaia Revoliutsiia v Rossii,” Voprosy Istorii, no. 11 (1989), 36.

on the D o n , allied w ith th e SR governm ent of the C o n stitu en t Assembly on the Volga, falls into th at category. In 1919 the socialist and cossack governm ents were replaced by W h ite gov­ ernm ents both in th e south and in the east and n o rth as the m ain frontline opponents o f the Bolsheviks. Seen from this angle, the frontline civil war betw een th e C o m m u n ist and regional governm ents in 1918 and betw een the Reds an d th e W h ites in 1919 was a civil war w ithin Russian educated society. E ach side used state structures and coercion to m obilize peasant masses for a cause into w hich th e peasants had no input. T his frontline, governm entversus-governm ent civil w ar was an unw anted war, a war im posed from above, as evidenced by th e mass desertions from b o th the Red and W h ite arm ies.6 At th e sam e tim e th e C o m m u n ist and th e W h ite governm ents conducted an o th er frontline w ar against new states form erly belonging to the Russian E m pire. T his w ar can n o t not be called a civil war, since it was not a war betw een different parts o f one society; rather it was a war to reconquer lost im perial territories: U kraine in 1918; U kraine, Latvia, L ithuania, and Estonia in 1919; P oland, A zerbaijan, and A rm enia in 1920; Georgia in 1921; and central Asia in 1 9 2 0 -2 2 . Sim ilarly the war o f th e W hite governm ent of D e n i­ kin against U krainian in d ependence forces in 1919 falls into this category. T h e frontline w ar led by governm ents on external fronts is the only war th at has received scholarly attention. Yet we m ust appreciate th e significance of the civil w ar on the internal front. T his was the civil w ar conducted by the Red and W h ite governm ents against populations on the territories they claim ed to con­ trol. T h e w ar o f th e C o m m u n ist and W h ite governm ents against the G reen peasant rebels was clearly a civil war of this category. It was a war w hich involved m o re people an d caused m ore casualties th an the relatively brief cam paigns betw een th e Reds an d th e W hites in 1919.7 U nlike the external frontline civil w ar this w ar was fought in every corner o f the country, in every province an d every uezd. It was a war o f conquest and subjugation on the governm ents’ side an d a partisan guerrilla w ar of resistance on the peasants’ side, a w ar they waged against participation in th e frontline civil war. A nd it was a war they waged against the extortion o f grain on Red territory and against the restoration o f landlords’ holdings on W h ite territory. H ere the peasants’ identity as landholders superseded any other allegiance and pitched them against any city in tru d er, Red or W h ite. As o n e historian p u t it, the Russian civil war was over two issues, land and pow er.8 From this perspective peasants fought against the property relations an d power structure o f both the Reds and the W hites. T h e R eds’ and th e W h ites’ war on the internal front was n o t directed against 6 For new data on desertion, see von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, pp. 6 9 70. 7 Conquest, The Harvest o f Sorrow, p. 50. 8 Alfred Rieber, “Landed Property, State A uthorityand Civil W ar,” Slavic Review, vol. 47, no. I (1988), 2 9 -3 9 , here 37.

peasants only. Both governm ents also fought on the invisible, internal front against other social groups deem ed hostile. T h e Bolsheviks fought a “class” war against what they called the “bourgeoisie” (property owners, the clergy, officers, “kulaks,” “petit bourgeois” elem ents) and against all political parties: the lib­ erals, the Social D em ocrats, and the Socialist Revolutionaries. It was an ideo­ logical war because the “enem y” was defined exclusively by ideological criteria. Several categories of workers w ound up on the list of enem ies o f the “proletarian dictatorship” as well. In other words the C om m unists fought this invisible and covert civil war on the internal front against all groups of Russian society. For the C om m unists the class war on the internal front was m erely an extension of the frontline civil war against the W hites. T h e C om m unist gov­ ern m en t regarded class enem ies on the internal front in the sam e m anner as enem ies beyond the front line. These people were not covered by laws. M em ­ bers o f the “overthrown bourgeois class” were treated as captured enem ies, as POW s. T hey were forced to dig trenches and incarcerated in concentration camps. M em bers of their families were taken hostage. They had to pay indem ­ nities, as a defeated country in a war would. Finally they were simply exterm i­ nated during periodic waves o f Red Terror. To a certain extent the position of a “class enem y” was worse than that of a captured soldier o f the W hite armies. Such a soldier had a chance to claim that he personally was not a supporter of the W hites. A priest, a kulak, or a m erchant had no such chance. T his was a kind of civil war in w hich the governm ent did not consider a large part of society to be citizens protected by its laws. As Richard Pipes pu t it, it was a war of legalized lawlessness.9 T h e Bolshevik policy toward all political parties during the 1917-20 period can be seen as the unfolding o f a m ilitary cam paign aim ed at their destruction. T h e Kadets were outlawed as early as 1917 and later hunted down on Soviet territory. T h e M ensheviks, SRs, and Left SRs were tolerated longer. Offensives were followed by retreats, legalizations by new waves of terror. Each tim e the liberal Bolsheviks’ policy of toleration gained an upper hand and relatively unobstructed elections to the local soviets (which had no power anyway) were held, the M ensheviks, SRs and Left SRs scored m ajor victories throughout this period. In the 1918 spring elections to the soviets the Mensheviks and SRs actually won in a majority of urban soviets.10 In the spring elections of 191911 and 1920 the opposition parties did exceptionally well, and in the spring of 1921 free elections would undoubtedly have produced socialist opposition majorities in m ajor industrial centers and SR majorities in the countryside. At each stage the Bolsheviks tightened the screws further. W hen these parties were legalized in February 1919, their newspapers were suppressed after two 9 Pipes, The R ussian R evolution, pp. 796—99. 10 Brovkin, The M ensheviks after October, pp. 159-60. 11 For the analysis of village elections of 1919, see O rlando Figes, “T h e Village and Volost’ Soviet Elections o f 1919,” Soviet Studies, vol. 40 (1988), 2 1 -4 6 .

months. Yet they could still talk freely in workers’ clubs. In 1920 the opposition parties were allowed to run in elections, but without any press of their own. And in 1921 the Cheka decimated what was left of the opposition parties, droving them into the camps, exile, or underground. T he Cheka engineered splits among opposition parties at every opportunity. N ot only did it promote the original split of the PSR into the SR and Left SR parties in Decem ber 1917, but it continued along the same path by engineering the split of the Narod group in 1919 and subsequently infiltrating it with Cheka agents and elim inating it altogether. T he same tactics were applied in regard to the Left SRs, decimated by arrests after the so-called July 1918 uprising. T he Bolsheviks allowed loyal Left SRs to exist if they repudiated “disloyal” Left SRs; the new splits in 1919 and 1920 then made it easier to liquidate this party as well. Similarly the Mensheviks were supposed to expel the right wing from their party as a price for legalization in 1919. Yet both factions were under constant surveillance by the Cheka, and both were destroyed by systematic arrests, exiles, and imprisonments by 1921. T he most im portant aspect of the Bol­ sheviks’ war on the opposition parties was that the Bolsheviks used the instru­ m ents of state— the army, the police, agents provocateurs— to promote their party cause. T he public dom ain, which is supposed to assure the well-being of all, was abused to promote the private interests of one party. T h e war conducted by the W hite regime against its internal opponents was similar in character but different in nature and smaller in scale than that of the Reds. W hite military authorities likewise were engaged in “pacification” cam ­ paigns against peasants on the internal front. W hite officers likewise did not consider socialists to be citizens protected by laws. And they arbitrarily shot them on num erous occasions. T he difference between the Reds’ and the W hites’ war on the internal front was perhaps that L enin’s government used terror as a m ethod of social engineering. T he W hites had never cherished a goal of recasting Russian society. They wanted only to preserve it from destruction, as they would put it, and to punish those who, they thought, were responsible for its disintegration. T he W hite generals, at least publicly, praised law and order and guarantees to all citizens regardless of class or nationality. T he W hites’ war on the peasants and left-wing social elements was an expression of revenge. T he peasants had to be taught the lesson that they should not take landlords’ lands. T h e socialists and the Com m unists had to be taught the lesson that they should not, as the W hites would put it, subvert Holy Russia by foreign and alien teachings. Still their ultim ate goal was to impose state authority on separate identities rather than to blend all into one. T he C om m unist terror on the other hand was part of a grand design to elim inate entire social groups of the population by violence, as obstacles to what the C om m unists called socialism. T he bourgeoisie, as Lenin tirelessly repeated year after year, had to be annihilated. Landlords, capitalists, officers, priests, kulaks, Kadets, Mensheviks, and SRs were to be smashed as well. T he

Red Terror o f the civil war established and routinized the practice of “process­ ing” entire social strata of people w ithout regard to personal guilt or lack thereof. Anyone could have been labeled a kulak or a hidden counterrevolu­ tionary or a hireling o f the bourgeoisie and disappeared not just in 1937 but in 1919. T h e key ingredients the Bolsheviks employed in this covert and invisible civil war against society were mass terror and the prom otion o f divisions within targeted social groups. Traditional ties and identities were smashed and new ones imposed. Peasants were no longer peasants but kulaks, m iddle peasants, and poor peasants. Som e were to be killed, others conscripted, others forced to comply, and still others given a chance to rule over their neighbors as agents of the center. Workers were similarly divided into hereditary proletarians, con­ scious proletarians, hirelings of the bourgeoisie, petit bourgeois conciliators, and so on. T h e m ost active and independent of them were systematically arrested, exiled, and shot throughout 1918-20. T he labels the Bolsheviks created had no relation to reality. T h e m ain characteristic o f the so-called kulaks and petit bourgeois workers was their independence. Anyone who dared to question a Bolshevik policy or action, let alone resist, or who dared to defend traditional values, econom ic interests, or identities was autom atically labeled with one of the crude Marxist terms invented by the Bolsheviks. T h e civil war on the internal front systematically exterm inated all forces in Russian society capable o f and willing to defend their autonom y and identity vis-a-vis the state. T h e Bolsheviks not only destroyed all the institutions o f civil society— independent courts, parliam entarianism , an independent press, po­ litical parties, local self-government, independent trade unions, and peasant cooperatives— b u t also any people who were associated with them . By 1921 Russia had a very hom ogeneous society, a society indeed of the masses; its form er social groups were stripped of any organizational capacity w hich could allow them to articulate their separateness or individuality. T his war on society was essentially a counterrevolution from above that destroyed European politi­ cal culture in Russia for seventy years. T he Bolsheviks tried to create a m elting pot where all local, regional, and separatist identities would m elt and the new identity o f a New Soviet M an would be forged.

T he W hite M ovem ent Perhaps one of the m ost im portant aspects o f the civil war is that it changed the very nature o f the m ajor participants. T he frontline civil war shaped the W hite movement'. It started out as a m ovem ent of dedicated and courageous officers who fought against the C om m unists w ithout any hope o f winning. T hey de­ fined themselves as Volunteers guided by noble ideas of patriotism. Yet at the height of the frontline civil war the W hite m ovem ent becam e m uch m ore

intolerant, chauvinistic, an d anti-S em itic than it had been at the beginning. If the C o m m u n ists could label anyone “bourgeois," the W hites labeled any oppo­ n e n t a “C o m m u n is t,” for w hom no laws applied. H e could be shot on the spot. T h e greatest weakness o f the W h ite m o v em en t was th at it failed to becom e a unifying national force. It rem ained alm ost exclusively a m ovem ent of officers. It lacked a social base of any kind. T h e W h ite m o vem ent failed to establish a workable partn ersh ip w ith th e liberal and socialist intelligentsia— in political term s w ith th e Kadets, SRs, and M ensheviks, who were indispensable to gov­ e rn m e n t adm inistration. T h e W h ites were suspicious of workers and revenge­ ful in regard to peasants. T h e y failed to attract th e U krainians and the cossacks to m u tu ally shared goals. T h e W h ite m o v em en t failed to organize a disciplined arm y let alo n e a state adm inistration. T h e W hites im provised the state. O n m any occasions they sim ply bluffed. T h ey did not really have a state apparatus, an adm inistratio n , police, banks, m oney, or any recruiting capacity. T hey p retended as if they were th e state and tried to cover up their actual weakness by brutally enforcing their claim s. O nly w ith the greatest difficulty can one speak o f a K olchak governm ent. It did n o t govern. Its laws and decrees were of little relevance to the h uge territory it claim ed to control. In Siberia field co m ­ m anders did w hatever they pleased. T h ey were com pletely autonom ous in their m ilitary an d civilian policies and actions. Siberia u n d er Kolchak was essentially a conglom eration o f w arlords’ fiefdoms, only nom inally u n d er “governm ent” control. T h e w arlords’ least con cern was to govern their area o f occupation; they w anted only to extract from it w hatever was needed to sustain their m ilitary in d ep e n d e n c e . 12 D e n ik in ’s arm y was m ore centralized an d disciplined th a n th at of Kolchak. D enik in h im self co m plained, however, th at h e had no control over the officers and was powerless to prevent Jewish pogrom s. If the general was powerless to control his ow n army, how could he lead an entire society? Society was beyond his reach. It was sim ply u n d er his occupation. T h e m inds and the hearts of all those w ho greeted th e W hites as liberators were quickly lost for the W hite m ovem en t, due to pogrom s, lawlessness, corruption, and the arbitrariness of its m ilitary com m anders.

The Kadets If th e W h ite m o v em en t failed to consolidate the forces o f anti-Bolshevik Russia, th e K adet party failed to lead the W h ite m ovem ent. O f all the Russian political parties the Kadets had the m ost adm inistrative and organizational talent. T h ey were a party o f professors, lawyers, and businessm en. 13 T hey had 12 For a remarkable discussion of the popular m ovem ent under Kolchak, see Norm an Pereira, “T h e Partisan M ovem entinW estern Siberia, 1918-1920,” Jahrbiicher fur Geschichte Osteuropas, vol. 38, no. I (1990), 88-97. 13 T here is only one study of the Kadets: Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution.

enough talent and experience in their ranks to establish a functioning adm inis­ tration on the territory cleared of the Bolsheviks overnight. T hey were a party that had won close to 25 percent of the urban national vote in the C onstituent Assembly elections. And yet they were a party whose input into national politics during the Russian civil war was negligible. Why? T h e Kadets were removed from the majority of the Russian people, the workers and peasants. C ulturally there was a gulf between them . T h e Kadets were the educated and Europeanized part of society, whose very identity was based on Europeanness rather than Russianness. T h e Kadets defined them ­ selves as enlightened, progressive, educated leaders of backward Russia. They looked down on the Russian m uzhik as a dark and Asiatic, primitive and uncivilized beast. T hey had no words to address the Russian peasants. For most Kadets the Russian revolution was nothing but chaos, b u n t, Pugachevshchina, or the T im e of Troubles. T hey craved law and order through force. T h e way they saw themselves and their role defined their allegiance to the W hite move­ m ent, w hich alone seem ed to be able to restore Russia. By that they m eant the em pire, since Ukraine for them was certainly a part of Russia. T h e C onstitu­ tional Dem ocrats were imperialists and no democrats. T heirpolitical behavior betrays their insecurity. Instead of leading, they themselves sought protection from anyone who was ready to offer it. In 1918 the Kadets sought it from the G erm an Kaiser, and in 1919 from the Allies and the generals. T h e liberal wing of the party m ade feeble attem pts to influence D enikin’s policy and act as if it were the intellectual trust of the W hites. T h e right wing succum bed to seeing its priorities in terms of revenge on all those who, as they believed, had betrayed Holy Russia. H ence in 1919 the party of People’s Liberty, as it called itself, refused to condem n anti-Jewish pogroms on “liberated” territory. Russian lib­ erals ended up in the com pany o f the Black Hundreds.

The Party of Socialist Revolutionaries T h e PSR is hardly ever m entioned in studies of Russian society during the civil war. T h e biggest Russian political party has been forgotten and ignored. Ac­ cording to M oshe Lewin: “T h e SRs were not a factor in the civil war, and hence not a factor at a ll.”14 In fact the PSR played a very im portant although tragic role in the Russian civil war. It was the only party in Russia fortunate enough to win a popular majority in national elections, but at the sam e tim e it consistently lost every tim e it tried to struggle for political power. T h e tragedy of the PSR was that it split into rival factions at every critical stage, and those factions n eu ­ tralized each other pursuing contrary policies. T hus in O ctober 1917 the Left SRs greatly helped the Bolsheviks seize power by splitting the PSR and the peasant m ovem ent. Similarly in O ctober 1918, when the crucial decisions on 14 M oshe Lew in, “M ore T h a n O n e Piece Is M issing in the Puzzle, ” Slavic Review, vol. 44, no. 2 (1985), 243.

form ing a n atio n al anti-B olshevik g overnm ent at the Ufa state conference were m ade, th e center-left w ing and th e right wing o f the party were pursuing m utually exclusive objectives. T h e center-left w ing of V ictor C hernov dis­ trusted th e officers, and th e PSR ’s right w ing o f N . D. Avksentiev was too eager to strike a deal w ith conservative forces. T h is led to neith er faction’s achieving its objectives. T h e PSR was the largest party in Russia. It was the only mass party and a truly Russian party th a t relied n o t on a foreign b u t on a R ussian-rooted populist ideology. It was an intelligentsia party for peasants. Its strength was in its num b ers, w hich could have m attered a great deal in electoral politics. Its weakness was in the dispersion o f its social base. T h e w arring PSR factions relied on different social strata of peasants. T h e conservative elem ents in the party were m ostly associated w ith cooperatives, zemstvos, and o th er wellestablished and form erly prosperous elem ents o f the rural com m unity. T h e m ore radical w ing o f th e SRs were intellectuals and those w ho identified with the m ore dispossessed layers of the peasantry. T h e SRs were a m arkedly different sort o f people in tem peram ent from the M ensheviks. T h e ir factional differences always led to a party split. At the sam e tim e all SRs, from the m ost radical to th e m ost conservative, no m atter how m u c h they detested o n e an o th er, were proud to be Socialist R evolutionaries and shared a profound, unshakable, and deeply rooted love for the Russian countryside an d Russian peasants. T h e PSR was close to success th roughout the civil wars years, b u t long-lasting victories eluded it. In 1918 it alm ost succeeded in providing a socialist alternative to C o m m u n ist rule, only to be defeated by com b in ed pressure from the Red Army, W h ite putschists, peasant apathy, and intern al party strife. T h e PSR alm ost succeeded in leading a peasant insurrectionary m ovem ent in 1919, b u t th e party h ad reservations about th e tim eliness o f overthrow ing the Bolsheviks. D u e to Bolshevik terror it never quite becam e the organizational center o f peasant resistance. A gain in 1920—21 the SRs were close to realizing their cherished goal o f a peasant w ar against the Bolsheviks in m any if not all provinces o f Russia. T h e peasant war, u n d er p redom inantly SR slogans, did seriously th reaten th e viability of L e n in ’s regim e, yet it could not topple it. T h e PSR was th e party closest to th e peasants, b u t lacking clarity o f goals and direction, it failed to prevail over th e C om m unists.

The Mensheviks T h e im pact of the civil war on the M enshevik party was m ost devastating. It was a political party th at strived to defend workers’ interests, b u t the virtual disap­ pearance of the workers as a distinct social group un d e rc u t the SD s’ social base. M oreserio u s was the rift betw een the leaders, w ho cam e from the intelligentsia,

and the mass of workers. Railway workers, printers, and m unitions factory workers were m uch m ore radically anti-Bolshevik than the SD leadership. U nder the im pact of the civil war M enshevism as an intellectual current of socialist thought and the M ensheviks as a political party split de facto into two parts. T h e first signs of that rift occurred in 1918 over the issue of the SRs’ rebellion on the Volga. To side with the SRs or not to side, that was the question. T h e Right Mensheviks decided to side with them and fight the Bolsheviks, and the Left M ensheviks decided to rem ain neutral. In 1919 the M ensheviks’ rift becam e deeper. T h e two factions had com e to fundam entally different definitions of the C om m unist regime and the develop­ m en t of capitalism and socialism. T h e Left Mensheviks saw the Bolsheviks as undem ocratic b u t reform able, as trying to build socialism but in the wrong way and by the wrong m ethods. T h e Right Mensheviks regarded the C om m unists as traitors to the Russian dem ocratic m ovem ent, as usurpers and dictators, as builders of a m onstrous regime, unreform able and unforeseen by Marxism. Before anyone else, the Right Mensheviks perceived and predicted what we now call the totalitarian transform ation of Leninism . T h e Right M ensheviks were closer to the rebellious workers in spirit but not intellectually. Workers were angry, hungry, and concerned with everyday issues: bread, strikes, and com m issars’privileges. T he R ightM ensheviksw ere, for the m ost part, intellec­ tuals who had contacts with bu t were not themselves workers. T h e M ensheviks’ lively interfactional debate, w hich raged in the m idst of the civil war, kept the party alive intellectually. M any of the Mensheviks’ ideas, like those expressed in W h a t Is to Be Done? no doubt influenced L enin and others in their search for an acceptable and workable econom ic policy. T h e intellectual division be­ tween the Right and Left M ensheviks foreshadowed a division along the same lines o f the entire social-liberal W estern intelligentsia for decades to come. Like the Left M ensheviks, m any continued to believe that Bolshevism was essen­ tially a progressive m ovem ent, but like the Right M ensheviks, some cam e to believe that Bolshevism signified a historical catastrophe for socialism, dis­ crediting the idea for generations to com e. Even though in the context of 1921 the Mensheviks appear as a party that lost, in a long-term perspective they m ight have been satisfied, if they could have lived to see the evolution o f Bolshevism over seventy years. W ith great satisfaction both Right and Left Mensheviks could claim to have won their historical argum ent with the C om m unists. Such C om m unist ideas as the dictatorship of the proletariat, the elim ination of private property, and the destruction o f capitalism have turned out to be utopian and useless notions. O n the other han d the SD tenets that socialism is unthinkable w ithout democracy, th at a m ixed econom y and private enterprise are here to stay, that workers’ rights are best defended not by a "proletarian state” but by independent social forces, unions, laws for all, and dem ocratic guarantees— these ideas were accepted at least in theory by the heirs o f L enin and Stalin.

The Bolsheviks T h e Bolsheviks believed th at they were th e party of the proletariat. T h a t does not m ean th at we have to accept their claim at face v a lu e .15 T h e Bolshevik party started o u t as a loosely organized radical revolutionary party of intellectuals claim ing to speak for workers in 1917. It seized pow er relying largely on soldiers and sailors. In early 1918 it lost th e lio n ’s share of the workers’ vote it had gained in the fall o f 1917. By m id-1918 it had becom e a besieged m inority governing party, ready to secure its survival by mass terror. By m id-1919 the C o m m u n ist party had becom e a m ilitary-industrial m obilization agency in control o f the state apparatus, dedicated to self-preservation at w hatever cost. Let us n o t be fooled by th e C o m m u n ists’ rhetoric th a t they represented the working class. It was an ideological cover to sustain th eir claim to rule Russia, a fake identity to hide their lack o f legitimacy. T h e Bolshevik party claim ed to be a workers’ party b u t in fact treated workers as subsistence-level recruits for labor arm ie s.16 It was a party w ith o u t a clearly defined social base. By m id-1918 it was no longer a political party in th e old sense o f th e word, since it no longer expressed the interests o f any social group as such; rather it recruited its m em bers from m any social groups. F o rm er workers, soldiers, peasants, or officers, once C o m m u ­ nists, were tu rn ed into a new social group in its own right. T h eir status in society, th eir m aterial position, th eir bread rations, their behavior patterns, th eir access to privilege and to power, and th e laws th at governed their behavior p u t th em apart from th e rest o f society. T h ey acquired the new identity o f a vanguard, as they th o u g h t, in fact a privileged elite. T h e ir allegiance was not to ideas or to the laws they them selves had passed or to th e institutions they staffed. AU th a t could be cast aside. T h e ir allegiance was first and forem ost to the Party, since th a t was the source o f everything. T h e C P becam e a self-recruiting and self-sustaining m ilitary-industrial and adm inistrative apparatus. T h e im pact o f th e civil war on th e C P was, it seem s, twofold. T h e first im pact was th e m ilitarization o f Bolshevism . 17T h is applied no t only to party structures and in stitutions— the C heka, the army, and the bureaucracy—-but m ost im ­ portantly to the party m em bers’ m entality. T h e C om m unists got used to th in k ­ ing in term s of m ilitary cam paigns, offensives and retreats, com m anders and soldiers. O bed ien ce, discipline, an d subm ission becam e positive virtues, rather th an spontaneity, initiative, an d challenging authority. T h e m ilitary m entality necessarily defined failures and disasters as consequences o f treason, desertion, 15 Sheila Fitzpatrick, “T h e Bolshevik Dilem m a: Class, C ulture, and Politics in Early Soviet Years,” Slavic Review, vol. 47, no. 4(1988), 599-614, here 601. 16 For the opposite view stressing “circum stance” in the Bolshevik m istreatm ent of workers, see W illiam Rosenberg, “T he Social Background to Tsektran,” in Koenker, ed., Party, State and Society in the Russian C ivil War, pp. 349-74. 17 Alfred Rieber, “Landed Property, State Authority and Civil War, ” Slavic Review, vol. 47, no. I (1988), 37.

and subversion. A change of policy was inevitably perceived as a retreat. For m any decades the C om m unists defined every project in terms of m ilitary campaigns: the socialist “offensive,” the industrial or ideological or transport “fro n t.” T h e concept “building socialism ,” which was originally understood as creating the fullest possible dem ocracy and unleashing the initiative of the masses, was turned into “fighting” on the industrial front, the collectivization front, or the ideological front. Those who criticized or disobeyed, doubted, or refused orders were autom atically perceived as deserters, provocateurs, traitors, and enem ies of the people. Stalin did not invent those terms. Bukharin, Trotsky, and all other top Bolsheviks used them in 1920. T he self-definition of rank-and-file Bolsheviks as fighters on such and such a front was in place by 1921. T h at is why the political culture of debate, w hich still lingered am ong old-tim e Bolsheviks who had com e out of the Social Dem ocratic tradition, did not find any substantial audience am ong the Bolsheviks of the 1920s. T h e C o m m u n ist party had already becom e an O r d e r of Crusaders” well before Stalin took control. T h e m ilitarization of Bolshevik political culture was also a result of the intellectual void Bolshevism found itself in since it isolated itself from the political com m unity of the rest of the nation. O nce everybody else was an enemy, there was no one to argue with anym ore. T he Bolsheviks convinced themselves that what they were creating was socialism, and anyone who dis­ agreed with them was a counterrevolutionary by definition. T he self-imposed intellectual isolation of Bolshevism contributed to its m ilitarization, steriliza­ tion, and eventual hollowness decades later. T h e second im portant im pact of the civil war was that the C P becam e terrified of the peasants. T h e generation o f C om m unists formed in those years went through a m ost bitter, bloody, and dangerous war with the peasantry. So m any o f their com rades were slaughtered by the “G reen bandits.” So many times, in so m any places, their power was overthrown or threatened by the peasants. T h e C om m unists were always aware that they were a m inority party in a hostile peasant sea. In view o f the danger that the peasant sea would engulf the CP, L enin sounded what he called a “retreat” from the C om m unist offen­ sive into the N E P (military term inology again). However, the C P was ready for a final battle with the “G reen bandits, ” with the “kulaks” and other “enem ies” of Soviet power, at a later date. Intellectual dogm atization, isolation and m ilitar­ ization, com bined with a deeply seated hostility to and suspicion of peasants, critics, socialists, and hidden enem ies, created the ingredients of Stalinist totalitarian political culture in L enin’s CP.

The Greens T h e G reen m ovem ent was clearly the m ost num erous of all parties and move­ m ents in the civil war. It was a true people’s m ovem ent em bracing hundreds of

thousands of peasants. Its impact on the course of the civil war itself and on the future of Russia was enormous. In terms of the num ber of people involved and the impact on the nation the peasant war overshadowed and outlasted the Bolshevik war with the W hites. D ue to peasant uprisings behind Bolshevik lines in 1919 the W hites were able to march as far as they did, and it was due to peasant uprisings behind W hite lines that the Reds were able to break through the W hite front. It was due to peasant uprisings that Lenin finally decided to put C om m unism on hold in 1921. T he Green m ovem ent ruined some and brought others to victory. It was a decisive third force in the civil war, but it did not become an independent contending power center except on a regional scale. Why? W hy did the m ovem ent that had more people in it than all the Russian political parties and the Red and W hite armies combined not prevail? T he answer, it seems, should be sought in the mentality and identity of the Russian peasants. T h e Greens defended their own villages from outsiders. In most cases that was the end o f their political aspirations. T he peasants could no t win because they never even tried to conquer the state. They tried to hit the state and force it to leave them alone. Ideas like freedom and democracy were understood as Russian Volia7 that is, freedom from the state, from any obligations to anybody. European ideas of a democratic republic, the rule of law, equality, and parliam entarianism — all these ideas that the SRs brought into the peasant m ilieu were mostly incom prehensible to peasants. Neither of course were the notions brought by the Bolsheviks: internationalism, socialism, or Marxism. T h e fundam ental problem was that the peasants and the Russian intelligentsia spoke different languages; they spoke by each other, not to each other. The failure of the dem ocratic alternative parties of the Mensheviks and SRs was rooted in the fact that they represented the European and cultured part of Russian society while the masses they claimed to lead were still premodern, parochial, and village-oriented, for whom concepts of citizenship and civil rights were distant. This does not m ean that workers and peasants were any closer to Bolshevik ideology. O n the contrary the workers and peasants continu­ ously fought against the new masters, the new barin. Yet the way they fought was the way of an old Russian b u n t, a rebellion, which was unacceptable to the intelligentsia leaders.

Scope o f the Peasant War Evan Mawdsley in his recent study has used a m etaphor, cossack Vendee, a term he borrowed from the C om m unist propagandists.18 It is supposed to evoke an image of a backward counterrevolutionary province loyal to the old regime, 18 Mawdsley, The Russian C ivil War, pp. 85-99.

an obstacle to revolution, and m ost im portantly an exception from the rest of the country. T h e image is supposed to legitim ize the defeat and destruction of a counterrevolutionary province. T here are, of course, striking similarities be­ tween the Vendee revolt of 1793 in France and the uprising in cossack lands of 1919-20, but nevertheless those events are of a different kind. Just as Vendee peasants did not fight “the revolution” or the patrie but the terrorist dictatorship of Parisian Jacobins, the cossacks did not fight the “worker and peasant repub­ lic” but the state terrorists in the Krem lin. T hey started their rebellion only after the M oscow Bolsheviks em barked upon decossackization, designed to destroy cossacks as a “class.” T heir war against the Bolsheviks was defensive, and their alliance with the W hites a m arriage of convenience. It was their reluctance both in 1919 and in 1920 to advance beyond their native land that crippled the W h ite offensive and spelled the ultim ate defeat for both cossacks and W hites. T h e parallel between the D on and Vendee is m ost startling in the m ethods em ployed by the Jacobins and Bolsheviks in their subjugation of the unfortu­ nate province: systematic plunder, devastation, rape, m urder, and mass execu­ tions of civilians. T h e Bolsheviks added to this hostage taking, concentration cam ps, and mass deportations. B ut the differences between the two are even m ore im portant. If the Vendee was an exception, D on and Kuban were the rule. How m any Vendees were there in Russia? Was Tam bov Province another Vendee? Was Saratov, Sam ara, Tsaritsyn, Simbirsk, Kazan, Penza, Voronezh, Ufa— that is, the entire lower Volga basin and the Urals— another Vendee? Was Kiev, Poltava, Volyn’— the entire left bank U kraine— another Vendee? How can we judge? If our criterion is mass participation in a peasant war against a state terrorist regime, then the entire U kraine, the entire black earth region o f southern Russia, the cossack lands o f D on and Kuban, the Volga basin and the Urals, and large parts of Siberia would qualify. T his m eans that the entire grain-producing area in Russia and Ukraine was one huge Vendee.

Character o f the Peasant War E ach party tried to em ploy its own explanatory schem es to describe peasant rebels. “B andits,” “kulaks,” “h idingofficers,” “S R conspirators,” “deserters,”— these were the favorite Bolshevik labels for the Greens. Images o f hardworking and in n o cen t peasants abused by local C om m unist tyrants are frequent in SR literature. T h e C om m unist m yth of “bad kulaks, good proletarian cause” can be counterpoised to the SR m yth of “bad Bolsheviks, good peasants.” T he reality o f the peasant war was m ore complex. T here were of course innocent and hardworking peasants and C om m unist tyrants. B ut the point is that from am ong these hardworking peasants rose rebels fascinated by the idea o f “Loot the Looters,” and from am ong the same peasants rose others who aspired to

become new “tsars and lords.” In terms of their attitudes to life, death, power, and authority, were they that far apart? T h e problem with both myths is that on closer examination those local officials who acted on behalf of the Bolsheviks and those rebellious peasants who fought under the nom inal com m and of A. S. Antonov or Nestor M akhno revealed similar cultural and behavioral patterns. For both parties in this car­ nage the cause of proletarian dictatorship or peasant justice was but a smoke screen for an unbridled Russian free-for-all, volnitsa. Those who pillaged and raped as m embers of Bolshevik punitive expeditions were not that different from Antonov’s or M akhno’s rebels who pillaged and killed for peasant justice. T he essence of peasant rebellion was liberation from all authority. Everything was permissible. It was “Loot the Looters” all over again. For Bolshevik punitive detachm ents that m eant a license to do whatever they pleased in the hostile countryside: burn, destroy, and kill in “the bandit nests. ” For Green “bandits” it m eant a similar freedom to obliterate any attributes of aliens’ or outsiders’ presence in their native land. For M akhno’s bands it was freedom to ransack the cities and for Petliura’s cossacks to massacre Jews. Peasant war was a carnival of revolution. T h e central perm anent feature of the Russian civil war was that all the armies involved, the Reds and the W hites, the cossacks in 1919, and the Greens in 1920, went along essentially the same path beginning with a cause based on ideals and degenerating into m arauding and debauchery. T he W hites, the Greens, the cossacks, and the Reds went through this cycle. Red authorities talked of socialism and exterminated cossacks. Denikin issued orders against Jewish pogroms but was unable to prevent them . Nestor Makhno swore that he did not offend the Jews, but his troops staged pogroms. T he cossacks rose in a valiant rebellion against the Bolsheviks and ended up slaughtering Jews.19 Fighters in the field (of all the armies) always seemed to get out of control. If an observer did not know which army was passing through a town, say in Tambov Province in m id -1919, that of W hite general M amontov or a division of the Reds or a band of Antonov’s Greens or some itinerant unit of cossacks, he would not be able to tell them apart. Their esprit de corps was remarkably similar. For all of them war was a carnival: seize, loot, ride a horse, drink, and enjoy life; everything is permissible. It was not uncom m on in central Russia and espe­ cially in Ukraine that the same individuals served in several or all armies, Red, W hite, and Green. This is not to suggest that there was no difference between them . This is to point to a similarity in spirit and to the overall brutalization of society. T h e reality of the civil war shows that distinctions between good and evil were blurred. Rebels fighting a requisition detachm ent come across as freedom 19 For remarkable data on the anti-Jewish pogroms by all these forces, see Heifetz, The Slaugh­ ter o f the Jews in the Ukraine in 1919.

fighters defending their property. Yet the same detachm ent executing the fam ­ ily of a C o m m u n ist functionary comes across as com m itting a crim e. Similarly a C o m m u n ist detachm ent shelling a village m ay be seen as an instrum ent of state terrorism , but the sam e detachm ent attacking a hiding place of rebels com es across as acting in self-defense. Ukrainian rebels destroying a C om m unist-held railway station no doubt believed they were fulfilling the patriotic duty of national liberation. But the same detachm ent robbing and killing Jews in a little village for ostensible collaboration with the Bolsheviks can be judged as com m itting a crim e against hum anity. W here is the difference betw een heroes and m urderers? Between patriots and Black Hundreds? T h e carnage between peasant rebels and former peasants turned soldiers in Bolshevik detachm ents, seen from this perspective, reveals a collision of the two branches of the peasant com m unity in Russia: those who believed in peasant justice un d er no state control on the rebel side, and those who shouted “Loot the kulaks” and aspired to be new masters on the C om m unist side. T he life of an individual becam e cheap. G uilt by association was com m onplace. T h e dehum anization of enem ies by labeling allowed for mass violence on an u n ­ precedented scale. Settling scores with real and im aginary opponents becam e the essence o f politics. T h e civil war routinized the unthinkable. It incor­ porated mass m urder into the routine of governm ent. It accustom ed one to thinking in term s of enem ies to be unm asked. It substituted for politics as usual the politics of war. T he civil war m eant a profound brutalization of society and especially of its new ruling class.

Military Victory AU political parties during the Russian civil war— the Bolsheviks, the W hite generals, peasant rebel headquarters, and SRs— tried and failed to control the peasant m ovem ent. It produced its own leaders, m en from the people: M akhno, Antonov, Kolesnikov, Sapozhnikov, and Vakhulin, to nam e only a few. These leaders were guided by notions of peasant justice and vague echoes from the platforms of political parties, mostly of an anarchist or Left or Right SR variety. Yet all parties were associated with state order, with programs and governm ents, whereas these concepts were alien to local peasant leaders. Par­ ties represented national politics, and the peasants represented prenational identity and regional allegiance. O ne of the reasons the peasant m ovem ent did not win militarily, despite its m agnitude and scope, was that each province or area of several provinces had its own political dynamics out of tune with the rest of the country. At a tim e when in one province the Greens were defeated, in another the uprising would only be beginning. N one of the G reen leaders ventured outside their im m ediate vicinity or at most beyond surrounding prov­ inces. In this spontaneity, scope, and breadth also lay the m ovem ent’s strength,

since peasant rebellions could erupt anywhere anytime. Indeed in M arch 1921 large parts of the country were ungovernable. T h e Soviet regime could have collapsed. Peasant rebellions were out of control, like a forest fire. Therein lay the G reens’ power and also their helplessness against a systematic assault. T he Bolsheviks, invested with the powers of the state, recruiting and com m anding a huge army, overwhelmed the peasant rebels militarily. They did it by a system­ atic occupation of villages, mass executions, and deportations of tens of thousands. T h e key to the Bolshevik victory was not merely in the application of sheer force but in dividing the peasant com m unity and inducing it, as a hostage, to participate in its own self-destruction.20 T he Bolsheviks created their own constituency in the countryside by forcing some to cooperate and rewarding them at the expense of others. They enveloped the peasant com m unity in a network of committees and agencies never tried on such a scale in the Russian village before. They were a party geared to handle and process millions of people. T h e Bolsheviks, a small minority, overwhelmed the peasantry because they were willing to employ all the coercive instruments at the disposal of a twentieth-century state against a nineteenth-century peasantry. Russian peasants lacked political consciousness in the sense that they did not care what form of government Russia as a country had. They did not care about parliaments or freedom of the press and assembly. O n the whole they were satisfied with economic concessions. T he survival of the Bolshevik dictatorship throughout the ordeal of the civil war can therefore be seen not as a manifesta­ tion of popular support but as a manifestation of the prenational consciousness and backwardness of the Russian peasantry, the majority of the nation. And the brutality of the new regime was partly a manifestation of the crassness and brutality of those Bolshevik upstarts who strove to become “tsars and lords.” O n the other hand if the Bolsheviks had not physically destroyed the opposi­ tion parties, those parties probably would have had considerable followings in the post—civil war years. They would have continued their decades-old efforts to bring the elements of European political culture to the Russian masses. T he persistence with which Russian workers dem anded free soviets and indepen­ dent unions, strike after strike, year after year, suggests that a democratic politi­ cal culture had roots at least am ong the workers, and it took an all-out Bolshevik terror to destroy it. T h e tragedy of Russian society was in its disjointedness, the lack of under­ standing between its diverse parts. Each of them pulled in a different direction, thus making it easier for the C om m unists to prevail. T he Mensheviks were right that Russia was not ready for socialism. O ne can add that it was not ready for democratic parliam entary statehood. T he cultural level of the majority of the 20 I owe thanks to Jan Gross for this concept. He developed it studying the Soviet occupation o f eastern Poland in 1939; see Revolution from Abroad, pp. 225-41.

population was low. And w hen, during the civil war, educated society was destroyed, it is no wonder that the new bosses, reared in the civil war, retained power and defined socialism as a centralized dictatorial com m and econom y system where no laws existed for any enemies. From this historical perspective it is irrelevant w hether L enin m ight have lived longer or w hether Trotsky rather than Stalin stood at the helm or w hether B ukharin’s rather than Stalin’s m ethods of collectivization were used. T h e num ber o f deaths m ight have been different but not the substance o f the political culture. T he system that emerged was a product of L en in ’s doctrinairism , of a prim itivized, vulgar Marxism detached from the hum anistic E uropean tradition and brutalized by the civil war.

W ho Won? W ho Lost? T h e end o f the civil war and the introduction o f the N E P is usually presented in W estern historiography with two contradictory interpretations. O n the one hand the civil war ended with the Red Victory, on the other the Bolsheviks had to retreat into the NEP. W e have a m etaphor here of retreating conquerors and of a victory incom plete. W ho won and who lost in the civil war of the Bol­ sheviks with the peasants? Huge parts o f the country, formerly grain producing, were devastated. H alf a m illion peasants died in the peasant war o f 1919—20. Even m ore died in the fam ine o f 1921-22. If the Bolshevik regime was to survive, unlike its Jacobin predecessor, a retreat was in order. T h e C o m m u n ist retreat into the N E P was certainly a peasant victory. From the perspective of 1922 they won. T h e Bolsheviks were forced to leave them alone. T hey could produce, sell, and govern themselves at the village level with a m inim al C o m m unist presence. T hat is exactly what the peasants had fought for. T h eir war aims were fulfilled. T h e N E P was their victory and the C o m m u ­ nists’ defeat.

Legacy T h e legacy left by that war is m uch m ore im portant than the question of who won and who lost by the standards of 1922. It is naive to believe that in M arch 1921, as if by magic, w hen one m ethod of grain collection was changed to a less violent one, the experiences and habits of the civil war vanished. AU those peasants who had opted to becom e soviet chairm en, Red Army officers, or volost’ Executive C om m ittee m em bers knew with whom they were dealing. T hey brought a profound fear of peasant wrath to the Bolshevik party. They knew that any new outburst of peasant protest m ight m ean the end of their lives. Was it th at surprising, then, that after a six-year breathing spell the Bolsheviks

resum ed the offensive? Was it surprising th at this tim e the Bolsheviks would not p u t u p w ith peasant control of the food supply? W as it surprising th at upon resum ing th eir storm ing o f the countryside th e Bolsheviks decided to im pose control n o t only over th e target quantities o f grain to be delivered b u t over the very grain-producing process as well? T h e second Bolshevik onslaught o n th e countryside was even m ore devastat­ ing: b u rn ed villages, shootings, and mass deportations of hundreds o f th o u ­ sands. T h is tim e th e peasants lost an d th e B o lsh ev ib w on, or so it seem ed. T h e following decades saw a steady depeasantization o f Russia, a progressive pau­ perization of the countryside, and its depopulation. A nd yet the triu m p h of Soviet power in the countryside m ay yet tu rn o u t to be a Pyrrhic victory. D espite decades o f socialist construction, th e cou n try has not been able to feed itself. E co n o m ic stagnation prom pted a search for reform in the late 1980s. Reform ers cam e to the conclusion that if there was any way out, it was in private agriculture and peasant ow nership o f the land. T his suggests th at in the long­ term perspective the Bolsheviks lost. T hey had to abandon the fruits of their victory o f 1921 and 1934. D espite decades o f dictatorship, Russian society is back. Political parties, an independent press, cossack assemblies, independent unions, an d scores o f other civic organizations have reappeared after the col­ lapse o f C o m m u n ism . T h e single identity o f New Soviet M an th at the C o m ­ m unists tried to im pose on all has now been cast aside, and Russia is desperately searching for its new identity and its place in the world. O ne can only hope that its transition to a m odern and com plex society will n o t lead this tim e to a catastrophe like the one the country experienced in 1917-22.

Bibliography

Archival Materials C om plete bibliographic inform ation for archival docum ents is in the footnotes. Included in this bibliography are only short descriptions of the m ajor collections cited in the text and the m ost im portant docum ents.

Soviet Archives T h e Fondy usually refer to collections of docum ents of specific institutions or individ­ uals. T h e O pis’ inventory refers to docum ents o f subdivisions w ithin these organizations or to some other categorization of docum ents, such as incom ing or outgoing correspon­ dence. T h e Soviet archives refer to edinitsa khraneniia, an item of preservation w hich is translated here as a docum ent. A basic subject sum m ary precedes the title of docum ents cited. t s .p .a

. t s e n t r a l ’n y i p a r t i i n y i a r k h i v ( c e n t r a l p a r t y a r c h i v e ) , M O S C O W

Renam ed in 1991 as Vserossiiskii Tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokum entov noveishei istorii (All-Russian C enter for the Preservation and Study o f D ocum ents of M odern History). Fond 17, TsKa RKP(b) (Central C om m ittee o f the RCPjb]). O pis 6. Svodki o partiinoi zh izn i (Com pilations on [Com m unist] party life). Prim ar­ ily the C entral C om m ittee’s incom ing correspondence from provincial C om m unist party com m ittees. Orel m utiny: “V Vserossiiskuiu C hrezvychainuiu Kommissiiu ot tovarishcha Z hukova, kopiia v TsKa RKP(b).” “Vypiska iz Svodki No. I Inform , chasti osobogo otdela pri Orlovskom G u b C h ek a.” “V TsKa RKP(b). Doklad o rabote Orlovskogo G ubkom a za Aprel pervuiu polovinu M aia 1919.” Fall o f Voronezh: Priakhin, “V T sK a RKP(b).” Decossackization: “D okladnaia zapiska chlena Donskogo biuro RKP(b) Syrtsova o rabote D on biuro. V sekretariat RKP(b). ” Uprising on the Volga: O tc h e t Samarskogo G ubkom a” (February-Septem ber 1919). Reprisals against deserters: T sentral’naia kommissiia po borbe s dezertirstvom. “Protokol No. 32 (10 June 1919) Kaluga G ubkom ” and “Protokol No. 37 (21 July 1919) Svodki o partiinoi zhizni. K aluga.” O pis’ 12. Politsvodki, otchety, doklady. Assessments o f political situations, reports, and m em orandum s by the provincial C P com m ittees to the Bolshevik C entral C o m m it­ tee. D ocum ents cited contain correspondence of the C P C entral C om m ittee with Bryansk, Astrakhan, N izhni Novgorod, Perm, Saratov, Simbirsk, Tsaritsyn, Vyatka, and th e Urals region party com m ittees for 1920. V yatka, measures against deserters: O tc h e t o deiatel’nosti Vyatskoi gubernskoi kommissii po bor’be s dezertirstvom .”

“Doklad ob Otriadakh Osobogo Naznacheniia.” Tambov peasant war. “Protokoly zasedanii Kirsanovskogo Uezdnogo komiteta RKP(b)” (January-December 1920). “Doklad Bryanskogo Gubkoma” (July 1920-January 1921) in PerepiskaTsKa RKP(b) s Bryanskim Gubkomom. Urals, soldiers’ attitudes: “Doklady, otchety Ural’skogo Gubkoma RKP(b) i Voennogo okruga o polozhenii v gubernii” (subtitle: “osvedomitel’naia rabota”). “Otchety Permskogo gubkoma.” Cheka intelligence on opposition parties: O t sotrudnika poruchenii sekretnogo otdela Vecheka Braude: Raport.” Opis’ 84. Biuro Sekretanata (The Bureau of the Secretariat of the Central Commit­ tee). This inventory contains materials on uprisings, mutinies, atrocities, and concen­ tration camps, as well as intelligence data on opposition parties— all special and serious cases for the highest bodies of the party. Intelligence on the party o f Left SRs: “Svedeniia Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka o partii Levykh Eserov. ” “V Org. Biuro RKP(b) ot Sekretnogo Otdela Vecheka Zam.Zav. Sekretnogo Otdela M. Romanovsky” (17 September 1919). M utiny in Gomel: “Doklad TsKa RKP(b) o miatezhe v Gomele.” North Caucasus Cheka chief on executions and concentration camps: Lander, “Iz doklada o polozhenii del na Severnom Kavkaze” (10 October 1920); and “To Osobyi Otdel Vecheka, TsKa RKP(b), Krestinsky, Lenin, Trotsky” (26 August 1920). A. N. Latsis, "Doklad o deiatel’nosti upolnomochennykh Vecheka i Osobykh Otdelov Vecheka na Severnom Kavkaze i o sostoianii Cheka i Osobykh Otdelov na mestakh” (25 December 1920) (Report on the activity of the plenipotentiaries of the Cheka and the special departments of the Cheka). Astrakhan insurgency: “Pis'ma i telegrammy Astrakhanskogo Gubkoma. O povstancheskom dvizhenii krestian.” Fond 76. Dzerzhinsky Archive. Many documents are written on stationery marked “The chairman of the All-Russian Cheka.” Some are handwritten. Most documents cited here deal with the Cheka policy toward opposition parties, the struggle against desertion and against the Green movement, and reports to Dzerzhinsky by provincial Cheka agents or chiefs. Some sensitive documents, such as the daily assessments of the situation during the Kronstadt uprising, bore a mark that ten copies only were made. Nine went to department chiefs of the Cheka and the tenth to Lenin. Opis’ 3. Report on SRs: “Pozitsiia Eserov. Mart 1919.” File title: Ό deiatel’nosti pravykh i levykh Eserov. ” Cheka infiltrator reports: “Nachal’niku Sekretnogo Osvedomitel’nogo Otdela. Svodka No. 27 agenturno osvedomitel’nykh materialov po doneseniiu osvedomitelia Voinova” (6 March 1921) (To the chief of the Secret Intelligence Department. Report no. 27 of the intelligence materials based on the report of agent Voinov). Surveillance o f the SRs: Dzerzhinsky to Menzhinsky, 20 April 1920. M utiny in Nizhni Novgorod: “Doklad o Nizhegorodskikh sobytiiakh.” To the chair­ man of the Vecheka, Dzerzhinsky; to the chairman of the Special Department of the Vecheka, Menzhinsky, 31 October 1920.

Tam bov peasant war: “Telegram m a kom anduiushchego voiskami V N U S V. S. Kor­ neva” (22 D ecem ber 1920). “O perativno-Inform atsionnaia svodka Vecheka” (10 M arch 1921). Fond 275, TsKa R S D R P (Central C om m ittee of the Russian Social D em ocratic Workers’ Party). Official docum ents o f the M enshevik party, accounts of strikes, reports of local organizations, leaflets, econom ic platforms of various factions, speeches and letters o f party leaders, and m em orandum s to the British delegation. O pis I. “Pis’m o T u l’skoi organizatsii R SD R P” (15 April 1919). “Rezoliutsii Soveshchaniia pri TsKa R SD R P.” L. Martov, “D iktatura proletariata i dem okratiia.” Fond 274, TsKa P SR (Central C om m ittee of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries). C ontains protocols of the SR C entral C om m ittee (Moscow), SR organization docu­ m ents, U krainian SR com m ittee docum ents, reports from the provinces on popular attitudes, and docum ents on C hernov’s contacts with the British delegation, 1920. O pis’ I. Reports o f local organizations: “Konferentsiia Moskovskoi organizatsii PSR o tekushchem m om ente” (26 January 1919). “Protokoly zasedanii TsKa P S R .” “Rezoliutsiia Deviatogo Soveta PSR .” “Vseukrainskii kom itet partii E SE R , O tchet o poezdke v C hernigov.” “Krestianskie nastroeniia Novgorodskoi gubernii” (February 1920). TsKa PSR: “Predstaviteliam Angliiskogo proletariata. ” t s .g

. a . o . r . t s e n t r a l ’ n y i g o s u d a r s t v e n n y i A RKH IV o k t i a b r s k o i r e v o l i u t s i i

(C E N T R A L STA TE A R C H IV E O F T H E O C T O B E R R E V O L U T IO N , M O S C O W )

Fond 130. Sovet N arodnykh Kommissarov SN K (C ouncil of People’s Commissars). Opis 3’. A m ong the m ost im portant docum ents in this inventory are weekly reports of the Secret D epartm ent of the Vecheka to L enin on the disposition of population by province; reports by special plenipontentiaries of the People’s C om m issariat of Internal Affairs or th e C E C on strikes and disturbances by province; reports o f the provincial executive com m ittees on peasant uprisings by province; and docum ents on th e decossackization cam paign on the D on and Kuban in 1919. Cheka weekly reports to Lenin: “Inform atsionnye Svodki Sekretnogo O tdela Vecheka tovarishchu L e n in u ” (1919-20). Tula strike: Predsedateliu Sovnarkoma tovarishchu L eninu. “Doklad o polozhenii na T u l’skom oruzheinom i patronnom zavodakh s 14 m arta po 10 aprelia” (A report on the situation at the arm am ents and cartridge plants in T ula from 14 M arch to 10 April). Predsedateliu Sovnarkom a tovarishchu L eninu. “Doklad chlena kollegii N K V D A nt­ onova o sobytiiakh v T ule s 30 M arta po 10 Aprelia” (To the chairm an of the C o u n cil of People’s Com m issars com rade L enin. A report of the m em ber of the N K V D Board A ntonov on the events in T ula from 30 M arch to 10 April). Peasant Insurgency. Yaroslavl: “D okladnaia zapiska o Poshekhonsko-Volodarskom uezde Yaroslavskoi gubernii.” Kostroma: Lunacharsky to L enin (May 1919 Kostroma). Volga provinces: Predsedatel’ A. Sokol’sky: “Doklad Samarskogo G ubernskogo Ispol-

nitel’nogo Komiteta o martovskom vosstanii i o polozhenii v derevne, v Sovet Narodnykh Kommissarov” (13 May 1919) (Chairm an A. Sokol’skii to the Council of People’s Commissars: A report on the M arch uprising and on the situation in the countryside by the Samara Province Executive Committee). “Doklad VTsiKu osoboi kommissii po revizii povolzh’ia pod predsedatel’svom P.G. Smidovicha” (A report to the C E C by the Special Com mission to Assess the Situation in the Volga Provinces chaired by P. G. Smidovich). Decossackizatiom “Osoboe polozhenie o kolonizatsii byvshei Donskoi oblasti” (Spe­ cial regulations on the colonization of the former D on Host area). “Predsedateliu Soveta Oborony L eninu,” signed by m em ber of the D on Rev. Com . Trifonov. “Svodka no. 314 Pomoshnika po politchasti kom anduiushchego voiskami vnutrennei sluzhby na 3 oktiabria 1920 goda.” Opis' 4. C om pilation of reports of the Cheka Secret D epartm ent on activities of the opposition parties. Fond 1235. Vserossiiskii Tsentral’nyi Ispolnitel’nyi Komitet, V TslK (Central Execu­ tive C om m ittee of Soviets, CEC). Opis' 38. Telegrams and regulations on the introduction of the state o f emergency in Samara and other provinces on the Volga. Opis' 55. Instructions on the purge of bourgeois elements from Soviet institutions. Opis' 56. Reports of the chief of the Nationalities Departm ent, the Urals, 1919. Opis' 94. Reports of the Cossack D epartm ent of the C E C on Samara and Orenburg; Tula Executive C om m ittee report on kulak rebellions; telegrams of local executive com mittees to Lenin on peasant rebellions, mobilization, and desertion in Simbirsk and Kostroma provinces, 1919. “Telegramm a Efremovskogo Ispolkoma o kulatskom vystuplenii v sviazi s oblazheniem kontributsiei kulakov” (Tula 22 M arch 1919). “Varnavinsky Uezdnyi Ispolkom” (I M arch 1919). “Telegram m a iz Syzrani o raskrytii zagovora i podavlenii vosstaniia miatezhnikov v uezde” (20 M arch 1919). Opis' 99. Reports of the Simbirsk Province Food Supply Com mittee. Fond 1240. Vserossiiskii Tsentral’nyi Ispolnitel’nyi Komitet, VTsIK (Central Execu­ tive C om m ittee of Soviets, CEC). Opis' I. C E C plenipotentiaries reports on mobilization and desertion by province. “Doklady upolnom ochennogo TsKa RKP(b) i VTsIK Dobrokhotova o sostoianii partiinoi i Sovetskoi raboty i provedenii mobilizatsii v Yaroslavskoi gubernii.” Fond 446. Internal political situation under Denikin. Opis' 2. D ocum ents on the political situation in Kuban under Denikin; data on political attitudes in the Kuban Rada; secret reports of the Propaganda D epartm ent of the Special Conference on Political Parties and Groups in the south of Russia, 1919; assessments of the political situation in Ukraine. " 0 nastroenii na Kubani v sviazi s ubiistvom Riabovola.” “Sekretnaia svodka otdela propagandy Osobovo Soveshchaniia o politicheskikh par­ ti iakh i organizatsiiakh.”

F o n d 439, O pts I . D enikin’s letters and m em orandum s to th e SpeciaJ C onference on W orkers’ Legislation. “Pis’m o D enikina po fabrichno-zavodskom u zakonodatel’stvu na im ia predsedatelia Osobovo Soveshchaniia G enerala D ragom ilova.” Fond 5451. Pervaia A rm iia Truda (The First Labor Army). O pts’ 4. Protocols o f the Revolutionary C ouncil o f the First Labor Army, 1920.

T S .G .A .S .A . T S E N T R A L ’N Y I G O SU D A R S T V E N N Y I A R K H rv SO V ET SK O I a r m i i ( c e n t r a l STATE A R C H IV E O F T H E S O V IE T A R M Y ), M O S C O W

Fond 42. G lavnoe Upravlenie V nutrennikh Voisk (The m ain directorate of Internal Security troops). O pis’ I . D ocum ents on operations against deserters and the Greens. Fond 192. T h e N in th Army of the southern front. Survey of soldiers’ political atti­ tudes; orders o f m ilitary and civilian authorities to the local population in view of the G reen insurgency; and data on all kinds of violations, poaching, and aerial bom bard­ m ent o f the Greens. O pis’ I. Politotdel 9 oi arm ii (Political D epartm ent of th e N in th Army). V oenno-T senzurnoe otdelenie Rew oensoveta 9oi arm ii: “Politsvodka 9oi arm ii za aprel 1920” (M ilitary C ensorship D epartm ent of the Revolutionary W ar C ouncil of the N inth Army: Political survey o f th e N inth Army for April 1920). Telegram m a v Shtab 9oi arm ii ot: Predsedatelia Gubernskogo Revoliutsionnogo Kom iteta (19 July 1919). “Prikaz Revvoensoveta 9oi arm ii i Kubansko-Chernom orskogo Revkoma” (2 July 1920), Ekaterinodar. “ Svodka no. 127 Inform atsionno-Instruktorskogo podotdela KubanskoC hernom orskogo otdela upravleniia” (7 O ctober 1920). “Raport. Ot: V oennogo Kommissara polevogo upravleniia aviatsii pri shtabe 9oi arm ii” (14 July 1919), Penza. Fond 193: T h e T enth Arm y of the southern front. O pis’ I . D ocum ents of the Revolutionary Military C o u n cil of the T enth Army; m em orandum s on political attitudes o f soldiers and civilian population; data on supply and desertion and m ilitary operations; and copies of orders o f the C entral Com m ission for the Struggle against D esertion in Moscow (Tsentrkom dezertir). “Prikaz T sentrkom dezertir” (13 D ecem ber 1919). “Postanovlenie Soveta Truda i O borony.”

Archives o f the Institute for Social History, Amsterdam PA V EL A X E L R O D A R C H IV E

Axelrod’s correspondence w ith Iulii Martov, Boris Vasil’ev, B. Skomorovsky, Raphail A bram ovich, and other leading M ensheviks. Reports and m em orandum s on conditions in Russia.

R SD RP A R C H IV E

Most Menshevik party docum ents are at the Hoover Institution. Here are appeals and m em orandum s to the Socialist and Social Democratic parties of Europe and C C in ­ com ing correspondence. Glavnyi Komitet RSDRP na Ukraine (I Decem ber 1920). T H E A R C H IV E O F T H E PSR

Contains systematic data on the PSR by far superior to what is available in Moscow or the Hoover Institution. S R party documents. P SR Central Com m ittee correspondence with local organiza­ tions: “Vsem organizatsiiam PSR ,” Biulleten TsKa PSR (3 Decem ber 1919), folder 2004. “Ko vsem Organizatsiiam Partii Sotsialistov Revoliutsionerov” (summer 1919), folder 2003. “Vsem Organizatsiiam P S R Biulleten TsKa PSR (3 Decem ber 1919), underground publication, folder 2004. “Polozhenie na Urale. Pis’m o iz Ekaterinburga,” a handwritten letter to the PSR Central Com m ittee, folder 2045. Proceedings o f PSR congresses and conferences: “Deviatyi Sovet Partii Sotsialistov Revoliutsionerov,” folder 2003. Protokoly TsKa PSR: konferentsiia 25-27 Sentiabria 1920 goda, folder 2006. Left S R party documents: Izvestiia TsKa L S R (26 November 1919), folder 2021, Protocols o f the interrogation o f Kolchak: folder 2028. Politics in cossack lands: “D on, Kuban’, Terek,” in an underground newspaper, Listok “De/u naroda,” folder 2003. STEPA N JN A N O V IC H (P O R T U G E IS ) A R CH IV E

Workers Under Kolchak: O tc h e t Delegatsii Prof. Soiuzov Urala, 1918-1919,” Strum ilo folder. Letter to M artov (18 February 1921). Right M enshevik documents: G ruppa Sotsial Demokratov, Petrograd, (May 1920). Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California NICO LA EV SK Y C O L L E C T IO N

Series 6: M aterialy TsKa (Materials o f the Menshevik Central Committee). Box 5: “Proekt osnovnykh polozhenii platformy” (December 1918). “0 polozhenii v Sovetskoi Rossii. Doklad pravykh m en’shevikov.” O t Petrogradskoi gruppy M en’shevikov Shvedskim Tovarishcham” (end of 1918 by Petrograd Mensheviks grouped around Potresov). “O polozhenii v Sovetskoi Rossii. Doklad pravykh m en ’shevikov.” “Taktika RSDRP v Sovetskoi Rossii” (13 July 1920). “M em orandum TsKa RSDRP Angliiskoi delegatsii.” Box 6. Workers under Kolchak: “Socialist activities and trade union movements in 1919 under A. V. Kolchak. Survey and five articles from Sibirskii Rabochii." Series 7: Party o f Socialist Revolutionaries. “Pervoe Vserossiiskoe Soveshchanie po partiinoi rabote v derevne,” in Chernov, Viktor, “Bolsheviki v derevne,” box 10, folder 14.

“Theses adopted by the Plenum of the PSR C entral C om m ittee” (underground publication), box 8. SR s in Siberia: V. Chernov, “ ‘Chernovskaia G ram ota' i Ufimskaia Direktoriia” (m anuscript), box 10. Series 16: Pavel Axelrod papers. C orrespondence with key M enshevik party leaders, including Iu. Martov, F. D an , R. Abram ovich, B. Skomorovsky, B. Vasiliev, and others. Series 17: Iu. O. M artov papers. Correspondence with Pavel Axelrod, A. N. Stein, S. D. Shchupak; speeches and articles. Series 89, box 143: Cheka documents. “Tsirkuliarnoe pis’m o V echeka.” ARKHIV SHTABA GLAVNOKOM ANDUIUSHCHEGO VOORUZHENNYM I SILAMI NA IUGE ROSSII (W RA NG EL ARCHIVE)

Intelligence data on the political situation on Bolshevik-held territory: “Svodka razvedyvatelnogo otdeleniia po dannym k 19 oktiabria 1919 goda. V nutrennee polozhenie Sovetskoi respubliki,” docum ent 147.

Records o f the Departm ent o f State Relating to the Internal Affairs o f Russia and the Soviet Union, National Archives, Washington, D .C . D ocum ents of the D epartm ent of State on Russia are arranged in a decim al file w hich reflects the consecutive order o f w hen docum ents were received regardless o f the place of origin or the subject m atter. For example, docum ents o f th e D enikin adm inistration w hich were officially passed on to the U nited States may appear as dispatches o f an A m erican consul in C onstantinople o r Rom e or any other E uropean capital. A m erican consuls in Vyborg (Finland), Riga (Latvia), and other listening posts drafted weekly reports on conditions in Russia based on intelligence inform ation, wireless intercepts, periodicals, and other sources. T h e decim al file 861.00 is devoted to political affairs in Russia, and the period under investigation here starts with decimal files 861.00.3601 (January -F eb ru ary 1919) up to 861.00.7801 (January 1921). A m ong the m ost valuable materials in this collection are the reports of M r. Imbrie, A m erican consul in Vyborg, w ho systematically m onitored the political situation in Petrograd and sent detailed and regular dispatches w hich included intelligence assess­ m ents o f the political situation in Russia, reports by agents described as “acting on office instructions,” and clippings o f Russian newspapers. M r. Im brie also sent posters and proclam ations w hich his agents picked up in Petrograd “o n office instructions.” O f great interest are reports to President W ilson by Red Cross officials, am ong them M r. Teusler on Bolshevik atrocities in 1919, and the observations o f G eneral Graves on conditions in Siberia under Kolchak. M any docum ents were received from Allied intelligence, nam ely the British. Some docum ents had been intercepted by decoding Bolshevik com m unications. G eneral D enikin’s and Kolchak’s adm inistrations passed on a great n um ber of official docum ents to the Allies about conditions in the south o f Russia and Ukraine as a m atter o f policy. Imbrie, Vyborg, Finland: “R eport on C onditions in Petrograd by an Agent Acting on Office instructions” (20 July 1919), 861.00.5111.

“Political and Military Situation of Soviet Russia as Evidenced by Events from I April to 11 July, 1919," 861.00.4696. R edT errorinthe Urals: From W . H. Anderson, 5 April 1919: “D octor Teusler o f Red Cross telegraphs m e the following . . . ,” 861.00.4204. Ukraine under the Reds, 1919: “K harkov," 861.00.7791. Rear admiral, U.S. Navy, U.S. high commissioner in Turkey: Photographs and docum ents: “Atrocit6s Bolchevistes,” compiled by Bureau de la Presse Russe a Constantinopol, 861.00.6277. Social conditions under the Bolsheviks: Leslie A. Davies, American consul, “Confi­ dential Report on Conditions in Russia” (12 May 1920), 861.00.7031. Office of the Com m issioner of the United States, Riga, Latvia (22 Decem ber 1920), confidential m em orandum : “T ula Arms Works,” 861.00.6027 M ilitary affairs: L ieutenant Colonel W ilson, British military observer at Reval, British M ilitary Mission, Reval: “Strength of the Red Army. Report on Bolshevism, Appendix X ,” 861.00.7847. Siberia (social and political conditions): “Telegram from Tomsk. Subject: C ondi­ tions, W orkingm en and Factories, Siberia,” 23 February 1919, 861.00.504.12. From General W illiam Graves, com m ander of U.S. forces in Siberia, August 1919, 861.00.5009. Social and political conditions under Denikin: Latvian Red Cross official, Andreas Friedenberg, for the Office of the Com missioner of the U .S. for the Baltic provinces of Russia, Riga (14 February 1920), 861.00.6630. Otdel propagandy Osobogo Soveshchaniia (9 September 1919) “Prilozheniie k politicheskoi svodke no. 225,” signed by Statskii Sovetnik Shum akher, 861.00.6320. “Present Conditions in D on, Kuban’ and Terek” (May 1920), 861.00.7081. From Rear Admiral Newton A. McCully, U.S. Navy, to Secretary of State. Subject: Odessa, fall of, made by Lieutenant Com m ander Ham ilton Bryan: “Report on the Evacuation of Odessa” (30 January—9 February 1920), 861.00.6649, and (19 May 1920), 861.00.7082.

Smolensk Archive, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. T hese materials deal primarily with operations against the Greens, reports on the political disposition of the population, and measures of the local party officials to m onitor opposition views and activities in Smolensk Province, as well as copies of Cheka docum ents from Moscow. Among the most im portant docum ents are: B. Ardaev, “D onesenie Roslavl’skomu Uezdvoenkomu” (6 August 1919) (Report to the Roslavl’ Uezd military com m andant), WKP no. 119, Roslavl’. From N achal’nik Sekretnoi Operativnoi Chasti Cheka (chief of the Cheka Secret O perations Departm ent) to the Uezdnyi Komitet RKP(b) gorod Roslavl’ (Uezd CP Com m ittee) (7 October 1920, top secret), W KP no. 119. “Svodka o nastroenii mass uezda za mai mesiats” (Compilation of data on political attitudes in the uezd for the m onth of May), W KP no. 119. “Protokol zasedaniia Roslavl’skogo Uezdnogo Komiteta RKP(b) (10 October 1920)” (Protocols of the Roslavl C P Com m ittee), WKP no. 119. “Vsem G ubkom am RKP(b) (8 O ctober 1920), W KP no. 119. “Piataia Bel’skaia konferentsiia RKP(b),” W KP no. 254.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

431

Trotsky Archive, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Nearly all docum ents in the Trotsky Archive for the 1919-20 period are in The Trotsky Papers, 1917-1922, edited and annotated by Jan M. M eijer (T he Hague: M outon, 1964).

Grigorii Aronson Family Archive O bsuzhdenie (m inutes of discussion) of G. Aronson: K Istorii Pravogo Techeniia Sredi M en ’shevikov.

Newspapers of the Civil War Era A zovskii Krai, (W hite, Azov) B iulleten’ Iugprofa (M enshevik, Kharkov) B iulleten’ Tambovskogo Gubernskogo K om iteta RKP (Bolshevik, Tam bov) B iulleteri TsK P SR (SR underground publication) Bor'ba (M enshevik, Tiflis) B ulletin o f Inform ation (G eneral Staff A .E .F., W ashington, D .C .) B ulletin o f the R ussian Inform ation Bureau in the U .S. (New York) B ulletins o f the R ussian Liberation C om m ittee (pro-W hite, L ondon) B ulletin Russe (Lausanne) Delo naroda (SR, M oscow) Les Echos de Russie (M enshevik, Stockholm ) Ekonomicheskaia zh izr i (Moscow) Freiheit (U SPD , Berlin) G azeta pechatnikov (Printers’ U nion, Moscow) Inform ation B ulletin (London) Les Inform ations Democratiques (Paris) Les Inform ations Democratiques Russes (Paris) Les Inform ations Democratiques Russes B ulletin (Paris) Iuzh n a ia gazeta (M enshevik, Kharkov) Iuzhnoe slovo (Odessa) Izvestiia K har’kovskogo Soveta (Bolshevik, Kharkov) Izvestiia Odesskogo Soveta rabochikh deputatov (Bolshevik, Odessa) Izvestiia Orlovskogo Soveta (Bolshevik, Orel) Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Gorodskogo Obshchestvennogo Sam oupravleniia (Petrograd) Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta (Bolshevik, Petrograd) Izvestiia TsIK (Moscow) Izvestiia TsKa RKP(b) (Bolshevik, Moscow) Krasnaia gazeta (Petrograd Soviet) Listok “Delo naroda" (SR underground publication) M orgon T id (Stockholm ) N a rubezhe (Tiflis, Georgia) Nachalo (M enshevik, Kharkov) N ackalo (M enshevik, Moscow) Narod (SR, M oscow and Petrograd) N arodnaia gazeta (W hite, Rostov-on-Don) Nash golos (M enshevik, Kharkov) Nasha gazeta (Kolchak adm inistration, Omsk) N asha zaria (Kolchak adm inistration, Omsk) Nedelia (Vladivostok)

Novyi den’ (Menshevik, Petrograd) N ovyi mir (Moscow) Odesskii nabat (anarchist, Odessa) Otechestvo (independent— under the W hite adm inistration— Arkhangelsk) Petrogradskaia Pravda [Severnaia kommuna] (Bolshevik, Petrograd) Petrogradskii rabochii (Bolshevik, Petrograd) Peuple (Brussels) Prilozhenie k “L istku Delo naroda” (SR underground publication) Pour la Russie (Menshevik, Paris) Pravda (Bolshevik, Moscow) Proletarii (Menshevik, Rostov-on-Don) P ut’ Sotsial Demokrata (Menshevik, Nikolaev) Rabochii Intem atsional (Menshevik, Moscow) La Republique Russe (Menshevik, Paris) La Russie Democratique (U nion for the Regeneration o f Russia, Paris) Severnaia K om m una (Bolshevik, Petrograd) Sovet rabochikh i krest’ian (Bolshevik, Klin) Struggling Russia (London) Svobodnaia zh izri (Rostov-on-Don?) The Times (London) Utro M oskvy (Printers’ U nion, Moscow) Vecherniaia Zvezda (Menshevik, Moscow) Volia Rossii (SR, Prague) Vsegda Vpered (Menshevik, Moscow) Z hizn (W hite, Rostov-on-Don) Znam ia truda (Left SR, Moscow-Petrograd)

Journals of the Civil War Era A m erica n F ederation ist (A .F. o f L ., W ash in gton , D .C .) G o lo s S o tsia lis ta R evoliu tsion era (SR , Kharkov) In form ation B u lletin (L ond on) K rasn oarm eets (Red A rm y, M oscow ) M ysV (M en sh evik , Kharkov) N a ro d o vla stie (SR , Ekaterinodar) P o litra b o tn ik (B olshevik, M oscow ) R e vo liu tsio n n a ia R ossiia (SR , Prague) S o tsialistich eskii V estn ik (M en sh evik , Berlin) S ta tis tik a tru d a (Labor D ep artm en t, M oscow ) V e stn ik a g ita tsii i p ro p a g a n d y (Agitprop, M oscow ) V estn ik K o m m issa ria ta vn u tren n ik h d e l (N K V D , M oscow ) V la s t’ S o v e to v (N K V D , M oscow ) V o lia R ossii (SR , Prague) Z n a m ia (Left SR , Berlin)

Historical Journals A rkh iv R usskoi R e vo liu tsii (Berlin) B ochum er A rch iv fiir d ie G esch ich te des W id ersta n d es u n d der A rb e it (B och u m )

Byloe (Petrograd) Cahiers du M ond Russe et Soviettque (Paris) C anadian Slavonic Papers (Toronto) The C arl Beck Papers in Russian a nd E ast European Studies (Pittsburgh) Golos minuvshego na chuzhoi storone (Paris) G rani (Frankfurt) International Review o f Social History (Amsterdam) lstoriia S S S R (Moscow) Jahrbucher fur Qeschichte Osteuropas (M unich) The Journal o f M odem History (Chicago) Katorga i ssylka (Moscow) Krasnye arkhivy (Moscow) K om m unist (Moscow) Letopis revoliutsii (Kiev) Literatum oe Nasledstvo (Moscow) M olodaia Gvardiia (Moscow) N a chuzhoi storone (Berlin) N ovyi M ir (Moscow) Ogonek (Moscow) Past and Present (Oxford) Proletarskaia revoliutsiia (Moscow) Rodina (Moscow) Russian Review (C olum bus, Ohio) Russkoe Proshloe (Saint Petersburg) Sbom ik: The Journal o f the S tu d y G roup on the Russian Revolution (London) S E E R : Slavonic a nd E ast European Review (London) Sibirskii arkhiv (Prague) Slavic Review (Philadelphia) Sotsialisticheskii V estnik (New York) Sovetskoegosudarstvo i pravo (Moscow) Soviet Studies (Glasgow) Soviet Studies in History (Armonk, N. Y.) Staryi Bol’shevik (Leningrad) Survey (London) Vestnik Russkogo khristianskogo dvizheniia (Paris) Voprosy Istorii (Moscow) Voprosy Istorii K P SS (Moscow) World Politics (Baltimore)

Collections of D ocum ents and Personal Nanatives Abramovitsch [Abramovich], Raphail. Die Z u k u n ft Sowjet R usslands. JenarT hiiringer Verlagsanstalt und D ruckerei, 1923. ---------- , ed. M artov i ego blizkie. Sbom ik. New York: n .p ., 1959. Agabekov, G. S. G P U zapiski chekista. Berlin: “S trela,” 1930. A scher, A braham , ed. T heM ensheviksin the Russian Revolution. L ond o n rT h am esan d H udson, 1976.

Bauer, Otto. Bolschewismus oder Sozialdemokratie? Vienna: Verlag der W iener Volksbuchhandlung, 1920. Baynac, Jacques, ed. La Terreur sous Lenine. Paris: Sagittaire, 1975. Bechhoffer-Roberts, C. E. In D enikin’s Russia and the Caucasus, 1919—1920. Lon­ don: W. Collins Sons & C o., 1921. Belov, G. A .,ed . Izistorii Vserossiiskoichrezvychainoi kommissii, 1917-1921. Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1958. Belyi arkhiv. Sbom ik materialov po istorii bol’shevizma, ibelogodvizheniia. 3 vols. Paris: Imp. de Navarre, 1926-28. Benario, Miguel S. Ein Jahr im Dienste der russischen Sowjet-Republik. Berlin: Der F irn, 1920. Berliner, Hans. Der Bolschewistische Staat. Die G estaltung der mssischen Sowjet Republik durch die Kom m unisten (Bolschewiki) dargestellt a u f G rund der Verfassung vom 10. Juli 1918 u nd der seit der Oktoberrevolution 1917 bis August 1918 erlassenen Gesetze und Verordnungen. Berlin-Lichterfeld: Verlag der Lichtstrahlen, 1919. Bernshtam , M ikhail, ed. Ural i Prikam e, noiabr 1917 ‘ianvar 1919. D okum enty i materialy. Paris: YMCA Press, 1982. Boldyrev, V. G. Direktoriia. Kolchak. Interventy. Vospominaniia (Iz tsikla “Shest” let’ 1917—1922 g.). Novonikolaevsk: Sib. Krai. Izdat., 1925. Bor’ba za Ural i S ib ir . Ed. Smirnov. Moscow-Leningrad: 1st part, 1926. British Labour Delegation to Russia, 1920. Report. London: Offices of the Trade Union Congress, 1920. Brovkin, Vladimir, ed. Dear Comrades: Menshevik Reports on the Bolshevik Revolution and C ivil War. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1991. Buisson, Etienne. LesBolcheviki (1917—1919). Faits-documents-commentaires. Paris: Fishbacher, 1919. Bunyan, James. TheO rigin o f Forced Labor in the Soviet State, 1917-1921. Documents and Materials. Baltimore: T h e Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967. Burevoi, K. S. Raspad 1918-1922. Moscow: Novaia Moskva, 1923. Cheka. M aterialy po deiatel’nosti chrezvychainykh komissii. Berlin: Izd. Tsentral’nogo biuro Partii Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov, 1922. Burevoi, K. S. et al., eds. K prekrashcheniiu voiny vnutri demokratii (U fm skie peregovory i nasha pozitsiia). Moscow: Moskovskii okruzhnoi kom m issaritatpo vnutrennim delam, 1919. A Collection o f Reports on Bolshevism in Russia: Abridged Edition o f Parliamentary Papers, Russia, No. I. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1919. Collins, David, and Jon Smele, eds. Kolchak and Siberia: Documents and Studies, 1919—1926. W hite Plains, N.Y.: Kraus International Publications, 1988. Com m ittee to C ollect Information on Russia. Report (Political and Economic). Lon­ don: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1921. Dallin, David. Posle voin i revoliutsii. Berlin: G rani, 1922. D an, Fedor. D vagoda skitanii, 1919—1921. Berlin: Sklad izd. Russische Biicherzentrale Obrazowanje, 1922. , ed. Oborona Revoliutsii i Sotsial Demokratiia. Moscow: Kniga, 1920. Denikin, A. I. Ocherki Russkoi sm uty. Moscow: Nauka, 1991. Deviatyi s'ezd RKP(b). Protokoly. Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1960. DeviatyisovetPartii [SR] i ego rezoliutsii (iiun 1919). Paris: Im prim erie“U n io n ,” 1919.

Dieterikhs, Μ. K. Ubiistvo Tsarskoi sem ’i i chlenov doma Rom anovykh na Urale. Moscow: Skify7 1991. D n i grozovye. Voronezhskaia organizatsiia KPSS v gody grazhdanskoi voiny, 1 9 1 8 1920. D okum enty i materialy. C om piled by Z. P. Eresieva et al. Voronezh: Voronezhskoe kn. izd-vo, 1960. D otsenko, O leksander. Litopys ukrains’koi revoliutsii. M aterialy i dokum enty do istorii ukrains’koi revoliutsii (1917—1923). L’viv: 1923—. Dotsenko, Paul. The Struggle for Democracy in Siberia, 1917—1920. Stanford, Calif.: H oover Institution Press, 1983. . The Struggle for a Democracy in Siberia, 1917-1920: The Eyewitness Account o f a Contemporary. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1963. Dvinov, B. O t legal’nosti k podpol’iu, 1921—1922. Stanford, C a lif : Hoover Institution Press, 1968. D zerzhinskii, F. E. Izbrannye proizvedeniia v dvukh tomakh. Moscow: Politizdat, 1977. Espe. G od v tsarstve Kolchaka. M aterialy po istorii rabochego dvizheniia v Sibiri (iiul’ 1918—iiul' 1919). Kazan: n .p ., 1919. R eprinted in Collins, David, and Jon Smele. Kolchak a n d Siberia. G an, A. [Anatolii G u tm an n , pseud.]. Rossiia i bol’shevizm. M aterialy po istorii re­ voliutsii i b o r by s bol’shevizm om , 1919—1920. Shanghai: Tip. Russkogo t-va pechatnogo i izdatel’skogo dela, 1921. G ins [Guins], G. K. S ib ir , Soiuzniki i Kolchak, 1918—1920. 2 vols. Peking: n .p ., 1921. G oldm an, E m m a. M y D isillusionm ent in Russia. London: C. W. David, 1925. Gorodetskii, E. N ., ed. Sovetskaia Strana v period grazhdanskoi voiny, 1918—1920. Bibliograficheskii ukazatel’ dokum ental’nykh publikatsii. Moscow: GPIB, 1961. Graves, W illiam S. Am erica’s Siberian Adventure, 1918-1920. New York: P. Sm ith, 1941. G rinfel’d, Iu. Izvospom inanii o bor be za svobodu i narodovlastie v Odesse, 1918—1920. Inter-University Project on the History of th e M enshevik M ovem ent, Paper no. 9. N ew York: Inter-University Project, 1962. G rondijs, Lodewijk H erm en. L e Cas-Koltchak. C ontribution a Vhistoire de la Revolu­ tion Russe. Leiden: A. W. SijthofF7 1939. H aim son, Leopold, ed. The Mensheviks: From the Revolution o f 1917 to the Second World War. Trans. G ertrude Vakar. Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1974. H eifetz, Elias. The Slaughter o f the Jews in the Ukraine in 1919. New York: T hom as Seltzer, 1921. H ough, Jerry, and M erle Fainsod. H ow the Soviet U nion Is Governed. Cam bridge, M ass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1979. Iakovlev, la. Russkii anarkhizm v velikoi russkoi revoliutsii. Petrograd: Izd. Komm unisticheskogo internatsionala, 1921. In the Shadow o f D eath (a D ocum ent): S ta tem en t o f Red Cross Sisters on the Bolshevist Prisons in Kiev. London: Russian Liberation C om m ittee, 1920. Istoriia G razhdanskoi voiny. Vols. 3 and 4. Moscow: Gos. Izd. Polit. Lit., 1957. Ivanov-Razum nik, V. [R. V. Ivanov, pseud.]. P uti Revoliutsii. S b o m ik statei. Berlin: Skify, 1923. Ivlitskaia, T. V. Publikatsiia dokum entov po istorii rabochego klassa S S S R (1 9 1 8 —1920). Moscow; G osizdat, 1960.

Jansen, M arc, ed. Partiia Sotsialistov R evoliutsionerov posle O ktia b rsko g o perevorota. A m sterdam : S tichtin g B eheer, 1989. K aganovich, P. K. K ak dostaetsia khleb. D o kla d u p o ln o m o ch e n n o g o V T sIK p o realizatsii urozhaia v S im b irsk o ig ubernii. Moscow: n .p ., 1920. K amkov, B ., an d A. Shreider. R espublika sovetov. Berlin: Skify, 1920. K antorovich, V ladim ir. F ra n tsu zy v Odesse. Petrograd: n .p ., 1922. Kerensky, A. F. L a R ussie des Soviets d'apres Ies Bolcheviks eux-m em es. Paris: P our la R ussie, 1920. K rem l’ za reshetkoi (Podpol’naia R ossiia). V ospom inaniia levykh eserov. B erlin: Skify, 1923. L am p e, A. A. von. Tragediia Beloi A rm ii. M oscow: Studia “T rite ” “Rossiiskii arkhiv,” 1991. Latsis, M artyn [Janis Sudrabs, pseud.]. D v a g o d a bor’by na vn u tren n em fronte. Populia m y i obzor dvukhgodichnoi deiateVnosti chrezvychainykh kom issii po bor’be s kontrrevoliutsiei, spekuliatsiei i p restupleniiam i po dolzhnosti. Moscow: Gos. izd-vo, 1920. L e n in , V. I. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. 55 vols. M oscow: Politizdat 1 9 5 8 -6 5 . L ib erm an , Sim on. B u ild in g L e n in ’s R ussia. C hicago: U niversity o f C h icag o Press, 1945. M artov, Iu. O ., ed. O borona R evoliutsii i Sotsial D em okratiia. Odessa: K niga, 1920. M aslov, S. S. Rossiia posle chetyrekh let revoliutsii. Paris: Russkaia p ec h at’, 1922. M aterialy po tekushchei prom yshlennoi statistike, 1 9 1 9 -1 9 2 0 . Moscow: n .p ., 1922. M em o ra n d u m on the Bolshevist or C o m m u n ist Party in R ussia a n d its R elation to the T hird or C o m m u n ist In tern a tio n a l a n d the R ussian Soviets (a co llection o f d o c u ­ m ents). W ashington, D .C .: G o v ern m e n t Printing O ffice, 1920. T he M ilita ry S itu a tio n in G reater R ussia. W ashington, D .C .: G o v ern m en t Printing Office, 1919. M o h ren sch ild t, D im itri von, ed. T he R ussian R evolution o f 1917: C ontem porary A c ­ counts. N ew York: O xford U niversity Press, 1971. N ie m a n n , A ndreas. F u n fM o n a te O brigkeit von U n ten . E rin n e m n g en aus den Odessauer Bolschew istentagen A p ril bis A u g u st 1919. Berlin: D e r F irn , 1920. O beruchev, K. M . So vety i sovetskaia v la s f v Rossii. N ew York: “N arodopravstvo,” 1919. O lberg, P aul. Briefe aus Sow jet R ussland. Stuttgart: J. H . W. D ietz N achf., 1919. O uspensky, P. D . L ettersfro m R ussia, 1919. L ondon: R outledge & K egan, 1978. Partiia m en ’shevikov i D en ikin sh ch in a . Protsess kievskikh m enshevikov. M oscow: K rasnaia N ov’, 1923. Perepiska Sekretariata TsK a RKP(b) s m estn ym i p a rtiin ym i organizatsiiam i. M oscow: G ospolitizdat, 1 9 5 7 -. Pethybridge, Roger, ed. W itnesses to the R u ssia n R evolution. N ew York: C itadel Press, 1982. Portugeis, S. O . [Stepan Ivanovich, pseud.]. P ia t’ let bol’shevizm a. N achala i kontsy. Berlin: Izd-vo z h u rn a la Z aria, 1922. Potresov, A. N . V p len u u illiu zii. M o i spor s offitsial’n y m m en shevizm om . Paris: Im p. de la Societe nouvelle d ’editions franco-slaves, 1927. R aleigh, D o n ald J., ed. A R ussian C ivil W ar Diary: A lexis B abine in Saratov, 1 9 1 7 1922. D u rh a m , N .C .: D uke U niversity Press, 1988. R ansom e, A rthur. R ussia in 1919. N ew York: B. W. H uebsch, 1919.

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Index

Abramovich, Raphail, 29, 253, 256, 266, 283 Agaev, P. M ., 222, 343 Agitprop, 168 air force: bom bing by, 153, 316 Akmolinsk, 200 Aleksandrovsk, 111 Aleksandrovskaia, 328 Aleksandrovskii railway, 63-65 Aleksandrovsky locomotive plant, 287, 290 Allies, 19; and W hites, 91, 126, 209, 210, 220-21; and Bolsheviks, 26, 130, 242, 252; and Kadets, 411; and Kolchak, 193; in Odessa, 231-32; and Savinkov, 20; in Siberia, 92-93; SRs on, 4 2-43; in Ukraine, 108, 355. See also French inter­ vention; Japanese intervention All-Russian Cheka, 46, 256, 268, 283, 287, 317, 339, 400 All-Ukrainian C P Conference, 5th, 112 Altai, 378-79 American consul: in Vyborg, 283, 391-96 anarchists, 110, 419 Annenkov, B. V., 196, 206 antidesertion detachm ents, 151 Antip (deputy of Fesov), 137-38, 154 antiprofiteering detachm ents, 133, 164, 393 anti-Semitism, 112-13, 117-19, 214-15, 227-28, 315; Denikin on, 229; among workers, 216. Seealso pogroms Antonov, A. S., 127, 157, 360-64, 367-68, 418-19; army of, 368-73 Antonov, V. P., 76 Antonov-Ovseenko, V. A., 108, 115; and Tambov rebellion, 357, 358, 360-63, 371, 372, 384-88 Arendt, H annah, 268 Arm enia, 406 Aronson, Grigorii, 173 Arsenal plant, 391, 396 Artem (Fedor Sergeev), 116 Artemyev (W hite general), 200 Astrakhan, 82-85, 375-76 Avksentiev, N. D ., 207, 412 Axelrod, Pavel: letters to, 241-45, 248, 255, 262, 266, 291, 324

Azerbaijan, 340, 406 Azov Sea: coast of, 343-44 Babich (Green atam an), 336 Balakhovich (Green leader), 335, 340 Baltic Fleet sailors, 70, 390, 392, 394 Baltic shipbuilding plant, 68, 391 banks, 13, 119 Barnaul, 379 Bashkir, 324 Ber (B. N. Gurevich), 116 Bespalov, N. A., 265 Biisk, 379 Black Eagles, 323-25 black earth region, 79, 131, 140, 146, 304, 314 Black Hundreds, 206, 411 Black Sea: coast of, 330-31, 344, 349-51, 366 Bliumkin, la. G ., 19 Bobrov, V., 100 Bogatyr’ factory, 262 Bogdanov, B. O ., 61 Bolsheviks, 13-16, 28 -3 1 , 4 0 0-401, 4 0 7 -8 , 4 14-15; versus desertion, 150-55, 318; and elections to soviets, 284-87; and E u­ ropean socialists, 51, 242, 261; foreign pol­ icy of, 26, 56, 252, 300, 340-41; versus Greens, 386-87; hard-line faction of, 3 9 40, 45, 50, 188-89; militaristic mentality of, 89, 188, 190-91, 274, 303-4, 384, 407, 414; m oderate faction of, 4 5 -4 7 , 188; myths about, 5-7; and Narod, 182-83; and peasants, 80, 129-32, 140-43, 301-5, 313-17, 372-73, 382-88, 415; reactive politics of, 8, 10; Right Mensheviks on, 170-71, 173, 249; slaughter of, in Omsk, 2 04-5; SRs on, 174-76; versus strikes, 8 8 89, 296-98; and Ufa delegation, 42-45; W hites on, 193-94. See also Com m unist party; C P Congress bourgeoisie: Bolsheviks on, 298, 407; cossacks as, 102; in countryside, 118, 140, 381; econom ic collapse of, 271; Lenin on, 185— 86, 341, 408; peasants as, 32, 137; Red atrocities against, 85, 9 6 -9 7 , 232, 346;

446 bourgeoisie (cont.) R ight M ensheviks on, 169-70; totalitarian­ ism and, 18 9 -9 0 ; in U kraine, 1 20-25, 35 3 -3 4 ; and W hites, 209, 233. Seealso class warfare; educated classes; kulaks Brest-Litovsk treaty, 18 B rezhnev era, 281, 309 British consul: in E katerinburg, 95 British delegation, 2 5 2 -5 5 , 2 5 8 -5 9 Brusok (G reen leader), 372 Bryansk, 30, 73, 8 0 -8 1 , 1 6 0 -6 1 , 297, 361 Bubnov, A ndrei, 116 B udennyi, S. M ., 232, 337 B ukharin, Nikolay, 39, 256, 415 b u n ty, 156, 321, 416. S e eaiso reb ellio n s bureaucracy. See C o m m u n ist party Burevoi, K. S ., 42, 44, 181, 200 Buriats (G reen leader), 379 Butyrki jail, 81, 263, 266 C a ch in , M arcel, 260 capitalism , 1 6 3 -6 4 , 304; L enin on, 186; M ensheviks on, 1 6 4 -6 5 , 2 3 9 -4 0 , 413; Right M ensheviks on, 1 6 9 -7 0 , 172, 248; SRs on, 175; Trotsky on, 273 C aucasus, 91, 330, 342 C hase, W illiam , 57n C heka: versus C o m m u n ist rivals, 28, 29; versus cossacks, 34 9 -5 4 ; debate on, o f Bol­ sheviks, 4 5 -4 9 , 189; versus deserters, 1 5051, 153; and foreign delegations, 252—53, 256, 260; and elections to soviets, 2 8 6 -8 7 ; in frontline war, 9 7 -9 8 ; in K uban, 3 4 4 45; looting by, 220; M akhno verus, 116; and M irbach m urder, 19; versus opposition parties, 168, 1 7 9 -8 0 , 1 8 2 -8 4 , 191, 241, 2 5 1 -5 2 , 2 5 5 -5 8 , 2 6 2 -6 9 , 3 6 7 -6 8 , 408; and peasants, 138, 143, 161, 269, 270, 313—14, 338; versus Petrograd uprising, 393—97; as Red T error instigators, 52; versus T am bov rebellion, 3 7 0 -7 1 , 385; in U kraine, 1 1 9 -2 5 , 233, 33 2 -3 3 ; workers and, 94, 2 9 0 -9 1 , 2 9 3 -9 6 . See also AllRussian C heka; totalitarianism Chelyabinsk, 203, 382 C herevanin, F. A ., 163 C hernenikov, B. N ., 44 C hernigov, 107, 328 C hernov, V ictor, 12, 55, 2 5 2 -5 8 , 262, 366, 412; “Civil W ar and D ictatorship,” 1 7 7 78; versus Kolchak, 205; on R ight SRs,

INDEX 207; on SRs’ legalization, 53; on T am bov rebellion, 363; on Ufa delegation, 4 1 -4 2 , 45 C hernov, V. M ., 379 C h ich e rin , G. V., 44 C hinese detach m en t, 159 circle assem blies, 103, 331 C ircle Assembly (D on), 2 2 1 -2 2 , 330, 343 civil war, 9—21, 90—92, 1 6 1 -6 2 , 4 0 5 -9 ; as brutalization of society, 4 1 8 -1 9 ; historians on, 127, 134, 192, 300, 4 0 3 -6 , 421; ideol­ ogy in, 234, 407, 414; identities and, 403, 406, 416, 419, 422; m yths of, 3 - 7 , 4 1 7 18; origins of, 9 -2 1 ; peasants as third force in, 1 4 3 -4 5 , 199, 3 2 5 -2 6 , 4 0 5 -6 ; as re­ conquest of Russian em pire, 7 - 9 , 406 class warfare, 10, 1 2 0 -2 5 , 2 3 2 -3 3 , 403, 407; versus cossacks, 351; in countryside, 136— 37, 162, 3 0 1 -2 ; L enin on, 185; as totali­ tarianism , 124, 1 89-90; R ight M ensheviks on, 248; SRs on, 175; in U kraine, 32 8 -2 9 . See also bourgeoisie; Red Terror collective farms, 108, 109, 161, 142, 327, 329. See also state farm s comm issars: collaboration of, w ith G reens, 150; corruption of, 139, 317; drunkenness of, 79, 139, 143, 359; as “little tsars,” 1 3539, 160, 3 0 6 -9 , 371; opposition parties on, 170, 242, 248, 251; workers’ resent­ m en t of, 6 0 -6 1 , 80, 94, 280, 282 C o m m ittee o f the C onstituent Assembly. See K om uch governm ent com m ittees o f the poor, 17, 31, 107, 129— 30, 301, 404; M ensheviks on, 164; in U kraine, 3 2 7 -2 9 com m unes: peasant, 3 1 0 -1 2 C o m m u n ist party: bureaucratization of, 1 8889, 275, 277—78, 284, 310; peasants’ c o n ­ fusion about, 14 1 -4 3 . See also Bolsheviks; C P Congress; dictatorship co ncentration cam ps, 4 8 -4 9 , 123, 265, 4 0 0 401; bourgeoisie sent to, 334; for deserters, 153; M artov on, 261; peasants sent to, 316, 346, 376; Pravda on, 288; workers sent to, 256, 277, 288, 297 confessions: forced, 71, 122, 296 Congress o f M em bers o f the C onstituent As­ sembly, 41 Congress o f Peasants, Rebels, and W orkers, 2d, 1 0 8 -9 Congress o f Soviets, 2d, 16; 5th, 1 9 -2 0

Conquest, Robert, 127-28 C onstituent Assembly, 11-12, 204-6; Bol­ sheviks on, 16; cossacks on, 222-23, 225; and Right Mensheviks, 171; SRs and, 9, 4 0 -4 3 , 175, 404; W hites on, 194-95; worldview of leaders of, 208 Constitutional Democrats. See Kadets cossacks: versus Bolsheviks, 11, 101-6, 315, 3 29-34, 341-46, 373-76; and frontline war, 96, 114; massacres by, 206, 227; Red Terror against, 349-56; as refugees, 230; versus W hites, 2 21-25. See also D on Host area; Kuban C ouncil o f Southern Trade Unions, 214, 215-16, 228 C ouncil of Workers’ Cooperatives of the South, 131 C P Congress, 8th, 28, 32, 4 9 -5 1 , 60, 136, 139, 140, 143; 9th, 276-77 C rim ea, 226, 229, 340, 342-46 Crispien, A rthur, 260 C zech Legion, 18, 9 2 -9 3 , 205, 207 D alin, David, 54, 258 Dan, Fedor, 12, 37, 163-65, 167, 252-56, 258; and workers, 60, 167-68 Davydov (SR), 265 decossackization, 101-6 D e cre e o f 14 June (1918), 25 Delo naroda, 53-54, 55 D enikin, Anton: frontline campaign of, 77, 9 0 -9 1 , 100-101, 106, 114-16, 126; and peasants, 21 8 -2 5 , 330; on pogroms, 229; regime of, 209-12, 410; SRs and, 2 2 4 25; on W hite terror, 226; and workers, 213-18 D epartm ent of Propaganda (OSVAG), 224 deportation: mass, 316, 387 deserters, 127, 146-49, 150, 152-53, 31112, 317-19; Bolshevik responses to, ISO55; Lenin and, 187; from m ilitarized labor, 276-77; return of, 220; SR organization of, 180; in Ukraine, 3 36-37, 339; on the Volga, 98, 99; from W hite armies, 197— 99, 323 Deviatkin, A. F., 254 Diakonov, A., 4 6 -4 7 dictatorship: Com m unist, 17, 35-36, 78, 165, 308 dictatorship of proletariat, 62, 132, 134, 413; M artov on, 239-41; m yth of, 57, 129;

Lenin on, 185-86; Right Mensheviks on, 248; SRs on, 175 Dieterichs, Μ . K., 194 Directory governm ent, 40, 118, 207 Donetsk, 107 Don Host area, 91, 101-6, 329-34, 341-46, 375-76; and Antonov, 369; Russian settlers in, 103, 224-25, 329-30 draft, 86, 100, 150, 303, 309, 317; by Greens, 324 Duks factory, 60 dumas: and W hites, 212 Dutov, A. I., 196 Dybenko, Pavel, 109, 131 Dzerzhinsky, Feliks, 50, 52, 54, 7 3 -7 5 , 259, 2 65-68, 340; on Cheka policy, 48; on fall of Perm, 97 -9 8 ; and Krondstadt rebellion, 395; L enin’s reliance on, 49, 263; on SRs and peasant rebellions, 269 Econom ic Commission of Menshevik C C , 163 educated classes: as W estern term for bour­ geoisie, 96 Ekaterinburg, 110, 203, 206, 288-90, 297, 306, 325 Ekaterinoslav, 107, 214, 227, 337, 355 Elisavetgrad, 119 E m ilianov(G reenleader), 321 Enisei, 378 Erikson factory, 67 Ermansky, O. A., 262 Estonia, 340, 366, 406 fam ine, 132, 142, 280, 300, 305, 309, 38788, 421; D an on, 164; Menshevik predic­ tions of, 36; Right Mensheviks on, 249 Feldman (chief of Cheka First Special D e­ partm ent), 390 Fesov (Tittle tsar”), 137-38 Finland, 340 Fitzpatrick, Sheila, 57n Fom in, N il, 205 food rations: as cause of strikes, 66, 74-75, 82, 86, 94, 389, 391; as political weapon, 7 7 -7 8 , 84, 177, 277-78; size of, 270, 279-80; in Ukraine, 119-20 food supplies, 31-32, 129-31, 301, 316, 389-90; Left SRs on, 250; Mensheviks on, 241; official history of, 134; in Ukraine, 327; under W hites, 193, 209, 218; workers on, 282-83. See also famine; food rations

food supply committees: provincial, 302-3 foreign delegations, 252-55, 2 5 8 -6 1 , 270 forest bandits: as Bolshevik term for Greens, 152 French intervention, 108, 355 Frenkel’ (Yaroslavl Cheka chief), 138 Frenkel’, A. A., 104 Frossard1 Louis-Oscar, 260 Frunze, Μ . V., 339, 345 “gang of four,” 138-39 Geissler factory, 280 Generalov (Stavropol Checka chairm an), 333 Georgia, 223, 342-43, 357, 406 G erm an revolution, 26, 56 G erm an-Russians, 306 Germ us, Ida, 257 Gins, G. K., 194, 196-200, 206 glasnost, 4 G ol’din (Tambov food supply commissar), 359 G ol’tsm an (critic of Trotsky), 273 G om el, 159-61, 336 Gorbachev, M . S., 249 Gorky, M axim, 42 Gots, A. R., 257 grain requisitioning, 38, 129-34, 301-3, 305-9; as cause of peasant rebellions, 17, 156, 158-59, 3 21-23, 358-60; L enin on, 187; Mensheviks on, 36, 164; in Siberia, 378-79; SRs versus, 180; in Ukraine, 328, 331-32; in Volga basin, 9 8 -9 9 Graves, W ., 198 Great Russia, 211 Greens, 145-50, 160-62, 3 10-12, 319-21, 405, 4 15-16; and cossacks, 341-44; histo­ rians on, 6, 127-28; in Tam bov rebellion, 360-64; in Volga rebellion, 99; versus W hites, 199-200, 220, 224, 330. Seealso forest bandits; rebellions Grigoriev, Nikifor, 101, 106, HO, 111-12, 114-15, 117 G rom an, V. G ., 163 G urevich, B. N . (Ber), 116 G uzhon plant, 61 H aim son, Leopold, 127-28 hostage taking, 123, 258, 2 68-69, 386-87; Bolshevik defense of, 190; of C hernov’s family, 257; o f cossacks, 351-53; of politi­ cal opposition, 52, 81, 365; by punitive

and requisitioning detachm ents, 138, 156, 323, 332, 359; to stem desertion, 152-54; in Ukraine, 121-23, 346, 347-48; by W hites, 201 identity: social, 7, 403, 406, 4 0 8 -9 , 416, 419, 422. See also New Soviet M an; peas­ ants, withdrawal of; W hites, worldview of; workers, worldview of industry: collapse of, 13, 36 -3 7 , 59, 166, 390. See also capitalism intelligentsia. See bourgeoisie Internal Security troops, 376, 38 3 -8 4 International, 2d, 51, 259; 3d, 51, 242, 2 5 8 60, 261 Internationalists: bridages of, 7 6 -7 7 , 111, 161 Irkutsk, 208, 378, 379 Ivanovo-Voznesensk, 73, 147, 281, 320 Ivan the Terrible, 306 Izhevsk, 9 3 -9 4 , 202, 291-92 Izhevsk m unitions works, 19 Izhorsky plant, 288 Izvestiia7 35, 58, 136-37, 182, 267; rebels’ versions of, 159 Japanese intervention, 196, 200 Jews, 107, 231, 347-48; in anti-C om m unist m yth, 5; and W hites, 195, 209, 227. See also anti-Sem itism ; pogroms Kadets, 12, 206, 2 1 0 -1 1 , 216, 330, 410-11 Kaganovich, P. K., 133, 310-11, 313 Kaledin, Aleksei, 11 Kalmykov, I. M ., 196 Kaluga, 133, 147, 281 Kamenev, L. B., 46, 50, 108, 257; and Cheka, 47, 53, 265; and grain requisition­ ing, 131-32; and SRs, 31, 44 Kaminsky, Grigorii, 75, 295 Kamkov, B. D ., 367-68 Karakhan, Lev, 44 Karas, Vaska, 372 Kautsky, Karl, 53, 259 Kazan, 2 0 -2 1 , 321, 324 Kefali, M. A., 254 Kharkov, 115-18, 120-24, 287, 291; Greens in province of, 335, 355; M ensheviks’ split in, 173; peasants and state farms in, 107, HO; and Petrograd uprising, 398; under W hites, 209, 214, 226, 230

INDEX Kherson, 335, 338 K hinchuk, L. M ., 244 Kiev, 116, 120, 122-25; G reens in province of, 355; Jews in, 3 47-48; pogrom in, 2 2 7 28; rebellions in, 334—35; state farms in, 107; under W hites, 209, 2 1 3 -1 4 , 226, 230 Kievlianin, 227 Kirov, Sergey, 84 Kirsta, K. F., 214-15 Koenker, D iane, 59 Kokot’ (G reen leader), 336 Kolchak, Aleksandr: C hernov on, 178; on C onstituent Assembly, 195; coup of, 21, 27, 40, 205; and D enikin, 210; versus Kom uch leaders, 20 5 -7 ; nongovernm ent of, 196, 410; peasants under, 377; Urals cam ­ paign of, 9 0 -9 2 , 100; and W estern opin­ ion, 203; on W hite lawlessness, 200 Kolesnikov (G reen leader), 375, 419 Kolom na locom otive plant, 281—82 Kolpino plant, 282 K om uch governm ent, 1 8 -1 9 ,4 1 , 202, 2 0 5 -7 Kornev, V. S., 384 Kosior, Iosif, 116 Kostroma, 29, 158, 281 Kozlov, 29 Kozlovsky, A. R., 395 Kraikom (Siberian SR com m ittee), 207 Krasilnikov, I. N ., 196, 201, 204 Krasnov, Petr, 101 Krestiannikov (“tsar and God"), 137 Krestinsky, Nikolai, 44, 324 Kronstadt rebellion, 159, 249, 298, 379, 380, 389-400 Krylenko, Nikolai, 47 Kuban, 91, 315, 329-34, 3 4 1 -4 6 , 349-56 kulaks, 132, 137, 159, 310, 325, 385; “bands” of, 149; L enin on, 341; under to­ talitarianism , 189-90; in Ukraine, 328-29. See also class warfare kumavstvo: as term for rural politics, 134 Kursk, 79, 126, 151, 160; grain requisitioning in, 307, 322; G reens in, 321; W hites in, 312 Kursk railroad, 297 Kushch (Green atam an), 338 Kuznetsov, A. T ., 258, 263 labeling: as political weapon, 2 8 8 -8 9 , 291, 295, 308, 4 0 9 -1 0 , 419

449 L abour party (British), 203. See also British delegation Laferm tobacco factory, 392 Lake Baikal region, 196 land: redistribution of, 109, 141, 329; seized by peasants, 128-29, 193, 404; W hite pol­ icy on, 195, 218 L ander, K. I., 342, 344, 349-53 Latsis, A. N ., 3 5 1 -5 2 Latsis, M artyn, 31, 88, 120, 129 Latvia, 340, 406 Left SRs, 14 -1 5 , 19-20, 87, 116, 181-82, 2 5 0 -5 1 , 273; and m ainstream SRs, 14, 181, 411; and peasant rebellions, 251, 3 6 7 -6 8 , 3 6 9 -7 0 , 372, 373; in soviets, 119, 129; suppression of, 20, 55, 67, 70 -7 2 , 119, 26 7 -6 8 L ehovich, D im itry V ., 2 1 2 -1 3 L enin: and C heka, 49, 287; and decossackization, 103-5; versus desertion, 153, 318; doctrines of, 184-89; on food rationing, 278; inconsistency of, 50-51; on M akhnovites, 108; and Martov, 54, 239— 4 1 , 25 9 -6 1 ; “m erciless reprisal” orders of, 3 4 0 -4 1 , 3 4 5 -4 6 , 3 86-87; m yth about, 269, 401; on N ew C ourse, 3 1-32; on N orth C aucasus oil, 330-31; on peasants, 130, 166, 313, 3 74-76; peasants’ views on, 142; during Petrograd rebellion, 395; and workers, 69, 7 3 -7 6 , 167, 185, 275, 292 Levchenko (G reen leader), 336, 338 Levin, R. I., 50 Lewin, M oshe, 411 liberals, 5, 411 L ieber1 Mark, 173 L ithuania, 406 Lubkov, P. K., 379 Lukomsky, A. S., 218 Lunacharsky, Anatoliy, 50, 54, 257; on deser­ ters, 144; on food rationing, 278; on grain requisitioning, 130, 132; on peasant rebel­ lions, 157, 158, 375; on social fragm enta­ tion, 271; and workers, 69, 289 Maevski i, V., 203 M agrini, Luciano, 260 M aikop, 3 5 1 -5 2 Mai-Maevsky, V. Z ., 213 Maisky, Ivan, 244, 266 M akhno, Nestor, 108-12, 355, 3 73-74, 380, 4 1 8 -1 9 ; arm y of, 337; and Bolsheviks,

450 M akhno, Nestor (cortt■) 101, 106, 115, 346; cossacks on, 223; and grain requisitioning, 132; historians on 127; SRs and, 225; and W hites, 110, 116, 2 0 9 -1 0 , 220, 224, 343 M am ontov, Κ. K., 180, 187, 219-20 Martov, lulii, 12, 298; and Allies, 252; and Bolsheviks, 165, 244, 272, 280, 305; versus C heka, 28, 46, 52—55; and L enin, 54, 2 3 9 -4 1 , 259-61; on New Course, 31, 3 3 34, 36; on Right Mensheviks, 172-73 M arurenko, Yurii, 111 M arxism, 272, 299, 409, 421; L enin and, 186-87; M artov on, 33, 240; and m yths of civil war, 7 -8 ; Right Mensheviks on, 170— 7 1 ,4 1 3 Maslakov (Green leader), 375-76 M atveenko (Green atam an), 336-37 Mawdsley, Evan, 127n M edvedey (Green atam an), 321 Melgunov, Sergey, 122, 194, 205, 346 Mensheviks, 11-14, 16 -1 7 , 2 5 -3 1 , 34-40, 163-69; 41 2 -1 3 ; on Bolshevism, 239-42, 244, 246; on Cheka, 46, 49; and C onstitu­ ent Assembly, 12; under D enikin, 209, 211, 216; and E uropean socialists, 51, 252-55, 259-61; and frontline war, 17374; in Kharkov, 116, 173, 214; L enin on, 185-86; and peasants, 129, 241, 325; and Petrograd uprising, 3 91-92, 399; in Siberia, 193; slaughter of, in Omsk, 205; in soviets, 2 43-44, 286-87; and SRs, 17677; and strikes, 87, 202; suppression of, 52, 54-55, 119, 252, 258, 262-69; in Tula, 7 4 -7 6 , 167, 292-96; in Ukraine, 230-31, 330; and W hites, 164, 165, 194, 215-16, 226; on workers, 283. See also Right Mensheviks Metalworkers' U nion, 30 M etal works (Petrograd), 290 Mgeladze, I. V., 50 m ilitarization of labor, 2 72-77, 280-83, 287 -9 9 M iliutin, V. P., 106, 304 M irbach, W ilhelm von, 19 Mishka (Green com m ander), 321 Mogilev, 286 Moldavia, 114 M ordalevich (Green atam an), 337 M ordovia, 324 Moscow: February 1921 uprising in, 391-97;

INDEX

Greens in province of, 147, 321,-soviet elections in, 284, 286; state farms in prov­ ince of, 304; strikes in, 6 3 -6 5 , 255, 389; workers in, 59, 279, 281, 390-91 M otovilikha plant, 9 4 -9 5 , 202 M uslim peasants, 324 mutinies: historians on, 7; o f peasant bands, 114-16; ofR ed Army, 73, 81 -8 5 , 127, 159-62, 322-23, 382, 394; o fR e d navy, 271, 322; of W hite army, 198. Seealso Kronstadt rebellion N arod, 181-84, 2 6 4 -6 5 , 267, 285 -8 6 Naval’ plant, 28 9 -9 0 Nazarov (W hite colonel), 343-44 Nekrich, Aleksandr, 127-28 NEP, 33, 187, 272, 3 0 4 -5 , 399, 415, 421; Lenin on, 400-401 Nerekhta, 135 Nevsky, V. I., 78 New Course, 2 6 -2 8 , 4 9 -5 6 , 89, 184 New Soviet M an, 409, 422 newspapers. See press Nicolaevsky, Boris, 47n, 166 Nikolayev, 107 Nikolayev railroad, 72, 285-86 N izhni Novgorod, 86, 132-33, 147, 322 Nogin, Victor, 28, 139 N orth Caucasus, 91, 330, 342 Novgorod, 156, 300, 318, 322, 366, 394 Novorossiysk, 220, 344 Novoselov, I. P., 379-80 Obolenskii1 V., 212, 213, 217, 226 O bukhov plant, 66, 282, 288, 290, 392 O ctober revolution, 9 -1 1 , 168, 239, 241, 250; L enin’s revised version of, 32 Odessa, 118, 120-24, 155, 214, 246; Allies in, 231-32; under W hites, 23 0 -3 2 Old Believers, 158 Om sk, 196, 2 0 4 -5 , 378, 380-82 O rdzhonikidze, G. K., 330, 340 O rel, 30, 7 9 -8 2 , 147, 160-61, 321; pogrom in, 227; W hites and, 126, 209 Osinsky, N ., 2 7 -2 8 , 46, 50, 136, 275-76 Palm er (U .S. vice-consul), 9 5 -9 6 peasant detachm ents, 385-86 peasants: and Bolsheviks, 80, 129-32, MO43, 301-5, 313-17, 3 72-73, 382-88, 415; and C onstituent Assembly, 159; and

INDEX D enikin, 21 8 -2 5 , 330; and Mensheviks, 129, 241, 325; m ilitarization of, 274-75; and Right Mensheviks, 171-72; in Siberia, 193; self-governm ent of, 3 1 0 -1 2 , 380; on state farms, 3 1 3 -1 4 , 317; in Ukraine, 108— 12, 348; in Volga basin, 9 8-100; and W hites, 144-45, 195-202, 2 2 0 -2 1 , 224, 312, 315; withdrawal of, from national pol­ itics and econom y, 14, 129, 1 43-45, 155, 199, 404, 416. See also G reens; kulaks; land; Left SRs; rebellions; Red Army; SRs Penza, 376 People’s Army, 19, 9 2 -9 3 , 366 People’s Com m issariat o f Food Supply, 131 People’s Com m issariat of Internal Affairs, 47 People’s Com m issariat o f Justice, 47 People’s Revolutionary Peasant Army, 3 7 9 82 Pepeliaev, A. N ., 37, 95 Perm , 37, 91, 9 5 -9 8 , 312, 318 Peters, Iakov, 47, 73, 81 Petliura, Sim on, 111, 117, 160, 334, 336; and pogrom s, 418; and SRs, 225; versus W hites, 221, 224 Petrenko (G reen leader), 336 Petrograd, 147, 156, 258, 262, 304, 306; February 1921 uprising in, 3 91-97; soviet elections in, 284; strikes in, 6 6 -7 2 , 202, 290, 297, 389; workers in, 13, 279, 281, 283, 390-91 Piatakov, G . L ., 108, 115, 116, 288 Piatigorsk, 352-53 Pipes, Richard, 407 plenipotentiaries m ovem ent, 17, 61; and Petrograd uprising, 393, 39 7 -9 8 Pleskov, A ., 3 8 -3 9 , 262 Pliusnina, N ., 109, 117 Plo factory, 281 Plotnikov, I. D ., 379 Podolaika (G reen atam an), 336 Podol’e, 107, 328, 334, 336, 347, 355 pogroms, 117-18, 160, 206, 209, 338, 347, 418; D enikin on, 229; Kadets and, 411; M akhno on, 115; by W hites, 173, 2 2 7 -2 8 Poland, 2 5 0 -5 1 , 259, 3 39-41, 406; W rangel and, 343 Poltava, 107, HO, 3 3 5 -3 6 , 347, 355 Popov, F. G ., 3 73-74, 375 Pravda, 35, 58, 136, 138-40, 2 7 6 -7 7 , 288; workers’ writing in, 57n press, Russian: under Bolsheviks, 17, 39, 51,

451 58, 252, 264, 270, 288, 4 0 7 -8 ; free ex­ pression in, 397-98; glasnost-era revisio­ nism of, 4; under W hites, 203, 2 10-11. See also Delo naroda; Izvestiia; Pravda; Vsegda Vpered press, W estern: and civil war m yths, 10; on Red Terror, 26; on socialist opposition, 255, 260, 261; on W hites, 126, 204, 213 priests, 161 Printers’ U nion, 30, 2 5 4 -5 5 , 258 Pskov, 311, 366 punitive detachm ents: Red, 1 37-40, 154, 156, 322, 324, 362; in Ukraine, 332-33; W hite, 199, 200-201 punitive troikas, 351 Putilov plant, 6 7 -7 0 , 277, 283, 392 Putilov resolution: text of, 6 7 -6 8 P ut’ Rabochego, 21 4 -1 5 Rada (Kuban parliam ent), 2 2 1 -2 5 , 330, 331, 3 4 2 -4 6 Radek, Karl, 26 Radkey, Oliver, 320, 359, 3 6 3 -6 5 , 367, 370, 4 0 4 -5 Raevskaia (Left SR leader), 367 Rakitnikov, N. I., 44, 181 Rakov, F. D ., 257, 263 Rakovskii, C hristian, 112, 328, 346 Ratner, E. M ., 257 rebellions, peasant, 17, 31 -3 2 , 38, 117, 128-30, 155-62, 300, 3 2 1 -2 6 , 4 0 4 -5 , 41 6 -1 9 ; in Astrakhan, 8 2 -8 5 ; Bolsheviks on, 112; C hernov on, 178; historians on, 7, 1 27-29, 357-58; M artyn Latsis on, 31, 88, 129; in O rel, 7 9 -8 2 ; Right Mensheviks and, 172; in Siberia and Urals, 377-83; in Tam bov, 3 57-73; in Ukraine, 111, 314, 317, 3 3 4 -4 1 , 3 55-56; on the Volga, 9 8 100, 300, 3 77-79; under W hites, 200, 218, 2 2 0 -2 1 , 224. See also cossacks; Left SRs; SRs Rechkin railcar-building plant, 68, 290 R edA rm y, 3 1 -3 2 , 3 8 -4 0 , 1 21-22, 275, 3 39-40; and elections, 285; and grain req­ uisitioning, 131-32; L enin on, 307; and N arod, 183; and peasants, 129, 145, 162, 322; political unreliability of, 86—87, 97, 99, 10 5 -6 , 157, 159, 298, 337, 339, 372, 376, 380, 3 8 2 -8 3 , 3 93-94, 399; and SRs, 180-81; in Ukraine, 90, 112-14, 327; and

452 Red Arm y (cont.) workers, 65, 76, 78. See also deserters; K ronstadt rebellion; m utinies Red Cross Sisters of M ercy, 123—24 Red m ilitarism , 3 8 -4 0 . See also Bolsheviks, m ilitaristic m entality of Red officers’ schools, cadets of; versus G reens, 3 3 6 -3 7 , 362; versus workers, 392, 393 R ed T erro r, 2 0 -2 1 , 2 5 -2 6 , 184, 4 0 0 -4 0 1 , 409; in A strakhan, 85; D ecree on, 161; in D o n area, 102-6, 349; historians’ ignoring of, 6; in K uban, 349—56; and Right M e n ­ sheviks, 169; in Tam bov, 3 70-71; in U kraine, 1 18-25; in Urals, 9 3 -9 8 . See also Cheka; concentration camps; hostage taking; villages, shelling of R ed Thought, 94 refugees, 2 3 0 -3 2 R em ington, T hom as, 57n requisition detachm ents, 142, 323, 338 revolutionary com m ittees, 331 revolutionary tribunals, 2 8 8 -8 9 Riabikov (W hite general), 198 Riabovol, N . S., 222, 223 Right M ensheviks, 1 69-74, 202, 207, 2 4 5 50, 266, 413 Right SRs, 19, 55, 207 R odin, Vadim, 381 Rogov, G . F., 379 R om ania, 340 Rostov, 233, 2 4 6 -4 7 , 344, 376 Rozanov, S. N ., 201 Rozhdestvenskii tram park, 70 Rozhkov, N ., 36 Russian Liberation C om m ittee, 6 I n Ryazan, 147, 157, 316, 360 Ryazan railway, 61, 2 9 0 -9 1 , 297 Rybinsk, 30 Rykov, Aleksei, 50, 273 Sam ara, 151, 159, 304, 316, 321, 3 7 3 -7 7 San (Kharkov M enshevik), 173 Sapozhnikov (G reen leader), 3 7 3 -4 , 376, 419 Sapronov, T. V., 2 7 5 -7 6 Saratov, 147, 246, 304, 306, 316, 318; peas­ a n t rebellions in, 300, 314, 321, 3 73-77, 398 Savinkov, Boris, 20, 266

INDEX Scheibert, Peter, 12 7 -2 8 , 134, 300 Selianskii (G reen leader), 372 Sem enov, G. S ., 196, 206 Sem ipalatinsk, 196, 200, 378, 379 Seratti, G iacinto, 260 Sereda, Sem en, 141 Sergeev, Fedor (Artem ), 116 Serov (G reen leader), 3 7 3 -4 , 376 Shchetkin (G reen atam an), 321 Shm elev, N. A ., 44 Shm erling, V. G ., 263 Shogrin (G reen leader), 111 S huba (G reen atam an), 336 Shvarts, Solom on, 173 Siberia, 27, 193, 2 0 6 -8 , 270, 315, 410; Nicolaevsky’s report on, 166; peasant rebel­ lions in, 200, 300, 321, 377 -8 2 S iem ens-S chuckert plant, 68 Sim birsk, 258, 2 8 9 -9 0 , 300, 3 1 0 -1 1 , 313, 321; grain requisitioning in, 302, 305; peasant rebellions in, 156, 158, 300, 324, 3 7 3 -7 7 , 399 Sirko (G reen atam an), 338 Skachko (Red com m ander), 111 Skocpol, T heda, 162n Skomorovsky, B. N ., 243, 262, 291 Skorokhod rubber factory, 68, 283, 288 Skoropadsky, P. P ., 101, 118 Slashchev, Ya. A ., 217 Sm olensk, 147, 151, 285, 297, 300, 306, 311 Social D em ocrats (G erm an), 26, 51, 259-61 social fragm entation, 2 3 3 -3 5 , 271, 4 0 3 -4 , 409, 42 0 -2 1 socialist construction, 16, 129, 132, 415; in countryside, 3 0 4 -5 ; Left SRs on, 250; L en in ’s retreat from , 3 2 -3 3 ; M artov on, 2 3 9 -4 1 ; m yth of, 270—72; Trotsky on, 274; in U kraine, 327 socialists, Russian. See Left SRs; M ensheviks; R ight Mensheviks; SRs socialists, W estern E uropean, 26; Bolsheviks and, 51, 242, 252; M ensheviks and, 40, 259; R ight M ensheviks and, 170, 249; SRs and, 261. Seealso Social D em ocrats Sokol (G reen atam an), 335 Sokolov, Boris, 283 Sokolovskii (G reen leader), 111 Sorm ovo, 73, 7 7 -7 9 , 202 Soviet C onstitution, 25, 35, 239—41 Soviet power, 310; w ithout C om m unists,

453

INDEX

159, 380; m yth of, 3 9; peasants on, 108, 110, 141-43, 319; "w ithout soviets,” 102; in Ukraine, 106-8; workers on, 168 soviets, 63, 240; elections to, 134-3S, 2 8 4 87, 309; M enshevik strength in, 243-44, 28 6 -8 7 , 407; Narod on, 182; in Ukraine, 331 sowing com m ittees, 303, 312 Spartacist uprising, 56 Special Conference of the C om m ander in Chief, 210, 212, 2 1 6 -1 7 , 222 Spiridonova, M ariia, 31, 250, 2 6 7 -6 8 , 271; and workers, 60, 62, 6 7 -6 8 SR Party C onference, 9th, 174-76, 181 SRs, 15-18, 4 0 -4 5 , 174-84, 41 1 -1 2 ; on C heka, 46; and C onstituent Assembly, 11— 12; under D enikin, 209, 211, 2 23-25; and European socialists, 2 5 2 -5 5 , 261; histo­ rians’ ignoring of, 6, 411; versus Kolchak, 208; and Kronstadt rebellion, 366, 398; Lenin on, 185-86; M artov on, 241; and peasants, 129, 159, 310; and Petrograd up­ rising, 3 9 1 -9 2 , 394, 399; as rebet orga­ nizers, 179-80, 184, 323-25, 341, 3 8 0 81; in Siberia, 193, 20 7 -8 ; slaughter of, in Om sk, 20 4 -5 ; in soviets, 407; as strike leaders, 87, 202; suppression of, 54-55, 7 4 -7 6 , 116, 119, 191, 2 6 2 -6 9 , 400; and Tam bov rebellion, 357, 361, 3 63-68, 3 6 9 -7 0 , 372; in Ukraine, 330; and W hites, 4 0 -4 1 , 194, 226. See also Left SRs; Narod; SR Party Conference; Ufa delegation Stalin, 49, 9 7 -9 8 , 304, 415; m yth of, 269, 401 Stalinism: as Leninism , 49, 89, 190, 4 0 0 401. See also totalitarianism state farms, 106-8, 304, 3 1 3 -1 4 , 317, 378. See also collective farms Stavropol, 341 Steinberg, Isaak, 250, 267 strikes, 17, 58, 73, 8 5 -8 9 , 276, 287-92; his­ torians on, 7; L enin and, 73 -7 6 ; in Mos­ cow, 6 3 -6 5 , 255, 389, 391-97; in Petrograd, 6 6 -7 2 , 202, 290, 389, 391-97; Right Mensheviks and, 249; in Sormovo, 7 7 -7 9 ; in T ula, 7 3 -7 7 , 2 92-97; in Urals, 9 4 -9 5 ; under W hites, 2 0 2 -3 , 2 1 7 -1 8 Struk (Green atam an), 111, 3 35-38, 355 Strum ilin, S. G ., 66, 68 Strum ilo, G ., 202, 203

Struve, Petr, 210, 212 Stulov (Green leader), 320 Sviatitsky, N . V., 42, 44 Syrtsov, Sergey, 1 0 3 -4 Syzran’, 9 8 -9 9 Tam bov, 3 1 2 -1 4 , 316-17; Antonov in, 127; deserters in, 318, 320, 361; grain requisi­ tioning in, 3 0 7 -9 , 358-60; G reens in, 147, 360-64; peasant rebellions in, 79, 157, 220, 300, 321, 325, 357-73, 384-88 Tatars, 3 2 3 -2 4 Terpilo, D anil. SeeZ elenyi (Danil Terpilo) Teusler, D r. (Am erican Red Cross), 96 theater of the absurd: Soviet life as, 2 70-72, 285 Timofeev, E. M ., 44, 257 T iutiunnik, Yurii, 335 Tobolsk, 200, 380-82 Tomsk, 198, 200, 203, 378, 379 totalitarianism , 2 6 8 -6 9 , 274, 413, 415. See also Stalinism trans-Siberian railroad, 93, 193, 380 Treugolnik rubber factory , 70 Trifonov, Valentin, 104-5 Troianovsky, A. A., 262 Trotsky, L eon, 18, 102, 115, 334, 415; on deserters, 336; and m ilitarization of labor, 27 2 -7 6 ; peasants’ views on, 142; and Red Army, 148 Trutovsky, V. E ., 367 tsarist officials, 212 Tsaritsyn, 126, 209, 306, 373-77 T seitlin, M . S ., 257 T sentm soiuz (peasant cooperative), 207 T ube plant, 391 Tukhachevsky, M . N ., 357, 360, 384-86, 400 T ula, 30, 7 3 -7 7 , 156, 167, 286, 2 92-97, 398 T ula arm am ents plant, 286 Turki, 134 T urner, Ben, 252 Tver, 73, 7 7 -7 9 , 147, 156, 300 T yum en, 198, 382 Ufa, 91, 9 6 -9 7 , 202, 206, 312, 321, 324 Ufa delegation, 4 1 -4 5 , 181-82 Ukhachev (Green leader), 321 Ukraine, 37, 100-126, 129-32, 2 24-33,

454 U kraine (cont.) 3 1 4 -1 5 , 3 4 6 -4 9 ; frontline war in, 9 0 -9 1 ; independence of, 101, 125, 334, 355, 406; peasant rebellions in, 111, 300, 314, 317, 33 4 -4 1 , 3 5 5 -5 6 ; un d er W hites, 2 1 8 -2 4 U nion of T oiling Peasantry, 361, 385 upoinom ochennye. See plenipotentiaries m ovem ent Upovalov, I., 202 Urals: Black Eagles in, 325; frontline war and, 37, 9 0 -9 2 , 202; peasant rebellions in, 3 7 7 -8 2 ; un d er Reds, 9 3 -9 8 , 274; under W hites, 2 0 3 -4 V akhulin (G reen leader), 37 3 -7 4 , 419 V asiliev(L eftS R ), 116 Vasiliev, Boris, 245—50 V edeniapin, M . A., 257 Vendee: peasant rebellion as, 4 1 6 -1 7 villages: shelling of, 1 5 3 -5 4 , 175, 187, 201, 316, 346, 419 Vitebsk, 286 V ladim ir province, 147, 281 Voice o f the People’s A rm y, 381 Volga basin, 304, 369, 38 7 -8 8 ; frontline war in, 93; peasant rebellion in, 9 8 -1 0 0 , 300, 373-77; un d er W hites, 195 Volin (speaker at 8th C P Congress), 143 Vologda, 317 V oloshchenko (G reen leader), 338 Volsky, V. K., 4 1 -4 4 , 181 V olun teerA rm y, 1 44-45, 2 1 3 -1 4 , 2 27-28; advance of, 9 0 -9 1 , 2 0 9 -1 0 ; and cossacks, 22 1 -2 2 ; retreat of, 2 2 9 -3 2 Volyn ’, 107, 328, 334 -3 5 V oronezh, 126, 214, 304, 306; deserters in, 311, 361; G reens in, 321, 335; peasant re­ bellions in, 79, 156, 3 7 5 -7 6 Voroshilov, K lim ent, 116 Votkinsk, 93, 94, 202, 2 9 1 -9 2 Votkinsk m unitions works, 19 Vsegda Vpered, 2 9 -3 0 , 34, 3 9 -4 0 , 61n Vyatka, 158, 319 Vyshinsky, Andrei, 266 W ar C o m m u n ism , 25, 272, 2 9 8 -9 9 , 3 0 4 -5 , 3 8 9 -9 1 , 399, 405; M ensheviks on, 165 warlords, 196, 372, 410 W eim ar Republic, 56 W h at Is to Be D one? (M enshevik program), 163, 413

INDEX W hite arm ies, 3 7 -3 8 , 195, 1 9 7 -9 9 , 201, 2 1 2 -1 3 , 2 1 9 -2 0 , 229—31; political u n re ­ liability of, 224. See also People’s Army; V olunteer Army W hites, 21, 209, 2 1 1 -1 2 , 2 3 3 -3 5 , 4 0 4 -5 , 408, 4 0 9 -1 0 ; and cossacks, 3 4 2 -4 6 ; cult of, 4n; D an on, 167; historians on, 192; m yths of, 3, 6; and peasants, 144, 145, 1 9 5-202, 2 2 0 -2 1 , 224, 312, 315; pogroms by, 173, 2 2 7 -2 8 ; and R ight Mensheviks, 171-72; SRs on, 177-78; in U kraine, 125, 2 1 8 -2 5 ; and workers, 168, 193, 2 0 2 -4 ; worldview of, 1 9 3 -9 6 . See also D enikin; Kolchak, Aleksandr; W hite armies; W hite terror W hite terror, 2 0 4 -6 , 219, 2 2 6 -3 2 . Seealso hostage taking wom en: in concentration cam ps, 123-24; m obilization of, 293, 303, 314; n o n ­ violence of, 294; in pogrom s, 228; raping of, 1 2 1 -2 2 , 220; as refugees, 232, 379; taken hostage, 323, 3 5 1 -5 2 , 3 8 6 -8 7 workers, 5 9 -6 3 , 397—99; u nder D enikin, 2 1 3 -1 8 ; flight of, from cities, 36, 59, 2 8 0 81; historians on, 57n; L enin and, 69, 7 3 76, 167, 185, 275, 292; and M ensheviks, 55, 16 6 -6 8 , 202, 2 4 1 -4 2 , 2 4 9 -5 0 , 413; m yths of, 4 -7 ; parties’ inability to control, 8 5 -8 6 , 168, 250; and R ight M ensheviks, 246; and soviets, 27, 168, 2 8 4 -8 7 ; and SRs, 55, 87, 202; in U kraine, 330; in Urals, 9 3 -9 8 , 2 0 2 -4 ; wages of, 7 4 -7 5 , 233, 2 7 8 -8 0 ; and W hites, 168, 193, 2 0 2 4; worldview of, 12, 86, 216, 234, 2 8 1 83, 420. See also M etalworkers’ U nion; m ilitarization o f labor; Moscow; Petrograd; plenipotentiaries m ovem ent; Printers’ U nion; Red Army; strikes; workers’ c o n ­ trol; workers’ detachm ents; workers’ oppo­ sition W orkers’ Assembly of Plenipotentiaries, 66 workers’ control, 13, 34 workers’ detachm ents, 15 workers’ opposition: origin o f term , 276 W rangel, P. N ., 223, 229, 337, 340, 34 2 -4 6 , 403 Yakir I. E ., 105 Yaroslavl, 20, 147, 157 Yenisseisk, 382 Yushko (G reen leader), 320

INDEX Zaretskaia, S. M . , 173, 245 Zelenchuk (Green ataman), 335, 336, 338 Zelenyi (Dani) Terpilo), J 06, 111, 114, 116 Zermtov (Piatigorsk Cheka chairman), B 52— 53 zemstvos, 2 0 7 - 8 , 412 Zenzinov, V. M . , 207, 267

455 Zhizn, 2 1 0 - 1 1 Zinoviev, Grigorii: on bureaucratization, 188-89; on peasants, 145; and Petrograd strikes 67, 69, 71, 393-96; speech at 8th C P Congress, 60; speech at Halle, 261 Zorin (member of Petrograd soviet), 116