Captives of Revolution: The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolshevik Dictatorship, 1918-1923 0822944030, 9780822944034

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Dilemmas of Civil War
Chapter 2. The Shape of Dictatorship
Chapter 3. Komuch
Chapter 4. The Politics of the Eastern Front
Illustrations
Chapter 5. Between Red and White
Chapter 6. The End of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries
Chapter 7. “Renegades of Socialism” and the Making of Bolshevik Political Culture
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

CAPTIVES OF REVOLUTION

Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies Jonathan Harris, Editor

Captives of Revolution THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARIES AND THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORSHIP, 1918–1923

Scott B. Smith

University of Pittsburgh Press

Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260 Copyright © 2011, University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, Scott B. (Scott Baldwin), 1963– Captives of revolution : the socialist revolutionaries and the Bolshevik dictatorship, 1918–1923 / Scott B. Smith. p. cm. — (Pitt series in Russian and East European studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-4403-4 (cloth : acid-free paper) ISBN-10: 0-8229-4403-0 (cloth : acid-free paper) 1. Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917-1921. 2. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1917–1936. 3. Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov—History. 4. Socialists—Soviet Union— History. 5. Revolutionaries—Soviet Union—History. 6. Communism—Soviet Union—History. 7. Socialism—Soviet Union—History. 8. Dictatorship—Soviet Union—History. 9. Political culture—Soviet Union—History. I. Title. DK265.S5296 2011 947.084’1—dc22 2010046565

“Important lecture!” cried Pnin. “What to do? It is a cata-stroph!” ­—Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments  ix Introduction  xi

1. Dilemmas of Civil War 1



2. The Shape of Dictatorship 43



3. Komuch 89



4. The Politics of the Eastern Front 123

Illustrations  177–180

5. Between Red and White 181



6. The End of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries 215

7. “Renegades of Socialism” and the Making of Bolshevik Political Culture 239 Notes  279 Bibliography  349 Index  371

vii 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Like any work of scholarship, this book is the product of solitary labors made possible by wider communities. Overlapping networks of teachers, colleagues, archivists, librarians, students, and friends supported me in many ways during the years I was engaged in this project. Most will remain unnamed, but I am grateful to them all. Research trips to Russia were made possible by the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Information Agency, and the United States Department of State, which administers the Russian, Eurasian, and East European research program (Title 8). The bulk of the research was carried out in Widener Library at Harvard University, the library and archives of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the State Archive of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, GARF), the Russian State Library, and the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii, RGASPI). The book draws on two of my previously published articles: “The SocialistsRevolutionaries and the Dilemmas of Civil War,” in The Bolsheviks in Russian Society: The Revolution and the Civil Wars, edited by Vladimir Brovkin (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997); and “Who Shot Lenin? Fania Kaplan, the SR Underground, and the August 1918 Assassination Attempt on Lenin,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 46 (1998): 100–19. I am grateful to Yale University Press and Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas for permission to incorporate material from those articles here. Photographs that appear in this work are credited as follows: Viktor Chernov, Courtesy of the Slavic and Baltic Division, New York Public Library; Nikolai Avksent’ev and SRs in Prague, 1935, Courtesy of the Amherst College Center for Russian Culture; Nikolai Bukharin with defendants, A. L. Litvin, “Azef Vtoroi,” Rodina 9 (1999): 80 (original image located at RGAKFD [Russian State Archive of Film and Photographic Documents]); Abram Gots, Dmitrii ix 

x / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Donskoi, Evgenii Timofeev, Fania Kaplan, Florian Fedorovich, Lev Gershtein, Mikhail Gendel’man, and Evgeniia Ratner: S. A. Krasil’nikov, K. N. Morozov, and I. N. Chubykin, eds., Sudebnyi protess nad sotsialistami-revoliutsionerami (iiun’-avgust 1922 g.): Podgotovka. Provedenie. Itogi. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002) (original images located at the Central Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation: Photoal’bom chlenov TsK i aktivnykh chlenov PSR, TsA FSB RF. N.-1789, t. 21). I have been fortunate to have the help of two able assistants, Will Thompson and Jade Severson, who can also represent the many students at Harvard, Reed College, and Linfield College who helped me more than they will ever know, even when they kept me from the project for extended periods. Without a series of good turns by Christine Mueller, Ed Segel, and Lena Lencek, as well as the patient support and wise counsel of Peter Buckingham, this book would never have come to fruition. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Jonathan Daly, my longtime friend and fellow traveler through Russian history. For many years now, I have benefitted from his encouragement and advice, and he was a careful and critical reader of various versions of the manuscript. Finally, my greatest debt of all is to Lisa Hay. Without her unfailing love and support, I would never have completed the project. The book is dedicated to her, as well as to our daughters, Sarah and Hannah, and to our larger family.

INTRODUCTION

In March 1938, at the last of the great Moscow show trials organized by the triumphant Stalinist leadership of the Soviet state, Joseph Stalin’s disgraced rival Nikolai Bukharin confessed: “I admit I am guilty of treason to the socialist fatherland, the most heinous of possible crimes, of the organization of kulak uprisings, of preparations for terrorist acts, and of belonging to an underground anti-Soviet organization.”1 To historically minded listeners, Bukharin’s confession might have recalled the first major Soviet show trial, the trial of more than twenty leading Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) in 1922. The crimes to which Bukharin confessed—maintaining treasonous relations with foreign interventionists, organizing peasant rebellions, and conspiring to carry out terrorist attacks on Bolshevik leaders—were the same charges that had been levied against the SRs in 1922. For much of that year the Soviet press had lavished enormous attention on charges that the SRs had been tied to Anglo-French imperialism throughout the civil war, were complicit in peasant rebellions against the Soviet state, and stood behind the 1918 terrorist attack that nearly took Lenin’s life. At the conclusion of the trial in August 1922, the court condemned a dozen of the SR leaders to death, although the Soviet government suspended the execution of the sentences. For the rest of their lives Abram Gots, Evgenii Timofeev, and the other principal defendants at the trial were effectively captives of the Soviet state. Most of them perished in the paroxysm of political violence that took Bukharin’s life and that of countless other revolutionaries who faced charges of terrorism and treasonous links with foreign intelligence services and kulak conspirators in the 1930s. In a deeper sense, Bukharin’s 1938 trial neatly articulated the master plot that structured the SR trial and other major Soviet show trials. Soviet show trials combined a dread vision of the overthrow of Soviet power by “renegades of socialism” and a heroic account of vigilant, Bolshevik triumph over these unmasked enemies.2 This narrative loomed large in the Bolshevik imagination. It shaped the struggle against the Bolshevik opposition in the 1920s, and it xi 

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structured not only show trials but also the rituals of self-criticism and apology that Communist Party members who had deviated from the general line were expected to perform throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Soviet mass meetings and agitation trials often enacted a similar story, and the discovery and trial of hidden enemies was a staple of early Soviet literature and film. By exploring the many contexts in which Bolsheviks staged rituals of unmasking, recent scholarship has enormously enriched our understanding of the political culture of the Bolshevik elite and uncovered some of the meanings these performances held for their organizers, participants, and audiences in the 1920s and 1930s.3 This book explores the history and peculiar power of the narrative that underpinned the show trials and apology rituals by grounding it in a formative Bolshevik experience: the struggle against socialist and radical resistance to the Soviet state in the first years after the October Revolution. At the epicenter of that struggle stood the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (PSR), heir to the tradition of Russian revolutionary populism and the largest political party in Russia in 1917. From the time it coalesced in 1902, the PSR distinguished itself from Social Democracy and other currents of the Russian revolutionary movement by its commitment to a model of development that emphasized the possibility of a noncapitalist transformation of the Russian countryside and by its use of terror in the struggle against the imperial government. Each line of thinking and practice derived from SRs’ conscious embrace of the heritage of the People’s Will and the other Russian radical groups of the 1870s and 1880s. Each aspect of that heritage, however, had undergone substantial changes since the nineteenth century. Although Alexander Herzen and the populists of the nineteenth century may fairly be described as agrarian socialists, the PSR had long since made its peace with industrialization and sought to adapt its view of the socialist future to the unfolding processes of Russian economic and social modernization.4 Throughout its existence the PSR cultivated support among industrial workers.5 Like the other parties of the Second International, to which it belonged, the PSR tended to link socialism and industrial modernity. Sympathetic readings of Marx were also widespread among SRs, but they insisted, against Social Democratic orthodoxy, that peasants formed part of a larger toiling class that included industrial workers. They likewise stressed peasants’ revolutionary potential in the struggle against the Old Regime. Before 1917, Viktor Chernov, the principal theoretician of the PSR, argued that peasants’ hunger for land and their hope to remake the countryside in accordance with values that had been shaped by centuries of communal farming would inevitably radicalize Russian politics after the overthrow of the monarchy. The revolution, he and many other Socialist Revolutionaries believed, would overflow the conventional political boundaries of a bourgeois revolution and smash

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the first breaches in Russian capitalism.6 The most important such breach would be the socialization of land—the abolition of private property in agricultural land, which would be distributed to anyone willing to till it by his or her own labor. This revolutionary breakthrough would open the way to a lengthy process of socialist transition, in which Russia would be characterized by a democratic state, a socialized countryside, and a capitalist industrial sector.7 The PSR was also distinctive in its attachment to terrorism as a method of struggle against the Old Regime. Between 1902 and 1911, SRs carried out hundreds of terrorist attacks, killing two ministers of the imperial government and the uncle of the tsar, among many others.8 Ivan Kaliaev, one of the bestknown SR terrorists, is famous for having remarked that a Socialist Revolutionary without a bomb was not an SR.9 Kaliaev’s disdain for methods of political action other than terrorism would have endeared him to his predecessors in the People’s Will, but SR leaders in fact saw terrorism simply as one of several methods the party ought to pursue in its fight against the Old Regime. Many were indeed skeptical of the terrorists’ inclination to substitute their own efforts for mass revolutionary action. In the last years of the Old Regime, when the imperial security police had become skilled at penetrating SR terrorist detachments and foiling their plans, some leading voices in the party even recommended abandoning terrorism. The party majority demurred, however.10 Although few would have gone as far as Kaliaev in identifying the party and the terrorist struggle, most leading SRs shared his emotional attachment to terrorism, which made manifest the party’s revolutionary genealogy, affirmed its commitment to the violent destruction of the Old Regime, and stood alongside the socialization of the land as the key point distinguishing it from Social Democracy, in either its Menshevik or Bolshevik variant. These commitments to terrorism and the socialization of the land did much to define the SR profile before 1917, but the PSR was always remarkable for the range of diverse opinion that it contained. In part this stemmed from the aspiration of the party’s founders to absorb all of the populist groups that dotted the political landscape in Russia and the emigration after the turn of the century. It stemmed as well from the absence of a single dominant figure in the leadership, and from the organizational weakness that plagued the party throughout its existence. Multiple centers of authority always coexisted and competed within the party, and leading SRs often voiced widely divergent, even contradictory, views. In seeking to do justice to this range of opinion and action, but also to write a coherent narrative of the party’s history after October, I have taken inspiration from comments by the historian Gareth Stedman Jones about the British Labor Party. The Labor Party, he has argued, should not be understood as the outgrowth of a coherent, systematic ideology, and still less as the expression of a particular set of social interests. It should be seen rather as a

xiv / INTRODUCTION

“vacant center—as a space traversed or tenanted by groups possessing different and sometimes incompatible political languages of widely varying provenance, a changing balance of forces and their discursive self-definitions.” The task of the party’s historian, he suggests, is to map these languages and their conflicts, and to explore how “groups and discourses of very different points of origin enter at particular moments into relationships of stable coexistence or even mutual reinforcement.”11 The PSR is a particularly fruitful site for the study of political languages in revolutionary Russia and for an exploration of the categories, narratives, and practices of civil war politics, because it spread across the space on the political spectrum at which the two great languages of collective action in the modern world—the language of class and the language of nationhood—collided, coexisted, and interpenetrated. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were by no means immune to the pull of nationhood, but they were certainly far more comfortable speaking the language of class. To the SRs’ right, Kadets were deeply suspicious of that idiom and tried, with little success, to identify themselves with a supra-class set of national and state interests.12 Most SRs, by contrast, sought to make sense of the upheavals of revolution and civil war in terms of both class and nation. Their efforts to do so—and the reciprocal interplay between political languages, social structures, and political practices—form one of the principal themes of this book. The SRs stand at the end of an important, and distinctively Russian, political and social tradition. They should be recovered in their own right from the dustbin of history to which Trotsky famously, and erroneously, consigned them in 1917. My chief aim, however, is not to restore a neglected political party to scholarly attention, but to explicate the politics of the Russian civil war. Following the late French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu, I see politics as a struggle to impose an authoritative vision of the social world. This struggle plays out in, and is constrained by, particular social contexts, but it turns crucially on the establishment and control of the vocabulary that constitutes and defines social reality. As Bourdieu has put it: “The categories of perception, the systems of classification, that is, essentially the words, the names that construct social reality as much as they express it, are the crucial stakes of political struggle, which is a struggle to impose the legitimate principle of vision and division.”13 In the Russian civil war the stark binary of Red and White, widely understood as rooted in class antagonisms, became that legitimate principle of vision and division. By the end of 1918 it defined the political alternatives facing the country, the social identity of the combatants, and the larger meaning of the violence that had enveloped Russia. The mobilizing power of this vision of the civil war contributed immensely to the victory of the Red Army and Soviet state. Its power reflected the fact that the Bolsheviks had effectively monopo-

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lized revolutionary political discourse, thereby securing control of the key site of political power and severely impinging the ability of SRs, Mensheviks, Left SRs, and other radicals to define a revolutionary alternative to Bolshevik dictatorship. From this perspective the central political question of the civil war is how the polarities of Red and White were in fact produced and established over the course of 1918, and that year becomes the decisive year of the civil war. Bolshevik success in framing the civil war as a war between Red and White dictatorships has shaped its historiography. Historians have taken over the categories of Red and White with little awareness that this way of thinking about the civil war is a product of the Bolsheviks’ own ideological labor and in fact played an important role in their victory.14 For decades it rendered SRs, Mensheviks, Left SRs, and other radical opponents of the Soviet state nearly invisible after October, and its simple picture of class relationships has obscured a more nuanced social topology of the civil war.15 It has also fostered a historiographical tendency to hurry from the revolutionary polarizations of 1917 to the battles of the Red Army against the Whites in 1919, which paradoxically emerge as the decisive turning points of the civil war and yet mere codas to 1917. Study of the civil war has thus languished until recently, despite the historian Sheila Fitzpatrick’s suggestion twenty-five years ago that it was the formative experience of the Bolshevik party and Soviet state.16 My final ambition is to develop that insight conceptually and empirically. Key features of the Bolsheviks’ outlook and important practices of their dictatorship—the dictatorship itself, in fact—took shape amid struggle with radical and popular opposition in 1918. The events of that year established the Socialist Revolutionaries in particular as the archetypal “renegades of socialism” and offered a scenario of catastrophe that haunted the Bolshevik imagination for many years, as Bukharin’s plea suggests. A few words should be said about various boundaries that delimit this project. The book analyzes the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries during the civil war, with an emphasis on the party’s national leadership and its efforts to find its place in the civil war. Developments are sketched at the local level, but the focus of the book and the paucity of source materials on local SR organizations after 1918 make it difficult to go into great detail on some basic organizational questions (such as party membership) or to write a genuine social history of the PSR in the first years of the Soviet period. In addition, factions and individual SRs who had split from the party before 1918 appear occasionally, but they are not the objects of study here. This category includes notably the Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries, but it also comprises the SR-Maximalists and a handful of important individuals, such as Boris Savinkov. I do give attention, however, to groups and individuals who separated from the main body of the party over the course of the civil war, including Vladimir Vol’skii’s Narod group, the

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SRs who worked in the Union for the Regeneration of Russia, and the Siberian Union of Socialist Revolutionaries. On a terminological note, I avoid the label “right SR” throughout the book. This Sovietism, which SRs themselves did not use, formed part of the Bolshevik effort to reshape the public image of the PSR, undermine its socialist and revolutionary credentials, and ultimately destroy it. Indeed the disappearance in Soviet usage of the term “Socialist Revolutionary” and its replacement by “right SR” (pravyi eser) testifies to the Bolsheviks’ success in monopolizing revolutionary political discourse.17 That process is a principal concern of this book, but not one that I should reproduce in its pages. I refer to persons on the right wing of the PSR without using the term “right SR,” and I reserve “Left SR” for members of the PLSR. Members of the PSR in fact invariably referred to themselves as “Socialist Revolutionaries,” not “SRs” (esery). For reasons of space and style, however, I have chosen to use the shortened form throughout the book. In another terminological matter, the historians Vladimir Brovkin and Peter Holquist have each proposed the term “civil wars” as an alternative to the conventional “civil war.”18 I agree that “civil wars” is in some ways analytically richer, but I have nevertheless adopted the usual term, on the grounds that a book that deals substantially with representations ought to stick close to the usage of contemporaries. Russians understood themselves to be living through a “civil war,” not “civil wars.” The SRs and Bolsheviks who are the subjects of this book discussed it as a unitary, though complex, phenomenon, and their vocabulary was freighted with historical associations that had important effects on their perception of events. It has therefore seemed to me important to preserve. Chronologically, the book addresses the period from the onset of civil war in early 1918 through the demise of the PSR in Russia in the early 1920s. It begins in the aftermath of the Bolshevik dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, when the SR leadership first began seriously to think through a way beyond Soviet power.19 Geographically, the book concentrates on European Russia and Siberia, the main staging grounds of the PSR during the civil war. Before proceeding further, it may be helpful to sketch a brief account of the PSR in 1917.20 The fall of the monarchy transformed the PSR overnight into the largest political party in Russia. On the eve of the revolution, the party had been little more than a congeries of small, atomized groups. These groups were poorly connected with each other and with the party leadership in emigration.21 The party’s reputation for radicalism and its association with the socialization of land, however, drove a heady growth in the several months after the revolution. By the summer of 1917, the influx of new recruits, the so-called “March SRs,” swelled the party membership to approximately seven hundred thousand. Little is known about the social background and political outlook of the new party members, but it seems safe to say that the PSR had the

INTRODUCTION / xvii

widest appeal across class and estate boundaries of any political party in Russia. SRs dominated the nascent network of peasants’ soviets and had an enormous presence in the army, where soldiers comprised almost half of the PSR’s 1917 membership.22 By summer SRs also served as the mayors of Petrograd, Moscow, Kiev, and many other cities. Mensheviks generally played the leading role in the workers’ soviets and in the central Soviet institutions, but the SR presence was impressive there as well and belies the stereotype of the PSR as a party of agrarian socialism. For several reasons, however, this picture of strength was misleading. Even at the peak of its popularity in the summer of 1917, the PSR suffered from difficulties that undercut its ability to withstand the Bolshevik surge in the fall. Two weaknesses in particular should be highlighted, because their effects extended past October and into the civil war. First, the PSR was split by internal disputes that left different sections of the party often working at cross purposes. The two most contentious issues were Russia’s participation in the World War and SR participation in the coalition with the Kadets in the Provisional Government. The far right wing of the party, grouped around the Petrograd newspaper Volia naroda, fiercely defended both the continuation of the war effort and coalition government. This group, which included such longtime party luminaries as Andrei Argunov and Ekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaia, had no mass following, but it did have a strong voice in the party leadership and some influence on the Provisional Government. On the other side of the party, much of the internationalist wing of the PSR gravitated left over the course of the year and came out in support of Soviet power by late summer. Unlike the right, it had a significant mass following. The final separation of the left wing and the formation of the Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries took place only after October, but well before the Bolshevik seizure of power, much of the SR left had effectively seceded from the party, taking with it large parts of the party organizations in Petrograd, Khar’kov, and elsewhere.23 Between these two warring wings, the SR Central Committee also suffered from the contentious disputes over the war and the coalition. The bloc of centrist SRs that dominated the Central Committee was itself divided into two wings, the so-called right-center and left-center. The right-center controlled the majority in the Central Committee until the Fourth Party Congress in December 1917. It comprised a group of veteran SRs, mainly from Moscow, who were bound together not only by their support of the war effort and their belief in the necessity of coalition, but also by ties of kinship, marriage, and long-standing friendship. The most important men in this group were Nikolai Avksent’ev, Abram Gots, and Vladimir Zenzinov. All had studied together in Germany before 1905, where they absorbed the neo-Kantian idealism that provided the philosophical underpinnings of their moderate and reformist views.

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Their studies also set them apart from the other groups in the party leadership, which for the most part held fast to nineteenth-century orthodoxies. Chernov in particular dismissively referred to the former students as “knowledge rats” (gryzuni nauki).24 Chernov was himself the dominant figure in the left-center minority of the Central Committee. Before 1905 he had been almost single-handedly responsible for the elaboration of the party program, and for many years he had figured as the party’s principal theoretician. SR positions on the peasant commune, the terrorist struggle, and Russia’s road to socialism were almost entirely the products of his thinking and writing. Part of Chernov’s skill, however, lay in finding compromise formulations that papered over the disagreements in the party, a mixed blessing in light of the party’s divisions in 1917 and during the civil war.25 He was also not in any meaningful sense the charismatic or organizational leader of the party. In 1917 there is no doubt that the mass of the party rank and file stood closest to Chernov’s internationalist views on the war and shared his mounting skepticism about coalition government, but for a variety of reasons, the Central Committee elected at the Third Party Congress in May was dominated by the right-center.26 As the party’s predicament deepened over the course of 1917 and the mass of the party moved left, Chernov proved powerless to push the Central Committee beyond its commitments to the coalition and the Kerensky government. This state of affairs persisted through the catastrophes of the fall. After the Bolshevik seizure of power, Gots organized the Central Committee’s frantic efforts to find forces with which to restore the Provisional Government, efforts that resulted in the ill-fated “Junker rebellion” of October 29. With less enthusiasm, the right-center leadership of the party also participated in the negotiations to form a coalition socialist government that were organized by the Executive Committee of the Railway Workers’ Union (Vikzhel’).27 In December the acrimonious Fourth Party Congress finally bore witness to the prevailing leftist sentiment in the party, despite the withdrawal of the Left SRs. It elected a new Central Committee with a left-center majority led by Chernov and Nikolai Rakitnikov. Avksent’ev and several stalwarts of the right-center were dropped, although Gots and Zenzinov did manage to gain reelection.28 Any hope that this might open the way to a more disciplined leftist line proved illusory, however, because the right-center and right wing of the party gained a new institutional base in the bureau of the SR fraction of the Constituent Assembly. It was elected by the fraction on December 23 to serve as its leading organ, and its two-dozen members included only one representative of the party’s left wing (Chernov). Most of the other members of the bureau, including the Central Committee members Zenzinov, Mikhail Gendel’man, and Evgenii Timofeev, as well as Argunov, Vadim Rudnev, and Il’ia Fondaminskii,

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were prominent leaders of the right-center or right wing of the party.29 This institutionalized division between left and right would plague the PSR for the rest of its history. A second problem for the PSR, deeper and more intractable, was one that it shared with all the political parties in revolutionary Russia. Imperial Russian politics had long been characterized by the state’s determination to contain the growth of organized political activity independent of bureaucratic authority. Political parties consequently entered the upheavals of the revolution, and civil war weakly developed, with shallow roots in the population. Moreover, the burgeoning impulse to define and defend collective interests that was so characteristic of popular political activity in 1917 was not primarily realized through the political parties.30 More important in constructing and mobilizing social groups, and therefore of greater political importance in 1917 and beyond, were class-based institutions such as the soviets, factory committees, trade unions, and soldiers’ committees. These institutions were the chief loci of popular politics. They expressed an understanding of democratization as the dismantling of social hierarchies, not the realization of popular sovereignty through the political parties and representative government.31 To be sure, this is more readily apparent in retrospect than it was at the time, when SRs, Mensheviks, and Bolsheviks saw the political labels affixed to the participants in such institutions as evidence of identification with the particular projects of their parties and with their larger understandings of the revolution. This was illusory in important ways, which posed profound challenges for SRs, Bolsheviks, and others after 1917.

1

Dilemmas of Civil War

T

he first months of 1918 may seem in retrospect an interlude of relative calm and pluralism in Soviet Russia, but contemporaries understood that civil war was upon them. The nonpartisan daily Petrogradskoe ekho began to carry regular updates under the rubric “Civil War.” The newspaper’s reports focused on the disintegration of the Russian empire and the fighting that ensued as the Bolsheviks sought to reassemble the Russian state. Such warfare broke out first in Ukraine, where Bolshevik forces fought a successful campaign in January against units loyal to the Rada in Kiev. The “Civil War” rubric also incorporated reports on the fighting in Siberia, where a Siberian regional government dominated by Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) declared its autonomy from Russia and quickly found itself facing Bolshevik forces determined to keep Siberia fully within the new Soviet Russia. Soon, however, the editors of Petrogradskoe ekho created a second rubric under which to organize their material: “On the Russian-Russian front.” Readers in the capital could ponder the bewildering variety of ways Russians had begun to kill each other in the winter of 1918. Devoted largely to the political and social conflicts in European Russia, “On the Russian-Russian front” distinguished such revolutionary violence from the processes of imperial disintegration and national construction that initially constituted “the Civil War.”1 Both rubrics, however, betrayed the long shadow of World War I. The editors 1 

2 / DILEMMAS OF CIVIL WAR

of Petrogradskoe ekho needed to distinguish the “Civil War” from “the War,” and the “Russian-Russian front” from the “Russian-German,” “Rumanian,” and “Western” fronts that had long dominated the newspaper’s front page. Yet the distinctions they drew, and the ironic juxtaposition of the “Russian-Russian front” to the other fronts, show how the World War framed the nascent civil war. Throughout 1918, SRs also interpreted political and social conflict, and the interplay of national movements and state-building campaigns, in light of the World War. A tour of the front pages of Petrogradskoe ekho in January and February thus maps some of the contours of the conceptual space in which the Russian civil war developed. At the same time, it seemed as self-evident to most SRs as it did to the editors of Petrogradskoe ekho that the violence of 1918 marked an intensification of the revolutionary upheavals of 1917. Even as they sought to relate the civil war to the larger World War, SRs thus also interpreted the civil war in terms of the categories that had shaped their understanding of the revolution. How to bring into coherent focus these two conceptions—the civil war as an extension of the revolution and the civil war as part of the World War—posed the first of the many dilemmas of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (PSR) in the civil war. This challenge proved particularly difficult for SRs because of the way that the two political languages through which they sought to make sense of events, the language of class and the language of nationhood, shaped different understandings of events and situated those events in different narratives. Class, Nation, and Civil War

The language of class generally held sway on the left wing of the party, where socialism and revolution were the keywords, while the language of nationhood contributed more to the political vocabulary and outlook of the party’s right wing. Nevertheless, each wing of the party sought to fix the meaning of events in terms of both idioms and to negotiate the tension between the two ways of conceptualizing the civil war. The dramatic shifts in the party’s outlook and rhetoric over the course of the civil war are better understood as shifts in the hierarchy and balance of power between these two languages than as shifts in the numerical balance of the party’s left and right wings, which remained stable and strongly inclined to the left throughout the civil war. The left wing that controlled the party leadership after the Fourth Party Congress emphasized the civil war’s origins in the political and social cataclysms of the revolution. Setting those origins and the likely development of the civil war in a narrative drawn largely from the French Revolution, the leftcenter leadership of the Central Committee believed that civil war would likely end in the triumph of “Bonapartist counterrevolution.”2 The Bolshevik seizure of power and dissolution of the Constituent Assembly had opened the door to

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civil war and counterrevolution, a charge that took center stage in the Central Committee’s indictment of the Bolsheviks and remained there for most of the next four years. The only way to avert counterrevolution, Viktor Chernov and the other leaders of the party’s left wing argued, was to reconvene the Assembly, which it depicted as the only institution capable of reversing the slide into civil war. This reasoning framed the left wing’s central dilemma after January 1918: to reconvene the Constituent Assembly, the SRs, its principal advocates, would have to fight for it, which meant participating in the civil war; yet by the left’s logic, civil war probably doomed the revolution and certainly made a democratic, socialist outcome exceedingly unlikely. The party leadership never escaped this dilemma, which bedeviled it throughout the civil war and accounts for much of its vacillation and many of its shifts. In its first response to this dilemma, the Central Committee abandoned active efforts to reconvene the Assembly. The Central Committee cited the Bolsheviks’ popular support as the basis for its refusal to take up arms against the Soviet government, but the fear that Bonapartism lay at the end of civil war was equally important, as was the continued belief that the Bolsheviks themselves remained a part of the “revolutionary democracy.” Like most Russian radicals in 1917, the SRs used the term “democracy” (often qualified as “revolutionary” or “toiling”) more frequently to designate the socialist portion of the political spectrum and its mass constituencies than to describe a set of representative institutions or constitutional commitments. In this sense “the democracy” served as the conceptual counterweight to “Bonapartist counterrevolution.” Although the SRs were far more willing than the Mensheviks to argue that the Bolsheviks had excluded themselves from the revolutionary democracy by their seizure of power and by their policies after October, such claims were usually voiced very tentatively, especially in 1918. And even if the Bolsheviks had broken with the democracy, the workers, soldiers, and peasants who supported the revolutionary state remained very much a part of the democracy in the SR mind. For the left wing of the party especially, the fundamental opposition between the democracy and the counterrevolution severely constrained the possibilities of struggle against the Soviet state.3 Eschewing armed struggle, the Central Committee adopted a set of theses that outlined a campaign of propaganda and opposition to Bolshevik power within the confines of the Soviet framework.4 The Central Committee hoped to rally the population behind a “healthy socialist policy” that recognized the social and economic impediments to the construction of socialism in Russia but did not preach a return to unreconstructed capitalism.5 Such a policy could include the socialization of the land, substantial state regulation of the economy, and selective nationalization of industrial enterprises. It fit well with Chernov’s long-standing belief that the Russian Revolution would push past a

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conventional bourgeois phase and launch the first skirmishes with capitalism and private property.6 Such a “healthy socialist policy” would also include the strengthening of the soviets and other institutions in which the masses could gain political experience and defend their interests, but SRs kept the Constituent Assembly at the center of their political thinking. The Constituent Assembly remained the SRs’ alternative to Soviet power because of its promise of civil peace, its massive socialist majority, and the authority conferred on it by the principle of popular sovereignty. Because the party had no immediate plan to reconvene the Assembly, however, the leadership conceived the campaign in defense of the Constituent Assembly as one of propaganda, in the sense in which that word was used in the Russian revolutionary tradition: a patient campaign to raise popular consciousness, the sort of campaign that had traditionally been distinguished from agitation for direct action. As the leadership understood it, propaganda, with a rhetorical focus on the Constituent Assembly and a day-to-day emphasis on the soviets and other working-class institutions, held the key both to the future of the revolution and the fate of the country. The dual emphasis on revolution and country points to the way that the Central Committee theses deployed both the language of class and the language of nationhood, although the former did far more to shape the theses and to structure the outlook of the Central Committee’s left-center majority. The use of both languages is nicely captured in the Central Committee’s instructions to the SRs active in the organs of local self-government: “The PSR sees in the consolidation of a truly democratic state structure the realization of the greatest achievements of the revolution and, at the same time, the only path to the regeneration of the country, the rescue of its independence, and the preservation of the bases of the social acquisitions of the toiling masses.”7 Nevertheless, the primacy of class, and the conceptual opposition between the democracy and the Bonapartist counterrevolution, dictated an orientation toward a mass, socialist opposition within the Soviet framework. As the Central Committee concluded: “In view of the fact that Bolshevism, unlike the tsarist autocracy, is based on soldier and worker masses that are still blinded, have not lost faith in it, and do not see that it is fatal to the cause of the working class, the struggle against Bolshevism must be carried out in the form of the organization of the masses behind our slogans and open mass struggle against Bolshevik anarchy; under no circumstances may it take on the character of a conspiratorial struggle.”8 As this passage suggests, SRs shared the conviction, widespread among socialists, that the key to the Bolsheviks’ success lay in their exploitation of Russian “backwardness.” Economic underdevelopment, popular political inexperience, inadequate education and lack of culture, the fragility of the organs of self-government, and the weakness of working-class institutions such as the

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trade unions, the soviets, the cooperatives, and the socialist parties—in short, the “backwardness” of the “toiling democracy” itself—had left workers, peasants, and soldiers vulnerable to irresponsible Bolshevik promises and blind to their utopian and demagogic character. As the socialist cliché had it, the salvation of the revolution now depended on workers “sobering up” and facing their real conditions, possibilities, and constraints. For the right wing of the party, by contrast, the place of the civil war within the larger World War held primary significance. Like Chernov and the party left, right-wing SRs such as Nikolai Avksent’ev emphasized Russian “backwardness,” but by “backwardness” they understood primarily a weakly developed national consciousness that had left the mass of the population with little sense of responsibility for the war effort and the Russian state. The unprecedented trials of the World War had laid bare the inability of the intelligentsia, the old elites, and the popular masses to subordinate their class interests to the defense of the country. Bolshevik agitation for the transformation of the World War into a revolutionary war of the lower classes against their imperialist governments had combined with the peasant army’s incomprehension of the purposes of the war to bring on the collapse of Russian statehood, initiated by the unthinking reactionary policies of the Old Regime. While the left laid stress on the failure of the Provisional Government to advance the revolution and on the inadequate development of class consciousness and the institutions of the democracy, the right underscored what it saw as the irresponsible pursuit of class interests in 1917. The country required above all a genuinely national, republican government that could unite the nation, preserve the state, and return the country to its rightful place in the World War.9 This line of reasoning and the language in which it was cast suggest how little divided the right-wing SRs from the left wing of the Kadet party. To the dismay of those Kadets open to cooperation with socialists, however, right-wing SRs were not prepared to drop the language of class entirely, nor were they prepared to abandon the Constituent Assembly and the principle of popular sovereignty. A 1918 article by the prominent right-wing SR Aleksandr Minin captures these aspects of the right wing’s outlook and illustrates how right-wing SRs awkwardly juggled the languages of class and nation. Minin conceded that “the social” had held priority over “the national” in the worldview of the PSR and all of international socialism before 1914. He argued, however, that “pure internationalism, with its unquestioned priority of the social over the national” was now characteristic only of economically and culturally backward countries. Moreover, the military defeat of revolutionary Russia would only consolidate German imperialism and European capitalism: “Violation of the national will inescapably bring with it social harm, both in the victorious countries, where social peace will be established on the basis of exploitation and repression, and

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in the defeated countries, where social peace will form the necessary condition of national renaissance.” Minin held fast to an SR conception of the ultimate priority of “the social,” but he argued that the severity of Russia’s crisis necessitated a focus on national consolidation and liberation, the twin conditions of successful social transformation. Social reform could not be abandoned, and little would be accomplished by simplistic appeals to order and discipline, but the country’s defense would have to take temporary priority over social revolution.10 Responsibility for the “harmonious combination of the national and the social” sought by Minin and right-wing SRs lay with the Constituent Assembly, because it alone embodied the principle of popular sovereignty.11 Happily for the right wing, and not coincidentally, it almost completely controlled the SR fraction of the Constituent Assembly, which allowed it to keep its distance from the party organizations dominated by the party’s left wing. Indeed, the mantle of the Constituent Assembly allowed the right wing to claim a legal and moral authority higher than that of party bodies, although the fraction did maintain ties with the Central Committee through Vladimir Zenzinov, Evgenii Timofeev, and Abram Gots, who formed the right-center minority in the Central Committee and mediated between the party’s left and right wings. Both the SR fraction and the right-center in the Central Committee believed that the only way out of Russia’s crisis lay through the resurrection, with renewed vigor, of the coalition policies of 1917. They hesitated to say this openly, however, because of the prevailing climate of opinion within the party and because the Fourth Party Congress had unequivocally rejected coalition with “bourgeois” parties. Like the Central Committee, the fraction rejected participation in an armed campaign against the Bolsheviks on behalf of the Constituent Assembly. Yet because the right wing of the party had little interest in the soviets and other class-based institutions that stood at the center of the Central Committee strategy, the fraction, and the right wing of the PSR generally, were uncertain how to proceed after the dissolution of the Assembly. Vadim Rudnev, the chairman of the bureau of the fraction, suggested that the Constituent Assembly should not organize its own defense but should entrust it to the population, which would work through the political parties, the Committee for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly, and other public organizations. The Inter-fractional Council of the Assembly, taking its lead from the SRs, shared this view. Within the bureau a minority of Vissarion Gurevich, Sergei Maslov, and G. K. Pokrovskii opposed the passive attitude of the majority and formed a separate group that pushed for more active measures to support the Constituent Assembly. The members of this group, who became known as “activists” (aktivisty), assembled their own bureau, consisting of Gurevich, Vladimir Vol’skii, and

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S. A. An-skii (Rappoport). This bureau organized two underground meetings of members of the Constituent Assembly in Petrograd and Moscow in early 1918. About seventy members of the Assembly attended the latter session in February, when the delegates adopted a plan that had been worked out by Il’ia Fondaminskii and Gurevich and approved by the bureau of the fraction as a concession to the activists. According to this plan, the members of the Constituent Assembly were to return to the provinces from which they had been elected. There they would form Committees of Members of the Constituent Assembly that would organize public opinion and support any anti-Bolshevik regional governments that emerged.12 In June this scheme would bear fruit with the formation of the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) under Vol’skii’s chairmanship in Samara, the most serious effort in the civil war to build an anti-Bolshevik government based on the Constituent Assembly. Renunciation of “conspiratorial struggle” by both the SR right wing and the Central Committee entailed in the first instance a refusal to adopt one of the party’s historical forms of political action: terrorism. Already in December 1917, with its hopes focused on the upcoming Constituent Assembly, the Central Committee had ordered party members not to take up the terrorist weapon. F. M. Onipko, one of the members of the SR Military Commission who had been entrusted with the organization of the defense of the Constituent Assembly, had conceived a plan for a terrorist attack on Lenin and come to the Central Committee for approval. The Central Committee refused to sanction the attack and set up a commission to investigate the activities of the Military Commission. Despite the Central Committee opposition, however, a group of SRs associated with the Military Commission continued to prepare an attempt. This group, about whom only sparse and contradictory information has survived, included the SRs Boris Sokolov, Vladimir Lebedev, Evgenii Kolosov, and N. N. Mart’ianov. Several officers and soldiers who had served with Mart’ianov in the 266th Infantry Regiment in Moscow in 1917 were also members, as was the brother of the prominent Kadet Nikolai Nekrasov. The group had ties to the right-wing SRs grouped around Volia naroda as well as to some figures in the Kadet leadership, including Nekrasov and Sergei Vostrotin. Several of the soldiers penetrated Smol’nyi as chauffeurs, and Mart’ianov assembled a stash of dynamite and other explosives in a rented apartment. On January 1, 1918, after one of the members of the group missed an opportunity to throw a bomb at Lenin’s car in accordance with the plan of attack, one of the other terrorists fired four shots at the Bolshevik leader, slightly wounding him.13 The SR leadership denied any connection to the attack. The Central Committee declaration

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suggested that no assassination attempt had taken place and that the Bolsheviks had staged a “grandiose provocation.” The SR press also speculated that the Bolsheviks were simply taking advantage of random gunshots, a frequent hazard in revolutionary Petrograd, to justify the planned dissolution of the Constituent Assembly.14 SR talk nevertheless continued to drift toward the possibilities that terrorist attacks might open for the party in the winter of 1918. In mid-January the Central Committee member Nikolai Ivanov proposed that the committee reconsider the prohibition. Although Chernov supported Ivanov’s proposal to discuss the issue, the Central Committee refused to discuss it and left the ban intact.15 The Central Committee returned to the issue in February, when the Khar’kov SR organization raised the possibility of assassinating Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, the commander of Bolshevik forces in Ukraine. Although the Central Committee once again rejected the use of terrorism against the Bolsheviks, two views emerged at the meeting. Mikhail Sumgin argued that terrorist acts against the leaders of another socialist party were impermissible under any circumstances. Chernov countered that there could come a time when the murder of a Bolshevik commissar would revolutionize the masses, and it would therefore be unwise to renounce the possibility of launching terrorist acts in the future. A majority supported Chernov’s line over the objection of Sumgin, who pointed out that it might encourage the more hot-headed elements in the party to push ahead with attacks.16 Discussion of possible terrorist acts against Bolshevik leaders continued both in the SR leadership and in the lower echelons of the party throughout the spring. Ivanov and some other Central Committee members supported terrorist methods of struggle against the Bolsheviks by March, and the party leadership received many offers from SRs interested in assassinating Lenin.17 Moreover, the January 1 episode had shown that the leadership could not easily enforce its ban on terrorism, and there was a long tradition of SR terrorists carrying out attacks independently or in defiance of the party leadership.18 To get around the Central Committee ban, one would-be terrorist, Lidiia Konopleva, proposed characterizing an attack on Lenin as an “individual act.” Although the party leadership in Petrograd refused to approve Konopleva’s proposal, she nevertheless spent two weeks in March organizing surveillance of Lenin in Moscow and drawing up a plan of attack with her accomplice Petr Efimov. Evgenii Timofeev was able to dissuade the two potential assassins, and they returned to Petrograd.19 With increasing difficulty over the course of the spring, the Central Committee held fast to the ban on terrorism, which rested on the fear that terrorist attacks, like any form of armed struggle, would only deepen the divide within the democracy, intensify the civil war, and play into the hands of counterrevolution.

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Into Soviet Politics

The Central Committee’s refusal to launch a terrorist campaign mirrored its preference for an organized mass movement within the Soviet framework. In accordance with the Central Committee theses, SR organizations in the capitals and in the provinces sought to mobilize supporters and build an open socialist opposition to the Soviet state in the months after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. Because the SR leadership chose not to adopt any form of armed struggle or terror, the party’s campaign against Bolshevik domination amounted to a war of words. At issue in that war—indeed the central political challenge of the civil war itself—was control of the lexicon for constructing an authoritative vision of the politics and social basis of the civil war, and thus the meaning of the civil war itself. Analysis of the SRs’ strategy and its successes and failures must therefore explore the language in which the party presented its critique of Bolshevik rule, the rhetorical bases of the SRs’ efforts to mobilize support for the opposition, and the ways that SRs’ language organized their understanding of politics and the social world in the winter and spring of 1918. Attention must also be devoted to the means by which the Bolsheviks sought to legitimate their authority, to the categories and classificatory schema through which they sought to make sense of political and social violence, and to the messages communicated by their political practices. Finally, of course, attention must be paid to the workers of the major Russian industrial centers, the principal focus of both SR and Bolshevik appeals and the most important group whose interests they claimed to define and express. How industrial workers responded to the claims of the rival political parties, how they conceived and articulated their interests, how they sought to define and participate in revolutionary politics, what they understood by legitimate authority—all are questions of central importance to the PSR’s effort to organize a mass socialist opposition to Bolshevik rule. These various projects and contestations are of particular interest because of the fluidity of revolutionary politics in the first months of 1918. Until the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the Council of Peoples’ Commissars had theoretically remained a provisional government, but now all of the political players sought to adopt new strategies and adapt to the new terrain of Soviet politics. Lenin plainly aimed for a one-party dictatorship, but not all Bolsheviks agreed, and even among those who did, acceptance of single-party rule as the realization of the dictatorship of the proletariat left a range of difficult and divisive questions unanswered. The forms of popular political participation were uncertain, as were the relations between the state and the working-class institutions that had arisen in 1917, notably the soviets themselves, the trade unions,

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and the factory committees. Uncertain as well were the delineation of power between central and local Soviet authorities, the state’s role in the economy, and the nature of social relations within the workplace. Theory was only the roughest of guides in these matters, although Lenin’s own impulses were pushed consistently toward centralization, dictatorship, and coercion.20 Still, Lenin had difficulty imposing his views on his own party, to say nothing of securing control of revolutionary politics. Although his personal role was great, the characteristic practices and institutions of the Soviet state emerged primarily out of the contestations of 1918 and the complicated process by which the Bolsheviks monopolized revolutionary discourse and established an authoritative vision of the civil war. At first glance the SRs’ focus on workers in their effort to build a socialist opposition to Bolshevik power is surprising, given the historical association of the party with agrarian socialism, its strong showing among peasants in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, and its argument that the peasantry formed a part of the larger toiling class. Despite its success among peasants in 1917, however, the PSR had little in the way of genuine party organization in the countryside, although the same could certainly be said of the other political parties. In 1917 rural SR organizations depended on the peasant unions, zemstvos, cooperatives, and nascent Soviet apparatus, and the dismantling of the zemstvo apparatus and the party’s walkout from Soviet construction deprived it of organizational footholds in the countryside in 1918.21 The walkout effectively ceded control of Soviet construction in the countryside to the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs. In the many provinces where the SRs still held majorities in the provincial peasants’ soviets, the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs had no difficulty convening peasant congresses to recognize Soviet power and dethrone the PSR, although the composition and representativeness of these congresses were often dubious. By spring, what party politics there was in the countryside centered on the growing tension between the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs, which came to a head in the summer of 1918.22 The PSR played almost no role. The PSR’s exclusion from rural soviet construction was probably the most important consequence of the party’s split with the Left SRs. Although the two parties had bitterly separated by the end of 1917, the schism of party organizations and the formation of Left SR organizations at the local level dragged into the first months of 1918. The immediate effects of the schism varied by region. In Petrograd, where the Left SRs had a strong influence prior to October, the split resulted in SR and Left SR organizations of roughly equal size. The left controlled the Kazan’, Khar’kov, Iaroslavl’, and Kronstadt SR organizations in 1917, and they defected to the new party nearly in their entirety. In Pskov and Ufa the Left SRs took a majority of the party organization into their party, but elsewhere the majority in the party organizations remained with the PSR. On

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the whole it appears that the PSR held on to a substantial majority of the party intelligentsia, while the Left SRs did comparatively better among the rank and file.23 Nevertheless, the schism did not transform the PLSR overnight into a large and well-organized political party. Far more important in facilitating the growth of the PLSR were the advantages the Left SRs enjoyed in the countryside and the benefits that accrued from their association with Soviet power and their status as junior partners in the revolutionary state. Despite the heritage they shared with the Left SRs, the SRs were politically closer to the Mensheviks, with whom they worked in tandem in Soviet politics in the first months of 1918. Like the PSR, the Mensheviks emerged from 1917 with a reorganized left-wing leadership determined to stay a revolutionary course. Despite the antipathy that Iulii Martov and Fedor Dan felt for the PSR, their analysis of the dynamics of the revolutionary process largely coincided with that of Chernov and the SR Central Committee. Although the Mensheviks had much less enthusiasm for the Constituent Assembly, due largely to their weak showing in the elections and their suspicion of the PSR and the political outlook of the Russian peasantry, the SRs’ decision not to take up arms on behalf of the Assembly dampened the force of potential disagreements until later in the spring. In the first months of 1918 the parties shared a commitment to work within the Soviet framework and build a mass, socialist opposition. Cooperation was particularly close at the local level, where the two parties worked together to strengthen working-class institutions and regain majorities in the soviets. In Petrograd the SRs launched their effort to build a mass opposition movement immediately in the wake of the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly on January 5, emphasizing the Bolshevik shooting of the demonstrators who had marched in favor of the Assembly rather than the dissolution of the Assembly itself.24 SR agitation sought to link the shooting with the Old Regime’s penchant for the use of violence against working-class demonstrators, although the association of Bolshevik and tsarist practices did not stem from a genuine conviction within the SR leadership that the Bolshevik regime represented the resurgence of a traditional autocratic political culture. Rather, SRs sought to exploit the historically and emotionally charged vocabulary of the radical movement and adapt an older narrative of revolution to new circumstances. One sees this particularly in the recurrent focus on the date of the shooting, January 5, which marked an effort to tie the shooting to that powerful symbol of the Russian Revolution: Bloody Sunday, on January 9, 1905. On the eve of the demonstration the bureau of the SR fraction of the Constituent Assembly issued a public appeal that drew the comparison to Bloody Sunday. Clearly anticipating a bloody outcome, Delo naroda warned in an editorial: “Only enemies of the people, dictators, could disperse and fire upon such a demonstration.”25

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A second editorial compared Bolshevik preparations to those of St. Petersburg Governor-General Dmitrii Trepov in 1905.26 With the rhetorical ground thus prepared, SR propaganda swung into full gear after the shooting. The Petrograd Committee of the PSR compared the Bolshevik forces to “tsarist oprichniki” who had concealed machine guns “a là Protopopov” and thrown grenades following the “example of Khabalov.” Petrograd, “having survived the horrors of January 9, 1905” had been “fired upon by a new oprichnina.”27 Under a banner headline that again called attention to the date of the shooting, Delo naroda began its detailed account of the demonstration by solemnly intoning: “Once again blood has been spilled. Once again there are wounded and dead from a fratricidal confrontation.”28 Spilled blood suggested not only Bloody Sunday, but also the February Revolution, a point of reference suggested by the names of Protopopov and Khabalov. As the Bolsheviks arrested SRs, closed down socialist newspapers, and raided SR clubs over the next weeks, SRs extended the association between Bolsheviks and the Old Regime. The Bolsheviks had adopted “old techniques” and inherited the “whole rich arsenal of police persecution left by the autocracy.”29 The “oprichniki of Smol’nyi” were in fact establishing a “new autocracy” or “commissarocracy,” an SR neologism that played on the word “autocracy” and soon became common currency in party propaganda.30 The ceremonial funeral organized for eight of the victims of the shooting also evoked the struggle against the Old Regime and bathed the victims in the aura of martyrdom that was central to the radical tradition, particularly its populist wing. In an effort to imbue the funeral with the maximum emotional and dramatic force, the SR-dominated Committee for Defense of the Constituent Assembly selected January 9 as the date of the funeral and chose the Preobrazhenskii cemetery as the place of burial. There the common grave of the victims would share space with the grave of the victims of Bloody Sunday.31 The ceremonial funeral itself recalled one of the great rituals of 1917, the funeral of the victims of the February Revolution, which took place March 23, 1917, on the Champs de Mars and was recalled by Nikolai Sukhanov as a “grandiose and gripping triumphal procession of the revolution and of the masses who made it.”32 Osip Minor, Vissarion Gurevich, and the other SRs who played the leading roles in the funeral ceremony of 1918 no doubt had little hope of recapturing the popular euphoria of early 1917, but it was not unreasonable to hope that the shooting and the commemoration of it might help rebuild SR fortunes. At midday on January 9 a lengthy funeral procession set out from the Mariinskii hospital for the Preobrazhenskii cemetery ten miles away. According to newspaper reports, tens of thousands of people accompanied the members of the Constituent Assembly carrying the coffins. Red party flags, black flags of

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mourning inscribed to the victims, the plaintive strains of revolutionary anthems such as “You Fell a Martyr,” and delegations from Petrograd factories completed the symbolic outfitting of the procession. Banners invoked the historical significance of the date and made explicit the analogy between the old and new autocracies. Five hours later the procession arrived at the cemetery, where members of the Constituent Assembly delivered speeches tying the victims to the martyrology of the Russian Revolution. The eight victims were buried next to the victims of Bloody Sunday, and the procession slowly made its way back into the center of the city.33 The Bolshevik press, by contrast, sought to deflect attention from the shooting of January 5 and focus instead on counterrevolutionary conspiracy and provocation. In 1917 conspiracy had organized the revolutionary interpretation of the Kornilov affair, and the Bolsheviks later justified the seizure of power in October largely as a preemptive strike against a renewed Kornilovite conspiracy. After October the Bolsheviks’ conspiracy scenario functioned mainly to explain the onset of civil war and to justify moves against the political opposition, including the PSR. In the days leading up to January 5, the Bolsheviks presented the convocation of the Constituent Assembly as a cover for a counterrevolutionary plot in which the SRs would perform the dirty work of the bourgeoisie. M. S. Uritskii, in charge of Bolshevik preparation for the Assembly, declared the city in danger of an SR conspiracy led by Kerensky and Savinkov.34 According to a banner headline in Pravda, a monstrous plot lurked behind the whole effort to convene the Constituent Assembly: “Lickspittles of the bankers, capitalists, and landlords, allies of Kaledin and Dutov, slaves of the American dollar, backstabbers—the right SRs demand in the Constituent Assembly all power for themselves and their masters: the enemies of the people. In words they appear to have joined the people’s demands for land, peace and workers’ control, but in reality they are trying to fasten a noose around the neck of socialist power and revolution. But the workers, peasants, and soldiers will not fall for the bait of lying words of the most evil enemies of socialism. In the name of the socialist revolution and the socialist Soviet republic they will sweep away all its open and hidden murderers.”35 In this context Bolshevik rhetoric easily assimilated both the January 1 assassination attempt against Lenin and the shooting of the demonstrators on January 5 into the larger conspiracy against the revolution. In the Petrograd soviet, Zinoviev (himself the supposed target of another shooting episode) argued that the assassination attempt had been “prepared in a literary sense” by the SR press. He warned that “the masses” would respond to “black terror” with “red terror,” a note picked up by another pro-Bolshevik speaker who proclaimed to great applause: “For each head of one of our leaders we will demand the heads of a thousand others. We will be able to answer the black terror with the red

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terror, a more terrible terror (bolee uzhasnym terrorom).”36 Pravda too moved from the assassination attempt to a call for red terror: “Bankers and factory owners are hiring hooligans, former detectives, right SRs, counter-espionage agents, and all political prostitutes. They are turning to the execution of the leaders of the proletariat. But let them remember: for every head of one of our people they will answer with a hundred heads of theirs. The proletariat does not like to turn the other cheek and ‘forgive enemies’ . . . If they try to exterminate the workers’ leaders, they will themselves be mercilessly exterminated. All workers, all soldiers, all conscious peasants will then say: long live the red terror against the hirelings of the bourgeoisie!”37 After January 5 the Bolshevik press deployed the rhetoric of conspiracy to suggest that the shootings were provocations by hidden enemies, the work of the same SR hirelings of the bourgeoisie who had organized the assassination attempt of January 1. Pro-Bolshevik factories passed resolutions denouncing SR terrorism, and the authorities claimed to have discovered a large cache of bombs, weapons, and SR literature in a provincial capital.38 Krasnaia gazeta declared that resolutions in the pro-SR Obukhov plant against the shootings and in support of the Constituent Assembly were the work of masked bourgeois and rich peasants who had penetrated the factory. The newspaper reported that workers in the factory suggested “purging the factory of these harmful elements, who only disorganize worker solidarity.”39 Such denunciations of “enemies of the people” and calls for “red terror” in early 1918 should neither be dismissed as incidental verbiage nor taken as evidence of concrete intentions awaiting later implementation. Important, rather, is the emergence of a cluster of images, expressions, and ideas—none of them entirely new, most of them drawn from the rhetoric, theory, and practice of the Russian and broader European revolutionary tradition—under the impact of terrorist attacks on Bolshevik leaders and the Bolsheviks’ uncertainty about the depth of popular support for their new state. Workers, Bolsheviks, and the Socialist Opposition

Although the successful dissolution of the Constituent Assembly allayed the most immediate Bolshevik concern early in the new year, the shooting of the demonstrators did spark some scattered worker protests in Petrograd. In the ten days after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, more than a dozen Petrograd factories passed resolutions condemning the shooting of the demonstrators. The factories involved were primarily large state-owned metalworking plants employing tens of thousands of workers who had been relatively moderate in 1917. According to newspaper reports, meetings of the workers in these factories were the largest in several months. Many of the resolutions declared the workers’ support for the Constituent Assembly and recalled the factory’s

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delegates to the Petrograd soviet; some did so in terms that suggest that SR propaganda had struck a chord and that SR orators were enjoying success at factory meetings. Eight thousand workers at the traditionally SR Obukhov plant, for instance, resolved on January 7: “We, the workers of the revolutionary Obukhov plant, indignantly protest the Council of People’s Commissars’ shooting of peacefully demonstrating workers who were marching to welcome the greatest achievement of the working class—the Constituent Assembly. We believe that this policy of the commissarocrats (komissaroderzhavtsy) in no way differs from the policies of the tsarist satraps Trepov and Protopopov. . . . And as the revolutionary Obukhov plant once raised the flag of insurrection against the autocrat Nicholas II, so are we now raising the banner of struggle against the usurpers of the people’s power (narodnaia vlast’), the banner of struggle for the People’s (Vsenarodnoe) Constituent Assembly, which has been subjected to violence.”40 The Obukhov workers concluded with a call for new elections of its delegates to the Petrograd soviet and for the withdrawal of their representatives in the Red Guards. So too did the Rechkin plant, whose resolution is also worth quoting for its populist-SR terminology and emotional coloration: Having assembled on January 9, 1918, in the theater of the Rechkin plant, the workers recall on the day of January 9 all the fighters who have fallen for the rights of the people, for the sovereign People’s (polnovlastnoe Vsenarodnoe) Constituent Assembly. The workers of Petrograd marched in the struggle for these demands in 1905. And under the same slogans they marched on January 5, 1918. Blood was spilled now, as it was then. We protest against the shooting of the peaceful demonstration. We brand with scorn the government that has shamed itself with these murders. We protest against the present composition of the Petrograd soviet of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, which supports and protects those who shoot at the people. We join the demand of the Obukhov workers for new elections to the soviet and for the recall of the Red Guard, which blindly carries out the work of Cain. We demand the free convocation of the Constituent Assembly.41

The aims and language of these resolutions point to strong SR influence, although it is impossible to disentangle the phrasings suggested by party activists, the workers’ own appropriation of SR vocabulary, and a populist idiom home-grown in the factories. At any rate the characteristic SR emphasis on the people (narod) and the echoes of the party slogan “In struggle you will attain your rights” link these and other factory resolutions of the period more to the PSR than to the Mensheviks, a partisan affiliation that would persist in Petrograd opposition politics for the remainder of the year.42 SR activists sought to build on the rhetorical parallel with Bloody Sunday

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and the 1905 revolution and on the sense of outrage embodied in the factory resolutions. Reestablishing a major SR presence in the soviet was the critical next step in the building of a socialist opposition, and party activists and the party press began to lobby in the factories for new elections to the Petrograd soviet. Because it made little sense to work for elections to an institution that the party itself had boycotted since October, the SR fraction of the Petrograd soviet returned to that institution on January 22. The previous day, following the instructions of the Central Committee, the SRs who made up the party’s small delegation in the Central Executive Committee had reassumed their seats in what was in principle the national legislative body.43 Over the last week in January, workers in about twenty factories attempted to recall their delegates to the Petrograd soviet and carry out new elections. Whereas the resolutions at factory meetings were typically adopted unanimously, the Soviet elections laid bare the divisions within the workforce and provide a surer guide to the relative strengths of the political parties at the plants where the SRs and Mensheviks were beginning to make inroads. At Obukhov, for instance, the Bolsheviks received 1,690 votes, the SRs 1,354, the Left SRs 336, and the nonparty candidates 1,026. Because the nonparty candidates sympathized with the PSR, the SRs could claim a victory, a claim substantiated by the reelection of an SR as chair of the factory committee by a wide margin. Still, the political message of the elections was ambiguous, particularly because only about half of the workers who had participated in the factory meeting that adopted the resolution had voted in the election.44 At Old Lessner, which had also passed a resolution condemning the January 5 shooting, the Bolsheviks were able to secure a narrow victory in the soviet election.45 Elections were held at some factories, however, that had not passed resolutions in the wake of January 5, including workshops at the Putilov plant. By the end of the month the opposition press claimed that the SRs had secured thirty-six new seats in the soviet and the Mensheviks seven, and six or seven new unaffiliated delegates had been elected.46 Although these elections brought the SRs and Mensheviks back from their near-total political eclipse of the fall, they hardly shook the Bolsheviks’ dominant position in the soviet, trade unions, or factory committees, and the campaign for recalls and new elections stalled over the course of February. In part this may be attributed to Bolshevik obstruction. At some factories elections were blocked by Red Guards, who broke up meetings and arrested opposition speakers. At the Pipe factory the Bolshevik-dominated factory committee threatened to shut down the plant if the workers carried out new elections. Elsewhere Bolshevik delegates to the soviet refused to give up their mandates.47 The Bolshevik leadership of the Petrograd soviet denied that it was blocking new

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elections but conceded that elections in some factories were being “postponed” due to factory closings and the flight of workers to the countryside.48 On the whole, however, the opposition’s campaign simply lost momentum. Elections were held in the factories that sympathized with the opposition, but the SRs and Mensheviks were unable to break the Bolshevik hold in most factories. And even where Bolsheviks’ position in the factories had eroded since October, the SRs and Mensheviks did not automatically reap the political benefits. As the economy continued to spiral downwards and unemployment mounted over the course of February and March, commentators in the nonBolshevik press reported that worker interest in political questions had declined, attendance at political meetings had dropped off, and workers were shifting their focus toward economic survival.49 Also contributing to a mood of deepening despair and even panic among workers was the chaotic and contentious Bolshevik effort to evacuate Petrograd industries in February and March, when a German occupation of the city appeared imminent. Membership in all of the political parties except the PLSR contracted severely. Precise statistics on the social composition of the parties are elusive, but it seems clear that large numbers of workers were abandoning the Bolshevik, Menshevik, and SR parties.50 Although SR and Menshevik activists began to describe the workers’ mood as “apathetic,” it would be more accurate to say that many Petrograd workers disillusioned with Bolshevik power nevertheless doubted that the opposition political parties could do much to alleviate their plight.51 Nevertheless, opposition to Bolshevik policies and power grew substantially among Petrograd workers in March and April, as evidenced by the emergence and growth of the Factory Plenipotentiary movement. The work that led to the formation of the Assembly of Factory Plenipotentiaries began underground in March, and by April the Assembly became the focus of the opposition parties’ organizing and propaganda among workers. The initiative for the new organization seems to have come from a group of right Mensheviks who had been active in the efforts of the Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly to organize workers before and after January 5. These Mensheviks, among them B. O. Bogdanov and M. S. Kefali-Kammermakher, continued thereafter to organize independently of the Menshevik Central Committee. By early March an organizational bureau of socialists and workers was functioning in the Nevskii district, home to Obukhov, the Nevskii Shipyard, and other plants supportive of the opposition. The bureau organized factory elections to what it termed a “Non-party Workers’ Conference,” which convened its first session on March 13 with eighty-three delegates from twenty-five large factories. After three additional underground sessions, and the first public notice of the movement, the conference resolved on March 22 to hold all future sessions

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openly and to rename itself the Assembly of Factory Plenipotentiaries.52 The bureau of the Assembly coordinated day-to-day work and set up commissions on the evacuation, unemployment, and the organization of the movement.53 By the end of March more than a hundred plenipotentiaries had been elected from fifty-six factories, although little is known of the conduct of these elections. The plenipotentiaries gathered several times a week to consider issues of importance to Petrograd workers, and the Assembly gradually emerged as an alternative working-class political forum.54 The success of the plenipotentiary movement and the Bolsheviks’ mounting difficulties among Petrograd workers were driven by the precipitous economic deterioration brought by the new year, which does much to explain the pattern of partisan political affiliation among workers in the various branches of the industrial economy in the first months of 1918.55 Economic crisis, of course, had been one of the main engines of radicalization and social polarization in 1917. Inflation tied to the financing of the war effort had been eroding the urban standard of living since the last year of the Old Regime. The gradual breakdown of the transportation system, likewise due to the pressures of war, contributed to urban food shortages and a crisis in fuel supply, which in turn impinged on industrial production.56 Inflation, transportation bottlenecks, and shortages of fuel and food all increased after October, but the industrial economy only truly collapsed when the Bolsheviks withdrew from the World War and undertook a rapid demobilization of industrial production for the war effort. In Petrograd the cessation of state military orders in December devastated the giant machine-construction and shipbuilding plants engaged in defense production. The workforce at metalworking factories dropped from roughly 167,000 in January 1917 to 43,000 by April 1, 1918. About forty thousand unemployed workers departed the city over the course of the spring, but sixty thousand unemployed still remained in May. The other major industrial sectors were less dependent on the war effort and thus much less affected by the demobilization of the wartime economy: textiles and food-processing experienced only slight declines, while the number of printers in Petrograd actually increased in early 1918.57 Not surprisingly, the oppositional mood in Petrograd’s working-class districts was concentrated among metalworkers hard hit by demobilization and unemployment. Already in January, elections to the soviet had taken place almost entirely in the big machine-construction and shipbuilding factories that had historically dominated the city’s industrial landscape and that still employed about half of the city’s industrial workforce. Textile workers, by contrast, displayed almost no inclination to recall their delegates or carry out new elections, and they were much less well represented in the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries. The sectoral distribution of opposition sentiment was not, how-

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ever, solely a function of the uneven economic effects of demobilization. Highly skilled, well-paid, and literate, metalworkers had always come closest to the revolutionary ideal of the conscious worker and had traditionally dominated the ranks of radical Petrograd workers. Although many skilled metalworkers had moved into Soviet administrative positions and many of the unskilled workers in the metalworking plants had departed for the countryside, a core of skilled, politically active metalworkers remained in the factories through the spring.58 The workforce in the textile and food-processing industries was by comparison largely unskilled and much less well-paid, and it contained substantially more women. Textile workers were certainly capable of political action, having shown a marked nationwide propensity to strike in 1917, but the revolutionaries’ cliché of the unconscious, mass textile worker did point to the difficulty in building the sorts of sustained political movements that socialist activists (overwhelmingly male) had always preferred.59 In Petrograd textile workers had been much less involved in party politics and slower to embrace the Bolsheviks in 1917, much as they remained mostly unmoved by the political opposition in 1918.60 The importance of skill and a tradition of organized political activity in shaping workers’ propensity to move toward the opposition is confirmed by the evolution of political attitudes among the printers. Highly skilled and yet largely unaffected by the demobilization, printers were once again solidly Menshevik by early 1918, and Mensheviks regained control of the printers’ union in March.61 Relations between the plenipotentiary movement and the opposition political parties were complex. Menshevik and SR activists played crucial roles in organizing the movement, but the leadership in each party was at first skeptical toward the new institution. Although Efrem Berg, a former candidate member of the SR Central Committee, chaired the organizational bureau and later the bureau of the Assembly itself, the SR Central Committee worried that the Assembly would emerge as a rival to the soviet and thereby further undermine the strength of the working class. The main aim of Central Committee strategy—the construction of a mass socialist opposition within the framework of the Soviet state—militated against the quick embrace of a movement outside the soviets. Similar concern manifested itself in the SR fraction of the Petrograd soviet, which feared competition from the Assembly and initially saw it as a Menshevik enterprise. Under pressure from the Petrograd SR committee, however, the SR leadership agreed to endorse participation in the Assembly in an attempt to bring it under party control.62 The Menshevik leadership underwent a similar evolution in late March and early April.63 For their part the workers active in the Assembly were also cautious about establishing ties to the political parties. The largest number of delegates to the Assembly claimed nonparty status, followed by slightly smaller (and roughly equal) numbers of SRs and

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Mensheviks.64 In a conscious break with revolutionary tradition, the plenipotentiaries defeated a proposal to give representation to the political parties, even of a consultative nature.65 Nevertheless, political logic steadily pushed the Assembly and the political parties together over the course of the spring and early summer. Although the sessions of the Assembly were widely reported in the nonBolshevik press, the surviving protocols of the first two underground meetings—literally hidden transcripts of resistance—provide the best access to the workers’ critique of Bolshevik power and to the vocabulary of everyday politics in the grass roots of the opposition.66 Most of the speakers reported a strong anti-Bolshevik mood in their factories, but most also emphasized workers’ sense of despair and their uncertainty about how to avert impending economic, social, and political catastrophe. As one put it, “The workers are in a terrible muddle.”67 Two themes dominated the discussion and framed the dissatisfaction with the Soviet government. The first was the economic crisis, which continued to gather momentum over the course of the spring. Although later sessions of the Assembly considered measures to alleviate unemployment and food shortages, speakers at the first two meetings focused on the chaos and injustices of the Bolsheviks’ effort to evacuate Petrograd industries out of reach of the Germans. Criticism of the evacuation seems to have driven a general hostility to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Some speakers bemoaned the lack of preparation and the inability of the authorities to formulate clear plans for evacuation, which left the workers to improvise on their own amid impossible circumstances. But others made in essence the opposite claim: “Smol’nyi” was making all the decisions, and the workers had been excluded from planning that had the most direct bearing on their lives. Either way, one of the striking features of the discussion was the degree to which the speakers blamed the difficulties of the evacuation on the way that the authorities related to workers. Many speakers also emphasized injustices they perceived in the actual process of evacuation: “They are evacuating the valuable things, but we are remaining here. Are we really less valuable to industry than machinery?” Others reported that workers wanted to know why “the commissars” could leave but they could not; still others worried about the fate of their own families.68 The idea that workers had lost control of the factory committees and Soviet institutions forms the second dominant theme of the discussion at the Assembly. Workers’ very participation in the Assembly suggested a lack of faith in the capacity of the soviet and factory committees to find a way out of the developing economic catastrophe or to serve as organs for the discussion of workers’ needs. When contemporary commentators in the non-Bolshevik press reported

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on the nonpolitical character of the Assembly and, more broadly on workers’ political apathy, they mistook the notable absence of sustained discussion of the Constituent Assembly or of the programs of the political parties for evidence of workers’ depoliticization. Workers involved in the Assembly, however, inscribed a charged political message in their participation in the Assembly—the need to preserve and defend autonomous, class-based workers’ organizations from state domination. The discussions at the Assembly sessions reinforced this message, as the delegates complained that the Bolsheviks were blocking new soviet and factory committee elections almost everywhere. The plenipotentiary from the Pipe Works reported: “For two months it has been impossible to carry out new elections to the factory committee, despite the fact that factory meetings have resolved in favor of new elections four times. Relying on armed force, the factory committee did not obey the resolutions. . . . In general, the behavior of the factory committee causes indignation among the workers, it makes threats with machine guns, etc.”69 Another delegate stated that his factory had carried out new elections to the district soviet, but it had not convened: “Whenever you go there, armed persons who look like bourgeois are sitting there arrogantly greeting the workers. Who they are, we don’t know.”70 At Obukhov, another delegate explained, the factory committee had always been SR, “but the Bolsheviks falsified the elections and now they have a majority. Already four months ago we passed a resolution of no confidence in the factory committee, but it didn’t help. They laugh when we pass resolutions of no confidence.”71 The speakers closely connected their inability to unseat Bolsheviks from the factory committees or to carry out new soviet elections with the highhandedness, threats, and violence of the Red Guards. In the words of the plenipotentiary from the Cartridge Plant: “The Vyborg district has always been considered a red district. The worker masses always responded enthusiastically when some task was proposed to it. Now the working population is terrorized by the Red Guard. Recently at our factory the following incident took place. The question of the evacuation was being discussed at a factory meeting. The worker Kuz’min used the word contagion (zaraza) in connection with the Red Guard. A few minutes later armed Red Guards burst into the factory, clicking the breech-blocks on their rifles, threatening people with their bayonets, causing panic at a meeting at which many women were present. They pounced on Kuz’min, gave him a bayonet wound, and dragged him off to the Red Guard headquarters.”72 Judging from the complaints of the other speakers and from newspaper reports, such incidents were common.73 Workers’ experience with the Red Guards lay behind the Assembly’s resolution commemorating the anniversary of the

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Lena massacre and its resolution on “political terror,” which denounced murders being carried out day and night “in the name of the revolutionary proletariat” by “responsible agents of Soviet power.” The resolution concluded with a call for the public trial of all who had committed such murders and atrocities.74 One need not take literally the scale of violence and terror described in these resolutions to see workers’ deeply felt desire to escape the arbitrary exercise of power and occasional violence that had traditionally characterized the state’s relations with workers. This desire, and the language of class in which it was conceived and articulated, forms the main thread tying the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries to the resolutions after the shootings of January 5. It ties it, in fact, to the fundamental meaning that the revolution held for many workers. In the working-class districts of Petrograd and other cities after February, the revolution aimed mainly at what the historian William Rosenberg has termed “the social corollaries of autocratic politics”—that is, the unchecked, arbitrary power of foremen and management, and the broader patterns of inequality, privilege, and power embedded in Russian social relations as much as in the Russian political tradition.75 Over the course of 1917 this process of dismantling hierarchies came increasingly to be cast in the language of class, and classbased institutions such as the factory committees and the soviets came to the fore as vehicles for remaking social and political relations inside and outside the factories. For the workers involved in the movement of plenipotentiaries, this process of democratization remained central to the revolution, and they feared that the Bolsheviks were reversing it as they secured their hold on political power. The Assembly’s resolution “In Defense of Class Organizations” denounced the “abnormal situation” that had arisen because of the Bolshevik integration of the soviets, trade unions, and factory committees into the state, which had transformed institutions for the defense of working-class interests into “diplomatic chancelleries” and “police organs.”76 Opposition-minded workers were highly sensitive not only to evidence of the reconsolidation of hierarchical patterns of factory management and political authority, but also to the symbolic and moral aspects of that reconsolidation. They were alert as well to the potential for violence that inhered in that reconsolidation, which shaped their recurrent focus on the violence of the Red Guards. The implications of this popular discourse of democratization for the SR and Menshevik effort to build a socialist opposition were mixed. On the one hand, it was surely distressing to SR activists that even workers supportive of the opposition had little interest in the Constituent Assembly as such. The quest for popular sovereignty, symbolized in the Constituent Assembly and organized by the political parties, remained for most SRs a central story of the revolution, a story in which the soviets and factory committees played

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important but secondary roles. Although the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries passed numerous resolutions asserting that the Constituent Assembly offered the only way out of the gathering crisis, the plenipotentiaries in their discussions rarely invoked the Constituent Assembly, whose authority was grounded in a political discourse and tradition that remained alien to most of the population. Workers instead organized their narrative of the revolution as a story of dismantling hierarchies, remaking social relations, and exercising political control through class-based institutions. The Assembly of Plenipotentiaries was just the sort of institution that had proliferated in 1917 to make the revolution in this sense—conceived in terms of class, aiming for local, even particularistic control, arguably representative in a broad sense, but with few if any formal electoral procedures. The basic model for the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries was in fact plainly the soviet itself. The terms “assembly” and “factory plenipotentiary” were in effect translations of “soviet” and “workers’ deputy,” and all these terms operated in the same popular discourse of democratization. In this context the appeal of the plenipotentiary movement was considerable, as its successes in Petrograd and elsewhere show, but Soviet power took its meaning and authority from the same discourse. Not only was the appeal of Soviet power therefore likely to remain great, but unlike the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries, the soviets had accumulated enormous symbolic capital over the course of the two revolutions in which they had played such prominent roles. The very success of the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries thus paradoxically testifies to the generative power of the underlying discourse from which Soviet authority derived, and in this sense it dramatized the difficulty facing the SRs as they sought to contest Bolshevik hegemony. On the other hand, both economic collapse and the Bolshevik leadership’s determination to monopolize political power, incorporate working-class institutions into the revolutionary state, and organize the economy for maximum production virtually guaranteed conflict with many workers. Moreover, Bolshevik rhetoric invested Soviet authorities and individual party members with the unlimited authority of the revolution and the working class, and it generated ever more elaborate scenarios of conspiracy to deal with the multiple predicaments in which Bolsheviks found themselves—in both ways contributing to the violence and the arbitrary exercise of power displayed by Soviet authorities and the Red Guards. As the aftermath of the shootings of January 5 and the plenipotentiaries’ simmering hostility to the Red Guards each suggest, violence could be endowed with considerable significance within the popular discourse of democratization. Two famous massacres of unarmed working-class demonstrators (Bloody Sunday and the Lena gold fields massacre) had, after all, sparked the Old Regime’s most important waves of worker unrest prior to the February

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Revolution—the 1905 revolution and the surge of strikes and protests from 1912 through 1914. The socialist opposition, especially the PSR, stood ready to use this tradition to mobilize workers, and for opposition-minded workers, the slogan of the Constituent Assembly seems to have had real power as a call for an end to the violence of civil war and as a populist appeal for the moral unity of the people. The unanimity of the resolutions adopted at factory meetings indicate that oppositional slogans could appeal to otherwise pro-Bolshevik workers at such moments, or that pro-Bolshevik workers in any event found it difficult to vote against such resolutions on the factory floor. Confronted with the plenipotentiary movement and the growth of the socialist opposition, Bolsheviks in Petrograd and elsewhere understood the critical importance of deflecting responsibility for violence and persuasively articulating the place of working-class institutions in the revolutionary state. The desire of pro-opposition workers to secure independent, class-based organizations of their own potentially posed a serious threat to the Bolsheviks, because that desire could be expected to resonate among many workers and radical activists sympathetic to the new state. Indeed many Bolsheviks in the factory committees and trade unions had themselves made similar arguments in the party controversy over workers’ control at the end of 1917 and early 1918. Workers who attributed the difficulties of the class struggle to conflict between the political parties and saw “salvation in nonparty status” (bespartiinost’) were therefore held to be suffering from “a lack of consciousness” that assisted only the “enemies of the proletariat.”77 The organ of the Petrograd soviet added that there were many “hidden enemies” among the nonparty activists of the plenipotentiary movement and that independence from the state could now only mean objective dependence on the bourgeoisie.78 The Bolshevik I. V. Mgeladze argued that the only people who were genuinely upset by the state’s absorption of workers’ institutions and who were advocating a nonparty workers’ conference were the members of the “pseudosocialist parties.” He concluded with a theoretical flourish: “A workers’ organization that wishes to remain independent of the state at a time when the state is in the hands of the working class—such an organization inevitably falls under the influence of another, hostile class, namely the bourgeoisie.”79 Mgeladze’s insistence on the stark opposition between proletariat and bourgeoisie illuminates the Bolshevik approach to the larger political imperative that all parties faced in 1918: defining the civil war, establishing the nomenclature for its analysis, and interpreting its political and social significance. In his speeches and writings in the first months of the year, Lenin sought to define the civil war as class war, a war between the exploited and the exploiting classes, the natural response of the bourgeoisie to the revolutionary assault on private property and capital. As he argued at the Third Congress of Soviets in

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January: “To all accusations of civil war, we say: yes, we have proclaimed that which no government has ever been able to proclaim. The first government in the world that can talk openly about civil war is the government of the worker, peasant, and soldier masses. Yes, we began and are conducting a war against the exploiters. The more directly we say this, the sooner the war will come to an end, the sooner the toilers and exploited masses will understand us and will understand that Soviet power is carrying out the true, vital task of all toilers.”80 Lenin attached importance to “talking openly” about civil war not because of any particular frankness on his part, but because classifying the conflict in Bolshevik terms—defining it as a class war and making that definition appear natural and self-evident, a straightforward description of the objective order of things—would help organize the social and political world in the way most likely to yield success for his party. As Pravda neatly summed up the Bolshevik argument, the imperialist war had been transformed “into a war with imperialism, i.e. into a civil war, i.e. into a war of classes. In this war we are opposed by one front, beginning with Wilhelm and Hoffman, continuing with the Kadets, Kaledin, and Lloyd-George, and ending with the social-patriots of all countries and nations, who differ from the open imperialists only in their methods of stupefying the worker masses.”81 Over the course of the spring, the Allied governments and the Anglo-French bourgeoisie replaced the kaiser as the imperialist sponsors of the anti-Bolshevik front.82 Later the Americans and even the Japanese would take their turns as the main organizers of the front, but regardless of who played that role, the trope of a united front extending from the international bourgeoisie to the Russian socialist parties remained central to Bolshevik propaganda for the duration of the civil war. The Bolshevik lexicon—class war, Soviet power, the united front of the bourgeoisie, counterrevolutionary conspiracy and provocation, hidden enemies—enjoyed substantial authority among workers in Petrograd and elsewhere in the first months of 1918, but its weaknesses and limits were also clear. Its power to constitute the social and political world in ways that were persuasive for many workers was in part a legacy of prerevolutionary labor conflicts and of the social polarization of the capital in 1917, when the political effectiveness of the language of class was grounded in objective social relationships in the factories and working-class districts of the city. Bolshevik success in 1917 gave the party and the soviets a reservoir of legitimacy on which they could draw in the ongoing effort to define and shape political conflict in the new year. This accumulated symbolic credit and the strength of class identities in urban Russia helped the Bolsheviks immensely among workers in 1918, but the main political issues in the capital during the first months of 1918—economic collapse, food supply, Brest-Litovsk, violence, productivity and labor discipline, the future of the soviets and other working-class institutions—were much less

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obviously grounded in class relations than the conflicts of 1917 had been.83 It was hardly self-evident that pro-opposition workers, plenipotentiaries, Mensheviks, and SRs were counterrevolutionaries, that they were in league with hidden bourgeois conspirators, or that they were objectively assisting the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, moreover, appeared politically much less relevant and far weaker than in 1917, ironically due in large part to the Bolsheviks’ own successes in the campaign against property and capital since October. The spreading popularity of the plenipotentiary movement illustrates that many workers were prepared to contest the Bolshevik interpretation of the class politics of 1918 and the civil war. Despite the plenipotentiaries’ ambivalence about the political parties (and the accelerating disarray in their own party organizations), SRs and Mensheviks justifiably could see the plenipotentiary movement as evidence of growing working-class dissatisfaction with Bolshevik policies and rule in Petrograd. Provincial Politics

Provincial Soviet politics in the late winter and early spring point toward similar conclusions. As SRs and Mensheviks around the country strove to build up local opposition movements, the pattern of their successes and failures roughly followed the trajectory set in Petrograd. Nationwide, the major industrial centers engaged in defense production gravitated toward the opposition over the course of the spring, for largely the same reasons as in Petrograd. The textile centers in the Central Industrial Region, such as Vladimir and Ivanovo, proved to be much less fertile ground for the two opposition parties.84 Provincial politics outside the major industrial centers displayed their own rhythms, because the social makeup and politics of smaller cities such as Orel and Tambov differed significantly from the bigger industrial centers. A brief look at the formation of opposition movements in a few of these places will throw some light on the position of the PSR nationally as it moved toward armed conflict with the Soviet state in the late spring and summer. The opposition enjoyed its greatest provincial successes in Tula, Sormovo, and Izhevsk—all major centers of defense production. A report to the Bolshevik Central Committee by N. V. Kopylov, the chairman of the Tula Bolshevik party committee, presents a succinct summary of the situation in that city, which was dominated by two large weapons factories employing about forty thousand workers, almost the whole of the city’s industrial workforce: “After the transfer of power to the soviet, a rapid about-face began in the mood of the workers. The Bolshevik deputies began to be recalled one after another, and soon the general situation took on a rather unhappy appearance. Despite the fact that there was a schism among the SRs and the Left SRs were with us, our situation became shakier with each passing day. We were forced to block new elections to the

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soviet and even not to recognize them where they had taken place not in our favor.”85 Opposition to Bolshevik domination was driven by the same interplay between economic crisis, violence, and workers’ sense that they had lost control of working-class institutions. Demobilization hit Tula’s metalworkers in December, although not as hard as it hit in Petrograd. The Cartridge Plant, one of the two big factories, closed at the end of the month. The other major industrial enterprise, the Arms Plant, continued to function. When the Cartridge Plant reopened later in the spring, Tula had largely weathered the industrial crisis. By summer the size of the workforce was back to its 1917 level.86 Still, the closure of the Cartridge Plant in December left many workers unemployed early in 1918. On January 14 a certain Kozharinov, a member of the Tula Military Revolutionary Committee, shot and killed the commander of the railroad workers’ militia and seriously wounded another member of the militia at a session of the Tula Railroad Workers’ Soviet. Kozharinov fled, but the railroad workers remained assembled to discuss the situation. Kozharinov thereupon returned with a squadron of Red Guards armed with machine guns to disperse the railroad workers’ meeting, which it did by opening fire, wounding seven, two of them seriously. The railroad workers threatened to go out on strike unless Kozharinov was arrested, which he was. A wave of resolutions demanding his trial, a full investigation, and the recall of Bolshevik and Left SR Soviet deputies rolled through the workshops of the Arms Plant.87 A few days later several workshops in the same plant passed more radical resolutions demanding the resignation of the Council of Peoples’ Commissars and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.88 A resolution adopted by the Tula railroad workers captures the disgust many workers felt with the accelerating violence and illustrates the importance pro-opposition workers attached to contesting the Bolshevik vocabulary of civil war: “Russian citizens, stop killing each other! Those who say that what is happening is a class war and that in the name of that war one can kill and shoot people are lying and committing the greatest crime. They are shooting already not bourgeois (burzhui), not capitalists, but us, workers and peasants. We are killing each other, comrades and citizens. This is not class war. It is extermination to a man. For three whole years the Austrians, Turks, and Germans have been shooting us, now for three whole months Russians have been shooting their own brothers, Russians. Only our enemies need this, only those who wish to take advantage of our civil strife (mezhdousobitsy) and smash all the achievements of our revolution. Down with civil war (mezhdousobnaia voina)! Down with violence and terror committed against Russian citizens!”89 Unusual in its use of the language of nationhood and citizenship, the resolution nevertheless echoed the anger characteristic of the resolutions adopted after January 5 in Petrograd.

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More bloodshed followed in Tula a week later. On February 15 processions organized by the Orthodox church were held in cities around the country to protest the decree of the Council of Peoples’ Commissar on the separation of church and state.90 On the eve of the procession in Tula, the Bolshevik authorities placed the city under martial law. Despite entreaties from the local Menshevik organization not to interfere with the procession, in which many workers from the Arms Plant marched, Red Guards fired on the procession, killing seven people and wounding a number of others.91 Although the Tula Bolshevik organ lamented the religious backwardness of the city’s workers, the Tula SR newspaper denounced this “second bloody massacre” in Tula and called for full freedom of conscience, the end of the civil war, and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.92 As Kopylov later informed Moscow, “the remnants of sympathy for the party among the working masses began to melt away not by the day, but by the hour.” The Bolshevik authorities shut down the Menshevik newspaper Narodnyi golos, suspended meetings of the city soviet for almost two months, and effectively vested power in the Tula Provincial Executive Committee.93 In this context a group of Menshevik activists organized a workers’ conference on the model of the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries then being organized in Petrograd. It held its first session on March 2 with 116 delegates claiming to represent twenty-five thousand workers. Seventy-three of the delegates were from the Arms Plant and the remainder came from the railroad workers, some trade unions, and a few of the idle workshops of the Cartridge Plant.94 With the city soviet not meeting, the workers’ conference organized soviet elections and agitated for a new plenum of the soviet that would seat the newly elected delegates. Its other resolutions called for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, the restoration of the organs of local self-government, the renunciation of the BrestLitovsk peace, and the defense of workers’ institutions.95 When official elections to the soviet were finally held in April, the Mensheviks and SRs emerged victorious and the Bolshevik authorities dissolved the soviet.96 An editorial in the Tula soviet organ Revoliutsionnyi vestnik demonstrates how the Bolsheviks sought to link the Mensheviks and SRs to bourgeois and “White-guard” conspirators, and how they sought to pin responsibility for the bloodshed around the country on the socialist opposition: “The formation of a new soviet is an undisguised adventure, an effort by local Judases from the collective swamp of social-traitors to repeat again the Tiflis, Nikolaev, Odessa, and all-Russian shootings, which were organized by the experienced hand of the Gotses, Rudnevs, Chkheidzes, Gegechkoris and other such ‘socialists.’ Beware, comrades, of this bloody and senseless adventure, beware of becoming the victims of a bloody gamble by a band of scoundrel social-traitors. The recent events in Tula province prove that the experienced hand of the White

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guards is operating here. . . . Whole crowds of former officers are gathering in Tula. It is clear to anyone that the formation of an ‘independent’ soviet is only a prologue to the White guard’s move against Soviet power.”97 While the Mensheviks took the lead role in Tula and dominated the opposition movement there into 1919, SRs headed the opposition that developed in the giant metalworking complex at Sormovo, which employed twenty-five thousand workers near Nizhnii Novgorod and had long been considered an SR stronghold.98 Some workers at the factory passed resolutions in defense of the Constituent Assembly at the beginning of January, and the SRs began to call for new elections to the soviet.99 In February a prominent local SR named Chernov was murdered with his wife. Amid suspicion of Bolshevik complicity in the murder, a new majority coalition of SRs, Mensheviks, Left SRs, and nonparty delegates coalesced in the Sormovo soviet. The new majority set up an investigative commission to inquire into the circumstances of the murder, agreed to finance Chernov’s funeral, and decided to compensate his family monetarily. Over the objections of the Bolsheviks, the majority also decided to hold new elections to the soviet.100 Shortly thereafter, a workers’ conference was organized to help press for the elections. Much like the workers’ conferences in Petrograd and Tula, it called for the end of the civil war, the cessation of violence, the amnesty of all political prisoners (a number of socialists had been arrested), and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.101 As the elections approached in early April, the Nizhnii Novgorod and Sormovo Bolshevik leadership worried that the ruling parties faced defeat. M. S. Sergushev, the secretary of the provincial Bolshevik organization, informed Moscow of a “grandiose collapse of spirit” in the workers’ district of Sormovo and pleaded for help from the center: “Our situation as a provincial committee is not very pleasant! Rescue us!”102 The Bolsheviks in fact polled the most votes of any party, with 5,603 votes, but the SR and Menshevik total of 7,263 (4,888 for the SR list and 2,375 for the Menshevik list) secured the opposition a majority of twenty-one soviet delegates to seventeen for the coalition of Bolsheviks, Left SRs, and Maximalists.103 At the first session of the soviet on April 26, the Bolshevik delegates demanded that the SRs and Mensheviks recognize Soviet power. When they declined, the minority coalition declared that it would recognize only the presidium of the old soviet and would have no further contact with the “appeasers.” The SRs and Mensheviks organized their own presidium, and the two halves of the soviet assumed parallel existences.104 The Bolshevik position in Sormovo continued to deteriorate over the course of May, due mainly to mounting dissatisfaction in the factory about the provincial authorities’ refusal to implement a new wage schedule that had been worked out in the Sormovo metalworkers’ union and approved by the Sormovo Commissar of Labor.105 The Bolshevik committee in Nizhnii Novgorod, responsible

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for work in Sormovo, informed Moscow of the “complete break with the soviet by even the previously revolutionary workers.”106 Sergushev also reported this to Moscow and warned: “The position of Soviet power in the province is now threatened.”107 In mid-May Moscow dispatched F. F. Raskol’nikov to supervise negotiations to reunite the two sections of the soviet. The SR-Menshevik majority acquiesced in the exercise of political power by the Bolshevik minority, in return for a promise that it would be granted control of economic and cultural affairs.108 This arrangement, however, did little to solidify the Bolsheviks’ position in Sormovo, which remained precarious into the summer. Reports of the opposition’s success at Sormovo and Tula received heavy coverage in the central SR and Menshevik press, as did reports of opposition victories in provincial soviet elections around the country in March, April, and May.109 Although the nature and depth of provincial workers’ support for the opposition is difficult to assess in the absence of careful, reliable local studies, scattered evidence in Moscow party and state archives suggests that the opposition had indeed made a significant comeback. A Kaluga Left SR reported that anti-Bolshevik sentiment there was “extraordinarily strong.”110 Railroad workers went out on strike in the city in March, apparently in response to mass weapons searches carried out by the authorities, who interpreted the strike as a “counterrevolutionary action against Soviet power.”111 “Patent counterrevolutionaries” were also reported to be a problem in Riazan’, where the authorities dissolved the soviet and vested power in a Bolshevik-Left SR Military-Revolutionary Committee.112 In Tver’, where the ruling coalition in fact won the elections, local Bolsheviks had nevertheless worried about the “very real danger” of a Menshevik victory and demanded that the Central Committee send the best party orators to combat the opposition.113 From Orel came a report that “the right socialist parties enjoy a large influence. The mood of the workers is against the Bolsheviks and Soviet power, which they understand as a purely Bolshevik party power. At meetings of the railroad workers the Bolsheviks were not allowed to speak, there were shouts of ‘Down with them,’ etc.”114 Several emissaries informed Moscow that attitudes toward the Bolsheviks had become particularly embittered at the metalworking complex in the province, where “bitterness” and “sharp attacks on Soviet power” were reported to define the mood.115 From the Bolsheviks’ point of view, news from the towns of the Central Agricultural Region and the Volga was scarcely better. A Saratov Left SR reported “a definite anti-Soviet mood” in that city in April, explaining that the “complete ruin of the Bolsheviks” was expected in the upcoming soviet elections.116 The chairman of the Saratov Bolshevik committee likewise urged the Central Committee to send prominent party workers to aid in the Bolshevik campaign

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“in view of the mood that [had] formed among the workers.”117 In Samara a local Bolshevik later recalled that the “political mood among the masses was far from favorable for Soviet power” in the spring of 1918.118 New soviet elections were scheduled for May, then postponed to June because of a Maximalist rebellion in the city in mid-May. The electoral statute permitted representation only for parties that accepted Soviet power, however, and the opposition began to organize a branch of the plenipotentiary movement.119 From Tambov, local Bolsheviks informed Moscow that they had lost the election to the soviet in their city and had been forced to vest power in the Provincial Soviet Executive Committee. The local Left SRs argued for the dissolution of the soviet and its replacement by a “Revolutionary Committee.” The Bolsheviks agreed on the need to dissolve the soviet but were more reluctant to break with the appearance of Soviet power. Instead, they restored to power the Executive Committee of the old city soviet, which had a Bolshevik majority. The Bolsheviks did, however, inform Moscow that they considered it necessary to raise the question of “the replacement of Soviet power by the power of the Communist and Left SR parties” as potentially the only way out of the crisis. This step, however, proved unnecessary.120 The SR and Menshevik press in the capitals presented the reports flowing in from the provinces as evidence of the much awaited “awakening” (probuzhdeniie) or “sobering-up” (vytrezvlenie) of the working class. The socialists’ use of these terms signals the presence of that venerable binary of Russian political discourse: consciousness (soznatel’nost’) and spontaneity (stikhiinost’). This opposition was central to the language of class employed by the SRs and Mensheviks (and Bolsheviks), and it did much to organize the Russian left’s picture of the political and social landscape throughout the civil war. Both socialist parties conceived their effort to build a socialist opposition as a propaganda campaign to raise working-class consciousness, not an agitation campaign for the immediate overthrow of the Bolsheviks. Each party felt the urgent need to combat what it understood as the forces of elemental, anarchist spontaneity unleashed in October, which were embodied in the gray mass of soldiers and Red Guards and in the conventional image of the revolution as a raging storm. Of course, one half of a conceptual opposition implies its pair. Over the course of the spring, awakening working-class consciousness increasingly found itself sharing space in the pages of the socialist press with “rebellions” (bunty) and “disorders” (besporiadki) that took their meaning from the other term in the same dyad. Although the notion of spontaneity is in fact of little help in understanding the origins and nature of political and social violence, the “rebellions” and “disorders” that figured prominently in the socialist press did refer to forms of popular action that were distinct from the opposition

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movements tied to the socialist parties.121 Clashes between soldiers and the Bolshevik authorities were one such form, as soldiers or armed bands of one type or another briefly overthrew Soviet power in Samara, Saratov, Voronezh, and other cities in April and May.122 On occasion local “officers” figured in these clashes, although one should be careful in drawing conclusions about the social makeup of these armed groups from Bolshevik sources. In Novgorod, Red Guards killed eight people calling for the release of persons who had been arrested in a demonstration in defense of the Constituent Assembly in January. Local officers took advantage of the strikes that broke out in response to the shooting to stage an attack on the soviet, but order was reestablished in the city with the aid of a machine-gunners’ unit brought in from Petrograd.123 More unidentified Novgorod “counterrevolutionaries” joined some of the local troops to stage a rebellion in April, but the Bolsheviks quickly rallied their forces and suppressed it as well.124 In Smolensk province, which like Novgorod suffered from acute food shortages, “counterrevolutionaries” slaughtered the entire soviet in Belyi in March.125 The second form of conflict that the socialist press configured as spontaneous rebellion was the subsistence riot (golodnyi bunt). Such riots were grounded in the increasingly grave food-supply crisis that afflicted most of central Russia. Scholarly work on subsistence riots before 1917 has revealed the rich texture of popular aspirations represented in such conflicts, but for the most part such nuances were lost on the authors of accounts in the press and in internal Bolshevik communications.126 A January episode in the Urals town of Nizhnii Tagil was a harbinger of many similar episodes over the course of 1918. A large crowd gathered on January 17 and began to hunt for the chairman of the local food-supply administration. Unable to find him, the crowd stormed the soviet, disarmed some of the Red Guards, and beat up several members of the Soviet Executive Committee. Red Guards dispersed the crowd, leaving three dead.127 Crowds could also kill Bolsheviks in such riots. In a town in Nizhnii Novgorod province in May, a crowd gathered in front of the soviet building to demand bread, then moved on to the building of the Bolshevik fraction of the soviet. The crowd tried to force its way into the building, but a shot rang out from inside the building, killing a member of the crowd. The crowd then broke into the building and murdered several Bolshevik commissars. The Bolsheviks shot seven people in reprisal.128 A May subsistence riot in Kolpino, a factory town on the outskirts of Petrograd, was of special significance in reshaping SR and Menshevik understandings of the political situation and in redefining their view of the prospects for the opposition movement. On May 9 a crowd of women standing in line for bread until late in the evening became angry when the food-supply administration informed them that no bread had been received for several days and that

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none would be forthcoming. A large crowd assembled and Red Army soldiers were called in to disperse the crowd. When one of the members of the crowd tried to ring the fire alarm to call out more supporters, the soldiers opened fire, killing one and wounding several others. When this news reached workers at the Izhorskii plant nearby, they organized a meeting in the factory that passed a resolution denouncing the shootings and the Bolshevik reliance on terror. As the workers dispersed from the factory, soldiers opened fire on them as well, killing one and wounding a number of others. The Bolsheviks declared martial law in the town and carried out mass searches and arrests.129 In Petrograd news of the Kolpino shootings generated the same response among opposition-minded workers as had the shootings earlier in the year, although on a much larger scale, and some workers went out on strike in protest (at the Sestroretsk Arms Plant). Big meetings were held at Obukhov, Putilov, Arsenal, the Cartridge Plant, and other factories. Workers passed resolutions denouncing the Bolsheviks, demanding new elections to the soviet, and calling for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly and an end to civil war. Demands for changes in the system of food supply and the equalization of workers’ food rations with those of Red Army soldiers provided the new note in these resolutions, which otherwise hewed to the rhetorical patterns of the January resolutions.130 As in January, the opposition organized a ceremonial funeral that sought to link the events at Kolpino to traditional notions of revolutionary martyrdom. A delegation of Petrograd workers traveled to Kolpino for the funeral of one of the victims and adopted a resolution in a meeting at the Izhorskii plant: “We, the delegates of the Petrograd plants and factories, having gathered in Kolpino to fulfill our last comradely duty to a hungry comrade murdered by Red Army soldiers, resolve that in the present situation victims are unavoidable, because the commissars cannot feed the hungry without the democratic unification of the whole country. On the contrary, they are causing greater and greater hunger—the inevitable consequence of the civil war and anarchy stirred up by Bolshevik power.”131 The resolution called for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly and the formation of a people’s government (vsenarodnaia vlast’). According to a newspaper report, thousands of workers accompanied representatives from the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries and the opposition political parties as the casket was carried through the streets of Kolpino to the local church. The casket was draped with wreaths dedicated “to the hungry victims who died at the hands of a well-fed government” and “to the victim of arbitrary power, to the defender of the hungry.” The Bolshevik-controlled Kolpino soviet wisely ordered all Red Army soldiers off the streets, and the funeral concluded peacefully after a series of graveside speeches.132 Predictably, the Kolpino shootings generated new conspiratorial scenarios

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in the Bolshevik press. The organ of the Petrograd soviet declared the revolution in danger from Kadet, Menshevik, and SR conspirators who were “inciting workers to pogroms, excesses, and strikes, directing the hungry mass at the soviets, provoking bloody episodes like Kolpino.”133 On the eve of the funeral in Kolpino, the Petrograd soviet declared that “agents of the counterrevolution” were trying to provoke turmoil and warned that “Soviet power will view any processions or demonstrations as direct assistance to the external enemy and will mercilessly suppress them.”134 The Executive Committee of the Kolpino soviet called on Petrograd workers not to attend the funeral, explaining that workers were being “criminally deceived by social-traitors when they spoke of a mass shooting.” The disorders had in fact been initiated and fanned by provocateurs and formed part of a well-organized movement against “toiling Russia” that united the foreign and domestic counterrevolution.135 As tension mounted in Petrograd during the week after the shooting, the presidium of the Petrograd soviet denounced the SRs and Mensheviks for working for the overthrow of Soviet power and the restoration of capitalism: they were the “hirelings of the bourgeoisie, the lackeys of the capitalists, the boot-cleaners of the landlords.” It called on workers to arrest all “Black-Hundred agitators” and turn them over to the Revolutionary Tribunals.136 The socialist opposition also deployed its customary conceptual categories to represent the Kolpino shooting and its aftermath, but with new accents and to novel effects. For the first time the opposition began seriously and publicly to worry that the “stormy” mood in the factories might spark an “elemental hunger movement” (stikhiinoe golodnoe dvizhenie) against the Bolsheviks.137 The Petrograd SRs and Mensheviks urged the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries to organize a one-day strike as the only way to avoid a “rebellion” (bunt).138 To assist in defusing the workers’ anger, the Petrograd SRs summoned Gurevich and the other leaders of the city party organization from Moscow, where they had traveled for the Eighth Party Council. Gurevich later claimed that it took all the party’s efforts to avert a spontaneous rebellion.139 Significant here is not whether the SRs correctly estimated the likelihood of violent anti-Bolshevik action in Petrograd (undoubtedly they exaggerated it), but rather that the forms of protest that socialists had previously represented as signs of an awakening consciousness had now been configured quite differently, as evidence of a looming elemental rebellion. This had serious consequences for the socialist opposition campaign and for the Menshevik-SR partnership in Petrograd and across the country. Among Mensheviks, who had long conceived their political and social task as assisting workers’ development of a social-democratic consciousness, anxiety about spontaneous rebellion ran deep. As early as January, a Menshevik shaken by what he perceived as the “savage hatred” of Petrograd workers for the Bolsheviks had observed to a comrade:

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“You know, I’m absolutely terrified about what will happen when the Soviet regime is toppled. The bloodshed, the brutality, the hatred!”140 Along with various other considerations, such fears now pushed the party into continued adherence to legal opposition almost at any cost. The prospect of an elemental rebellion was hardly more welcome to SRs, but spontaneity had never been an unequivocally negative category in the PSR, because it provided the philosophical subtext to peasant rebellion. Chernov, among others, distinguished the PSR from both wings of social democracy precisely in terms of the greater role the SRs attributed to spontaneity in the historical movement toward socialism.141 To most SRs, it seemed clear that in the event of a confrontation between the state and the population, the party would have no choice but to take its place “with the people” (vmeste s narodom, as the populist cliché had it)—however uneasily this sat with the conceptual opposition between the democracy and the Bonapartist counterrevolution, and however reluctant most SRs were to engage in the civil war. The Eighth Party Council

Such was the backdrop against which the SR leadership gathered to consider the party’s political strategy at the Eighth Party Council of the PSR in May. The new strategy adopted at the council moved away from the idea of a legal mass opposition that had been the keystone of the Central Committee theses of January. Although the party did not entirely abandon the effort to organize mass opposition in Soviet territory, the SRs parted ways with the Mensheviks and shifted their focus to an uprising that would establish a new government under the Constituent Assembly and resume the war with the Germans. In essence, the Party Council overturned the hierarchy of discourses that had prevailed within the party since early 1918. The concept of the civil war as a part of the larger World War emerged as the controlling discourse within the party, subordinating the previously dominant discourse that represented the civil war as an extension of the revolution. Of course to put matters this way schematizes a complex political shift that had multiple motivations, but it points to the essence of the change wrought at the Eighth Party Council. The new strategy governed party policy from May until the end of the World War in November, and it pushed the SRs into their most sustained assault on the Soviet state at any point in the civil war. Over the course of the spring, both the successes and the failures of the Central Committee strategy of building a socialist opposition within the framework of the Soviet state had suggested the need for a new approach. Because the Central Committee viewed the evidence for a popular “awakening” as an indication that the revolution had entered a new phase, one marked by the ebb of the intoxicating radical wave of October and the end of workers’

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“Bolshevik illusions,” the need to consider the next step arose quite naturally. At the same time, the language of class that defined the popular “soberingup” as a maturation and growth in revolutionary consciousness constituted other forms of political and social action as “unconscious,” “elemental,” and “apathetic.” A contradictory sense of the party’s obligation to the people and of the growing danger to the revolution posed by spontaneous rebellion also suggested the need to rethink party tactics. So too did the transformation of Russia’s urban social structure, because the collapse of industry, the flight of workers to the countryside, and the absorption of class institutions into the Soviet state were making it increasingly difficult to build and sustain an organized socialist opposition. In addition, the Bolsheviks’ success in dissolving soviets in which the SRs and Mensheviks regained a majority and their increasing harassment of the non-Bolshevik press called into question the strategy of building an open, peaceful opposition movement, as did the delegates’ dismaying reports about the state of SR party organizations in the provinces. Delegates lamented the dramatic collapse of party organizations in most parts of the country. One noted that of ninety SR organizations in the Urals in January 1918, only forty existed four months later. As several delegates to the council summed up the situation, popular enthusiasm for the Bolsheviks had cooled, but the SR effort to build an opposition movement was foundering amid economic collapse, mass desertion of the political parties, spontaneous violence, and Bolshevik repression.142 The most important cause of the revision in party strategy at the Eighth Party Council lay, however, in the SRs’ interpretation of the Treaty of BrestLitovsk. Since the end of 1917, the SRs had uniformly opposed the Bolsheviks’ effort to secure a separate peace and had argued, implausibly, that only the Constituent Assembly would be able to secure a general, democratic peace. When the Bolsheviks reached the peace agreement with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk, the SRs condemned it immediately and unequivocally as a capitulation. The party leadership denounced the dismemberment of the Russian empire, which it hoped to transform into a federal republic, and emphasized the economic consequences of the peace. Pointing out that the treaty deprived Russia of key Ukrainian grain-producing regions, they argued it would aggravate the already serious crisis in food supply. The economic provisions of the treaty would undo the social achievements of the revolution by allowing German capital unfettered access to the Russian economy and, in the longer run, the rump Russia left by the treaty would not survive as an independent economic entity.143 In short, the SR leadership saw Brest-Litovsk as a stepping-stone to German imperial control of Russia. Political logic would soon compel the Germans to crush the revolutionary movement, set up a reactionary Russian government, and complete the country’s subordination to German rule.

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Within the party leadership Abram Gots figured as the principal architect of this conception of German hegemony, and Gots’s renewed prominence in the leadership suggests that the outlook within the Central Committee had shifted toward the right-center and its emphasis on the civil war as a part of the larger World War. The German overthrow of the Ukrainian Rada and the establishment of a new Ukrainian government under Hetman Skoropads’kyi at the end of April clearly shaped Gots’s thinking, and he began to argue that the struggle with reactionary Germany would be the fundamental task of democratic Russia for many years.144 Gots’s argument that Brest-Litovsk had opened the way internationally to the German subordination of Russia and domestically to the victory of the counterrevolution coordinated the two conceptions of the civil war—the civil war as a part of the World War and the civil war as an extension of the revolution. Instead of pushing in opposite directions, the two lines of thinking each now suggested the need to revisit the party’s refusal to engage in armed struggle. The Central Committee directive on the treaty illustrates well how the leadership integrated the languages of nationhood and class, and how it identified defense of the revolution with a set of now dominant national obligations: The complete capitulation of Bolshevism in the face of German imperialism nullifies not only the conquests of the revolution. It also simply turns the peoples of Russia over to the victor for looting. The peace accepted by the Council of People’s Commissars destroys the independence of the Russian republic and may lead, in the present international situation, to its simple partition by the great powers. . . . Taking the point of view of class, fighting for the interests of the toilers, defending the principles of progress, peaceful existence and intercourse between nations and their cultures, the PSR is obliged unswervingly and decisively to strive for the destruction of the agreement between the Council of People’s Commissars and the German coalition and to organize resistance to the plundering of Russia and the possessions of its peoples. The slogan “the Defense of the Country,” designating simultaneously the defense of the revolution, is at the present time the most fundamental slogan of our political activity and should become our most effective slogan. The defense of democratic Russia against enslavement by international imperialism is at the same time a struggle for the International against bourgeois reaction, for labor against its full subordination to capital, for the freedom of nations against militarism, for the principles of revolution against international reaction, and for culture against barbarism.145

Following Gots’s line of thinking, the SR leadership began in April to consider ways to open armed struggle against the Soviet state and resume the war with the Germans. Over the course of the spring, representatives of the Central

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Committee participated in negotiations organized by the Party of Popular Socialists aimed at the formation of a united political front against the Germans and Bolsheviks. This front, the Popular Socialists hoped, would also include the SRs, the Kadets, the tiny Menshevik splinter group Unity, and perhaps the main body of Mensheviks. Negotiations quickly broke down, however, because it proved impossible to reconcile SR and Kadet views about the future role of the Constituent Assembly. The Kadets insisted that the Constituent Assembly of January 5 not be resurrected and that any discussion of the role of the Constituent Assembly center on an assembly that would be created by new elections. The SRs refused to accept this view, but the willingness of the Central Committee even to participate in such negotiations, which clearly violated the spirit of the resolutions of the Fourth Party Congress against coalition with bourgeois parties, testifies to the shifting attitudes within the party leadership and to the invigoration of the party’s right wing.146 Although the Central Committee abandoned the effort to form a united political front with other parties, the leaders of the party’s right wing, notably Avksent’ev and Argunov, went on to play central roles in the formation of the Union for the Regeneration of Russia. The union was one of the most important underground anti-Bolshevik organizations in Soviet Russia in 1918. It united leading political figures from the center and left of the Russian political spectrum who stood for the resumption of the war with Germany in cooperation with the Allies, struggle with the Soviet government, the formation of a strong collegial directory to serve as the Russian government for the duration of the war, and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly at the end of the war to reestablish a united, democratic Russia.147 The relative simplicity of the platform reflected an effort to sketch out a minimum on which right-wing SRs and left Kadets could agree. The initial core of the Union of Regeneration consisted of the SRs Avksent’ev, Argunov, and Boris Moiseenko; the Popular Socialists N. V. Chaikovskii, V. A. Miakotin, A. A. Titov, and A. V. Peshekhonov; and the Kadets N. N. Shchepkin and N. I. Astrov. They were joined by a number of other socialists, Kadets, and persons not affiliated with any political party, the most important of whom was General Vasilii Boldyrev. The SRs who subsequently joined included Gots, Fondaminskii, Mark Vishniak, Vladimir Pavlov, and other figures from the right and right-center of the party. By structuring the organization as a personal union instead of a formal bloc of political parties, the initiators of the union circumvented the SR and Kadet Central Committees. Only the Popular Socialists participated with the approval and full support of their Central Committee; the other members of the union joined as individuals, not as representatives of their parties. By April the Union of Regeneration was drawing up plans for the creation of an Eastern front against the Germans and Bolsheviks. The union began to

DILEMMAS OF CIVIL WAR / 39

recruit officers for eventual transfer to the Eastern front, and it established contact with two other important underground anti-Bolshevik organizations, the National Center and Boris Savinkov’s Union for the Defense of the Fatherland and Freedom. Ties with Savinkov’s organization were loose, but cooperation with the National Center became quite close. The National Center grouped Kadets and other nonsocialists who had broken off from the Right Center, an earlier secret organization, because of its pro-German tilt. Several Kadets, notably Astrov and Shchepkin, belonged to both the Union of Regeneration and the National Center and coordinated the activities of the two organizations. Each organization concentrated on transferring officers to Siberia, where a large Allied force was expected to arrive soon. Allied support would allow the opening of the Eastern front against the Germans and Bolsheviks, behind which a new Russian government would be formed. The Union of Regeneration envisioned this government as a three-person directory that would turn power over to a new Constituent Assembly at the end of the war. The National Center preferred a military dictatorship but after discussions with the union agreed to support a five-person directory. Among the candidates discussed were Avksent’ev, Astrov, Chaikovskii, and Generals Alekseev and Boldyrev. The plans of the Union of Regeneration and the National Center plainly depended on a massive Allied military intervention, because neither organization had significant military forces of its own and the prospects for rebuilding a Russian army were at best uncertain. Representatives of the underground organizations therefore began to discuss plans for an intervention with Allied representatives in Moscow, and in May the union agreed with the National Center to conduct all discussions with the Allied representatives jointly.148 From the Allied perspective these discussions took place against the background of the massive German offensive that began in March on the Western front. Over the next months it rightly seemed to the British and French military and diplomatic authorities that the war had at last arrived at its decisive battles. They were accordingly desperate to reopen an Eastern front against the Germans, preferably at the Bolsheviks’ invitation. The British took the lead in the planning for such a front. In their view the logical forces to use in support of a renewed Russian war effort were the Japanese, who could reach European Russia, and hence the Germans, through the Far East and Siberia. The Japanese were in fact reluctant to engage their troops in Europe, and the U. S. government adamantly opposed Japanese intervention, but British and French negotiators nevertheless hoped to secure Bolshevik consent to the plan. Negotiations between the Allies and the Bolsheviks broke down in April, however, and the Allies began more seriously to consider working with the anti-Bolshevik organizations to reopen the front. Throughout the spring and into early summer, neither the British nor the

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French government decided on a definite policy in Russia, but Joseph Noulens, the French ambassador to Russia, emerged as the most forceful advocate in Allied diplomatic and military circles for the restoration of the Eastern front in cooperation with the anti-Bolshevik organizations. Noulens had been in contact with representatives of the underground organizations since midwinter, but he left Petrograd for Vologda with the other Allied ambassadors in March, and the French consul-general Fernand Grenard took over subsequent discussions in Moscow. Noulens and Grenard dispensed cash liberally to the Union of Regeneration and Savinkov, and they appear to have promised an Allied intervention that would come from Murmansk and reach as far south as Vologda.149 By late spring the underground anti-Bolshevik organizations were erroneously convinced that a massive Allied military intervention was in the works as they coordinated their plans to create an Eastern front.150 Well-informed about the plan of the Union of Regeneration and the National Center, the SR Central Committee also began think in terms of an Eastern front. In Moscow the Central Committee intensified the party’s underground military work, which was led by Zenzinov, Iosif Dashevskii, and Moiseenko (also a member of the Union of Regeneration). They hoped to form an underground military organization to give the party a force on which it could rely in the event of a Bolshevik collapse or a Central Committee order to seize power, and they sought to recruit officers for use on a possible Eastern front. To fulfill the first aim, Zenzinov and Moiseenko reorganized the “fighting organizations” of the Moscow Committee of the PSR. The new organization comprised several thousand armed members, who, according to Zenzinov, were ready to come out on the streets at the party signal. Although some workers and officers sympathetic to the PSR joined, the bulk of the membership consisted of demobilized soldiers living exclusively on party funds.151 In Petrograd, Grigorii Semenov’s secret military organization served an analogous function under the loose control of the Petrograd Bureau of the Central Committee. The Central Committee, however, attached more importance to the recruitment of officers for transfer to the proposed Eastern front than to building these underground organizations in Soviet Russia. Unfortunately for the PSR and for the Union of Regeneration, most officers preferred to join Savinkov’s Union for the Defense of the Fatherland and Freedom or to go south to the Volunteer Army, whose agents were also recruiting in Moscow.152 By the time of the opening of the Eighth Party Council in the second week of May, the party leadership as a whole, not just the right wing active in the Union of Regeneration, had come to believe in the necessity of armed struggle against the Germans and Bolsheviks. Scheduled to run nine days, the council was raided by the Cheka on its second day and completed its work underground in abbreviated fashion. One hundred fifteen delegates attended, representing

DILEMMAS OF CIVIL WAR / 41

the Central Committee, the SR fraction of the Constituent Assembly, all the SR organizations in Russia, the Ukrainian regional organization, and the Kiev provincial party organization.153 In a sign of shifting views within the Central Committee, Evgenii Timofeev of the right-center minority delivered the main political report to the council. He denounced the Council of Peoples’ Commissars for its “complete subordination to the orders of Berlin and Vienna” and called on the PSR “to come out in defense of the country against the foreign enslaver, to throw off the yoke of the usurpers of power and create an order in which all the forces of the nation can be directed towards that defense.”154 Impressed by the report of Arkadii Al’tovskii, the chairman of the Volga regional SR organization, which described growing anti-Bolshevik resistance on the Volga, the council followed the lead of the Union of Regeneration and made the Volga the staging ground of the planned rebellion. There the SRs hoped to overthrow the Bolsheviks, reconvene the Constituent Assembly, and reestablish the organs of local self-government. With Allied support they would reopen the Eastern front against Germany.155 Both the prevalence of the language of nationhood at the Eighth Party Council and the decision to initiate armed struggle against the Germans and Bolsheviks suggest that the council represented a victory for the right wing of the party. It is true that the right-center minority in the Central Committee, especially Gots and Timofeev, played a key role in the formulation of the new strategy, but the right and right-center had not overturned the left’s majority in the Central Committee, the council, or the party as a whole. The shift within the party was conceptual: it hinged on a shift in the balance between the languages of class and nationhood, not on a change in the numerical strength of the left or right wing of the party. The right’s inability to overturn the party ban on coalition with bourgeois parties provides clear evidence of the left wing’s continued majority, and the rather odd effort the party made to continue building a mass opposition within the framework of the Soviet state—even as the party openly called for armed insurrection—confirms that the discourse representing the civil war as an extension of the revolution had been subordinated, not abandoned. 156 Nearly the whole of the party’s left wing agreed with the right on the necessity of armed struggle. Even Chernov, always deeply reluctant to fight the Bolsheviks, was swept up in the prevailing atmosphere and exclaimed: “If not now, when? If not us, who?”157 The Brest-Litovsk treaty had overturned the hierarchy of discourses within the party and allowed the party left and right wings to come together in an understanding of the civil war that gave primacy to its place within the World War. Although SRs continued to interpret events in light of their understanding of the civil war as an extension of the revolution, it cannot be overstressed that the SR leaders came to endorse armed struggle primarily because of their

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interpretation of the place of the civil war within the World War. The leadership conceived the planned uprising and the subsequent campaign as the restoration of the Eastern front of the World War. Gurevich, one of the SRs most inclined toward active struggle, recalled in emigration that the overthrow of Bolshevik rule was not the SRs’ central consideration, “since we mistakenly believed the Soviet government was doomed to a quick and inescapable death, independent of the planned uprising. The latter very many of us saw as primarily a struggle against the Brest peace, which it seemed then would lead to the economic and political enslavement of Russia to triumphant German imperialism for many years and also to a lengthy period of domestic reaction.”158 The decision to launch armed struggle against the Soviet state thus represents less of a revolution in the SRs’ understanding of the civil war than it might at first seem. The hierarchy of discourses within the party had been reversed, but the two political languages that structured the party’s outlook continued to coexist, and the new conception of the civil war could hold meaning only so long as the World War dominated the political stage. The unity of the left and right wings of the party depended on the constellation of circumstances embodied in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, without which the solid left-wing majority of the party would likely gravitate back to the preoccupations and outlook of early 1918. In light of this, it should come as no surprise that when the German revolution brought the World War to a close in November, SRs found themselves once again grappling with the meaning of the civil war.

2

The Shape of Dictatorship

I

n May 1918 the Central Committee dispatched leading Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) to the Volga and Urals to organize the uprising approved at the Eighth Party Council. Dmitrii Donskoi traveled to Saratov to serve as chief organizer, and other Central Committee members dispersed to take over the leadership of local party organizations in the provincial capitals of the Volga, Black Earth, and Urals. The SR leadership hoped to overthrow Soviet power along a line from Perm’ to Tsaritsyn using party peasant detachments and the veterans unions.1 The leadership hoped eventually to reopen the Constituent Assembly, but for the moment it planned a network of regional Committees of Members of the Constituent Assembly. The idea of forming provincial Committees of Members had first arisen among the members of the bureau of the SR fraction of the Constituent Assembly who had been dissatisfied with the bureau majority’s refusal to take active measures to reconvene the Constituent Assembly in the winter. As a concession to the so-called activists, the bureau had instructed SR deputies to the Constituent Assembly to return to the provinces from which they had been elected and form provincial Committees of Members of the Constituent Assembly. Few such committees were in fact created over the course of the spring, but the Central Committee now integrated the idea into the planned uprising. It instructed local party leaders in the regions surrounding Saratov to form provin43 

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cial Committees of Members and to vest authority in them after the overthrow of Bolshevik power.2 The Central Committee also sent Nikolai Avksent’ev to Siberia, where he was to participate in a Siberian regional government and serve as the party’s representative to the Allies.3 Avksent’ev’s appointment, like that of Boris Moiseenko as Donskoi’s principal deputy, indicates that the Central Committee was coordinating its preparations with the Union of Regeneration. The leaders of the union also expected Avksent’ev to play a prominent role in the government to be formed in Siberia, but they envisioned the government there as an all-Russian power, not a regional authority. They also opposed the reconvocation of the Constituent Assembly elected in 1917. The Union of Regeneration took the lead in coordinating the plans of the various anti-Bolshevik organizations. It also led negotiations with the French consul general in Moscow, Fernand Grenard, and with other Allied representatives in Russia. Agreement was reached for the union, the National Center, the SR Central Committee, and Boris Savinkov’s Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom to move political activists and officers to the vicinity of the planned uprising. While the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (PSRs) concentrated on Saratov and the middle Volga, the Union of Regeneration dispatched its agents mainly to the north and to the Volga and Savinkov focused on the upper Volga towns. Before the unexpected rebellion of the Czechoslovak Legion at the end of May forced all the anti-Bolshevik organizations to adjust their plans, they hoped to overthrow Soviet power in a series of coordinated actions as the Allies landed in Arkhangel’sk to provide military support.4 The Eastern front formed with Allied support would then arc from Vologda, through the upper Volga region, and down the river. All the anti-Bolshevik organizations expected the Allied intervention to be quite substantial, because Grenard and the French ambassador Joseph Noulens made firmer commitments and promised greater military aid than either Paris or London had approved. Even in the Allied capitals, however, views shifted over the course of April and May, as the possibility of restoring an Eastern front in cooperation with the Bolsheviks receded. In mid-May the Bolshevik leadership abandoned negotiations for a Soviet-Allied agreement and moved instead to repair relations with the Germans. At the same time, the British realized that the troop landing planned for Arkhangel’sk in early June, originally negotiated with Trotsky and to be undertaken in cooperation with the Soviet authorities, could be reconceptualized as an effort to open the way for an anti-Bolshevik government on the Eastern front.5 Although the Central Committee focused on Saratov, the city of Samara, 250 miles to the northeast, in fact became the focal point of the Eastern front. Already in February, the Samara SRs had abandoned hopes to build a legal opposition to Bolshevik power and turned their efforts to underground con-

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spiratorial work. Boris Fortunatov, scion of a distinguished family of Moscow professors, led party work among the remaining soldiers in Samara, and the veteran revolutionary Prokopii Klimushkin concentrated on harnessing peasant dissatisfaction with the Bolsheviks. The third member of the Samara SR leadership, Ivan Brushvit, was dispatched to Siberia to establish contact with anti-Bolshevik forces there.6 In Siberia, Brushvit found a well-organized underground anti-Bolshevik network dominated by SR activists. By spring, Irkutsk, Novo-Nikolaevsk, Omsk, and Tomsk were all home to cells of officers and SRs poised to depose the Bolsheviks under the banner of the Siberian government, whose slogans called for Siberian autonomy from European Russia and the convocation of a Siberian Constituent Assembly to establish a democratic regional government. Independently of the Eighth Party Council, the Siberian SRs were planning an anti-Bolshevik uprising for mid-May. Before returning to Samara, Brushvit promised that the Samara SRs would rise simultaneously, gain control of the city and the bridges across the Volga, and send reinforcements to help in Siberia.7 The Czechoslovak Rebellion and the Formation of Komuch

Thus matters stood at the end of May when the rebellion of the Czechoslovak Legion unexpectedly catapulted the SRs to power all along the Trans-Siberian railroad. Contemporary Bolsheviks and later Soviet historians have asserted, without much evidence, that the rebellion was part of a grandiose Allied conspiracy against Soviet power.8 In fact, the Allied diplomats most involved with the anti-Bolshevik organizations did not envision using the Czechoslovak Legion to overthrow Soviet power, nor did the anti-Bolshevik organizations themselves, although some Allied diplomats were certainly more deeply involved with the conspiratorial plans of the anti-Bolshevik organizations than their governments either realized or cared to admit. For its part the forty-thousandman Legion, formed from Austro-Hungarian and German prisoners of war in 1916 and 1917 and still eager to fight the Central powers, hoped to leave Russia via the Trans-Siberian railroad to the east. From Vladivostok the Legionnaires planned to sail for Europe and a place on the Western front. Some Allied diplomats, notably Noulens, found it odd to transport the Legion halfway around the world to the Western front just when the search for forces with which to reopen the Eastern front was becoming increasingly desperate, but the Allies consented to the plan and the Bolsheviks gave their approval in March 1918. By May almost half of the Legionnaires had reached Vladivostok, and the rest were strewn along the railroad as far west as Penza.9 Events soon conspired to entangle the Legion in Russia. On May 2 the Allies decided that the First Division of the Legion should abandon the journey east and move north to Arkhangel’sk instead. Its first task would be to guard

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the Arkhangel’sk-Vologda railroad as the troop landing planned for June unfolded in Arkhangel’sk. This plan, however, proved to be unacceptable to the Legionnaires when the Czechoslovak National Council (based in Moscow) communicated the orders on May 15. Coincidentally, delegates from all of the units in the Legion began gathering at Cheliabinsk for a congress of the Legion that same day. Among the congress’s first decisions was a vote to defy the order to reroute the First Division to the north and to continue eastward instead. At the same time, the Bolshevik leadership began to take a tougher line against the Legion. After a group of Legionnaires forced the Cheliabinsk soviet to release members of the Legion arrested in a fight with some Hungarian prisoners of war around the time of the opening of the congress, Trotsky compelled the Czechoslovak National Council to order the Legion to turn over its weapons to the Bolshevik authorities. Several days later, Trotsky ordered Red Army units to disarm the Legion themselves. The first effort to do so, in the Siberian depot of Marianovka, led to a violent clash between units of the Legion and Red Army soldiers on May 25. Within days, fighting broke out all along the Trans-Siberian railroad between the well-armed Legion and badly overmatched Soviet forces. SR preparations for the Volga uprising were not far advanced, but the Samara SRs were further along than their comrades elsewhere. Fortunatov’s work among officers and soldiers in Samara had produced several detachments willing to follow the SRs onto the street. He had also established contact with a small underground military organization headed by Colonel Nikolai Galkin.10 When they learned of the developing clash between the Red Army and the Legion, the Samara SRs sent Brushvit to the Czechoslovak headquarters in Penza to secure Czechoslovak support for the overthrow of the Bolsheviks. Brushvit arrived in Penza on the eve of the Czechoslovak seizure of the city, but the Czechoslovak command refused to see him.11 After the Czechoslovak overthrow of Bolshevik rule in Penza on May 30, the Legion rebuffed the SRs’ request for help, made no effort to establish an anti-Soviet government, and resumed its journey to the east. Bolshevik rule was quickly reestablished in Penza. To avoid this in Samara, Klimushkin and Fortunatov accelerated their preparations in anticipation of the Czechoslovak entrance into the city. They were joined by Ivan Nesterov, an SR delegate to the Constituent Assembly from Minsk, and Vladimir Vol’skii, an SR delegate from Tver’. Vol’skii had been sent by the SR Central Committee to Ural’sk to help organize underground SR forces there, but with the outbreak of the Czechoslovak-Bolshevik conflict, he came to Samara by agreement with the Volga Regional Committee of the PSR. The committee instructed him to make sure the local SRs did not miss the opportunity presented by the Czechoslovak rebellion.12 Vol’skii’s instructions

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dovetailed nicely with the Samara SRs’ own mood, and Klimushkin opened negotiations with the local Kadets and Mensheviks on the formation of a government that would assume power when the Czechoslovaks entered the city. The Samara Menshevik committee, headed by A. I. Kabtsan, refused to take part in any move against the Soviet state, although it assured the SRs of its sympathy with their aims. Talks with the Samara Kadets proved no more successful.13 The Czechoslovak occupation of Samara came quickly and easily, as it did in most of the cities and towns along the Trans-Siberian artery. Bolshevik rhetoric of class war and imperialist intervention notwithstanding, the Samara soviet leaders found many local workers uninterested in resistance to the Legion. At the factories of Ivashchenkovo, outside Samara, workers passed a resolution greeting the Czechoslovaks and elected an SR-dominated committee to take over local administration from the soviet. In Samara itself an assembly of railroad workers called for the transfer of all power to the Constituent Assembly and resolved to send a delegation to the Legion to elucidate its platform.14 These votes no doubt owed more to workers’ desire to ingratiate themselves with the dominant military force in the region than to considered support for the Constituent Assembly, but they nevertheless testify to the weakness of the Bolshevik position. Able to muster no more than a few hundred men in Samara, the Bolsheviks brought in soldiers from Simbirsk and Ufa, but they stood little chance of successfully defending the city. Nikolai Podvoiskii, sent from Moscow to the Volga in mid-May to coordinate the Red effort, cabled Lenin that the few available Red troops were “worthless.”15 After a brief clash at Lipiagi, the last station on the railroad before the city, the Czechoslovaks entered Samara on June 8. The collapse of Soviet rule in the city left individual Communists open to retribution, and crowds hunted down at least ten in the first hours of Czechoslovak control. F. I. Ventsek, the chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was murdered by an enraged mob that ripped off his beard and ears.16 The five SR leaders hurried to the city Duma, where under Czechoslovak guard they announced their own assumption of power as the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, soon to be known by the acronym Komuch (Komitet chlenov Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia). Echoing the resolutions of the Eighth Party Council, Komuch issued proclamations that denounced the Bolshevik betrayal of Russia to German imperialism, called on all citizens to rally behind the Constituent Assembly in defense of national independence and popular sovereignty, and announced the formation of a People’s Army to fight the Germans and Bolsheviks.17 The initial reach of the bid for power announced in these proclamations fell notably short of Komuch’s subsequent all-Russian aspirations. Order no. 1, declaring Komuch’s assumption of power, claimed sovereignty only in the province of Samara and invited representatives of the

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Samara organs of local self-government to join the new committee. Other early decrees referred to the “Samara Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly” and confirm the provincial limits of Komuch’s initial claim to power.18 From the start the key figure in Komuch was Vladimir Vol’skii, who merged the activities of the Samara SRs with the Eighth Party Council’s plan for an uprising and quickly transformed Komuch into an embryonic all-Russian government. The son of a lawyer, Vol’skii was a longtime revolutionary and a member of the PSR from 1903. Like many Russian radicals of his generation, Vol’skii was a veteran of several terms of imprisonment and exile under the Old Regime. Like many SRs, he was a former terrorist, convicted for a plot to kill the governor of Baku in 1904. In exile in Tver’ at the time of the February Revolution, Vol’skii became the leading SR in the province in 1917. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly from the province and after its dissolution became one of the leading advocates of creating provincial Committees of Members of the Constituent Assembly. At the end of May the Central Committee dispatched him as its emissary to Ural’sk as part of the preparations for the overthrow of Soviet power. Vol’skii had reached Saratov when news arrived that the Czechoslovaks would shortly enter Samara. The SR Volga Regional Committee rerouted him there to assist in the overthrow of Soviet rule.19 As a newcomer outside the web of conspiratorial ties woven prior to his arrival in Samara, Vol’skii played little role in the events that brought the Samara SRs to power. His credentials from the SR Central Committee and Volga Regional Committee, however, bought him immediate standing in SR circles, and he was appointed chairman of Komuch. Vol’skii disagreed with the mix of local and all-Russian claims in the decree proclaiming Komuch’s seizure of power, bemoaned what he later termed its failure to assert a “general principle for a provisional revolutionary government in the name of the Constituent Assembly,” and urged his fellow Komuch members to expand their horizons.20 Joining Vol’skii in prodding in this direction was Mikhail Vedeniapin, who arrived as the Central Committee emissary to Samara several days after the fall of the Bolsheviks. Vedeniapin and Vol’skii moved the focus of the Volga uprising from Saratov to Samara. At the same time, the progress of the Czechoslovak rebellion opened a large territory beyond Samara province to which Komuch began to lay claim. In the process, Komuch began to transform itself from a provincial Committee of Constituent Assembly members into an embryonic all-Russian government. The invitation to representatives of the Samara city Duma and zemstvos was quietly dropped as Komuch began to act in the name of the Constituent Assembly. References to the “Samara” Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly trickled to a stop, and all Constituent Assembly members except Bolsheviks and Left SRs were called to Samara.21 At first Komuch depended entirely on the Czechoslovaks, who insisted into

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June that they still hoped to leave Russia for the Western front. The SRs understood that a Czechoslovak departure from Samara would deal a fatal blow to Komuch and usher in a second era of Bolshevik rule in Samara. The Samara Bolsheviks assumed events would follow the pattern set in Penza and end in their quick restoration.22 The Czechoslovaks confounded this expectation, to the good fortune of the SRs, because their leaders determined to gain control of the entire railroad running east from Samara through Siberia. This would allow the Czechoslovak forces, clumped along the railroad in three main groups—the Western group under Čeček in Samara, the Middle group under Voitsekhovskii in Cheliabinsk, and the Eastern group under Gajda beyond Novonikolaevsk in eastern Siberia—to reunite their forces and move on to Vladivostok. Čeček concentrated on clearing out the Soviet forces that stood between his men and Voitsekhovskii’s forces in the Urals. On July 6, Čeček’s forces entered Ufa and pressed on to meet units of Voitsekhovskii’s Middle group coming east from the Urals. With this link-up the Czechoslovaks controlled the entire railroad from Samara to Irkutsk, as Voitsekhovskii’s men and Gajda’s Eastern group had met up in mid-June. All that now separated the Czechoslovaks from their brethren in Vladivostok was a bottleneck beyond Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia. Over the course of June it gradually became clear to the Allies that the Legion would not be moving to Arkhangel’sk and that if the Czechoslovaks were going to support a reconstituted Eastern front, it would be along the Volga, not in the north. At the end of the month Major Alphonse Guinet, the French military representative to the Czechoslovak Legion, informed the Legion that it should abandon its plans to evacuate either to the north or to the east. The British postponed the small troop landing planned for Arkhangel’sk, as the Legion would not be arriving to guard the railroad. The Legion was instead tasked with defending the Trans-Siberian railroad and manning the Eastern front until the arrival of Allied forces, although it remained unclear who would provide these forces and how they would get to the Volga.23 Komuch could now rest secure that an immediate Czechoslovak withdrawal would not be forthcoming. Moreover, thanks to Czechoslovak efforts, Komuch possessed a substantial territory in Samara and Ufa provinces over which it asserted sovereignty. This territorial expansion, alongside the assistance provided by the Czechoslovaks and the promise of a serious Allied effort in the east, spurred Komuch to expand its political claims and lay claim to all-Russian power in early July. The military strength of the Czechoslovak Legion, its control of the TransSiberian railroad, and the friendly disposition of the Cossack forces to the southeast afforded Komuch a modicum of security, but the SRs clearly needed a military force of their own. On the morning of the Samara coup of June 8, Komuch disposed only of Galkin’s military organization and the SR party detachments—a total of perhaps three hundred men. Within days Komuch assembled

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a military staff under the joint command of Galkin, Fortunatov, and Vladimir Lebedev, a veteran SR and former minister of the navy in the Provisional Government. They organized several thousand volunteers into the first two divisions of the People’s Army and a small cavalry unit under Fortunatov.24 Under the command of Vladimir Kappel’, these units joined the Czechoslovak Legion over the course of July. Kappel’, an unknown colonel of the General Staff who later became the commander of all White armies in Siberia, seized Syzran’ and moved quickly up the Volga, capturing Simbirsk with the Czechoslovaks on July 25. Pressing north, the Legionnaires and the People’s Army gained control of the Volga up to the river’s confluence with the Kama and attacked Kazan’ on August 5. They met fierce resistance from the Latvian Riflemen, but within thirty-six hours the Czechoslovak Legion and the People’s Army controlled the city. 25 With the capture of Kazan’, Komuch now claimed sovereignty over a vast territory made up of portions of five provinces (Kazan’, Samara, Saratov, Simbirsk, and Ufa), with a population of twelve million people. The Bolsheviks and the Eastern Front

These developments delivered an enormous shock to the Bolsheviks. As the Czechoslovak rebellion unfolded in May, Nikolai Podvoiskii was dispatched from Moscow as head of the Supreme Military Inspection to investigate the political and military situation in the Urals and Volga region. His top-secret report painted an alarming picture. Throughout the front region (Riazan’, Samara, Saratov, Tambov, and Ufa provinces), Podvoiskii noted the “fatal alienation of Soviet organizations from the population.” He lamented that “the soviets do not pay attention to the aspirations of the popular masses. Not only are they are incapable of initiating the masses into their work, but they do not even consider it necessary to strive to do so.” The local authorities were poorly organized, divided among themselves, and “helpless” in the face of economic chaos and difficulties in the food supply. The army was in no better shape. He reported that its “praetorian character and the absence of any discipline render it militarily useless” and argued that its weakness, like that of other Soviet institutions, stemmed from Soviet power’s “isolation” from the population. Bolsheviks everywhere lacked “regular and organic connections” with workers. There was widespread disillusionment about the failure of October to bring real and immediate benefits. “With rare exceptions,” Podvoiskii concluded, workers were “hostile to Soviet power.”26 Podvoiskii also reported that the Czechoslovak Legion had managed to “secure for itself great sympathy among the peasantry and the petit bourgeois urban population.” The slogan of the Constituent Assembly had met great success: “This slogan enjoys an enormous popularity here. Nowhere in the whole period of the revolution has a slogan seized the masses so deeply as is taking place in

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the regions that form the arena of the Czechoslovak tragedy. Even workers who have preserved a source of income are falling under its influence, to say nothing of the unemployed, the railroad workers, and the peasants. The only exception is the purely worker population of the northern and middle Urals.” Podvoiskii conceded that the counterrevolution would face great difficulties organizing its forces, but with grain, fuel, and access to the Urals metalworking industry, its prospects appeared good. Success would deprive the Bolsheviks of their only sources of grain, coal, and metal and would likely push Soviet Russia into famine “in the literal sense of the word.”27 The gravitation eastward of opponents of the Soviet state thus posed a great danger, according to Podvoiskii: “If we allow them to become firmly established there, Soviet Russia should not count on victory. . . . Those comrades who suppose that the people’s anger will soon turn against those who have started a rebellion that has given birth to innumerable hardships for the population—and who suppose that this will happen all by itself, without the greatest exertion of effort on our part—are committing a tactical error that is absolutely unacceptable at the present moment, to say the least. It will take enormous work to achieve a decisive change in the mood of the masses.”28 Although time would show that Podvoiskii overstated the mobilizing power of the slogan of the Constituent Assembly, Bolsheviks watched in horror as the collapse of Soviet rule in one province after another appeared to confirm his analysis. By August the Czechoslovak rebellion had combined with events in the south—the German establishment of Skoropads’kyi’s Hetmanate in Ukraine, the Don Cossack rebellion, and the advance of the Volunteer Army in the Kuban’—to overthrow Soviet power in roughly three-quarters of the former Russian empire. The two principal fronts of the civil war took shape: the Eastern front along the Volga and a Southern front officially constituted in September. Of the two the Eastern front undoubtedly delineated the chief threat to the Soviet state in 1918. The Central Committee officially declared the Eastern front the main front of the Red Army, and Lenin tirelessly argued in his public and secret communications throughout the summer that the future of the Soviet state hinged on victory in the east. As he put it in a letter of August 1 to Fedor Raskol’nikov and other Communists in Kazan’: “Now the whole fate of the Revolution rests on one card: a quick victory over the Czechoslovaks on the Kazan’—Urals—Samara front.”29 Lenin’s characteristic hyperbole about the political significance of the immediate moment should not obscure either the military significance of the Eastern front or the great influence that the formation and early history of the Eastern front had on the shape of the emerging Bolshevik dictatorship. It jumpstarted the construction of the Red Army and had a profound and lasting impact on the Bolshevik party and Soviet state. In the short run the innovation that most affected the population was con-

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scription. The Czechoslovak rebellion and the formation of the Eastern front dealt a final death blow to Bolshevik hopes for a volunteer Red Army.30 On May 29 the Central Executive Committee entrusted the organization of a draft to Trotsky’s commissariat of war. Considerations of class and knowledge of the mood among peasants made the Bolshevik leadership reluctant to extend the draft to the countryside, although the army was formally christened the Red Worker-Peasant Army. Fifteen partial mobilizations over the course of the summer concentrated on workers of the Central Industrial Region and were carried through with great difficulty. The only effort to extend the draft to the countryside, in the Volga, met substantial peasant resistance and yielded far fewer recruits than had been hoped. By the end of the summer, about 540,000 men had been drafted into the army, and the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern front disposed of 45,000 troops.31 The fighting capacity of these conscripts, like that of the conscripts on the anti-Bolshevik side of the front, was very low. On the Red side the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front, I. I. Vatsetis, pronounced the newly formed Fifth Army “completely useless” during the battle for Kazan’, thus echoing Podvoiskii’s earlier complaint about the “worthless” Red Army units deployed in the defense of Samara.32 For most of the summer the only reliable troops other than the Czechoslovaks on either side of the Eastern front were the small volunteer units, mainly Red Guards and the Latvian Riflemen on the Red side and the units of the People’s Army under Kappel’ and Fortunatov on the Komuch side. This was the main reason that the Czechoslovak Legion—relatively large, highly motivated, and battle-tested—was an almost unstoppable military force until late August. Several important practices relating to command and discipline in the Red Army were pioneered on the Eastern front.33 To redress the acute shortage of commanders, the Council of People’s Commissars drafted former officers of the imperial army born between 1892 and 1897. The draft was eventually extended to all officers under the age of forty, and it opened the way to the enrollment of twenty-two thousand officers into the Red Army by November.34 Euphemistically called “military specialists,” the officers contributed enormously to the professionalism of the new army. They served the Bolsheviks loyally in the vast majority of cases, although there were a few celebrated instances of betrayal, notably the defection of Colonel M. A. Murav’ev, Vatsetis’s predecessor in command of the Eastern front, who abandoned Kazan’ and moved his troops against Soviet power in Simbirsk in mid-July. This episode reinforced Bolshevik anxieties about the political loyalty of the military specialists and led to a great expansion in the use of military and political commissars to supervise the officers. The commissars formed part of a gradually improvised system of dual com-

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mand that was institutionalized in Revolutionary Military Councils at various levels of the army. In addition to watching over the officers, the commissars served in field tribunals created to deal with cases of treason, insubordination, and desertion. The establishment of the field tribunals marked a shift to a harsher repressive policy in the army and front zone, as did the formation on July 16 of the first front Cheka, the Extraordinary Commission of the Eastern Front under M. Latsis. After the fall of Kazan’, Trotsky concluded that “agitation alone” would not make the Red Army a genuine military force. The People’s Commissar of War publicly warned that the commissar and commander of any units retreating from the front without authorization would be shot. Despite opposition from the Commissariat of Justice, the field tribunals executed hundreds of soldiers and commanders over the course of the summer and fall. As Trotsky later recalled, “by a combination of agitation, organization, revolutionary example, and repressive measures, the necessary transformation was achieved” and an effective fighting force began to take shape.35 These innovations began to make themselves felt on the Eastern front over the course of the late summer and early autumn, but another practice—the mobilization of party members for service in the Red Army—contributed equally to the improvement in the Red Army’s fighting capacity and probably had an even greater long-term impact.36 In June and July, Bolshevik organizations in Petrograd, Moscow, and the Urals began to mobilize party members and dispatch them to the east, responding both to direct appeals from the leadership and to local initiative. On July 29 the Central Committee announced the first mass mobilization of Bolsheviks for the Eastern front. All party members with past military experience were ordered to place themselves at the disposal of the People’s Commissariat of War within three days. Over the course of August and September, party conferences in Petrograd, Moscow, and elsewhere mobilized up to a fifth of their membership and sent tens of thousands of Bolsheviks to the front to serve as commanders, political commissars, and soldiers. By November the five armies of the Eastern front counted roughly fifteen thousand party members in their number.37 The influx of thousands of highly motivated Bolsheviks contributed significantly to the upturn in the Red Army’s fortunes on the Eastern front in the fall. According to S. I. Gusev, one of the principal organizers of the Red Army, the Bolshevik leadership eventually came to view the percentage of party members in a given unit as a reliable indicator of the unit’s fighting capacity. Units whose Communist Party membership did not rise above 5 percent were considered militarily unreliable, while units containing 12 percent or more were regarded as “shock troops.”38 In the long run the contribution of the party mobilizations to party mythology and to the militarization of the party’s language and outlook was even more important than their immediate military impact. In September, when

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the Red Army retook Kazan’ shortly after Fania Kaplan’s assassination attempt against Lenin appeared to have pushed the Soviet state to the brink of catastrophe, the Central Committee attributed success to the “energetic, determined, and self-sacrificing” work of the Bolsheviks at the Eastern front. The party, it was felt, had transformed itself into a “fighting party,” as Lenin had urged earlier in the summer.39 Such rhetorical emphasis on the special, fighting qualities of the party and on the party’s decisive contribution to the Red victory at a moment of great peril for the revolution forms an important link in the complicated genealogy of the myth of the Communist Party as a special kind of heroic, miracle-working fighting association.40 Lenin’s image of a “fighting party” also points to the proliferation of military language in Bolshevik discourse, a likewise complicated, lengthy, and important story in which the summer of 1918 forms a key chapter. The Central Executive Committee proclaimed the whole of Soviet Russia a “military camp” on September 2.41 Heroic success on the Eastern front, the first officially constituted front of the civil war, helped entrench “front” in Bolshevik discourse, where it would have a long history defining the party’s tasks and demarcating it from its enemies.42 The importance of another martial figure of speech, “capitalist encirclement,” also dates to the summer of 1918. According to Lenin, the Soviet republic was “encircled by enemies.” The Allied troops in the north, the Czechoslovaks in the east, and the Volunteers in the south were all links in a single “ring” forged by Anglo-French imperialism.43 The image of an iron imperialist ring encircling Soviet Russia soon came to occupy a central place in Bolshevik rhetoric, working mainly to legitimate the dictatorship and to justify the suppression of socialist opposition and public criticism of the revolutionary state and its policies.44 Socialist Opposition in Soviet Russia

Bolsheviks saw the “iron ring” encircling Soviet Russia as visible evidence of the class structure of the civil war. It no doubt seemed self-evident to most of them that opposition to Bolshevik rule and policies inside Soviet Russia was structured by the same class conflicts that defined the external frontlines of the civil war. Nevertheless, the ideological labor necessary to establish their understanding of the social basis of the civil war and to homologize the internal and external fronts was the Bolsheviks’ paramount political task in the summer of 1918. This labor of categorization was a matter of both argument and practice. In word and deed, the Bolsheviks sought to define the terms of the civil war and to impose and institutionalize their vision of it as a class war whose underlying social dynamics had generated a stark choice between Red and White dictatorships.45 Purging the soviets of SRs and Mensheviks was an important part of this

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ideological work. Outside of Petrograd and a few other cities, SRs and Mensheviks posed little threat to Bolshevik control of the soviets, but the continued presence of the opposition in the Central Executive Committee and many city soviets bore witness to the concept of the revolutionary democracy and implicitly contested the Bolshevik understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Rumors that the opposition faced imminent expulsion from the soviets had circulated in the capitals from late May, fueled by the developing confrontation between the Bolsheviks and the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries.46 As the Czechoslovak rebellion gave birth to the Eastern front over the course of June, the Bolshevik leadership overrode resistance to the expulsion on the part of the Left SRs and some members of the Bolshevik fraction of the Central Executive Committee (CEC). In a dramatic session on June 14, the CEC expelled the SRs and Mensheviks. The expulsion decree cited the socialists’ role in the spread of domestic opposition and their participation in the anti-Bolshevik movement in the east, although the Mensheviks had in fact played no role on the Volga or in Siberia. The CEC also urged local soviets to expel their own SR and Menshevik fractions as they prepared for the upcoming Fifth Congress of Soviets. Matvei Kogan-Bernshtein, the leader of the SR fraction in the CEC, protested the expulsion and insisted defiantly that the SRs would march with the masses as they rose against Bolshevik domination.47 Oddly, the expulsion of the SRs and Mensheviks from the Central Executive Committee coincided with the elections to the Petrograd soviet, the last city soviet elections seriously contested by the socialist opposition. In the former capital the surge of opposition in connection with the Kolpino shooting continued through June. The historian William Rosenberg has counted more than seventy worker protests of one kind or another from mid-May through the end of June, including eighteen strikes or work stoppages in city factories.48 The sectoral contours of protest and strike activity remained largely the same as earlier in the year. Metalworkers continued to dominate protest actions and the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries. As before, arrests and real or threatened violence sparked many actions. Resolutions and strikes rarely focused on employment, wages, and other material issues, but the economic crisis in the city continued to structure opposition sentiment, and the intensifying food shortages undoubtedly stood at the center of oppositionists’ bitter disappointment with the Bolsheviks. On May 27 big meetings devoted to the food supply and to the Soviet effort to organize requisitioning detachments took place in the workshops of the Nicholas railroad and at the Obukhov plant and the Alexandrov locomotive works. The next day fourteen thousand workers at Putilov condemned the requisitioning detachments and called for new elections to the Petrograd soviet and the formation of a coalition socialist government. The Petrograd soviet’s

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introduction of a new, class-based rationing system on May 29 did little to quell discontent, and workers at the Thornton textile mill, Obukhov, and several other factories and plants in the Nevskii district went out on strike. Reports that the Obukhov workers were meeting jointly with the sailors of the Mine Division docked nearby alarmed the Petrograd Bolshevik committee, which mobilized its agitational and military forces. The strikes quickly subsided, however, in part because the Bureau of the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries urged workers to return to the factories as it began preparations for a general strike.49 Calls for new elections to the Petrograd soviet figured prominently in protest resolutions at Obukhov, Putilov, and other centers of discontent. There had been no general soviet elections in Petrograd since the fall of 1917. The prospect of soviet elections worried the Petrograd Bolshevik leadership, and it began to cast around for ways to ensure that any new elections would safely return a Bolshevik majority. On May 20, at a meeting of Petrograd Bolshevik activists, the Petrograd Bolshevik leader Grigorii Zinoviev proposed the election of district conferences in which Red Army soldiers would be given equal representation with workers. If these conferences produced Bolshevik majorities, which was likely, since Bolshevik support among Red Army soldiers remained strong, the district conferences might then elect the district soviets. If all went well, similar indirect elections could be organized for the Petrograd soviet. Zinoviev couched his arguments in the need to overcome the “isolation” of the soviets from the masses, but one of the Petrograd Bolsheviks who objected, I. V. Mgeladze, spelled out what was at issue: “We are talking about various ways of constructing the soviet, because we think we cannot successfully carry out elections to the soviet, but where has such pessimism come from?” The majority endorsed the plan to organize the district conferences but decided against immediate soviet elections and left open the question of how to construct the soviet.50 After the elections to the district conferences produced solid Bolshevik–Left SR majorities, Zinoviev pressed his plan for indirect elections to the soviet at a May 30 meeting of the Petrograd Bureau of the Central Committee. Arguing that the present soviet was “not sufficiently closely tied to the masses” and claiming that Bolsheviks were meeting particular resistance from women, Zinoviev expressed fear for the composition of the soviet and proposed to form the soviet from delegates of the district conferences, “who will be closely tied to the masses and go with the Bolsheviks, as life shows.” M. M. Lashevich objected that “this new principle of elections threatens to destroy the whole Soviet apparatus” and persuaded the bureau to postpone a decision until conferring with Moscow.51 Moscow apparently decided against Zinoviev’s proposal, because the June 15 election statute preserved direct elections in the factories and

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did not base the soviet entirely on the district conferences. Two-hundred sixty of the delegates to the soviet were to be directly elected by workers employed in functioning enterprises. Nevertheless, the remainder of the 677 seats in the soviet were allotted to organizations and institutions that could be expected to return Bolshevik delegates. The largest blocs went to the trade unions, the district conferences, and the district soviets. The factory committees were also accorded representation, although their delegates were subject to confirmation by the trade unions.52 The brief election campaign reprised many already familiar arguments, but it also foreshadowed the rather different politics of the second half of 1918. Since October, Bolsheviks had emphasized the supposed links between SRs, the counterrevolution, and international capital. They had insisted that the revolution offered workers a choice only between Bolshevik hegemony and Kornilovite reaction—there could be no third path. The overthrow of Soviet power along the Volga and in Siberia gave more persuasive shape to this argument and made it less dependent on the notion of a vast, hidden conspiracy. The Bolshevik press in Petrograd lavished heavy coverage on Komuch and the Siberian government, stressing the SRs’ responsibility for the intensification of the civil war. According to Bolsheviks, the Eastern front divided the revolution from the “enemies of the people,” and the Constituent Assembly (“uchredilka”) was a fig leaf for the monarchist reaction gathering in Samara.53 Zinoviev opened his speech in the Petrograd soviet on June 15 with the assertion the SRs had been joined in power in Siberia by Admiral Kolchak, Putilov, and Mikhail Romanov, the brother of Nicholas II.54 Lashevich brandished a revolver at the SRs and Mensheviks in the soviet and warned that the Bolsheviks would kill their opponents and themselves in the event of a counterrevolutionary advance. V. Volodarskii promised the SRs first a ballot and then a bullet, adding that the new soviet would convene under the slogan of struggle against the SRs and deal with them once and for all.55 For the first time, SRs responded to this rhetoric in kind. Although they continued to denounce the Bolsheviks in much the same terms as they had since the beginning of the year, SRs no longer called unambiguously for an end to the civil war. Coverage of Komuch and the Siberian government was muted in the SR press, but on June 18, the first day that Delo naroda was allowed to resume publication, Abram Gots responded to Volodarskii with a lead editorial entitled “A Battle of Bullets or Ballots?” Although he suggested that the elections afforded Petrograd workers a chance to avert a new burst of civil war, Gots accepted the challenge to fight by both ballots and bullets. The Bolsheviks had lived by the sword and would die by it. Switching metaphors again, Gots heralded an elemental popular rebellion that would soon wipe the Bolsheviks from

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the face of the earth. Other editorials in Delo naroda argued that “enemies” of the revolution had set up a new autocracy and hailed the imminent reconvocation of the Constituent Assembly. From Moscow the SR fraction of the Central Executive Committee struck a similarly aggressive tone, looking forward to the day when an all-Russian workers’ congress would declare the Bolsheviks “enemies of the people” and prevent them from acting in the name of the working class.56 The possibility that the SR call for the destruction of “enemies” was not simply a figure of speech was brought home on June 20, when Volodarskii was assassinated not far from the Obukhov plant, in the extraordinarily tense Nevskii district. Although the Petrograd Bureau of the SR Central Committee denied responsibility for the assassination, Bolsheviks naturally focused their suspicions on the SRs, given their terrorist history and their strength in the Nevskii district. Indeed, the assassination was the debut action of an underground SR military organization led by Grigorii Semenov, who was destined to play a notorious and fateful role in the history of the PSR after October. Born in 1891 into the family of a Russian imperial official in what is now the Estonian city of Tartu, Semenov had been a professional revolutionary from the age of fourteen.57 He began his career in the Combat Organization of the Latvian Social Democracy. This group, one of several national Social Democratic terrorist organizations active during and after the revolution of 1905, rivaled the SR combat detachments in its commitment to terrorism. After his first arrest and exile in 1907, Semenov escaped and rejoined the revolutionary movement as a member of an anarchist-communist splinter group of Latvian Social Democracy. Semenov remained an anarchist-communist for the next several years as he worked his way through the familiar radical circuit of arrest, exile, escape, and renewed revolutionary activity. He emigrated to France in 1912, broke with anarchism there, and joined the PSR in 1915. He returned to Russia that year and became active in army politics in 1917, serving as commissar of the Ninth Army and later assisting Kerensky in the futile effort to find pro-government troops to overturn the Bolshevik seizure of power. Semenov worked in the SR Military Commission in Petrograd after October. Later in the winter he participated in the effort to build SR “fighting detachments” under the auspices of the commission. Small detachments of armed workers were organized in several districts of the city, and by May, Semenov began to press the party leadership to make use of them against the Bolsheviks.58 The SR leadership in Petrograd (initially Dmitrii Donskoi, later Gots and Boris Rabinovich of the Petrograd Bureau of the Central Committee) did not share Semenov’s optimistic assessment of the strength of the fighting detachments or his inclination to use them to force matters with the Bolsheviks. Like other

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leading SRs, Gots and Rabinovich saw the Eastern front as the real locus of the SR struggle against Soviet power and felt insurrection in the cities of European Russia would be suicidal. Gots viewed the detachments as an “armed fist” to be used only in the event of mass disorders or a sudden Bolshevik collapse.59 Semenov and some of the SRs gathered around him argued that the detachments ought to be used to begin terrorist attacks against Bolshevik leaders. Since March, Semenov had been pushing the party to take up the terrorist weapon. M. A. Tislenko, one of the SRs working with Semenov, had served then as chief of staff of one of the Petrograd divisions of the Red Army. He had proposed to use his access to passes and information to blow up the train of the Council of People’s Commissars when it left Petrograd for Moscow in mid-March. Semenov agreed to the plan, but the party leadership vetoed it and nothing came of it.60 Around the same time, another aspiring terrorist, Lidiia Konopleva, came into Semenov’s orbit. She conceived a plan for an attack on Lenin and, over Rabinovich’s objections, traveled to Moscow to begin surveillance. Evgenii Timofeev eventually dissuaded her from carrying out the attack, and she returned to Petrograd to rejoin Semenov. In May, Semenov assembled a small group of potential terrorists, including a handful of workers from the fighting detachments as well as Konopleva and E. A. Ivanova, a veteran of one of the most feared prerevolutionary SR terrorist groups, the Northern Flying Combat Detachment under Albert Trauberg (“Karl”). Ivanova was the stepsister of the Central Committee member Nikolai Ivanov, who supported terrorist attacks on Bolshevik leaders and himself considered joining Semenov’s detachment.61 Through her stepbrother, Ivanova probably knew that a minority in the Central Committee favored taking up terror, which may have emboldened her and Semenov to defy Gots and Rabinovich. There is no reason to doubt that Gots and Rabinovich’s opposition to terror remained firm, despite Semenov’s later claim that they approved his preparations for the assassination of Zinoviev and Volodarskii. The two SR leaders were certainly aware of Semenov’s views on terror (according to Gots, he made little effort to hide them), but the Central Committee position on terror had not changed and Gots and Rabinovich almost certainly communicated this unambiguously to Semenov. Semenov’s group nevertheless began surveillance of Volodarskii, who presented an easier target than Zinoviev. Semenov later explained that he drew up a plan to ambush Volodarskii’s car and that he told a worker and former anarchist named Sergeev to carry out the attack if an opportunity presented itself. Sergeev shot Volodarskii on June 20, when his car broke down outside the porcelain factory, near the Obukhov plant. That evening Konopleva told Rabinovich that Sergeev had carried out the attack. Rabinovich confronted Semenov, who told him that Sergeev’s attack had caught him unawares and had

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not been organized by the group. He repeated the same version of events to Gots the next day, who then published the PSR’s denial of responsibility in Delo naroda.62 The assassination pushed the political temperature in the Nevskii district to the boiling point. Workers in the district, especially the almost five thousand workers at the Obukhov plant, had been at the forefront of anti-Bolshevik protest throughout the spring. The situation in the district was complicated by the presence of the sailors of the Baltic Fleet’s Mine Division, whose fifteen ships were docked on the Neva outside the Nevskii Shipbuilding Plant and Obukhov. Like the workers at Obukhov, the sailors were largely hostile to the Bolsheviks. Since May, they had been participating in factory meetings at Obukhov and had been tied to the PSR through the SR Military Commission. To Semenov and the like-minded members of the Military Commission, the sailors constituted an armed force with which to strike against the Soviet state, a scenario that occurred to the Bolshevik leadership as well.63 The Bolsheviks reacted quickly to the news of Volodarskii’s assassination. Effectively cutting off the Nevskii district from the rest of the city, they banned all public meetings, imposed a curfew, and arrested the leading SRs in the district, including Grigorii Eremeev, the SR head of the Obukhov factory committee. Outside the district arrests were also carried out at Putilov, the other hotbed of opposition. The Obukhov workers, aroused by the arrest of Eremeev, went out on strike on June 22. The release of Eremeev that night did not mollify the strikers, and I. P. Ivanov, the Bolshevik commissar of the factory, informed Zinoviev that the factory would have to be shut down, the workers locked out, and the district declared under martial law. Zinoviev hesitated, anxious that the Putilov workers would go out on strike in support of their comrades at Obukhov. He soon agreed to declare martial law, however. On June 25 the factory was shut down and the Obukhov workers dismissed. Sailors from Kronstadt were brought in at the same time to disarm the sailors of the Mine Division. Eight of the Mine Division’s ships unmoored and sailed provocatively into the middle of the Neva. When the Kronstadt sailors approached with an ultimatum to submit or face attack, the Mine Division rebels betrayed fifteen of their leaders and turned the ship over on June 23.64 These dramatic events coincided with the voting in the Petrograd soviet elections, which began on June 18 and dragged on in some factories until June 29. As several scholars have noted, the available evidence on the election results is fragmentary, contradictory, and difficult to evaluate.65 The trade unions, district conferences, district soviets, and Red Army soldiers returned the expected Bolshevik–Left SR majorities. Thus there is no doubt that the soviet as a whole was overwhelmingly Bolshevik and Left SR. Controversy has centered on how to interpret the evidence on the direct elections in the factories, which offer

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greater insight into workers’ political preferences in June 1918 than do the institutional elections or the aggregate figures for the elections. In all likelihood Petrograd workers elected more opposition candidates than Bolsheviks and Left SRs in the direct factory elections, although the Bolshevik-controlled election commissions refused to recognize the results or seat the delegates in many cases. Drawing on the data reported in the SocialDemocratic Internationalist Novaia zhizn’, Vladimir Brovkin counted 123 Menshevik and SR delegates elected in the factories to 97 Bolsheviks and Left SRs, with an additional 10 delegates unaffiliated with any party.66 Although the Bolshevik press fiercely disputed the opposition’s claims, Novaia zhizn’ is generally a more credible source than such Bolshevik newspapers as Severnaia kommuna and Krasnaia gazeta. Its figures should be treated as approximate, but the results reported, with SRs and Mensheviks outpacing official candidates at most of the big metalworking plants but lagging behind at most textile factories, fit well with the evidence about the plenipotentiary movement and worker protest actions in the spring, as well as with patterns of worker support for the radical parties dating back to 1917. They also tally with analogous figures reported in other Petrograd socialist and liberal newspapers and make sense in light of Zinoviev’s repeated anxieties.67 Several conclusions may be drawn from the election results. First, although the direct elections in the factories provide the better evidence of workers’ political preferences, the elections in the trade unions and other institutions should not simply be dismissed. The Bolsheviks’ success in using these elections to constitute the soviet speaks to the erosion of democratic controls and the tipping balance toward bureaucratic predominance in Petrograd labor organizations. This process was driven by the chaos in the economy and the demands of reconstruction as well as by the struggle against the opposition.68 Second, whatever the precise figures, Petrograd workers were deeply divided in June 1918. The evidence that the opposition won at least a plurality of the delegates in the factory elections is persuasive, but it is clear that Bolsheviks, Left SRs, Mensheviks, and SRs all enjoyed significant support on the factory floor. At the same time, the opposition would certainly have won many additional seats had unemployed workers been represented in the soviet. The election statute granted the right to vote in the factory elections only to employed workers and denied the unemployed separate representation. In principle they enjoyed the same right to vote through the trade unions as did employed workers, but in practice union delegates to the soviet seem to have been selected mainly by the union boards; unemployed workers were effectively disenfranchised. Finally, whatever the exact dimensions of the opposition comeback in the factory elections, it was more an SR than a Menshevik affair. In many factories SRs and Mensheviks campaigned on joint slates, but where they ran separately,

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SRs outpolled Mensheviks, often by a wide margin. At the Semiannikov plant, for instance, the SR slate received 1,221 votes, the Bolshevik–Left SR slate 493, and the Menshevik slate 200. Even Bolsheviks conceded that workers at the Nevskii Shipbuilding Plant elected five SRs, one Menshevik, and two candidates from the joint Bolshevik–Left SR slate. At Obukhov five SRs, one nonparty delegate, and one Bolshevik were returned. SRs won three of the four seats at Arsenal, split the four seats from the Cartridge Plant with the Bolsheviks, and ran well in the shops at railroad depots. At Putilov, opposition delegates were divided among SRs and the United Workers’ Party, a small group organized by the Putilov worker and plenipotentiary activist N. N. Glebov. He stood politically closest to the right Mensheviks but tapped into many workers’ hopes to overcome the divisions among the established political parties and free themselves from dependence on intelligentsia activists. All told, the SRs elected to the soviet probably outnumbered Mensheviks by about two to one.69 It is striking that workers who voted against the ruling parties generally chose the more strident anti-Bolshevik option, particularly in view of the assassination of Volodarskii and the SRs’ adoption of armed struggle. This certainly suggests that some workers’ hostility to the Bolsheviks had become quite sharp. It is very doubtful, however, that many workers who voted for SRs endorsed armed struggle against the Soviet state. Judging from newspaper reports and the discussions in the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries, opposition to civil war remained central to most workers who supported the socialist opposition. SRs speakers at factory meetings steered clear of the party’s emerging participation in the civil war and stuck to the themes that had been well rehearsed with the Mensheviks and the plenipotentiaries throughout the spring. The draft resolution offered to workers by the Petrograd SR committee emphasized the deterioration of workers’ material circumstances, the evisceration of independent working-class institutions, and the Bolsheviks’ responsibility for the violence against workers on January 5 at Kolpino and, more recently, at Sormovo.70 Workers adopted resolutions echoing these slogans at many of the large, mostly state-owned defense plants that had inclined toward the PSR and the opposition over the course of the spring. Even the Obukhov workers, the most bitterly anti-Bolshevik workers in Petrograd, who appealed to the Mine Division sailors on June 17 to support a declaration of “war” on the regime by the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries, simultaneously called for an immediate end to the civil war and demanded that the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries find ways to force the Bolshevik regime to cease its “civil wars.”71 Thus although the strength of the SR vote suggests an impatience with the Menshevik critique of Bolshevik rule and a preference for the SRs’ more radical anti-Bolshevik rhetoric, workers voting for the opposition parties were probably still motivated mainly by

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the economic catastrophe, opposition to civil war, and concern about emerging authoritarianism in Soviet institutions and economic management. Serious labor unrest in June was not confined to Petrograd. The Cheka informed the Bolshevik Central Committee that railroad workers around the country were “very aroused against the soviets,” and there were violent clashes with railroad workers in Moscow. At various points in the second half of June, workers went out on strike in Iaroslavl’, Sormovo, Tula, and Tver’.72 Tula had been a chronic sore spot since the beginning of the year and remained one through most of the civil war, but Sormovo probably presented the most worrisome case from the Bolshevik point of view, because of its proximity to the Eastern front and its reputation as an SR stronghold. Since the SR-Menshevik victory in the elections in April, the Sormovo soviet had been split in two parts, each with its own presidium. The agreement brokered by Fedor Raskol’nikov to reunite the Bolshevik–Left SR and SR–Menshevik halves of the soviet broke down in May amid continuing unrest and a brief strike at the factory. Once again, the Bolsheviks expelled the SRs and Mensheviks from the soviet. SR and Menshevik activists abandoned the soviet to concentrate on organizing an independent workers’ conference as a branch of the nationwide plenipotentiary movement. The workers’ conference was scheduled to meet on June 10, but the provincial Bolshevik authorities banned it on June 9. The next day Cheka units and Latvian Riflemen called in from Moscow patrolled the streets and occupied the building in which the conference was to meet. A hostile crowd surrounded one of the Latvian units and began to taunt it. The Bolshevik units apparently opened fire, killing several protesters.73 In response, the conference activists organized a one-day political strike in the Sormovo factory on June 18. At least half of the Sormovo workers went out on strike. The striking workers passed a resolution labeling the Soviet government a “hostile regime” and calling for the release of political prisoners, the end of martial law, and an investigation into the shooting of workers. In Nizhnii Novgorod the union of commercial and industrial employees joined the strike, although many enterprise owners also supported the strike and agreed to close their establishments for the day. Significant numbers of employees in Soviet institutions joined the strikers as well. The Bolshevik response was swift and harsh. All state and Soviet employees who joined the strike were dismissed. The Cheka declared that all shops and enterprises that did not open on June 18 were to remain closed until further notice. At some enterprises the Cheka confiscated inventory and began distributing it to the population at fixed prices. Some enterprises were allowed to reopen on June 20, but the striking commercial and industrial employees refused to return to work. At a raucous meeting of the union on June 25, speakers noted that the union

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was now engaged in a struggle against both the enterprise owners and an “autocratic regime,” and they voted unanimously to remain out on strike. The strike in Nizhnii only came to an end after July 4, when the Bolshevik authorities threatened the strikers with dismissal and a permanent ban on work in any state or private institutions.74 At the Sormovo factory workers had confined themselves to the one-day protest strike on June 18, but on June 27 Red Guards fired on workers protesting the arrest of a local Menshevik leader. Two protesters died, and the Sormovo workers again went out on strike. This strike soon subsided, but a Bolshevik investigator concluded that the factory would only function normally and labor discipline be restored if a “filtration” of the workers took place.75 Whether workers were dismissed in this way is unclear, but the Bolshevik position at Sormovo remained difficult and martial law was again declared in Nizhnii Novgorod on July 12.76 By mid-July, however, organized worker protest tied to the plenipotentiaries and the opposition socialist parties had in fact peaked, although this is much clearer in retrospect than it was at the time. The first signs of a loss of momentum came in Petrograd, where the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries sought to organize a general strike in the wake of the crackdown in the Nevskii district. Although the Assembly claimed that about twenty thousand workers went out on strike on July 2, Bolshevik and non-Bolshevik newspapers reported that most factories were functioning and the railroads were not disrupted. Even the Assembly conceded the strike a failure.77 Krasnaia gazeta wittily obituarized the Assembly on July 3: “Yesterday, after a short but serious illness, the ‘bureau of plenipotentiaries’ died in the second month of its life. In the person of the deceased, all the factory owners and bankers of the Russian bourgeoisie have suffered an irreplaceable loss.”78 Having tolerated the Assembly uneasily throughout the spring, the Bolshevik authorities in Petrograd now declared it illegal and the Assembly closed down on July 19. By then the plenipotentiary activists had already shifted their attention to an effort to organize an all-Russian Workers’ Congress in Moscow. About forty delegates from Moscow, Petrograd, Sormovo, Tula, Iaroslavl’, and other industrial centers gathered to open the congress in Moscow on July 20. The next day the Cheka raided the proceedings and arrested the participants, most of whom were imprisoned until the autumn. Among those arrested were the Putilov plenipotentiary N. N. Glebov, several leading Mensheviks, and Efrem Berg, the former SR Central Committee member and chairman of both the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries in Petrograd and the Workers’ Congress.79 The dissolution of the congress and the collapse of the plenipotentiary movement marked the end of the socialist opposition movement that dated to early 1918. SRs and Mensheviks retained a presence in urban Russia, but throughout July and August organized worker political protest subsided in

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Soviet territory. Although workers at Putilov went out on strike in August, not until 1921 did the Bolsheviks face organized opposition among workers on the scale of the first half of 1918. This remaking of the political landscape in urban Russia should be attributed above all to the transformation of the civil war and to the Bolsheviks’ increasing success in shaping an understanding of it as class war. By midsummer the irregular “civil war” that opposition newspapers had chronicled and socialists had denounced since early in the year had given way to a full-blown war involving rival states claiming all-Russian power, deploying conscript armies arrayed along formally constituted fronts. There was plainly no possibility of bringing this civil war to a rapid close, and the PSR had chosen to join it by forming an anti-Bolshevik government in Samara. As Mensheviks understood better than SRs, this greatly weakened an opposition movement whose chief appeal had derived from its opposition to civil war and its invocation of the Constituent Assembly as an alternative to fratricidal bloodshed and Bolshevik dictatorship.80 By midsummer the elements of the opposition program that had underpinned worker support for the SRs and Mensheviks—reconvening the Constituent Assembly, putting an end to the civil war, and defending working-class institutions against the claims of the Soviet state—appeared far less realistic than they had during the first six months of 1918. To be sure, workers’ material difficulties continued to mount, but the collapse of the economy eroded the collective power of workers, focused them on the daily business of subsistence, and stimulated mass flight to the countryside. In short, the formation of the Eastern front soon pushed the socialist opposition inside Soviet Russia into a dead end. Toward an Authoritative Vision of Civil War

Over the course of the summer of 1918 the Bolsheviks’ effort to construct the civil war as a class war began to have greater success. The absence of a plausible and readily identifiable bourgeois enemy had played an important role in the politics of the first half of the year. As William Rosenberg has pointed out, the absence of such an enemy had made the socialists’ effort to mobilize worker discontent more difficult, and less successful, than the corresponding Bolshevik effort of 1917.81 Yet the absence of such a readily identifiable bourgeois enemy had also caused difficulties for the Bolsheviks. Many workers seem to have been prepared to consider the socialist claim that Bolshevik dictatorship, not the hidden machinations of the bourgeoisie, had disorganized the industrial economy, exacerbated the food crisis, and fueled the violent politics that defined the civil war in the first half of the year. After June, however, the anti-Bolshevik governments of the east, enjoying Allied support and assistance, provided ready material for the Bolsheviks to mold into concrete evidence of the bourgeois threat to

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the revolution. By midautumn the complicated interplay between the imaginative, ideological labors of Bolsheviks inside Soviet Russia and political developments on the other side of the Eastern front—the rise and fall of Komuch, the formation of the Directory in Ufa, and the coup d’état in Omsk that brought Admiral Kolchak to dictatorial power in the east—would secure the Bolsheviks a monopoly on revolutionary discourse and establish a vision of the civil war whose mobilizing potential would help carry the Soviet state and Red Army to victory over the following years. Shutting down the “bourgeois” and “petit bourgeois” press—that is, Kadet, SR, Menshevik, and nonparty newspapers—greatly facilitated the Bolshevik bid to define the civil war in class terms and gain authoritative control of revolutionary discourse. Persecution of the non-Bolshevik press dated to the seizure of power in October.82 Most provincial capitals were home to an SR and a Menshevik newspaper in 1917, as well as to one or more liberal newspapers, but few of these publications survived past May. In Petrograd and Moscow the Bolsheviks tolerated a wide range of liberal and socialist newspapers through the spring, but the formation of the Eastern front put an abrupt end to the opposition press in the two capitals. Delo naroda was banned in May after it published the resolutions of the Eighth Party Council, but the SR Central Committee was allowed to resume publication in Petrograd on June 18. At the same time, the Central Committee launched a new organ, Novoe delo naroda, in Moscow. The Menshevik Central Committee organ Novyi luch and the internationalist Novaia zhizn’ were the most important outlets of social democratic opinion in the spring and early summer. The liberal Nash vek was the successor to Rech’, for many years the unofficial voice of the Kadet party. Many other nonparty, liberal, SR, Menshevik, Left SR, anarchist, and Maximalist newspapers and journals filled out the political spectrum of the press in the two capitals. Over the course of late June, July, and August all of these newspapers were shut down. A first wave of closures hit Delo naroda, Novoe delo naroda, and the short-lived successor to the latter, Narodnoe delo, at the end of June. Most of the other SR and Menshevik newspapers in the capitals were banned at the same time. A second wave followed the so-called Left SR rebellion on July 6, when anti-Soviet newspapers were banned in Moscow. On July 8 the press department of the Moscow soviet announced that the ban would remain in force “until the complete solidification and triumph of the Russian Soviet Socialist Federal Republic.” The next day Izvestiia announced the closure of more than fifty Moscow newspapers, including virtually the whole of the Left SR press in the capital. 83 Novaia zhizn’, Nash vek, and the remaining non-Bolshevik newspapers in the capitals were shut down over the course of the next month, as were Left SR newspapers in the provinces. By the end of August the Bolsheviks had secured a monopoly on the periodical press, an im-

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portant landmark in the formation of the dictatorship. Over the next few years the authorities occasionally allowed opposition parties and groups to publish newspapers or journals, but party and state control of the press was never seriously threatened. The closing of the opposition press and the expulsion of the socialists from the soviets helped the Bolsheviks secure control of public political discourse in Soviet Russia, but the deeper and more important monopolization of revolutionary discourse remained elusive through the summer. Despite the Bolshevik monopoly on newspaper publishing, the socialist opposition retained a dialogic presence in the Soviet press that testified to the sharp divisions within the revolutionary democracy and to ongoing resistance to the dictatorship. Throughout the summer the Bolshevik press continued to devote great attention to contesting SR and Menshevik interpretations of revolutionary politics and the civil war, even after the suppression of the socialist press had deprived SRs and Mensheviks of the possibility of responding to Bolshevik claims in print. Bolshevik emphasis on the “either/or” quality of civil war politics took implicit aim at SR and Menshevik arguments in favor of democratic institutions and the possibility of steering a way between proletarian dictatorship and counterrevolutionary reaction. As the organ of the Penza Bolshevik party committee put it in August: “Either Soviet power, a worker-peasant power, or the blackest, darkest bourgeois-landowner counterrevolution. Thus stands the question. There can be no third way in Russia, though meanwhile in many regions, and earlier in all of Russia, so-called ‘socialists’ are in power, in the person of the right SRs and Mensheviks.”84 To buttress the argument that there could be no third path, many Bolshevik newspapers carried regular accounts of the supposed triumph of reaction on the other side of the Eastern front. Events there, it was held, showed that only Bolsheviks and Soviet power could defend the revolution from the onslaught of reaction.85 Other newspapers played down the Eastern front, preferring to focus readers’ attention on the more obviously counterrevolutionary threat posed in the south. The Bolshevik press also devoted considerable energy to the quintessential revolutionary act of “unmasking” the SRs as renegades, petit bourgeois counterrevolutionaries, and tools of Allied imperialism.86 Yet the sheer quantity of print devoted to defining the class essence of the civil war and to refuting SR and Menshevik arguments suggests that the socialist opposition’s views continued to circulate and to command attention within the revolutionary democracy, the first audience of the Soviet press. On occasion, the argument against a third path was coupled with a call for terror against the bourgeoisie. Several days after the Penza Bolshevik organ defined the political choices facing the country, for instance, it followed with an editorial calling for mass terror.87 Similarly, the organ of the Viatka soviet led

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on July 19 with two editorials: one emphasizing that there could be no “third outcome,” the other calling for the application of terror.88 Bolshevik terror during the civil war had multiple purposes, but these editorials suggest that calls for terror in 1918 were partly bound up with the lengthy effort to contest SR and Menshevik arguments in favor of political and social democracy and establish the Bolshevik understanding of the civil war as a war between class dictatorships. From this point of view it did not much matter that the seizure and execution of bourgeois hostages would not strike at the most active opponents of the Soviet state. Organized bourgeois resistance within Soviet Russia was negligible, but targeting the bourgeoisie or persons associated with the Old Regime would help define the enemy in class terms, and the practice of terror against representatives of the old elites would reinforce the Bolshevik construction of the civil war as class war. In addition to underscoring the state’s willingness to use violence against those it viewed as enemies, terror thus had a pronounced ideological function. Political violence, in fact, exploded throughout Soviet territory in the summer of 1918. In the countryside the policies of the “food dictatorship” proclaimed in May launched requisitioning detachments in search of grain and sparked violent peasant resistance in numerous districts of European Russia. Bolsheviks were quick to see an SR hand in this violence, but there is no evidence that the party was involved in peasant actions, which SRs generally saw as counterproductive. In Voronezh province peasants shot the head of a requisitioning detachment in June, and in August a Bolshevik reported that “counterrevolutionary outbreaks in Voronezh province flare up so often . . . at times they take on a chronic character.” In one episode peasants seized the commissars in charge of requisitioning and sentenced them to death. Bolshevik forces killed sixteen peasants during the pacification of the village. In another the peasants disarmed the police and forced the volost’ soviet to flee: “To such impudence from the local kulaks it was necessary to respond with armed force, in which we suffered losses of several persons killed. . . . With the aid of big forces and artillery we forced them to give up. In this battle the whole surrounding population of over ten thousand people participated on the side of the kulaks.”89 Similarly in Orel province peasants killed Bolshevik officials in four districts in June, and clashes with the authorities continued through the summer.90 In Tambov province peasants angered by mobilizations and requisitioning flooded the provincial capital in June. Joined by one of the local Red Army units, they overthrew Soviet power and arrested the local commissars. The local workers, according to a Tambov Bolshevik, were “in the best case neutral.” The rebels restored the pre-October mayor (an SR) and the city Duma, dominated by SRs, before Red Army units restored Bolshevik rule in the city on June

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19.91 The southern districts of Tula province also witnessed significant turmoil. According to the local Bolshevik leader G. N. Kaminskii, well-armed bands of “kulaks” operated in many districts. When a Bolshevik requisitioning detachment arrived in Chern’ district, “kulaks” mobilized all males ages sixteen to sixty and organized cavalry units that forced the requisitioning detachment to retreat to the district capital. The town was “besieged and surrounded,” and Kaminskii requested a detachment of at least seven hundred experienced fighters with artillery and armored cars to fight the peasants.92 In Penza the chairman of the Provincial Executive Committee informed Moscow in June that “everywhere the majority is definitely kulak” and that “the attitude to the soviet is rabid (beshennoe).”93 In August a bitter and now well-known rebellion erupted in five volosti of the province.94 In Saratov “fierce battles” were reported first in Nikolaev district and soon from other districts in the province. Peasant rebels seized a number of railroad stations and despite poor organization were able to resist Bolshevik forces through July and into August.95 A delegation sent from Moscow to investigate reported that the peasant rebels threatened to cut off Saratov from the front. They added that the province was entirely surrounded by “counterrevolutionaries” and that the Saratov workers were “not able to display the proper attitude.” The delegation concluded that “any delay in the strengthening of the Saratov-Moscow line threatens catastrophe.”96 Rural violence was not confined to the major grain-producing provinces of the Black Earth and Volga. In central and northern Russia clashes between villagers and requisitioning detachments were reported in districts of Kostroma, Moscow, Novgorod, Petrograd, Pskov, and Smolensk provinces. Red Army forces battled peasant rebels in two districts of Kostroma province for more than a month.97 Peasants attacked requisitioning detachments in Smolensk province and killed the head of the Food Supply Board and several policemen in districts of Riazan’ province in early July.98 Efforts to mobilize horses, enroll soldiers, and take other steps to organize the Red Army also met peasant resistance in some provinces. In Iaroslavl’ a Soviet report stated that “all of July passed in rebellions of deserters.” Some of the “kulak” organizers of these rebellions were shot, while others were sent to a concentration camp in Iaroslavl’.99 In the Staraia Russa district of Novgorod province a detachment of Red Army soldiers arrived in July to organize a volost’ military commissariat. When the chairman of the local soviet resisted, the soldiers arrested him and several others, but crowds from the surrounding villages arrived to demand the release of the prisoners. By the next day unrest had spilled over into the neighboring volost’. Peasants from more than thirty villages took over the railroad station and blocked the movement of trains. The chairman of the Novgorod Provincial

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Executive Committee informed Moscow that “the rebels were dispersed with machine-gun fire from a train sent by a detachment of Latvian Red Army soldiers from Bologoe.” More than a hundred people were killed.100 Peasant resistance to the organization of the Red Army was also central to the Bolsheviks’ mounting difficulties in the upper Volga and Urals. Peasants in this region had clashed intermittently with Bolshevik requisitioning detachments since June, with particular violence in several districts of Viatka province.101 At the same time, peasants in the Volga-Urals region were made subject to the draft proclaimed for all males born between 1893 and 1897 (elsewhere, only workers were subject to the draft). Initially the Soviet authorities hoped to mobilize 275,000 conscripts from the region, but fewer than 20 percent of the draftees ultimately turned out. As the SRs were discovering on the other side of the Eastern front, peasants had little interest in joining the civil war on either side. By August, Bolshevik sources reported that “waves” of counterrevolution and rebellion had engulfed a large territory comprising Perm’ province, the southern portions of Viatka province, and the northern portions of Kazan’ province. Intertwined peasant resistance to conscription and to requisitioning detachments threatened the supply and stability of the front, and the draft was eventually abandoned. Red Army sources acknowledged the failure of the mobilization effort and attributed it to the “passive and unsympathetic attitude of the peasants.”102 In this context Soviet authorities began to seize and execute hostages, kill criminals and other prisoners, and step up the use of violence against actual and potential enemies throughout Soviet Russia. The Cheka informed Iakov Sverdlov, the chairman of the Central Executive Committee, that the Bolsheviks in Arkhangel’sk were “working well in the sense of terror against the officers and bourgeoisie.”103 The chairman of the Riazan’ City Executive Committee cabled the Council of People’s Commissars in June: “In view of the population’s extremely hostile attitude to the authorities in connection with the critical situation in food supply, I am forced to take measures for the preservation of order that may be criminal from the point of view of the Council of People’s Commissars. A rebellion has been averted by extreme measures. I will supply details separately.”104 A similar telegram came from the Kostroma soviet, which requested authorization to kill counterrevolutionaries. As in Riazan’, the Kostroma Bolsheviks declared martial law and proposed terror to forestall a supposed move by unnamed counterrevolutionaries.105 Later in the summer, punitive detachments moved through twenty-five districts in Kostroma province and executed all “White-guardists” that they captured. More than fifty people were shot in this manner, and the Cheka killed an additional fifteen hostages in the city prison.106 A Left SR informed the Central Executive Committee that fifty-four people had

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been shot in the Saratov prison in early June.107 In Petrograd the local Cheka shot twenty-one prisoners on August 21, the first of about eight hundred prisoners who would be shot in the former capital over the next month.108 In Tula, N. V. Kopylov, the chairman of the city Bolshevik party committee, complained to the Central Committee that forty prisoners in the local jail had been shot on August 14 by orders of the presidium of the Provincial Executive Committee. The prisoners were taken from the jail during the night and publicly shot in the morning: “Forty corpses, with chopped off heads and their innards turned inside out, lay about for a whole day in front of everyone.”109 Over Kopylov’s protests the Tula Bolshevik committee approved this spectacle as “correct and decisive,” while the vice-chairman of the Tula Provincial Executive Committee blandly reported to Sverdlov that a number of “bandits” had been shot.110 The Tula Bolshevik organ published the names of the executed and declared that anyone who sympathized with the dead was “either a bandit, an inveterate scoundrel, or a manifest counterrevolutionary.” The newspaper’s call for death to enemies of the proletariat was a clear warning to the still popular Menshevik and SR opposition in the city.111 Hostages, ordinary prisoners, and members of the former elites were particularly vulnerable in the rapidly moving front zones of the Volga, Urals, and Siberia. The Russian historian A. V. Egorov’s careful study of the fate of the hostages taken at Ufa shows how the Cheka drew up lists of prominent citizens and “suspicious” persons to be seized if the Czechoslovak Legion drew near the city. As it happened, the seizure of hostages at the end of June swept up almost a hundred Kadets, SRs, prominent citizens, and Czechoslovak soldiers. Nine of the hostages were shot, but the twenty people who survived a harrowing two-month imprisonment on a barge would probably have been shot as well had not Komuch seized its own group of hostages and, through Allied intermediaries, opened complicated negotiations with Moscow.112 In a separate episode sixteen hostages were shot by the Bolsheviks in Syzran’ and ceremonially reburied there on June 20 after the Komuch takeover of the city.113 In Vol’sk a Bolshevik newspaper published a list of twenty-seven hostages executed on August 25, shortly before Komuch took control of much of that district in Saratov province.114 In Kamyshlov, in Ekaterinburg province, the Bolsheviks killed fifty-three hostages on the eve of the Czechoslovak arrival in July. An investigative commission formed after the fall of Soviet power dug up the mass grave and found many corpses with broken skulls, multiple bayonet wounds, and evidence of torture.115 In August the Bolshevik position in the upper Volga and Urals region took an additional turn for the worse when workers in Izhevsk and Votkinsk overthrew Soviet power and formed an SR-dominated, pro-Komuch regional government. Although Bolshevik and White memoirists have emphasized, each

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in their own way, the unusual aspects of work and life at the Izhevsk and Votkinsk factories, especially the workers’ relative prosperity and the strength of their ties to the countryside, the political evolution of the Urals factories did not differ greatly from that of the other main centers of defense production in European Russia.116 SRs and Mensheviks dominated Izhevsk politics in 1917, but Bolsheviks and SR-Maximalists benefitted from the surge of worker radicalism in the fall. In February 1918, SRs and Mensheviks again secured a majority in elections to the Izhevsk soviet and elected a Menshevik, A. I. Sosulin, chairman of the Executive Committee. On the first day of the new soviet, Red Guards conducted searches of the SR organization, confiscated weapons they discovered, and arrested several SRs. The next day two bombs thrown by unknown persons exploded in the building of the SR organization, where the SRs and Mensheviks were meeting to discuss strategy. Two days later, Sosulin was killed in an ambush on his way home, the SR Naslegin was wounded with him, and the SR V. I. Buzanov was wounded in a separate attack.117 Probably because the Mensheviks and SRs retained their majority in the Izhevsk soviet, no workers’ conference or assembly seems to have been organized at the factory complex, despite escalating crime and continued violence on the part of Red Guards and armed Maximalist formations. In April the Bolshevik authorities placed the city under martial law, vested power in a Revolutionary Field Headquarters, and moved to disband the Red Guard, which they denounced in uncompromising terms: “Anarchy, unauthorized searches, arrests, robberies and executions without any authorization by the judicial-investigating committee of the People’s Revolutionary Tribunal have reached unheard of dimensions and have been terrorizing the population in our city of Izhevsk.” The Red Guard had fallen under Maximalist control and become a “criminal band of marauders, robbers, and murderers.” Soviet power, the authorities insisted, “was fighting against violence, not creating it.”118 Popular as this move surely was, new elections to the soviet nevertheless ended in another Bolshevik defeat in May. The Izhevsk Bolshevik party committee informed Moscow that it possessed grain, raw materials, and fuel “in abundance,” but that the composition of the soviet was nevertheless “absolutely rightist.”119 Buzanov was elected chairman of the Soviet Executive Committee, although the largest bloc of deputies was unaffiliated with any political party. The Bolsheviks walked out of the soviet and dissolved it.120 Despite the opposition’s success, the size of the nonparty bloc in the soviet was notable. As in Petrograd and other cities, the erosion of Bolshevik support among workers also marked a significant turn away from party politics. A local SR characteristically interpreted this as a sign of “apathy,” adding that the workers were reluctant to take any action more decisive than protest resolutions and were sick of all the political “windbags.”121

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The Eighth Party Council accorded Izhevsk and Votkinsk an important place in its plans for the formation of the Eastern front, and the Central Committee members Nikolai Ivanov and Ivan Teterkin were dispatched to the region in early June. As the Czechoslovak rebellion unfolded, the political commissar of the Red Second Army informed Moscow that most of the workers at the factory supported the SRs or the anarchists. He urged Moscow to dismiss the Izhevsk workers and send new cadres to guarantee the security of the factory.122 SR activists counted on the sympathy of the Izhevsk workers, but as in other Volga and Urals towns, they focused their preparations on the veterans unions. The strength of the four-thousand-man veterans union derived mainly from its members’ unwillingness to submit to conscription, and it was such an effort to mobilize it that triggered the overthrow of Bolshevik rule in Izhevsk. When Kazan’ fell to the Czechoslovak Legion at the beginning of August, the Izhevsk Bolsheviks demanded that the veterans union join the Red Army. The union declared it would submit only as a distinct unit and only if its members immediately received weapons and uniforms. In fact, the union decided to overthrow the Bolsheviks as soon as the weapons were distributed. The Bolsheviks did not yield to the union’s demands and began to carry out arrests among the veterans. This served as a signal to launch the uprising. After brief fighting, the union took control of Izhevsk on August 8.123 The rebellion in Izhevsk initially restored the SR-Menshevik Soviet Executive Committee that had been dissolved by the Bolsheviks in June, but power was soon transferred to a Provisional Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly for the Kama River Region (Prikomuch). V. I. Buzanov, a delegate to the Constituent Assembly from Viatka province and the leader of the Izhevsk SRs, became the chairman of the committee, which soon established relations with Komuch in Samara. Following the model of Komuch, the new authorities centered their propaganda on the Constituent Assembly and national resistance to the Bolsheviks and Germans, and they likewise followed Komuch in reestablishing the organs of local self-government and organizing a People’s Army.124 The severe deterioration of Bolshevik relations with the Izhevsk workers and much of the Viatka peasantry over the course of the summer helped Prikomuch become more popular, and much more successful, than Komuch had been when it came to power in Samara. Prikomuch’s People’s Army quickly recruited about twelve thousand local workers, veterans, and former officers. The People’s Army repelled a series of attacks by Soviet forces and cleared a large territory of Bolshevik rule without assistance from Komuch or the Czechoslovak Legion. Within a month of the overthrow of the Bolsheviks in Izhevsk and nearby Votkinsk, Prikomuch disposed of an army of tens of thousands of men, both volunteers and conscripts, and it enjoyed widespread support in the countryside. By the end of August the progress of the rebellion

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and the fall of Kazan’ brought the Red Army’s fortunes on the Eastern front to their lowest point in the whole of the civil war, just when a terrorist attack on Lenin in Moscow nearly cost him his life. The August 30 Assassination Attempt on Lenin

In the catalog of perplexing episodes in the civil war, the attempt on Lenin’s life outside the Mikhel’son Factory in Moscow on the evening of August 30, 1918, occupies a prominent place. Four days later the Kremlin commandant P. D. Mal’kov and a group of Latvian Communists executed the alleged attacker, a former anarchist named Fania Kaplan, but the Bolshevik authorities in fact knew next to nothing about the attack. Kaplan had been arrested at the scene and had confessed to the shooting, but her interrogators had been unable to establish whether she had accomplices or acted as part of a larger terrorist group, whether she had ties to any political party, or whether her attack had any connection to the assassination of the Petrograd Cheka chief M. S. Uritskii on the same day as the attack on Lenin. Although the Bolshevik authorities immediately suspected the PSR, the Cheka no less than the population at large remained in the dark about the origins of the attack until preparations for the trial of the SR Central Committee members began at the end of 1921.125 As part of the preparations, Grigorii Semenov, the former head of the underground SR organization that had assassinated Volodarskii in June, published a brochure in which he claimed that Kaplan had shot Lenin as a member of his detachment.126 The detachment’s attack on Lenin, he asserted, had been approved by the SR leadership. Semenov and several other former members of the detachment testified about the assassination attempt in great detail at the SR trial in 1922, but historians have been understandably reluctant to lend much credence to the evidence adduced at this first big Soviet show trial. In many respects a fog of mystery has continued to shroud the August 30 assassination attempt ever since the trial. Soviet historians faithfully rehearsed the trial’s version of events through the end of the Soviet era, but two scholars in the West, Boris Orlov and Semion Lyandres, have exposed the many contradictions in the published source material for the assassination attempt.127 Orlov flatly concluded that Kaplan did not fire the shots at Lenin. Lyandres more cautiously asserted that it could not be established who had shot Lenin or what group stood behind it, but he expressed serious doubt that the nearly blind Kaplan would have been physically capable of carrying out the assassination attempt. Since the late 1980s, many scholars and journalists have repeated and elaborated these arguments. Two prominent Russian historians who examined Kaplan’s Cheka file, A. L. Litvin and Dmitrii Volkogonov, have concluded that Kaplan probably did not shoot Lenin and that, at any rate, the PSR had no connection to the assassination attempt.128 Many of the journalistic accounts

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sensationally attribute the assassination attempt to rivalries and conspiracies within the Bolshevik leadership, with Sverdlov, Dzerzhinskii, and Stalin variously figuring as the main conspirator. One intrepid investigator has even asserted that Lenin himself staged the entire “assassination attempt” to provide a pretext to launch the Red Terror.129 In fact, however, the August 30 assassination attempt originated in Semenov’s detachment, although the trial presented a grossly distorted picture of Semenov’s relations with the SR leadership.130 After the assassination of Volodarskii in June, knowledge of Semenov’s responsibility for the murder spread throughout the party leadership. Accordingly, the leadership devoted considerable attention to the future of the organization, which moved to Moscow at some point in the summer.131 Responsibility for supervision of the organization passed from Gots (who left for the Eastern front) to Timofeev, one of the four members of the Moscow Bureau of the Central Committee. Timofeev approved Semenov’s proposal to keep the organization together for use as a partisan unit on the Eastern front. Semenov went to Saratov to prepare for the move across the front, but there he met M. A. Tislenko, a former member of the detachment in Petrograd, with whom Semenov agreed to resume terrorist attacks over the Central Committee’s opposition. Semenov returned to Moscow in mid-July and told Timofeev that his group ought to be left in the capital in case the party adopted terrorist methods. Timofeev, however, insisted that the use of terrorism against Bolshevik leaders remained unacceptable, because the Bolsheviks had not definitively broken with the international socialist movement.132 Gots meanwhile returned to Moscow from Penza, having been unable to cross the front. Semenov again asked whether the Central Committee attitude toward terror had changed. Gots replied it had not.133 Nevertheless, Semenov and the fifteen members of his detachment began seriously to consider terrorist attacks on Lenin and Trotsky. At this stage Fania Kaplan entered the scene. Born Feiga Khaimovna Roitman in Volhynia in 1887, Kaplan, like Semenov, was a former anarchist and terrorist who gravitated to the PSR in the last years of the Old Regime. She was arrested in 1906, when a bomb she and several other terrorists were preparing for the Kiev governor-general exploded in their hotel room, slightly injuring her. Kaplan was sentenced to death, but her sentence was commuted and she passed the remaining years of the Old Regime in Siberia in the Akatui and Mal’tsev prisons, where most female political prisoners were incarcerated.134 While in prison, Kaplan abandoned the anarchist beliefs that she had embraced as a teenager and began to consider herself an SR. Freed from prison by the February Revolution, she came to Moscow but soon moved south to the Crimea. She returned to Moscow after February 1918, where by her own account she soon arrived at her decision to shoot Lenin.135

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Other evidence confirms that after her arrival in Moscow in the spring, Kaplan suggested to the veteran Siberian SR Nil Fomin that they assassinate Lenin. Fomin in turn proposed such an attack to Vladimir Zenzinov, whom the Central Committee had delegated to supervise all underground conspiratorial and military work in Moscow. Zenzinov informed the Central Committee of the Fomin-Kaplan proposal and shortly thereafter communicated the Central Committee’s negative response to Fomin.136 Fomin soon departed for Siberia, but Kaplan stayed in Moscow and, according to several SRs, continued to advocate a terrorist attack on Lenin.137 At some point in the spring or summer she joined an underground organization led by V. K. Rudzievskii, a lawyer who called himself an SR. This group, unknown either to Semenov or to the SR leadership, had begun preparations of its own for attempts against Lenin and Trotsky. Iosif Dashevskii, one of the leaders of the SR effort to transfer officers to the Eastern front, stumbled across Rudzievskii’s organization and put Semenov in touch with several of its members, including Kaplan. Semenov invited Kaplan to join his detachment.138 While Semenov stepped up preparations for the assassination of Lenin, he continued to struggle with the problem of the party leadership’s opposition to the use of terror against the Bolsheviks. According to Tislenko, only four members of the organization (Konopleva, Ivanova, Semenov, and himself) knew of the Central Committee’s opposition to terror. Semenov apparently told the other members of the detachment that the Central Committee approved of the organization’s activities.139 In fact, however, the opposition of the Central Committee majority remained unshaken. After most members of the Central Committee moved to Saratov en route to Komuch territory in August, Donskoi remained in Moscow and assumed responsibility for Semenov’s organization, which Timofeev informed him was soon to move across the front to Samara. Soon thereafter, Semenov informed Donskoi that Fania Kaplan had joined his group and had “definite terrorist schemes and wishes.” Donskoi asked to meet her, which he did “very shortly” before August 30. Kaplan argued for a terrorist attack, but Donskoi explained that the party was not now carrying out terrorist attacks and urged her to “think hard.” His testimony continues: “I added also that in her position, wishing to carry out a terrorist act, she would put herself outside the party if she acted. . . . I got the impression that a strong decision had matured in her, but I thought that my indications in this regard would be completely authoritative and would exert some influence.”140 Donskoi overestimated his authority, but his talk with Kaplan does seem to have influenced her conduct at her interrogation. Semenov’s plan centered on Lenin’s custom of delivering speeches at factories around Moscow every Friday. Semenov divided the city into four districts and designated one member of the group as the potential assassin in each

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district. Three consecutive Fridays in August the members of the organization staked out factories where Lenin might speak. On the third Friday, Kaplan held responsibility for the region in which Lenin appeared at the Mikhel’son Factory. She carried a revolver supplied by Semenov and waited outside while another member of the group, a worker named Novikov, attended the meeting. Various witnesses claimed to have observed Kaplan prior to and during the meeting in the factory, but their accounts are contradictory and do little to clarify Kaplan’s activities or demeanor. After the meeting Novikov intentionally stumbled in the stairwell as he followed Lenin out of the factory. This diversion delayed part of the crowd behind Lenin. Outside the factory, as a smaller crowd gathered around Lenin and a woman complained to him about grain confiscations on the trains, three shots rang out and Lenin fell to the ground. None of the witnesses later interrogated seems actually to have seen Kaplan fire the shots, and their efforts to describe what had happened contradicted each other. The most reliable account is probably that of S. K. Gil’, Lenin’s chauffeur, who testified that he heard the shots, turned in the direction from which they had come, and saw a woman flee after dropping a revolver.141 Novikov escaped unnoticed after the shots, but Kaplan was captured immediately. The circumstances of her arrest have also given rise to much speculation, because both N. Ia. Ivanov, the chairman of the Mikhel’son factory committee, and S. N. Batulin, the deputy military commissar for the local Red Army division, claimed to have played the leading role in her arrest. Although the authorities seem to have decided later to give priority to Ivanov’s claim, perhaps because he was chairman of the Mikhel’son factory committee, only much later did Ivanov claim to have captured Kaplan.142 In the days after the shooting, Batulin provided the main account of Kaplan’s arrest, although he gave differing accounts of his own role.143 Kaplan was taken to the local military commissariat and then transferred to the Cheka headquarters at Lubianka for further interrogation. Already at the military commissariat, Kaplan identified herself and confessed to the shooting. Her replies to her battalion of interrogators appear cautious but truthful. She testified that she had decided to assassinate Lenin in February 1918 and had ever since been preparing to carry out her intention, because Lenin had betrayed socialism and postponed its realization for decades. The independent evidence about her March proposal to assassinate Lenin corroborates this point of her confession.144 Kaplan’s testimony also strongly suggests that Donskoi’s admonition to “think hard” and not to involve the party in her actions remained on her mind throughout the interrogations. She was quick to state that she was a socialist and several times underlined the fact that she was no longer an anarchist, but she refused through several interrogations to admit that she was an SR or to reveal her attitude to Komuch. Kaplan acknowledged that she was an SR only

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after the Cheka had established her party affiliation by rounding up some of her past acquaintances from prison. Still, she never claimed a sanction from the party and insisted that she had carried out her act “personally” and “according to her convictions.”145 The Cheka’s investigation turned up little beyond what Kaplan herself revealed. Dzerzhinskii had already departed for Petrograd to investigate the murder of Uritskii, so his deputy, Iakov Peters, assumed overall command of the investigation. The confusing eyewitness accounts gathered over the several days after August 30 clearly puzzled two of the lead Cheka investigators, the Latvian Chekist Viktor Kingesepp and Iakov Iurovskii, the recently returned executioner of the imperial family. On September 2 they returned to the scene with Ivanov and Gil’ in an unsuccessful attempt to reenact and clarify the details of the shooting.146 The Cheka also experienced embarrassing difficulty recovering the gun used in the attempt, which further confused matters. After Kaplan dropped the revolver, someone apparently kicked it under Lenin’s car and it subsequently disappeared. Only after a public appeal did a local worker named Kuznetsov deliver the revolver to the Cheka.147 The recovery of the weapon presented new difficulties, however. Although most of the witnesses reported three shots and the Browning turned in by Kuznetsov was missing three of its six bullets, four cartridges had been found at the scene. This raised the possibility of a second gunman.148 The Cheka was unable to gather any evidence to prove or disprove the existence of this second shooter, nor has any evidence surfaced since. More important was the failure of the Cheka to uncover any evidence linking Kaplan to her accomplices and or to learn anything about the existence of Semenov’s detachment. With the investigation already at a dead end, Kaplan was shot in the Kremlin early in the morning of September 3.149 Despite the failures of the Cheka and the skepticism of later historians, there can be no reasonable doubt that Kaplan was a member of Semenov’s organization and that she was at Mikhel’son as part of Semenov’s plan to assassinate the Bolshevik leader. The often repeated argument that Kaplan and Semenov can be linked to the PSR only by the dubious testimony of the second, pro-Bolshevik group of defendants at the 1922 trial is simply mistaken.150 The other argument commonly advanced against attributing the attack to Kaplan, her supposed physical and psychological incapacity to carry it out, is unpersuasive.151 Moreover, a final piece of evidence ties her irrefutably to Semenov’s organization. One of the items found in Kaplan’s possession after her arrest was a train ticket to the station of Tomilino, on the railroad line leading to Kazan’. Kaplan initially denied having such a ticket, but in a later interrogation she implicitly conceded it was hers when she refused to state where she had acquired it.152 The conspiratorial dacha of the Semenov organization was indeed at Tomilino, as not only Semenov but Tislenko and several members of the first group

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of defendants at the SR trial testified.153 In light of the Tomilino ticket, Kaplan’s confession, and the testimony especially of Donskoi and Tislenko, it is impossible to accept the notion that Kaplan might have “come to the Mikhel’son factory that evening by accident,” as one scholar has suggested.154 There are indeed contradictions in the eyewitness accounts and some oddities in the Kaplan case as a whole, but contradictions in the eyewitness accounts of a crime are to be expected and the aspects of the case that have struck recent investigators as suspicious are better explained without resort to wild improbabilities or conspiracies.155 After the assassination attempt the members of Semenov’s organization expected Semenov to produce the promised Central Committee declaration of SR responsibility for the attack on Lenin. When it was not forthcoming, they convened a meeting at the dacha in Tomilino to confront him. Although Semenov claimed that the Central Committee had reneged on its promise, all except Ivanova, Konopleva, and Tislenko (who knew the real story) began to suspect that Semenov had deceived them. The execution of Kaplan only intensified their anger. Semenov managed nonetheless to secure a vote of confidence in his leadership, and a majority of the group decided to continue with terror if the Central Committee gave explicit approval. A minority of six, including Semenov and Tislenko, supported Konopleva’s proposal to carry out further terrorist attacks even if the Central Committee did not give its sanction.156 To the dismay of the terrorists, the Moscow Bureau of the Central Committee disclaimed responsibility for the attack on September 6, although Izvestiia buried the SR announcement on page four under the headline “Statement of the Left SRs.”157 Only after the publication of the SR statement did Donskoi meet Semenov to ask him if he had any connection to Kaplan’s attempt. Semenov admitted he had provided her with the revolver that she used and declared that he had been inspired by Kaplan’s example. His group would henceforth devote itself to terrorism and call itself an “autonomous group of SRs.” The conversation became heated and Semenov stormed out, only to return several days later to say he would submit to the party’s orders and move to the Eastern front.158 Semenov still hoped to carry out additional attacks, however, and Tislenko traveled to Penza on behalf of the organization in a last attempt to gain Central Committee approval. There he met Timofeev, who was preparing to move across the front to Samara. After consulting with Gots, Timofeev threatened unspecified punishments if the group did not cease its activity. Tislenko returned to Moscow and communicated this to the terrorists. Konopleva, Semenov, Tislenko, and a few others stayed on and decided to target Trotsky, but Donskoi refused to finance their operations. After carrying out some robberies to secure funds, Semenov and several others were arrested in the fall.159 There is no reason to believe Semenov’s claim that the Central Committee

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had approved his actions, but it was disingenuous, to say the least, for the party leadership to deny any connection to the August 30 attempt. Party leaders maintained regular contact with Semenov throughout the summer, and Semenov and the members of his organization continued to live entirely on party funds. Several party leaders knew full well of Semenov’s desire to open a terrorist campaign on behalf of the PSR, and Donskoi knew that Kaplan in particular was prepared to act. Moreover, they knew that Semenov had already once violated the Central Committee ban on terror by organizing the assassination of Volodarskii, and it is impossible to believe that they had no inkling he might do so again. Although it opposed terrorist attacks, the party leadership took a remarkably tolerant attitude toward Semenov and his organization, much as it had before 1917, when party terrorist detachments carried out attacks independently or in violation of the leadership’s orders.160 The Central Committee did not expel any members of Semenov’s organization from the party after August 30, and it welcomed Semenov himself back into the party fold after his release from prison in 1919. When the Central Committee decided to send a terrorist detachment to Siberia to assassinate Admiral Kolchak in August 1919, it turned to him again. Although nothing came of this plan, Semenov’s appointment to head the detachment suggests the terrorist prestige that he continued to enjoy in the top circles of the PSR.161 Lidiia Konopleva and Elena Ivanova also remained active in the party, and in November 1919, Sergei Morozov of the Moscow Bureau of the Central Committee asked Konopleva for a photograph of Kaplan to deposit in the party archive.162 The Red Terror

Fania Kaplan’s execution closed the last major episode in the two-decade history of SR terrorism, but September 1918 opened a new chapter in the history of Russian revolutionary terror. In response to the assassination attempt, the Bolsheviks declared the Red Terror, which elevated terror to a place in the revolutionary state’s arsenal of political weapons that it would occupy, with fluctuating degrees of prominence, for several decades.163 Announced in a pair of Soviet decrees in the first week of September, the Red Terror marks an important milestone in the formation of the Bolshevik dictatorship. To be sure, the practices called for in the decrees on the Red Terror, notably mass arrests and the seizure and execution of hostages, were not new, although they now claimed more victims than they had previously. The quantitative escalation of violence, however, did less to sustain and shape the Bolshevik dictatorship than did the elaboration of the ideology and rhetoric of the Terror.164 Analysis of the Terror thus requires close attention to the texts that proclaimed and depicted it, although for its organizers, victims, and audiences, the Terror achieved its full significance only as practice. The messages of the Terror were communicated

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by explicit discourse and practical action: the Terror is best thought of as a kind of ideological performance, one that can be reduced neither to script nor to enactment, that was shaped both by revolutionary tradition and by the improvisations of the moment, and that aimed to define the civil war as class war in the most spectacular fashion possible.165 The images, expressions, and ideas that made up the script of the Terror had first begun to come together at the time of the January 1 assassination attempt against Lenin, although most had figured in Russian and European revolutionary discourse for decades and Lenin was himself long since on record as an advocate of unrestrained revolutionary violence.166 In January, Petrograd Bolsheviks had threatened to launch “mass red terror” in response to the “black terror” and “individual terror” carried out by SR “hirelings of the bourgeoisie” on behalf of “enemies of the people.”167 And in June, after the assassination of Volodarskii, Lenin had complained bitterly in a well-known letter to Zinoviev that the Petrograd authorities were compromising the party by their failure to follow through on threats of mass terror.168 Over the course of the summer, Bolshevik rhetoric and the everyday practices of Soviet authorities edged the Bolsheviks ever closer to what the Left SR Isaak Steinberg later termed the “system” of the Terror.169 The deteriorating situation at the front and the mounting violence in the countryside help to contextualize Lenin’s multiple calls for terror in mid-August. In an unpublished article, Lenin referred to the “battle against the kulaks” as the party’s “last, decisive battle,” a battle he couched in a rhetoric of extermination. Kulaks were “vampires,” “bloodsuckers,” “spiders,” and “leeches” who deserved only merciless war and death.170 Although this article remained unpublished until 1925, Lenin referred to it indirectly in his now infamous letter to the Penza Bolsheviks V. V. Kuraev, E. B. Bosh, and A. E. Minkin on August 11. Quoting his own assessment of the “‘last decisive battle’ against the kulaks,” Lenin notoriously instructed the Penza Bolsheviks to find “some truly hard people” and carry out public hangings.171 Kulaks, however, were not the only targets Lenin identified in internal party communications in the weeks after the fall of Kazan’. In a letter to Bolsheviks in Nizhnii Novgorod, like Penza of prime importance because of its proximity to the Eastern front, he ordered the local authorities to launch “mass terror” and to deport and shoot “hundreds of prostitutes, drunken soldiers, former officers,” and other “unreliables.” The Bolshevik press also singled out criminals, bandits, and other marginal figures. The stigmatization of such “disorganizers of socialism” points to the early presence in Soviet political discourse of a vocabulary of social hygiene and cleansing that would contribute powerfully to the state’s representation of the enemy and to its practice of terror in subsequent decades.172 An editorial in the organ of the Petrograd soviet illustrates the degree to

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which the ideological system of the Terror had cohered on the eve of the Kaplan attack. The paper called for the revolution to take measures of “self-defense,” because “all across Russia the right SRs, in union with the Alekseevites, are preparing kulak-officer rebellions . . . the entire rear is turning into a continuation of the front.” The paper declared that “all bourgeois (burzhui) preparing actions against Soviet power should feel its severe, punishing hand.”173 Most of the key ideological features of the Terror are present here: an argument for selfdefense; the use of verbal tags to assemble monstrous, double-headed enemies whose identities cut across ordinary categorical boundaries (the union of right SRs and Alekseevites; kulak-officer rebellions); the implicit notion of a web of hidden conspiracies tying together all opposition to Soviet power; the semantic navigation from Socialist Revolutionary to right SR to dehumanized burzhui; and the call to make literal the trope of class war.174 The editorial also illuminates the social and political contexts in which the Terror materialized. Bolsheviks’ anxiety about rural unrest and the precarious position of the Red Army on the Eastern front, and their conviction that the PSR stood behind both the chief internal and external threats to the Soviet state, gave Kaplan’s attack a significance in the Bolshevik mind that far surpassed that of the first attempt on Lenin’s life or the assassination of Volodarskii. Within hours of Kaplan’s attack, Sverdlov expressed confidence that the shooting was the work of right SR hirelings of the English and French and declared: “The working class will answer attacks aimed at its leaders with an even greater unification of its forces and with merciless mass terror against all enemies of the Revolution.”175 Several days later, Severnaia kommuna summed up the Bolshevik case against the SRs. The PSR had “begun the cruelest civil war all across Russia against the power of the workers and peasants. From open rebellions and uprisings it has passed to the organization of conspiracies and terrorist acts. It has added attacks from the rear to its attack against the workerpeasant state at the front. It has now decided to resort to individual terror against workers and peasants.”176 The same day the CEC echoed its chairman, attributing the attack to “renegades of socialism.” It added: “To the white terror of the enemies of the worker-peasant state, the workers and peasants will answer with a mass red terror against the bourgeoisie and its agents.”177 Two aspects of this warning should be highlighted: first, the argument that the Bolsheviks had been forced of necessity to adopt mass revolutionary terror in response to the terror of their opponents; and second, the concept of the White Terror. The notion that revolutionary terror was primarily a matter of selfdefense and was forced on reluctant revolutionaries by counter-revolutionary terror and violence had long figured prominently in Russian radical discourse. Before the revolution it was one of several arguments advanced in favor of terrorist attacks by the People’s Will and the PSR, the two major revolutionary

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parties that practiced terror. Terrorists and their defenders frequently disavowed responsibility for the turn to terror and displaced responsibility onto its victims or vaguely defined circumstances. As Vladimir Burtsev put it in 1897: “The resolution of the question of terror, of whether terror is or is not necessary in Russia, depends not on the revolutionaries but on Nicholas and the Pobedonostsevs.”178 In a slightly different vein, Chernov argued in the principal SR programmatic work on terror that “the significance of terrorist actions as a means of self-defense . . . is perfectly obvious and understandable. Circumstances are more and more frequently forcing even former opponents of this means of struggle towards such actions.”179 Whatever the differences between “mass” and “individual” terror, Bolsheviks took over this line of reasoning and its conventions as the principal public justification of the Terror. Lenin frequently employed it, and Latsis turned to it when he recalled the Terror in his obituary salute to Dzerzhinskii in 1926: “To the White Terror life forced the response of the Red Terror.”180 The concept of the White Terror was itself central to the ideology of the Terror. It too had a lengthy history in revolutionary discourse. The term was first used in France to represent the counterrevolutionary violence and revenge of 1795, and it became firmly entrenched on the European left by midcentury, when Russian radicals adopted it as a designation for the government’s repressive policies and its measures to combat the revolutionary movement.181 Bolsheviks now applied it to the attacks on Uritskii and Lenin to represent the assassination attempts as pieces in a single bourgeois campaign against Soviet power.182 In reality, the attacks were unrelated, and resistance to the Soviet state generally was neither well coordinated nor predominantly bourgeois in outlook or social basis. Kaplan herself was a longtime radical who shot Lenin because she believed he was postponing the realization of socialism for decades. Her mentality and actions (like those of Uritskii’s attacker, Leonid Kanegisser) had been shaped by the tradition of Red, revolutionary terror and owed nothing to White sensibilities, practices, or organizations. Indeed Kaplan’s attack seemed so ominous to Bolsheviks precisely because it made sense to tie it to the PSR, the party most closely identified with revolutionary terrorism, and thereby to link it to the peasant unrest of the summer and to the fall of Kazan’ on the Eastern front. The concept of the “White Terror” made these connections, but it depicted the SRs as “pathetic puppets” who were only “physically responsible” for the attack.183 Behind the SRs stood the international bourgeoisie, as Severnaia kommuna made clear: “At present we are conducting a war with the international finance capital of the Allied powers, which has come to the aid of the propertied classes of our fatherland. The united internal and external enemies of the proletariat have supplemented attacks on the front with strikes in the rear, with

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rebellions and conspiracies against Soviet power and, also, as the events of the last few days have shown, with the extermination of the most prominent leaders of the proletariat.”184 The propagandistic focus on the White Terror reflected both genuine conviction about the centrality of class and ideological dissimulation about the political and social contours of resistance to the Soviet state. Certainly the Bolshevik leadership believed that opposition to its policies and rule was structured by class and international in scope. From this perspective the concept of the White Terror simply demystified the civil war and laid bare its class essence. Yet Bolsheviks also knew that SRs and other radical opponents of the Soviet state had been drawing on revolutionary discourse to construct and mobilize opposition since the beginning of the year, and they understood that this posed a more dangerous threat to Bolshevik power than resistance on the part of the old elites and the Volunteer Army, who drew on political discourses with much less mass appeal.185 Conscious ideological labor to construct the civil war in class terms, to define the SRs as “renegades,” and to shift attention to the supposed machinations of the bourgeoisie therefore assumed critical importance. To these ends, the Cheka fabricated a highly publicized case against Bruce Lockhart, the British representative in Moscow. Lockhart was first arrested on August 31, released the next day, and then rearrested several days later when the Cheka announced the liquidation of a grand conspiracy to bribe Red Army troops, seize the Bolshevik leadership, and establish a military dictatorship in Moscow.186 To the same purpose, mass meetings were organized in Petrograd on the theme “Who are we fighting against and who is assassinating our leaders?” The answers were not Komuch and the PSR, but international capital.187 Nevertheless, Grigorii Petrovskii, the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, ordered local soviets to arrest all SRs in his “Order on Hostages,” one of the two principal decrees of the Terror.188 Without access to the Cheka archives, it is not possible to evaluate how this order was carried out and whether there were geographic or other patterns to its implementation. On the basis of reports in the Bolshevik press, the testimony of SRs, and some data in state and party archives, it seems safe to say that SRs constituted only a small percentage of those incarcerated during the Terror. Although many SRs were arrested and active SRs in Soviet territory were forced underground, only a small percentage of the SR membership from 1917 and 1918 landed in Soviet prisons. Some SRs were seized as hostages, but most hostages were officers, merchants, or persons in some way associated with the Old Regime.189 The seizure of such “bourgeois” hostages alongside SRs was an important part of the ideological performance of the Terror, because it gave bodily form to the concept of the White Terror, entangled SRs and bourgeois as co-conspirators in it, and masked the true nature of resistance to Bolshevik power. The Soviet

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press printed long lists of hostages who were executed in the weeks after the Kaplan attempt or who remained alive but subject to execution in the event of “the least stir among the White Guards.”190 These lists invariably included an identifying label for each hostage, because the public display (through the press) of hostages identified by name only would not have accomplished the ideological purposes of the Terror. The strategy of classification deployed in these labels mixed social and political criteria. Hostages were tagged in most cases with a social label that tied them to the bourgeoisie or the Old Regime (merchant, financier, factory director, priest, officer), but SRs were almost always identified by political affiliation only, without any information about social status or occupation. Bourgeois hostages, by contrast, were not identified by partisan political affiliation. At most, crude political labels such as “rightist” or “Black Hundred” were occasionally attached. The association of the SR political label and the social category of the bourgeoisie, the contiguity of individual SRs and bourgeois in the lists, the striking absence of identified Kadets, and the fact that the Bolsheviks held SRs and bourgeois responsible for each other’s actions formed a powerful metonymic argument that the PSR represented the bourgeoisie.191 At the same time, the overwhelming numerical dominance of bourgeois in the lists of hostages and of the dead advanced the central ideological dissimulation of the Terror—the idea that the expropriated bourgeoisie was the true organizer and leader of resistance to the Soviet state and that resistance therefore reflected the intensification of the class struggle on a worldwide basis. All across the country public meetings were organized to denounce the White Terror and endorse the Red Terror. Such meetings, capped by the dispatch of a telegram to the central Soviet authorities for publication in the Bolshevik press, had a pronounced theatrical quality, one that was intimately linked to the theatrical quality of the Terror itself.192 The first major article that Izvestiia devoted to the Terror (by the prominent Bolshevik Karl Radek) illustrates well the Bolshevik inclination to conceive the Terror as a highly public and participatory form of political theater. The Red Terror, Radek wrote, “cannot be the work of the Extraordinary Commissions [the Cheka]; it can materialize only as a result of the extraordinary efforts of the working class, and this is its positive significance. . . . Five hostages taken from the bourgeoisie and shot on the basis of a public sentence of the local soviet of workers’, peasants’, and Red Army deputies, shot in the presence of thousands of workers approving this act—this a more powerful act of mass terror than the execution of five hundred persons by decision of the Cheka, without the participation of the worker masses.”193 In fact, there is no evidence that executions were carried out in this manner. The actual process of killing was controlled by the Soviet and Cheka authorities, who carried out their tasks without the distraction of witnesses, usually

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by shooting prisoners they already held in local prisons. Radek’s image is nevertheless instructive, because mass meetings were used to choreograph a mediated (and party-controlled) popular participation in the Terror. Similarly, a participating audience for the executions was achieved through the Bolshevik press, which published long lists of the executed alongside collective resolutions of approval.194 This mediated popular participation blurred the boundary between participants and spectators, and it worked to legitimate the Terror by grounding it publicly in class. It also had a didactic function. Guided by the party and state, the working class, in the words of one Chekist, would “acquire for itself firm convictions” about the need for terror in response to “the conspiracy of the right SRs with the Allies.”195 The Chekist’s comment and Radek’s theatrical image suggest that workers formed the principal audience for the Terror. Understood in this way, the purpose of the Terror was not to terrorize the Russian bourgeoisie but to overcome opposition to Bolshevik hegemony within what socialists still called the revolutionary democracy: that is, resistance on the part of the revolutionary parties and their constituencies, including industrial workers, peasants, the urban and rural poor generally, the soldiers of the Red Army, and the intelligentsia and radicalized lower-middle strata that were crucial to the Bolshevik state-building effort. In the form of corpses, hostages, and tabulations of the bourgeois death toll in the Soviet press, the Terror claimed to offer conclusive evidence for the validity of the Bolshevik interpretation of the civil war as class war and for the Bolshevik reification of the revolutionary state as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Such evidence was hardly of interest to Kadets, counterrevolutionaries, or the bourgeoisie. Bourgeois victims were indispensable to the Terror, but its ideological argument was aimed at efforts to contest and resist Bolshevik power from positions within revolutionary discourse. Consider, for instance, the statement of purpose offered by the editors of the weekly organ of the Cheka—the short-lived Ezhenedel’nik ChK, itself an extraordinary monument to the Terror. In the debut issue of September 22, they wrote: Our journal should become the vehicle for expressing and conveying the ideas and methods of struggle with enemies being carried through by the All-Russian Cheka, which will enable all local Chekas more uniformly, systematically, and methodically to carry out the struggle and to destroy the ideologues, organizers, and leaders of the hostile and irreconcilable class enemies of the proletariat and its dictatorship. This is the first task. Second—our organ, working up investigative materials and publishing valuable documents, must strive for that form of presentation that will enable all the poor of the cities and villages to see, judging by this material, who their class and political enemies are . . . [We must] make

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the plans for conspiracies, speculation, etc. absolutely clear to the working class, illustrating them with facts—all this must help the working class assimilate a single principle: if not the dictatorship of the proletariat, then the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie; there is no third way, a fact everyone must commit to memory. Having assimilated this principle, the treasonous behavior towards the working class on the part of the Mensheviks and SRs will become a thousand times clearer and more visible.196

That revolutionary politics offered only a stark choice between naked class dictatorships was precisely the proposition that SRs and Mensheviks had sought to contest since October, with significant success. The Red Terror took dead aim at the SR-Menshevik interpretation of the politics of 1918 and sought at long last to monopolize revolutionary discourse by imposing the Bolshevik definition of the civil war as class war—virtually by inscribing it on the bodies of the bourgeoisie. Thinking of the Terror in this way clarifies the peculiar place in it of the PSR, which was at once central and yet oddly absent from the actual violence.197 A performance that sought persuasively and definitively to constitute the civil war as class war required bourgeois, not socialist, victims. Individual SRs were thus sparsely represented in the toll of victims, even though the destruction of the PSR and any revolutionary alternative to Bolshevik dictatorship was the state’s main object. In Petrograd the first published list of 512 executed hostages included only 10 SRs, while in Moscow only 1 SR is known to have been shot. In Astrakhan’ all fifteen members of the SR provincial committee were shot, but this was an exceptional case.198 In general, too many socialist victims would have worked against the ideological aim of the Terror, although the social origins of the victims were undoubtedly more haphazard than the neat picture of class war painted in the Bolshevik press would suggest. A stream of telegrams to Petrovskii from Turlo, the chairman of the Penza soviet, conveys the force of the Terror in that province and suggests that many of the victims there were in fact peasants or common criminals. On September 9, Turlo reported that mass arrests had begun. Six hostages had been shot in the city and “kulaks” were being shot in the countryside. In separate telegrams the next two days he reported four more executions and “merciless arrests.” On September 14 he cabled again to report that “shootings are taking place” and more hostages had been seized. At this stage a prison rebellion broke out. Thirty prisoners managed to escape, but the authorities responded by stepping up the pace of executions. On September 24, Turlo reported the execution of sixty-two criminals and thirty hostages. The next day he reported that the “Whites” had paid for the prison rebellion with fifty-two lives, but he promised “measures of increased severity.” In a separate telegram the same day he reported sixty-eight

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executions. Two days later, on September 27, he reported sixty-four executions in three rural districts of the province.199 In the absence of good local studies and access to the Cheka archives, it is impossible to evaluate the representativeness of Penza or to make confident judgments about the number of victims nationally, their political affiliations (if any), their social origins, and their geographic distribution.200 It is exceedingly unlikely, however, that large numbers of SRs were secretly shot. By September 1918, as the Red Terror played out, the most important institutional and conceptual contours of the Bolshevik dictatorship had taken recognizable shape. The elaboration of the Terror and its various practices, the transformation of the soviets into one-party organs, the monopolization of the press and public political discourse in Soviet Russia, and the construction of the Red Army are among the most important of those contours. All these processes had been generated and developed in the context of bitter struggle with the PSR. To be sure, other contestants and combatants were important, notably the Left SRs on the political front and the Don Cossacks and the Volunteer Army in military terms. There were likewise other pressures beyond the political struggle that also pushed in the direction of an authoritarian state, as the SRs were discovering on the other side of the Eastern front. Chief among those pressures in the Soviet case were the acute shortages in food supply in European Russia, the economic and social dislocations of the aftermath of the World War and revolution, the institutional and cultural weight of the Russian past, and Lenin’s own long-standing commitment to revolutionary dictatorship. Nevertheless, the civil war itself, and the political struggle that it reflected and expressed, was the crucible of Bolshevik power in the spring and summer of 1918. Not only were SRs at the center of that struggle, but as Lenin understood, they and others who could draw on revolutionary discourse to contest the Bolshevik understanding of the civil war were the most dangerous enemies of the dictatorship, because the language of revolution remained the most powerful political language in Russia and control of revolutionary discourse was the key stake in the political struggle. The ideological labor necessary to establish authoritatively the Bolshevik vision of the civil war as a war between Red and White class dictatorships had begun to gain traction after June, even as Soviet power was overthrown in most of the former empire and violence inside Soviet Russia escalated. At the same time, however, the events of the summer also offered Bolsheviks dramatic evidence of the danger that SRs and other “renegades of socialism” posed to the Soviet state. The figure of the renegade—terrorist, conspirator, friend of the kulak, agent of capital—would remain central to the Bolshevik imagination for many years.

3

Komuch

T

he city of Samara, the seat of the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, spreads along the left bank of a great bend in the Volga, where the river snakes east around the Zhiguli ridge before resuming its flow south to the Caspian Sea. There in the summer and early fall of 1918 the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) secured their principal opportunity during the civil war to build a revolutionary alternative to Soviet power. This was a critical moment, because the Bolsheviks had not yet succeeded in their efforts to monopolize revolutionary discourse and establish their vision of the civil war as a war between Red and White dictatorships. Moreover, Bolshevik fortunes on the Eastern front and inside Soviet Russia appeared desperate and precarious. Komuch, as the Samara government came to be known, offered the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (PSRs) its best practical opportunity to challenge the Bolsheviks’ monopolization of the revolutionary project and to contest their construction of the civil war as a class war. At the same time, Komuch offered the party an opportunity to head off the Bonapartist dictatorship that SRs feared would emerge to challenge, and likely defeat, the Red Army and Soviet state. The SRs’ efforts on the Volga in 1918 also illuminate the state-building process in the civil war. Komuch was shaped not only by the SRs’ efforts to give institutional body to their political outlook, but also by the exigencies of war, the social contexts in which the SRs found themselves, and the political 89 

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contestations behind the Eastern front. Like the other contenders for power across Russia, Komuch’s leaders were forced to address a range of difficult questions that arose as they sought to prosecute the civil war. Chief among them were the reconstitution of effective state authority, the place of political parties and of the soviets and other class-based institutions in the new state, and the difficulty of procuring grain and conscripts from the countryside. Building an army raised another set of problems. On the Soviet side of the Eastern front in the summer of 1918, the Bolsheviks were groping their way toward arrangements that secured effective party control of the military professionals but at the same time accorded the Red Army a prominent status as one of the principal institutions of the revolutionary state.1 By contrast, the Volunteers in the south, and later Kolchak in Siberia, opted for a straightforward concentration of power in military hands. By eschewing the militarized and dictatorial style of the Bolsheviks on the one hand, and by resisting the political claims of the officer corps on the other, the leaders of Komuch hoped to build a “People’s Army” and erect the framework of a democratic polity. Such a state, they hoped, would tap the mass longing for “land and freedom” and emerge as a potent alternative to Soviet power. The viability of such a state and its capacity to mobilize the resources necessary for civil war seemed doubtful to the SRs’ opponents on the left and right, and its history sheds a useful comparative light on the possibilities and constraints of civil war state building. Nationhood and Popular Sovereignty

The chief political imperative facing Komuch in the summer of 1918, the same imperative that the Bolsheviks faced on their side of the Eastern front, was to define and impose an authoritative vision of the civil war. In this respect it should be recalled that the origins of the PSR’s commitment to armed struggle against the Soviet state lay in the shift in the hierarchy of languages that structured SR thinking about the civil war. In the spring of 1918, the language of nationhood had displaced the language of class as the dominant idiom of party discourse, even on the left wing of the party. This brought to the fore an understanding of the civil war as a part of the larger World War, and a conception of the Eastern front as facing German imperialism even more than Soviet power. At the same time, however, the language of class and the commitment to revolutionary politics that it shaped had by no means disappeared from the party’s outlook and thinking. The great difficulty for SRs was how to square that commitment to class and revolution with resistance to the Soviet government and to their own erstwhile comrades in the revolutionary democracy. To that difficulty could now be added the challenges of fending off counterrevolutionary pressures and mobilizing the constituencies of the revolutionary democracy for armed struggle against a state that itself claimed to embody the revolution.

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Komuch sought to resolve these dilemmas and hold the competing discourses in the party together by centering its rhetoric and policies on national independence and popular sovereignty. The fight for national independence justified SR participation in the civil war, and it offered the prospect of mobilizing the population along national lines. The SRs hoped that the promise of popular sovereignty would mobilize the population in defense of the revolution, and institutionalizing it would protect against counterrevolutionary pressures to undo the achievements of 1917, which SRs understood would be sure to accompany a deepening of the civil war. The primacy of nationhood and the interlocking commitments to national independence, popular sovereignty, and the achievements of 1917 underpinned all of Komuch’s important public statements. Komuch’s first proclamations, in early June, denounced the Bolshevik betrayal of Russia to German imperialism, called on all citizens to rally behind the Constituent Assembly in defense of national independence and popular sovereignty, and declared the fight against the Germans and Bolsheviks the principal task of the People’s Army.2 Throughout the summer Komuch propaganda and agitation laid heavy stress on the German threat to national independence and popular sovereignty, which it invariably linked.3 At times Komuch propagandists made claims that SRs themselves no doubt knew to be mendacious, as when Komuch’s chief propaganda agency—the Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda— claimed that Germans made up half of the advancing Red Army in September.4 Nevertheless, SRs genuinely conceived their struggle on the Eastern front as a struggle against German imperialism, because the logic of SR discourse made it difficult to justify civil war and to imagine victory in other terms.5 Each of these points may be seen in a speech by the Komuch chairman Vladimir Vol’skii at the Ufa State Conference in September. Vol’skii’s remarks are worth quoting at length, because they throw into sharp relief the SR leaders’ understanding of the Eastern front, their hopes for the mobilizing potential of popular sovereignty, and their pessimism about the prospects for victory in the civil war if it came to be cast as a struggle against Soviet power, not German imperialism. Vol’skii framed his remarks as a response to efforts on the part of the SRs’ opponents at the conference to conceive the reconstitution of state authority in terms of the discourse of Russian statehood, which emphasized the primacy of the authoritarian state and the underdeveloped political consciousness of the mass of the Russian population. “The task of constructing the Russian state,” he explained, “is above all . . . the task of the majority of the people of Russia. That task cannot be fulfilled if the Russian people do not begin to fulfill it. That task cannot be fulfilled by the incantations or efforts of any selected groups but only by the people itself. We must improve the state spirit of the people itself, we must instill in the popular masses the awareness that the

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creative activity of the state is at present their own task, and only then will the state powers of the people (gosudarstvennye sily naroda) truly arise and awaken, the powers that will unify the people and reconstitute its Statehood.”6 Vol’skii further explained that the bulk of the country was “not in the hands of the democracy, but of the Germans and their closest allies” and had not yet “escaped the political and social confusion clouding the popular consciousness.” From this it followed that if the anti-Bolshevik groups were unable to mobilize the population for war and state building, the anti-Bolshevik cause would be doomed: If we forget about this for one moment, if we are unable to find those rational instruments of the state capable of attracting the popular masses into the state movement, we will not accomplish anything. Thus for us, for the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, from its first moments until the present, only one thing has been clear: there is only one path by which the State will be able to attract the people and transform it into a force for the state (gosudarstvennaia sila)—the path of popular sovereignty. There are no other paths, and any effort to organize our Russian statehood by any means not resting on popular sovereignty will naturally and inescapably lead only to one result: there will be not Russian statehood but Russian slavery and continued decay, because the allied front that all patriots now dream of, the Russian front against foreign enemies, will not exist. Instead there will be a front of one part of Russia against another part, and what’s more, the smaller part against the larger part: a hopeless front. This purely practical principle—the principle of evaluating the real situation, the principle of understanding Russian reality—compels us, independently of the democratic convictions that we hold, and which we do not renounce, to declare everywhere and to everyone: there is no path to the reconstitution of Russia other than the reestablishment of popular sovereignty.7

Komuch grounded its claim to rule in the link it made between the Constituent Assembly and the realization of popular sovereignty. In principle, membership in Komuch was open to all members of the Constituent Assembly. There were, however, no Menshevik members of the Constituent Assembly present in Samara, and the Kadet members in the city refused to join. This made Komuch overwhelmingly an SR affair, although neither Menshevik nor Kadet enrollment would have changed this much, in view of those parties’ poor showing in the Constituent Assembly elections. The other major parties in the Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks and Left SRs, naturally had no interest in its resuscitation as Komuch. On July 12, Komuch duly barred them from its ranks, citing their renunciation of the Constituent Assembly.8 Halfheartedly, Komuch even began proceedings to replace the Left SR delegates to the Assembly with other candidates from the same electoral lists, who conveniently were

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SRs because of the mix of Left SRs and SRs in the lists, although nothing came of this project.9 In the absence of the principal Russian political parties aside from the PSR, only a few representatives of the non-Russian nationalities of the upper Volga were left to dot the sea of SRs that comprised the membership of Komuch. Komuch enjoyed substantial support from the leadership of the national movements of the upper Volga, which helped it mobilize the Chuvash, Tatar, and Bashkir populations of the region. All five Chuvash members of the Constituent Assembly joined Komuch, and a host of authoritative Tatar figures supported it as well.10 The Bashkir national movement was the most important of the Volga national movements during the civil war, and it too supported Komuch enthusiastically. The first Bashkir national congress had met in July 1917 and elected a thirteen-man council, or Shuro, to lead the national movement. After October the Shuro declared Bashkiria autonomous and convened a Bashkir Congress (Kurultai) in Orenburg. The congress confirmed the Shuro’s declaration of autonomy from Moscow, formed the first Bashkir government, and began to organize Bashkir troops, even as it declared its loyalty to the Soviet state and hoped to stay out of the civil war. Nevertheless, hostility to the Bashkirs was strong among local Russian and Tatar Soviet activists. In February the Bolsheviks established Soviet power in Orenburg and arrested the Bashkir leaders. Later in the spring the Bashkir leader Zeki Akhmed Validov and other Bashkir activists began discussion with the Orenburg Cossacks for coordinated action against the Soviet government. Like the SRs they took advantage of the Czechoslovak rebellion and proclaimed the reestablishment of the Bashkir government in Cheliabinsk on June 7. The reestablished government called on all Bashkirs to fight against the Red Army and resumed the effort to organize Bashkir troops. Because the Bashkir territories of Ufa and Orenburg provinces were controlled by different governments (Komuch, the Siberian government, and Aleksandr Dutov’s Cossack government in Orenburg), Validov worked with all of them, but Komuch was the most receptive to his plans to organize Bashkir military forces. By July the first Bashkir division had been formed, and it subsequently proved to be one of the most reliable military formations at the disposal of Komuch.11 In late September, Komuch reached an agreement with Validov for the creation of an autonomous Bashkir state.12 Despite this support from the non-Russian national movements of the upper Volga, the SRs dominated Komuch. Komuch’s membership swelled from the original five SRs—Vol’skii, Prokopii Klimushkin, Ivan Brushvit, Ivan Nesterov, and Boris Fortunatov—to twenty-nine by early August.13 An influx of prominent SRs from central Russia—including the Central Committee members Vladimir Zenzinov, Konstantin Burevoi, Mikhail Gendel’man, and Dmitrii Rakov—brought the membership to forty-eight by the end of the month,

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from which it rose to almost one hundred by the end of September.14 All but a handful were SRs. Klimushkin later recalled that the party’s domination of Komuch was welcome, because SRs wanted a government that was “flexible, strong and monolithic.” Alluding to the Kadet and Menshevik reluctance to join in the Samara uprising, he added, “it was obviously impossible to include in the construction of governmental institutions activists from other parties, in view of the attitude they had taken to the movement from the start.”15 Although this determination to build Komuch alone soon gave way to an effort to accommodate the Mensheviks, and briefly even the Kadets, Klimushkin’s remarks suggest that the SRs hoped to keep Komuch free of the alliances that had entangled the party in 1917. The Samara Provincial SR Committee struck a similarly optimistic note when it instructed local party organizations not to conceal the de facto one-party status of Komuch: “It is very important to explain that precisely now it is necessary to follow one definite party: that party is the party of land and freedom, which has again demonstrated its fealty to its program. The Bolsheviks and the Kadets and the Black Hundreds have already begun intensified agitation for nonparty status (bespartiinost’), because these parties are alien to the people and it is more profitable for them to hide behind nonparty status.”16 The putative all-Russian government to which Vol’skii and the Samara SRs called other Constituent Assembly members gradually took shape in accord with an organizational scheme drawn up on the eve of the Czechoslovak seizure of the city. The committee concentrated power in its own hands. To it were attached ministries headed by ministers responsible to Komuch, although at first the five SRs simply divided the portfolios among themselves. In practice, the ministries were slow to form, and Vol’skii and Klimushkin generally made the important political and administrative decisions in consultation with Mikhail Vedeniapin of the SR Central Committee, who was not a member of the Constituent Assembly and thus could not formally join Komuch. The three other founding members of Komuch were usually absent from Samara. Fortunatov commanded a volunteer cavalry unit at the front, Nesterov was dispatched to Orenburg as Komuch’s emissary to the Orenburg Cossack Host, and Brushvit worked in Siberia to establish relations with the Siberian government and organize SR forces there.17 At the local level Komuch essentially replicated the arrangements of the Provisional Government. It restored the organs of local self-government, the city Dumas and zemstvos, which were to carry out early elections to renew their memberships and legitimacy. Komuch concentrated local administrative authority in appointed provincial and district plenipotentiaries and entrusted the plenipotentiaries with broad provisional powers to suspend decisions of the Duma and zemstvo administrative boards, dismiss persons serving in pub-

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lic institutions, and imprison anyone who posed a threat to national defense and social order.18 The plenipotentiaries were all reliable socialist supporters of Komuch. Of the seven provincial plenipotentiaries, four were SRs, one was a Menshevik, one was a nonparty cooperative activist, and one was a Popular Socialist. At the district level about half of the plenipotentiaries were SRs.19 In August the expansion of Komuch’s membership and the proliferation of ministries and departments prompted Komuch to reorganize the division of responsibilities between Komuch itself and the ministerial apparatus. A Council of Ministers was established to coordinate the execution of policies adopted by the membership of Komuch, which in effect now served as a legislative assembly. This fifteen-person Council of Ministers, chaired by the veteran SR Evgenii Rogovskii, who also headed the Ministry of State Security, consisted of SR members of Komuch, with three exceptions: the Menshevik Ivan Maiskii at the Ministry of Labor; Minister of War Galkin, who had headed the underground anti-Bolshevik officers’ organization in Samara and had led Komuch’s military efforts since the Czechoslovak rebellion; and G. A. Krasnov, the nonparty Minister of State Control who went on to serve in the same capacity under the Directory and Kolchak.20 Galkin was the most important of these ministers, because of the obvious importance of building a larger armed force to relieve the Czechoslovak Legion and the volunteer units at the front. Galkin helped ensure that the new “People’s Army,” despite its name, would be constructed on traditional lines. The disciplinary statute and titles of the old Russian army were retained. Epaulets, albeit small, were reintroduced over the opposition of Colonel Vladimir Kappel’, who commanded the most important of Komuch’s volunteer units. Soldiers were barred from political activity and there were no political commissars in the army.21 Opposition from the officer corps also forced Komuch to back down from its original plan to carry out agitational work in the army.22 Social and Economic Policies

Komuch’s social and economic policies aimed to realize the promise of “land and freedom,” which SRs understood as the key to popular mobilization and to the construction of a revolutionary alternative to Bolshevik and Bonapartist dictatorship. In effect, Komuch sought to enact the minimum program of the PSR. The keystone of that program had always been the socialization of the land, and Komuch adopted land policies that were unambiguous, socialist, and aimed to mobilize peasant sympathy for the PSR. Komuch affirmed the Land Law passed by the Constituent Assembly at its single session of January 1918 and put it at the center of its rural propaganda and agitation.23 In principle, the January decree of the Constituent Assembly abolished private property in land and turned all land over to the land committees and organs of local self-

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government for distribution to citizens prepared to cultivate it by their own labor. Although Komuch was unsure that the disorderly seizure of land in 1917 and 1918 could justly be described as socialization and therefore proposed to reestablish the network of land committees that had collapsed under Bolshevik rule, the SRs had no real intention of reconsidering the results of the rural revolution of 1917 and 1918. Komuch’s other policies in the countryside built on this foundation of socialization. Like the land, the animals and agricultural equipment seized by the peasants would not be returned to their previous owners unless the local land committee ordered them to do so, which they did not. Komuch’s chief concession to the former landowners was its order of July 22 that the right to the harvest of the winter crop belonged to the sower, regardless of who now controlled the land. Komuch took this step mainly to preserve the grain from former estates for the upcoming procurement campaign. It decreed that the crop sown by private landowners and by those who had leased noncommunal land could be sold only to the state.24 The urge to enact the minimum program of the PSR that animated Komuch’s rural policies also inspired its industrial economic policy. In this respect, however, Komuch’s policies reflected the long-standing SR conviction that Russian industrial backwardness precluded an immediate leap into socialism. The SRs had opposed Bolshevik nationalization of the factories and banking system on these grounds, insisting that workers’ interests and the future of socialism could safely be protected by a panoply of regulatory measures limiting industrialists’ prerogatives. Although Komuch could now easily enact such regulatory measures and denationalize the banks, formidable practical and political barriers stood in the way of a speedy denationalization of industry. Many former owners of factories had fled Samara, and those that remained had allied themselves with the Kadet critics of Komuch, and some organizations and corporations that had owned factories had simply ceased to exist. Industrial workers, on whom Komuch counted for political support, could also be expected to look askance at the restoration of the old owners and factory directors. These considerations gave the SRs pause as they contemplated denationalization. The banks did not present the same practical and political problems as the factories in this regard, so Komuch moved quickly, on June 12, to restore the previous administration of the Samara Merchants’ Bank and local branches of Russian commercial banks.25 Otherwise, caution was the norm. Among Komuch’s first declarations of June 8 was a call for all organizations involved in the administration of factories and enterprises, such as the factory committees, to continue their work. The population at large, and the former factory owners in particular, were enjoined from abolishing or overthrowing them.26 The Soviet status quo in the factories was thus temporarily preserved. On July 9,

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Komuch formed a commission to oversee the denationalization of factories and enterprises. No property was to be returned to the former owners except by decision of the commission, and former owners who attempted to seize their property would be subject to prosecution. The membership of the commission, in which socialists outweighed the representatives of management, ensured that Komuch would control the pace and scope of denationalization.27 In August the government published general guidelines that set the conditions under which the previous owners of enterprises would be restored to their rights: owners were required to submit a summary of the enterprise’s future work, with a list of employees, and to assume responsibility for outstanding orders and debts of the enterprise. They were also obligated to reach a collective bargaining agreement with the workers, which was subject to confirmation by the Society of Factory-owners and Industrialists on the one side and the relevant trade union on the other. If the former owner refused to fulfill these conditions, the enterprise would be sequestered by the state.28 Denationalization of industrial enterprises proceeded more rapidly after the publication of these guidelines, but industries tied to the war effort were declared government monopolies and many enterprises were simply turned over to local government.29 To soften the impact of partial denationalization and the anticipated return to industrial capitalism, Komuch hoped to enact an array of laws and regulatory measures to protect workers. Komuch’s first steps preserved much of the Soviet legal framework for labor. All Soviet labor legislation issued before June 8 retained legal force, as did all collective bargaining agreements reached before Komuch’s assumption of power. The government also confirmed the legal status and rights of the factory committees, trade unions, and provincial Economic Council (Sovnarkhoz), in which Mensheviks moved in to replace the departed Bolsheviks.30 To enforce this labor legislation, Komuch formed a Department of Labor and expanded it to a ministry in August. The new Ministry of Labor, headed by the Menshevik Central Committee member Ivan Maiskii, was to review Soviet labor legislation and draft additional measures to protect workers under Komuch. In the six weeks that remained to Komuch, the Ministry of Labor issued a series of decrees that established unemployment insurance, instituted an eight-hour workday, and restored the prerevolutionary system of factory inspectors. These decrees could hardly be implemented and had little practical impact, but their more important political aim was persuade workers they had nothing to fear from Komuch and the return of some factory owners.31 The same aim, with more serious practical consequences, motivated Komuch’s decision to preserve the Workers’ Soviet. The shifting political mood among Samara workers in 1917 and 1918 mirrored that of workers in other Volga towns and provincial centers and underscores the difficulty that both the Provisional Government and Komuch faced in their efforts to stabilize a democratic,

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multiparty political order. Workers gravitated to the Bolsheviks in 1917 and joined soldiers to provide the principal social support for the establishment of Soviet power in Samara. The Bolsheviks handily won the elections to the Constituent Assembly in the city, polling 42 percent of the vote to the SRs’ 27 percent and the Kadets’ 14 percent.32 As elsewhere, however, the end of the World War battered Samara’s new industrial economy and shook Bolshevik popularity. The shutdown of military production shrank industrial employment in the city to fewer than fifteen thousand workers by June. The Bolsheviks retained significant support among Samara workers, but a local Bolshevik later recalled that the “political mood among the masses was far from favorable for Soviet power” in the spring of 1918. Many workers defected to the Mensheviks, SRs, and Maximalists or abandoned politics altogether.33 By late spring the Samara soviet’s claim to represent the popular mood was dubious. New soviet elections were scheduled for May, then postponed to June because of a Maximalist rebellion in the city in mid-May. The electoral statute permitted representation only for parties that accepted Soviet power, however, and the opposition began to organize a branch of the plenipotentiary movement.34 The erosion of Bolshevik support among workers mirrored the moribund state of the Bolshevik party organization. As the same local Bolshevik recalled, the active party membership shrank to twenty or thirty people by spring, barely sufficient to maintain an elementary control of the city administration.35 After the overthrow of the Bolsheviks in Samara, Komuch dissolved the Bolshevik-controlled soviet and replaced it with a Workers’ Conference. Elections to the conference produced a body that convened June 11 under solid Menshevik-SR control. To the left of the Mensheviks and SRs stood a sizable group of Social-Democratic Internationalists, while a thinly disguised faction of Bolsheviks and Left SRs comprised the far left wing of the conference. The Samara Bolshevik and Left SR organizations had gone underground during the Czechoslovak occupation of the city, but many local Bolsheviks and Left SRs gained election to the conference as “nonparty extreme leftists.” The first indication of the relative strength of the political parties in the conference came from the reading of the instructions (nakazy) with which the workers sent their representatives to the conference. Most endorsed the Constituent Assembly’s assumption of power, and only a few held out for Soviet power.36 At the next session the conference adopted a Menshevik resolution supporting Komuch and the principle of a democratic republic, declaring the workers’ goal the end of the civil war, and calling for the preservation of the Samara soviet as a nongovernmental body for the defense of worker interests. This Menshevik resolution received 362 votes; the competing resolution for the restoration of Soviet power, offered by the Bolshevik Aleksandrov, received 156.37 Fifty-three of the leftists

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thereupon denounced the conference as unrepresentative and illegitimate and demonstratively walked out of the next session.38 Despite these votes, the main practical issue considered by the conference in its first sessions in June suggests that its relations with Komuch were more problematic. The arrest of many Bolshevik and Soviet activists, Red Guards, and Red Army soldiers by Komuch, the Czechoslovak Legion, and units of the incipient People’s Army generated much discontent among delegates to the conference and pushed it into a series of confrontations with the authorities. The delegates complained about the arbitrary nature of the arrests and the severe overcrowding in the Samara prison, and they pressured Komuch to establish an investigative commission to inquire into the arrests and resolve the fate of the prisoners. Komuch set up such investigative commissions in Samara and elsewhere, although Klimushkin informed the Samara Conference that the commissions would not have the power to order the release of any prisoners.39 On July 4, Vol’skii himself came to the conference to defend the government’s resort to extrajudicial arrests and quell the delegates’ mounting discontent. He argued that “enemies” from the extreme left could not be allowed to organize freely within the democratic republic and emphasized that Komuch’s resort to coercion paled in comparison with the Bolsheviks’ use of terror. An unpersuaded delegate complained, in words that nicely capture the SRs’ dilemma in 1918: “You keep talking about the end of the civil war, but it keeps expanding.”40 On August 10 the Workers’ Conference gave way to a soviet of Workers’ Deputies elected under a statute drafted by the Executive Committee of the Workers’ Conference. Elections to the soviet took place at more than a hundred enterprises, at which about half of the twenty thousand eligible workers voted. They elected about two hundred delegates who joined delegates elected in the trade unions and other professional organizations to form a soviet of 274 delegates.41 Of this number, however, no more than 160 delegates took part in any plenary session of the soviet. On occasion, absenteeism among the delegates reached sufficient proportions to prevent a quorum, to the frustration of the soviet leadership. No evidence survives to explain this absenteeism, but it probably reflected workers’ uncertainty about the role of the soviet in the new order and their lack of interest in party politics, particularly as events dashed their hopes to bring the civil war to an early end. The first sessions of the soviet in mid-August produced a series of victories for the Menshevik and SR supporters of Komuch, although the vast majority of the delegates were in fact nonparty. The Menshevik A. I. Kabtsan was elected chairman of the soviet, and the soviet endorsed worker participation in the elections to the city Duma and recognized the nongovernmental status of the soviet.42 These votes revealed a Menshevik-SR bloc of roughly one hundred

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delegates and a pro-Bolshevik bloc of around fifty. Nevertheless, the issue of arrests continued to roil worker activists. At the second session of the soviet on August 15, a letter from the political prisoners being held in the Samara jail was read aloud to the assembled delegates. The imprisoned leftists welcomed the soviet and called on its delegates to renounce absenteeism and join forces across party lines to defend the revolution against the gathering onslaught of counterrevolution.43 At the session of August 30 the soviet assembled to elect an Executive Committee and adopt a resolution outlining its future course of action. One resolution, proposed by the Menshevik Solomon Lepskii, sketched the Menshevik view of the soviet as a class organ dedicated to preserving the workers’ gains in the revolution, and it called on the workers to rally around the Constituent Assembly. The Bolshevik A. I. Sokolov proposed a rival resolution in the name of the “nonparty and extreme left delegates.” His proposed resolution warned of approaching military dictatorship and called for the universal arming of workers, the end of martial law in Samara, the release of all political prisoners, and the restoration of all soviet laws and decrees. The Menshevik resolution passed in an open a vote by a tally of 80-70, but both resolutions were then voted again in a secret ballot. This time, the Bolshevik resolution passed by a vote of 8483. The resulting muddle was passed along to a commission of the soviet to resolve.44 These votes sounded the death knell of the soviet. The Executive Committee continued to meet, but the soviet did not again meet in plenary session under Komuch. Unnerved by the prospect of a Bolshevik majority in the soviet, Gendel’man editorialized somberly in the Samara SR organ Zemlia i volia: “There is no reason to repeat old mistakes. The soviets no longer assure unified action, since Bolsheviks are tolerated in their midst. We cannot march together with people who advance slogans about fighting for an unrealizable socialist revolution by unacceptable means that infringe on democracy; we cannot march with people who in the final accounting have betrayed the cause of the working class. They must be isolated. . . . We must abandon the soviets and build new nonparty political associations of the working class that stand for a platform of class struggle and popular sovereignty.”45 The decision to block further sessions of the Samara soviet buried the SRs’ hopes to remake the soviet into an independent, nongovernmental, class organization of the workers and enmesh it in the web of a democratic polity. Worker discontent elated the Samara Bolsheviks, who hoped to channel it to overthrow Komuch, but Bolshevik calls for “revolutionary action” on the part of the Samara workers went unanswered.46 Worker disorders in Kazan’ and Simbirsk suggest that the processes at work in Samara mirrored those in other regions of Komuch territory, although nowhere did the cooling of workers’ already

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lukewarm support for Komuch seriously threaten the government.47 Rather, the end of the soviet, and the clues it provides to the shifting mood among Volga workers, underscore the pressures toward authoritarianism and one-party dictatorship generated by both the depth of political division and the popular disengagement from party politics, as well as by the practices of the various combatants and the experience of civil war itself. Party Politics

The difficulty of building a multiparty, democratic order and the pressures pushing toward an authoritarian approach to state building may also be seen in the story of party politics in Komuch territory. Komuch’s claim to have inherited the legal authority of the Constituent Assembly elicited resistance across the non-Bolshevik Russian political spectrum. On the left, Martov and most of the national Menshevik leadership unambiguously refused to recognize Komuch as an embryonic Constituent Assembly or to sanction participation in it. Like their Bolshevik counterparts, the Menshevik leaders assumed that the Allies were the real force behind the Czechoslovak rebellion. They feared that the rebellion had opened a struggle among the imperialist powers for control of Russian resources and markets, a struggle in which each imperialist bloc would look to install compliant governments to serve its own interests. The Bolsheviks would be tempted into an even closer alliance with the Germans or court replacement with pro-German conservatives; on the other side of the front, it would only be a matter of time before reactionaries elbowed the SRs aside with the connivance of Allied representatives. These considerations reinforced the Menshevik leadership’s already strong resistance to any kind of armed struggle against the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks’ main goal was to bring the civil war to a rapid close, preserve the remnants of the party and worker organizations in the meantime, and avoid at all costs political “adventures” and participation in the carnage enveloping Russia.48 This policy put the Samara Mensheviks in a difficult position. Although the circulars that outlined the Menshevik Central Committee position were drawn up later, the Samara Mensheviks correctly sensed the party line and initially resolved not to participate in the new government. Most Samara Mensheviks nevertheless sympathized with Komuch and looked favorably on the SRs’ general political approach. By July this sympathy coalesced into a desire to take a position explicitly in favor of Komuch and play a more active role in its politics. A conference of Volga and Urals Menshevik organizations convened at the beginning of August resolved for full support of Komuch, in clear opposition to the Menshevik Central Committee. Although the Volga Mensheviks continued “in principle” to oppose participation in the Komuch government, their view that Komuch was defending the conquests of the revolution and was threatened

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by reactionary forces from the right justified assistance. The conference elected a Regional Committee of the Menshevik party for the territory of the Constituent Assembly that was to lead party work in Komuch territory. The committee was authorized to assist Komuch as long as it worked to enact “the democratic February slogans in a decisive struggle with the reaction.”49 A pro-Komuch outlook was not confined to the Menshevik committees of Komuch territory. Right Mensheviks at the national level sympathized with Komuch from its inception. One prominent right Menshevik, the Central Committee member and future Soviet diplomat Ivan Maiskii, defied the Central Committee and came to Samara to lend Komuch his support.50 Upon his arrival in Samara, Maiskii was offered the post of Minister of Labor in the Komuch government. He accepted the offer with the approval of the Menshevik Regional Committee, to the evident pleasure of the SRs, who were eager to bolster their standing among workers by appointment of a prominent Menshevik to head the ministry.51 Another Menshevik, V. L. Preobrazhenskii, assumed the post of Samara provincial plenipotentiary, while other party activists began to serve in the Samara ministries, which was a great help to the SRs in view of the severe shortage of administrative personnel supportive of the new regime.52 No Mensheviks, however, joined Komuch itself, because there were no Menshevik members of the Constituent Assembly present in Samara. From Moscow the Menshevik Central Committee resolutely opposed the pro-Komuch evolution of the Volga Menshevik organizations. When it learned of Maiskii’s entrance into Komuch, the Central Committee expelled him from its own ranks. This drew a vigorous protest from the Volga Regional Committee, but the Central Committee did not bend, and it in fact later expelled Maiskii from the party after the demise of Komuch.53 Nevertheless, the Central Committee was powerless to control the local Menshevik organizations of Komuch territory during the campaigns of the summer and fall of 1918. In practice the SR leadership of Komuch could depend on Menshevik loyalty and support throughout Komuch’s existence. This was more than it could count on from the right wing of its own party. In Moscow the bureau of the SR fraction of the Constituent Assembly, the bastion of the SR right wing, considered itself the legal guardian of the Assembly and looked suspiciously at Komuch’s effort to revive it. Most of the members of the bureau were surprised both by the formation of Komuch and by its claim to represent the Constituent Assembly. The most influential members—including Vadim Rudnev, Il’ia Fondaminskii, and Mark Vishniak—denounced Komuch as a splinter of the full Assembly with no legal right to act on its behalf. Most of these men were members of the Union of Regeneration, and they preferred the union’s plan for a coalition directory to lead the anti-Bolshevik cause for the duration of the civil war.54 The fraction bureau sent a nine-person delegation

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to the east to support the formation of a coalition all-Russian government and investigate the possibility of convening the Constituent Assembly, and it instructed the delegation not to stamp Komuch with the bureau or fraction’s seal of approval.55 The delegation was dominated by influential members of the Union of Regeneration (including Argunov and Avksent’ev), most of whom bypassed Komuch and went on to Siberia to explore alternatives to Komuch more in keeping with the ideas of the Union of Regeneration. Argunov arrived in Samara in early July. There he appeared in a dual role, representing both the delegation of the bureau and a delegation of the Union of Regeneration, which had sent him to the east with the SR Vladimir Pavlov and the Kadet Lev Krol’. Argunov denounced Komuch’s usurpation of the name of the Constituent Assembly, refused to join it, and pressed on to Cheliabinsk with Pavlov, who seconded his criticisms of Komuch.56 Another member of the delegation, Vissarion Gurevich, arrived shortly thereafter and informed Komuch that the bureau had conferred on the delegation alone the right to take the initiative in the convocation of the Constituent Assembly and the SR fraction of the Assembly. He communicated as well the bureau’s wish that the prospective all-Russian government include representatives of all democratic forces and its view that “moves or actions on the part of individual groups of members of the Constituent Assembly are undesirable.”57 Political groupings outside the PSR met Komuch’s claim to all-Russian power with even more skepticism than the right wing of the PSR. Nonsocialists—Kadets, Cossacks, officers, and others—never accepted the legitimacy of Komuch’s aspirations. Only one prominent nonsocialist political figure joined Komuch: A. I. Dutov, the Ataman of the Orenburg Cossacks, who had been fighting Bolshevik forces in territory adjacent to Komuch ever since the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917. Dutov came to Samara to join Komuch, much to the delight of the local officers. Komuch was highly suspicious of Dutov, but at least initially hoped to win him over. It appointed him its representative in Orenburg, but Dutov soon regretted having joined Komuch and shifted his allegiance to the Siberian government, which had become Komuch’s chief rival in the east.58 Otherwise, political groupings to the right of the PSR took a dim view of Komuch from the start. While Dutov hesitated and the Mensheviks trudged a tortuous path through internal division, the Kadets immediately rejected Komuch’s claim to all-Russian power. Kadet sentiments ran mainly in the direction of military dictatorship for the length of the civil war. Among nationally prominent Kadets, the National Center had nudged aside the party Central Committee by June 1918 and become the leading organ of Kadet political activity. Although it would have preferred a military dictatorship, the National

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Center agreed in June to support the Union of Regeneration’s plan for a coalition directory to assume the leadership of the eastern anti-Bolshevik front.59 Two Kadet emissaries set out for the Volga and Siberia in accord with that plan: Lev Krol’ on behalf of the Union of Regeneration (with the SRs Argunov and Pavlov) and the Central Committee member Viktor Pepeliaev on behalf of the National Center. Each communicated to local Kadets the national leadership’s negative attitude to Komuch, which happily coincided with the attitude of the local organizations themselves. Upon his arrival in Samara, Krol’ refused to join Komuch, despite intense pressure from the SRs. He shortly left for his native Ekaterinburg to organize the Provisional Urals Government.60 Pepeliaev likewise came to Samara and, before moving on to Siberia, lent his authority to the strident anti-Komuch line of the local Kadet committee and its organ Volzhskii den’.61 Thus emboldened, the Samara Kadets sparred regularly with Komuch. Several weeks after the coup, Klimushkin approached the Kadets, as well as the Samara Mensheviks, to explore the possibility of their participation in the Komuch government. These talks, between Klimushkin and P. P. Podbel’skii, the chairman of the Samara Kadet Committee, revealed the irreconcilability of the SR and Kadet positions. The SRs insisted that the Constituent Assembly be the sole source of any government, which the Kadets, not surprisingly, found unacceptable.62 The SRs and Kadets also divided bitterly over agrarian policy. The Kadets demanded that Komuch renounce the Constituent Assembly’s Land Law, which abolished private property in land and effectively sanctioned the peasant seizure of privately held land. Podbel’skii and the Samara Kadets argued that private property in land should be restored unequivocally. Although he recognized that Komuch was powerless to confiscate the land from the peasants and return it to its previous owners, Podbel’skii insisted that Komuch not give peasants legal cover and preclude a future, definitive solution by a new Constituent Assembly. There was no chance of the SRs accepting this Kadet condition, which flew in the face of their hope that a radical land policy would harness peasant support for Komuch and provide a social base for a socialist, anti-Bolshevik state. The negotiations, whose prospects were never very good, collapsed, and relations between Komuch and the Samara Kadets deteriorated badly.63 They reached a low in late August, when Komuch arrested a prominent local Kadet, Aleksandr Korobov, for an article he published in Volzhskii den’ forcefully denying the legitimacy of Komuch’s claim to all-Russian power and effectively calling for a dictatorship.64 By August it had become clear that the SRs’ hopes to build and stabilize a pluralist and democratic order on the Volga were not meeting success. Komuch was de facto a one-party state, and the exigencies of civil war were pushing it toward coercion and authoritarian solutions in ways it had not anticipated. The

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most important pressure in this direction, however, derived neither from the shifting mood among Samara workers nor from the bitter contestations among increasingly weak political parties. It derived instead from the variety of challenges that Komuch faced among peasants, on whom it had staked great hopes early in the summer. Grain Procurement

Like other governments during the civil war, Komuch needed to project its power into the countryside, beyond the front region, towns, and railroads to which its day-to-day authority was largely confined. In particular, its success depended crucially, like that of other civil war governments, on its ability to extract grain and conscripts from the countryside. The interface between state authority and the peasant population thus offered a test of the SRs’ ability to mobilize what they saw, and what Bolsheviks and many others saw, as their natural constituency. At the same time, that interface—with its obvious potential for friction, coercion, and authoritarian solutions—posed an ever-present threat to reshape the moderate, democratic polity that SRs hoped to build.65 Securing an adequate food supply for the cities and army, a process that contributed powerfully to the development of Soviet authoritarianism in 1918, proved less difficult for Komuch than it did for the Bolsheviks. Komuch was fortunate to come to power in one of most fertile provinces of Russia, long a major exporter of grain. All of the provinces that Komuch controlled were traditionally grain-surplus provinces, although the poor harvest of 1917 and the economic dislocations of war and revolution had left many of the Volga towns with bread shortages. The SRs initially preserved the state monopoly on grain purchases and the system of urban bread rationing they inherited from the Bolsheviks, but they were confident that shortages in bread and other food supplies could be alleviated by abandoning forced requisitioning and freeing the price that state purchasing agents paid peasants for their grain. In Samara they decided in June to lift temporarily all restrictions on the import of grain to the city and to permit legal trade in grain and flour at market prices. The price of grain skyrocketed with the abolition of fixed prices and the reemergence of a legal market, and the food supply in Samara actually worsened briefly. In early July the Samara City Food Supply Committee was forced to reduce the daily bread ration to a quarter-pound. The situation soon improved, however, and the ration was increased to a half-pound at the end of the month. Thereafter, bread shortages in Samara did not again became acute in the period of Komuch’s rule, although prices remained high and the possibility of severe shortages remained a concern.66 More daunting was the prospect of organizing a procurement campaign as peasants brought in their harvest at the end of the summer. The harvest of 1918,

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by contrast with that of 1917, was an excellent crop in Samara and the other provinces of the upper Volga. This helped alleviate the pressure on the food supply already in early fall, but the larger procurement campaign posed a great financial, institutional, and political challenge for Komuch’s Ministry of Food Supply, headed by Valentin Almazov, an SR delegate to the Constituent Assembly from Simbirsk province. The upper Volga provinces were cut off from their traditional export markets, and Komuch had little access to manufactured goods that it might trade with the countryside. Komuch also found itself in a difficult financial predicament. For both economic and political reasons Komuch was committed to allowing the price of grain to float. A high purchase price offered the best way to persuade peasants to part with their crop and to support the government, but Almazov estimated that the procurement of grain alone would cost about three billion rubles, which he termed an “astronomical figure” for Komuch.67 Komuch’s rural governmental institutions, the provincial and district zemstvos, were also too weak to undertake a campaign that Almazov anticipated would be enormously difficult: “The food supply question, like the land question, is an extraordinarily confused and tense question in which it will hardly be possible to avoid coercive measures, and occasionally direct repressive actions, a path that the zemstvos are unlikely to take in most localities. To count on this year’s food supply developing in a normal and painless manner because of the large harvest means not to consider all the factors shaping the upcoming procurement campaign.”68 Komuch hoped to overcome the financial and institutional challenges of procurement by turning to private and cooperative credit institutions and setting up grain councils (khlebnye sovety) to coordinate and regulate the campaign in each province. The councils consisted of representatives of the cooperatives, local self-government, the army, and commercial institutions. They would supervise a campaign in which the state monopoly on grain purchases would be suspended and cooperatives, banks, and private traders would be entrusted with the purchasing of grain. Almazov understood, however, that the financial resources of the cooperatives were limited, and that merchants and banks were likely to be cautious with their scarce capital.69 Although Almazov floated fantastic schemes for organizing a commodity exchange with Soviet Russia, his comments suggest that he was well aware that the procurement campaign was likely to turn coercive and that Komuch needed to prepare for that eventuality. As he put it in early September, drawing a suggestive analogy and making plain the stakes of the procurement campaign if Komuch hoped to advance into European Russia: “Just as a War Ministry, in preparing for war, must accumulate a huge quantity of weapons, shells, and other equipment, so must the Ministry of Food Supply procure as much grain as possible, remembering well that the consolidation of the power of the

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Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly in the starving provinces will depend on its ability to feed those provinces.”70 Market measures, he suggested, would not suffice. Later in the month Almazov conceded in a speech to the Samara Provincial Peasants’ Congress: “At present the procurement campaign is being extraordinarily complicated, and even paralyzed, by the financial complications that [Komuch] is experiencing.”71 In fact, like the Red Army, the People’s Army turned increasingly to requisitioning over the course of the summer. Army units requisitioned grain, other food products, and horses as they moved through the countryside, and they imposed carting obligations on the local villagers. By September peasants’ opposition to requisitioning, and their resulting hostility to the People’s Army generally, became one of the principal themes of the mood reports prepared by Komuch’s Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda. Peasants complained that the People’s Army made impossible carting demands and that they “got the whip” when they asked for documents legitimizing the army’s requests or objected in any way. Army units seized geese, ducks, and grain and did not pay for them or paid too low a price; they took horses and refused to provide receipts; and everywhere, they beat up village elders and other peasants when the villagers did not satisfy their demands.72 In some villages peasants resisted violently, attacking requisitioning detachments and the punitive detachments sent out in their wake.73 At a peasants’ congress in Samara in September, many speakers reported on the “extraordinary situation” that had developed on the ground in connection with requisitioning. A sympathetic reporter summarized their stories: “arrests, executions, and all sorts of measures of retribution have become so common, that the peasant population is literally terrorized.”74 The behavior of the Czechoslovak Legion was widely reported to be much better than that of the People’s Army, and many villagers made a distinction between the Legion and Komuch’s own forces.75 The latter became almost universally unpopular in the Russian villages of Samara and Ufa provinces. As one Komuch agitator conceded with wry understatement: “The flogging of peasants makes a very unfavorable impression.”76 By the time Komuch evacuated Samara in early October in advance of the Red Army’s occupation of the city, the pressures for an authoritarian solution to the problem of food supply had already begun to make themselves felt. It was left to the advancing Bolsheviks to deal with the full burden of those pressures, but it was also the Bolsheviks who reaped the benefits of the harvest of 1918. In this respect the Red Army’s success in pushing the Eastern front into the grain-surplus provinces of Komuch in the early fall of 1918 can scarcely be overestimated. Samara province alone supplied roughly a quarter of the grain procured by the Soviet state in the procurement campaign of 1918 and 1919.77 Had the Czechoslovak Legion and the People’s Army held the front for several

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months, or pushed it forward and opened the way for Komuch to procure the grain of all the upper Volga provinces, the Bolsheviks would have found themselves in a precarious position indeed in the winter of 1918–19. For its part, however, Komuch would likely have emerged from that outcome reshaped in significant ways by coercive practices that its leaders had hoped to avoid. Conscription

If the challenges of grain procurement laid bare the social and economic pressures pushing Komuch and other civil war governments toward authoritarianism, conscription underscored the importance of mobilization as well as coercion in civil war state building. In the early summer, other than the Czechoslovak Legion, the fighting on both sides of the Eastern front was principally the domain of the small volunteer units on each side—Red Guards and Latvian Riflemen on the Soviet side, and the volunteer units of the People’s Army led by Kappel’, Boris Fortunatov, and Fedor Makhin on the Komuch side. The military and political leadership on each side understood, however, that conscription offered the only road to larger armies. The Soviet leadership, it will be recalled, had responded to the formation of the Eastern front by abandoning the effort to build the Red Army on a volunteer basis and turning to conscription on May 29. Komuch announced the draft in its territory on June 30, mobilizing all men born in the years 1897 and 1898. In principle, the draft would provide over one hundred twenty thousand troops, which the Komuch General Staff planned to organize in five territorially based divisions.78 On paper, the draft did not produce a bad result. According to Klimushkin, about 75 percent of the draftees showed up at the district recruiting stations, which produced 121,000 troops nominally on the rolls of the People’s Army.79 Other memoirists more persuasively recall a lower turnout, but the evidence gathered by the Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda, which was tasked with assisting recruitment, does suggest that nominal compliance with the draft was more common than direct resistance.80 Even Klimushkin acknowledged, however, that the People’s Army sent at most fifteen thousand troops to the front, because of a terrible shortage of weapons and, especially, because of mass desertion on the part of the conscripts.81 Nominal compliance followed by rapid desertion, in fact, was peasants’ principal means of dealing with the draft. It was far less dangerous than an outright refusal to provide conscripts, which risked the dispatch of troops or a punitive detachment, and it fit into a larger complex of strategies that villagers adopted as they sought to stay out of the civil war and minimize the risks of retribution at the hands of the combatants. To be sure, villages and volosti openly resisting the draft dotted Komuch territory. In four neighboring volosti in Buguruslan district, for instance, the

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peasants reacted “extremely hostilely” to the first visit by an agitator to inform them of the draft. The peasants proclaimed in chorus that the Bolsheviks had not carried out a mobilization, and a mobilization now would only serve to help the “bourgeois” (burzhui) confiscate the land. The villagers unequivocally denounced Komuch in the belief that it contained Kadets and bourgeois. A meeting of the draftees from the four volosti resolved not to submit to the mobilization. Their explanation of their reasons for refusing mobilization is worth quoting at length: “The authorities (vlasti) currently existing among us draft us for the defense of the motherland and the Constituent Assembly from the still existing Bolshevik volost’ [sic]. We, however, finding that this draft has been declared and is being carried out on the principles of party struggle, which we as the non-party and completely exhausted peasantry are not capable of supporting with our forces; and being perplexed that these parties unceasingly fight among themselves while every one of them at every step and in every appeal they publish strives for and promises the common good for us peasants, which we to the present time have still not seen.”82 The draftees instead declared the need to mobilize all peasants up to the age of forty-five for the defense of peasant interests. Agitators reported that peasants in these volosti openly declared their support for Soviet power as the authorities tried in vain to push through the mobilization.83 More common was for villagers to comply with the draft in a manner that agitators described as “sluggish” or “reluctant,” and for the draftees to desert at the first opportunity, typically before they had been dispatched to the front.84 This greatly reduced the risk that the army command would dispatch a punitive detachment to the village. The activities of punitive detachments of the People’s Army ranged from forcing through conscription and the mobilization of horses to the execution of supposed Bolshevik agitators and former Soviet activists. Komuch dispatched a punitive detachment to Natal’inskaia volost’ after the resolution of the four volosti quoted above, though it departed without carrying out any executions or arrests.85 Other peasants were not so fortunate. One punitive detachment formed a field court-martial in Buzuluk on August 18. Over the course of a two-week tour through Buzuluk district, the detachment shot thirteen people, usually one or two in each village it visited. Several of the executed had held positions in the volost’ soviets or were described vaguely as “former commissars.” The remainder were accused of engaging in pro-Soviet agitation or of having ties to the Bolshevik underground.86 Such punitive detachments operated throughout Komuch territory. In view of the brutality of punitive detachments, particularly those composed of Orenburg Cossacks, it made good sense for peasants to eschew open, collective defiance in favor of nominal compliance to the draft and subsequent desertion. Peasants were well aware that outright refusal to submit to conscrip-

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tion pushed a confrontation with the authorities on to unfavorable ground. It was far better, and more characteristic of the peasant outlook, to improvise “weapons of the weak” to deal with the demands of the state and the dangers of civil war.87 As one Komuch agitator nicely put it: “There is an undoubted desire to ‘outsmart’ (perekhitrit’). They say, ‘maybe it will be possible to get out of it (otboiarit’sia) and they will make do without us.’”88 Of course, to emphasize that peasants resorted to weapons of the weak is not to deny that they ultimately possessed real power. All of the combatants were eventually forced to accommodate themselves to peasant preferences in various ways, and the Bolshevik introduction of the New Economic Policy at the end of the civil war effectively ratified peasants’ power in Soviet Russia. The capacity of individual villages to resist specific demands that the state was prepared to enforce was nevertheless severely limited. Peasants were understandably reluctant to challenge the army directly and risk bringing the full brunt of punishment on themselves. Peasants’ hope to “outsmart” the warring sides sheds light on various strategies they pursued for dealing with the People’s Army and the civil war. Komuch, it should be recalled, had initially hoped to recruit volunteers for the People’s Army and avoid a draft entirely. It had switched to a draft only when it became clear that large numbers of volunteers would not be forthcoming, particularly from the countryside. Peasants’ reluctance to volunteer for the People’s Army was mainly a function of their hope not to fight in the civil war at all, but many peasants explained to recruiters that a draft would be preferable, because it would offer them cover in the event of a Bolshevik return. In Ufa province the provincial head of agitation for the army reported this and added that “forced conscription will be met completely calmly and even positively, as a sign of a strong government (tverdoi vlasti).”89 Later in the fall in the same province, when Komuch tried to organize additional volunteer detachments, the same outlook prevailed. Peasants told an agitator looking for volunteers, “No one will go, but let there be a draft, otherwise the Bolshevik will put an end to us.”90 Of course, the same peasants could well find additional reasons not to fight once the draft was organized. In most cases peasants’ appeal for conscription was in fact an evasive, nonconfrontational way to stall the authorities—a classic weapon of the weak—but it reflected as well their efforts to protect themselves from retribution as the civil war unfolded. The same peasant strategy was on display even more curiously after Komuch switched to a draft in July. Pointing out a widespread phenomenon, the head of the Samara district section of the Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda reported: “It is characteristic that the peasants themselves ask that armed detachments be sent to them. This is explained by the fact that they are scared of the Bolsheviks’ return and revenge for giving ‘volunteers.’”91 Another agitator reported from Saratov province: “Many of the mobilized asked to

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send them at least a small detachment of armed men so that they could justify themselves in front of the Red Guards, if they came to the village.”92 A report from Ufa province noted: “The peasantry wanted this armed force as a fiction, without which it did not dare give up its sons, fearing having to answer for it in the event of a return of the Bolsheviks.”93 This is not to suggest that all cases of detachments being sent to the villages to carry out the draft were fictitious. Many certainly were not, and even where they were initially sent as a fiction, they could easily arouse peasant dissatisfaction if they were too forceful, as the same report from Ufa conceded. Nor should we take at face value peasants’ references to their fear of the Bolsheviks. They distrusted all the combatants, as other evidence makes clear, and most villagers probably feared a Bolshevik return less than they distrusted the People’s Army, which was actually present. But reference to the Bolshevik danger delayed the departure of recruits while keeping negotiations with the People’s Army within acceptable bounds. And in the event Komuch dispatched an armed force, the villagers would indeed have a story they could cite later to justify their delivery of the conscripts. Peasants and the Politics of Civil War

Desertion, delay, and efforts to “outsmart” the authorities were peasants’ principal responses to the military demands of Komuch. What do they suggest about peasants’ larger understanding of the civil war, Soviet power, and Komuch itself? The SR leaders, of course, were curious to find out and to mold peasant opinion if at all possible. This was the principal task of the Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda, which Komuch created at the beginning of August to conduct propaganda and agitation in the villages in connection with the draft. Already prior to the establishment of the department, Komuch had created a network of travelling rural agitators who supplied the government with regular reports on the peasants’ political mood.94 Inheriting many of the agitators already in place, Komuch expanded the network of agitators to most of its provinces by the end of August. Before packing them off to the countryside, the Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda gave the agitators a brief training and supplied them with literature for distribution among the peasants. Over the course of the summer, the department produced 835,000 pamphlets in Russian and an additional 150,000 in minority languages. Its newspaper, Narod, appeared daily in runs of six thousand and was distributed free of charge. Provincial sections of the department supplemented these materials from Samara with newspapers and pamphlets of their own.95 In addition to the work of the Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda, the People’s Army established a Department of Agitation and Recruitment that made regular efforts to ascertain the peasants’ mood.

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The reports prepared under these various auspices afford a sense, elusive in most sources of the period, of peasants’ political outlook in Komuch territory in the summer and fall of 1918.96 They pose numerous interpretive challenges, however. In the first place peasants’ reluctance to share their views with outsiders, which was both a deep-seated feature of peasant political culture and a sensible tactic during the civil war, made it difficult for traveling agitators to determine how peasants truly felt. Moreover, the Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda, as its name suggests, was responsible not only for gathering information about the peasant mood, but also for enlightening peasants about Komuch, the civil war, and the importance of service in the People’s Army and, in a larger sense, bringing a populist conception of “culture” to the village. This put the agitators in a contradictory position. One reported that the peasants treated him as a “bureaucrat” carrying out his obligations. The only way to find out peasants’ views was to represent himself as a traveler happening to come through the village.97 Other agitators observed that peasants understood their discussions of Komuch and its policies as “orders from the authorities” and complained that peasants were “accustomed to agreeing with agitators.”98 Echoing the approach generations of peasants had taken with imperial officialdom, peasants also invoked their supposed ignorance (temnota) to avoid contradicting the agitators when they preferred not to fulfill his requests. In a village in Ufa province peasants who were reluctant to provide draftees told an agitator: “[We are] exhausted and terrified, our heads are spinning, we do not understand anything.”99 In Simbirsk province villagers used similar language to resist giving horses to the army, asserting that they were “ignorant and [did] not understand anything in this party struggle.”100 In the village of Starye uzeli in Samara province peasants told an agitator: “We are an ignorant people and do not interfere in politics. We wish we had bread, and we have no interest in politics.” The evasions and protective functions of this rhetoric are well illustrated by the fact that these same villagers had in fact recently attacked an army detachment sent to the village to requisition horses. Young peasants beat up the leader of the detachment and threw him in a local river. He did not drown, but the peasants killed him, stripped him, and buried him naked in the forest. When a punitive detachment subsequently came to the village, they attacked it as well. The detachment overpowered the villagers, killed about thirty, and burned down more than a hundred peasant huts.101 Generations of imperial officials and estate owners would have been unsurprised by these accounts of peasants’ efforts to manipulate clichés about the ignorance of the village and by the peasants’ efforts to anticipate what the agitators wanted to hear.102 Komuch’s agitators also struggled with the fact that the questions that shaped their inquiries in the village reflected an understanding of the civil war

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that had little meaning to peasants. In part this stemmed from the striking degree to which the communication links between the village and towns had been disrupted by the revolution, the breakdown of the economy and transportation system, and the civil war itself. In a village less than ten miles outside Samara, for instance, an agitator who arrived in the third week of July (six weeks after the overthrow of the Bolsheviks in Samara) was the first to tell the peasants of the fall of Soviet power and the formation of Komuch.103 Another agitator reported from Ufa province that the total isolation of the village dated to the period of Bolshevik rule, when mail delivery had ceased and the telegraph in the district center had been cut off. This remained the case in early August, he added, which meant that many villages had no idea about the change in regime.104 Through the autumn surprised agitators reported to their superiors in Samara and Ufa that the peasants were entirely unaware of the nature and purposes of the new government.105 Pressed by Samara to elucidate the peasants’ “attitude to the government,” the agitators reported to their dismay that even when the peasants knew something about Komuch, they did not have a political orientation in this sense. One agitator who was asked about the peasants’ “attitude to the present government” responded simply that they had no attitude.106 The same organizer in Ufa summarized many reports when he observed: “Almost all agitators stress that until their arrival, a whole set of questions almost did not exist. Among them are questions that we are already sick and tired of, such as the questions of the Czechoslovaks, the Allies, the present government, and the internal meaning of the civil war.”107 This was brought home in dramatic fashion to an agitator in the village of Kiriushkino, in Samara province. Upon arriving in the village, the agitator convened a meeting that all the local peasants attended. His efforts to talk about “current events,” however, elicited only a “deathly silence.” Only when he turned to a discussion of land policy did peasants display any interest. All the peasants started shouting and arguing, asking him to solve their disagreements over whether villagers with sufficient land should be forced to share their land with others and whether to divide communal land according to total population or by counting only the males.108 Peasant concerns, not surprisingly, focused on land policy, conscription, and the behavior of army units passing through the countryside, although their efforts both to manipulate the agitators and to stay out of the civil war nevertheless testify to an awareness of the wider political context in which they found themselves. For these various reasons it is important not to attach too much significance to the results of the agitators’ efforts to record and quantify peasant political opinion. Typical of such tabulations was a report by the head of the Samara district Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda, who informed his provincial superiors in September that reports from the volosti in his district

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suggested that six of the volosti positively supported Komuch, nine were sympathetic, three were opposed, and in two the attitude of the peasants was unclear.109 These proportions of reported support and hostility to Komuch are broadly representative of the information that flowed to Samara from the localities. Agitators were able to identify pro-Soviet villages and volosti through Samara, Saratov, and Ufa provinces, and young peasants were widely reported as more likely than their elders to support the Bolsheviks.110 For the most part however, the agitators reported that peasants were generally sympathetic to the Constituent Assembly and the new authorities. Because peasants did not attach much significance to general statements about the “current political moment” and were wary of openly disagreeing with the agitators, however, the agitators’ reports are of limited value. Peasants’ outlook and strategies are better deduced from their actions and from the rumors that circulated in Komuch territory than from the agitators’ efforts to fix their orientations to Komuch and Soviet power or to elicit negative statements about the Bolsheviks. In some places there does seem to have been real hostility to the Soviet state, which was usually connected with violence and requisitioning on the part of the Soviet authorities before the arrival of the Czechoslovak Legion. In a village in Birsk district, Ufa province, for instance, peasants demanded that the police turn over the local Bolsheviks who had been arrested after the fall of Soviet power. When they refused, the villagers broke down the door, dragged the Bolsheviks onto the street, and lynched them on the spot.111 Throughout the district another agitator reported: “The name Bolshevik is equivalent to death.” Peasants’ hatred was linked with the fact that Bolshevik punitive detachments had operated in the area before the Czechoslovak rebellion.112 Another village in Khvalynsk district (Saratov province) was hostile to Soviet power and stood out from the villages of a largely pro-Bolshevik district. The Komuch agitator connected this with Bolsheviks having beaten up the local priest and some peasants, extorted contributions from traders at the market, and accumulated stocks of weapons with which to terrorize the population.113 In Sterlitamak district of Ufa province an agitator observed that peasants were “strongly hostile to the agents of Soviet power—commissars, Red Guards [who] by means of their lawlessness and arbitrariness left such a bad memory of themselves that now the title ‘commissar’ or ‘Red Guard’ elicits deep indignation from the peasants.”114 On the whole, however, Komuch uncovered relatively little animus against the Bolsheviks, and it certainly had little success mobilizing peasants for civil war. Peasants did not usually express open support for Soviet power, but they did give frequent voice to their unwillingness to participate in the civil war, which many cast as a war between the political parties. In Simbirsk province peasants told an agitator urging mobilization that “a fight between the parties is going on, and we are ignorant (temnye) nonparty people, and therefore it is

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not desirable to participate in the civil war, since in it brothers are forced to kill brothers.”115 Peasants in Samara province told an agitator: “Stop this party war, why should we fight the Bolsheviks, tell them to quit. . . . You will leave and the Bolsheviks will come and slaughter us.”116 Another agitator in the same province recorded the peasant view in similar terms: “civil war is not necessary and it would be possible to avoid it if not for the parties.”117 Or as a peasant phrased it to another agitator: “There is grain and thank God and whoever needs these guards, let them go ahead and fight. We are on the sideline.”118 Many agitators recorded such sentiments and argued that pro-Bolshevik agitators played a role in spreading them. Some peasants, in resisting Komuch’s bid for their support, did so in language suggesting Bolshevik agitation, as when they complained that Komuch wanted them to fight in a “fratricidal war with the Red Guards.” The agitator who reported these sentiments added, however: “In all the villages of this region, mention of the parties elicited indignation. ‘These have betrayed us and those have betrayed us.’ This is the collective voice of the peasantry.”119 It is hard to say how much such statements reflected peasants’ genuine views and how much they cast peasants’ unwillingness to fight for the People’s Army in a way that would be acceptable to the agitators. On the whole the evidence suggests that peasants indeed saw little reason to fight in the civil war but that most peasants’ preference not to fight was nevertheless more closely bound up with their understanding of Soviet power than they were willing to acknowledge to the agitators. The chief evidence for this lies in the rumors that circulated throughout Komuch territory. Rumor can offer a window on the hidden transcripts of resistance that peasants and other subordinate groups are typically reluctant to express openly.120 Many agitators commented on the pervasiveness and importance of rumors. One reported that “rumors have much greater success than any official information,” and another claimed that the village “lived by rumors.”121 Some rumors concerned the composition of Komuch, which was widely believed to contain Kadets and burzhui. The Czechoslovak Legion, about which peasants had very little information, was the subject of the most extravagant rumors. Many peasants had no idea who the Czechoslovaks were, while others thought the Legion was a political party.122 Other peasants reported that local landowners had hired the Czechoslovaks to punish the peasants for seizing their land.123 A common cycle of rumors centered on the idea that the Czechoslovak Legion had been hired by the estate owners and the bourgeoisie to return the land to its former owners and to reestablish the prerevolutionary social order. At a village meeting in Buguruslan district debating mobilization, for example, peasants from a neighboring village arrived to agitate against the mobilization, which would entail “fighting with your own brothers.” The Czechoslovaks, they

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claimed, had been hired to defend the capitalists’ interests. The Constituent Assembly had issued an order returning the land to the estate owners, and it intended soon to reestablish the autocracy and put the capitalists in charge.124 The language of these rumors (particularly references to capitalists and burzhui) suggest that peasants were not cut off from the wider world of revolutionary politics.125 Rumors were undoubtedly spread not only by Bolshevik sympathizers, but also by Cossacks, officers of the People’s Army, and the estate owners themselves, who insinuated to peasants that the land would be returned to private ownership soon or even that the government had ordered the peasants immediately to return it.126 Nevertheless, the origin of rumors and their initial content were less important than the fact that rumors fell on fertile ground and were elaborated by peasants in ways that reflected their deep anxieties about the civil war and the future of the land redistribution of 1917 and 1918.127 Such rumors were extremely difficult for Komuch to combat. Despite agitators’ efforts to publicize Komuch’s commitment to the abolition of private ownership in land, rumors about the future of the land circulated incessantly. Peasants, moreover, were highly sensitive to any actions of the former estate owners that suggested an intention to take possession of their former land or to reestablish the prerevolutionary social order. Petitions of former estate owners to the land committees for the return of confiscated animals and agricultural equipment, for instance, quickly aroused peasant fears not only about that inventory, but about the land as well.128 In Stavropol’ district, Samara province, a local estate owner, V. G. Shapron, served as an officer in the People’s Army, which sent him and the detachment he commanded to the district to requisition horses. The presence of Shapron sufficed to arouse the peasants. Shapron, moreover, mobilized the horses that had previously belonged to his family and had been seized by the peasants. The peasants interpreted this as a “return to the old ways.” The episode naturally reinforced their fears about the land they had seized from Shapron, fueled rumors about the estate owners generally, and increased pro-Soviet sentiment in the villages of this district.129 Agitators elsewhere reported similar episodes in which peasants suspected that estate owners and others associated with the Old Regime were signaling their intentions or the plans of the new government. In a village in Ufa province, for example, a riot broke out against the mobilization of recruits when peasants learned that a former local land commandant was serving as an army commander in the region.130 Even the mere fact of organizing the People’s Army could set off peasant fears. As one agitator complained: “The majority of the population not only does not understand politics, but is positively indifferent to the needs of the state. Only personal interests are important to it, and it sees in the calls to enter the People’s Army a return to the old ways.”131 Peasants’ interpretation of the formation of the People’s Army as a sign of a

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possible “return to the old ways,” of course, suggests a highly attuned political engagement that the agitator missed in his conventional lament about peasants’ political ignorance and indifference. Rumors and fears about the future of the confiscated land especially suggest that even where agitators recorded sympathetic attitudes toward Komuch, peasants’ refusal to fight for the People’s Army or against the Red Army was not simply a function of their stated desire to stay out of a civil war that they identified with the political parties. It reflected as well their identification of Soviet power with the rural revolution of 1917 and 1918, which made it very difficult for the SRs to mobilize peasants against the Soviet state and Red Army. The chief exception to this generalization was the pattern of responses to Komuch in the non-Russian villages of Samara and Ufa provinces. Among Bashkir, Chuvash, Mordva, and Tatar peasants the fact that war with Soviet Russia could be mapped in national terms made it much easier to mobilize the population. Throughout Komuch’s territory the non-Russian section of the population—most importantly Tatars and Bashkirs, but also the Chuvash and Mordva villagers—displayed much greater willingness to fight the Red Army than did the Russian peasants. The non-Russian villages were uniformly more sympathetic to Komuch than the Russian villages, while villages cited as proBolshevik were almost invariably Russian. This division can be most clearly seen in the reports on Buguruslan district, one of the best covered by the reports of the Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda. The agitators fixed the general political orientation of eighteen Chuvash or mostly Chuvash villages, of which seventeen were reported to favor the Constituent Assembly and only one to favor of Soviet power. In the Mordva and mostly Mordva villages with an identifiable outlook, six supported Komuch, one was pro-Bolshevik, and one was reported to have a Bolshevik element. All four Tatar villages for which information was available were reported to be pro-Komuch. In the Russian villages in the same district, the picture was quite different: six were reported to support Komuch, five to support the Bolsheviks, fifteen had some pro-Bolshevik sentiment, and two were indifferent.132 This national divide was not limited to general statements of peasant support, whose importance should not be overestimated. In most of the Chuvash, Mordva, and Tatar villages the draft was much more successful than in the Russian villages, and the Russian villages proved more reluctant to send draftees even where they professed support for Komuch.133 The differences between Russian and non-Russian opinion ran throughout Komuch territory. An agitator reported from Khvalynsk district that “the Tatars have a significantly better attitude both to the power of the Constituent Assembly and to the question of the mobilization” than the Russians.134 In Bugul’ma district, Samara province, an agitator reported in September that the

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draft had gone well in the Tatar villages and had met resistance only in some Russian villages.135 In the Tatar and Bashkir villages of Buzuluk district, also in Samara province, the Tatars and Baskhirs were reported to support Komuch “passionately.” According to the agitator, Baskhirs encountered resistance from Russian villagers who refused to send soldiers to Komuch and threatened the Bashkir villagers if the latter did.136 Throughout Ufa province as well, the Bashkirs enthusiastically supported Komuch and were strongly anti-Bolshevik. Of all the national minorities of the upper Volga, they displayed much the greatest interest in fighting the Red Army. Even where the draft was not carried out, they volunteered for the People’s Army and complained that others were avoiding service. One agitator approvingly quoted a Bashkir on the Bolsheviks: “We must put an end to [them]. [They] are terrible scoundrels.”137 Komuch’s greater success among the non-Russian peasants reflected the growth of national movements among the non-Russian populations of the upper Volga before and during 1917 and the support that Komuch enjoyed from those national movements, especially the Bashkirs. In 1917 the SR call for federalism and national-cultural autonomy for the non-Russian nationalities had earned it broad support among the national movements of the Volga and Urals.138 Support for Komuch in 1918 also reflected patterns of landholding that dated to the Old Regime. Most non-Russian peasants had historically been state or crown peasants with much higher allotments of land than was typical of the Russian peasants who had been serfs before Emancipation.139 Because there were fewer private estates and private landholdings leased to peasants, villagers were much less invested in the land seizures of 1917 and 1918 and did not share the Russian villagers’ anxiety about the return of private landowning. Moreover, in the Bashkir regions of Ufa province and elsewhere, the imperial government had accelerated Russian colonial settlement at the end of the nineteenth century. This impinged on the Bashkirs’ ability to sustain their nomadic, or seminomadic, mode of subsistence, which required much more land than agriculture alone. Bashkirs greeted 1917 with the expectation that the revolution would return to the land they had lost to colonists in the preceding decades, and the Provisional Government’s refusal to do so played an important role in catalyzing the development of the Bashkir national movement.140 The Tide Turns

Komuch’s inability to mobilize the Russian peasant population of the upper Volga for civil war left the Czechoslovaks, the Bashkirs, and the small volunteer units under Kappel’, Fortunatov, and Makhin as the only reliable forces on the Eastern front. After the seizure of Kazan’ by the Legion and Kappel’s volunteer unit in August, the situation on the Volga front steadily deteriorated. The number of Red troops on the Eastern front rose to seventy thousand by September 15

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and exceeded a hundred thousand men by early October. The Red Army’s enormous advantages in men and artillery soon took their toll. On September 10 the Red Fifth Army, supported by the Second Army, retook Kazan’ and opened a general Red offensive along the whole front.141 Under the impact of this military pressure, Komuch’s position in the countryside deteriorated even further, because the defeats the Czechoslovaks and volunteer units suffered against the Red Army made peasants even more reluctant to cooperate with Komuch. Deserters flooded home to their villages in the autumn and lived openly in the territories in which Komuch still held power. They spread rumors that they had been released from the army by their officers and terrorized anyone who urged support for the Komuch authorities.142 News of Komuch’s defeats, often exaggerated, raced through the countryside. An agitator in Buguruslan district reported that “all these rumors make people edgy and force them to hunker down in their burrows.”143 Wherever peasants perceived that Komuch was unlikely to achieve a victory over the Bolsheviks, their reluctance to fight hardened into determined refusal—a sensible strategy even had they been more inclined to participate.144 Against this background Komuch’s inability to punish desertion and force conscripts back into the army had devastating political effects, quite apart from its impact on the manpower shortages at the front. Peasants rightly saw the presence of the deserters as a sign of the weakness of the army and state. Stemming the tide of desertion and forcing the draftees back to the army therefore became critical in the eyes of the agitators. As one put it: “The population will unconditionally obey the orders of the government when it sees that the government is strong, which is why decisive measures are called for in the struggle with desertion.”145 Although the mobilizing capacity of the various states vying for power in the Russian civil war varied, all struggled with the problem of desertion and the need for coercive measures against conscripts, particularly in 1918, when the great mass of the population preferred to stay out of the war. The successful application of coercion against conscripts and deserters was thus a prerequisite of success, and it pushed strongly in the direction of an authoritarian state. Komuch’s weakness in this respect, agitators reported, severely compromised it in the eyes of the peasantry.146 This suggests, however, that what limited authority that Komuch had ever possessed in the countryside had been based mainly on the threat of coercion. As that threat receded, peasants no longer felt any need to cooperate with the government at all.147 The demands and ravages of war also stimulated widespread peasant longing for order by the autumn. What the agitators termed the peasants’ “thirst for order” was mainly a hope that a reconstituted state might protect them from the claims of the combatants and their warring armies, and it formed the dominant theme of the mood reports for October and November, when Komuch had

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been transformed into a regional government subordinate to the Directory in Omsk.148 Although there is virtually no evidence of monarchism, many agitators observed a growing tendency among peasants to look back favorably at the order and stability of prerevolutionary Russia. One agitator did report “sighs for the tsar.” He explained: “The reason is disorder. I then explain that it is possible to have order without the tsar, that the tsar with his whip was not himself with you in the village. I explain about the methods of forming a state power (vlast’). They agree and become supporters of the Constituent Assembly, about which they previously had no conception.”149 Agitators elsewhere in Komuch territory drew similar conclusions. One reported from Ufa district that the peasants wanted “any kind of authority (vlast’), just a strong authority that could protect citizens from violence and mockery.”150 Elders in a village in Buguruslanskii district, in Samara province, told an agitator: “We need a shepherd. We are like cattle without a shepherd. Whether the Constituent Assembly (uchredilka) or some president is established, just let there be order, if there were order then there would be a state power (byl by poriadok, byla by i vlast’).”151 Another agitator neatly summed up the situation: “The attitude to the present civil war prior to my arrival was nonparticipatory, indifferent, they consider it unnecessary, they want order, the war gives disorder [and] is undesirable, [their] view is indifferent [and] from the sidelines, because of a lack of understanding of its tasks. They say: ‘The Red loots, destroys, we know it and do not want it, the People’s [Army] we see and hear, if the Blue arrived and promised order, we would follow it.’”152 Such laments illuminate the tragedy of the civil war for Russian peasants, who wanted little part of it but were ineluctably drawn into it as the chief suppliers of grain and conscripts and the principal victims of the slaughter. They also highlight yet another of the pressures pushing toward an authoritarian solution to the demands of civil war state building. After the Red Army retook Kazan’ on September 10, the Czechoslovaks and the People’s Army could not regain the initiative as the Reds pressed forward. On October 1 the Komuch leadership began to make preparations for the evacuation of Samara. Five days later they fled for Ufa, and Red troops took Samara on October 7. Most of the members of the Constituent Assembly eventually moved on from Ufa to Ekaterinburg, where the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly sat, but a pared-down version of Komuch’s Council of Ministers stayed in Ufa as a regional government for the province. Vasilii Filippovskii replaced Rogovskii as chairman of the Council of Ministers, whose other members included Prokopii Klimushkin, Mikhail Vedeniapin, and Ivan Nesterov. They had ambitious hopes to build a last bastion of the “Volga democracy” in Ufa, but they in fact spent most of their time trying to cope with the flood of refugees rolling eastward in advance of the Red Army.

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In the end the experience of the “Volga democracy” makes clear that SRs’ construction of the civil war as a war for national independence and their revolutionary rhetoric of “land and freedom” did not organize the violence of 1918 in ways that resonated among the peasants of the upper Volga region and did not succeed in mobilizing them on behalf of Komuch. In fact, agitators’ efforts to cast the civil war in national terms—as a renewal of the World War and a war of national liberation against the Germans—made it all the easier for peasants to resist fighting a Red Army that they sensibly pointed out was composed of Russians, not Germans. Many peasants even claimed that they would be more than willing to fight if the Germans in fact arrived, although this is probably best understood as yet another stalling tactic. More importantly, Russian peasants in the upper Volga continued to identify Soviet power with the rural revolution of 1917 and 1918 and were uneasy about the future under a new regime, whatever the assurances Komuch sought to give. Despite its historical association with peasant revolution and its continuing effort also to represent the civil war as an effort to defend and consolidate the gains of the revolution, SRs had neither the deep roots in the population nor the accumulated political capital to overcome peasant anxieties. Peasants saw little reason to fight a Red Army that they did not see as a threat, in part because the collapse of Soviet authority in late May and June had spared the region from the Soviet requisitioning detachments that fanned out on the other side of the front over the course of the summer. The political capital that the Bolsheviks had accumulated from their association with the seizure of privately owned land thus remained substantially intact on Komuch’s side of the Eastern front, even as it eroded significantly on the Soviet side of the front. Komuch’s inability to mobilize its population contrasted with the Bolsheviks’ relative successes on the other side of the front in the late summer and fall of 1918. The Bolshevik construction of the civil war as a class war between Red and White proved to have far greater mobilizing power than the SRs’ vision of a war for national independence and popular sovereignty. To be sure, Soviet sources described the Red Army’s effort to conscript peasants on its side of the Eastern front as a failure, and they attributed that failure it to the “passive and unsympathetic attitude of the peasants.”153 Later in the fall the Soviet state’s first efforts to extend Red Army mobilizations to the countryside in central Russia in the fall of 1918 also met substantial peasant resistance. Soviet sources recorded violent peasant resistance to the mobilizations in 138 of the 286 districts of central Russia in November and December.154 In the four-day period from November 23 to November 27 alone, the Cheka reported “kulak rebellions” in Iaroslavl’, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Kaluga, Kazan’, Kursk, Smolensk, and Tambov provinces.155 Official estimates of the number of rebels ran into the thousands or tens of

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thousands in many districts, and rebels took over district centers in Riazan’, Smolensk, and Tambov provinces. In Riazan’, where forty Bolsheviks and Soviet officials were killed in the single district of Sapozhkov, a thousand soldiers and additional punitive detachments of up to 650 men per district were dispatched to fight the rebels.156 In Kaluga the Red Army formed a special military command, which deployed more than seven hundred soldiers and cavalry using machine guns and cannons to fight the rebels. Bolshevik forces killed 199 “Whites” in the suppression of the Kaluga rebellion. Red losses totaled eight killed, nine wounded, and sixteen captured.157 Nevertheless, Soviet conscription of the urban population, their mobilization of the population generally, and eventually their efforts to conscript peasants as well were more successful than the SRs’ comparable efforts in Komuch territory. In addition, the Soviet state had a much larger population on which to draw, and Bolshevik theory and rhetoric legitimated a level of violence against resistance that Komuch never envisioned and did not attempt. Still, had the SRs secured control of Siberia, Komuch’s retreat from Samara might not have foreclosed the party’s effort to build a socialist and democratic polity based on the Constituent Assembly. The outcome of the struggle for power in Siberia in the summer and fall of 1918 was therefore as important as the failures of Komuch in the shaping of the anti-Bolshevik alternative in the east.

4

The Politics of the Eastern Front

I

n the vast spaces behind the Eastern front, the Czechoslovak rebellion and the overthrow of Bolshevik rule opened a protracted struggle for power. While Komuch struggled to secure itself on the Volga, the Provisional Siberian Government in Omsk emerged as the principal power in Siberia over the course of summer, and a host of other governments established themselves in the Urals, Central Asia, and Far East. These governments drew on different political discourses to advance their claims to rule and to contest the claims of their rivals. Most also participated in the effort to form an all-Russian government that would carry the anti-Bolshevik struggle to European Russia. These overlapping processes of contestation determined the final shape of the alternative to Bolshevik power in the east. The struggle played out on two fronts: an internal Siberian front defined by the rival efforts of the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) and their nonsocialist opponents to secure control of the Siberian government in Omsk, a front on which Komuch lent its authority (and more) to the local SRs; and an external front generated by the bitter contest between Komuch and the Siberian government for control of the prospective all-Russian government, a front on which the Siberian SRs gave active support to Komuch. The struggles on these intertwined fronts culminated in the coup d’état in Omsk that brought Admiral A. V. Kolchak to dictatorial power on November 18. 123 

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Siberian Regionalism and Soviet Power

Until September, when the Directory staked out clear all-Russian aims, the anti-Bolshevik cause in Siberia flew the banner of Siberian regionalism (oblastnichestvo). Siberian regionalism dates to the second half of the nineteenth century, when Nikolai Iadrintsev and Grigorii Potanin asserted that Siberia was a colony of Russia and needed the institutions and economic development that would free it from dependent status. Iadrintsev and Potanin were heavily influenced by the radical historian Afanasii Shchapov, himself of Siberian origin. Like many nineteenth-century Russian historians, Shchapov laid great stress on the Russian colonization of the Eurasian landmass. Unusually, however, he argued that the divergent geographic and ethnographic conditions of the newly settled regions made Russian history a story of the development of its separate regions. Shchapov also believed that colonization and regional development stemmed not from state action but from the spontaneous initiative of the people. Regionalism (oblastnost’) and the primacy of the people (narodnost’) thus displaced the concept of statehood (gosudarstvennost’) as the organizing principles of Russian history.1 Shchapov exerted a great influence on Iadrintsev and Potanin when the two young Siberians studied together in St. Petersburg in the 1860s. In their interest in the emancipation of the peasantry and in social change more broadly, the two shared the main interests of Russian radical thought of the period, and they absorbed much of its tone and style. But the influence of Shchapov and the peculiarities of Siberia pushed them to adapt radical doctrines to Siberian conditions. Siberia, Iadrintsev argued, was a colony of Russia and needed schools, a Siberian university, a free press, and capitalist industry to overcome “backwardness” and liberate itself from domination by the centralized imperial state. After Iadrintsev’s death in 1894, Potanin, who had previously concentrated on ethnographic and geographic research, became the main spokesman and living symbol of Siberian regionalism. From 1902 he lived in Tomsk and devoted himself chiefly to propagandizing regionalist ideas in the Siberian intelligentsia, putting particular emphasis on the need for Siberian political autonomy. During the revolution of 1905, Potanin began to call for an elected Siberian Regional Duma with broad authority over Siberian affairs.2 After the fall of the monarchy in 1917, small regionalist organizations sprang up in most Siberian cities. Regionalism also spread through the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (PSRs) in Siberia, and intellectuals sympathetic to Siberian autonomy within a federal Russian state came to dominate the party throughout the region. Regionalists gravitated to the PSR because it supported both a federal state and national-cultural autonomy for the peoples of Russia, but often they did not endorse the socialist planks of the SR program. Many regionalists

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had conventionally liberal political priorities, including education, economic development, the rule of law, and the introduction of the zemstvo to Siberia. They did not, however, find a congenial home among the Kadets, because the Kadets advocated a unitary state and opposed federalism and decentralization. Most regionalists thus looked to the PSR, although the regionalists around the elderly Potanin kept their distance from all the political parties and were known as nonparty regionalists. Over the course of 1917, regionalists within and outside the PSR organized a series of congresses, culminating in the Siberian Regionalist Congress that convened in Tomsk on October 8. There were 179 delegates at the congress—70 were SRs, and an additional 25 declared themselves sympathizers of the party. The congress declared itself the legal voice of Siberia and approved a “Statute on the Regional Administration of Siberia” that it proposed to submit to the Constituent Assembly for ratification. The approved statute granted legislative authority in a broad range of matters to a Siberian Regional Duma that would be elected by universal suffrage. Executive authority was vested in a Cabinet of Ministers responsible to the Duma. The congress also elected an Executive Committee, nominally chaired by Potanin but in reality dominated by SRs. It was to oversee the Siberian push for autonomy at the upcoming Constituent Assembly.3 The Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd vastly increased the importance of Siberian regionalism, because regionalism provided a political discourse within which to ground opposition to the Soviet state and constitute a Siberian government. Siberian SRs therefore focused their political energies after October on the regionalist movement, in marked contrast to 1917, when regionalism was a distinctly secondary concern of most party organizations. Regionalist discourse offered a vocabulary and set of arguments by which to legitimate resistance to the central government, and it constructed institutions, notably the Siberian Regional Duma and a Siberian Constituent Assembly, through which that resistance might be organized. In the person of Potanin, it supplied an authoritative figure who embodied the regionalist tradition and possessed enormous prestige in the Siberian intelligentsia. The regionalist white and green flag even offered the first trappings of a symbolic system, although there was little evidence that regionalism had much mass appeal, and the historical weakness of provincial and regional identities in Russia suggested limits to its mobilizing potential. In Tomsk the Executive Committee elected at the October Regionalist Congress called for an Extraordinary All-Siberian Regional Congress to address the political crisis opened by the Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd. The Extraordinary Congress convened on December 6 and, like the earlier regionalist congresses, was dominated by SRs. It declared the upcoming all-Russian

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Constituent Assembly the only legitimate source of political authority in Russia but called for the convocation of a Siberian Constituent Assembly in March. In the meantime, the congress proposed a Siberian government in the form of a Siberian Regional Duma and a Provisional Siberian Regional Council responsible to the Duma. The congress called for the Siberian government to include socialists ranging from the Popular Socialists to the Bolsheviks, but the Provisional Siberian Regional Council in fact consisted almost entirely of SRs. Potanin chaired it but was largely a figurehead. He was joined by the SRs Mikhail Shatilov, E. V. Zakharov, Petr Derber, Aleksandr Novoselov, and A. A. Ermekov, and by the nonparty Irkutsk regionalist Grigorii Patushinskii. The statute of the Siberian Regional Duma, which was to convene in early January, provided for the representation of the zemstvos, city Dumas, and soviets, as well as for the Siberian Cossacks, the Siberian troops at the front, the national minorities of Siberia, and the cooperatives.4 The Siberian Bolsheviks, meanwhile, gradually extended Soviet power throughout the region. By the end of October they had easily gained control of the city and province of Krasnoiarsk, the citadel of Siberian Bolshevism, but they secured power in eastern Siberia only after bloody street fighting in Irkutsk in December. In western Siberia the Bolsheviks moved cautiously, because SRs and Mensheviks still controlled the soviets in Novonikolaevsk, Omsk, and Tomsk, the principal cities of the region. Because of the regionalists’ strength in Tomsk, the Bolsheviks concentrated on Omsk, where they gained a majority in the Omsk soviet in November and declared Soviet power in the city. They also convened a West Siberian Regional Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies that met simultaneously with its rival, the regionalists’ Extraordinary All-Siberian Regional Congress. The Omsk Soviet congress recognized the Council of Peoples’ Commissars and declared the transfer of power to the soviets throughout western Siberia. In Tomsk the soviet claimed power on December 8 but made no move to block the regionalists’ congress or to interfere with the activity of the Provisional Regional Council.5 The council focused on organizing the Siberian Regional Duma, which took a brief turn in the Tomsk political spotlight in January. Deputies to the Duma trickled in to the city over the course of the month. By January 20 ninety delegates (fifty-six of them SRs) had arrived in Tomsk. “Private sessions” of the Duma members began under the chairmanship of the Irkutsk SR and regionalist Ivan Iakushev, who set the formal opening of the Duma for February 2. On January 25, however, the Tomsk soviet dissolved the Duma and ordered the arrest of its members and the members of the Provisional Regional Council. Pro-Soviet troops sealed the Duma building and began rounding up deputies, but the forty Duma members who eluded arrest gathered secretly on the night

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of January 28, proclaimed the opening of the Duma, and elected a Provisional Siberian Government chaired by Petr Derber. SRs received roughly half of the ministerial posts. Two representatives of the Siberian national minorities were also selected as ministers, and several nonparty ministers were elected on the cooperative-regionalist list, including Patushinskii, Ivan Mikhailov, Ivan Serebrennikov, Petr Vologodskii, and Vladimir Krutovskii. This new government, however, not only had no forces upon which it could rely, but several of its members were unaware of their election or were already in jail. The deputies agreed to abandon Tomsk and escape east to Chita.6 As the Provisional Siberian Government fled east with hopes of reconvening in friendlier territory, it left behind two underground commissariats, a West Siberian Commissariat based in Tomsk and an East Siberian Commissariat based in Irkutsk. The West Siberian Commissariat—consisting of the SRs Pavel Mikhailov, Boris Markov, Mikhail Lindberg, and Vasilii Sidorov—played the main role in coordinating the work of the Siberian anti-Bolshevik underground over the next months. The commissariat appointed plenipotentiaries in Siberian cities and tried to control the formation of the secret military organizations that popped up across Siberia under a variety of auspices, usually with the financial support of the Siberian cooperatives.7 The two most important military organizations affiliated with the West Siberian Commissariat were the Irkutsk organization under the SR N. S. Kalashnikov and the Novonikolaevsk organization under Lieutenant Colonel Aleksei Grishin, who called himself an SR and assumed the pseudonym Almazov. Grishin-Almazov also served as head of the military headquarters of the West Siberian Commissariat. At the same time, various underground Cossack and officers’ organizations formed independently of the SR organizations. The strongest of these groups was the Cossack detachment in Omsk under Colonel Pavel Ivanov of the Siberian Cossack Host, who took the pseudonym Rinov and became known as IvanovRinov. In Tomsk several military organizations were brought together under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Anatolii Pepeliaev, brother of the wellknown Siberian Kadet and Central Committee member Viktor Pepeliaev.8 Although SR and non-SR military organizations proliferated across Siberia, in the judgment of one well-placed observer, they did not constitute a serious threat to Soviet power.9 Like the Samara SRs, however, the SRs of the West Siberian Commissariat were ideally positioned to seize power when the Czechoslovak rebellion overthrew Bolshevik rule. In mid-May, Captain Rudolf Gajda, commander of the Middle Group of Czechoslovak troops, had established contact with representatives of Grishin-Almazov’s military staff. At the end of the month, as the rebellion unfolded, Gajda and Grishin-Almazov reached an agreement for

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the underground military organizations to rise across Siberia and overthrow Bolshevik rule in coordination with the Czechoslovaks. Grishin-Almazov sent telegrams to the underground organizations in Tomsk, Krasnoiarsk, Omsk, and other Siberian towns setting the rebellion for May 26 through 28.10 These uprisings failed, but Czechoslovak successes against the disintegrating Bolshevik forces led to the collapse of Soviet authority in western Siberia over the course of the next several weeks. The overthrow of the Bolsheviks took longer in eastern Siberia, but by early July the Czechoslovaks had toppled the Bolsheviks in nearly all of Siberia. The West Siberian Commissariat moved quickly into the resulting vacuum. It declared the end of Soviet rule in Novonikolaevsk on May 25 and began to take practical steps to organize a government in Omsk after the fall of the Bolsheviks there on June 7. The commissariat enjoyed two principal sources of support: the Czechoslovak Legion and the Siberian cooperatives. The Legion’s sympathy for the commissariat mirrored its support for the SRs on the Volga and stemmed from the same democratic and moderate socialist sensibilities as its efforts on behalf of Komuch. The commissariat’s other chief support, the Siberian cooperatives, was potentially an enormous asset for the new authorities, because SRs and their sympathizers dominated the network of cooperatives that covered the Siberian countryside. The two most important cooperative organizations were the Union of Siberian Buttermaking Cooperatives and the all-Siberian Union of Unions of Consumers’ Cooperatives, which embraced 65 percent of the peasant households and controlled the circulation of about half of all goods in Siberia. These organizations had financed the underground operations of the West Siberian Commissariat and the other antiBolshevik organizations of the east, and they offered continued financial and political support after the overthrow of Bolshevik power.11 On June 14, Pavel Mikhailov met with representatives of the cooperatives and other social organizations in Omsk to set up the beginnings of an administrative apparatus. Entrusting Grishin-Almazov with the Military Department, the members of the commissariat chose nonpartisan figures with administrative experience and established reputations to head the civilian departments. The lone SR appointed was V. S. Sizikov, who took over the Administrative Department, which had responsibility for the zemstvos, city Dumas, and police. These appointments, made quickly and from a limited pool of qualified personnel, had lasting importance, because these men formed the administrative core not only of the West Siberian Commissariat, but of its successors as well. Drawn mostly from the nonparty intelligentsia, which ranged politically from liberalism to the right fringe of the socialist parties, these men comprised the majority of Kolchak’s Council of Ministers well into 1919.12

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The Provisional Siberian Government

With the support of the Czechoslovaks and the cooperatives, respectively the most powerful military and economic forces in Siberia, the West Siberian Commissariat seemed initially quite secure. As it happened, however, the commissariat gave way to a reconstituted Provisional Siberian Government at the end of June. From the beginning of its existence, the commissariat had faced opposition from the nonparty regionalists, the Siberian Kadets, and the Siberian Cossack Hosts. The political spokesman and chief intriguer on behalf of these groups was Ivan Mikhailov, minister of finance in the original Provisional Siberian Government elected in January. Mikhailov was the dominant figure in the anti-SR camp of Siberian politics in 1918. Young, aggressive, and soon much hated by the left, Mikhailov was determined to avert SR control of the anti-Bolshevik movement in the east. Ironically, he had a distinguished radical pedigree. His father, Adrian Mikhailov, was a well-known revolutionary and terrorist, and Ivan Mikhailov was himself born in prison in 1890. Politically, he was widely rumored to have been an SR, although he denied (probably falsely) that he ever belonged to the party. He remained in Siberia during the period of Soviet rule in Siberia, when the more active members of the government moved to the Far East. As a result, he was one of the few members of the government on the scene when the Czechoslovak rebellion toppled the Bolsheviks and the West Siberian Commissariat emerged to claim power.13 At Mikhailov’s behest, the ministers of the Provisional Siberian Government who were present in Omsk (Patushinskii, Shatilov, Vologodskii, and himself) met on June 29 and agreed to form a government consisting of themselves and Krutovskii, who was then in Krasnoiarsk. Also attending were Iakushev, the chairman of the Siberian Regional Duma, and Georgii Gins, chief of staff of the West Siberian Commissariat and the spokesman for its administrative apparatus. The initiative clearly belonged to Mikhailov, who argued that the SRs who made up the West Siberian Commissariat were “completely unauthoritative.” This argument only thinly veiled Mikhailov’s hostility to the PSR, but he nevertheless secured the support of the SR Iakushev, who was eager to maintain legal continuity with the Duma decisions of January and to secure an important political role for himself. In the name of the Duma, Iakushev transferred all power in Siberia from the West Siberian Commissariat to the reconstituted Provisional Siberian Government on June 30. Iakushev and Gins then convinced the members of the West Siberian Commissariat to cede power to the new government and pass quietly from the scene. This they did, although not without doubts about the political intentions of the new authorities.14 Although the new Provisional Siberian Government was the offspring of the government created in Tomsk in January, it had its own political physiognomy.

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Because the most active SR ministers of the original regional government had left for the east in January, the new government was distinctly to the right of both the January government and the SRs who had created it. Vologodskii became chairman of the Council of Ministers, giving up the portfolio of foreign affairs that had been assigned him by the Regional Duma in January. Vologodskii was a distinguished Tomsk lawyer, Siberian public activist, and former deputy to the Second Duma in 1906. A former SR, he had drifted away from the party early in 1917 and was by 1918 closest to the nonparty regionalists.15 He is of particular importance to the historian, because the diary he kept throughout the civil war is one of the outstanding sources for Siberian politics in 1918. Unfortunately, the diary reveals Vologodskii as decent but weak-willed, poorly suited to the stresses of government in any conditions, let alone civil war. Mikhailov stayed on as minister of finance and led the nonsocialist, anti-SR wing of the government. To the left of both Mikhailov and Vologodskii stood Patushinskii, the minister of justice, and Krutovskii, the minister of internal affairs. Both were regionalists with past political ties to the Popular Socialists, which left them in the shifting middle ground between the nonparty regionalists and the SRs. Patushinskii was a well-known Siberian lawyer who had achieved political prominence for his role in the investigation of the shooting of the Lena workers in 1911. Krutovskii was a Krasnoiarsk doctor and editor of Sibirskie zapiski, one of the principal regionalist journals. He served as chairman of the Krasnoiarsk Soviet Executive Committee and as provincial commissar for the Provisional Government in 1917. To their left stood Minister of Native Affairs Shatilov, the only SR member of the Council of Ministers. Shatilov was a leading SR-regionalist and one of the principal organizers of the regionalist movement in 1917. Shortly after the formation of the government, another of the ministers elected in January returned to Omsk and assumed his duties. Ivan Serebrennikov, who like Vologodskii was a former SR now closest to the nonparty regionalists, became minister of supply.16 The internal political balance of the Siberian government was precarious. Krutovskii abandoned his post in July and returned home to Krasnoiarsk, where he refused repeated requests that he resume his duties.17 This left two blocs—a left bloc of Shatilov and Patushinskii and a right bloc of Mikhailov and Serebrennikov. In between, pulled now this way, now that, stood the perpetually uncertain Vologodskii. He generally sided with Mikhailov and Serebrennikov to form a nonsocialist majority in the government, but only after pressure from all sides and a great deal of internal torment that he faithfully recorded in his diary. The six ministers of the government formed a Council of Ministers that held ultimate political authority. In those ministries in which the minister elected in January was not present in Omsk, the heads of the departments

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of the West Siberian Commissariat served as provisional ministers. They did not, however, enjoy the same political rights as the full-fledged ministers who had been elected by the Duma in January, and it was unclear what would occur if any of those ministers returned to Omsk from the Far East. Collectively the provisional ministers and their first assistants formed the Administrative Council of the Siberian government, which coordinated the work of the various ministries. In principle, the Administrative Council had no political powers, but in practice it exercised political as well as administrative functions. Over the course of the summer the Administrative Council became a bastion of antiSR sentiment and a reliable supporter of the political line of Ivan Mikhailov in the Council of Ministers. The policies of the new government aimed for a far more thoroughgoing liquidation of the Soviet state than had been anticipated by the West Siberian Commissariat or than was being carried out by Komuch. The government suspended all Soviet laws and decrees and abolished the soviets. The TransSiberian railroad, the axis along which all the Siberian civil war governments organized themselves, was placed under martial law. Over the opposition of Shatilov, the government also announced plans to denationalize industry, end the state monopoly on grain purchases, and restore privately owned land to its previous owners (mostly peasants, because there were no noble estate owners in Siberia before the revolution).18 In practice, few of these social and economic steps were realized, because the government remained administratively weak, but the political signals they sent were nevertheless important. The emergence of the Omsk government as an alternative to, and soon rival of, Samara gave opponents of the Soviet state a choice between two variants of resistance in the east, and those who considered themselves “state-minded” gravitated to Omsk over the course of the summer. Officers, Cossacks, Kadets, and others created a political atmosphere that gave SRs the sense that Omsk was “enemy territory.”19 The appeal Omsk held for officers and Cossacks helped the Siberian government assemble the beginnings of an army. With the Czechoslovak Legion and Komuch’s volunteer units manning the Eastern front, Minister of War Grishin-Almazov also could afford the relative luxury of organizing troops without having to dispatch them immediately to face the Red Army. Already in June, the West Siberian Commissariat had issued orders for the formation of the First Central Siberian Corps under Anatolii Pepeliaev and the Second Central Siberian Corps under Ivanov-Rinov. These volunteer units resembled the volunteer units under Kappel’ and Fortunatov on the Volga, and, like them, they were small, well-motivated, and quite successful against Soviet forces.20 On July 31, Grishin-Almazov announced the mobilization of all men born in 1897 and 1898. By early fall the draft, the original volunteer units, and the

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various Cossack formations combined to form the base of reasonably strong army by the standards of 1918.21 The SRs watched the consolidation and political evolution of the Siberian government with dismay. They opposed most of its policies and argued that the Administrative Council had usurped powers that belonged rightly to the full ministers of the government and to the Duma. Already in June, GrishinAlmazov’s enthusiasm for building the Siberian army stirred SRs’ fear of a military dictatorship.22 Although Grishin-Almazov had represented himself as an SR in the anti-Bolshevik underground, his political views were unclear, and SR suspicion of him intensified over the summer. At the end of July, Pavel Mikhailov approached Vologodskii and confidentially informed him of Grishin-Almazov’s “real intentions.” Mikhailov asserted that Grishin-Almazov had ties to the Far Eastern Committee, a group in Harbin that allegedly planned to establish a military dictatorship in Siberia under Admiral Kolchak. In connection with this plan, Mikhailov explained, GrishinAlmazov had agreed to arrest the members of the Siberian government. Vologodskii placed no credence in this information and noted in his diary that he understood Mikhailov’s claims “as the ravings of someone who has lost his psychological equilibrium.”23 A week later Mikhailov again approached Vologodskii, whom he apparently hoped would be sympathetic as a former SR and political moderate, but Vologodskii dismissed him again.24 Although there is some evidence that Grishin-Almazov indeed flirted with the idea of dictatorship later in the summer, Mikhailov’s anxiety about dictatorship in early August owed more to the characteristic SR fear of Bonapartism and to an ongoing effort to pull Vologodskii into a pro-SR majority in the government. Relations between Komuch and the Siberian government mirrored the political tension in Omsk. In Samara the Komuch leadership did not see the Samara assembly as one of several regional governments that had emerged in the areas where the Czechoslovaks had overthrown Bolshevik power. Instead, as Vol’skii explained in a press interview in August, Komuch was in essence an all-Russian government, because it had inherited the authority of the Constituent Assembly. The regional governments ought therefore to recognize Komuch as the “state center” (gosudarstvennyi tsentr). If it was not already an all-Russian government, it certainly would be the source of any such government.25 For its part the Siberian government declared that Russian statehood had ceased to exist. Siberia was therefore independent until the all-Russian and all-Siberian Constituent Assemblies could convene to reconstitute the state and to restructure Siberia’s relations with European Russia. In the meantime the Siberian government claimed all power in Siberia and disputed the notion that Komuch had inherited the legal authority of the Constituent Assembly.26 The Siberian

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government thus deployed regionalist argumentation to justify its claim to power in Siberia and to contest the all-Russian claims of Komuch. At a practical level tension between the two governments manifested itself in various ways. A customs war broke out when the Siberian government refused to allow a trainload of goods through Cheliabinsk. Samara interpreted this as an act of aggression, and each side placed tariffs on a variety of products.27 More serious was the territorial rivalry that developed for control of the Urals, cleared of Bolshevik rule over July. Siberian military units secured control of Perm’, Cheliabinsk, and parts of Ufa province over the objections of Samara. When Ekaterinburg fell to the Czechoslovaks on July 24, each side rushed to establish its authority there. The principal attraction of the Urals was the presence of the most important metallurgical plants in the east, which would be crucial to the long-term success of a military effort against the Red Army. At the insistence of the Czechoslovak and Allied representatives, a coalition government was formed in which the dominant influence belonged to Lev Krol’, a member of the Kadet Central Committee member and representative of the Union of Regeneration in the east. The purpose of this government, essentially a government of the Union of Regeneration, was to mediate between the two increasingly hostile major governments and to protect the industrial output of the region for the common effort on the Eastern front.28 The squabbling between Komuch and the Siberian government alarmed the Union of Regeneration, the Czechoslovak Legion, and the several Allied representatives in the east, the most important of whom was Major Alphonse Guinet, the French military representative to the Czechoslovak Legion. They organized a conference at Cheliabinsk on July 15 and 16 in an effort to form a single all-Russian government that would supersede the regional governments and assume overall command of the Eastern front. Brushvit, Vedeniapin, and Galkin attended on behalf of Komuch, while Mikhailov, Grishin-Almazov, and M. P. Golovachev represented the Siberian government. The Union of Regeneration also secured representation at the conference, in the person of Lev Krol’ and the SRs Andrei Argunov and Vladimir Pavlov. In the first session of the conference the Komuch delegation argued that until the Constituent Assembly could reconvene, the authority of the Assembly was embodied in Komuch. Komuch was willing to form an coalition government, but any such government would be responsible to Komuch, and Komuch would serve as the legislative branch of the government. Moreover, the government would resign as soon as thirty members of the Constituent Assembly had entered Komuch. Komuch would then take on the functions of the Constituent Assembly and proceed to the formation of a new all-Russian government. The Siberians asserted that Siberia would tolerate no other state power

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on its own territory, and they insisted that they would not recognize any allRussian government formed without their consent. Infuriated by Komuch’s position, Ivan Mikhailov snapped that thirty SRs could not be taken seriously as a quorum for the Constituent Assembly and the basis of an all-Russian government. When Mikhailov refused to outline an alternative procedure for the formation of an all-Russian government, Brushvit declared there was no point in further discussion.29 The conference was only salvaged by the efforts of the Czechoslovaks, Guinet, and the Union of Regeneration. On July 16 the Siberian government accepted the Union of Regeneration’s proposal for a future conference of representatives from all the regional governments to form an all-Russian government. The Komuch delegation opposed this plan, because it threatened to reduce Komuch to the same status as the other regional governments and to sever the link between the Constituent Assembly and the prospective all-Russian government. Komuch gave way, however, after securing conference representation for all members of the Constituent Assembly and for representatives of the central committees of the major political parties, which opened the prospect of an SR-dominated conference. The conference was set for August 6 in Cheliabinsk. In the meantime the delegates agreed on a series of practical measures to coordinate supply, transport, and finance.30 As he left Cheliabinsk for Samara, the disgruntled Brushvit remarked to Krol’, “farewell, devil’s matchmaker” (chertova svakha).31 First Skirmishes

At Cheliabinsk the SR leadership came to appreciate how fiercely the Siberians were prepared to contest Komuch’s claim to all-Russian power. Although Komuch could insist that the Constituent Assembly held supreme power and offered the only grounds on which to form an all-Russian government, it would take a major effort by the PSR to secure the victory of that principle and of Komuch. To that end, Komuch dispatched a delegation to Siberia on July 22. Behind the obscure and cautiously worded instructions that it gave Brushvit as head of the delegation—he was “to enter into definite relations with socialpolitical groups and to draw the social forces of Siberia into work for the realization of the ideas being carried out by the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly”—lurked a plan for a Siberian coup d’état.32 Legal cover for the coup would come from the Siberian Regional Duma, whose SR leaders worked closely with Brushvit and the Komuch leadership. In principle, the Siberian Regional Duma was the constitutional source of the Omsk government’s authority, so it made sense for SRs to make their bid for power through the Duma. In June the West Siberian Commissariat had invited members of the Duma to assemble in Tomsk for the first time since January. Its plan had been for the members of the Duma to join the Siberian members of

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the Constituent Assembly and then to organize a new government. The Duma would become the Siberian legislative body, and the prospective Siberian government would replace the government elected in January and become an executive branch responsible to the Duma.33 The Siberian government as it emerged at the end of June did not wish to be tied to an SR-dominated Duma, but because its own claim to power was based on the Duma decisions of January, it was awkward for it openly to resist the convocation of that body. As July stretched on, the government took no measures to convene the Duma, but almost a hundred members of the Duma gathered in Tomsk. The delegates split into two main groups, an SR majority and a much smaller group of nonparty regionalists. At the end of July the Irkutsk SR Moisei Krol’ warned the Omsk government on behalf of the Duma that the government had isolated itself from “democratic society” and fallen under the influence of the reaction, which aimed ultimately for a military dictatorship.34 The government agreed to convene the Duma on August 15, but with a strictly limited agenda. The Duma would only hear Vologodskii’s report as chairman of the Council of Ministers and adopt a law expanding its membership to include representatives of propertied society, which had been excluded from the Duma in the 1917 statute.35 The SRs hoped to use the convocation of the Duma as a cover for the overthrow of the government. In conjunction with the Komuch leadership, Brushvit drew up plans for the coup d’état with Pavel Mikhailov and other leading Siberian SRs. On August 7 he cabled Vol’skii from Cheliabinsk, where he had gone because the Omsk government had discovered he was using its telegraph and denied him further access to it: “We have been forced to conduct extremely complicated diplomatic work, now there is complete agreement with the Czechoslovaks, up to armed support.” Brushvit asked Vol’skii’s opinion concerning “certain resolute steps.” Vol’skii cabled his approval, and Brushvit explained that the details of his plan depended on how relations between the government and the Duma developed and whether “serious internal complications” materialized. “In the event of complications,” he added, “a Czechoslovak dictatorship is not excluded. If things go smoothly, the Duma will open August 8.”36 When the Duma opened, the left wing of the Siberian government— Shatilov, Patushinskii, and perhaps Krutovskii—would join it and the Duma would elect a delegation to the upcoming conference on the formation of an all-Russian government, which would then be moved to Samara. Troops loyal to Komuch would arrest the remaining ministers of the Siberian government, and the Siberian members of the Constituent Assembly would travel to Samara and join Komuch. Komuch would then be able to form an all-Russian government entirely on its own terms.37 This plan failed because the Siberian government learned its rough outlines and the PSR displayed the internal divisions that weakened it on so many

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occasions. Grishin-Almazov assured the government he disposed of sufficient military force to defeat any move by the SRs.38 At the same time the right wing of the PSR moved to counteract Komuch’s initiative. Within the SR leadership Mikhail Gendel’man argued strongly against the plan, and he and moderates in the Duma pointed to several concessions that the Siberian government made on the eve of the Duma’s convocation. It had allowed the Duma to send its own delegation to the Cheliabinsk conference and had agreed to consider changing the composition of the Siberian government’s delegation. Gendel’man argued that these measures presaged a strengthening of the Siberian democracy that would allow Komuch to prevail at the upcoming conference in Cheliabinsk.39 Although the sketchy sources do not make clear whether the moderates succeeded in formally calling off the action or whether, amid dissension, the Siberian SRs simply backed down after Grishin-Almazov’s show of force, the Duma adopted a conciliatory tone at the session that was to have ratified the SR bid for power. It elected a delegation to the Cheliabinsk conference and passed a law expanding its membership to include representatives of the industrial and merchants’ organizations and to replace the representatives of the worker and peasant soviets with representatives of unspecified “corresponding” institutions. For party-minded SR representatives, the sensation of the session was a speech by Grishin-Almazov that vigorously denied the possibility of popular sovereignty in conditions of civil war. Grishin-Almazov may well have hoped to provoke the SRs into action, which would have enabled his troops and the increasingly aggressive Cossack detachments to crush the opposition to the government. Grishin-Almazov’s speech so outraged Nil Fomin that the ex-terrorist raised the possibility of a terrorist attack on the minister of war, although nothing ever came of it.40 On August 20 the government prorogued the Duma until September 10, catching the SRs by surprise. To ensure that the Duma leadership did not prevail on the ever-wavering Vologodskii to reconsider this step, Gins squirreled the chairman of the Council of Ministers away for a pleasant all-day picnic outside of Tomsk.41 Three days after the Duma was prorogued, the second conference to organize an all-Russian government convened in Cheliabinsk. This was a more elaborate affair than the first, attended by more than 150 delegates from Komuch, the Siberian government, the Union of Regeneration, the Cossack Hosts, the Urals government and the other smaller regional governments, and the central committees of the major political parties. It was quickly decided to postpone the effort to form an all-Russian government for consideration at yet another conference, to be held at Ufa in September.42 Before the delegates could disperse, however, Grishin-Almazov embroiled the Siberian government in a scandal that soon led to another round of com-

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plicated intrigues in Omsk. At a banquet attended by representatives of the regional governments, the Czechoslovaks, and the Allies, Grishin-Almazov delivered a speech in which he apparently let slip a remark to the effect that the Allies needed the Russians more than the Russians needed the Allies, because the new Russian army would decide the outcome of the World War by its decision as to which side to join.43 This naturally outraged the Czechoslovaks and the Allies, who protested vigorously to the Siberian government. In Omsk, Patushinskii and Shatilov used the incident to press for Grishin-Almazov’s ouster as acting minister of war. They found support in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and among the officers grouped around Ivanov-Rinov, now Ataman of the Siberian Cossacks, who were not averse to taking control of military affairs themselves. Three days of governmental crisis ensued as Mikhailov and Serebrennikov opposed the dismissal of Grishin-Almazov and Vologodskii vacillated. Vologodskii’s decision to support Grishin-Almazov’s dismissal tipped the balance in the Council of Ministers in favor of Patushinskii and Shatilov, and Grishin-Almazov was dismissed on September 5.44 The dismissal of the minister of war at the urging of the left wing of the government and the PSR seems to have stimulated the first serious discussions of military dictatorship in the anti-SR camp of Siberian politics. Grishin-Almazov, Ivan Mikhailov, and their supporters in the Administrative Council refused to accept the Council of Ministers’ decision. The Administrative Council persuaded the Council of Ministers to reconsider the issue, which it did in a stormy session that ended with Mikhailov and Patushinskii cursing each other viciously. The ministers reaffirmed Grishin-Almazov’s dismissal, but he refused to submit and considered his options with Mikhailov and Viktor Pepeliaev, the Kadet Central Committee member and emissary of both the Union of Regeneration and the National Center. In all likelihood they discussed military dictatorship, because Pepeliaev was a fervent supporter of dictatorship and Mikhailov had come to share his enthusiasm over the course of the summer and early fall. Together they were the principal civilian organizers of the coup d’état in Omsk in November, but how seriously they considered a coup at this stage is unclear. In the end Grishin-Almazov simply sent a letter to Vologodskii refusing to resign, while Mikhailov tried to undo the dismissal in the Council of Ministers. The majority in favor of dismissal held firm, and Grishin-Almazov eventually acquiesced. Unable any longer to work together, Mikhailov and Patushinskii submitted their resignations from the government, but Vologodskii eventually persuaded Mikhailov to retract his.45 The crisis thus ended with the consolidation of Ivan Mikhailov’s position in the government and a renewed demonstration of the power of the Administrative Council, by now openly hostile to the PSR.

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Although nothing came of it, the discussion of military dictatorship by the nonsocialist circles in and around the Siberian government was nevertheless significant, because it marks the beginning of their search for a way to free themselves conceptually and institutionally from Siberian regionalism. As the effort to construct an all-Russian government took center stage over the course of the summer, the contest between Samara and Omsk, and between the PSR and its opponents, became a struggle to fix the principles by which all-Russian state power would be constituted and by which the resulting government would seek to legitimate itself. Regionalism began to fade in importance, because regionalist discourse had little to offer in these respects, and the discourse of Russian statehood came increasingly to the fore among nonsocialists. The growing prominence of Viktor Pepeliaev also militated against regionalist arguments, since the Kadets were preeminently the party of Russian statehood and their historical opposition to federalism and regional decentralization had only been reinforced by the disintegration of the Russian state in 1917 and 1918. On the whole, however, few Kadets other than Pepeliaev were serious players in the politics of the east prior to the coup d’état of November 18.46 The logic of political contestation and the demands and effects of state building and military mobilization were more important than the Kadets in pushing the Siberian government toward the discourse of Russian statehood. That discourse represented the state as the embodiment of Russia’s historical tradition and the driving force of its national development. It emphasized the need for a strong central government to preserve the state, which it elevated above divisions along estate, class, political, and national lines. In its prerevolutionary, imperial form, it acknowledged only a small, although expanding, domain of legitimate politics, from which the government had historically sought to proscribe socialism and the revolutionary movement as the principal enemies of state institutions and the concept of statehood. After the revolution, when monarchist elements of the discourse disappeared and its liberal variant came to structure the outlook of virtually the whole of the nonsocialist portion of the political spectrum, the boundaries of the political domain were drawn more broadly, but the anti-state essence of the radical intelligentsia remained a central notion. For many who assessed the revolution and civil war in these terms, the radical intelligentsia’s destruction of the state became the central story of 1917. For many as well, the army moved into the place vacated by the monarchy at the center of Russian statehood, completing a process that antedated the revolution and had been accelerated by the World War. A turn to the army, conceived as a supra-class institution outside of the political domain, thus seemed not only the best way to fight the Red Army, but the logical way to reconstitute

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the state tradition that the revolutionaries sought to negate.47 From this point of view SRs shared responsibility with the Bolsheviks for the destruction of the Russian army and state in 1917. It was therefore crucial that they not be allowed to penetrate the army once again or to define the principles by which the Russian state was to be reconstructed. The nonsocialists’ visceral hostility to what they saw as the seditious “nest of SR-ism” (gnezdo eserovshchiny) in Samara was only exacerbated by most of the SRs’ reluctance to draw on the vocabulary and symbolism of Russian statehood and by its tendency to define efforts to do so as counterrevolutionary.48 The Ufa Conference

The widening divide between the SR leadership and the Siberian government posed the principal obstacle at the Ufa State Conference, the last and most important of the conferences convened in the east to constitute an all-Russian government. It opened on September 8, although the political infighting in Omsk delayed the arrival of the Siberian delegation until September 12. The unexplained absence of the Siberian delegation from the first sessions of the conference was one of several developments that contributed to a tense and uneasy beginning. On the symbolic front, the members of the Samara delegation demonstratively arrived with red corsages in their lapels, which upset members of the other delegations and enraged Aleksandr Dutov, ataman of the Orenburg Cossacks.49 General Bobrik of the Siberian Army worried that the SRs would simply seize him and the members of the other delegations as counterrevolutionaries.50 Suspicion of the SRs, seen in the worst case as antistate exterrorists and revolutionaries, little different from the Bolsheviks, was in fact the main political force uniting the right wing of the conference. It too was attuned to the importance of political symbolism, and by attending a church service together, it sought to envelop the conference in a rather different set of associations than were suggested by red corsages. Some of the SRs stayed away, but the decision of part of the SR fraction to participate in the service anticipated the difficulty the Komuch leadership would have in holding together the left wing of the conference.51 The Komuch leadership was in a very difficult position at Ufa. On the one hand, it had maintained since late June that it was, if not an all-Russian state power itself, then at least the kernel of one—the only source from which an all-Russian government could originate. Vol’skii’s opening address to the conference laid out Komuch’s position once again, addressing head-on the liberal conception of Russian statehood. He insisted that the reconstitution of the state could only be achieved by the people itself, and that the task of the political leadership of the Eastern front was to find ways to mobilize the population and

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transform it into a “force for statehood” (gosudarstvennaia sila).52 Vol’skii endorsed the idea of a collegial all-Russian government or directory but argued that only the Constituent Assembly could form such a government, set limits on its own powers, or organize new elections. Any new government would have to be approved by the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly—that is, a renamed and reconceptualized Komuch—and it would be responsible to the congress until the full Constituent Assembly could reconvene. The congress alone would determine when the Constituent Assembly could reconvene, and when it did so, the government would cede power to it.53 At the same time, however, Komuch’s very presence at the State Conference made it clear that Komuch had been unable to secure authoritative power and felt it had no choice but to negotiate the formation of an all-Russian government with the various regional governments. The pressure to negotiate stemmed primarily from military necessity. Without an agreement to form an all-Russian government with full authority in the territory behind the Eastern front, Komuch faced insurmountable difficulties in manpower, supply, and railroad transport. Most officers arriving from Soviet Russia were moving on to Omsk, and the Cossack Hosts of the east had made clear their preference for the Siberian government. Although the capture of Kazan’ in early August had raised euphoric hopes that Komuch would be able to exploit the internal political difficulties of Bolshevik power and trigger a grand implosion of the Soviet state, the loss of the same city to the Red Army on September 10 illuminated Komuch’s military predicament and made clear the urgent need for an agreement that would open the way to Siberian and Allied aid.54 Nevertheless, as Vol’skii’s opening salvo made clear, the Komuch leadership still preferred a hard line against Omsk, and the fall of Kazan’ was only the first of two circumstances that pulled it reluctantly toward an agreement. The second circumstance, ironically, was the large SR presence at the conference. SRs accounted for about half of the delegates, since members of the Constituent Assembly had the right to participate and almost all who did so were SRs. They joined the SRs in the delegations from Komuch, the SR Central Committee, and the zemstvos to form an SR fraction of roughly sixty persons, whose decisions were binding on all SRs. The conference organizers had been careful to stipulate that all conference decisions would have to be unanimous, because it was understood that neither the Siberian government nor Komuch would submit to an agreement reached without its consent, but the subordination of the Komuch leadership to the larger SR fraction effectively deprived Vol’skii and his colleagues of the veto power that the Siberian government continued to hold.55 Without this unforeseen quirk, it may well have proved no more possible to reach an agreement at Ufa than it had at either of the Cheliabinsk conferences. Characteristically for the party, the SR fraction at the conference repre-

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sented a broad and contradictory range of opinion. On the extreme left stood V. Chaikin and Matvei Kogan-Bernshtein of the Central Committee, who were not prepared to make any concessions. They insisted that the all-Russian government be responsible to the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly and that the SRs be represented in the government in proportion to their strength in the Constituent Assembly. When it became clear that concessions would be necessary, Kogan-Bernshtein left the conference. He hoped to return to Soviet Russia, but he was captured and shot by the Bolsheviks as he crossed the front. Chaikin stayed, but he ultimately refused to sign the agreement.56 At the opposite extreme of SR opinion stood a small group of right-wing SRs, including Argunov, Dmitrii Rozenblium, and Viktor Podvitskii, who bitterly charged the party and Komuch leadership with “negosudarstvennost’.” This imprecise term, a favorite among “state-minded” critics of the left, defies a simple translation, but within its penumbra circulated notions of a failure to accept the central importance of Russian statehood, a lack of patriotism, excessive and irresponsible partisanship, and a practical incapacity for state building and administration. The charges levied by right-wing SRs echoed a widespread view of the party among the non-SR delegates, for whom reconstituting Russian statehood was the central purpose of the conference. The overwhelming majority of the SR fraction eschewed both of these extreme positions and divided into two groups of almost identical size. The left-center group headed by the Komuch leadership and most of the Central Committee would have preferred to avoid any concessions, but it was prepared to make some compromises to secure Allied military aid for a collegial government tied closely to the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly. The other half of the fraction adhered to the right-center and right wing of the party and included only one important figure in Komuch (Evgenii Rogovskii) and two members of the Central Committee (Gendel’man and Zenzinov). This group felt it was imperative that the party make substantial concessions to reach an agreement. Gendel’man, Zenzinov, and others from the right-center were prepared to loosen the ties binding the government to the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly. A bit further to the right, Avksent’ev and other SR members of the Union of Regeneration had never supported Komuch. They preferred a fully independent directory that would only become responsible to the Constituent Assembly when it convened sometime in the future.57 The fall of Kazan’ tipped the balance in the fraction slightly to the right, giving Gendel’man and Zenzinov a majority by a thin margin of several votes.58 The fraction endorsed a collegial government of five to seven persons, responsible to the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly until the Constituent Assembly could reconvene. When it reconvened, the Constituent Assembly would have veto power over measures taken by the government, but the

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government would remain in power and the Constituent Assembly would make no effort to draft fundamental laws, which would be postponed until new elections could be held.59 These last two points reflected the victory of the rightcenter in the fraction, as did the selection of Gendel’man and Zenzinov to participate in a commission that would try to reach agreement on the members of the all-Russian government behind closed doors. Four other SRs participated in the commission (Avksent’ev, Rogovskii, Boris Moiseenko, and Apollon Kruglikov). Like Gendel’man and Zenzinov, all were from the party’s right wing, which meant that the Komuch leadership and the Central Committee majority had been effectively excluded from the commission. Because the SR left and left-center found itself shut out of the commission by the SR fraction, the commission’s immediate task was to bridge the divide between the right-center of the PSR and the Siberian government, but to do so in a way that would not cause the Komuch leadership to bolt the conference. The delegation of the Siberian government, headed by Serebrennikov and Vasilii Sapozhnikov, had arrived in Ufa with instructions to work for an all-Russian government of no more than five persons that would not be responsible to any legislative or controlling body. Komuch would be abolished, but the Siberian government would stay on as a regional administration and the directory would take over the Siberian government’s administrative apparatus, preserving both the Council of Ministers and the Administrative Council. The new government would hold power until elections for a new Constituent Assembly could be held, presumably at the end of the war.60 Like the SR fraction the Siberian government accepted the Union of Regeneration’s idea that the all-Russian government be a collegial, coalition directory, so negotiations centered on the prospective directory’s tie to a legislative organ or some kind of controlling body, and on the place of the Constituent Assembly. All parties accepted the Constituent Assembly and the principle of popular sovereignty that it represented. They agreed that the directory would eventually turn power over to the Constituent Assembly, but they were divided over whether this be the assembly of January 5 (meeting relatively soon without its Bolshevik and Left SR fractions) or whether it would be a new assembly (meeting only when new elections could be carried out at the end of the war). From Omsk, Mikhailov and the Administrative Council insisted that the Siberian delegation make no concessions providing a role for the Constituent Assembly in the composition of January 5, but Serebrennikov and Sapozhnikov found themselves pressed by a coalescing group of moderate, coalition-minded delegates determined to draw Samara and Omsk into an agreement. The exclusion of the Komuch leadership from the commission facilitated the formation of this moderate center, as did the presence of the influential Union of Regeneration members Lev Krol’ and Vasilii Boldyrev. In theory,

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Krol’ served as the representative of the Kadet Central Committee in the commission and was allied with Omsk, but his views were substantially to the left of mainstream Kadet opinion and of the Siberian government. General Boldyrev, the union’s representative in the commission, was similarly moderate and inclined to coalition government. As the shape of the agreement became clear, Serebrennikov and Sapozhnikov felt they had no choice but to accept a compromise endorsed by Krol’, Boldyrev, and the Siberian Cossack delegation.61 With great difficulty the commission reached an agreement on a Provisional All-Russian Government after five days of intense negotiations. A five-person directory would take supreme power in the entire territory of the Russian state. It would not be responsible to any controlling or legislative body until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, to which it would deliver a report. In a victory for the SR point of view, the Constituent Assembly to be convened would be the old one, but Gendel’man assured the other delegations that the Constituent Assembly would limit its program to the organization of new elections.62 This was a critical concession, but it seems to have remained unknown to the SR fraction as a whole.63 In a further blow to the PSR, the quorum for the Constituent Assembly was set high enough that the Assembly was in fact unlikely to meet. Two-hundred fifty Constituent Assembly members could open the Constituent Assembly on January 1, 1919; however, if 250 were not present, then a quorum of 170 on February 1, 1919, would suffice. There were, however, only a few more than 70 members of the Constituent Assembly present in Ufa at the time, and it was improbable that 100 additional members would arrive from Soviet Russia by early 1919. To make this scheme palatable to the SR fraction, the settlement institutionalized the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly. This body had two responsibilities: first, to coordinate the arrival of new Constituent Assembly members and the preparations for the opening of the Constituent Assembly; and second, to ensure that the government neither violated the rights of the Assembly nor delayed its opening. The rights of the Constituent Assembly were not defined, however, and it was not clear in any case what would happen if the government violated them, because the agreement stated that the directory was not responsible to any organ and that its members could not be removed. It was not difficult to see the potential for conflict that lurked in the simultaneous creation of a directory entrusted with supreme power and a Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly that would surely consider itself the embodiment of popular sovereignty.64 On September 18 the commission announced its proposal to the full conference, which approved it unanimously despite serious opposition from both the Siberian Government in Omsk and the Komuch and SR Central Committee leadership. Serebrennikov and Sapozhnikov, who negotiated the agreement on

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behalf of the Siberian Government, had violated their instructions when they accepted a role for the Constituent Assembly, but there was little Mikhailov and the Administrative Council in Omsk could do, as they were preoccupied with fending off a last, spasmodic bid for power on the part of the Duma.65 The Komuch leadership and SR Central Committee were no more enthusiastic about the agreement than Omsk. Vol’skii cabled Klimushkin in Samara, “I am beginning to think that we made a mistake agreeing on [the conference]. Probably nothing but harm will come from it . . . . It may be necessary to resort to operational methods.”66 Vol’skii’s notion of using force to defend the interests of Komuch and the PSR was quite unrealistic, though he apparently took the idea seriously, since he asked Klimushkin to ready prison cells in Samara. The mood in the Central Committee was no better. Of the eight members of the Central Committee in Ufa, only Zenzinov, Gendel’man, and Nikolai Ivanov voted in favor of the agreement in the SR fraction. The departure of KoganBernshtein near the end of the conference removed the most vehement Central Committee opponent of an agreement, but the longtime leaders of the party left, Viktor Chernov and Nikolai Rakitnikov, arrived in Samara at about the same time. Chernov was sufficiently unpopular among nonsocialists that the Central Committee discouraged him from coming to Ufa, fearful his presence would torpedo any settlement. From Samara, Chernov immediately denounced the concessions made by the SR fraction. He wired the members of the Central Committee warning them not to “destroy the party and the democracy” by signing the agreement. Faced with the difficulty of renouncing an agreement that their own fraction supported and with the Red Army now threatening Samara itself, all the Central Committee members in Ufa except Chaikin signed the agreement. The Komuch leaders also decided they had no choice but to submit, though Ivan Maiskii cabled Vedeniapin in Ufa to report that the Komuch government was “deeply disappointed” by the agreement and insisted on providing half of the ministers in the prospective Council of Ministers. For his part, Chernov unsuccessfully urged the Central Committee to rip up the agreement and simply declare Komuch the all-Russian government.67 The conference’s approval of the agreement on September 18 left the commission with only the composition of the Directory to resolve. The SR fraction expected two of the five seats in the government, but filling those seats with SRs acceptable to the other fractions was not easy. Avksent’ev was an obvious candidate, but the SRs were only willing to endorse him if they could install someone closer to the mainstream of party opinion in their other seat. They proposed Zenzinov, Evgenii Timofeev, and Dmitrii Donskoi—of whom only Zenzinov was present. The selection of a military man posed the other chief difficulty. Admiral Kolchak and Generals Alekseev and Denikin were mentioned as possibilities, but the SRs rejected all three. They would accept only Boldyrev, who

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as a leading member of the Union of Regeneration had ties to the party’s right wing and was plainly not a counterrevolutionary. In the end the commission agreed on Avksent’ev, Boldyrev, Vologodskii, the Kadet Nikolai Astrov, and the Popular Socialist Nikolai Chaikovskii. The commission assigned each of the five men a deputy who would take over an absent member’s seat on the Directory. Neither Astrov nor Chaikovskii was present, so the Kadet Central Committee member Vladimir Vinogradov took Astrov’s place, and Zenzinov took Chaikovskii’s place, thereby securing a second seat for the PSR. With little disagreement the commission also adopted a political program for the government that was based on a draft offered by the SR fraction. It emphasized national unity and independence, preservation of the gains of the February Revolution, the renunciation of Brest-Litovsk, and a renewed struggle against German hegemony. On September 23 the entire conference reconvened for a final time to approve the “Act on the Formation of the All-Russian Supreme Power.”68 In the end the principal victor at Ufa was the Union of Regeneration, the only political organization wholeheartedly and unambiguously committed to the agreement. Alongside the Czechoslovak and Allied representatives, members of the union had organized the state conferences of the summer and had devoted the most energy to forming an all-Russian government to unify the anti-Bolshevik cause. Four of the five men elected to the Directory at Ufa (Astrov, Avksent’ev, Boldyrev, and Chaikovskii) were founding members of the union, although it is unclear how widely this was known. Other members of the union—including Argunov, Moiseenko, Pavlov, and Lev Krol’—had played important roles in the Cheliabinsk and Ufa conferences.69 The Union of Regeneration’s fingerprints can be found on numerous features of the Ufa agreement. The idea of a collegial, coalition directory can be traced to the union platform of early 1918, as can the hope that the Directory would have full power and not be constrained by any legislative or controlling institution. This view was unsurprising on the right, but its success in the SR fraction was due mainly to the influence of the SR members of the union. The Union of Regeneration’s importance may also be seen in the fact that Krol’, the Kadet Central Committee representative to the conference, only briefly and half-heartedly advanced his party’s preference for military dictatorship, evidence of his allegiance to the union platform and of the cross-party ties and supra-party loyalties that the union had nurtured. In this respect the role and significance of the Union of Regeneration may be compared to that of political freemasonry in 1917; in fact, most of the founding and leading members of the union were Masons, including Argunov, Astrov, Avksent’ev, Chaikovskii, and Krol’.70 The Masons’ desire to work quietly behind the backs of the political parties to overcome partisan divisions and cultivate a sense of moral and national

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unity informed both the activity of the Union of Regeneration and the brief history of the Directory. The union’s full name—the Union for the Regeneration of Russia (Soiuz vozrozhdeniia Rossii)—provides the best opening into the deeper structures of its political outlook. The call for national regeneration reproduced one of the classic tropes of modern nationalism, historically evidenced in the ubiquitous metaphors of family in national narratives and iconography, in the names of countless national organizations modeled on Mazzini’s “Young Italy,” and in the fertile notion of a springtime of nations. To regenerate Russia was of course to awaken it to national consciousness (the slumbering metaphor evoked the same image as rebirth), but like activists of national movements elsewhere, the members of the union understood the need for concerted work to construct the national consciousness that they sought in principle merely to awaken. With its cross-party networks, its ties to the like-minded National Center, and its semiofficial publications such as the Moscow newspaper Vozrozhdenie and the journal Narodovlastie, the union had tried to carve out a space for some of that ideological labor. There they hoped to narrow the conceptual gap between popular sovereignty (narodovlastie) and a national, or nationalist, government (natsional’naia vlast’).71 Since the national catastrophe represented by Brest-Litovsk, members of the union had conceived the restoration of the Eastern front against Germany and the formation of a domestic “united national front” based in principle on popular sovereignty as two aspects of the same process of national regeneration. As Avksent’ev argued in the spring: “The nation’s sole task is the defense of the country and the reconstitution of Russian statehood. The condition for its fulfillment is the creation of a united national front. That united national front should be secured, formalized, and organized by the creation of a government of the whole nation (natsional’naia vlast’). . . . That government should advance a dual slogan for national defense and for the rebirth and strengthening of popular sovereignty: through the rebirth of popular sovereignty to national defense and through national defense to popular sovereignty. The rebirth of Russia is possible only by means of this dual path. And it will come, because the lethargy of the people is not its death, and we see the first signs of its awakening from this lethargy.”72 For Avksent’ev and the other members of the Union of Regeneration present at Ufa, the new Provisional All-Russian Government was such a government of the whole nation, a government dedicated to the dual path of defending the country and strengthening the institutions of popular sovereignty. At the end of that path, it was hoped, lay the rebirth of an independent, united, and free Russia, a conceptual trajectory that owed much to nineteenth-century liberal nationalism and to an understanding of the formation of the modern (and

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model) nation in the French Revolution. Just as the Thermidorean Directory had found a way out of revolutionary terror after 1795, so too did the architects of the new Directory hope that collegial government might consolidate the gains of the revolution and institutionalize modern Russian nationhood. The introduction of the Russian tricolor to replace both the red flag of Komuch and the white and green regionalist flag of the Siberian government symbolically conveyed Komuch’s desire to supersede both governments and their constitutive discourses and to legitimate its authority in terms of republican nationalism.73 That nationalism was also distinct from the discourse of Russian statehood, in which nationalist elements comingled with Old Regime concepts and categories. At the very moment of its formation, however, the Directory confronted powerful evidence of the difficulty it would face in drawing both the revolutionary and “state-minded” elements in the east into a patriotic Eastern front. In Omsk the Siberian Regional Duma staged a last, desperate attempt to assert SR control of the Siberian government and tip the balance of power in the Ufa negotiations. The origins of the latest intrigues in Omsk dated to the second week of September.74 During the Ufa conference Ivan Mikhailov was the only member of the Council of Ministers of the Siberian government present in Omsk. The Council of Ministers therefore granted the Administrative Council extraordinary powers for as long as the Council of Ministers did not have its quorum of three ministers present. Among those powers was the right to dissolve the Duma, which alarmed the Duma members in Tomsk, who had never accepted the Administrative Council’s growing political role.75 The Duma majority had meanwhile watched the behavior of the Siberian government at the Ufa conference with mounting frustration, because the Duma continued to support Komuch in the struggle over the formation of an all-Russian government. The Duma members were also concerned about the mission Vologodskii had undertaken to the Far East, where he hoped to liquidate two other claimants to power, the Derber group in Vladivostok and General Horvath’s Cabinet in Harbin. The Derber group, the remnant of the original Provisional Siberian Government elected by the Duma in January, had led a peripatetic existence since its flight from Bolshevik-controlled Tomsk, landing eventually in Vladivostok. There it claimed all power in Siberia on July 8. The next day in Harbin, Horvath, the administrator of the East Chinese Railroad, declared himself provisional supreme ruler of Russia and announced the formation of a cabinet dominated by Kadets and other nonsocialists. Real power in the region in fact belonged to the Japanese, who had seventy thousand troops in the area by the fall of 1918, but in principle each group posed a threat to the Siberian government in Omsk.76 Vologodskii devoted particular atten-

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tion to the liquidation of the Derber group’s claim, as it formed the second half of the original Provisional Siberian Government and the Duma continued to regard its members as potential ministers of the government in Omsk. The Duma indeed hoped to unite what it saw as the eastern and western halves of the Siberian government by persuading Derber and his colleagues to return to Omsk. There they would take up the ministerial posts conferred on them by the Duma in January, which would dramatically reshape the Siberian government and shift the balance of power to the PSR.77 When the Siberian government dispatched Vologodskii to the Far East, the Duma elected its own delegation to follow him and counteract his diplomatic initiatives. As soon as he learned of the Duma delegation, Ivan Mikhailov ordered the army command to halt the delegation before it could reach the Far East. Siberian military authorities detained the delegation in Irkutsk.78 Because the detention coincided with the tense preparations for the reopening of the Duma, it appeared particularly threatening to the Duma leadership. On September 11, Mikhailov sent the first of a series of telegrams to A. N. Gattenberger, the Siberian government’s provincial commissar in Tomsk, instructing him to watch carefully that the Duma did not exceed the limited agenda that had been agreed on, and inquiring about the reliability of the troops in the Tomsk garrison.79 When it learned of these telegrams, the Siberian SR leaders interpreted them as evidence of the Administrative Council’s plans to dissolve the Duma. As V. N. Merkhalev of the Siberian Regional Committee of the PSR later put it, the Duma at this point “decided to put the question sharply.”80 Meeting in closed session, Iakushev and the Duma leaders opened a stormy assault on the government’s position at the Ufa conference.81 More important, the Duma leadership took steps to form a new leftist majority in the Council of Ministers and thereby deprive the Administrative Council of its extraordinary powers. The fortuitous return of Krutovskii to Omsk helped regain the quorum in the Council of Ministers. Vologodskii, passing through Krasnoiarsk on his way to the Far East, had convinced Krutovskii to return to the government, because Vologodskii had tired of his own pivotal role in the middle of the government.82 Simultaneously, Iakushev persuaded Patushinskii to reenter the government and turned his attention to Aleksandr Novoselov, an SR-regionalist and minister of local self-government in the original Provisional Siberian Government elected in January.83 Novoselov had spent most of 1918 in the Far East but had returned to western Siberia weary of politics and intent on dedicating himself to literature. In Omsk, Shatilov and Iakushev entangled him in their hopes to remake the Siberian government. Under intense pressure from Shatilov and a direct order from the Duma, Novoselov agreed to enter the government.84 On September 20, with the return of Shatilov and Krutovskii, a quorum of the Council of Ministers was again present in Omsk. That afternoon the

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council met in the presence of Iakushev, invited ostensibly to discuss the matter of the Duma delegation to the Far East and its detention. Krutovskii, Shatilov, and Iakushev presented Mikhailov with Patushinskii’s withdrawal of his resignation and raised the issue of Novoselov’s entrance into the government. Mikhailov refused to accept the return of Patushinskii or the entrance of Novoselov. After long and furious debates, the Council of Ministers endorsed Novoselov’s entrance into the government. Mikhailov stormed out of the session in an effort to deprive the meeting of a quorum, but he returned later in the afternoon to find that the government had issued a decree announcing Novoselov’s resumption of his duties.85 Now faced with the prospect of a pro-SR, pro-Duma majority in the Council of Ministers even after the return of Serebrennikov and Vologodskii from Ufa, Mikhailov turned to Colonel Viacheslav Volkov, the commander of the Omsk garrison. Volkov, an energetic and thoroughly reactionary Cossack officer, headed a secret military organization whose shadow fell over most of the political violence in Omsk in 1918.86 At 4:00 a.m. on September 21 officers acting under the orders of Volkov awakened Shatilov, Iakushev, and Krutovskii and summoned them to the general staff headquarters. From there the officers spirited Shatilov, Iakushev, and Krutovskii to an apartment on the outskirts of town. Shortly thereafter other officers seized Novoselov and brought him to the same apartment. The next morning Shatilov and Krutovskii, under threat of death, signed letters of resignation from the government. The officers released Krutovskii, Shatilov, and Iakushev and ordered them to leave Omsk within twenty-four hours, but Cossacks took Novoselov to a grove outside town and shot him. That evening the Administrative Council accepted the resignations of Shatilov and Krutovskii and dissolved the Duma.87 In contrast to August, the SRs fought back and turned to the Czechoslovak Legion for support. In Tomsk the Duma dissolved the Administrative Council and dismissed Ivan Mikhailov from the government. It then transferred its own powers to a Committee of the Siberian Regional Duma dominated by SRs, including Pavel Mikhailov and Vasilii Sidorov from the old West Siberian Commissariat and Merkhalev and M. S. Fel’dman from the Siberian Regional Committee of the PSR. This committee claimed all power in Siberia. In Omsk, meanwhile, Iakushev and František Richter, the Czechoslovak representative in the city, agreed to have the Legion arrest Mikhailov and any members of the Administrative Council who had been involved in the murder of Novoselov. The Legion agreed to provide military support for the transfer of the seat of the Siberian government to Tomsk. Richter established contact in Ufa with General Syrový, commander-in-chief of the Czechoslovak forces, who ordered the arrest of Mikhailov and informed the Siberian authorities that this order had come from the Directory.88

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This chaos coincided with the birth of the Directory and presented it with its first political test. Syrový’s order for the arrest of Mikhailov had not in fact been approved by the Directory and had indeed preceded the Directory’s official formation. General Boldyrev resisted entreaties to order the arrest himself, uncertain of the real situation in Omsk and reluctant to become dependent on the Czechoslovaks. Mikhailov eluded arrest by the Czechoslovaks and continued to mastermind the Administrative Council’s counteroffensive against the Duma, and units loyal to the Siberian government began rounding up SRs in Tomsk. On September 25 the Directory finally moved to liquidate the crisis in Omsk and Tomsk. It restored Shatilov and Krutovskii to their ministerial posts and recognized, in principle, the political rights of the Duma. Other, more important steps, however, worked against the Duma and the Siberian SRs. The Directory prorogued the Duma, ordered the Czechoslovaks to release Gratsianov, and blocked any Czechoslovak move on behalf of the Duma.89 These measures effectively acknowledged that real power lay in the hands of Mikhailov and his supporters in and around the Siberian government. Shatilov and Krutovskii in fact never returned to the Council of Ministers, which was now securely controlled by the nonsocialist, anti-SR camp of Siberian politics. Although the Duma persisted in its claims to all power in Siberia into October, it finally dissolved itself under pressure from the Directory in early November.90 The Agony of the Directory

One of the oddities of the Ufa agreement was that it created a provisional allRussian government, but it neither abolished the regional governments nor delineated their powers from those of the Directory. The Ufa agreement simply stated that the regional governments would cede power to the Directory when the latter demanded and that determination of the competencies of the regional governments in local matters would be left to the “wisdom” of the Directory.91 Moreover, because the Directory had no administrative apparatus of its own, it existed for the time being only on paper, at the sufferance of the regional governments. Its territory rapidly shrinking, Komuch abandoned Samara for Ufa two weeks after the formation of the Directory, effectively ending the Directory’s chances of consolidating power by balancing itself between Samara and Omsk. In Omsk the Siberian government was not inclined to trust in the “wisdom” of the Directory, particularly as it felt its hand improve with Komuch’s loss of territory and move to Ufa. The Siberian government and its Administrative Council had just won a bitter struggle for power with the Siberian SRs and the government’s principal political leader, Ivan Mikhailov, had opposed most of the concessions made by the Siberian delegation at Ufa. As a result, the Directory found itself negotiating anew the conditions of its assumption of power, ostensibly settled at Ufa.

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At Mikhailov’s urging, the Siberian government took a hard line and forced the Directory into a series of concessions that recognized the Siberians’ preeminent political position. The Siberians first persuaded the Directory to choose Omsk as its residence. From the Directory’s point of view, the principal attraction of Omsk lay in its administrative apparatus. Although the Omsk administration was not particularly strong or efficient and had begun to show signs of the bureaucratic bloating and corruption that later plagued Kolchak, it was arguably senseless for the Directory to start over in another city. Avksent’ev and Zenzinov, however, were reluctant to strengthen the hand of the Siberian government and faced strong opposition to Omsk from most SRs. They preferred Ekaterinburg, seat of the Provisional Urals Government, which was itself, like the Directory, an offspring of the Union of Regeneration. The Directory in fact decided on Ekaterinburg but ran into opposition from the Siberian government and a warning from General Syrový that the Czechoslovak Legion could not guarantee the security of the city. The Directory therefore reversed course and chose Omsk. Avksent’ev and Zenzinov travelled to Ufa to placate the Bureau of the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly, which gave its reluctant support to the move after Avksent’ev outlined a strategy for the “envelopment” (obvolakivanie) of the Siberian government.92 As Avksent’ev explained to a jilted Krol’ of the Urals government: “We have to crawl into the wolf’s mouth. Either he will eat us or we will strangle him.” Krol’ assured Avksent’ev it would be the former.93 The Siberian government also forced the Directory to accept most of its nominations for the new Council of Ministers. After some hesitation the Directory appointed Vologodskii chairman and agreed that the other ministers would be drawn primarily from the Siberian government and the Administrative Council. Ivan Mikhailov and Evgenii Rogovskii, the only SR considered for a ministerial position, became the principal bones of contention. Avksent’ev and Zenzinov hoped to secure the portfolio of internal affairs for Rogovskii, but the Siberians, likewise eager to secure control of the police, had the same post in mind for Mikhailov. In the end Czechoslovak opposition to Mikhailov and Vologodskii’s pressure on the Administrative Council forced the Siberians to settle for Mikhailov’s appointment to head the Ministry of Finance. Rogovskii was appointed assistant minister of internal affairs with responsibility for the police.94 Otherwise, former members of the Administrative Council of the Siberian government dominated the new government. Of the fourteen ministers ten were drawn from the Administrative Council: only Admiral Kolchak (war and navy), Iurii Kliuchnikov (foreign affairs), Leonid Ustrugov (communications), and G. A. Krasnov (state control) were new, and all could be expected to hew closer to the Siberian line than to that of Komuch or the PSR. Only two of the thirty-eight ministers and assistant ministers were SRs (Rogovskii and

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Nikolai Oganovskii, an agrarian expert from the party’s right wing who became assistant minister of agriculture).95 With these difficulties overcome, the Siberian government officially transferred power to the Directory on November 3, and the Directory liquidated the regional governments of the Urals, Central Asia, and Komuch territory on November 4. The Siberian government’s proclamation announcing the transfer of power provides striking evidence of the conceptual distance it had traveled since its creation by the Duma in January. The proclamation drew scarcely at all on regionalist discourse, and its account of the government’s accomplishments was deeply colored by the vocabulary and rhetoric of Russian statehood. Obscuring the government’s origins in Siberian regionalism, an offshoot of Russian radicalism that had historically sought to challenge imperial and liberal conceptions of the Russian state, the proclamation interpreted the civil war precisely as an effort to reconstitute a powerful, unified Russian state: Having accepted supreme power after the overthrow of the Bolsheviks in Western Siberia, the Provisional Siberian Government has been exerting itself to the highest degree to realize its difficult task—the further liberation of all of Siberia and the strengthening in it of the principles of legality and order. A heavy burden fell on the Siberian government: it inherited a situation in which the people’s property had been looted, industry destroyed, railroad transport disorganized. It was necessary to construct state power anew and to create order anew, in conditions of unending struggle. The glorious Russian officer corps, the Cossacks, and the selfless detachments of volunteers, relying on the fraternal assistance of the brave Czechs and Slovaks, heroically struggled for the liberation of the country. Today a single, unified state power (edinaia vlast’) exists across the whole expanse of Siberia. An army has been created again that is young, but strong in spirit. An administration subject to law has been established again. Work on the strengthening of the new state power in Siberia is far from complete, but while thinking about the welfare of the Siberian population, the interests of tormented Russia cannot be forgotten. Our motherland is bleeding. The Bolsheviks have handed her over for pillage to German prisoners of war and the most dissolute bands of criminals. The end of the World War is nearing. Nations will be deciding their fates, but formerly Great Russia may remain captive and broken apart at this exceptionally important moment. Without a Great Russia, Siberia cannot exist. At the hour of the greatest danger all forces and all means should be put in the service of the one most important task—the re-creation of a unified and strong Russian state. This weighty task has been taken on by the provisional all-Russian government that was elected at the Ufa State Conference and invested with supreme power. All forces and means of administration should be subordinated to the single will of this government,

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and the further existence of several regional governments is today not permissible. Conscious of its holy and patriotic duty to all the peoples and parts of Russia, the Siberian government, having received guarantees that the principles of autonomy will be restored and strengthened as soon as the difficulties of the political situation of Russia have passed, has resolved today in the name of state interests: to repeal the declaration of July 4 “On the state independence (gosudarstvennaia samostoiatel’nost’) of Siberia,” to give up supreme power, and to transfer full power in the territory of Siberia to the provisional all-Russian government.96

Six weeks after the Ufa conference, the Directory had finally concentrated authority in its own hands, but as it struggled to hold together a conception of nation, state, and revolution that would keep the Union of Regeneration’s coalition intact, the Siberian government had arrived at an understanding of the civil war that undercut the principle of coalition, took implicit aim at the PSR, and pointed the way toward the coup d’état of November 18. As Vologodskii noted in his diary after the formation of the Council of Ministers: “With such tense relations between the Directory and the Siberian government, one cannot expect anything good in the future. One may think that there will always be conflicts between the Directory and the Council of Ministers.”97 The Directory’s concessions to the Siberian government alarmed the SRs, many of whom were no more enthusiastic about the Directory than was the Siberian government. At the end of September delegates from the Siberian SR organizations gathered in semiunderground conditions for an all-Siberian Congress of the PSR, the first party body officially to adopt a strategy for dealing with the Directory. The right-center majority argued that the party had been right to make compromises at Ufa but should maintain pressure on a directory that was “undemocratic in its composition.”98 The Irkutsk SR Isaak Gol’dberg concluded that SRs should not undermine the Directory unless it moved against the Constituent Assembly, although other speakers charged him with “reformism.” Another speaker pointed out that as it would be impossible to overcome the Siberian masses’ lack of interest in politics, a more radical line was out of the question and the party had little choice but to support the Directory.99 The resolutions of the congress reflected these considerations. The party congress offered the Directory its support but urged the government to base itself on “the wide strata of the organized democracy” grouped around the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly, whose principal task would be to exert pressure on the political line of the government.100 The resolutions of the Siberian SR Congress illustrate the hopes SRs placed on the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly. The congress, based in Ekaterinburg, grouped the roughly eighty members of the Constituent

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Assembly present in the east, all but twenty of whom were SRs. As at the Ufa conference the SRs were divided into left and right factions, and the right maintained the slim majority it had held at Ufa. Disagreement centered on the purpose and political strategy of the congress. The right argued that the congress should concentrate on support of the Directory. In its view most members of the congress ought to move to Omsk and work for the government. The congress would continue formally to exist, but its tasks would be minimal, confined to propaganda for the Directory and work on an instruction (nakaz) and new electoral law for the Constituent Assembly. The left minority pushed a more aggressive strategy. It viewed the congress as a means to organize the democratic forces for the coming struggle with reaction. Nikolai Sviatitskii, one of the leaders of the left in the congress, insisted that the Directory was essentially dead and would soon be replaced, either by the counterrevolution or by the congress itself. Members were not to be released to work for the Directory. The congress should remain in Ekaterinburg to exert political pressure on the Directory, organize its own military forces, carry out agitational work in the population, and prepare legislation for the Constituent Assembly.101 Anxiety about the growing strength of the anti-SR forces in Siberian politics soon overwhelmed the right-center SR line reflected in the strategy of the congress majority and in the decisions of the Siberian Congress of the PSR. At a meeting called to work out the congress’s future course of action and its line toward the Directory, Dmitrii Rozenblium revealed that Gendel’man had assured the other parties to the Ufa agreement that if the Constituent Assembly convened it would limit itself to calling for new elections. Hence the party as a whole was formally committed to the SR right’s understanding of the role of the Constituent Assembly. Rozenblium’s revelations, coming in the wake of the Directory’s concessions to Omsk, tipped the balance in the congress to the left. A new left-wing majority promptly endorsed Sviatitskii’s aggressive plan of action. It recalled all Constituent Assembly members from Omsk to Ekaterinburg and declared that the Constituent Assembly would pass basic laws that could not wait for a new assembly.102 Acquiescence in the right-center line of the fraction majority came to an end in the Central Committee at the same time. After the arrival of Chernov and Rakitnikov in September, the Central Committee attained a quorum for the first time in the east. It convened at the end of September in Samara to assess the results of the Ufa conference, and it endorsed Chernov’s view that the Ufa agreement represented a major and unequivocal defeat for the party. Gendel’man argued in vain that the accords were the best the party could have achieved in the circumstances, but Chernov insisted that it would have been better to abandon the effort to form an all-Russian government and put power in the hands of local Committees of Members of the Constituent Assembly.

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The Central Committee decided not to renounce the agreement and to focus instead on “rectifying” it, but it also resolved to abide by the agreement only as long as, in its view, the Directory adhered to it.103 In mid-October the Central Committee concluded that the Directory’s concessions to the Siberian government marked a victory for the reaction and an abandonment of the principle of coalition that underpinned the Ufa settlement. On October 22 it issued a secret directive to party organizations of the east. This document, the so-called Chernov Manifesto, articulated Chernov’s assessment of the Ufa agreement and the Directory, although it toned down some of his most radical formulations. Nonetheless, the thrust of the directive was clear: preparation for struggle against the counterrevolution now became the party’s chief priority in the east. The Central Committee instructed the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution and legislation for the upcoming session of the Constituent Assembly, to mobilize society in defense of the Constituent Assembly, and to prepare to defend the all-Russian government from the onslaught of reaction. The most controversial portion of the directive read: “In anticipation of political crises that may be called forth by counterrevolutionary intrigues, all forces of the party at present should be mobilized, given military training, and armed, so that they are at any moment prepared to withstand the blows of the counterrevolutionary organizers of civil war in the rear of the anti-Bolshevik front. Work on the gathering, unification, and comprehensive political instruction and purely military mobilization of the party’s forces should be the basis of the activity of the Central Committee, giving it reliable points of support for ongoing influence on the state.”104 The Ufa Council of Ministers, the successor to Komuch, spearheaded the SRs’ effort to organize forces for the showdown. The council recalled Colonel F. E. Makhin, the highest-ranking SR officer and commander of one of the volunteer units at the front, and it urged the Directory not to go ahead with the planned dissolution of the units manned by the Izhevsk and Votkinsk workers, who had been sympathetic to the party in the past.105 Although the Directory had already abolished the People’s Army, most of which had simply disintegrated in the course of the Soviet offensive of September and October, the Ufa Council had preserved Fortunatov’s cavalry unit and the two battalions of the Constituent Assembly, one of which served at the front and the other of which was divided between the front and guard duty for the council in Ufa. These units secretly resolved to follow only the orders of the council or the Central Committee of the PSR.106 Using the funds at its disposal as a regional government, the Ufa Council redoubled its efforts to build up the volunteer units, which totaled roughly twentyfive hundred troops. In addition, the council launched a new effort to form Russian-Czech regiments. General Čeček had first proposed Russian-Czech

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units in Samara. His plan had been to man the units with Russian volunteers and to avoid the politically suspect Russian officers by relying on Czechoslovak officers sympathetic to Komuch and the PSR, an idea that held great appeal to Komuch. With the support of the Czechoslovak National Council, the first efforts to form such units began in late summer, but little was achieved before the evacuation of the Komuch leadership to Ufa.107 In Ufa the idea of RussianCzech units arose again, but the SRs now focused on the necessity of “creating a democratic army capable of fighting not only the left Bolsheviks, but also the ‘right Bolsheviks.’”108 By early November three battalions had been formed, one of which was dispatched to the front. Still, the Czechoslovak Legion was the SRs’ trump card. There were three thousand Czechoslovak troops in Omsk when the Directory arrived there in October. When the negotiations between the Directory and the Siberian government over the formation of the Council of Ministers appeared on the verge of collapse in October, the Czechoslovak command informed Avksent’ev and Zenzinov that it could dissolve the Siberian government if they wished. Avksent’ev and Zenzinov declined. They were unwilling to move without the approval of the Directory and knew that the other members of the Directory would oppose such a move. SR party circles soon learned of the unwillingness of Avksent’ev and Zenzinov to take advantage of the Czechoslovak offer, which was seen as further evidence of their indecisiveness in the struggle with the Siberian reaction.109 At the same time, the prospect of Czechoslovak support bolstered the party left’s confidence that it could prevail in an aggressive course of action. In Ekaterinburg a “militant mood” prevailed in the new majority of the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly, which was determined to act on the October 22 directive.110 On November 2, Chernov arrived with Vol’skii and a group of Central Committee members in Ekaterinburg for the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly. The Chernov group’s presence reinforced the new left majority in the SR fraction, which passed a resolution endorsing the Central Committee directive.111 The full congress resolved to form new military units, to step up the formation of the Russian-Czech regiments, and to create a commission that would coordinate propaganda and agitation in defense of the Constituent Assembly. On November 16, the presidium of the congress resolved to hold a closed session of the full congress to debate the future of the Ufa agreement and congress policy toward the Directory. It was by now clear that there would be no quorum of 250 Constituent Assembly members by January 1 or 170 by February 1, but the congress leaders expected that with the Ufa agreement disintegrating, they would simply declare that the congress was itself the Constituent Assem-

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bly. With a growing sense of despair, the much reduced right wing of the SR fraction denounced these decisions as violations of the Ufa agreement and an abandonment of the Directory. It is unlikely that the session of the congress planned for November 19 or 20 would have openly broken with the Directory, but party sentiment was clearly running in that direction.112 The anti-SR forces, however, moved before the session could be held. The Omsk Coup

The coup d’état of November 18 arrived sooner than the congress expected, although rumors of an imminent coup had been rampant for weeks. The principal civilian conspirators were Ivan Mikhailov, the archenemy of the Siberian SRs, and Viktor Pepeliaev of the Kadet Central Committee. Some members of the Directory’s Council of Ministers were certainly among the conspirators, but it is impossible to say precisely who in the Mikhailov-led core of the former Siberian government was involved. Almost all were anxious to dispense once and for all with the SRs and could be expected to sympathize with the overthrow of the Directory. Mikhailov and Pepeliaev also worked closely with officers in Boldyrev’s general staff, although Boldyrev himself, like Vologodskii in the Council of Ministers, remained in the dark. Colonel A. D. Syromiatnikov, the quartermaster of the Siberian Army, seems to have played the main role among the officers working with Mikhailov in the preparation of the conspiracy.113 Mikhailov’s close ties to the Cossack detachments of Vol’kov, Krasil’nikov, and Katanaev provided a ruthless force on which to rely in the execution of the coup. Their men were probably behind the most recent act of violence in Omsk, the kidnap and murder of Boris Moiseenko, the longtime SR and treasurer of the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly.114 Pepeliaev brought the authority of the Kadet party and the National Center to the conspiracy. He was nominally a member of the Union of Regeneration in addition to the National Center, but by the time he came east from European Russia in August, Pepeliaev had abandoned any interest in cooperation with the socialists and become an ardent proponent of military dictatorship. In Samara, Pepeliaev endorsed the strident anti-Komuch line of the Kadet organization on the Volga before moving on to the Urals. He declined to attend the Ufa conference, pleading illness, and continued on to the Far East. There he established contact with General Gajda in Vladivostok and General Horvath in Harbin and tested the ground for a military dictatorship. Gajda informed Pepeliaev that he could secure Czechoslovak cooperation for a military dictatorship (a doubtful claim) and that he would speak with Admiral Kolchak, the prospective dictator.115 Pepeliaev returned to Omsk at the beginning of November and sounded out his Kadet colleagues in the National Center on the possibility of

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dictatorship. To his surprise, the two Kadet members of the National Center present in Omsk, N. A. Borodin and Stepan Vostrotin, opposed a coup.116 This conciliatory approach toward the left was anathema to Pepeliaev and to most members of the Siberian government, especially Mikhailov. Despite the initial doubts expressed by his most senior Kadet colleagues, Pepeliaev laid plans for the coup with Mikhailov.117 There remained the question of the prospective dictator, Admiral Kolchak, who had arrived in Omsk to take up his post as minister of war for the Directory. True to his promise to Pepeliaev, Gajda had spoken with Kolchak in Vladivostok in early October. They discussed the army and the political situation in Omsk, about which Gajda was better informed than Kolchak. Gajda offered the view that the Directory was not viable and suggested military dictatorship as an alternative. Kolchak responded that there was no person with sufficient authority in the army to assume the role of dictator and a military dictatorship would therefore not be possible. Rebuffed, Gajda did not divulge Pepeliaev’s plans, adding only that the situation was developing and that he personally remained in favor of military dictatorship.118 Pepeliaev himself now approached Kolchak in Omsk. On November 5 he noted a “long and interesting conversation with Kolchak” in his diary. Pepeliaev recorded Kolchak’s political outlook: “It is necessary to support the government. In the future everything hinges on whether Avksent’ev and Zenzinov will be tied by their party. If so, it will be impossible to work with them. If not, then everything will go more peacefully.” After briefly discussing the military situation, Pepeliaev raised the question of a military dictatorship, mentioning the names of both Alekseev and Denikin. Kolchak stated: “A dictator should have two bases: victory and great personal merits. Alekseev does not now have the first, but he has the second. I have neither the one nor the other, but if it becomes necessary I am ready to make this sacrifice. But events should not be forced. The government must be supported.”119 Kolchak thus displayed no great appetite for power but signaled his willingness to serve. His view that the fate of the government hinged on the ability of its SR members to shake free of their party reflected the conventionally “stateminded” understanding of politics and government that informed most officers’ deep suspicion of socialists and revolutionaries. In the two weeks that remained until the coup, numerous officers, Cossacks, and political figures approached Kolchak to urge that he take power. Some were key figures in the preparation of the overthrow. Others simply voiced the widespread conviction that the Directory was near death and that further delay would imperil the army and the stability of the rear. The details of these conversations left no mark in the sources, but it is fair to conclude that Kolchak gradually came to believe that he would have to assume power to save the Russian army and state.120

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The plotters moved into action on the night of November 17–18. In the middle of the night a squad of Cossacks from Krasil’nikov’s detachment seized Avksent’ev, Zenzinov, Rogovskii, Gendel’man, and another member of the Central Committee, Dmitrii Rakov, at Rogovskii’s apartment. A separate group seized Argunov, Avksent’ev’s replacement under the Ufa agreement, while other forces disarmed the SR police units that Rogovskii had brought from Samara to guard the Directory. The Cossacks smuggled Avksent’ev, Zenzinov, Argunov, and Rogovskii to Krasil’nikov’s headquarters in the Agricultural Institute outside Omsk. There they remained isolated until the morning of November 19, when they learned of the success of the coup.121 After a confused effort during the night to gather information, Vologodskii convened a meeting of the Council of Ministers with Vinogradov at 8:00 a.m. (the final member of the Directory, Boldyrev, was at the front). Vologodskii reported what he had been able to learn and proposed the arrest of Krasil’nikov. To his surprise, this met sharp opposition. The consensus of the ministers, orchestrated by Mikhailov, was to accept the events of the night as a fait accompli, consider the Directory dissolved, and entrust power to a military dictator. Vinogradov resigned his position on the Directory, and Vologodskii declared his intention to resign as chairman of the Council of Ministers. The assembled ministers, however, prevailed upon Vologodskii to stay, in order “to sanction the coup with his name.” The ministers resolved unanimously to take power into their own hands and transfer it to a supreme ruler. Vologodskii asked Kolchak to leave the room and the ministers elected him to the post by a vote of ten to two (two ministers voted for Horvath). Kolchak returned to the room and solemnly accepted power.122 In principle, the Council of Ministers, virtually synonymous with the former Siberian government, had seized power and transferred military command and executive authority to Kolchak. The approval of the Council of Ministers was required on all legislation, although Kolchak was granted broad emergency powers. In the event of Kolchak’s death, his powers would revert to the Council of Ministers.123 These constitutional procedures had little meaning, and power slipped quickly from the civilian to the military authorities after November 18, but neither fact should obscure the degree to which the overthrow of the Directory was largely the work of the former Siberian government and grew out of the long struggle between the SR and anti-SR camps in Siberian politics. Over the course of this struggle, the Siberian government had metamorphosed from an SR-created regionalist government with origins in the radical tradition into the embodiment of Russian statehood—in the eyes of the government’s supporters the best, and perhaps last, hope for the Russian state tradition. Kolchak’s public declaration of his assumption of power echoed the Siberian government’s recent rhetoric and drew heavily on the idiom and imagery of Russian statehood: “On November 18, 1918, the all-Russian Provisional Government collapsed. The

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Council of Ministers took full power and transferred it to me, Admiral of the Russian Navy Alexander Kolchak. Having assumed the cross of that power in the exceptionally difficult conditions of civil war and the complete disintegration of state life, I declare: I will take neither the path of reaction nor the fatal course of party politics (partiinost’). My main goal is the creation of an army capable of combat, victory over Bolshevism, and the establishment of legality and the rule of law, so that the people will be able to choose without interference the form of rule it desires and to realize the great ideas of freedom that have now been proclaimed throughout the world. I call you, citizens, to unity, to the struggle against Bolshevism, to labor, and to sacrifices.”124 Kolchak was probably in some measure sincere in his desire to rise above party politics, and some of his subsequent policies bear witness to his hope to eschew the course of reaction. Nevertheless, the opposition between party politics on the one hand and Russian statehood on the other, and the attendant effort to keep partisan politics out of the army (and perhaps even out of “state life” itself) represented a characteristic statist desire to push back the boundaries that had come to mark the political domain since the fall of the monarchy. Revolutionary politics, of course, aimed ultimately not only to bring the army and state structure within its sphere, but to obliterate the boundaries that put some social relations and institutions explicitly out of reach of politics and left others unexamined and undiscussed, disguised as part of the natural order of the world.125 Efforts after 1917 to shrink the political domain, and the hope of Kolchak and many officers to depoliticize the army in particular, did not necessarily entail counterrevolutionary aspirations on matters of land and property, although liberal and statist conceptions of law and order certainly operated in defense of privilege and hierarchy in a broad sense.126 Nevertheless, what united supporters of the dictatorship was neither a common interest in property nor a resolve to defend capitalist economic relations. They believed, rather, that reconstituting the Russian state and rebuilding the army required dispensing with the SRs, whose supposed determination to introduce politics into those institutions was seen as evidence of their incapacity for constructive work and state building. As Ivan Serebrennikov later put it, employing vocabulary suggestive of the quintessential statist opposition between the elemental chaos of revolution and the hard-won order of the state, “SRs could only introduce total disorder into any well-organized affair. . . . [They were] organically unsuitable for the struggle against the Bolsheviks.”127 Like many members of the Siberian intelligentsia who gravitated to the anti-SR camp in 1918, Serebrennikov was himself a former SR, and his migration from the fringes of the PSR to minister of supply under Kolchak maps the polarization of the politics of the Eastern front in 1918. So too does the diary entry of Vasilii Boldyrev in response to the news of the Central Committee

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directive of October 22. The moderate general, a member of the Union of Regeneration who in the recent past had been close to the right wing of the PSR, now drew on the discourse of Russian statehood to express his anger with its left wing: “Those know-it-alls (umniki) have learned nothing and are beginning again their treasonous work.”128 Boldyrev’s evaluation of the directive echoed that of many others in Omsk, and Avksent’ev was right later to lament that the Central Committee directive hammered “the last nail in the coffin of the Directory.”129 Although that last nail would probably have been hammered regardless, the Central Committee directive was nevertheless a catastrophic miscalculation on the part of the leadership, because it cut precisely to an acute anxiety of those who felt themselves even to a small degree “state-minded”: the fear that the PSR’s search for counterrevolution would politicize and destroy the still fragile army and state just as, in their view, it had in 1917. The directive thereby alienated most of the party’s remaining sympathizers outside of its own ranks, completed the emptying-out of the already sparsely populated political center around the Directory, and handed the organizers of the coup d’état ideal grounds on which to act. The overthrow in Omsk found most of the SR leadership in Ekaterinburg with the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly or in Ufa with the Ufa Council of Ministers, the rump Komuch government that administered the province for the Directory. Both centers resolved immediately to resist the establishment of the new order. In Ekaterinburg the bureau and presidium of the congress met with the members of the SR Central Committee who were present and elected an Executive Committee headed by Chernov and Vol’skii to lead the effort to depose Kolchak. The Executive Committee convened the whole congress on November 19 to condemn the coup. The congress, in turn, instructed the Executive Committee to take steps for the “reestablishment of the legal order.” The congress adopted this vague formulation to conceal its lack of interest in the restoration of the Directory. Before the Executive Committee could take any concrete measures to resist Kolchak, however, troops loyal to Omsk stormed the hotel where the SRs were living and arrested Chernov, Vol’skii, and more than a dozen other leading SRs.130 Meanwhile the Ufa Council of Ministers declared its own assumption of power in what remained of Komuch territory. In a telegram to Vologodskii, the Ufa Council of Ministers demanded the immediate restitution of the Directory but also approached Boldyrev with a proposal that he rely on the PSR and the regional governments to assume supreme power throughout the territory of the Directory. The council hoped to restore the political situation to what it had been prior to the Ufa conference: the Siberians would retain control of Siberia, but the council would rule in Komuch territory, and the Bashkir government in Bashkir territories. Boldyrev would remain as commander-in-chief

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and have nominal power over all these governments. Boldyrev declined to cooperate.131 These rather fantastic schemes and threats notwithstanding, the SRs in Ufa and Ekaterinburg pinned their real hopes on the Czechoslovak Legion, which found itself in a difficult situation. The SRs appealed to the Russian Branch of the Czechoslovak National Council in Cheliabinsk for support in the suppression of the “traitors” in Omsk. As they had throughout the year, the Czechoslovaks sympathized with the PSR. On November 19 the representative of the Czechoslovak National Council in Ufa informed the SRs that Czechoslovak troops would move against Omsk and restore the Directory.132 The Czechoslovak National Council, however, soon found its hands tied. It did not directly control the Czechoslovak troops, and the senior generals (Syrový, Gajda, and Voitsekhovskii) were less sympathetic to the SRs. In addition, the Czechoslovaks were subordinate to the overall Allied effort on the Eastern front. The British representatives in Omsk made clear their own sympathy for Kolchak, as did the French general M. Janin, en route from Vladivostok to Omsk to take command of all Allied troops. Although he was later to take a sharply critical attitude toward both Kolchak and the British officers in Omsk, Janin ordered Syrový not to interfere in Russian political affairs.133 Allied intervention thus blocked any Czechoslovak move against Kolchak on behalf of the PSR. The Legionnaires did, however, protect the SRs for several weeks after the coup, allowing the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly and the Ufa Council to keep alive their hopes of overturning Kolchak’s assumption of power. In Ekaterinburg, Gajda ordered the release of Chernov and the other SRs arrested by Siberian troops on November 19 but expelled the Constituent Assembly members from the city. The Constituent Assembly members journeyed to Cheliabinsk, where General Syrový permitted them to travel to Ufa to join the Ufa Council of Ministers.134 With the arrival of the Constituent Assembly members on November 23, the SR leadership in the east—including Klimushkin, Vedeniapin, Chernov, Vol’skii, and others—was now concentrated in Ufa. Its position was initially secure. Ufa had never been governed by the Siberian government, which thus had no troops in the city. The Czechoslovak Legion controlled Cheliabinsk and promised not to let any Siberian troops pass through the city en route from Omsk to Ufa. Some SRs therefore hoped that they might establish their own authority in the region of Ufa and reopen the Constituent Assembly. Others insisted that the situation was hopeless and that they should simply abandon the Eastern front and return to Soviet Russia.135 Kolchak’s desire to put an end to the SRs’ activities and to establish control of Ufa, a railroad hub in close proximity to the front, soon brought these debates to a close. On November 30 he ordered the arrest of the former members of Komuch and of the Ufa Council of Ministers. Two days later the Czechoslo-

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vaks permitted troops loyal to Kolchak to pass through Cheliabinsk to liquidate the Ufa Council and round up the SR leadership in Ufa. The Siberian troops captured thirteen members of the Constituent Assembly, among them two members of the SR Central Committee, Florian Fedorovich and Nikolai Ivanov, although most of the top SR leadership had escaped.136 Those arrested in Ufa and elsewhere were transferred to the prison in Omsk. Three weeks later, in the midst of an unsuccessful Bolshevik uprising in the city, ten of the prisoners were murdered by Cossacks, probably at the orders of Ivanov-Rinov, ataman of the Siberian Cossacks. These murders were exceptionally cruel even by the standards of the civil war, because three of the prisoners (N. V. Fomin, A. A. Bruderer, and I. I. Deviatov) had voluntarily returned to prison when the failure of the uprising became apparent. Several other prisoners who were freed during the uprising, including Fedorovich and Ivanov, declined to put their faith in the garrison authorities and fled into the SR underground. Early in the morning of December 23, a Cossack detachment persuaded the prison authorities to release Fomin, Bruderer, Deviatov, and seven other prisoners for transport to a field court-martial that Ivanov-Rinov had established on his own authority to suppress the Bolshevik uprising. The field court-martial condemned all of the prisoners to death, although none had any involvement in the Bolshevik uprising. The mutilated bodies of the prisoners were discovered on the banks of the Irtysh river the next day. The legal cover provided by the field court-martial did little to disguise the fact that the Cossacks had simply slaughtered the prisoners.137 Coming on the heels of Kolchak’s strike against the SR leadership in Ufa, the massacre in Omsk pushed SRs underground throughout Siberia and definitively secured the Kolchak regime. Political Languages and Civil War

Broadly speaking, governments in the Russian civil war drew on three political discourses to constitute their authority and to contest the claims of their rivals. Revolutionary discourse, regionalism or nationalism, and the discourse of Russian statehood each provided a language to construct the social world and a logic by which political actors could advance claims to rule. The central political struggle in Russia in 1918, the struggle to impose an authoritative vision of the civil war, was fought out within and among these discursive frameworks, as Bolsheviks, SRs, Left SRs, Mensheviks, Kadets, Cossacks, officers, and ordinary Russians sought to make sense of the chaotic violence that had engulfed the country and find ways of conceptualizing that violence that would define the social and political identity of the combatants, impose meaning on the various frontlines, and establish the legitimacy of their own claims to power. This process was substantially complete by the end of 1918, when the vision of the civil war as a war between Red and White dictatorships, rooted in class

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antagonisms, established itself as by far the most powerful way of talking and thinking about the civil war. Securing widespread acceptance of this way of conceptualizing the civil war was the Bolsheviks’ great achievement of 1918 and it reflected, among other things, the fact that they had secured an uneasy monopoly on revolutionary discourse. The names attached to the warring sides of the civil war were the labels they had used since the beginning of the year, and their reluctant acceptance even among supporters of the Kolchak government and the Volunteer Army in the south suggests how difficult it was for non-Bolsheviks to define the meaning of the civil war in their own terms and to impose their vision of it. Within the revolutionary democracy, the terms and oppositions by which the Bolsheviks constructed the civil war became much less contested than they had been during the first half of 1918, and it therefore became far more difficult to contest Bolshevik power from positions within revolutionary discourse. Organized resistance to Bolshevik rule among workers diminished substantially in the second half of 1918, although the Urals continued to be a sore spot.138 Repression contributed importantly to this calm, and dissatisfaction with particular Bolshevik policies undoubtedly remained widespread, but when strikes, protest resolutions, and other manifestations of working-class discontent resurfaced in Petrograd, Tula, and elsewhere in March 1919, even workers bitterly attacking the Bolsheviks were far more likely to cast their opposition in Soviet terms than they had been in 1918. Slogans tied to the Constituent Assembly had much less appeal.139 The relative success of Red Army mobilizations in the second half of 1918 also attests to the erosion of opposition support among workers and the increasing irrelevance of socialist arguments for an end to the civil war. Although desertion was massive and the political reliability of the draftees a recurrent source of concern for the Bolshevik leadership, the Bolsheviks were able to mobilize many thousands of workers, peasants, and ordinary Russians and override the still strong popular resistance to civil war. At the same time, Soviet institutions began to exercise a remarkable gravitational pull on the intelligentsia and lower- and middle-level clerical, technical, and white-collar personnel that constituted an integral part of the revolutionary democracy and had historically provided much of the active SR membership. Over the course of the second half of 1918, the Soviet state’s success in attracting such cadres helped overcome the severe shortages in qualified personnel that had plagued the Bolsheviks in the first half of the year.140 In these respects the fall of 1918 was the great turning point in the civil war for the Soviet state. Inside Soviet Russia the establishment of the Bolshevik vision of the civil war decimated the PSR and the other socialist parties. To be sure, crisis in the SR organizations of Soviet Russia antedated September, and the notion of crisis

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may suggest a prior organizational coherence that had in fact always eluded the PSR. Wild fluctuations in membership had characterized the party throughout its history and had contributed to its often crippling organizational weaknesses. On the basis mainly of these fluctuations, the Russian historian K. N. Morozov has distinguished six phases in the history of the PSR. The “proto-party” of the pre-1905 period encompassed at most a few thousand members, but it laid the foundations for the illegal mass party of 1905 through 1909. In this period the party swelled to roughly sixty thousand members, only to collapse with the ebbing of the revolutionary tide and the revelations of the Azef affair in 1908 and 1909.141 From 1910 to 1917 the PSR had a tiny membership, weak organizational connections, and a fractured leadership that commanded little authority within what remained of the party. Morozov has suggested that it is best to think in this period not of a party at all, but rather of “an atomized SR milieu (eserovskaia sreda) with tendencies to integration.” In 1917 the PSR became a legal mass party with a membership of perhaps seven hundred thousand. October and the civil war transformed the party into an illegal mass party, a larger version of the party of the 1905 revolution, but in the mid-1920s the party dissolved again into an atomized populist milieu. As such, it survived in the margins of Soviet life and in prisons, exile, and emigration for another decade, but it no longer had any political influence.142 Morozov’s periodization captures well the successive stages in the history of the PSR, but the disintegration of the mass party of 1917 proceeded more rapidly, and more catastrophically, than he suggests. The sources do not allow us to retrace the transformation of the party in great detail, but its outlines are reasonably clear. For a start, the impressive figures of the 1917 membership are misleading. In Siberia and elsewhere, for instance, local and provincial SR organizations often included the members of the party-sponsored peasant unions in their membership tallies, which enormously inflated the figures and suggested an organized party presence among peasants that was largely illusory.143 In addition, SR organizations in the army had accounted for almost half of the party’s membership in 1917. These organizations disappeared with the collapse of the old army by early 1918, and only a tiny fraction of the three hundred thousand to four hundred thousand members seem to have joined SR organizations elsewhere after demobilization.144 What remained were the party organizations of the big cities, provincial capitals, and larger district capitals, where about three hundred thousand SRs roughly equaled the number of Bolsheviks in the fall of 1917. Already at the Eighth Party Council in May, numerous speakers testified to the disarray in many of these local and provincial organizations.145 Little evidence survives to assess the state of party organizations and the SR membership in the summer of 1918, but most SR organizations had already contracted severely.

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In this context the Red Terror dealt the PSR a devastating blow in the fall of 1918. One SR later reported that the months after the Kaplan attempt were by far the most difficult period for the party in 1918 or 1919: “Police conditions were so severe that meetings of two or three people on party business were fraught with great risk. . . . It goes without saying that in such conditions nothing at all remained of our organizations.”146 Judging from the accounts of SR organizers in early 1919, when the Terror had relaxed and the Bolshevik leadership briefly tolerated a public SR presence in the capitals, this picture of disintegration is only slightly exaggerated.147 Already by the end of 1918, the PSR in Soviet Russia resembled less the mass party of 1905 and 1917 than it did the proto-party of the pre-1905 period and the atomized party of the last years of the Old Regime: a congeries of small, harassed, poorly coordinated urban radical groups whose place in the preoccupations of the authorities was considerably greater than their organized presence on the ground. It would be a mistake, however, to attribute the PSR’s disintegration in Soviet Russia primarily to Cheka persecution. In this respect the Terror was unprecedented in Russian experience, certainly more severe than anything the revolutionaries had endured before 1917, but police conditions do not in and of themselves account for the eclipse of the PSR as a mass party in Soviet Russia. Bolshevik repressive policies were important, but the Terror’s impact on the party depended on the political context in which it was carried out and on the increasing effectiveness of the ideological argument of which it was a part. In addition, and quite independently of the Terror, the collapse of SR organizations underscored the basic weakness of political parties in revolutionary Russia. Popular attachment to the parties was weak, and few people defined the revolution as the acquisition of popular sovereignty through elected bodies and political parties, as liberals and many SRs did.148 The Bolshevik party organizations likewise hemorrhaged in the spring and summer of 1918—across the political spectrum, people who had joined political parties after the fall of the monarchy now abandoned them—but popular disengagement from party politics hit the SRs and Mensheviks especially hard because of their exclusion from the soviets, factory committees, trade unions, and other institutions of the revolutionary state. The fate of the Left SRs, who thrived only as long as they maintained footholds in Soviet institutions, underscores the point. Among more deeply committed SRs, other factors came into play. Under the Old Regime, the party’s ability to withstand the police, and the willingness of individual SRs to make heavy personal sacrifices and endure harsh punishments, depended on a fanatical hatred of the enemy and a profound faith in the coming revolution: the revolution would come, it would destroy the enemy, and it would redeem their own sacrifices. This inherited narrative of revolution offered little guidance in the uncharted ground of 1918. As Vera Tarasova, one of

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the SRs rounded up in the wake of Fania Kaplan’s assassination attempt, put it to her Cheka interrogators: “I am presently occupied with ordinary work and do not participate in political activity. I cannot get oriented in the present situation. If there were a restoration of the Old Regime, I would be able to find my place.”149 A potential solution—to slide the Soviet state into the space vacated by the Old Regime as the incarnation of the enemy—was extraordinarily difficult, because most SRs saw Bolsheviks and their followers as members of the democracy and believed that the Soviet state retained legitimate socialist and revolutionary credentials, whatever its excesses. The reasons that tens of thousands of SRs abandoned the party and declined to participate in the struggles of 1918 cannot be fully recovered, but this sense of political disorientation no doubt played an important role for many. It contributed significantly to the disintegration of SR organizations and to the party’s weakness in the face of Cheka persecution. Moreover, as the Terror climaxed and subsided over the course of the fall, the political argument that it embodied became far more effective than it had been for most of the first year after October. The Red Terror, in effect, aimed to reorient radicals like Tarasova by working on their fear, indeed their terror, of counterrevolution and restoration. It sought to construct once and for all the class basis of the civil war and the social identities of the combatants, and to establish beyond any doubt the impossibility of steering a democratic path between Bolshevik dictatorship and counterrevolutionary reaction. In the aftermath of the Omsk coup, the argument that the civil war was a war between Red and White dictatorships, rooted fundamentally in class, became far more persuasive, completing a process that had begun with the Czechoslovak rebellion. The language of class and the familiar specter of Bonapartism provided a ready set of tools for SRs to interpret the coup in Omsk. Moreover, the November revolution in Germany simultaneously put an end to the interpretation of the civil war as part of the larger World War and restored the language of class to its place as the dominant language of political analysis and argument for most SRs.150 Changes in the objective shape of the civil war thus combined with another shift in the hierarchy of languages in party discourse in ways that brought SRs much closer to the Bolshevik interpretation of the civil war. This too posed enormous difficulties for an SR leadership still committed to the Constituent Assembly, and it speeded the collapse of the PSR as a mass party in Soviet Russia. After his recovery from the Kaplan shooting, Lenin himself devoted substantial attention to the processes at work in the PSR and the socialist opposition generally, and to their implications for the Soviet state. His Pravda article “Valuable Confessions of Pitirim Sorokin” addressed the prominent right-wing SR and future Harvard sociologist’s resignation from the party and Constituent

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Assembly. Lenin argued that SRs and Mensheviks had begun at last to assimilate the fact that there was “no middle” in civil war politics. With the end of the World War and the loss of their innocent “democratic illusions,” SRs, Mensheviks, and the whole of the “petit bourgeois democracy” had finally come face to face with the stark “either/or” of the civil war—as he put it, either Soviet power in all the advanced countries or rabid Anglo-American imperialism and the restoration of reaction around the world. Lenin called on his party to win sympathetic elements from the SR-Menshevik democracy over to Soviet power and referred to a possible “agreement” with the democracy, but what he really had in mind was the disappearance of the PSR and the Mensheviks as political parties and the cooptation of their followers.151 In another article from the fall, Lenin suggested an approach to fostering that disappearance. Arguing that politics had “been ‘clarified’ in its entirety and reduced to the struggle of two camps,” he called on the Soviet press to devote less space to “political blather” and to focus instead on the construction of a new Communist life.152 Lenin was both perceptive and prescient about the political benefits the Bolshevik party and Soviet state might derive from this reorientation. Because the opposition press had been shut down and the public presence of the socialist parties reduced nearly to nil, such a shift in focus would make the SRs and Mensheviks vanish almost entirely from public political discourse in Soviet Russia. Although “right SR” and “Menshevik” would survive as labels to pin on enemies through the 1930s, the Soviet press indeed gradually stopped contesting SR and Menshevik arguments over the last part of 1918 and early 1919. Lenin obviously hoped that this ideological maneuver would facilitate the SRs’ and Mensheviks’ actual disappearance from Russian politics. In a less radically dissimulative vein, his major theoretical work of the fall was implicitly directed at the Russian socialist parties and their arguments in favor of democratic institutions, but it masked its vitriolic assault as an attack on the “monstrous nonsense” and “Menshevik melodies” of “the renegade Kautsky.” Nevertheless, both the fury and the peculiar rhetoric of The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky speak to Lenin’s continued ideological anxiety and to his unrelenting need to expose the depths of the “bottomless pit of renegadism” into which socialist skeptics of the Bolshevik dictatorship were held inevitably to fall.153 Plausible as the Bolshevik “either/or” argument was by the end of 1918, the Bolsheviks’ insistence that only two sides faced each other in the civil war, and that the war’s frontlines should be understood as class boundaries, was nevertheless a deeply political argument, not a straightforward description of the conflict. In reality, the civil war interwove numerous political, social, and national conflicts from 1917 through 1921, and it is in some ways best to think of multiple civil wars.154 The political and social complexities of the civil war can

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scarcely be reduced to a simple opposition of Red and White, with no intershading hues or alternative colors. To represent the civil war in terms of this binary opposition and attach these labels to the two sides was, like any act of public naming, a political act, because it constructed the civil war in a way that denied the presence and significance of SRs, Mensheviks, Left SRs, and lowerclass resistance to Bolshevik hegemony, and it offered an oversimplified and misleading picture of the political and social complexion of the anti-Bolshevik camp. Dualist operations of this sort and the classifications they produced—proletariat and bourgeoisie, Red and White, Soviet power and counterrevolution, Communists and renegades—proved an enduring feature of Bolshevik ideology and were central to the long-term shape and success of the dictatorship sustained by that ideology.155 In 1918 they defined a vision of the civil war that helped the Bolsheviks secure control of revolutionary discourse, the key site of political power, and opened the way to the great victories of the Soviet state and Red Army over the next two years. For SRs, Mensheviks, and many other non-Bolshevik radicals, acquiescing in the Soviet vision of the civil war gave meaningful structure to the disorienting events of 1918, and adopting the Bolshevik lexicon was relatively easy, given most revolutionaries’ own inclination to interpret events in light of class. Such acquiescence held out the possibility of participating in the construction of a revolutionary state, the liquidation of counterrevolution, and the radical transformation of society, deeply felt desires in many cases. The Bolsheviks’ interlocking successes inside Soviet Russia in the second half of 1918—the monopolization of revolutionary discourse, the collapse of organized socialist opposition, the building of the party-state apparatus, and the establishment of an authoritative vision of the civil war—were born in part of these ideological incentives. While the Bolsheviks drew primarily on revolutionary discourse to define themselves, their state, and their opponents, opposition to Bolshevik rule outside of Soviet Russia grounded itself mainly in regionalism and nationalism through most of 1918.156 Even where national movements had not been especially prominent before 1917, opposition movements in the non-Russian territories of the former empire quickly sought to establish themselves as national movements. Prior to 1917, non-Russian national movements had developed unevenly throughout the empire, but the growth of national movements after October was accelerated by the ease with which political actors in the non-Russian borderlands could articulate their opposition to the Soviet state in national terms, and by the way that political and social conflict in the areas with mixed Russian and non-Russian populations could be mapped in the same way.157 Among Russians, by contrast, it was much more difficult to conceive resistance to the Soviet state as national liberation, and not only because conflict among Russians could

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not be mapped in national terms. Each of the major currents of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European nationalism—the emancipatory, republican, nationalism identified with Mazzini and his successors, and the authoritarian, integral nationalism of the fin de siècle—was weakly developed in prerevolutionary Russia. They appealed to some elites, but neither had much success in late imperial politics, nor did they become vehicles for political mobilization in 1917. Komuch and the Directory each ran up against the continued weakness of nationalism in 1918, when their efforts to deploy a republican nationalism to mobilize the population for war against the Germans and Bolsheviks proved strikingly unsuccessful.158 The historic centralization of the Russian state and the weakness of Russian regional identities also militated for the most part against regional movements of resistance, but two of the most important and lasting anti-Bolshevik movements, in Siberia and in the Don Cossack territory, did establish themselves as forms of regional resistance to central authority. The SRs who created the Provisional Siberian Government in January were genuinely interested in regional decentralization and federalism, but they gravitated to Siberian regionalism mainly because it could legitimate resistance to the Bolshevik seizure of power without resorting to statist argumentation. Regionalism had sputtered through most of 1917, and it is unlikely that it would have emerged so prominently in 1918 but for its utility in this regard. Liberals in the anti-SR groupings within and around the Siberian government had even less interest in regionalism as such, but they too needed a political vocabulary to establish their claim to power and to contest the all-Russian claims of the Bolsheviks and Komuch. Nevertheless, when the Siberian government achieved the pinnacle of its success, regionalism slipped quietly from view. Regionalism could legitimate Siberian resistance to the Bolsheviks and Komuch, but it provided no grounds on which to move beyond Siberia or advance a claim to all-Russian power. Thus it was not much in evidence at Ufa and did not figure in the rhetorical arsenal of the Directory. Neither was there any reason for Kolchak to turn to it after November 18. A second clue to the eclipse of Siberian regionalism lies in the social dimensions and mobilizing potential of the discourse of Russian statehood. Fundamental elements of that discourse—the need for a strong central government to preserve the Russian state; the nonpolitical and supra-class nature of the state and army; the obligation of patriotic Russians to rise above political and class divisions; the danger that the radical intelligentsia posed to the Russian state; and the inviolability of the territorial borders of the former empire—appealed to some of the most important social groups on which major military and statebuilding campaigns in the civil war relied, having historically defined their social place and identities and both shaped and given expression to their political

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outlook. Former officers and members of the imperial bureaucracy found such formulations congenial, as did much of educated society, but they also had significant appeal in the middle- and lower-middle strata that necessarily supplied much of the administrative personnel needed for state building. Among whitecollar workers, clerical and technical personnel, and zemstvo and cooperative activists, and probably among many others as well, the disintegration of the state and the chaos of the year since the Bolshevik seizure of power seem to have muted the counterrevolutionary overtones that the statist tradition had in 1917 and early 1918. The central importance of language and arguments drawn from the discourse of Russian statehood in the construction of effective military and administrative power during the civil war is suggested by their nearly simultaneous emergence in both Soviet and non-Soviet territory. In Soviet Russia, precisely in the same summer and autumn months of 1918, the intermingling of the discourse of Russian statehood with revolutionary language and practices began to buttress (and to shape) the Soviet state. The statist tradition emerged as a powerful mobilizing tool for the Red Army and Soviet bureaucracy, and it served as a reassuring bridge over which many non-Bolsheviks crossed to join the new state’s effort to remake Russian society.159 The Bolsheviks’ unique ability to draw on the usually antagonistic discourses of statehood and revolution, the two most powerful political discourses in Russia from the late imperial period until well into the Soviet era, lies at the heart of their success in the civil war. In striking contrast both to the Bolsheviks in Soviet Russia and to other groups within the anti-Bolshevik camp on the Volga and in Siberia, the SR leadership failed entirely to draw on the discourse of Russian statehood to legitimate Komuch, to build the People’s Army, or to advance the party’s political claims in Siberia. At one level the PSR’s failure is hardly surprising. As a party that deeply identified with the Russian revolutionary tradition, it shared that tradition’s profound hostility to the state and, even more than the Social Democrats, had historically viewed the violent destruction of the imperial state as the central aim of revolutionary action.160 The borders that divided the populist and anarchist currents of the revolutionary tradition were highly porous. Ideas and individuals crossed freely between the PSR and the various anarchist groups throughout the revolutionary era. Generally less extreme than the anarchists, many SRs’ commitment to popular sovereignty was nevertheless the obverse of their hostility to the state. Legitimate authority derived from the people, acting through the Constituent Assembly in a revolutionary moment of national self-determination that severed the continuous tradition of Russian statehood. The Central Committee emphasized this conception all the more because of

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its determination not to repeat what it considered the party’s fundamental error in 1917—the failure to pursue a consistently revolutionary line of argument and policy. Hence its insistence that only the Constituent Assembly could give birth to an all-Russian government and its emphasis on the organs of local selfgovernment (those unloved stepchildren of the imperial state). Hence too the modifying adjective in the title of the People’s Army, which reflected the antithesis between “people” and “state” in populist thought and underscored the desire of the Komuch leadership to break the conceptual link between the Russian army and Russian statehood.161 At another level, closer to the surface of civil war politics, the logic of political contestation in 1918 reinforced the SR leadership’s reluctance to draw on the discourse of Russian statehood. SRs felt it was imperative that Komuch not allow itself to be defined as a counterrevolutionary government. If it did, their hope to mount a popular campaign would certainly be doomed, and their sense of themselves as socialists and revolutionaries would be severely compromised. Furthermore, they understood that anti-Bolshevik resistance could easily be represented as counterrevolutionary and would inevitably attract many who indeed hoped to roll back some or all of what SRs understood as the gains of the revolution. Such considerations informed the determination of the SR leadership in Samara to stick close to the domain of revolutionary language even when their actual policies were not especially radical or uncompromising. Given the leadership’s conviction that a popular, revolutionary campaign was the sort of campaign most likely to succeed against Bolshevik power, it was more difficult for Komuch to draw on the discourse of Russian statehood, with its potentially counterrevolutionary connotations, than it was for the Bolsheviks, who in 1918 hardly needed to defend their revolutionary credentials. The Bolsheviks could point to foreign intervention in Russian affairs and take advantage of their control of the capitals, the Muscovite core of the country, and some of the other symbolic attributes of Russian statehood to mobilize former officers and administrative personnel in relatively traditional, statist terms. Moreover, although Bolsheviks as well as SRs partook of the revolutionary hostility to state institutions and to the discourse of Russian statehood, Lenin devoted great attention in 1918 to elaborating a theory of proletarian dictatorship that would give statehood a Marxist inflection and overcome the overlapping legacies of the radical tradition and his own anarchist fervor in the previous year’s State and Revolution.162 The SRs’ inability to secure control of Omsk only reinforced the leadership’s reluctance to draw on the statist tradition. The more the Siberian opponents of the party inclined to conceive all-Russian power in terms of the discourse of Russian statehood, the greater did the SR Central Committee and the Komuch leadership feel the need to ground the new government in the populist version

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of the radical lexicon: to tie it to the Constituent Assembly, popular sovereignty, nationhood, the people’s will, land and freedom, and socialism and revolution. Nationhood and revolution offered the SR leadership two discourses for contesting the political claims of the party’s Siberian opponents and of legitimating the sort of polity in which it believed and which it saw as the route to political, and therefore military, success on the Eastern front. Yet revolutionary language and rhetoric, whether in Omsk, Samara, Tomsk, or Ufa, only further repelled the political organizations and social groups whose support the SR leadership needed to build an army and state on the Volga and who, as events showed, had the greatest impact on the outcome of the contestations in Siberia. Those groups included some whose hostility to the PSR was unsurprising and who could have been expected to sympathize with the anti-SR cause, and others whose political outlook was less predictable. Prominent in the first category were the liberal intelligentsia that supplied much of the political leadership of the Siberian government and the Kolchak regime, the industrial and financial elites in Omsk that secured financial backing for those governments, and the Cossacks and officers who provided the armed forces with which the anti-SR groups dispensed first with the Siberian Regional Duma and later with the Directory. From the SRs’ point of view, these groups formed the core of the Siberian reaction and embodied its class basis and orientation. But although the anti-SR camp in Siberian politics received crucial support in these social groups and attracted people who were concerned to defend the rights of property and might plausibly be described as bourgeois, the lines of political division zigzagged through Siberian social terrain in a considerably more complicated fashion than most SRs allowed. The social complexity of the anti-SR (and anti-Bolshevik) camp in the east is best illustrated by the history of the Siberian cooperative organizations. The SR-dominated cooperative organizations had been among the most important supporters of the regionalist resistance to Bolshevik power in early 1918. The Second All-Siberian Congress of Cooperatives (at which seventy-five of eightyeight delegates were SRs) had recognized the original Siberian government immediately after its formation in January, and the cooperative network had subsequently provided crucial financial and organizational assistance to the SR underground throughout the spring. After the Czechoslovak rebellion the cooperatives seemed to represent a wealthy and well-organized base on which to establish SR power in Siberia, but the cooperative organizations soon came to support the Siberian government in its conflict with the Duma, and several of the most important cooperative leaders, including A. V. Sazonov and others, were among the founders of the so-called Omsk Bloc, a coalition of moderate socialist and nonsocialist groups that helped give shape to the anti-SR camp over the course of the summer.163

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Although Rakitnikov later asserted that only the cooperative “elite” supported the Siberian government and that the bloc merely gave “democratic cover” to the bourgeois reaction, the evidence of the Third All-Siberian Congress of Cooperatives in September makes clear that political opinion in the cooperative network as a whole was substantially to the right of the SR leadership.164 It is equally clear, moreover, that neither the cooperative leaders nor the middle- and lower-level activists can be meaningfully described as bourgeois or White. Across Russia they had historically been closely associated with the PSR, and although they had traditionally operated in a capitalist economy, their outlook remained solidly populist and anticapitalist.165 The key to understanding their opposition to the SR leadership in Siberia and their skepticism about unalloyed SR control of the Eastern front lies in their attitudes toward statehood, the reconstitution of state power, and the requirements of state building. In 1917, Sazonov had led an effort to organize a faction of “SR-statists” (SR-gosudarstvenniki), and the resolutions of the cooperative congresses and Omsk Bloc in 1918 articulated a conception of unified state power that testified to its underpinnings in the discourse of Russian statehood.166 This reflected not only populists’ sympathetic ear for patriotic rhetoric and their proximity to the paternalist and tutelary traditions of the Russian state, but also the degree to which the cooperatives had become deeply enmeshed in the practices of the Russian state.167 Under the imperial government during the World War and under both the Provisional Government and Soviet power in 1917 and 1918, the cooperative organizations had played an enormous role supplying food to the army and urban population in cooperation with the state authorities, a role the Siberian cooperative organizations continued to play under the Siberian government. Accustomed to cooperation with the state, many SR and ex-SR Siberian cooperative activists who continued to think of themselves as democrats and populists were unembarrassed to support the Siberian government’s effort to rebuild effective state power. Many repeatedly expressed anxiety about the disorganizing potential of the Duma and the more radically inclined SR organizations.168 On the whole the political sentiments of such men were closest to the Union of Regeneration, and several of the cooperative activists played key roles in the formation of the Omsk branch of the union. But it was telling that their patriotic support of the Eastern front was more likely to be cast in terms of the discourse of Russian statehood, with its emphasis on strong, undivided authority, the nonpolitical character of the army, and the primacy of constructive work over parliamentary talking-shops (govoril’ni), than in terms of the less familiar, radical republican nationalism favored by the right wing of the PSR. As the political tension in Omsk mounted throughout the fall, the cooperative

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leadership gravitated to the anti-SR camp and cut its remaining ties to the PSR. When the coup in Omsk finally came, the cooperative organ Zaria expressed cautious, but unmistakable, support for the Kolchak government, prompting the socialist Novaia Sibir’ to complain about the “noticeable enthusiasm of part of our democracy” for the conceptual subordination of society (obshchestvennost’) to statehood (gosudarstvennost’). It urged all democrats to remember that statehood and patriotism were “pure abstractions” if purged of their social content.169 Nevertheless, after an audience with Kolchak the Omsk Bloc issued a public endorsement of his rule and of the new regime’s campaign to restore the Russian state to its “former dignity and power.” The bloc insisted that this in no way undermined its commitment to the “principles of a healthy democratic organization of the life of the Russian people.”170 Although there is good reason to doubt the sincerity of Valentin Zhardetskii and the other Kadet members of the bloc when they professed adherence to democratic principles, there is little reason to doubt that of the cooperative leaders. Democratic convictions were not necessarily an obstacle to support for the new government, whose public proclamations were careful to emphasize that the population would choose its form of rule at the end of the civil war. The Council of All-Siberian Cooperative Congresses soon adopted a resolution in support of the Kolchak government. Although the murder of the prisoners in Omsk on December 22 gave everyone in the cooperatives an unpleasant jolt (Nil Fomin, the best-known victim, was a leading cooperative activist), they subsequently spent huge sums supplying Kolchak’s army.171 Only as the military authorities turned with ever greater frequency to violent repression did cooperative support for Kolchak wane. In the second half of 1919, the cooperative leaders mended some of their ties with the PSR and joined the SR-zemstvo movement against the Kolchak government. The cooperatives’ political trajectory—like that of Vologodskii, Ivan Mikhailov, Serebrennikov, and the several other former SRs and socialists in Kolchak’s first cabinet—illuminates both the defeat of the PSR in the east and the victories of the Siberian government and the Kolchak dictatorship in 1918. Neither of the Omsk governments could have achieved political and military success had they relied simply on brute force. The idiom of Russian statehood provided each government a powerful political language in which to constitute authority. This allowed them to draw support from important past constituencies of the PSR, including the democratic intelligentsia, the cooperatives, and the various groups in the urban middle- and lower-middle strata. Much of that support was palpably lukewarm, and it quickly cooled when Kolchak’s armies suffered their first major defeats in the summer of 1919, but the Siberians’ success among such groups in 1918 dealt a blow to the right wing of the PSR, which

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looked to the same groups with its own brand of radical republican nationalism. At the same time, the social space and institutional arrangements within which the Siberian political struggle played out—above all, the lack of a serious working-class presence in Omsk, Tomsk, and Ufa, and the consequent absence of soviets or workers’ conferences—undercut the ability of the left wing of the PSR to mobilize even that measure of worker support that it had in Samara and to exert revolutionary pressure on the political contest from the left. As Isaak Gol’dberg, a leading Siberian SR and later a well-known Soviet writer, lamented at the Second Siberian Congress of the PSR at the end of September: “Earlier, the masses followed the PSR. Now this is not the case. We must therefore build up our strength. . . . We must break the apoliticism of the masses.” Others were quick to agree with the diagnosis, but one speaker struck a note of realism when he added: “To wake the masses and draw them out of their apathetic condition presents big difficulties and is hardly possible.”172 Although the notions of “apoliticism” and “apathy” do not much illuminate the popular political outlook, the speaker was certainly right that neither the small Siberian working class nor the mass of the Siberian peasantry took much interest in the struggle over the political shape of the Eastern front. In this context the revolutionary rhetoric of the party left only torpedoed whatever chances the right wing of the party had to stabilize the Directory. Not for the first time in the history of the PSR, the two wings of the party worked at cross purposes: one backing patriotic coalition, the other the revolutionary authority of the Constituent Assembly; one joining the Directory, the other issuing the Central Committee directive of October 22; one scanning the revolutionary horizon for the birth of the nation, the other waiting anxiously for the dawn of the socialist epoch. It is no small part of the tragedy of the PSR that two souls thus dwelled within it, each wishing by now to dispense with the other, each only weakening the other as the party as a whole was battered from left and right.

Viktor Chernov

Abram Gots Dmitrii Donskoi

177 

Evgenii Timofeev

Nikolai Avksent’ev

Fania Kaplan

178 

Florian Fedorovich

Lev Gershtein

Mikhail Gendel’man

Evgeniia Ratner

179 

Nikolai Bukharin (seated, center) with the members of the second group of defendants at the SR trial, 1922

SRs in Prague, 1935. Left to right: Il’ia Fondaminskii, Vladimir Zenzinov, Vera and Vadim Rudnev, Mark Vishniak, Alexander Kerensky 180 

5

Between Red and White

A

s 1918 drew to a close, the stark choice between the Bolsheviks and the Kolchak government returned the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) to the dilemmas they had faced in the first months of the year. No less than in early 1918, the SRs believed that Bolshevik rule spelled doom for the revolution, whose salvation depended on the reconvocation of the Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks were clearly not going to resuscitate the Assembly, however, and the effort to fight for it had proved a dismal failure. To many SRs, the history of the Eastern front seemed to corroborate the analysis of the Central Committee theses of January 1918, which had stressed that armed struggle on behalf of the Constituent Assembly would only intensify the civil war and play into the hands of counterrevolution. The SR leadership had always worried that reactionary generals would emerge from such carnage victorious. The fears that had gripped the party in the first months after October—counterrevolution and Bonapartist dictatorship, identified now with Admiral Kolchak in Siberia and General Anton Denikin in the south—thus reasserted their hold. The catastrophe in the east was not the only reason those fears reemerged so powerfully: the abrupt end of World War I after the November Revolution in Germany was equally important. An understanding of the civil war as a part of the larger World War had been central to SR thinking about the civil war since early 1918. All the while, it had coexisted uneasily with a conception of the civil 181 

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war as an extension of the revolutionary cataclysms of 1917. Brest-Litovsk had laid the foundations for SR participation on the anti-Bolshevik side of the civil war by overturning the relations between these two competing conceptions of the civil war. Over the course of the summer and fall of 1918, the SRs’ Eastern front faced German imperialism as much, or more, than it did Bolshevik power. For SRs the end of the World War therefore called into question the meaning of the Eastern front and of the civil war itself. Rethinking the Civil War

Considerations along these lines became the subject of an unofficial meeting of the Central Committee with leaders of the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly in Ekaterinburg in mid-November, shortly after the end of the World War but before the coup in Omsk. Although the meeting took no formal resolutions, the participants agreed that the German Revolution and the Bolshevik annulment of Brest-Litovsk had transformed the events in Russia into what they termed a “normal civil war.” It was no longer possible to represent the civil war as a part of the larger World War. The Eastern front now faced only the Soviet state, not German imperialism, and Allied aid had metamorphosed into Allied intervention. In such a “normal civil war,” the participants in the meeting agreed, what chances for victory the democracy possessed depended on revolutionary unity in the face of counterrevolution. The lexical shift from Allied aid to Allied intervention and the renewed centrality of the conceptual opposition between the revolutionary democracy and the counterrevolution reflected a return to thinking about the civil war in terms of revolution and class. As the SR leadership understood it, in a normal civil war the combatants represented class interests, as they did in a revolution: the forces to the SRs’ right were defending the interests of the expropriated landowners and bourgeoisie, and the democracy was fighting for the mass of laboring people, with the Bolsheviks representing the “maximalistically-inclined minority of the working class.”1 Having begun to rethink the civil war, the participants in the meeting agreed to begin considering the terms for a reconciliation with the Soviet government. Chernov sent a courier to the SR underground in Moscow to sound out the possibilities for an SR-Bolshevik agreement.2 The changing SR understanding of the civil war and the resurgence of the language of class in party discourse had little practical impact prior to the Omsk coup, but the view that Russia now faced a normal civil war spread quickly through the party after November 18. Few SRs had any doubt about the party’s place in such a civil war: it was with the revolutionary democracy and against the Whites. On December 5 a joint meeting of the available members of the Central Committee, the Presidium and Bureau of the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly, and the Ufa Council of Ministers gathered

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secretly in Ufa. The assembled SR leaders formally resolved to abandon armed struggle against the Soviet state and turn all SR organizations against Kolchak. Ideally, the party would withdraw its units from the front and open the way for the Red Army as SRs overthrew Kolchak’s government in a series of coordinated risings in the Urals. This would provide the basis for a joint SR-Bolshevik campaign against the “Siberian reaction.”3 In Soviet Russia the Moscow Bureau of the Central Committee also decided that the annulment of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty had rendered Allied intervention in Russia impermissible. The party, it agreed, had no place on an Eastern front now aimed solely at Soviet power. The party ought instead to focus its energies on combating the counterrevolution, whose chances for success, they believed, grew daily in the fertile soil of Bolshevik dictatorship and terror.4 As in early 1918, such reasoning precluded an SR effort to fight for the Constituent Assembly. It also threatened to run the party into a dead end, however, because Lenin and most Bolshevik leaders did not share the view that only the united revolutionary democracy could defeat the reaction. The Bolshevik refusal to join forces with the SRs and Mensheviks assured that discussion within the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (PSR) remained contentious and factionalized. The collapse of the Eighth Party Council’s conception of the civil war and the subordination of the language of nationhood that shaped it meant that opposition to the emerging Central Committee line now came primarily from the party left, not right (as it had in early 1918). Three options emerged in the party discussion, and SRs pursued each at different times in 1919. The first option was to effect a rapprochement with the Soviet government to ward off the Whites, although how far to accede to the Bolsheviks’ dominant position became the most divisive question within the party. The second option was to accept Bolshevik power in practice but shun a formal accord and concentrate instead on rebuilding the shattered party organizations in Soviet Russia. The third possibility was to carry the struggle to White territory, independently defeat the Whites there, and negotiate an end to the civil war from a position of strength. This, it was hoped, might force the Bolsheviks into a more accommodating posture toward the revolutionary democracy and the PSR. In addition, a fourth option began slowly to develop over the course of 1919 and 1920: this was to accept that the concept of the revolutionary democracy had no place in Bolshevik discourse and political practice. From this perspective the Bolsheviks had abandoned the revolutionary tradition and established a regime that violated the basic principles of socialism and democracy. The inability to find acceptable terms of cooperation between the socialist opposition and Bolshevik power reflected the fact that the two no longer shared a common socialist vocabulary or outlook. For the Bolshevik leadership, it followed, there

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simply was no “revolutionary democracy.” There was only “the dictatorship of the proletariat” and Bolshevik hegemony. Moreover, not only would the Bolsheviks prove incapable of taming the reaction, as the SRs had argued since October, but a confrontation between the mass of the population and the Bolshevik dictatorship was inevitable. The PSR therefore needed to prepare itself to take up leadership of an armed mass movement against Bolshevik power, in defense of the revolution. The first option seemed best to many SRs in Siberia, where not only SRs but some Bolsheviks hoped that the SR renunciation of armed struggle against the Soviet state would lead to a joint SR-Bolshevik struggle against Kolchak. In December, Boris Shumiatskii, a prominent Siberian Bolshevik, wrote to Moscow on behalf of the Siberian Bolshevik organizations and pleaded for an agreement with the SRs and Mensheviks. He described the political situation as “murderous” and argued that the mass of the population had “lost faith in everyone and everything.” He elaborated: “There is only one thought that still lives and that would be capable of gaining their attention—that is the constant expectation of our agreement with the right socialist groupings. . . . Among all the workers, revolutionaries, even simply republicans who are still living, one wish is on their lips: the quickest possible agreement of Soviet Russia with the socialist and republican elements and parties on a platform of political compromise— popular sovereignty—because otherwise everyone realizes that in the event of continued hostility between these elements, the ultimate death of the working class will approach. . . . It is criminal for us to continue to conduct a civil war among the socialists, even simply the republicans, thereby allowing genuine counterrevolution to triumph.”5 One may doubt the validity of the analysis, as Lenin certainly did, but this desperate appeal represented the views of many SRs, Mensheviks, and Bolsheviks.6 The first opportunity to act on such considerations arose in Ufa, where the remnants of the Presidium of the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly and several members of the SR Central Committee awaited the arrival of the advancing Red Army in December 1918. The SRs in Ufa knew of Shumiatskii’s letter, which increased their hopes for an SR-Bolshevik agreement, and they still hoped to deploy troops loyal to the PSR against Kolchak (they had in mind the Battalions of the Constituent Assembly, Boris Fortunatov’s cavalry unit, the units manned by the Izhevsk and Votkinsk workers, and the RussianCzech units).7 Because one of the aims of these maneuvers was to open the front to the Red Army, the SR organizations in Ufa and Zlatoust, on whom the brunt of the practical work fell, insisted on a prior agreement with the Red Army command in order to avoid being slaughtered.8 On December 30, as the first units of the Red Fifth Army entered Ufa, the leading SRs in Ufa (including Nikolai Rakitnikov and Konstantin Burevoi from

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the Central Committee and Vladimir Vol’skii, Nikolai Sviatitskii, and Nikolai Shmelev from the Presidium of the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly, and the leaders of the Ufa city and provincial SR organizations) elected a delegation to begin negotiations with the Provisional Revolutionary Committee (Revkom) that the Bolsheviks had set up to govern Ufa. Acting on the basis of the decisions of the Central Committee and the congress leadership on December 5, the Ufa group decided to announce the party’s decision to end armed struggle against the Reds (which had been kept secret), to appeal to the Siberian troops not to fight the Bolsheviks, and to call on their own units to turn against Kolchak. A delegation of Rakitnikov, Vol’skii, Sviatitskii, and Shmelev was empowered to negotiate with the Revkom on behalf of the Presidium of the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly. The delegation gave the Revkom several conditions for a united SR-Bolshevik front against Kolchak: the pro-SR units would have to be allowed to withdraw from the front armed and in full order; SR organizations would have to be legalized in Soviet Russia and the personal inviolability of SRs and members of the Constituent Assembly would have to be guaranteed; and the SRs would need full freedom of agitation for popular sovereignty and the Constituent Assembly.9 The Ufa Revkom turned to Moscow for instructions. Lenin and Iakov Sverdlov, the chairman of the Soviet Central Executive Committee, authorized negotiations but instructed the Revkom to make no concessions on the Constituent Assembly.10 Negotiations began January 10 and focused on the authority of the SR delegation, now generally referred to as the “Vol’skii group,” and on the phrasing of the delegation’s prospective appeal to the Siberian troops, which constituted the main attraction of the negotiations for the Red Army command. Following Lenin’s lead, the Revkom insisted on negotiating with authoritative bodies of the PSR, preferably the Central Committee, and balked at negotiating with any groups representing the Constituent Assembly. The SRs, who had hoped to negotiate on behalf of the Congress of Constituent Assembly members, reformulated the authority of the delegation, which now claimed to represent the members of the Central Committee present in Ufa (there were only two, Rakitnikov and Burevoi), the Ufa SR organization, and the SR fraction of the congress. The Bolsheviks accepted this formula and concentrated on securing the delegation’s recognition of Soviet power. Moscow attached great importance to the SR recognition of Soviet power, but Sverdlov instructed the negotiators that they could, if necessary, make a vague statement to the effect that the final determination of the future of the Constituent Assembly would be made after the end of the civil war.11 This proved unnecessary. By the terms of the agreement, secured after eight days of tense negotiations, the SR delegation declared that Soviet power was “at the present moment . . . the only revolutionary government uniting the

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exploited in the struggle with the exploiters.” The delegation called on troops of the People’s Army, the Siberian Army, the Cossack Hosts, and the Czechoslovak Legion to abandon the fight against the Red Army. In return, the Revkom promised not to persecute any soldiers who came over to the Soviet side and not to persecute SRs for membership in the party. The Revkom guaranteed the Ufa delegation and all members of the SR Central Committee safe passage to Moscow, where they would undertake negotiations with the Bolshevik leadership for a broader agreement.12 Differing motivations guided the Ufa delegation and the Bolsheviks in the negotiations that began in Moscow on February 10. The SR delegation, chaired by Vol’skii, sought above all to secure the legalization of the PSR in Soviet Russia. The motivations of the Bolshevik leadership, which delegated the negotiations to Lev Kamenev, Grigorii Chicherin, and Nikolai Krestinskii, were more complex. At first the Bolsheviks probably overestimated the strength of the SRs in Siberia, although the Revolutionary Military Council of the Fifth Army soon informed Moscow that the SR appeal to the Siberian troops, widely publicized in the regions east of Ufa, had produced “no results” militarily. No more than the usual number of deserters had come over to the Reds, while some of the units claimed by the SRs, including Fortunatov’s cavalry unit and the units comprising the Izhevsk and Votkinsk workers, continued to fight loyally for Kolchak.13 The Bolshevik interest in the negotiations also stemmed from considerations that went beyond the immediate interests of the Red Army in Siberia, however. In early 1919 the possibility of an Allied-Soviet peace agreement had arisen, and the Bolshevik leadership and Western diplomats put out a number of feelers in this direction. At the same time, the Bolsheviks expected a more vigorous Allied intervention if no agreement was reached. It was hoped in Moscow that a Bolshevik-SR reconciliation and a clear statement of opposition to Allied intervention from a prominent Russian socialist party would undermine support for intervention and build pro-Soviet sentiment in Western Europe.14 The domestic audience for the negotiations was probably as important as these foreign policy considerations. The Soviet press devoted heavy coverage to the “sudden transformation [perelom] in the party of right SRs” and provided regular updates on the negotiations.15 Bolshevik propagandists highlighted the disastrous consequences of the SRs’ involvement on the Eastern front and implied that the SR leadership now recognized Soviet power as the only possible basis of effective revolutionary power. Knowledgeable readers might have noticed the absence of Chernov from the roster of SR negotiators, but disagreements within the PSR did not receive much attention in the Soviet press, even though the Bolshevik leadership knew that the activities of the Ufa delegation had aroused a storm of controversy within the PSR. Certainly the Bolshevik

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leadership hoped for a schism that would weaken the PSR still further, and in the coming months it did much to foster such a schism. Soviet coverage of the negotiations, however, aimed to win over supporters and sympathizers of the PSR and therefore glossed over the disagreements in the party. Within the PSR, disagreements over the steps taken by the Vol’skii group dated to the Ufa period of the negotiations. The Vol’skii group included both members of the SR Central Committee present in Ufa at the time of the first negotiations, Rakitnikov and Burevoi, and it could plausibly claim to represent the party in the east. It also could justifiably cite the decisions of the December 5 meeting that ended armed struggle with the Soviet state in defense of its position. Still, the group had no contact with other Central Committee members during the Ufa negotiations. Viktor Chernov and Mikhail Vedeniapin, the two Central Committee members who had participated in the December 5 meeting in addition to Rakitnikov and Burevoi, had fled to Orenburg in mid-December to avoid both the tightening net of Kolchak’s police and the advance of the Red Army. Of the remaining members of the Central Committee who had been in the east, Nikolai Ivanov, Dimitri Rakov, and Florian Fedorovich remained in prison in Omsk, while Mikhail Gendel’man was in hiding. Before departing Ufa, Chernov urged an agreement with the Bolsheviks but conditioned it on their recognition of the Constituent Assembly or some other popular representative body, a condition that Vol’skii and his supporters viewed as unrealistic, despite the hopes raised by Shumiatskii’s letter.16 In addition, Chernov preferred to negotiate directly with Moscow. He dispatched a messenger to seek out Maxim Gorky in Moscow and use him as an intermediary to lay the ground for high-level SR-Bolshevik negotiations. In the meantime, Chernov took a skeptical view of negotiations with victorious Red Army commanders and local Bolshevik organizations and began to develop the idea of SR struggle against the Whites as a “third force”—that is, independently of Bolshevik power and the Red Army. After the conclusion of the negotiations in Ufa, the SR delegation telegrammed Chernov and Vedeniapin to urge them to come to Moscow and take advantage of the opportunity for legalization. Chernov preferred to remain underground and travel to Moscow on false documents, which delayed his arrival in Moscow until March 1919.17 In Moscow the SR leadership in Soviet territory agreed on the need to end armed struggle with the Soviet state and turn the party’s forces against the Whites, but it expressed doubt about the likelihood of cooperation with the Bolsheviks. In January the Moscow Bureau of the Central Committee argued that accords with the Bolsheviks or with “bourgeois” groupings only discredited the party.18 A conference of the Moscow organization of the PSR in the same month, however, considered an agreement possible if the Bolsheviks changed their policies in the countryside and allowed free elections to the

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soviets.19 From the right-center, Evgenii Timofeev attacked this hope as “the height of naiveté” and discounted the possibility of an agreement with the Bolsheviks in the most uncompromising terms. Nevertheless, even he believed that the party was obligated “temporarily to tolerate and submit to Bolshevik power,” because reaction threatened, the democracy was weak, and the masses were disorganized and apathetic.20 Polemics about a possible SR-Bolshevik agreement dominated the conference of SR organizations in Soviet Russia that convened in Moscow in early February, just as the negotiations of the Vol’skii group with Kamenev, Krestinskii, and Chicherin were getting under way. The conference, attended by seventy-two delegates representing the Central Committee, regional organizations, and the Ufa delegation, condemned the Vol’skii group’s negotiations with the Soviet authorities as “political capitulation” and demanded that they cease. The conference reaffirmed the end of armed SR efforts to overthrow the Soviet state and urged a focus on building up party organizations, trade unions, and cooperatives, without participating in the soviets. Like the Vol’skii group, the conference called for party organizations in non-Soviet territory to work for the overthrow of White governments. The conference also expressed the hope that the SR members of the Constituent Assembly stop using this title until a decision about the Constituent Assembly could be made “by an authoritative party institution.”21 This declaration was aimed both at the Vol’skii group and at the SRs on the right wing of the party who had been active in the Union of Regeneration, although the Vol’skii group was larger and much more important in Soviet Russia. Despite the party’s rejection of an accord with the Soviet state, the resolutions of the conference and the promise of the Vol’skii group sufficed to secure the PSR’s legalization. What is generally referred to as “legalization” was in fact simply a repeal of the decree of June 14, 1918, that had expelled the SRs from the Central Executive Committee (CEC) and the local soviets. The CEC’s obscurely worded decree repealed the decree of June 14 for all SR groups that accepted the resolutions of the SR conference and of the Vol’skii delegation that renounced armed struggle against Soviet power, rejected Allied intervention, and called for war against the reaction.22 The Bolsheviks soon allowed a resumption of Delo naroda, the organ of the Central Committee, which thereby understood itself to have been legalized alongside the Vol’skii group. The SRs thus joined the Mensheviks, who in November 1918 had secured the repeal of the June 14 decree as it applied to them, although the practical benefits had proven small to that beleaguered party. Indeed, on the very day that the CEC legalized the PSR, the Bolshevik authorities shut down for good the organ of the Menshevik Central Committee, Vsegda vpered. As Chernov sardonically observed, it was now the SRs’ turn to play the role of the legal opposition.23

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Renewed Bolshevik tolerance of a public place for the PSR coincided with an upswing of popular opposition to Bolshevik policies. Manifestations of worker discontent reemerged most strongly in the industrial centers that had been centers of the opposition in 1918 (Petrograd, Tula, Sormovo), where the opposition was once again strongest among metalworkers and railroad workers. Like the Menshevik leadership, the PSR called on party members to restrain workers and to avoid direct confrontations with the Soviet state. Opposition-minded workers nevertheless voted for resolutions inspired by Menshevik and SR slogans (although not, generally, calling for the Constituent Assembly), and local socialist activists inevitably became swept up in factory meetings and strikes. In Petrograd, Left SRs moved to the fore and played the role in the factories that SRs had played in 1918. Dissatisfaction and unrest in the former capital centered in the Putilov Factory, but strikes encompassed about thirty-five thousand workers in the city and were triggered by the failure of the authorities to follow through on promises to increase food rations.24 On March 15 the Bolshevik Petrograd Committee decided to bring in a detachment of sailors to seize control of the factory and allow only those workers into the factory who agreed to work for the set rations. Those who refused would not be paid.25 This plan collapsed when the Baltic sailors sided with the workers, but despite this setback, the Bolsheviks were able to assemble sufficient forces to seize the factories and suppress the strikes. The Cheka followed up with the arrest of 225 Left SRs at the end of March.26 The pattern of events in Sormovo and Tula was similar. In Sormovo a Bolshevik ban on worker meetings to discuss the food crisis sparked the unrest. Political demands buttressed the strikers’ call for an improvement in the food supply: workers appealed for the end of the civil war, the unification of all the socialist parties, and the recognition of popular sovereignty. As in Petrograd, workers went out on strike, but the Bolshevik authorities announced that the strikers would be deprived of their food rations and arrested thirty strike activists. The strike collapsed, although the chairman of the Sormovo Bolshevik party committee continued to complain to Moscow about the difficulties posed by the “negative attitude of the workers.”27 The crisis in food supply was also acute in Tula, where the Bolshevik authorities asked for additional agitators from Moscow in view of the food shortages and the “Menshevik mood of the mass of workers.”28 The arrest of twenty-three Menshevik and SR activists in this volatile atmosphere sent most of the railroad workers and Armaments Factory workers out on strike in March (there was also a brief strike in February).29 Although the Bolshevik press blamed Menshevik agitators for the strike, the Mensheviks were in fact the only socialist party opposing the strike, whose real origins lay in the food crisis and arrests.30 The Bolshevik Central Committee dispatched Feliks Dzerzhinskii, the head of the Cheka, to the city to supervise

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in person the Bolshevik effort to end the strike and suppress the opposition parties. Two hundred ninety people were arrested in a ten-day sweep that began on March 31, just as the strike wave in the city reached its peak. By the second week of April, the Tula Bolshevik leadership considered the strike to have been liquidated, although five thousand workers were still out at the Armaments Factory. The Bolsheviks described the mood at the Armaments and Cartridge factories as “depressed,” because workers sensed their “defeat.”31 There are few signs that the socialist parties had been able to rebuild party organizations in these cities or elsewhere, and the workers’ resolutions were distinctly more Soviet than they had been in 1918. The resurgence of worker protest did coincide with the legalization of SR and Menshevik organizations in Moscow, however, and the strikers’ demands echoed some of the socialists’ slogans and arguments, to the evident consternation of the local and national Bolshevik leadership. Equally ominous from the Bolshevik perspective were Soviet difficulties in the countryside. The Cheka reported a variety of peasant actions in Kursk, Orel, Penza, and Viatka provinces in early March. The Bolshevik press habitually attributed such episodes to SR agitation, but party organizations continued to have no connection to the violence in the countryside.32 Rural violence against the agents of the Soviet state, and peasant dissatisfaction with the Bolsheviks generally, stemmed above all from conscription and grain requisitioning, the two points at which the state made its power felt in the countryside. Although an element of spontaneity was undoubtedly present in villagers’ decisions to resist this or that requisitioning detachment, it is a mistake to accept too readily outsiders’ descriptions of such episodes as unconscious, spontaneous rebellion. By 1919 peasants had some experience with Soviet campaigns in the countryside. They were surely capable of weighing the consequences of violent resistance against the likelihood that they would meet their objectives with other, more common modes of resistance, such as evasion, dissimulation, and flight.33 In fact, the first months of 1919 witnessed an increase in organized rural resistance to the Soviet state. Armed groups of deserters from the Red Army, the so-called Greens, congregated in rural districts throughout European Russia over the course of the year. They fought primarily to avoid service in the army and were not necessarily political opponents of the Soviet state, but on occasion they supported villagers resisting mobilization or grain requisitioning.34 On the Volga the so-called Chapan War (chapannaia voina) broke out in Samara province in early March. The conflict took its name from the caftans (chapany) worn by Volga peasants, and its immediate origins lay in the intense Bolshevik effort to secure provisions and livestock for the Red Army operating not far away on the Eastern front against the advancing armies of Kolchak. This latest round of requisitioning followed the enormous grain levies imposed on Samara province in the fall of 1918.

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Armed peasant resistance to requisitioning in several districts of Samara and Simbirsk provinces was coordinated by village and volost’ staffs of the newly proclaimed People’s Peasant Army (Narodno-krest’ianskaia armiia), which was based in Stavropol’ and in the village of Novodevich’e in Simbirsk province. At the height of the rebellion several tens of thousands of peasants were engaged in the fight with Red Army and Cheka detachments. They gained loose control of a substantial territory, entrusted political leadership of the movement to an executive committee in Stavropol’, and briefly published their own newspaper, “News of the Stavropol’ Executive Committee.” Although some Cheka reports saw the hand of the PSR in the rebellion, SR organizations played no role and had no political influence on the movement, which adopted Soviet slogans and emphasized a distinction between Soviet power and Bolshevik dictatorship. Despite the large number of rebels, militarily superior Red Army and Cheka detachments crushed the movement in the second half of March and first part of April, executing more than six hundred rebels.35 Rural unrest and the resurgence of worker protest evaporated whatever inclination the Bolshevik leadership had to tolerate legal SR and Menshevik organizations, even ones confined to the capital. On March 14, Dzerzhinskii reported to the Central Committee about the “seriousness” of the political situation. At his urging, a number of provinces were declared under martial law and steps were taken to strengthen the Cheka. The Cheka had seen some of its authority trimmed in the party discussion about its role in the last months of 1918 and early part of 1919.36 The Central Committee restored the powers of the Cheka and ordered the provincial party committees to return to the Cheka all party members who had been recalled for work in other party organizations. In addition, the Central Committee decided to shut down the Menshevik newspapers and warn Delo naroda, and it instructed the Soviet press to intensify its campaigns against the Left SRs.37 In accord with the Central Committee’s return to a hard line against the socialist parties, new plenipotentiaries responsible for the “left socialist parties” were appointed in the secret departments of the provincial Chekas, and the Cheka began to carry out arrests in Moscow as well as in the provinces.38 In April sixteen Mensheviks and fifty-five SRs were arrested in Moscow, including Burevoi and other members of the Vol’skii group. After an additional report from Dzerzhinskii, the Bolshevik leadership decided to release the members of the Vol’skii group and to refrain from arresting other leaders of the group still at liberty.39 This policy of favor toward the Vol’skii group led in April to a Politburo decision to allow publication, with financial assistance, of the group’s collection of articles on the history of the Eastern front, entitled Toward an End to the War within the Democracy. Although the Politburo hoped thereby to strengthen the hand of the Vol’skii group within the PSR, it cautiously de-

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cided to take measures to ensure that the book did not circulate widely.40 At the same time, pressure on the main body of SR organizations did not relent. The authorities closed Delo naroda on March 30 and rounded up many of the leading party activists in Moscow. Unlike the members of the Menshevik Central Committee, however, the SR Central Committee members eluded the Cheka for the time being.41 The Third Force

By early spring the trickle of returning SR Central Committee members from Siberia and the Urals, including Chernov, brought together a quorum of the Central Committee for the first time since the coup d’état in Omsk. In April it held a plenum in Soviet territory, its first there since June 1918. The plenum produced a new set of theses that characteristically focused on the worldwide political and economic situation in the wake of the end of the World War and left concrete political instructions for an accompanying letter to party organizations.42 Each of these documents bore the heavy impress of Chernov’s thinking. Chernov argued that the collapse of the losing countries in the World War and the outbreak of revolutions in Russia and Germany had opened the worldwide transition from capitalism to socialism. Russia’s former allies had become the dominant imperial powers defending the old capitalist order and had intervened in Russia to suppress the revolution. To defend their interests, they had created the League of Nations, an “all-powerful political and economic trust of the victorious great bourgeois powers for the imperialist ‘Black Repartition’ and exploitation of the whole world.”43 Closer to home, the Central Committee theses and the accompanying letter marked the party’s adoption of Chernov’s conception of the PSR as a “third force” between the Reds and the Whites. During the World War, Chernov had argued that the international socialist movement ought to become a third force equally hostile to the two warring coalitions.44 Spurred by the Bolshevik crackdown on the PSR in the spring of 1919, which eroded the SRs’ hopes for joint operations against the Whites and underscored the distance between the socialist opposition’s conception of a legitimate revolutionary state and the realities of Bolshevik dictatorship, Chernov adapted his wartime scheme to reconfigure the place of the PSR in the civil war. He now argued that the PSR must become the third force in the civil war, because the Reds and Whites were each fatal to the cause of democracy in Russia. The Whites aimed for a restoration of the prerevolutionary social and political order that was plainly directed at the democracy, but Bolshevik authoritarianism, militarism, and terror also posed a grave threat. Violence, Chernov argued, was so deeply embedded in the Bolshevik system of power that any agreement between it and the socialist opposition

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was impossible. There could no longer be any hope for a peaceful, democratic evolution of the regime. As ever, Russia’s only way out lay through the Constituent Assembly, but at present the party was not in a position to lead armed struggle for the Constituent Assembly in either Red or White territory. The Central Committee therefore renounced armed struggle against the Whites and declared that struggle against Kolchak would become permissible only when the PSR had regained sufficient strength to resume the fight against Bolshevik power after his overthrow. The party resolved that in the end it would probably have to lead an armed popular movement against both the counterrevolution and Bolshevik power: In the face of the danger from the right, the toilers’ democracy, in particular the PSR, may suspend the armed struggle against the Bolsheviks until it has sufficient forces for a struggle on two fronts; the toilers’ democracy, in the name of gathering its forces, may restrain the masses from uncoordinated flare-ups, rebellions, strikes and the like, which only exhaust the energy of the people and increase the general disorder. But it can never forget that the best worker for the future counterrevolution is the Bolshevik system itself, that it depends only on the behavior of the Bolsheviks whether their unavoidable departure from power will be peaceful or catastrophic, and that finally at the moment of [the Bolsheviks’] end, the place of the PSR, as ever, will be not on the side, but at the head of the people gaining its rights in struggle.45

This argument represented a major shift in party thinking. For the first time analysis of the internal dynamics of the revolution had persuaded the SR leadership that the interests of the revolution and the mass of the population would ultimately dictate armed struggle against the Soviet state. In 1918, by contrast, the SRs had conceived armed struggle primarily in terms of the need to resist German imperialism. Chernov recognized the key to Bolsheviks’ hegemony on the political left since the fall of 1918: it lay in their representation of the civil war as a war between Red and White in which proletarian and bourgeois dictatorship were the only possible political outcomes. To break the Bolsheviks’ hold, the SRs needed to contest this dualist construction of the civil war and build, conceptually and practically, a third force between Red and White. No longer could the SRs’ vision of the political landscape be organized entirely by the conventional juxtaposition of the revolutionary democracy and the counterrevolution, a binary that the Bolsheviks had transformed into the opposition between Red and White that they used to legitimate their dictatorship. The Bolsheviks’ “barracks Communism,” their systematic destruction of all forms of political freedom, and their brutal assault on the mass of the toiling

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peasantry now came to the fore in Chernov’s analysis. Chernov stressed that civil war was the essence of Bolshevism and that the Bolshevik dictatorship depended on methods of rule drawn from the practice of the war—requisitioning, the seizure of hostages, collective responsibility (krugovaia otvetstvennost’), mass executions, and concentration camps. Such practices had cultivated a Bolshevik “mystique of the state” that aimed for total control of the individual, and hope for a reform of Bolshevik institutions and policies was naïve.46 Nevertheless, few SRs doubted that counterrevolution remained the immediate enemy. The Vol’skii group was infuriated by the leadership’s willingness to countenance armed struggle against the Soviet state and its reluctance to admit that effective resistance to the Whites would require cooperation with the Reds. Vol’skii, Rakitnikov, and others criticized the Central Committee for underlining the temporary nature of the suspension of armed struggle against the Red Army. They called on the party to concede that there was no possibility of fighting for the Constituent Assembly in the real circumstances of the civil war. Although it remained committed to universal suffrage in principle, the Vol’skii group urged the PSR to become a “Soviet party” by accepting a reformed electoral statute that redressed the imbalance between workers and peasants in the Soviet suffrage and observed elementary rules of democratic practice. It is doubtful that Vol’skii and his supporters put much stock in their schemes for Soviet electoral reform: their real motivation lay in the conviction that the Soviet state, in the actual conditions of 1919, represented the Russian Revolution and its future. The fall of Bolshevik power would open the way not to the socialist opposition but to Denikin and Kolchak or to the proliferating Green armies, whom both the Vol’skii group and SR leadership depicted as counterrevolutionary.47 Given the SRs’ assumptions, there is much to be said for this perspective. It followed logically from the party’s emphasis on the overriding need to combat counterrevolution, and it is indeed difficult to imagine the SRs and Mensheviks securing power and stabilizing a democratic socialism on the ruins of Bolshevik rule in 1919. The party controversy came to a head at the Ninth Party Council, which gathered in Moscow at the end of June. Although forty-seven delegates representing the Central Committee and provincial SR organizations attended, the council illuminated the moribund state of the party. In the judgment of one participant, proper party organizations no longer existed in Soviet Russia. The conference represented only individuals and scattered, isolated groups.48 Nonetheless, the delegates analyzed and debated “the current political moment” with typical gusto. Vol’skii, invited to participate by the Central Committee (although it gave him no vote), again argued for recognition of Soviet power and an alliance with the Bolsheviks. Rakitnikov, who had participated in most of the initiatives of the Vol’skii group but suffered periodic doubts about

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the negotiations, urged the party to abandon its claim that the end of armed struggle against the Bolsheviks was only temporary. He also called for the party to contest Soviet elections without securing a formal SR-Bolshevik agreement. The Central Committee proposal for the party to remain a third force between Red and White secured the majority in the council. Rakitnikov and Burevoi resigned from the Central Committee. Four new members were elected to replace them and the two members of the Central Committee who had been shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918, Ivan Teterkin and Matvei Kogan-Bernshtein.49 In the face of the Kolchak armies’ successful spring offensive in Siberia, however, the Ninth Party Council dropped the Central Committee’s April declaration that armed struggle against the Whites could only resume when the PSR could be sure that it would be able to keep the anti-Bolshevik front intact in the event of its defeat of the Whites. The council called instead for immediate, all-out struggle against the Whites, using the methods the party had employed against the tsarist regime.50 In SR jargon this denoted terrorism. In August the Central Committee approved a plan for Grigorii Semenov to lead an effort to assassinate Kolchak, although his subsequent arrest by the Cheka cut the effort short.51 In the fall, as its attention shifted to the advancing southern armies under Denikin, the Central Committee urged SRs in the south to take up terrorism and not to be misled by the euphemisms of the Ninth Party Council: “We understand the ‘old methods’ in the same way they have always been understood. In general, this must be done.”52 SRs mobilized into the Red Army, by contrast, were instructed to bring to it “not a spirit of demoralization,” but unspecified “principles of cultural renewment.” And because of the supposed threat of counterrevolutionaries taking over the emerging Green armies, the council instructed local party organizations to paralyze the Greens’ activities.53 As it surveyed the armies in the field, the SR majority (no less than the Vol’skii group) thus gave its clear preference to the Red Army, and the advance of the Whites pushed aside the party rhetoric of a third force. This tilt to the left depressed those SRs who had hoped for a genuine commitment to the idea that the Reds and the Whites were equally opponents of the party and the democracy. One of the few such members of the right wing still active in the party complained from the Don: “How could the conclusion have been drawn about transferring the struggle to the south and [using] ‘the old methods?’ In Soviet territory there are no forces, but do they exist in the south? There caution, enlightenment and accumulation, but in the south ‘the old methods?’ There a ‘people’s army,’ but does the army in the south really not consist of workers and peasants? The Volunteers after all comprise an insignificant, unnoticeable percentage in the southern army. You must admit, this is not logical and the symmetry of two dictatorships equally hostile to us is significantly upset.”54

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Most of the criticism of the resolutions of the Ninth Party Council came from the left, however. The wrangling between the official party leadership and the Vol’skii group dragged on through the rest of 1919. During the first half of the year, the Vol’skii group continued to participate fully in party affairs, despite its public criticism of the party line. After the Ninth Party Council and the resignations of Burevoi and Rakitnikov from the Central Committee, the Vol’skii group began slowly to emerge as a distinct organization, though still within the party fold. Vol’skii, Burevoi, Rakitnikov, and a number of dissatisfied delegates to the Party Council issued another call to party members, denouncing the idea of a third force and declaring their intention to “fight the reaction tirelessly, with weapons in our hands, not asking nor demanding anything for this from the Bolsheviks.”55 In August the Vol’skii group secured permission from the Bolsheviks to publish a weekly newspaper, Narod. Although it was shut down after only one issue, Narod tied together the party opposition and provided a name for the Vol’skii group as it emerged as an organized faction. Separate Narod organizations formed in Buzuluk, Nikolaev, Poltava, Tula, Ufa, and Vologda. Some of these groups managed to maintain a legal existence and to place deputies in the local soviets. Most members of the Narod groups nevertheless still considered themselves members of the PSR, and the leadership continued to treat them as such.56 The fluid relations between the two groups are suggested by the Central Committee selection of Semenov, a member of the Narod group, for the task of assassinating Kolchak. The slow pace at which the disagreements within the party developed into a schism was a function of loyalty to the party and of the narrow range of the differences between the Narod group and the main body of the party. Those differences were further narrowed by the Central Committee’s renewed interest in an alliance with the Bolsheviks, an interest brought on by the menacing successes of Denikin in the south. In July the Central Committee appealed to the Bolsheviks, “for the last time,” to allow free elections to the soviets. If they did, the SRs agreed to “turn over the solution of all internal disagreements within the democracy to the new soviets.”57 Nothing came of this appeal, although it was not the last of the SRs’ pleas. The Bolshevik leadership displayed no interest in free soviet elections, but the prominent Bolshevik Iurii Larin did apparently put out feelers to the Mensheviks on behalf of some Bolsheviks at roughly the same time. His proposal for leading Mensheviks to take up high-level economic positions within the Soviet government fell short of the Mensheviks’ minimum demands and was rejected, but rumors about a possible Menshevik counterproposal circulated throughout the summer and fall of 1919. The SR Central Committee expressed skepticism about the prospects for a Bolshevik-Menshevik agreement

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when it got wind of these talks, although it expressed its hope for a successful outcome.58 In October, when Denikin appeared poised to march on Moscow, Chernov again offered the Bolsheviks recognition of Soviet power and the PSR’s full cooperation against the Whites in return for free soviet elections.59 Under the impact of same event, Denikin’s dramatic advance north in October, the Narod group moved even closer to the Bolsheviks, which brought the long-simmering party controversy finally to a boil. On October 15, Vol’skii, Burevoi, and other leading members of the Narod group sent a letter to the Soviet leadership expressing their desire to assist in resisting the approaching counterrevolution. The Narod group mobilized all of its followers for the Red Army and suggested they might be of use in organization, supply, and propaganda among the troops, as well as in the mobilization of SRs and party sympathizers. The group requested that the authorities help its members find places at the front and allow the legal existence of SR organizations in the army.60 Two days later the group wrote to the SR Central Committee demanding that the party side unequivocally with the Reds and call on all SRs actively to support the Red Army.61 Chernov tried to bridge the developing schism by suggesting that the Narod group move to Denikin’s territory to fight him there, leaving policy in Soviet Russia in the hands of the Central Committee. He also told the members of the group that he had prepared a proclamation as chairman of the Constituent Assembly calling for the defeat of the counterrevolution, but the Central Committee majority had blocked its publication.62 The Central Committee instead denounced the steps of the Narod group as a violation of party discipline and reiterated the rhetoric of the third force. It agreed with the Narod group that the Red Army was a “people’s army” and supported the entrance of individual SRs into the army, but it insisted that turning party forces over to the Bolsheviks would be tantamount to political suicide. Party organizations were not to mobilize their members for the Red Army. Of course none of these measures derived from sympathy for Denikin. The Central Committee again instructed party organizations in Denikin’s rear to organize rebellions, use terror, and find any other means to stop his advance.63 The Central Committee dissolved the Narod group and declared that if its members did not submit to the Central Committee, they would be expelled from the party.64 In response, the Narod group withdrew from the party in early November and established its own organization, the Minority of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (MPSR), under the leadership of Vol’skii, Burevoi, and Rakitnikov. In Ufa, Vologda, and a few other places the party organizations defected to the MPSR in their entirety; in Petrograd, Tula, and Khar’kov, the SR groups split, with majorities going over to the new organization.65 For a time in 1919 and 1920 the MPSR functioned legally and was allowed to contest elections in some

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places. It succeeded in electing ten delegates to the Petrograd soviet and three to the Tula soviet, for instance, and it sent a small delegation to the Seventh Congress of Soviets in March 1920.66 Yet as the schism in the party reached its climax, there was in fact desperately little left for the two sides to split. Another wave of arrests in December 1919 and January 1920 rolled through the SR organizations in Moscow, Tver’, Iaroslavl’, and a number of other provincial cities.67 The Central Committee members managed to elude arrest into the spring of 1920, but they were completely isolated from the provincial party organizations, which were themselves in a terrible state.68 The Central Committee had made an effort to rebuild the organizations in early 1919, after the Red Terror had eased, but its efforts met with little success. The little information that the Moscow party leadership possessed about the provincial party organizations at the end of 1919 was surely disheartening. The Penza SRs, for instance, wrote to the Central Committee to fulfill their “sad obligation” to inform the leadership of the “grave state of the Penza organization.” Two Penza SRs had traversed the whole province in November 1919 to arrange a provincial party conference, but not a single delegate had shown up on the appointed date. In the city itself the organization comprised fifteen or twenty people, but half of the Provincial Committee had been arrested in December. The letter concluded that the situation was simply “desperate.”69 In Nizhnii Novgorod the SR organization that had been so active in the city and in Sormovo in 1918 had “ceased to exist” by the fall of 1919.70 All along the Volga, another SR activist reported, party organizations had “nothing behind them.”71 The Siberian SRs and the Kolchak Government

In early 1920 good news from Siberia interrupted this sad story. On January 5 the SR-dominated Political Center overthrew the Kolchak government in its new capital of Irkutsk. Kolchak himself shortly fell into the hands of the Political Center, turned over by the commander of Allied forces in Siberia, General Maurice Janin, and the Czechoslovak Legion, who were eager to secure safe passage out of Siberia. With this prize in hand, the Political Center declared the end of the civil war in Siberia and opened negotiations with the Red Army on the political future of eastern Siberia. The coup d’état in Irkutsk thus realized the hopes of the SR Central Committee for an SR-led campaign against the Whites and fulfilled Kolchak’s long-standing fear of the party. The development of the Siberian SR organizations had followed closely the trajectory set by the Central Committee and SR organizations of Soviet Russia. In the last months of 1918 the Siberian Regional Committee of the PSR divided almost evenly between a moderate group that advocated unconditional support for the Directory and a leftist group that emphasized the need to deal a decisive

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blow to the reaction. After the coup in Omsk the leftists gained a majority in the Regional Committee for the first time when two members of the moderate group, V. N. Merkhalev and S. I. Fainberg, left for Irkutsk and were replaced by two prominent leftists from Tomsk, Pavel Mikhailov and Boris Markov. The leftist majority of the Regional Committee made its priority the assassination of Admiral Kolchak, Ataman Pavel Ivanov-Rinov, Ivan Mikhailov, and other leading figures of the new regime. By courier, the Central Committee members in Ufa (Chernov, Burevoi, Rakitnikov, and Vedeniapin) approved a plan to assassinate Kolchak. Preparations began in early December and were well-advanced by January. Pavel Mikhailov organized a central terrorist detachment in Omsk, established surveillance of Kolchak, and organized smaller terrorist detachments in other Siberian cities. They were to follow up the assassination of Kolchak with a series of attacks on lesser officials. The moderate group in the Regional Committee, however, bitterly opposed taking up terrorism, arguing that the party should devote itself to the reconstruction of party organizations and other democratic institutions. In its view the assassination of Kolchak, even if successful, would accomplish little, because the PSR lacked the organization and political support necessary to replace his regime with a democratic state. The turn to terrorism, moreover, would give the military and the Cossacks ample pretext to commence a full-scale slaughter of SRs, other socialists, and their supporters. In January the moderates regained the upper hand in the Regional Committee when Merkhalev and Fainberg returned to Tomsk and replaced Markov and Pavel Mikhailov. The Regional Committee dropped the plan for a terrorist campaign and thereafter emphasized rebuilding the party, with little success.72 The Regional Committee continued to argue that active struggle with Kolchak would become possible only when it became feasible to reopen the “front of the Constituent Assembly” against the Red Army.73 This cautious position provoked opposition from those SRs who were eager to fight Kolchak. The leftist minority in the Regional Committee urged the party to abandon the careful calculation of the permissible circumstances for an uprising against Kolchak and move immediately to active struggle. A conference of Siberian and Urals SR organizations in Irkutsk in April 1919 also called for the party to take more aggressive action against the Kolchak regime. Like the Regional Committee, the conference called for the patient accumulation of forces and the strengthening of democratic institutions on both sides of the front, but it argued that the ascendancy of the Siberian reaction dictated anti-Kolchak struggle “using the tried methods of revolutionary struggle, remembering nonetheless that unorganized mass risings lead only to the atomization and disorganization of the masses.”74 Although the resolutions of the conference stressed the impossibility of an accord with the Bolsheviks, there

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was in fact substantial interest in the Siberian SR organizations for an SRBolshevik agreement to conduct joint struggle against the Whites. Unofficial talks between the Siberian Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks, and the SRs in the spring of 1919 foundered on the Menshevik-SR insistence on a future role for the Constituent Assembly.75 Although the Ural-Siberian party conference moved the party closer to the views of the minority in the Regional Committee, Pavel Mikhailov, Markov, and other leading leftists remained dissatisfied and split off in late spring to form a Siberian Union of Socialist Revolutionaries. It denounced the passivity of the official party organizations and called for unrestrained struggle against Kolchak, with an emphasis on terrorism and the organization of a general political strike. Unlike the Narod group, whose thinking overlapped with the Siberian Union in many respects, the Siberian Union of SRs preserved the slogan of the Constituent Assembly in its propaganda. It formed a Siberian Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, consisting mainly of the members of the Siberian Union, which would assume power in the event that the union was able to overthrow Kolchak.76 The Regional Committee expelled members of the Siberian Union from the PSR and devoted considerable energy to keeping the provincial committees in line. This proved a difficult task, because many SRs doubted that the Regional Committee would ever accumulate sufficient forces to reopen the struggle against Soviet power and therefore worried that it would never move against Kolchak.77 As the Siberian SRs debated party strategy, Kolchak reached the pinnacle of his success in the spring of 1919. As a military dictatorship, the Kolchak government did not devote great attention to the political dimensions of civil war and concentrated on the military effort against the Red Army. By late spring the government could put an army of close to one hundred fifty thousand men at the front and mount an offensive without the Czechoslovak Legion, which had withdrawn from the front to guard the Trans-Siberian railroad and maintained cool relations with Kolchak and his government. The Siberian conscripts were untrained and poorly supplied, but for one of the few times in the civil war the Whites enjoyed a numerical superiority in men and artillery. Concentrated on Ufa, the spring offensive rolled through the Urals and regained most of the territory lost by Komuch in the fall of 1918.78 In late spring, however, Kolchak’s offensive toward the Volga ground to a halt and fell victim to a Red counteroffensive that brought the Reds through the Urals and into Siberia for the first time in almost a year. The defeats suffered by Kolchak’s Western and Siberian armies turned the military tide in the east irreversibly in favor of the Reds. It is tempting, but not wholly persuasive, to attribute the defeats at the front to popular opposition to Kolchak. Opposition to the dictatorship and its policies was widespread, but as the historian Evan

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Mawdsley has pointed out, the rear of the army remained reasonably stable by civil war standards, and there is little reason to believe that a more democratic and less authoritarian government would have been able to enforce conscription more effectively than the Kolchak government did.79 In fact, the Kolchak government was more effective than its predecessors in the east in mounting the draft and organizing the army, but it nevertheless faced virtually insurmountable problems. As long as the Soviet state retained its hold on the industrial center of the country, Siberia’s much smaller resources in industry, fuel, and railroads would make it enormously difficult to mount a successful challenge to the Red Army. Given the overwhelming demographic advantages that the Red Army enjoyed because of Soviet control of European Russia, it was also only a matter of time before the Bolsheviks redressed the Whites’ numerical superiority on the Eastern front.80 Over the course of April and May, the Bolsheviks doubled the size of the Eastern Army group. By June the Red Army pushed Kolchak’s forces back roughly to the line from which they had launched the offensive. Although internal opposition to Kolchak had little impact on his armies’ shifting fortunes in the spring and early summer of 1919, it did help to transform the setbacks at the front into a general political and military collapse in the second half of the year. Opposition to the Kolchak government took a variety of forms, but none of the opposition movements came under effective Bolshevik control. A. A. Shiriamov, the leader of the Irkutsk Bolsheviks, later reported that the Irkutsk party committee was the only properly functioning party organization in eastern Siberia, and it was no pillar of strength.81 Much more important than the small urban Bolshevik organizations were the proSoviet partisans operating in the Siberian countryside. They are probably the best known of the anti-Kolchak forces in Siberia, due mainly to the extraordinary attention they received in Soviet historiography, but their prominence in the historiography is considerably greater than their actual role in the demise of the Kolchak regime. They controlled sections of the countryside and some smaller cities, but they were not responsible for the collapse of the Kolchak government’s authority in the major cities and along the railroad line, to which his effective authority had in fact been confined from the outset of his rule. Indeed, given the length of the Trans-Siberian railroad and the difficulty of defending it, it is remarkable how ineffective the partisans were at interrupting traffic and sabotaging the line.82 In fact, the SR-zemstvo movement played the major role in turning military defeat and economic disarray into organized political opposition in Siberian cities and along the Trans-Siberian railroad. The movement united the underground SR organizations and the moderate SR and populist sections of Siberian society based in the zemstvos and the cooperatives, which had largely kept their

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distance from the SR party organizations since the summer of 1918. The cooperative activists, who had spent vast sums outfitting and supplying Kolchak’s armies, began in the summer of 1919 to look more favorably toward many of their former comrades in the PSR. As Viktor Pepeliaev, Kolchak’s minister of internal affairs, noted in his diary on July 17: “In leftist circles they are savoring the defeats. Even the ‘state-minded’ [gosudarstvenno-mysliashchie] are temporarily trudging along behind those who always have on their minds the holy thesis ‘if the government suffers a defeat, we must present demands to it.’”83 Pepeliaev rightly understood that much of the middle part of the Siberian political spectrum had moved closer to the PSR in the belief that securing the cooperation of the party’s right wing and opening the way to a democratization of the Kolchak government was the only way to stem the tide at the front. Although it is difficult to see what practical military benefits a move toward the PSR would in fact have brought Kolchak, the government itself nevertheless began to consider ways to bring the party’s right wing and a section of the populist intelligentsia into partnership with the government. In June, Kolchak approved the Council of Ministers’ proposal to reorganize and revitalize the State Economic Conference, an appointed body consisting of representatives of the merchant and industrial groups, the banks, and the cooperatives. It had been established in December 1918 to facilitate the supply of the army. The government now expanded the conference to include representatives of the city Dumas and zemstvos, cooperatives, Cossacks, industrialists, and others. The government also extended the conference’s authority to all economic matters.84 The inclusion of representatives of the city Dumas and the zemstvos in the State Economic Conference was a bid by the government to broaden its base in society. As the zemstvos were uniformly SR, and a few of the Dumas contained SR-Menshevik majorities as well, this bid was aimed primarily at the right wing of the PSR and its sympathizers. The zemstvos, introduced to Siberia only in 1917, had not been abolished or reelected under Kolchak and remained strongholds of the PSR, although their powers had been curtailed. The city Dumas, by contrast, were reelected under a new electoral statute in the summer of 1919. The new statute raised the voting age to twenty-one, deprived soldiers of the vote, and replaced proportional representation with majority, winner-takeall districts. Whether due to these measures, to popular opinion, or to the low turnout—about 15 or 20 percent of the electorate—the socialists did not fare well in most of the elections. Victory typically went instead to homeowner slates that kept their distance not only from the socialist parties, but from the Kadets as well, who formed electoral blocs with the Popular Socialists. Only in Irkutsk, Blagoveshchensk, Tobol’sk, and Zlatoust did the SR-Menshevik bloc win the elections.85 SR control of the zemstvos, however, remained unchallenged. Underground party

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organizations urged the zemstvos to boycott the election of the candidates to the State Economic Conference, the course followed by the zemstvos of Enisei and Irkutsk provinces, but in other zemstvos the delegates went ahead with the election of candidates. Typically they coupled this cooperation with the government with calls for a genuine, legislative organ elected by the so-called four-tail suffrage (universal, secret, equal, and direct).86 The reorganized State Economic Conference that assembled in June included a number of self-styled representatives of society, among them SRs from the party’s right fringe, pro-SR cooperative activists, and prominent left Kadets sympathetic to the PSR. These liberals and moderate socialists secured a majority in the conference, which thus joined the zemstvos in opposition to the government. In essence, this opposition movement adhered to the principles of the old Union of Regeneration. Several of the union’s activists, notably the left Kadet Lev Krol’ and the right-wing SR Dmitrii Rozenblium, had organized a Democratic Union in May 1919 to revive the ideas of the Union of Regeneration. The new union opposed the dictatorship and its policies but was prepared to cooperate with it in an effort to secure a democratized anti-Bolshevik government. Within the State Economic Conference, left Kadets such as Krol’ and Vladimir Vinogradov, the former member of the Directory, joined the cooperative group headed by A. V. Sazonov (nominally an SR) to push this effort to reform the government. To their left stood other SRs who were more skeptical of the government’s intentions but had, like Sazonov, broken with the official party organizations. Among these men were Nikolai Oganovskii, the former assistant minister of agriculture in the Directory, Vasilii Pankratov, the longtime revolutionary dispatched to Siberia by the Provisional Government in 1917 to guard the former tsar and his family, and Aleksandr Alekseevskii, Kolchak’s future interrogator for the Political Center and the Irkutsk Military-Revolutionary Committee. The government appointed Georgii Gins the chairman of the conference, but the conference elected Vinogradov assistant chairman and Alekseevskii secretary in a show of force by the opposition majority.87 Notwithstanding its name, the State Economic Conference focused on political reform of the government. Sazonov presided over the preparation of a note to Kolchak that called for the formation of a new Council of Ministers on a democratic platform and the transformation of the State Economic Conference into a legislative body with control of legislation and the budget, and with the right to interpolate ministers. When this met opposition from the government, the members of the State Economic Conference revised their project to give Kolchak the right to follow either the majority or the minority of the proposed legislative organ.88 Kolchak hesitated, pressed by his military advisers, the right wing of the Council of Ministers led by Ivan Mikhailov (the chief target of the calls for changes in the Council of Ministers), and the minority in the State

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Economic Conference. These groups urged him to stand firm in defense of the principle of dictatorship. Outside the government the Kadet press reminded the government of the history of the Siberian Regional Duma and called on Kolchak not to succumb to “democratic prescriptions” that would only create a “regular SR meeting.” Such “talking-shops” would do more harm than good, Kadets claimed, and the Bolsheviks were proving that the secret to success lay elsewhere.89 The government’s delay sapped the willingness of the conference and of the moderate left groups in society to cooperate with the government. Vinogradov quit the conference, although the other left Kadets and cooperative activists labored on in the futile effort to widen the social base of the government and attract the support of the PSR’s right wing. Alekseevskii, the leader of the left wing in the conference, also quit. His departure mirrored a shift to the left by the moderate zemstvos that had supported the conference and looked cautiously to the possibility of a democratized government. When on September 16 the government announced plans to transform the State Economic Conference into the State Assembly of the Land (Gosudarstvennoe zemskoe soveshchanie), it was too late to secure significant support from the zemstvos. The proposed new body, comprising representatives of the Cossacks and peasantry elected through the district zemstvos, was to convene after an electoral statute could be drafted and was to be consultative only.90 This was too little to rein in the developing zemstvo movement or to shore up the tottering government. By the fall of 1919 the government found itself isolated as the Siberian opposition shifted its attention to peace with Soviet Russia. The Gajda Coup

Although the official SR organizations had stood aside both from the attempt to democratize the government from within and from the partisan movement in the countryside, a desire for a more active effort against Kolchak spread widely through the PSR in the summer of 1919. Most SRs hoped for an end to the civil war, peace with the Bolsheviks, and the formation of a coalition socialistBolshevik “buffer state” in Siberia and the Far East. Such a buffer state, the SRs hoped, would preserve Siberian autonomy and some of the structures of a democratic state. They argued that the Bolsheviks would be attracted by the prospect of peace in Siberia and by the protection a buffer state would offer to Russian interests in eastern Siberia and the Far East; it was generally felt that the Japanese would not accept an openly Soviet regime. As ever a heterogeneous group, SRs were active in a variety of directions, some of which were condemned by the official party leadership in Siberia. The SR underground and the Siberian Union of SRs focused on the political isolation of the government and the organization of military forces for a broadly

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based uprising, although the hostility between the Siberian Union and the Regional Committee persisted into the fall.91 The zemstvos also stepped up their activities, accepting back into the fold the moderate zemstvo activists led by Alekseevskii, who had been prepared to cooperate with the government but now joined the broader SR-zemstvo movement for peace with Soviet Russia. Allied to the zemstvo movement, but distinct, were the SR groups in the army. Particularly in the staffs of General Rudolf Gajda and General A. N. Pepeliaev, there were SRs who had supported the fight against the Bolsheviks and served in the army even as they looked with disdain on the conservative policies of the rear. The most important of these SR officers was Captain N. S. Kalashnikov, an ex-terrorist who had been mobilized in 1914 and gone on to serve in a variety of military and political posts during the revolution. In 1919 he served as head of the information department on Gajda’s staff. During the summer he began to develop plans for a coup d’état to install a more sympathetic figure at the head of the government in Omsk. The SR underground initially shunned Kalashnikov, as it did the other SRs who had cooperated with the government, and it even expelled him from the party along with Pankratov, Sazonov, and several others.92 Kalashnikov and the zemstvo activists who supported his plans focused their hopes for a coup d’état on General Gajda, who had not hid his political ambitions since his first appearance on the Siberian political horizon in 1918. Unlike most of the men of the Czechoslovak Legion, Gajda had sympathized with the overthrow of the Directory and the establishment of the dictatorship. Enrolling in Russian service, Gajda rose to the rank of general and assumed command of the Siberian Army, operating on the northern section of the front near Perm’. In May he sent a long report to Kolchak, “The Results of the Spring Offensive,” which had in fact been written by Kalashnikov. The report attributed the failures at the front to the “methods of administration of the country” and called for the government to convene a Siberian Constituent Assembly and take other measures to disassociate itself from the counterrevolutionary right.93 The report had no effect in Omsk, and Gajda resigned in July.94 That month he departed for Vladivostok, meeting en route with SRs in several cities, including the important Krasnoiarsk SR Evgenii Kolosov, with whom he discussed the possibility of a coup d’état against Kolchak.95 In Vladivostok waiting for Gajda was Ivan Iakushev, the SR-regionalist and chairman of the Siberian Regional Duma in 1918. Iakushev stood at the head of the SR-zemstvo circles that were moving toward the overthrow of Kolchak, and he was eager to include Gajda in his plans. Iakushev, like Kolosov, hoped to overthrow the Kolchak regime in a series of coordinated risings in Irkutsk, Omsk, Vladivostok, and other Siberian towns along the railroad, relying on the support of the Czechoslovaks and the benevolent neutrality of the Allied

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representatives. A five-man directory would be formed to take power. In conjunction with this, a conference of zemstvo and city Duma representatives would convene in Irkutsk. It would legitimate the coup d’état and declare itself the Assembly of the Land (Zemskii Sobor) after incorporating representatives of the Siberian nationalities and the Cossacks. To organize the coup, Iakushev formed a Committee to Assist the Convocation of the Assembly of the Land in Vladivostok. This group, under his chairmanship, included two former members of the Siberian government of 1918, V. I. Moravskii and A. A. Krakovetskii, and the former SR member of the West Siberian Commissariat, V. O. Sidorov. Sidorov, the chairman of the United Organization of the Siberian zemstvos and city Dumas (Sibzemgor), linked the committee to the zemstvo movement. The committee entrusted technical preparation of the coup to Kalashnikov and his Central Bureau of Siberian Military Organizations, which had cells in Siberian towns and in the army and was particularly strong in the First Army under General Pepeliaev.96 Iakushev and his associates sought to use Gajda in their plans because of his authoritative status in the army and his ability to protect them from Allied charges of pro-Bolshevism. Gajda offered his full cooperation and became actively involved in the movement. With the same aim, Iakushev’s committee also established contact in September with General Boldyrev, who had been living in Japan since the overthrow of the Directory. Boldyrev declined Iakushev’s invitation to come to Vladivostok but expressed his support for the movement and thereafter worked in Japan to neutralize Japanese opposition to it.97 How frankly Iakushev discussed the aims of the movement with the two generals, each of whom had established anti-Bolshevik credentials, is not clear. It is also not clear how frank Iakushev was in his discussions with the Allied representatives in Vladivostok, the purpose of which was to use their support for the democratization of the Siberian regime to persuade them to prevent General Rozanov, Kolchak’s governor in the Far East, from using force to suppress the movement. The Allied attitude toward the anti-Kolchak movement in Vladivostok was on the whole uncertain and contradictory. Of the Allied representatives in Vladivostok, W. E. O’Reilly, the British consul, was especially sympathetic to Iakushev’s movement.98 The Czechoslovaks, particularly Dr. Vaclav Girsa, the representative of the Czechoslovak National Council in Siberia, were intimately involved in the planning of the movement, understood its basic aims, and were its principal source of weapons.99 As in 1918, Czechoslovak support offered the SRs a way to overcome the lack of military forces of their own. The purpose of the coup d’état was to negotiate a peace with the Soviet government while the front was still intact. Iakushev planned to move quickly, before the front collapsed completely, so that the new Siberian government would have some leverage when it sued the Bolsheviks for peace. He hoped that this

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would enable the government to preserve some democratic institutions in Siberia and avert a complete Sovietization of the region, since Moscow would be attracted to a peace that allowed it to concentrate all its forces on Denikin in the south. A conference in Vladivostok of all the socialist parties, including the local Bolsheviks, secured a Bolshevik promise not to interfere in the movement when it moved to overthrow Kolchak and open negotiations with the Red Army.100 By mid-September the preparations of the committee were complete and the coup was set for September 19. Rozanov, however, was well informed about the conspirators’ plans and concentrated troops in the city to put down the expected rising. Faced with superior force, Iakushev and Gajda postponed the coup and turned to the Allies in an unsuccessful effort to have them force Rozanov to withdraw his troops from Vladivostok.101 The involvement of Gajda and the negotiations with the Allies repelled the Siberian Regional Committee of the PSR and worried the zemstvo activists who had been cooperating closely with Iakushev and his committee.102 In midOctober the congress of zemstvo and city Duma activists that were to sanction the coup met secretly in Irkutsk. After hearing a report from Kalashnikov on the state of preparations in Vladivostok, the congress declined to support the planned coup d’état, insisting that Iakushev sever ties with Gajda and cease his negotiations with the Allied representatives. The congress resolved instead to agitate for the immediate departure of all Allied troops and to organize a railroad strike to bring down the government without a military coup.103 The congress elected a Zemstvo Political Bureau, the forerunner of the Political Center, to lead the rising. Its goal resembled that of Iakushev’s group in Vladivostok: the end of the civil war and the formation of a pro-Soviet buffer state in Siberia.104 In Vladivostok, Iakushev bemoaned the unwillingness of the Siberian zemstvo activists to work with Gajda. Throughout October and the first weeks of November, Gajda and the SRs living in his train openly organized troops and prepared the ground for their assumption of power. General Rozanov found his situation increasingly precarious as troops defected to the conspirators.105 In Omsk, where Rozanov’s inaction and the contacts he maintained with Gajda raised suspicions, there was well-founded concern that Rozanov himself would defect to the conspirators.106 In early November the Czechoslovak leadership, which had insisted on maintaining a veto over the rising because of its potential impact on the Czechoslovak troops along the railroad, gave the SRs and Gajda the go-ahead. Girsa telegraphed General Čeček in Vladivostok on November 8: “The circumstances for a coup d’état are favorable and the zemstvo activists want to carry it out before Kolchak’s departure from Omsk. [General] Syrový promises strict but benevolent neutrality and the preservation of secrecy if there is confidence of success and the zemstvo activists decided to carry out

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the coup in Vladivostok. We should be very careful, so that the Allies cannot reproach us for perhaps having organized the coup. Let the zemstvo activists act as they see necessary.”107 On the eve of the planned rising in Vladivostok, Dr. Girsa and Bogdan Pavlu, the representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council in Siberia, published a memorandum to the Allied representatives denouncing the Kolchak government, requesting authority to interfere in its repressive excesses, and asking the Allies to formulate a plan for the immediate withdrawal of the Legion. The memorandum was published as a leaflet and distributed along the Trans-Siberian railroad in support of the SR movement.108 The uprising in Vladivostok was finally set for November 17. That morning, units loyal to Iakushev and Gajda seized control of the railroad station and the Vladivostok docks as the trade unions went out on strike in support. For much of the day events seemed to be developing favorably for Gajda, Iakushev, and their allies, but in the midafternoon the Allied representatives in the city declared their neutrality. Iakushev, however, had counted on explicit Allied support, which would free the Czechoslovaks to act on his behalf. Neutrality, moreover, could take different forms. While the Czechoslovak neutrality may have been benevolent toward the SRs, the Japanese neutrality clearly favored Rozanov, and it proved decisive. The Japanese decision to “localize hostilities” to the region around the railroad station effectively constituted intervention on Rozanov’s behalf, since the rebels were now isolated and soon found themselves battered by loyal White troops. Japanese troops came out to patrol the streets of Vladivostok, demonstrating their support for Rozanov and their willingness to intervene to suppress the rebellion, which gave pause to those government troops that were contemplating defection to the conspirators. His cause thus strengthened, Rozanov crushed the rebellion on the night of November 17. The conspirators took refuge in the Czechoslovak and American headquarters as Rozanov reestablished control over the city. Gajda subsequently departed for Czechoslovakia, where he later became the leader of the Czechoslovak Fascists during the interwar period.109 The fiasco in Vladivostok did not put an end to the SRs’ efforts to overthrow Kolchak, but the party had missed whatever small chance it had of fulfilling its Siberian hopes. The overthrow of Kolchak in September or October, when Kolchak’s armies were retreating but remained partly intact, might have had more positive results for the SRs than the coup that ensued later. Negotiations with Moscow would have had a measure of plausibility, since the front in Siberia remained west of Omsk and Moscow faced an acute threat from Denikin. By the middle of November, however, the situation had changed dramatically. Denikin’s advance in the south had halted, the chaotic retreat of Kolchak’s army had accelerated, and the government had been forced to flee Omsk on Novem-

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ber 10. Two days later Kolchak himself followed, accompanied by his top military advisers and by trains holding the huge gold reserve. By mid-November no real chance remained of salvaging a role for the PSR, a Siberian Constituent Assembly, or the zemstvo and Duma institutions on whose behalf the SRs still proposed to act. The Political Center

As the army disintegrated, the Kolchak government entered its death throes. Viktor Pepeliaev replaced Vologodskii as chairman of the Council of Ministers and launched a last, desperate effort to bring the SR-zemstvo activists into the government and patch up relations with the Czechoslovaks, whose control of the railroad gave them great power. An agreement with the SRs and Czechoslovaks, he hoped, would secure government control of the railroad and the towns along it and allow it to retreat to Irkutsk or beyond Lake Baikal to stabilize the situation. Pepeliaev’s talks with Kolosov and Ia. N. Khodukin, the SR chairman of the Irkutsk Provincial Zemstvo Board, stood no chance of success, as the mood among the SRs was running in the opposite direction, toward peace with the Soviet government at all costs. So desperate was Pepeliaev for an agreement that he offered to force Kolchak to leave Siberia and convene an Assembly of the Land, relying on troops under his brother’s command. The SRs rebuffed all of Pepeliaev’s overtures.110 In November the activities of the SR organizations, the zemstvos, and the military forces organized by Kalashnikov were brought under the overall direction of the Political Center, a coalition of socialist groups formed at the initiative of the Siberian Regional Committee of the PSR. The Political Center consisted of representatives of the PSR, the Mensheviks, the Zemstvo Political Bureau formed at the Irkutsk Congress of zemstvos and city Dumas in October, and the SR-dominated peasant unions. Seven of the eight members of the Political Center were SRs, including two SR Central Committee members who had worked in the Siberian underground throughout 1919—Florian Fedorovich, who chaired the Political Center, and Lev Gershtein. The Political Center publicly renounced any intention to “resurrect the useless and harmful efforts to create on Siberian territory a government with all-Russian pretensions.” Instead, it declared its aim to be the formation of a regional government that would end the civil war, suppress the domestic and foreign reaction, and secure Bolshevik consent to a democratic buffer state in eastern Siberia. This buffer state would stretch from Achinsk to Vladivostok and would assure Russian control of the region in the face of Japanese opposition to Soviet power.111 The SR Regional Committee explained its plans for an eastern Siberian buffer to the Irkutsk Bolsheviks and offered them places in the Political Center. The SRs insisted, however, that while the “bourgeoisie” would be excluded from

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power and universal suffrage was unnecessary, the constitution of the buffer state could not be based on Soviet power. The Irkutsk Bolsheviks declined the offer, although they maintained ties to the Political Center.112 Despite the lack of Bolshevik cooperation, the Political Center organized a series of uprisings along the Trans-Siberian railroad in December. The chaos wrought by these uprisings triggered the final collapse of the Kolchak government and the speedy advance of the Red Army through central and eastern Siberia. According to a well-informed Omsk journalist, most of these rebellions originated in the staff of General Pepeliaev, which was riddled with cells of Kalashnikov’s military organization, now working for the Political Center.113 The Political Center organized the first of these uprisings in Novonikolaevsk on December 6 and 7. SRs from the local zemstvo movement formed a Committee of Salvation, seized control of the railroad station, and arrested General Voitsekhovskii, who was retreating along the railroad with the remnants of the Second Army. The slogans advanced by the Novonikolaevsk rebels—peace with Soviet Russia and the convocation of some kind of Siberian popular assembly to determine the region’s political future—tie the rebellion to the Political Center and the broader SR-zemstvo movement. Polish troops under Allied command, however, quickly freed Voitsekhovskii and restored a semblance of White authority in Novonikolaevsk. Ten days later, an analogous rebellion took place in Tomsk, although the devastation wrought to the chaotically retreating White armies was more severe in Novonikolaevsk.114 Before Kolchak’s overthrow in Irkutsk, the most devastating events for him took place in Krasnoiarsk. There the panicking military and civilian authorities allowed the Krasnoiarsk SR-zemstvo activists led by Kolosov and G. P. Sibirtsev to seize power virtually unopposed. On December 23 a Provincial Committee of Public Organizations consisting of representatives of the zemstvos, cooperatives, and trade unions declared its assumption of authority in the city and Enisei province. General B. M. Zinevich took over command of the troops in the province and cooperated with the new committee. The committee freed three hundred imprisoned Bolsheviks from the city jail and allowed the formation of a soviet, which sent its delegates to the Committee of Public Organizations to replace the cooperative and trade union representatives.115 The fall of Krasnoiarsk had disastrous consequences for Kolchak personally. Because he had already passed Krasnoiarsk in his journey east to Irkutsk, and the remnants of his retreating armies under General Vladimir Kappel’ remained to the west of the city, he was cut off from his only loyal troops. On January 3 these forces, which consisted of part of the Second Army under Voitsekhovskii and part of the Third Army under Sakharov, arrived at Minino, the last station before the city. With further retreat blocked by the Krasnoiarsk authorities, they embarked on a long march around the city, during which fighting, cold, and illness

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decimated their forces.116 Kolchak was henceforth at the mercy of the Czechoslovaks, the real power along the railroad. As the Whites disintegrated, Kolosov and the SRs in Krasnoiarsk received their first taste of negotiations with the Red Army. Kolosov established contact with the Reds as they neared the city on January 2. He gave a lengthy explanation of the Political Center’s plan to convene a Siberian Popular Assembly and conclude peace with Soviet Russia. He stressed that Soviet power could not be established in eastern Siberia, since the “Far Eastern reaction”—that is, the Japanese—would not allow it. This elicited a curt dismissal from the Red commissar: “Thank you for the moralizing lesson (moral’). I hope that we soon have the opportunity to exchange opinions in a more comfortable manner and to offer the working people a choice: either rotten appeasement and engagement to the petit bourgeois elements in society or the dictatorship of the proletariat and the toiling peasantry.”117 This inauspicious start set the tone for the negotiations. It soon became clear to the Red commissars who conducted the talks that neither Kolosov nor Zinevich could speak for the Whites, and that the Krasnoiarsk SRs had no forces of their own with which to withstand the Red Army. Kolosov and Zinevich were reduced to working out terms for the peaceful surrender of the city. On January 4 the Krasnoiarsk Bolsheviks seized power in the city with no resistance from the SRs, who now saw their goal as simply avoiding a bloodbath.118 On January 6 the Fifth Red Army occupied Krasnoiarsk. The final catastrophe of the Kolchak government opened five hundred miles to the east in Cheremkhovo, one of the last railroad stations west of Irkutsk. On December 21 forces of the Political Center’s military arm, the All-Siberian Military-Socialist Union under Kalashnikov, seized power in a bloodless coup. The insurgents blocked the further shipment of coal to Irkutsk, which soon deprived the city of electricity and plunged it into darkness. The fall of Cheremkhovo paralyzed the government in Irkutsk and marked its effective end.119 The pontoon bridge across the Angara river connecting Irkutsk to its railroad station in the suburb of Glazkovo was severed the same day. Three days later forces led by Kalashnikov himself took advantage of this, seized control of Glazkovo, and opened the decisive battle for control of the city. The only hope for the government and the garrison under General Sychev lay with reinforcements dispatched by Ataman Semenov at the request of Kolchak, but their defeat by Kalashnikov’s forces on December 31 sealed the city’s fate. After heavy fighting on January 1, the Allied representatives intervened in favor of the Political Center. They arranged a temporary armistice, during which Sychev and most of the government fled the city. Semenov’s forces also fled, taking with them thirty-one hostages turned over by Sychev, including the well-known SRs Pavel Mikhailov and Boris Markov. All were brutally murdered and dumped in Lake

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Baikal. On January 5, Kalashnikov’s forces entered Irkutsk, and the Political Center declared the overthrow of Kolchak.120 The history of the Political Center in Irkutsk replayed, in slow motion, the brief history of the Committee of Public Organizations in Krasnoiarsk. Like Kolosov in Krasnoiarsk, the SRs in Irkutsk drew up elaborate plans for the future administration of Siberia and elected a delegation to begin negotiations for the formation of a buffer state in eastern Siberia. But as in Krasnoiarsk, the Political Center had no intention of resisting the Bolsheviks and its only troops had defected from Kolchak precisely to avoid further fighting with the Red Army. It therefore existed at the sufferance of the Red Army and the Irkutsk Bolsheviks, who had been too weak to overthrow Kolchak themselves but could now rely on the victorious army. The SRs admitted privately that although they hoped for a compromise, they would have little choice but to capitulate if the Bolsheviks pressed the issue.121 That the Political Center was not immediately swept aside, as in Krasnoi­ arsk, was due mainly to the complicated maneuvering between the Red Army, the Czechoslovaks, and the Allied representatives led by General Janin. The Czechoslovaks were eager to leave Siberia immediately, and the Red Army was prepared to allow them to go peacefully if the Czechoslovaks gave up Kolchak and the gold reserve. General Syrový, in command of the Czechoslovak troops, ordered the string of trains carrying Kolchak, his staff, the gold, and Viktor Pepeliaev brought up to the outskirts of Irkutsk. They arrived from Nizhneudinsk, where they had been cut off from events for two weeks, on January 14. The Allied High Commissioners and Janin, the commander of all Allied troops in Siberia, had by then left Irkutsk for safety beyond Lake Baikal. From Verkhneudinsk, Janin authorized Syrový to take any course with Kolchak that he saw fit. Janin certainly knew that he thereby doomed Kolchak, as there was no chance of the Czechoslovaks fighting their way east with Kolchak, a man they detested. The Czechoslovaks, moreover, had close ties to the Political Center and had been deeply involved in the SR-zemstvo opposition to Kolchak since the fall of 1919 (as they had been with the PSR throughout the civil war in Siberia). After brief negotiations between Syrový and the Political Center, the Czechoslovak guard at the train turned Kolchak and Pepeliaev over to a delegation headed by M. S. Fel’dman of the Political Center on January 15. The Political Center transferred the prisoners to solitary cells in the city jail.122 Possession of Kolchak boosted the confidence of the Political Center as it began negotiations on January 19 in Tomsk with the Revolutionary Military Council of the Fifth Army and the Bolshevik’s Siberian Revolutionary Committee under I. N. Smirnov. The Menshevik I. I. Akhmatov chaired the delegation of the Political Center, which also included the SRs Kolosov and V. M. Konogov. Akhmatov and Kolosov again laid out the rationale for a eastern Siberian

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buffer state, stressing that the Bolsheviks’ only alternative was war against Japan. After consulting with Moscow, Smirnov agreed to their proposal over the strong opposition of A. M. Krasnoshchekov, the representative of the Irkutsk Bolsheviks. The Oka, a small river that bisected the railroad between Irkutsk and Nizhneudinsk, was selected as the western border of the buffer state. The principal task of the buffer, ostensibly to be controlled by the Political Center, would be to clear the area beyond Lake Baikal of foreign troops. Diplomatic efforts in this direction as well as the formation of the buffer state’s army would be secretly entrusted to Bolshevik organizers. The Political Center also agreed to turn Kolchak over to Moscow.123 This preliminary agreement quickly fell apart, in part because the Irkutsk Bolsheviks proved uncooperative. On January 20 they formed a MilitaryRevolutionary Committee and declared their intention to organize a soviet and take power. The Political Center agreed to turn power over to the Military Revolutionary Committee and called on the Siberian democracy to support the new government in the struggle against Semenov and the Japanese.124 The Political Center turned Kolchak over to the new authorities, by whom he was executed on orders from Moscow on February 6. When negotiations between the Bolshevik delegation and the Political Center for the formation of the buffer state resumed in Krasnoiarsk on January 24, Smirnov dismissed the Political Center’s request that it be restored to power in Irkutsk. He agreed only to create a coalition Revolutionary Committee in the city and to subordinate it to the instructions of Moscow during the remaining negotiations.125 The Political Center passed from the scene, but negotiations between the SR Regional Committee, a Menshevik delegation, and Smirnov’s Siberian Revolutionary Committee continued in Irkutsk over the next month. As the Fifth Army continued to advance (it occupied Irkutsk on March 1), the Bolsheviks established control of eastern Siberia and took a harder line. Moscow insisted on tighter control of the buffer and limited its prospective territory to the area beyond Lake Baikal. With negotiations breaking down at the end of February, Gershtein delivered a last appeal that captured the position of the PSR as its hopes for a genuine part in a revolutionary regime in eastern Siberia expired: “You are proposing to us a well-known role. We have agreed with you about the need to create a united Russia. This is what forced us to lead a rising, even anticipating your arrival. We now declare ourselves a legal opposition and you come to us and say that we must carry out certain actions. But we need assurances that we will be able to declare our slogans on the territory of the buffer. The role of the Moor is not at all appropriate for us. We must be presented the opportunity for certain work as we understand it.”126 Negotiations with the SRs and Mensheviks collapsed, but in April the Bolsheviks created the Far Eastern Republic, a buffer state based in Chita. It was little more than a Soviet puppet,

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and it served Bolshevik purposes well until its integration into the Soviet state in 1922. Gershtein’s poignant lament suggests how little had changed in the conceptual framework of the SR leadership over the course of the civil war. The idea of the PSR as a third force in the civil war—the vision of an SR-led, mass democratic, and socialist alternative to the Red and White dictatorships—never supplanted the party leadership’s hope to join, if only in opposition, a revolutionary democracy single-mindedly devoted to combating counterrevolution. Some SRs in Siberia and the Far East undoubtedly idealized the Bolshevik dictatorship, and indeed one later confessed that Soviet Russia had seemed “pure, radiant, genuinely popular, and revolutionary” from the perspective of the east.127 Still, by 1920 most SRs probably understood that the concept of revolutionary democracy had no place in Bolshevik political practice. It nevertheless remained deeply embedded in SR discourse. As long as the White armies remained active, the terminology and tactics of the third force only thinly covered a political and social field still structured by the fundamental opposition between the democracy and the counterrevolution. The resilience of the binary opposition between the democracy and the counterrevolution in turn worked against full assimilation of the idea of the third force, particularly as “counterrevolution” proved an enormously capacious category that SRs could almost effortlessly fill with new content. In Siberia the Japanese slipped easily into the place vacated by Kolchak and the Whites as the embodiment of revolutionary fears. The opposition between the democracy and the counterrevolution thus continued to structure SRs’ political outlook and to limit their options even as the White armies disappeared and the Bolsheviks secured the dictatorship. When the Bolsheviks once again declined to accept the terms of SR cooperation and grant the party a role in the revolutionary state, the Siberian SRs could scarcely resist the reconstruction of the dictatorship. As the Red Army advanced through Siberia, the Bolshevik authorities refused to legalize SR organizations. The Siberian Regional Committee retained a semilegal existence until about May, when it was forced underground. The Cheka pushed most other Siberian SR organizations underground at the same time, and arrests decimated the party’s ranks. The last semilegal SR organization, in Irkutsk, was suppressed in June of 1920.128

6

The End of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries

“

T

he terrifying thing about the modern dictatorships,” George Orwell remarked in 1939, “is that they are something entirely unprecedented. Their end cannot be foreseen.”1 The extraordinary difficulty of imagining an end to the dictatorship indeed aptly sums up the predicament of the anti-Bolshevik parties as the Whites passed from the scene and the Soviet victory became increasingly difficult to deny over the course of 1920 and 1921. For liberals and socialists working in the main line of the intelligentsia tradition, dominated as it was by images of 1789, 1848, and 1871, the Russian Revolution had broken the mold of European revolutions. It had resulted neither in an advance toward representative and constitutional government, nor in the triumph of a bourgeois order under a Thermidorean or Bonapartist regime. The unexpected victory of a revolutionary dictatorship posed a profound challenge to the intelligentsia’s conventional historical schemes and cultural categories. If culture, as the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has suggested, is “precisely the organization of the current situation in terms of a past,” the nature and depth of this challenge may be readily appreciated.2 As Orwell understood, liberals and socialists working with nineteenth-century narratives of history, progress, and revolution found it difficult to make sense of Bolshevik power and to find pasts on which they could draw for guidance as to how the dictatorship might be overcome. 215 

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After the Whites

It took time for the radical novelty of the situation to sink in. Although the SR Central Committee argued in early 1920 that the fall of Kolchak and Denikin had opened a “new page” in the Russian Revolution, through 1920 it in fact hardly questioned its reading of revolutionary history. Reference to the PSR as a “third force” faded away, but the concept of the third force was never as strongly anchored in party thinking as its rhetorical prominence in 1919 would suggest. The leadership insisted that the party’s role in the defeat of Kolchak had vindicated the tactical line of the Ninth Party Council. Despite the defeat of the principal White armies, the Central Committee held fast to its long-standing view that the Bolshevik dictatorship would endlessly generate economic chaos, peasant discontent, and counterrevolutionary resistance: only genuine popular sovereignty and consolidation of the democratic achievements of 1917 could stabilize the revolution and avert catastrophe. Moreover, with the outbreak of the Soviet-Polish War in April 1920, counterrevolution materialized for SRs in a new guise. The Central Committee invoked the threat of Polish imperialism, backed by the Anglo-French bourgeoisie, to call on all Russians to unite behind the Red Army. The Central Committee’s declaration characteristically intertwined social and national arguments as it called for the defense of the country and the revolution, and it warned that the Bolsheviks would be tempted to strike a deal with the Poles to save the dictatorship. At the same time, Baron Wrangel formed the last of the Russian White regimes after Denikin resigned command of the Volunteer Army and departed for exile. Able to consolidate itself in Crimea and to venture beyond the peninsula only because the Red Army was occupied by the Polish War, the Wrangel government posed little threat to the Soviet state. For the SR leadership, however, it served both as a daily reminder of the Bolsheviks’ supposed inability to vanquish the counterrevolution and as a constraint on its own range of options.3 Identifying Wrangel and the Poles with the counterrevolution may have validated SRs’ understanding of the revolution, but it offered little help in finding a way beyond the Bolshevik dictatorship. In January 1920 the Central Committee decided to convene a Tenth Party Council that would formulate a new tactical line for the party after the defeat of Kolchak and Denikin, but it would take over a year and a half for the council in fact to meet. In the meantime, the Central Committee repeatedly reaffirmed its unwillingness to resume armed struggle against the Soviet state. It hoped instead that pressure from “socialist and democratic public opinion” would compel the Bolsheviks to abandon the dictatorship, recognize basic civil liberties, and acquiesce in the emergence of a genuinely democratic and autonomous revolutionary politics.4 This outlook

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recalled the leadership’s view in early 1918, when the Central Committee theses had likewise articulated a hope that rebuilding the revolutionary democracy would simultaneously block the consolidation of a Bolshevik dictatorship and erect political structures that would be able to withstand the expected counterrevolutionary onslaught. By contrast with 1918, however, the Central Committee now placed its hopes for rebuilding the revolutionary democracy squarely on the Russian peasantry. There was good evidence in 1920 that the Bolshevik recourse to requisitioning and other coercive practices in the countryside had alienated large numbers of peasants, and the demise of the Whites would make it more difficult for the Bolsheviks to justify their policies and present themselves as the lesser evil. In March the Central Committee approved a plan to encourage villagers to adopt resolutions denouncing Bolshevik policies and calling for civil liberties and elections to a Constituent Assembly. The suggested twelve-point resolution (mirskoi prigovor) started with concrete criticisms of Soviet power, such as requisitioning, low fixed prices for grain, the shortage of manufactured goods, and the makeup and behavior of local Soviet administrations. It built to a demand for free, secret, and universal elections to the Constituent Assembly. In some versions of the resolution, peasants would declare that any government that would not agree to free elections could only be considered an “enemy of the people.”5 The Central Committee hoped that such resolutions would codify peasant demands in a standard form, center them on the need for genuine elections, and lay the basis for an organized, public movement of protest (prigovornoe dvizhenie) against the governing regime, on the model of the revolution of 1905.6 Also with 1905 in mind, the Central Committee decided to create a Union of the Toiling Peasantry. In April the Tambov SR organization proposed such a union, but the Central Committee also seems to have been entertaining the idea, and the surviving SR organizations throughout European Russian and Siberia were already searching for ways to organize peasants in the spring of 1920. The May 13 Central Committee circular that laid out the plan to use village resolutions to build a public protest movement also outlined a scheme to build a network of village brotherhoods and volost’ committees under the auspices of the union. Eventually a central organ of the union would be created at the national level, but for the time being the focus would remain on organizing peasants at the local and provincial level. The platform and statute of the proposed union mirrored the draft village resolution that the Central Committee had drawn up. The union’s stated aim was to liberate Russia and its “toiling people” (trudovoi narod) from dictatorial domination by Communists and nonCommunists alike, a goal that could only be secured through the convocation

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of the Constituent Assembly, acquisition of the full panoply of civil liberties, and the transformation of Russia into a democratic, federal republic. Viktor Chernov wrote a lengthy draft program situating these aims in the context of the larger revolutionary struggle for justice and freedom. In the shorter term, he and other SR leaders hoped that union organizations would provide a framework through which peasants could resist requisitioning and other Bolshevik practices. The union would be a nonparty organization formally independent of the PSR, but the SR leadership anticipated that SRs would play the leading role in the movement and coordinate its actions with those of the party. The Central Committee resolutely opposed the participation of nonsocialists in the union, but it authorized joint work with Left SRs, the former Populist-Communists (an offshoot of the Party of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries), and other radical groups. This was a striking break with the SRs’ practice since October, and it opened an important door to the participation of groups that had generally been pro-Soviet but might now be willing to make common cause with the PSR in defense of peasant interests and popular sovereignty.7 The May Central Committee circular also emphasized the need to rebuild party organizations. This had been an ongoing concern of the leadership ever since the collapse of provincial party organizations in 1918, but little headway had been made and the situation was indeed dire in 1920. If they existed at all, provincial SR organizations were tiny and lacked regular connections with each other or with the population. In Odessa the local party organization was able to recruit about thirty new members to join its two-hundred-person organization in 1920, but most party organizations found it nearly impossible to recruit new members.8 In early 1920 the chairman of the Voronezh SR organization unfavorably compared the party’s position to its position under the Old Regime, reporting to the Central Committee that the provincial party organization was “lifeless [obeskrovlena] as never before, as it had never been lifeless even before the revolution, under the tsarist regime.”9 In Moscow the Central Committee members were all living conspiratorially in the underground to avoid arrest by the Cheka, which had stepped up its efforts to track down the SR leaders after the defeat of the Whites. The party had no regular printed organ and scrambled to issue occasional leaflets and bulletins. It suffered from a severe shortage of funds in addition to Cheka persecution, and the Central Committee was also almost completely cut off from what little remained of the provincial SR organizations.10 Moreover, Cheka arrests began to destabilize the Central Committee for the first time in 1920. By early 1920 the Cheka had captured Dmitrii Donskoi, Sergei Morozov, and Evgeniia Ratner. The remaining members of the Central Committee eluded arrest through the winter and were able to direct party activities until May, when a series of arrests devastated the Central Committee.

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Evgenii Timofeev, Abram Gots, Mikhail Vedeniapin, Dmitrii Rakov, Mikhail Tseitlin, and Nikolai Ivanov were all arrested. This made it necessary to form an organizational bureau to take over for the Central Committee, which no longer had a quorum in Moscow.11 By the spring of 1920 there were already about thirty SRs of varying degrees of prominence incarcerated in Moscow’s Butyrki prison, where the prisoners had managed to win a series of concessions from the authorities, including the right to move about within the prison, to set up joint study groups, and to control their own kitchen. After the May arrests the Cheka isolated the Central Committee members by holding them in solitary confinement in the much more severe regime of the internal Cheka prison on Lubianka Square. This decision elicited a series of protests from the Butyrki prisoners, including repeated petitions to the Soviet authorities and a collective threat to launch a hunger strike. On August 12 the Butyrki prisoners and the Central Committee members in the Lubianka on whose behalf they had been protesting were transferred, amid a good deal of violence, to the former tsarist prison in Iaroslavl’. The material conditions at Iaroslavl’ were difficult, and the prisoners were initially subject to a severe regime that barred them from any communication with each other, but the regime was later relaxed somewhat. In November 1920, after Soviet military counterintelligence had penetrated the entourage of Boris Savinkov in Warsaw and entangled him in a fictitious terrorist plot against Lenin and Trotsky, the Soviet government publicly declared the SR Central Committee members hostages in the event of a terrorist attack by their former party comrade. Knowing that the supposed terrorist plot was in fact a Soviet counterintelligence operation and that the SRs had nothing to do with Savinkov, Feliks Dzerzhinskii himself informed the prisoners that they were not at risk of execution.12 About the same time, the Central Committee members were returned to Butyrki, where they again secured what was for veteran revolutionaries a reasonably tolerable regime that recognized their status as socialists and political prisoners.13 By the summer of 1920 there were thus only half a dozen members of the SR Central Committee still active in the underground. In Moscow, Viktor Chernov, Mikhail Gendel’man, and Mikhail Likhach continued to elude the Cheka, despite various near disasters. Lev Gershtein and Florian Fedorovich remained in Siberia, where they had served as Central Committee representatives since the end of 1918. For the Cheka the chief prize among the SR leaders at large was of course Chernov. His wife, Olga Chernova-Kolbasina, was arrested and held as a hostage. So too were Chernov’s daughter and two stepdaughters, although in March the children were released after several appeals to Dzerzhinskii by Ekaterina Peshkova, the well-connected head of the Political Red Cross in Russia and a former SR herself. In a telling sign both of their continued status as hostages and of the human connections that linked Russian revolutionaries

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across party lines, the girls were entrusted to the custody of the wife of the prominent Bolshevik Iurii Steklov, himself a prominent anti-SR publicist and one of the future organizers of the SR trial in 1922. The girls lived with Steklov’s wife and numerous Bolshevik luminaries in the Hotel National across from the Kremlin until they moved in with Peshkova in the spring.14 In May, Chernov emerged from hiding to give a famously daring speech at a meeting of the printers union with a visiting British Labor Party delegation. The delegation was a joint venture of the Labor Party and the Trades Union Congress that had been sent to Russia to investigate conditions there at the end of April. Over the course of the delegation’s six-week-long trip, it received numerous reports on the political situation in Soviet Russia from SRs, Mensheviks, Petr Kropotkin, the printers, and other leftists who were concerned to correct the picture painted at official receptions and in Soviet publications. The public meeting hosted by the printers union, whose Moscow branch was still controlled by the Mensheviks, offered Chernov a unique opportunity to speak directly to Western socialists before an audience of thousands of sympathetic listeners. Arriving incognito, Chernov was given the floor as a representative of the PSR. His long speech denounced the barracks communism of the Bolsheviks, whom he compared to the Christians of the Roman Empire in the ease with which they had transformed themselves from apostles of freedom to agents of ideological and bureaucratic oppression. As he ended his speech to prolonged applause, calls came from the crowd for the speaker to identify himself, and Chernov triumphantly obliged. He then hurried out of the electrified meeting and disappeared into the underground. As a stunned Menshevik later recalled: “At a legal meeting in 1920, there was nothing more forbidden, no more terrifying figures to invoke, than ‘the SRs.’”15 Chernov’s flair for the dramatic notwithstanding, it made good sense for the Central Organizational Bureau to send him abroad to organize a party press and prepare a new party program for the Tenth Party Council. He crossed the Estonian frontier in August and established a base in Tallinn, from which he hoped to maintain contact with Soviet Russia and coordinate the smuggling of SR publications into the country.16 Although the centers of the SR exile in 1920 were in Paris and Prague, Chernov soon found himself drawn into émigré party politics. Since 1918, Vasilii Sukhomlin, Nikolai Rusanov, Il’ia Rubanovich, and Dmitrii Gavronskii had represented the party abroad as its Foreign Delegation, but they had run out of money, parted ways, and virtually ceased activity.17 Several of the SRs who had played leading roles in Komuch, including Ivan Brushvit and Prokopii Klimushkin, clustered in Prague after 1918. More visible were the various prominent figures from the party’s right wing and right-center who gathered in Paris in 1919. Nikolai Avksent’ev and Vladimir Zenzinov had made their way to Paris after the Kolchak coup. There they joined

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forces with such like-minded SRs as Alexander Kerensky, Il’ia Fondaminskii, and Mark Vishniak. Most had played leading roles in the SR fraction of the Constituent Assembly in 1918, and several had served with Avksent’ev and Zenzinov in the Directory. All continued to advocate the patriotic, antiBolshevik coalition embodied in the Directory. They organized newspapers aimed at Western European audiences, and they issued several appeals to the Paris Peace Conference and to international socialist conferences protesting recognition of the independence of Finland, the Baltic states, and Georgia.18 In November 1920, Avksent’ev, Fondaminskii, Vishniak, Vadim Rudnev, and Aleksandr Gukovskii founded Sovremennye zapiski, which soon established itself as the most distinguished thick journal of the Russian emigration. The Prague SRs followed suit with their own journal, Volia Rossii, which also boasted an impressive array of contributors and became the only serious rival to Sovremennye zapiski in the cultural life of the emigration in the 1920s. Chernov’s relations with the émigré SR groups were complex, shaped not only by the long-standing splits in party opinion but also by the impact of exile itself. Chernov’s views were closest to those of the former Komuch activists in Prague, but exile pushed all SRs to the right, because the balance between the languages of class and nation shifted again for those party leaders who moved abroad. Nationalism is the natural language of modern exile politics, and the threat to Russian nationhood and the Russian state rose to the top of SR thinking throughout the diaspora. In a striking reversal, by the end of 1920, Chernov and other left-wing SRs abroad were far more willing to cooperate with nonsocialists and to consider resuming armed struggle against the Soviet state than were the right-center SR leaders inside Soviet Russia, notably Gots, Gendel’man, and Timofeev, for whom the language of class remained the dominant idiom and the Soviet state had become the vessel, however inadequate, of Russian nationhood. In January 1921, Chernov attended a so-called “private conference” of members of the Constituent Assembly that had been organized by Kerensky and Avksent’ev in Paris. The conference represented yet another effort to organize a patriotic, anti-Bolshevik coalition of socialists and liberals. Paul Miliukov, Vasilii Maklakov, and several other leading Kadets joined twenty-two SRs at the conference. At the end of the session the delegates elected an executive commission including five SRs, among them Avksent’ev, Kerensky, and Zenzinov, as well as Miliukov and two other Kadets.19 This revival of coalition outraged the SR Central Committee members in Russia. Chernov defended his participation in the conference on the grounds that he had technically only participated in the meetings of the SR fraction and had not joined the executive commission. He also insisted that he was pulling Zenzinov and Kerensky back to the mainstream of party opinion. Chernov had indeed persuaded Zenzinov to retract his resignation from the Central

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Committee, which he had submitted after the Ninth Party Council had suspended the armed struggle. This allowed Chernov later to co-opt Zenzinov into the Delegation, which in 1921 and 1922 comprised Rusanov, Sukhomlin, Rubanovich, Zenzinov, and himself.20 From Russia the imprisoned Central Committee members and the Organizational Bureau demanded that the Foreign Delegation impose party discipline on the exiles and send Zenzinov back to Russia. It expelled Avksent’ev and Fondaminskii from the party in January 1921, and it repeatedly demanded that all SRs abroad cease working with nonsocialists and trafficking in the Constituent Assembly’s name. The letter informing Avksent’ev and Fondaminskii of their expulsion from the party was intercepted by the Soviet government, however, and they only learned of it in the spring of 1922. The Foreign Delegation then persuaded the Central Bureau, the successor to the Central Organizational Bureau, to keep quiet about the expulsions in light of the unfolding trial of the Central Committee members in Moscow.21 Chernov’s unwillingness to break with the Paris SRs was a function not only of his shifting views, but also of his desperate search for money with which to organize a party press. In 1920 Alexander Kerensky reached an agreement with the Czechoslovak foreign minister Eduard Beneš to secure funding for a “nonparty union” (Vnepartiinoe ob’edeninie) that was in fact controlled by the Paris and Prague SRs. This was the first of many steps that the Czechoslovak government would take in the 1920s to support émigré SRs and the democratic and socialist wing of the Russian emigration generally, although at this stage the union simply gained access to former Komuch funds controlled by the Czechoslovak government.22 These funds were sufficient to launch the union, which in turned financed the publication of Sovremennye zapiski, Volia Rossii, and the SR newspapers in Tallinn and Paris. Almost all of the leading SRs in exile joined the union, whose day-to-day operations were in the hands of an “administrative center” consisting of Kerensky, Avksent’ev, Brushvit, Zenzinov, and Evgenii Rogovskii. They dispatched emissaries throughout the emigration to organize SRs and drew up various plans for future political work, none of which ever had any impact in Russia.23 Chernov kept his distance from the union, but he too was eager to secure funds from it, which he did at the end of 1920. This enabled him to found Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia in Tallinn, which soon became the official organ of the party abroad. Its first issue came out in December and was dominated by Chernov himself, although it tellingly included an article on the “third force” by Kerensky. Chernov’s long programmatic article highlighted the significance of the final defeat of the Whites, which could now open the way to a popular assault on the Soviet regime without fear of playing into counterrevolutionary hands, a fear that he conceded had long “paralyzed the will” of SRs and others.24 In Russia, by contrast, counterrevolution remained for SRs a key category

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of analysis and constraint on practical political action through 1920 and 1921. In early 1920 the Central Committee had decided to convene a Tenth Party Council to work out a new line for the party after the defeat of Kolchak. The Central Committee, however, was decimated by the arrests in the spring of that year, and the provincial party organizations had never recovered from the devastations of 1918 and 1919, which made it difficult to convene the council. The Central Committee regained its quorum and was reconstituted in September 1920, when Likhach, Gershtein, and Fedorovich returned to Moscow from their provincial assignments.25 The planned party gathering finally convened at the end of September, but the Central Committee deemed its nineteen delegates insufficiently representative for a party council. It was therefore refashioned as a less authoritative party conference.26 In its main political report to the conference, the Central Committee again invoked the “counterrevolutionary danger” embodied by the Poles and Wrangel and recommended that the party not lift the Ninth Party Council’s “temporary” ban on armed struggle against the Soviet state.27 Most of the conference delegates agreed with the Central Committee’s reasoning, but the delegates from Tambov, Ekaterinoslav, and the Kuban’ delivered impassioned pleas for the party to assume leadership of the mounting peasant resistance to Bolshevik practices in their provinces and elsewhere. The two representatives from Tambov reported that the provincial SR organization had formed underground party brotherhoods in several districts and explained that the Tambov SRs had been successfully working with the local Left SRs to build the nonparty Union of the Toiling Peasantry envisioned in the Central Committee circular of May 1920. The program of the Tambov organizations of the union called for the seizure of power from the Communists and the formation of a provisional government consisting of representatives of the union, workers’ institutions, and the socialist parties. The Tambov delegates also informed the conference that anti-Bolshevik raids and guerrilla campaigns were being loosely coordinated in the province by the former SR Aleksandr Antonov and his men, who invoked the PSR name in their work. The delegates urged the party to abandon the campaign for public resolutions of protest against the dictatorship and recognize that the “time for active struggle had come.” One of the Tambov delegates also called for the adoption of terrorist methods of struggle, which became necessary, in his view, “when the actions of the authorities insult society, and there are no other means of punishing them.”28 The delegates from Ekaterinoslav, the Kuban’, and Siberia struck many of the same “activist” notes as their comrades from Tambov. Like Tambov province, Ukraine and the northern Caucasus witnessed mounting resistance to grain requisitioning and other Bolshevik practices in the countryside in 1920. The Ekaterinoslav delegate argued that it was senseless for SRs to continue

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discussing how to create a “third force” when it was in fact already at hand and was looking to the party for conceptual and organizational assistance. The time had come for the party to organize terrorist attacks and begin preparing an armed offensive. The delegate from the Kuban’ likewise insisted that peasants had begun active resistance throughout the south and urged the party to organize a decentralized armed uprising immediately. The Siberian delegate stated that he did not personally support the resumption of armed struggle, but he reported that activist sentiments were growing among Siberian SRs because of the brutal methods that the Bolsheviks had adopted after the defeat of Kolchak. Despite the appeals of the Tambov, Ekaterinoslav, and Kuban’ delegates, the party conference held fast to the Ninth Party Council’s rejection of armed struggle. Likhach argued on behalf of the Central Committee that peasant dissatisfaction was essentially “negative,” and he warned that the fall of Soviet power would open the way for the Poles and Allies to divide Russia into spheres of influence. Moreover, given the organizational disarray of the PSR, its ability to impose its own positive program on the peasant movement was highly questionable. Another representative of the Central Committee invoked the supposed counterrevolutionary danger even more pointedly: “We must renounce activism, because other forces could exploit it. Our forces are not present in the rage against the Bolsheviks.”29 The final resolution of the conference cited the organizational and ideological weakness of the toiling masses and the supposed growth of counterrevolutionary sentiments in the borderlands in its reaffirmation of the decisions of the Ninth Party Council. It also emphasized that the party would have to carry out enormous political and organizational work before it could consider resuming armed struggle against the Soviet state.30 Peasant Rebels, the Kronstadt Sailors, and the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries

Despite the refusal of the SR leadership to revive armed struggle against the Soviet state, the Bolshevik leadership and the Cheka were deeply concerned about the possibility of an armed, SR-led, anti-Bolshevik movement in the countryside. In early 1920, Iakov Kozhevnikov of the Cheka forecast a “new period of revolutionary struggle” with what he called “the political party of the right SRs of the ‘Third Force.’”31 Other Cheka circulars from 1920 and early 1921 painted much exaggerated pictures of SR activity and identified the PSR as the “strongest enemy” of Soviet power. A Cheka order of December 1, 1920, linked the SRs with international capital. It asserted that the Allied powers had abandoned the monarchists and Kadets and were now focused on using the SRs to overthrow Soviet power. The SRs, the order warned, would surely turn to terrorist attacks as they had in 1918. Another Cheka circular of January 1921 singled out the PSR as the “most dangerous enemy of the working class,” because of its supposed determination to return to power, its ties to the peasantry, and its skill in

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exploiting the petit bourgeois instincts and anti-Bolshevik prejudices of the mass of the rural population.32 Timofei Samsonov, head of the Secret Department of the Cheka, sent the Bolshevik leadership regular updates on the Cheka’s efforts against the PSR and forwarded many confiscated SR documents to Lenin, Molotov, and others in the leadership.33 Their interest in the PSR, however—like that of the Cheka itself—derived less from empirical evidence of an organized SR presence at the local level than it did from assumptions about class and politics in the context of mounting peasant resistance to Soviet policies and practices. In late 1920 and early 1921, peasant resistance to grain requisitioning and other Bolshevik practices in the countryside coalesced into large-scale partisan warfare against the Soviet state in Tambov, the Volga provinces, Ukraine, the Don, the northern Caucasus, and Siberia. The scale and violence of peasant rebellions dwarfed the rural unrest of 1918 and 1919. In Tambov and western Siberia the rebels formed well-organized armies, complete with command structures, machine guns and artillery, systems of supply, and the beginnings of a civilian governmental apparatus. In western Siberia partisans chased Communists from almost the whole of Tiumen’ province and from several districts of the adjacent Siberian and Urals provinces. From February through April the rebels controlled a good-sized town, Tobol’sk, where they organized a “Peasant City Soviet” to take power and issued a regular newspaper, “The Voice of the People’s Army.”34 Elsewhere, peasant rebels generally did not control territory in the same sense, preferring instead to conduct guerrilla operations and hit-and-run attacks on Communists, Red Army units, requisitioning detachments, grain collection sites, and collective and state farms. In much of European Russia small groups of haphazardly armed peasants, Red Army deserters, and demobilized soldiers—“bandits” in Soviet parlance, “greens” in the more sympathetic accounts—operated in the same way, although on a smaller scale.35 Estimates of the number of rebels are not very reliable, but the scale of rural violence is suggested by the wide geographic reach of the larger rebellions, the presence of “bandits” throughout European Russia, the number of Red Army troops engaged in the countryside, and the figures for Soviet casualties. In Tambov the number of Red Army and other troops occupied in suppressing the rebellion associated with Aleksandr Antonov peaked at more than a hundred thousand in the summer of 1921. The size of the Soviet force reflected mainly the need to occupy the province to overcome popular support for Antonov’s much smaller number of highly motivated and mobile partisans.36 The numbers for Soviet forces engaged elsewhere were smaller but still remarkable, as were the causalities they suffered. In Saratov province peasant rebels killed more than five hundred Communists and Soviet activists in 1920 and 1921, the same number

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of Red Army soldiers who perished in a single battle with insurgents in the Don region in December 1920.37 In Tiumen’ province more than fifteen hundred Communists were killed in February and March of 1921, although military operations in the province continued through the fall of that year.38 Moreover, the peak of the peasant rebellions coincided with a wave of strikes in Petrograd in the second half of February and with the rebellion of the Kronstadt sailors at the end of the month. In Petrograd the alarmed Soviet authorities placed the city under martial law on February 25 amid unsuccessful efforts on the part of the fragmentary Menshevik organizations to rebuild the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries.39 In Kronstadt, partly in response to the events in Petrograd and the report of a delegation dispatched to the city to elucidate the situation, the sailors formed a Provisional Revolutionary Committee on March 1 that overthrew the Bolshevik authorities. The rebel sailors famously held power until the Soviet assault from the mainland on March 17 and 18.40 Public Soviet pronouncements and internal Bolshevik communications routinely tied the SRs both to the Kronstadt events and to the peasant rebellions, particularly in Tambov. A September 1920 report on Tambov by the chief of staff of the Soviet Internal Security troops declared: “The basic cause of the uprising is the presence in Tambov province of remnants of the SR organization, which is fairly well known and popular with the local, primarily kulak, population.”41 The growth of the rebellions throughout the fall, and the state’s refusal to change its grain requisitioning practices or to permit public discussion of them, only hardened this stereotyped claim. In February 1921 the head of the Tambov provincial Cheka attributed the expansion of the rebellion in that province to the “colossal and serious organizational work” of the PSR.42 In western Siberia the Bolsheviks less frequently claimed an SR role, but the secretary of the Tiumen’ Provincial Committee of the Communist Party did warn that it was “impossible to overestimate” the PSR’s role in the organization of the rebellion.43 As long as the Bolshevik leadership remained committed to grain requisitioning and the other practices soon to be labeled “war communism,” it was difficult for Bolsheviks to acknowledge the central role their own policies played in driving peasant resistance. SRs, “kulaks,” and “bandits” instead took center stage. Nevertheless, by abandoning forced grain requisitioning, first in Tambov in February and later in the whole country over the course of the spring, the Soviet government revealed a deeper understanding of the sources of peasant resistance. Throughout Russia the violent extraction of grain from the countryside by armed Soviet detachments was indeed the chief engine of the rebellions, although other factors came into play. Chief among them were the long-running peasant efforts to resist conscription and Soviet efforts to combat desertion, the defection of Red Army commanders and mutinies by units dispatched to the countryside, and the return of demobilized Red

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Army soldiers to the villages with the end of the Polish War and the defeat of Wrangel.44 In fact, outside of Tambov the PSR played virtually no role in organizing peasant resistance in 1920 and 1921 or shaping its political outlook. Any political movement in rural Russia was bound to include persons who thought of themselves as SRs or had past ties to the party, but most of the surviving SR organizations opposed armed struggle against the dictatorship, and they were in any event on the brink of total disintegration. Moreover, outside of Tambov, peasant rebels (like the Kronstadt sailors and Petrograd strikers) generally adopted pro-Soviet slogans that were anathema to the main body of the PSR. To be sure, a vaguely populist vocabulary also shaped the rhetoric of peasant rebels in western Siberia and elsewhere. References to a single class of toilers and to the people, the creation of a “People’s Army” in western Siberia, calls for free trade in grain and the defense of peasant interests, and the coexistence of revolutionary and nationalist rhetoric all suggest the proximity of the rebel vocabulary and the SR idiom in ways that perhaps testify to the SR legacy in the countryside and no doubt alarmed the Soviet authorities. Nevertheless, they should not be taken as evidence of a specific SR organizational or ideological role in 1921.45 Tambov is a partial exception in each of these respects, although here too contemporary Bolsheviks and later Soviet historians much overstated the SR role. The Union of the Toiling Peasantry envisaged by the Central Committee directive of May 13 emerged over the course of 1920 as a comparatively well-organized network of cells across the province. From the fall of 1920 through the peak of the rebellion in 1921, the union effectively functioned as the civilian arm of the Antonov movement in Tambov. Although neither the surviving documents from the rebel camp nor the Cheka reports on the movement provide much insight into the details of the process by which the union was created in the spring and summer of 1920, the Tambov SRs probably did play at least some role in organizing individual cells and tying the cells together in the southern districts of Tambov province, as they claimed at the September 1920 party conference.46 In addition, the committees of the Union of the Toiling Peasantry that were created in part under SR auspices were almost certainly the same committees whose role can later be discerned in the rebellion, despite the claims of Iurii Podbel’skii, a leading SR arrested in 1921 by the Soviet authorities and charged with having served as the Central Committee’s plenipotentiary for the organization and leadership of the Tambov rebellion. Podbel’skii persuasively denied ever having served in such a capacity, and there is no doubt that the SR Central Committee had nothing to do with the outbreak or subsequent course of the rebellion. There is no evidence, however, to support Podbel’skii’s claim that the original Union of the Toiling Peasantry of the summer of 1920 was crushed by

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the Cheka in the fall and had nothing to do with the organization operating under the same name in 1921.47 In spite of the SR leadership’s original hope that the Union of the Toiling Peasantry would provide a framework for peaceful resistance to the Soviet state, the union whose name and origin can be traced to the May 1920 Central Committee circular in fact developed in Tambov into an organizational framework for coordinating armed resistance and partisan warfare. As it did so, however, the role of the local SR organizations, to the degree that they even survived, was almost certainly fairly small.48 Local SRs also played a role in providing the Tambov rebels with a political language and set of slogans. The evidence for this is easiest to see in the language of the Tambov union’s program, which played an important role in articulating the partisans’ aims and aspirations to the surrounding population.49 With the salient exception of the Tambov union’s call for the violent overthrow of the Soviet government, the program hewed reasonably closely to the model program drafted at the time of the May Central Committee circular directing party organizations to begin building the unions.50 Moreover, as the historian Oliver Radkey pointed out many years ago, “the practiced eye sees everywhere the SR imprint” on the Tambov program.51 The call to reconvene the Constituent Assembly featured centrally in the union’s program and was a hallmark of all documents emanating from the PSR during the civil war. Its centrality in the Tambov union’s program is not alone sufficient evidence to see an SR role in the composition of the program, of course. Its prominence in the text does strikingly differentiate the program from analogous documents produced during the peasant rebellions in western Siberia and elsewhere at roughly the same time, though, as well as from the few documents produced by peasant rebels earlier in the civil war. Other features of the Tambov union’s program provide additional clues to its SR genealogy. The call to fully enact the Land Law passed by the Constituent Assembly in January 1918 is notable, as SRs were almost alone in seeing that law as the authoritative basis for land redistribution in the countryside. In addition, the program’s paradoxical call to arms in order to put an end to the civil war articulated a peculiarly SR notion and used some characteristic SR turns of phrase. Some versions of the program also incorporated the SR slogan “In struggle you attain your rights.” Radkey has also suggested that the program’s obscure reference to the “disgrace” that the Soviet government had brought on Russia may be a subtle allusion to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty—an old SR obsession. That too would buttress the case for seeing an SR author or authors behind the text.52 Nevertheless, the SR role in Tambov should not be overstated. SR organizations in the province were not responsible for the activities of Antonov’s band, which had been operating as a group of outlaws since 1918, and they had ap-

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parently sought to prevent him from using the party name. Neither were SR organizations involved in the clashes between peasants and requisitioning detachments in 1920 that helped transform Antonov’s group into a partisan army coordinating peasant resistance throughout the province. In these two key respects—the existence of bands of armed outlaws carrying out guerrilla attacks on Soviet institutions and personnel, and the escalating conflicts between peasants and requisitioning detachments—the situation in Tambov was much like that in other regions, and it was their merger more than anything else that drove the rebellion.53 Outside Tambov there is no evidence that the Union of the Toiling Peasantry envisaged by the SR leadership played a significant role in the peasant rebellions. Indeed, outside of western Siberia and Tambov it is not clear whether any unions were in fact organized. In Siberia it does seem that some steps were taken to organize the union, although the evidence is fragmentary and unreliable, because it stems either from the contemporary claims of Soviet and party officials or from the literature produced in connection with the show trial of the SR Central Committee members in 1922. In March 1921, for instance, the Tiumen’ provincial Communist Party organization reported to Moscow that the union stood behind the rebellion, as did the Cheka plenipotentiary in Siberia, Ivan Pavlunovskii.54 The same claim reemerged in the trial indictment in 1922 and in the trial propaganda, notably the former Popular Socialist V. I. Ignat’ev’s pamphlet on the civil war in Siberia.55 Nevertheless, there is no credible evidence that branches of the union played any role in the Siberian peasant insurgency. The movement’s slogans were not those of the union, and none of the surviving documents from the rebel milieu were issued by the union or even mentioned it. Neither is there any evidence of the union in the protocols of the Cheka interrogations of captured rebels conducted in 1921 and 1922.56 In Tobol’sk, which the rebels controlled from February through April, the rebels established a “Peasant City Soviet” to take power in the city and surrounding countryside. This suggests that the union had no presence in the most important rebel stronghold and testifies to the pro-Soviet, though bitterly antiCommunist, outlook of the rebels.57 Still, it was not only scapegoating and assumptions about class and politics that led Bolsheviks to see an SR hand in both the peasant and Kronstadt rebellions. The evidence for at least local SR involvement in the Tambov rebellion was significant, and while the SR leadership remained skeptical of the peasant rebellions’ socialist character and chances for success, several documents emanating from the Central Committee did edge the party leadership closer to an endorsement of armed resistance to the Soviet state in February and March. In February the Central Committee issued a circular on “party tactics in connection with the peasant movement” that discerned the much-anticipated “awak-

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ening” of the peasantry and proletariat. It predicted that the Bolsheviks would be unable to localize the crisis and welcomed the transformation of the peasantry into an active force in the revolution.58 The Central Committee declared that the peasant rebellions should be viewed as the “first heralds” of a larger peasant movement and instructed SR organizations to work to shape its political outlook: “remaining true to its fundamental views and bearing in mind the analysis of the ‘third force’ given by the [Ninth Party] Council, the PSR cannot ignore the growing movement of the toiling peasantry and allow the actions of internal, spontaneous forces or counterrevolutionary forces to give it ideological and organizational form. The party must therefore draw near to the movement [podoiti k nemu vplotnuiu] with all its own programmatic and tactical slogans.” The slogans that it recommended included the socialization of the land, peasants’ right to the full product of their labors, resistance to Bolshevik efforts to establish collective farms and sowing committees, and the need to overcome the Bolshevik dictatorship and convene the Constituent Assembly as the starting point for the construction of a new Russia. In the same document, however, the Central Committee obligated party members to counsel peasants against uncoordinated, spontaneous rebellions and not to force active resistance to the dictatorship. It warned that the movement could easily lose its socialist and revolutionary character, and it reiterated its preference for building the network of peasant unions, now renamed “Socialist Unions of the Toiling Peasantry.”59 Several Central Committee statements in March dropped the careful balancing act of the February circular and brought the PSR even closer to “activist” methods. A March 11 instruction from the Central Committee stressed the importance of providing the “growing revolutionary movement of the peasants, workers, Red Army and Navy” with socialist and revolutionary slogans. It declared the present task of the peasantry and proletariat the “complete emancipation and liberation from the yoke of the Bolshevik dictatorship.” It also recommended a call for the formation of a provisional socialist government until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly as the chief political slogan of the movement.60 Another March statement by the Central Committee welcomed the cracks in the Bolshevik order and unequivocally endorsed the wave of peasant rebellions that it saw rolling through Siberia, Ukraine, Tambov, the Volga, and the Don.61 Neither of these documents instructed SRs to take up arms against the Soviet state, and their continued emphasis on devising a set of socialist and revolutionary slogans for the movement reflected characteristic SR anxieties about spontaneous rebellion. The two statements nevertheless tentatively broke out of the conceptual framework that the leadership had established at the Ninth Party Council. From exile, Viktor Chernov and the Administrative Center pushed even

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further than the Central Committee in their newfound enthusiasm for popular resistance to the dictatorship. As recently as the February issue of Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, Chernov had described the current political moment as a “breathing space” between the recent defeat of the Whites and the party’s future resumption of armed struggle against the Bolshevik dictatorship.62 Chernov now asserted that the Soviet state had entered its last, violent convulsions. He reiterated that the PSR had always opposed efforts to incite rebellions (vspyshkopuskatel’stvo) and would have preferred a peaceful solution to the crisis of the dictatorship. Chernov nevertheless invoked the ides of March and glowingly endorsed the Kronstadt rebellion, despite the sailors’ Soviet vocabulary: “There is no longer any choice. There is no third path. Whoever is not with Kronstadt is a passive co-conspirator and moral accomplice of the ‘bloody field marshal Trotsky’ and his executioners. Only someone who is organically and infinitely alien to the people could remain on the sidelines and view events without participating in them. Our choice has been made. We are with the rebelling people, we are with the Kronstadt sailors who have risen up, and against the executioners and those seeking to suppress the rebellion.”63 The Administrative Center coordinated the efforts of exiled SRs to assist the Kronstadt sailors, who were more easily accessible than peasant rebels. Zenzinov, Kerensky, and other leading figures in the Administrative Center undertook efforts to organize food supplies for the sailors, dispatched SRs to Tallinn and Helsinki, and worked to incline Allied diplomats in favor of the rebellion.64 Ivan Brushvit, the representative of the Administrative Center in Finland, sent a courier to Kronstadt with messages from himself and Chernov to the Kronstadt Provisional Revolutionary Committee. Brushvit and Chernov offered the rebels aid, and Chernov proposed to come to Kronstadt himself. Although neither Brushvit nor Chernov set conditions on SR assistance, Chernov several times invoked the Constituent Assembly in his message and implied that it remained the only form through which genuine popular sovereignty could be realized and the dictatorship overcome. The members of the Kronstadt Provisional Revolutionary Committee were divided about how to respond, but most opposed linking the rebellion to the Constituent Assembly. Stepan Petrichenko, the chairman of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, was himself sympathetic to SR assistance, but he sent Chernov a letter “temporarily” declining Chernov’s offer for help. The rebellion was suppressed a week later, with more than three thousand Soviet casualties, and nothing came of the exiled SRs’ hopes to assist the sailors. The Cheka, however, was well-informed about the efforts of the SRs abroad to link up with the Kronstadt rebels. Bolshevik propagandists later made use of documents stolen from the Administrative Center to amplify their account of the rebellion as the product of an SR and White-guard conspiracy.65

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Needless to say, the peasant rebellions, the Kronstadt revolt, and labor unrest alarmed the Bolshevik leadership. At the Tenth Party Congress of the Communist Party in March, Lenin declared that the “petit bourgeois” and “democratic” counterrevolution spreading across the country was “undoubtedly more dangerous than Denikin, Iudenich, and Kolchak taken together.” According to Lenin, “petit bourgeois anarchist spontaneity”—that is, any effort to draw on revolutionary discourse to legitimate popular resistance to the Soviet state—remained the “most dangerous enemy of the proletarian dictatorship.” He stressed that this had in fact been the case throughout the revolution and the civil war, because such movements could draw huge support in a peasant country and had now reached “widely” into the working class.66 At the heart of Lenin’s argument lay his insight into the danger that peasant rebels, striking workers, and the Kronstadt sailors posed to the Bolshevik monopoly on revolutionary discourse and thus to the dictatorship’s ideological underpinnings. The uncertain shape of revolutionary politics in early 1921 in some ways evoked the first half of 1918, when the meaning of political violence and the social identity of the various combatants had been deeply contested, and the Bolsheviks had not yet succeeded in imposing an authoritative vision of the civil war. The Bolshevik construction of the civil war as a class war between Red and White dictatorships, the central political achievement of 1918, had been shaken by the defeat of Wrangel and the disappearance of the last Whites. The consequent surge in popular resistance reflected the erosion of, and threatened to further undermine, the authoritative status of the Bolshevik account of the class basis of political and social conflict. The introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) threatened to do the same. As in 1918, one of Lenin’s chief recourses (although by no means his only one) was to emphasize the “either/ or” quality of revolutionary politics and redouble Bolshevik efforts to undercut resistance to the dictatorship from positions within revolutionary discourse.67 Lenin’s understanding of the power that accrued to his party by monopolizing the revolutionary end of a polarized political field shaped the Bolshevik leadership’s decision in the spring of 1921 to mount a final campaign to crush the PSR. From the Bolshevik perspective the PSR was the prime candidate to organize “petit bourgeois anarchist spontaneity” on a national basis, and the shifting rhetoric of the SR leadership suggested that it was seeking to do so. On March 24, Trotsky cabled Lenin, Dzerzhinskii, and Molotov to urge political trials of the Kronstadt sailors and peasant rebels as a means of combating the PSR (“eserovshchina”) and anarchism.68 Two days later, Dzerzhinskii instructed Timofei Samsonov, head of the Secret Department of the Cheka, to draw up an indictment of the SRs and Mensheviks, a first step on the road that led to the show trial of the SR Central Committee members in 1922.69 The next month he

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ordered the arrest of Dmitrii Donskoi, Dmitrii Rakov, and Efrem Berg, members and former members of the SR Central Committee who had been released from prison earlier in the year. Dzerzhinskii instructed another prominent Chekist, Viacheslav Menzhinskii, to assemble a card catalog of all known SRs and begin gathering materials for the final destruction of the PSR.70 At the same time, the Politburo rejected a lengthy proposal from the Bolshevik I. V. Mgeladze to relax persecution of the PSR, grant it a legal printed organ, and allow the party to participate in Soviet elections. Mgeladze argued that such steps offered the only way to pull the PSR out of the “deep underground” and neutralize the danger that it posed.71 The alternative view, laid out in a Cheka report to Dzerzhinskii, emphasized that the PSR had been almost completely destroyed. Although the report’s author asserted that strong underground SR organizations still existed in Tambov, on the Volga, and in Siberia, he argued that legalization would offer the SRs their best chance to rebuild the party as a whole: “I do not think that the ideological regeneration and strengthening of the [PSR] is in our interests, and legalization will undoubtedly make it possible to unify and regenerate the party, perhaps not tomorrow, but in a year and a half or so. Before us will materialize a strong, renewed, powerful, right-SR party enriched by the underground and political experience. We must condemn the SR idea to languish in darkness.”72 This line of reasoning was much closer to Lenin’s conception of the ideological basis of the dictatorship, an understanding that also motivated the Tenth Party Congress’s “Resolution on Party Unity.” This resolution, whose importance in the evolution of Bolshevik political culture in subsequent decades can scarcely be overemphasized, banned all factions and factional activity in the Communist Party.73 It attributed the Kronstadt rebellion to the desperate willingness of counterrevolutionaries and SRs to exploit Soviet slogans to arouse the population, and it warned that the Mensheviks in Petrograd were exploiting divisions within the party to encourage the Kronstadt rebels. The key portion of the text centered Bolshevik attention on the dangers of even the smallest deviations from the general line of the party: “Convinced of the hopelessness of counterrevolution under an openly White-guard flag, these enemies are exerting all their efforts to exploit disagreements within the Russian Communist Party in order to push the counterrevolution forward by transferring power to those political groupings that appear, from the outside, the closest to recognizing Soviet power. Propaganda must also elucidate the experience of previous revolutions, when the counterrevolution supported the petit bourgeois elements that were closest to the extreme revolutionary party in order to shake and overthrow the revolutionary dictatorship, and thereby open the way to the eventual victory of the counterrevolution, the landowners, and the capitalists.”74

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The companion resolution condemning the workers’ opposition likewise argued that the history of European revolutions showed that counterrevolutionary restoration was the inevitable outcome of the apparent victory of any “petit bourgeois” or “semi-proletarian” deviations.75 The most recent example of this scenario of catastrophe, invoked by Lenin in his speech, was the road from Samara to Kolchak in 1918. The ban on factions adapted this historical lesson to the circumstances of 1921. It narrowed the bounds of legitimate revolutionary politics still further and tightened the identification of revolutionary discourse with the general line of the Communist Party. Over the course of the 1920s the ban on factions reproduced within the Communist Party the ideological operations that had helped the Bolsheviks monopolize revolutionary discourse and destroy the revolutionary democracy in 1918. Prison, Exile, Defeat

In the spring of 1921 the Cheka completed the destruction of the PSR throughout Soviet Russia. The reconstituted Central Committee was permanently deprived of a quorum by a series of arrests. Although several Central Committee members remained at large until August, a Central Organizational Bureau was again established to take over the party leadership. It disassociated itself from the Tambov rebellion and other peasant uprisings and proposed to concentrate again on rebuilding the party.76 The members of the bureau were mainly provincial SRs who found themselves in an extraordinarily difficult situation. They lacked any connections in the capital and were cut off from the remnants of the provincial organizations and from the exiled Foreign Delegation. The bureau was eventually able to reestablish some links, but the provincial organizations remained weak and were repeatedly decimated by arrests. The bureau was never able to establish reliable, regular communications with the Foreign Delegation.77 In July the bureau conceded in a letter to Zenzinov that the party’s condition was critical and that failure now would mean death.78 Although the bureau finally managed to convene the Tenth Party Council in August, another round of arrests devastated the party on the eve of the gathering. For the first and only time in the history of the PSR, a party council met with no Central Committee members in attendance.79 The Tenth Party Council was the last national party gathering to convene in Russia. Fourteen beleaguered provincial organizations managed to send delegates to the council. In chorus they lamented the weakness of local SR organizations, denounced the Bolshevik dictatorship, and complained about the cooperation of exiled SRs with nonsocialists.80 They condemned the New Economic Policy, but the old revolutionary instinct of “the worse, the better” prompted them also to welcome it, in the hope that the Bolsheviks’ partial turn to capitalist methods would regenerate the class consciousness of the

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proletariat and peasantry. The NEP, the assembled SRs suggested, offered concrete evidence of the counterrevolutionary essence of the Bolshevik dictatorship, evidence that helped push them, at least rhetorically, toward armed struggle against the Soviet state. In view of the disintegration of the party on the ground, the council’s principal resolution is mainly of interest for the insight it offers into the SR outlook as the party itself passed from the scene. The key portion read: “The Tenth Party Council, assembled at the moment when the conceptual and political bankruptcy of Bolshevik power has fully revealed itself, when Bolshevik power has lost any moral roots in the country and transformed itself into a force openly hostile to the toiling masses, when an unprecedented catastrophe has befallen the country, a catastrophe prepared by the entire preceding policy of the political power and bringing it to the edge of complete collapse and degeneration, declares that the question of the revolutionary overthrow of the dictatorship of the Communist Party is coming onto the agenda with all vital necessity and is becoming a question of the entire existence of the Russian toiling democracy.”81 This resolution was the closest any major party body ever came to a functional identification of the Soviet state and the Old Regime. Acknowledging the final defeat of the Whites, it forecast an alliance of the Communist Party and an exploitative NEP bourgeoisie and thereby opened the door, in principle, to the use of revolutionary methods against what it depicted as a degenerate, pseudoCommunist bourgeois dictatorship. By imagining a resurgent bourgeoisie that had abandoned the Whites and was on the verge of turning to the Soviet state as a new protector, however, the SRs at the Tenth Party Council did not simply open a conceptual path to armed revolutionary struggle against the dictatorship. They in fact radically misread the political and social situation in Soviet Russia and affirmed their own revolutionary narrative, which had always depicted counterrevolution as the likely end of the civil war. In the four years since October, those SRs who were still active in the party had made little progress in untangling the manifold contingencies of the present from the historical categories and revolutionary narrative that had long constrained their understanding of the possibilities for practical action. Even now, the party was hardly prepared to launch, even in theory, the “revolutionary overthrow of the dictatorship of the Communist Party.” The Tenth Party Council resolution repeated the familiar warnings against uncoordinated, spontaneous rebellions, and its cautious assertion that revolutionary action was simply “coming on to the agenda” reflected the paralysis of will that Chernov had lamented in 1920. Still, even the cautious phrasing of the resolution was too much for the imprisoned Central Committee members, who complained that the resolution did not rule out partisan warfare and cooperation with nonsocialist groupings in sufficiently explicit terms.82

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The Tenth Party Council may be taken as a convenient marker with which to date the end of the PSR as an organized political party in Russia. The Central Bureau survived to 1925, as did some local party organization that even managed to issue occasional pamphlets and illegal newspapers, but the party in Russia was no longer capable of coordinated political action.83 The only comparable period of crisis in the party’s history was the aftermath of the exposure of Evno Azef as a police informer in 1908. Azef was a longtime Central Committee member and head of the party’s main terrorist detachment, and the scandal after his exposure had very nearly destroyed the party. Vladimir Zenzinov later recalled how SRs had kept the party alive: “We set modest aims for ourselves. We understood well the organizational weakness of the party and did not delude ourselves with hopes for great success in our organizational work. We saw our task as supporting the organizations that still existed in some places, organizing the delivery of party literature from abroad, and setting up some kind of underground press in Russia. . . . Our only asset was our burning faith in the strength of the party’s ideas and their ultimate triumph, and we believed that the only reason for our existence was to carry the party’s ideas through this dark period and into better times. We tried above all to make sure that the smoldering flame of our party was not extinguished forever in those dark years.”84 Zenzinov’s remarks illuminate the deepest source of the disintegration of the PSR after October: that “burning faith” that had carried the party through the Azef crisis had long since been reduced to the property of a tiny minority among the SRs who had constituted the mass party of 1917, and by 1921 it had almost entirely disappeared. As Viktor Chernov discerned in an insightful 1921 article entitled “The Hypnosis of Success,” the Bolsheviks’ post-October endurance disoriented or paralyzed many socialists, pushed some toward a psychological capitulation to Bolshevik power, and impressed others with the prospects for a revolutionary dictatorship.85 The central motors of these disintegrating pushes and pulls were twofold. On the one hand, many SRs held fast to a narrative of revolution that constructed Bonapartist counterrevolution as the principal danger to the revolution and made it extraordinarily difficult to make sense of the Bolshevik dictatorship. On the other hand, SRs felt deeply the pull of the revolution. As the brother of the memoirist Nadezhda Mandel’shtam later recalled, the intelligentsia could not bear to give up the word and concept of “revolution.” The power of that word was so great, he added, that it was a wonder the Soviet state “still needed prisons and capital punishment.”86 Captive to their own narrative and categories even as they sought to rethink them, SRs found it nearly impossible to conceive a road past the dictatorship after the unexpected defeat of the Whites. The resilience of the key categories of democracy and counterrevolution reflected the power of this revolutionary

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narrative they had inherited, characteristic SR habits of classification, and SRs’ deep-seated need to uphold their identity as socialists and revolutionaries. The tiny number of active SRs reinforced their narrative and self-image, at a heavy cost, by clinging to the battered notion of the democracy and invoking, even imagining, a counterrevolution still to be resisted. For many more SRs, however, the simpler road to an affirmation of their status as socialists and revolutionaries lay through the abandonment of opposition politics, recognition of Soviet power, and perhaps even service to the revolutionary state. Late in 1920 a party delegation to the Urals discovered that there were only a handful of SRs still active in Ekaterinburg. The author of the delegation’s report explained that most SRs and former SRs were in a state of “total terror or exhaustion and apathy” and added: “The first have in a majority of cases attached themselves to Soviet institutions and try with all their effort to make not only others, but themselves, forget that they were ever SRs. A majority of the second have also attached themselves to Soviet or public institutions, and their favorite refrain at every opportunity is that the SRs did nothing, the SRs are doing nothing.”87 In the end, the conceptual baggage that SRs carried across the revolutionary divide proved better suited to the familiar confines of prison and the distant shores of exile than it did to everyday politics in the new Soviet world. As recognizable spaces for veteran SRs, prison and exile did not pose the challenges to the revolutionary imagination that Orwell had discerned with nearly the same edge as did everyday Soviet life and politics. Although scattered SR groups survived into the mid-1920s, prison and exile were the only places the party truly sustained itself after 1921. About seventy SRs, including most members of the Central Committee, were incarcerated in Butyrki prison in 1921. Others were held in various provincial prisons and camps.88 After the show trial of the Central Committee members in 1922, Abram Gots, Evgenii Timofeev, and the other SR Central Committee members were incarcerated in the internal GPU prison on Lubianka Square, where they were held in an unprecedented regime of “special isolation” that aimed to deprive them of all contacts with each other and with the outside world.89 Despite the severity of the regime to which they were subjected, the captive SRs in the Lubianka, like other SRs in the first important Soviet labor camp on the Solovetsky islands, were able to deploy the tested weapons of imprisoned radicals under the Old Regime—various systems of communication, petitions to the authorities, appeals to international socialist opinion, and hunger strikes—to win recognition of their status as political prisoners and secure regimes that allowed them to organize their own domestic affairs, elect elders to deal with the prison and camp administrations, and run party reading groups and lecture series. To be sure, material conditions remained harsh, and the political regime was always unstable and contested, dependent on the everyday

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willingness of the prisoners to face death. In December 1923 the Central Committee member Sergei Morozov committed suicide in the internal GPU prison, and six SRs were shot in a clash with the Solovki authorities, but SRs and other imprisoned socialists paradoxically sustained the political spectrum of the revolutionary democracy inside Soviet prisons and camps through the 1920s.90 In exile abroad SRs organized, debated, and published down to the Second World War.91 The Foreign Delegation asserted itself as the highest party body abroad, although its authority was contested by the right-center SRs based in Paris and several SR organizations abroad emerged in time. The party joined the Labor and Socialist International at its founding congress in Hamburg in 1923 and was represented on its executive committee throughout the interwar period. The fortunes of the party in exile dimmed ominously in the early 1930s, however. Rival SR organizations were established in Prague and Paris in 1931, and Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia ceased publication the same year. Volia Rossii, from the party point of view the more orthodox of the two great thick journals associated with the SRs abroad, folded in 1932. Sovremennye zapiski brought out its last issue in the spring of 1940, on the eve of the German occupation of Paris. With the outbreak of the war, Avksent’ev, Chernov, Zenzinov, and others escaped to the United States, where a New York SR organization had existed since the 1920s. Others, such as Il’ia Fondaminskii, fell victim to Nazi terror in France. Still others, such as Prokopii Klimushkin, survived the war only to be arrested by the Soviet authorities in Eastern Europe and deported to Siberian labor camps. A few SRs, such as Vasilii Sukhomlin, even joined the trickle of postwar “returnees” to the Soviet Union. Whatever their eventual fates, however, SRs abroad were more likely to recall fondly the heroic days of struggle against the Old Regime than they were to recount the difficult years after October. In exile, as in prison and throughout the civil war, SRs’ search for answers to the questions posed by a new world was framed by the language and experiences of the revolutionary movement under the Old Regime. For SRs seeking to narrate their odysseys and find a place for their party in a postrevolutionary world, the categories and narratives of revolution found little purchase. And to that perennial radical question—what is to be done?—the end of the civil war offered only a painful sense of catastrophe.

7

“Renegades of Socialism” and the Making of Bolshevik Political Culture

I

n an influential essay of 1985, the historian Sheila Fitzpatrick persuasively argued that the civil war was the formative experience of the Bolshevik party.1 She directed her argument primarily at an interpretive tradition that sought the origins of Stalinist mentalities and institutions in Lenin’s prerevolutionary writings, and her work formed part of a larger historiographical shift away from ideas and inevitability, toward contingency, circumstance, and the exigencies of war in the development of Bolshevik authoritarianism. This chapter suggests that a concept of experience based on the work of the anthropologist Victor Turner can introduce greater analytical precision to the commonsense notion of a formative experience and can build on the observation that so many key Bolshevik practices took shape in the civil war. For Turner, experiences are “distinguishable, isolable sequences of external events and internal responses to them.”2 An experience opens with a breach or a shock, it develops through time and as process, and it culminates, however open-endedly, in some kind of resolution or conclusion. Turner’s concept of experience incorporates both objective events and the subjective interpretation of events by participants, but anthropologists and others have long since abandoned the commonsense assumption that experiences happen to autonomous subjects whose outlook and sense of self has ontological priority. Experience, in fact, is better understood as “a process by which, for all social beings, subjectivity 239 

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is constructed,” as the feminist scholar Teresa de Lauretis has put it.3 Turner has also argued that the meaning of an experience is only fully constituted as it is expressed (or “squeezed out” of the experiential process) and enacted in ceremonies and rituals. A ritualized performance is thus the “proper finale” of an experience and can be one of the most important ways for a group to construct its identity. By organizing and performing the stories embedded in experiences, stories through which people make sense of themselves and their world, such rituals and ceremonies facilitate individual and collective self-definition by drawing on, and staging, shared experiences.4 Such a perspective on experience, ritual, and the making of Bolshevik subjectivity in the civil war can illuminate the deeper workings of the Bolshevik imagination long after the events that shaped it had receded from view. Toward the SR Trial

In the first decades of Soviet history, two related Bolshevik rituals—apology rituals and show trials—dramatized the triumph of the Communist Party’s general line and the destruction of opposition to it. These rituals were important in building party identity and offer an excellent window on the party’s self-image and culture. In the ritual of self-criticism and apology that former oppositionists and party members who had otherwise erred were called on to perform in appropriate party settings—from local cell meetings to party congresses—former oppositionists were expected to affirm the correctness of the victorious line and to confess unconditionally the crime of having opposed it. The ritual process reassimilated the repentant oppositionist to the party, restored party unity, and opened the way for the penitent’s return to party work. Show trials were similar in many respects, although they had a much larger public audience. Crucially, however, they did not transform the status of the former oppositionists. The main figures in the big show trials of the 1930s played roles similar to those they had played in apology rituals throughout the decade, but their exclusion from the party remained unchanged and they were shot. The show trials thus lacked the redressive quality characteristic of the apology rituals. Like apology rituals, however, the great show trials of the 1930s helped shape the identity and cohesion of the Stalinist majority in the party by throwing into sharp relief the treacherous crimes that separated the former oppositionists from the main body of the party.5 The first big Soviet show trial was the trial of more than twenty Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) in the summer of 1922, a performative finale to the civil war that served as the model for later show trials, codified some of the conventions of apology rituals, and organized the master plot used in both. The SR trial was by no means the first political trial in Soviet history. Since early 1918, the Revolutionary Tribunal attached to the Central Executive Committee had

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regularly tried political opponents of the Soviet state, as had a variety of other Soviet courts, and several provincial trials of SRs and Mensheviks were also organized in 1920 and 1921.6 These trials marked the Bolsheviks’ first efforts to consolidate the victory of the dictatorship by dramatically unmasking the socialist leaders as “renegades of socialism,” as one of the decrees on the Red Terror had labeled the SRs in 1918.7 By discrediting the provincial leaderships of the socialist parties and splitting them from the mass of party members and former members, these trials also aimed to win over whatever remained of the socialist rank and file. None of these early trials approached the importance of the SR trial, however. The political stature of the SRs was much greater than that of previous defendants, and the trial was accompanied by an unprecedented campaign of propaganda and agitation. It was also the first Soviet political trial to receive widespread international attention. The Soviet leadership formally decided to organize a public trial of SRs at a Bolshevik Central Committee meeting on December 28, 1921. Although some preparations for a trial had clearly already begun, no documents have surfaced from the Russian archives to illuminate the prehistory of the December 28 decision. At some point in 1921 the Cheka had begun to receive assistance in its preparations from Grigorii Semenov, the former head of the SR detachment that stood behind the murder of Volodarskii and the assassination attempt against Lenin on August 30, 1918.8 By 1921, Semenov was a member of the Communist Party and a long-standing collaborator with the Soviet security services. He had been arrested in September 1918 when the Cheka broke up his organization, but the Soviet authorities had not then known that they had stumbled upon the organizer of the August 30 assassination attempt. He was released from prison in April 1919, ostensibly under the terms of the amnesty that had been extended in February to members of the Vol’skii group. In fact, Semenov had agreed to cooperate with the Soviet military counterintelligence and report on the PSR.9 Over the next several years Semenov remained active in SR circles as a member of the Narod group and the Minority of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (MPSR), all the while carrying out a variety of tasks for Soviet military counterintelligence and the Cheka. In 1920 he was dispatched to Poland to penetrate Boris Savinkov’s Warsaw-based Russian Political Committee. Semenov secured a cover for himself in SR circles by wrangling an assignment in Poland from the MPSR.10 Crossing the front at the end of July, Semenov was arrested by the Polish authorities and released two months later after the intervention of Savinkov, whom he knew from the prerevolutionary emigration and from army politics in 1917. Semenov told Savinkov about his involvement in Fania Kaplan’s assassination attempt and volunteered to organize new terrorist attacks on Soviet leaders. Savinkov agreed to Semenov’s proposal to assassinate Trotsky and Lenin. Departing Poland with a passport and a hundred thousand rubles

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supplied by Savinkov, Semenov traveled to Berlin, where he gave a detailed report on Savinkov at the Soviet mission before returning to Russia.11 In January 1921, Semenov was allowed to join the Communist Party without having to pass through the customary probationary period of candidate status. In the application for party membership he submitted with his wife, Natal’ia Bogdanova, also a former SR and current Soviet counterintelligence agent, Semenov noted that his “life experience” had gradually brought him to accept the program and tactics of the Communist Party. 12 It is unlikely that Semenov’s party sponsors (Avel’ Enukidze, Nikolai Krestinskii, and Leonid Serebriakov) then knew the most sordid details of that “life experience.” Now secretly a Communist Party member, Semenov once again went abroad in early 1921, this time apparently to gather information on émigré SR circles.13 He met up abroad with Lidiia Konopleva, his associate from the underground in 1918, whose political evolution since the Kaplan attempt had mirrored his own. She too had been a member of the Narod group and the MPSR and had worked for Soviet military counterintelligence before joining the Communist Party in February 1921.14 In a January 1922 letter to Serebriakov, Konopleva wrote that she and Semenov decided to reveal to the Communist Party their involvement in the August 30 assassination attempt while they were together abroad, motivated by a desire to expiate their sins before the revolution and to unmask the SR leadership.15 Whatever one makes of Konopleva’s account of her motives, it indeed seems likely that key steps in the preparation of the trial were taken while she and Semenov worked abroad. At some point they revealed their knowledge of the August 30 assassination attempt and, in cooperation with the Cheka, began working on accounts that would detail their involvement and present the SR leadership in the worst possible light. The SR leadership’s responsibility for the assassination attempt took center place in the account that Semenov dated December 2, 1921. Joseph Stalin read it the next day and suggested that its possible use, as well as the future fate of the author, be discussed in the Politburo.16 Semenov then formally submitted his account to the Bolshevik Central Committee on December 5 with an accompanying letter that foreshadowed the stylized, self-critical confessions that he, Konopleva, and their accomplices would make publicly at the trial the next year, and which pointed toward the ritual apologies that Communists would make in various contexts over the next decades. Semenov elaborated the psychological and political pressures that had compelled him to come forward. He emphasized the necessity of exposing the PSR and discrediting it in the eyes of rank-and-file party members and those sections of the population still sympathetic to it, arguing that the history of the civil war and the upheavals of 1921 showed that the PSR was the only party capable of overthrowing Soviet power. Implicitly acknowledging the radical taboo on serving as a secret informer and

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provocateur, Semenov presented his confession as the only proper course of action for a revolutionary seeking to make a clean break with a heretical past.17 With Semenov’s account in hand, the Bolshevik Central Committee resolved to go ahead with the trial and appointed a commission of Feliks Dzerzhinskii, Lev Kamenev, and Stalin to decide when to announce it publicly.18 In January, Konopleva submitted her own report, covering much the same ground as Semenov. To disguise Semenov’s cooperation with the Cheka, his allegations were first made public in the pro-Soviet Berlin newspaper Novyi mir on February 24.19 Four days later, Pravda published portions of Konopleva’s testimony to much fanfare, and the GPU (the successor to the Cheka) announced the upcoming trial.20 In a letter to People’s Commissar of Justice Dmitrii Kurskii sent shortly before the public announcement of the trial, Lenin expressed the hope that the SR trial would be the first in a series of model trials aimed at opponents of the Bolshevik dictatorship.21 In the narrowest sense, the aim of this first trial was to destroy the PSR by depicting its leaders as renegades and winning over its followers and sympathizers. As Trotsky put it in a letter to the Politburo in May: “The most important political tasks of our agitation are to secure definitively for Communism those former SR activists and, in general, those former SRs who have already entered the [Communist] party or are gravitating toward it, to sow doubt and hesitation in new SR circles, and thereby to isolate the SR leaders.”22 In a broader sense the trial sought to reinforce the ideological binaries of Bolshevik power for the post–civil war era. In his letter to Kurskii, Lenin stressed that the “educational significance” of show trials would be “enormous.” Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders continued to believe that monopolizing revolutionary discourse and delegitimizing any radical alternative to the dictatorship held the ideological key to their power. The end of the civil war, the dismantling of War Communism, and the near disappearance of the working class under the impact of economic collapse threatened Bolshevik hegemony and gave renewed primacy to the quasi-educational labor of categorization that had loomed so large for Bolsheviks in 1918, a labor in which the Red Terror had played an important role. Although Lenin had by no means abjured the use of terror or abandoned his concept of dictatorship as rule unbound by law, he now informed Kurskii that the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) had shifted the main burden of Soviet coercive policy from the Cheka to the Soviet judiciary. Like the Red Terror in 1918, show trials of the SRs and Mensheviks would define the political landscape in terms of class polarities and map the ineluctable slide from socialist opposition to counterrevolutionary conspiracy. Dramatizing this argument would constitute the “educational significance” of the planned trials for those political and social groupings that had once formed

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the revolutionary democracy, including non-Bolshevik radicals and Soviet bureaucratic personnel, as well as the mass of the population. The revelations of Semenov and Konopleva were well calculated to contribute to this ideological labor and to serve the more immediate aims of the SR trial. In great detail, they recounted the history of their underground organization in 1918, its efforts to organize armed resistance to the Bolshevik coup and the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, and its responsibility for the assassination of Volodarskii and the August 30 attempt against Lenin. Semenov’s account of the efforts of the SR leadership to find forces to avert the consolidation of Bolshevik power in the first months after October usefully linked the SRs to various “bourgeois” organizations and suggested SR responsibility for the onset of violence and civil war. Nevertheless, the sensation of Semenov’s forty-page pamphlet and of the brief excerpts of Konopleva’s testimony published in Pravda was undoubtedly the account of the terrorist attacks of the summer of 1918. It should be recalled that almost nothing was known about the origins of these attacks or the identity of the perpetrators before the exposé by the two ex-terrorists. As best can be judged, a great deal of what they reported about the murder of Volodarskii and the several attempts against Lenin was true. Nevertheless, they distorted the attitude of the SR leadership to the use of terror against the Bolsheviks, and they almost certainly lied about the specific instructions they received from representatives of the Central Committee in the spring and summer of 1918. Konopleva alleged that Abram Gots and the Bureau of the Central Committee in Moscow had approved her March 1918 proposal to assassinate Lenin on her own, without invoking the party name.23 Semenov asserted that Gots and Dmitrii Donskoi had authorized his plan for terrorist attacks on Grigorii Zinoviev and Volodarskii in Petrograd in June. When preparatory work for the assassination of Volodarskii had been completed, Gots had supposedly asked Semenov to wait for a short time before carrying out the action. Semenov claimed to have concluded from this conversation that the Central Committee simply lacked the will and determination to act, “as often happened with the Central Committee at decisive moments.” He had therefore instructed Sergeev to shoot Volodarskii if the opportunity arose, which it soon did. The Central Committee had then supposedly seized on his refusal to wait for specific permission to act in order to justify its public disclaimer of responsibility. Semenov likewise claimed that Gots and Donskoi had approved Fania Kaplan’s attempt on Lenin’s life and had promised that the Central Committee would not renounce responsibility for it. After Kaplan’s execution Donskoi had ostensibly pleaded that the party had no choice but to disavow the attempt in order to protect itself from the Red Terror.24 Semenov and his editors in the Cheka hoped that this portrait of the Central

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Committee would discredit the SR leadership in the eyes of workers, rank-andfile SRs, and revolutionaries generally. The SR leaders emerged from the pages of Semenov’s brochure as morally degenerate and politically corrupt. They employed terrorist methods against a revolutionary state but lacked the courage to do so openly and honestly. They mendaciously concealed their service to the bourgeoisie by radical posturing and revolutionary phraseology. Such images played to stereotypes about the weak-willed SR intelligentsia and the degeneration of the party leadership that had circulated widely in the radical milieu at least since the Azef affair in 1909. They received heavy play in Bolshevik propaganda in the months leading up to the trial, as Bolsheviks worked to expose the SR leadership as unworthy of the heroic tradition they conceded to the People’s Will and even to the rank and file of the PSR. Anatolii Lunacharskii’s influential pamphlet Byvshie liudi (Former people), for instance, contrasted the positive contribution of SR terrorists to the revolutionary movement with the “atmosphere of moral decay” in the top leadership of the party, which had spawned Azef and brought the party to a rotten end after October. Recycling prerevolutionary clichés, Lunacharskii emphasized SR leaders’ supposed lack of will and their alienation from the healthy, united proletarian masses.25 The testimony of Semenov and Konopleva detailed the main charge against the SR leaders, but a great deal remained to be done to produce a workable script for the trial.26 In March the Politburo appointed a troika of Dzerzhinskii, Kurskii, and Iurii Steklov to supervise this work, and it instructed the GPU that the trial should begin by late April.27 Throughout March and April, Iakov Agranov of the GPU conducted interrogations of numerous SRs and former SRs, focusing on the central allegation of SR responsibility for the terrorist attacks of 1918. Five former members of Semenov’s detachment provided testimony corroborating his account of their activities, although only one claimed firsthand knowledge of the Central Committee’s views on terror.28 Petr Efimov, Konopleva’s accomplice in the aborted March 1918 attempt against Lenin, supported her account of that episode and, like the members of the detachment, began to cooperate with the GPU.29 Most of the incarcerated Central Committee members refused to answer any questions, but several former members of the Central Committee remained at liberty and were brought in for interrogations by Agranov. The most important were Nikolai Rakitnikov and Konstantin Burevoi, who had resigned from the Central Committee after the Ninth Party Council and remained free as members of the old Vol’skii group and the MPSR. Like Vol’skii himself, a figure of equal prominence though never a member of the Central Committee, Rakitnikov and Burevoi testified about the divisions within the Central Committee on the subject of terror and shared their own, fairly sparse, knowledge of Semenov and his activities.30 Despite Agranov’s labors, the GPU was far from

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ready to stage the trial as the Politburo’s target of late April neared. Little progress had been made in the composition of the indictment, scant evidence had been gathered on charges other than terror, and none of the agitation and propaganda materials planned for the trial had been prepared. The announcement of the trial had meanwhile sparked the SRs abroad to furious activity, and they succeeded in pushing the trial onto the agenda of the international socialist movement. Although the party’s Central Bureau in Moscow was able to distribute a hectographed leaflet denouncing the trial, the main burden of organizing a campaign on behalf of the prospective defendants fell on the Foreign Delegation and its newly acquired Berlin organ, Golos Rossii.31 Golos Rossii commissioned numerous articles refuting Semenov’s charges, the most important of which were the recollections of Boris Rabinovich, a former member of the Petrograd Bureau of the Central Committee and the brother-in-law of Abram Gots, and the account of a former member of Semenov’s detachment, Mikhail Tislenko. Tislenko’s statement presented some difficulties, however. He confirmed not only that Semenov’s group had indeed organized the attacks, but also that Elena Ivanova had been a member of it and that Donskoi and Evgenii Timofeev were well-informed about its activities, even if they did not authorize the attacks. The editors of Golos Rossii therefore deleted Tislenko’s references to Ivanova, Donskoi, and Timofeev from the published version of his statement, correctly expecting that the three imprisoned SRs would figure prominently at the trial.32 The Foreign Delegation also undertook to sway European socialist opinion against the trial. Its first priority was to have the European left apply pressure on Moscow not to impose the death penalty on the defendants. Fortunately for the imprisoned SRs, the political conjuncture for such an effort was good. The Comintern had been courting European socialists under the auspices of a “united front” strategy since late 1921, and the Bureau of the Vienna Union had organized a conference, scheduled to open in Berlin on April 2, at which representatives of the Second International, the Comintern, and the Vienna Union (the so-called 2½ International) would try to repair the fractured unity of European socialism. The PSR had effectively withdrawn from the Second International in 1920 and had been rebuffed in its efforts to join the Vienna Union. The party was thus not formally affiliated with any of the international socialist organizations and was not invited to the Berlin conference. The Foreign Delegation called on the representatives of the Second International and the Vienna Union to raise the fate of the SR Central Committee members and to make a Bolshevik promise not to impose the death penalty a condition of any “united front” cooperation. It also submitted to the conference a lengthy memorandum outlining the history of Bolshevik persecution of socialists in Russia.33 The Second International responded warmly to the Foreign Delegation’s appeal for

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help. The reaction of the Vienna Union was cooler, but the Menshevik members of the union persuaded it to join the Second International in criticizing the trial and the incarceration of political prisoners in the Soviet Union.34 The Comintern had no interest in a rapprochement with the Second International, but the Vienna Union represented a bloc of potentially pro-Communist parties that the Bolsheviks were eager to placate. The Soviet government also hoped that a public display of socialist unity might strengthen its diplomatic hand in Europe. Karl Radek, the head of the Comintern delegation to the Berlin conference, accordingly agreed to the two main socialist demands: (1) representatives of the Second International would be permitted to attend the trial and study the materials relating to it, and (2) the death sentence would not be imposed on the defendants. From Moscow, Lenin immediately denounced Radek’s concessions as too generous, an opinion that seems to have been shared by the Politburo as a whole. Using various stratagems, the Bolsheviks sought to undo Radek’s concessions without formally reneging on the agreement that had been reached at Berlin. Radek issued a statement claiming that he had appeared at the conference as a representative of the Comintern only and that his concessions therefore could not bind the Soviet government. Commissar of Justice Kurskii explained in an interview with Soviet journalists that the Berlin agreement could not bind a Soviet court. He added that the Communist Party would fulfill the obligations it had assumed by making sure that any death sentences imposed by the court would not be carried out, although only on the condition that the SRs themselves renounced armed struggle against the Soviet state.35 Over the course of April and May the notion that the Supreme Tribunal was free to sentence the SRs to death and that the Berlin agreement had only committed the Soviet government not to carry out the death sentence became the standard argument from the Communist side. The Second International and the Vienna Union accused the Bolsheviks of reneging on the agreement, and the Comintern withdrew from the joint bureau set up by the Berlin conference. The unlikely effort to rebuild socialist unity thus collapsed.36 Faced with these international complications and distressed by the slow pace of trial preparations, the Politburo dissolved the troika of Dzerzhinskii, Kurskii, and Steklov on April 13 and transferred responsibility for organizing the trial to a new, higher-level troika of Kamenev, Trotsky, and Dzerzhinskii.37 On May 7, Trotsky complained nervously to Kamenev and Stalin that they were on “the surest path to the failure of the trial,” because so little had been done.38 Bureaucratic infighting between the chief prosecutor, Nikolai Krylenko, and the GPU further complicated the preparations. The opening of the trial, which the troika had moved from late April to May 23, was postponed to June 1 and then to June 8.39 Only toward the end of May was the indictment completed, without which the trial could not begin. The agitation campaign in

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connection with the trial finally swung into full gear, as pamphlets by Lunacharskii, Steklov, and others were printed in huge runs, mass meetings were organized in Moscow, Petrograd, and provincial cities, and the Soviet press overflowed with denunciations of the PSR.40 The slogans of the campaign moved beyond the narrow focus on the terrorist attacks of 1918 to emphasize SRs’ supposed desire to rekindle the civil war. Among the officially approved slogans were “The SRs are the party of a new war,” “The workers and peasants of Soviet Russia need peace and order—death to the SRs, the instigators of a new war in the country,” and “The SRs are fighting against the workers’ country. Down with the White conspirators, down with the White murderers.”41 The launching of the agitation campaign brought its own problems. Years of relentless demonization of the PSR and other enemies had accustomed the Bolshevik press to a strident tone in dealing with the party, but the task of separating rank-and-file SRs from the party leadership required a more delicate touch. In a note to the other members of the troika and the Politburo, Trotsky argued that it was important to acknowledge the “heroic period” in the history of the PSR if ordinary SRs and party sympathizers were to be won over. The current tenor of the agitation campaign—“shrieking and cursing,” in Trotsky’s estimation—would hardly do.42 Trotsky’s own contribution to the agitation campaign, a May essay entitled “Who Is Betraying What,” gives an idea of what he had in mind. Systematically contrasting the healthy, revolutionary qualities of the SR rank and file with the degenerate leaders who had betrayed them, Trotsky defended Semenov and Konopleva as the true inheritors of the party’s revolutionary past and the best representatives of its lower ranks. In addition, Trotsky adopted a sober narrative voice and emphasized concrete “facts” as he detailed the party’s ostensible descent into counterrevolution.43 The other members of the troika concurred with Trotsky’s criticisms, but the coordinators of the campaign repeatedly complained that the Moscow press seemed incapable of shifting to a less vulgar tone.44 The Trial

After months of preparation the trial finally opened on June 8. The Bolshevik Central Committee member Grigorii Piatakov served as chief judge. The lengthy indictment detailed charges against thirty-four SRs and was carefully framed to discredit the SR leadership in the eyes of the party rank and file and the trial’s larger radical audiences. After a fifty-page “historical section” that recounted the PSR’s role in the civil war, the indictment charged the SR Central Committee members with four specific crimes: (1) organizing armed resistance to Soviet power in Petrograd and Moscow in the first weeks and months after October; (2) entering into treasonous relations with Allied imperialist powers to facilitate their seizure of Soviet territory in 1918; (3) maintaining ties with the

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White generals Mikhail Alekseev, Anton Denikin, and Piotr Krasnov for the same purpose; and (4) organizing the terrorist attacks on Soviet leaders in the summer of 1918.45 The common threads of SR responsibility for the onset of the civil war and the Central Committee’s hidden connections with counterrevolutionaries stitched these charges together. Notably absent were any charges that might have attested to the SRs’ populist radicalism or mass following, such as participation in the movement of plenipotentiaries, organization of the Izhevsk rebellion, or leadership of Komuch. Neither were the SR leaders specifically charged with organizing peasant uprisings against the Soviet state, although the historical section of the indictment devoted attention to the purported SR role in the peasant rebellions in Tambov and western Siberia and to Chernov’s efforts to link up with the Kronstadt sailors.46 The indictment, like the trial itself, kept the focus squarely on charges that could be expected to undercut the SR leaders’ political influence and moral stature among Russian and European leftists. The indicted SRs divided into two groups. Gots, Donskoi, Timofeev, and nine other Central Committee members headed the list of the indicted, but they were joined in the dock by almost two dozen other SRs and former SRs of varying degrees of prominence, including Semenov, Konopleva, and five former members of Semenov’s detachment. The decision to try Semenov, Konopleva, their accomplices, and several other cooperative former SRs alongside the unrepentant principal defendants from the SR Central Committee had been made already in March, and the trial’s reliance on their confessions and guilty pleas established what became one of the distinctive features of the Soviet show trial.47 The confessions of the twelve members of this so-called second group of defendants would serve as the principal evidence on the central charge of terrorism. The defendants’ account of their treatment at the hands of the Central Committee would dramatize the split between the SR leadership and the rank and file that the trial sought to depict. Their repentance and professions of loyalty to the Soviet state would then point the way forward to other rankand-file SRs. Nikolai Bukharin assumed responsibility for the “general political defense” of this second group of defendants, and a handful of other prominent Communists and revolutionaries were engaged to represent the individual defendants of the group.48 The twenty-two members of the so-called first group of defendants included the Central Committee members, one former member of Semenov’s detachment (Elena Ivanova), and several other SRs of varying degrees of prominence in the party. They were represented by a group of Russian lawyers led by Nikolai Murav’ev and by four Western socialists who had been permitted to join the defense after lengthy negotiations that grew out of the Berlin agreement of the three internationals. In May the Comintern had accepted a list of ten socialists

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then residing in Western Europe to serve on the defense team, including three exiled SRs (Vasilii Sukhomlin, Vissarion Gurevich, and Pavel Kobiakov). Several of the foreigners withdrew, however, and the Bureau of the PSR in Moscow decided against having SRs participate in the defense. The Supreme Tribunal also rejected the request of three Mensheviks to join the defense. As a result, the only socialist representatives on the defense team were the Belgians Emile Vandervelde and Arthur Wauters from the Second International and Kurt Rosenfeld and Theodor Liebknecht of the German Independent Social Democratic Party, who represented the Vienna Union. Shortly after the opening of the trial, when it had become clear that effective legal representation of the defendants would be impossible, the Western socialists resigned their posts and left Moscow.49 After the reading of the indictment, the two groups of defendants began to articulate their respective strategies when they were called upon to enter pleas on June 10.50 Led by Timofeev, the members of the Central Committee accepted responsibility for the actions of the PSR during the civil war but refused to enter formal pleas. The Central Committee members demonstratively insisted that the trial had no legal basis and amounted to little more than an act of political vengeance. By refusing to enter pleas but accepting responsibility for the actions of the party, the Central Committee members sought to move the trial from a legal to a political plane. Denying the right of the court to try them and appealing to the Russian working class as the ultimate tribunal of judgment, the SR leaders drew on well-established conventions of radical conduct in prerevolutionary courts to shape their behavior and infuse it with historical and political meaning. In the same vein they refused to acknowledge the court’s designation of them as “the accused” and demonstratively remained seated when the judges entered the courtroom.51 Such tactics no doubt came naturally to SR leaders who had always considered themselves custodians of the revolutionary tradition and were sensitively attuned to the semiotics of revolutionary self-presentation. The Central Committee members also hoped to label the second group of defendants “provocateurs,” or accomplices of the security police—one of the most highly charged terms in the vocabulary of the revolutionary movement.52 Throughout the trial the Central Committee members sought not only to contest the specific charges levied by the prosecution, but to cast Semenov as a provocateur and make his transgressions of revolutionary ethics the central issue in the case. The prosecution, the members of the second group of defendants, and their lawyers understood that the political success of the trial indeed hinged on competing applications of revolutionary ethics. “Revolutionary ethics” referred to the distinctive complex of values and taboos in the revolutionary subculture of late imperial Russia. As much as any formal ideological commitments, revolutionary

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ethics defined revolutionaries’ sense of self and demarcated their break with bourgeois conventions. They also defined radicals’ relations with other members of the revolutionary subculture and with outsiders. Needless to say, revolutionary ethics sanctioned violence and justified other transgressions of conventional morality, particularly in relation to outsiders. Before 1917, becoming a provocateur and betraying the revolution was probably the worst offense against revolutionary ethics that a Russian radical could commit. In the PSR some exposed provocateurs, such as Nikolai Tatarov, had been murdered by the party, and others (such as Evno Azef) had escaped death only by flight. Bukharin, always one of the most perceptive observers of revolutionary political culture, agreed that “the question of betrayal” was indeed the central political issue at the trial.53 Had the members of the second group of defendants betrayed their party and compromised their own revolutionary honor by agreeing to cooperate with the Cheka and the prosecution? Were they, in other words, provocateurs? Or had the SR leaders betrayed their party, the revolution, and their own calling as socialists and revolutionaries by fighting against Soviet power? Had they not set themselves beyond the revolutionary pale by accepting money from Allied imperialists, cooperating with open counterrevolutionaries, and organizing terrorist attacks against Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders? After the members of the first group refused to enter pleas on June 10, Grigorii Ratner entered a collective plea of guilty for the members of the second group of defendants and read aloud a declaration on its behalf. A former member of the Moscow Bureau of the Central Committee, Ratner was the highest-ranking former SR in the second group and had been a member of the Communist Party since 1921.54 He was also the brother of Evgeniia Ratner, a former Central Committee member in the first group of accused, whom he contemptuously described as his “former sister.” “If the Revolution requires it,” Ratner declared, “a man should be able to send his sister to the scaffold.”55 That the interests of the revolution superseded family ties was a radical commonplace, but so too was the taboo on capitulating to the state and providing testimony against one’s comrades. Ratner defended his fellow defendants in the second group and insisted that it was the SR leaders who had betrayed them, and the entire party, on the trial’s first day. The Central Committee’s behavior, he argued, followed logically from its position throughout the civil war, which had always aimed to conceal the party’s services to the counterrevolution from the SR rank and file. Ratner explained: Our role is not the role of high politicians. We did not know or understand anything in high politics, and we do not now understand it. We knew how to act directly and decisively. We knew and know how to respect those who act directly and openly. But we have deep, organic contempt and hatred for double-

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dealers and hypocrites. And if now, in the course of the judicial investigation, our opponents add to all their hypocritical attacks and commit a new act of betrayal in relation to their own party; if they renounce what party fighters did on their directives; if they try to wreck the trial or try by some other tricks to pin responsibility on their own former agents and make them common criminals—this will be the final betrayal, after which there will be no other way of characterizing the party but as a party of hypocrites and traitors. We acknowledge all of our crimes, but this crime—the crime of hypocrisy, empty rhetoric, and double-dealing—we categorically repudiate.56

As a former member of the Moscow Bureau of the Central Committee and the brother of a Central Committee member, Ratner was implausibly cast as a representative of the party’s lower ranks. The very extent to which Ratner’s remarks did not conform to his own biography, however, underscores the lengths to which the trial organizers went in their effort to frame the trial as a contest between a simple, unsophisticated rank and file with healthy class instincts and a degenerate intelligentsia that had betrayed the party and its revolutionary traditions. As the trial unfolded over the next two months, it did not make for riveting political theater. The twice-daily sessions in downtown Moscow’s House of Trade Unions, the former Noble Assembly, laboriously worked through the indictment’s charges in chronological order. The first weeks of the trial were devoted to the SRs’ supposed role in the so-called Junker rebellion, the ill-fated effort to find troops to resist the Bolshevik takeover in November 1917. Krylenko depicted this episode as the opening shot of the civil war, for which the SRs and their co-conspirators thus held responsibility. Several pro-Bolshevik former SRs echoed the second group of defendants and testified to the Central Committee’s involvement in the Junker rebellion and to the links between the SR leaders, Savinkov’s Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland and Revolution, the Union of Regeneration, and other “bourgeois” organizations in the winter of 1917 and 1918. Despite the obvious partisanship of the judges, persistent harassment from the prosecutors, and difficulty calling witnesses in their own defense, the Central Committee members effectively resisted the prosecutors’ effort to depict them as little more than front men for counterrevolution. Donskoi, Gots, and Timofeev testified at greatest length. They did not deny that the PSR had sought to resist the establishment of Bolshevik power, but they presented a far more nuanced and accurate picture of the anti-Bolshevik underground of late 1917 and early 1918.57 In an effort to refocus attention on the SRs’ complicity in terrorist attacks on Bolshevik leaders, the trial managers organized a massive demonstration in

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Moscow on June 20, the anniversary of Volodarskii’s murder in 1918. By 1922 the Bolsheviks had considerable experience using mass meetings and demonstrations to choreograph shows of public support for the revolutionary state and its policies. Indeed, the trial itself stands alongside such mass meetings and demonstrations as a landmark in the development of what the historian Jeffrey Brooks has termed “Bolshevik performative culture.”58 The troika coordinating preparations for the trial had selected the date in consultation with Piatakov and Krylenko on June 6. The troika also instructed the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party to select “worker witnesses” to attend the trial on the day of the demonstration. These workers would be armed with petitions in support of the trial, signed by workers from their factories. Returning to the factories, they would serve as conduits for Bolshevik agitation and propaganda in connection with the trial.59 On June 20 crowds assembled outside the House of Trade Unions to hear Krylenko, Piatakov, Bukharin, and others rage against the SRs. In what was undoubtedly a low moment in the trial for the SRs themselves, the members of the Central Committee were paraded onto the balcony above the crowd to endure its taunts.60 Later in the day the “worker witnesses,” joined by a delegation of workers from Petrograd, were admitted to the trial’s evening session. There they read aloud declarations denouncing the SRs and calling for no mercy to the “enemies of the working class.”61 This show of working-class militance notwithstanding, there is little evidence that ordinary Soviet citizens took much interest in the trial. For several months the GPU had been carefully monitoring popular responses to the campaign against the PSR, paying particular attention to the mood among industrial workers. The daily mood reports distributed to top party and state officials in May and June make clear that the majority of the population viewed the trial mostly with indifference. At factories and at mass meetings around the country, Bolshevik agitators had little difficulty securing resolutions endorsing the trial and calling for “severe measures of punishment” (a common euphemism for the death penalty). On occasion, workers voted against such resolutions or abstained from voting, but such glitches were not common. No doubt to the disappointment of the trial organizers, however, the GPU reports indicate that most resolutions were passed mechanically, without great enthusiasm.62 Nevertheless, workers’ passivity was hardly good news for the SRs. There is ample evidence that Soviet workers in 1922 were capable of dissenting, and of engaging in collective action, on issues that genuinely concerned them. The GPU reported significant dissatisfaction among workers over the nonpayment or late payment of wages in the spring and summer of 1922, and strikes were widespread. Frequently the same workers who were reported by the GPU to be critical or to be harboring anti-Soviet sentiments passed resolutions in support of the trial with no objection.63 Workers’ failure to speak out against the

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trial thus cannot be attributed to the impossibility of resistance or simply to intimidation by the Communist Party and Soviet security police. On the whole it seems clear that neither the staging of the trial nor the fate of the SRs much concerned workers or other ordinary Soviet citizens. In mid-June the Bolshevik leadership grew apprehensive that the trial was not shaping up as a political success. On June 22 the Politburo instructed the Supreme Tribunal to exert a much stricter control of the proceedings during the court’s future sessions, and it resolved that “for political reasons the trial must be concluded as quickly as possible.”64 The Politburo had several concerns. The trial’s failure to grab the popular imagination was probably one source of disappointment. The courage of the SR leaders on the stand probably disquieted the Politburo as well. Gots, Timofeev, and Donskoi were tenaciously presenting their own account of the SR past, and they had succeeded in drawing attention to the fact that Semenov, his colleagues in the second group of defendants, and virtually all of the prosecution witnesses had long since thrown in their lot with the Communist Party. The Bolshevik leadership also continued to be dissatisfied with coverage of the trial in the Soviet press. Several days after the opening of the trial, the committee responsible for agitation in connection with the trial had reiterated its directive of June 7 calling for a more objective, less vulgar treatment of the SRs.65 On behalf of the Bolshevik Central Committee, Valerian Kuibyshev reprimanded the editors of the major Moscow newspapers for failing to carry out the directive. He ordered the newspapers to steer clear of “vulgar abuse.”66 The coordinators of the agitation campaign also complained about the coverage, but the polemical habits of the Soviet press were too deeply engrained for their complaints, or Kuibyshev’s instructions, to have much effect.67 The Politburo’s instructions to bring the trial to a speedy conclusion were no more successful. During the last week of June, Krylenko slowly worked through a tendentious account of the SR decision to adopt armed struggle against the Soviet state at the Eighth Party Council in May 1918. He then turned his attention to SR participation in the anti-Bolshevik government in Arkhangel’sk in the summer of 1918, which he adroitly used as a way to abandon a strictly chronological account in favor of a regional survey of SR activities in Siberia, Tambov, Ukraine, and elsewhere. This allowed him to carry his story up to 1921 but save the most important testimony about the 1918 terrorist attacks for what he hoped would be the trial’s emotional climax. This finally came in the second half of July. Over the course of a little more than a week, Semenov, Konopleva, and a parade of prosecution witnesses testified at length about the aborted March attempt against Lenin, the murder of Volodarskii, and Fania Kaplan’s attack on Lenin on August 30, 1918. Their testimony added nothing of substance to the charges already detailed in Semenov’s brochure and the Soviet propaganda campaign against the PSR. Although the Central Committee members

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were unable to call any witnesses in their own defense, Mikhail Gendel’man and Abram Gots effectively cross-examined Semenov, highlighting his links to Soviet counterintelligence and to Savinkov. The SR leaders with the greatest personal knowledge of Semenov’s activities (Gots, Timofeev, and Donskoi) were also able to give their own accounts of the terrorist attacks of the summer of 1918.68 Under pressure from the Politburo to wrap the trial up by August 1, the prosecution team began its closing arguments on July 27.69 Krylenko gave the main speech for the prosecution, an eighteen-hour marathon over two days. Like Trotsky in “Who Is Betraying What,” Krylenko stuck to a sober recitation of the “facts” of the case, eschewing the abuse of the SR leaders that continued to characterize coverage of the case in the Soviet press. He reviewed all the charges the prosecution had levied against the SR leaders, again saving for last the “most shameful page in the history of the PSR”—the terrorist attacks of the summer of 1918.70 He concluded that the evidence showed that the PSR was the instigator and organizer of the civil war, and he demanded the death penalty for all but four members of the first group of defendants (Efrem Berg, Vladimir Utgof, Iurii Morachevskii, and Pavel Zlobin—none of whom were figures of the first rank in the party). Additional speeches for the prosecution were delivered by Lunacharskii, the Comintern representatives, and Mikhail Pokrovskii. For the most part these speeches covered familiar ground, although Pokrovskii’s speech focused on Komuch, which had received scarcely any attention at the trial. It also struck a discordant note by unequivocally labeling the PSR a bourgeois-reactionary party, without any socialist or revolutionary credentials whatsoever.71 More interesting than the prosecutors’ speeches were the concluding arguments by the lawyers for the second group of defendants. Pokrovskii’s remarks provoked a response from Bukharin, who held responsibility for what he termed the “general political” defense of the second group of defendants. Bukharin insisted that Pokrovskii had erred when he denied that there were any socialists on trial in the case. The second group of defendants were socialists, he asserted, and his task was to defend them and their revolutionary honor. This he did by returning again to the central question of revolutionary ethics: “I must in the first instance address the question that from the point of view of the defendants of the second group, each and every one of them, is the central question; the question that has been repeatedly addressed here and is termed the question of betrayal.”72 From Bukharin’s point of view it was of course the SR leadership that had betrayed the revolution, the working class, and socialism. Only the members of the second group deserved to be called socialists, and he called for them to be acquitted on all charges on grounds of “political expediency.”73

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S. V. Chlenov and P. A. Shubin, the lawyers for Konopleva and Semenov, emphasized the same point in their concluding arguments. Chlenov denied his client was a traitor: “The Soviet Republic does not need traitors. People who for the sake of saving their own skin go today to kill Lenin and tomorrow to sell their own comrades, who the day after join some black-hundred organization, betray the Communist Party, and again go off to kill people—such people should be shot.”74 The only people out to save their own skin, he insisted, were the members of the first group of defendants, who had betrayed and renounced his client. Shubin likewise defended the revolutionary honor of Semenov and condemned the SR leadership for renouncing him: “Semenov believed that he was serving the revolution when he worked in the PSR. He did not betray the party, the party betrayed him, when it encouraged him to believe that he was fighting for socialism, for the liberation of labor.”75 The members of the second group also stressed the obligations of revolutionary ethics in their final pleas. Iosif Dashevskii, like Semenov, one of the organizers of SR military forces in the winter of 1918, spoke first. After reviewing the history of the PSR’s “petit bourgeois” vacillations throughout the civil war, Dashevskii urged his listeners to reflect on the supposed fact that SRs had served in the White armies as late as the Wrangel episode in 1920. He argued that this raised the question as “to whom, and to what degree, the norms of revolutionary ethics are applicable or not applicable.” The Central Committee had moved the PSR from the camp of revolution to that of counterrevolution, which meant that the moral obligations that had taken shape in years of joint struggle and that continued to govern relations among revolutionaries had lost their force. Instead, the “categorical imperatives” to defend the revolution, socialism, and the working class required the defendants in the second group to “speak the whole truth about those who are fighting against the revolution and socialism by any means, about those who will stop at nothing to ruin the revolution and socialism.”76 Petr Efimov and Grigorii Ratner echoed Dashevskii, as did Konopleva in her succinct, two-sentence statement: “Comrade judges, everything that I consider it my duty to say, the whole truth about my work in the PSR in 1918, I said at the preliminary investigation, here in the Tribunal, and to my Central Committee. I have fulfilled my duty, the duty of a revolutionary, and now it is the task of the Tribunal to judge me.”77 Semenov himself gave a short speech explaining that his own true trial—“a trial of the revolutionary conscience”—had begun long before his appearance in the courtroom. It dated to 1919, when he had first realized that the moral obligation to serve the revolution required that he find the courage to break with the PSR. He expressed deep satisfaction with his contribution to the exposure of the party and claimed that his own move from the PSR to the Communist Party was part of a larger mass phenomenon.78

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Revolutionary ethics also shaped the final pleas of the SR Central Committee members and the other members of the first group of defendants.79 By asserting that they likely faced death and casting their final pleas as opportunities to defend their revolutionary honor, the SR Central Committee members continued to model their behavior on that of defendants in prerevolutionary political trials. Stressing, and often enumerating, their long years of service to the revolution, they cast their final pleas as last testaments and adopted a language suitably elevated for that genre. Conscience, faith, and duty were the organizing concepts and keywords of their life stories. To a greater degree than Social Democrats, SR intellectuals schooled in Alexander Herzen, Piotr Lavrov, and the subjective sociology of the late-nineteenth century conceived the individual’s inner life and external social reality as intertwined ethical realms. The moral virtue of the revolutionaries lay in their willingness to remake their own subjective inner worlds in accordance with the ethical demands of social reality and to deploy the force of their remade personality for the achievement of social and historical ends.80 “The revolutionary self,” Evgeniia Ratner proclaimed at the trial, “has always been higher, its morality purer and more aesthetic, its internal control more delicate than that of an ordinary citizen.” In his speech Bukharin had used the image of a clockwork to convey the inexorable, machine-like power of the Communist Party and the historical process. For Ratner, Bukharin’s image laid bare the Bolsheviks’ moral catastrophe and their profound betrayal of the revolution, because it sacrificed any notion of the revolution as the ethical responsibility of free persons. Bukharin had himself put the question of betrayal at the center of the trial, she added, but no act of betrayal could ever surpass the Bolsheviks’ betrayal of the moral ideals of socialism and their poisoning of the revolutionary self.81 Death, the SRs reminded their listeners, is the inescapable ending to which all persons are fated, and almost all the speakers turned to face death as they brought their speeches to a close and uttered their “last word.” The Central Committee members never referred to themselves as martyrs, but a secularized revolutionary eschatology shaped their self-presentation as men and women who were destined to serve the revolution even in death.82 Welcoming that end, Evgenii Timofeev declared: “We serve the future and want to serve only it.”83 Elena Ivanova reported that “all that is left to me is the happiness of dying with the people whom I consider the dearest and closest to me.”84 Ratner contrasted the triviality of “mere physical death” to the “death of the soul” and “moral death” to which the members of the second group of defendants and the Bolsheviks themselves were fated by their betrayal of the revolution.85 As Gots put it, the Bolsheviks had “signed a contract with victory.” For SRs confident in the justice of their own stand, it remained only “to sign a contract with death.”86

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The SR leaders also cast their speeches as last opportunities to report to their party and to the working class on their actions and policies. Gots sardonically thanked the Bolsheviks for this opportunity, and he joined Evgeniia Ratner and Mikhail Gendel’man in offering a detailed account of the civil war and the PSR’s place in it. Ratner rightly dwelled on the role of Brest-Litovsk in pushing the PSR to armed struggle, emphasizing the party’s effort to link its conception of its national obligations with its understanding of the class interest of the toiling population. Brest-Litovsk was “not only a national evil, but a social evil as well,” because it threatened to turn the country over to German imperialist exploitation.87 Gendel’man addressed the central charge of terrorism. He showed persuasively that Semenov had lied when he claimed Central Committee sanction for the terrorist actions of 1918. He also suggested, much less persuasively, that the real figure lurking in the background of the entire affair was Boris Savinkov, whose life and revolutionary career had intersected with Semenov’s at various points before and after 1917.88 Gots gave the fullest account of the history of the PSR in the civil war, and his speech in several ways can serve as a fitting capstone to the history of the PSR after October. Not surprisingly, his selection and organization of events, and the meaning he attached to them, differed radically from the narrative that the prosecutors and members of the second group of defendants had recounted. For Gots, the major signposts on the road from October to the trial were the PSR’s efforts to unify the democracy and avoid civil war at the end of 1917, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, and the brief promise and defeat of Komuch. He also pointed to the suspension of the armed struggle at the Ninth Party Council and to the party’s subsequent (and ostensibly still active) effort to organize the population to secure civic freedoms and democratic guarantees. Gots gave particular emphasis to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. January 5, he asserted, “was the turning point in the history of the Russian Revolution.” His explication of the necessary links between freedom, democracy, and socialism provoked an irritated interruption from Piatakov, who instructed Gots to move on and explained curtly that the “dictatorship of the proletariat is for us an incontestable form of power and is not subject to discussion here.”89 For all its courage and moral force, however, Gots’s speech also displayed the marks of analytical weakness that had contributed to the SRs’ woes after October. Invoking the familiar clichés of Thermidor and Bonapartism, now reinforced by the evidence of the New Economic Policy, Gots expressed the fear that an “avalanche of petty trading and reborn, primitive forms of rapacious capitalism” would sweep away not only the Bolsheviks, but all the gains of the revolution. Almost five years after October the Bolsheviks remained for Gots little more than the avant-garde of counterrevolution.90 Given the context, there

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were good rhetorical reasons for Gots to depict the Bolsheviks this way, but the corollary articulated by Lev Gershtein was nevertheless telling: “I still today take the point of view that there is no sense in us fighting you, because we are the reserve of the revolution against the coming reaction in the person of Kliuchnikov and others still worse.”91 To no one’s surprise, the court found the defendants guilty on August 7 and returned death sentences for fifteen of the thirty-four defendants. Semenov and Konopleva were among those sentenced to death, but they and the other members of the second group of defendants were promptly pardoned by the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee, the highest organ of the Soviet government. Indeed, the Bolshevik Central Committee secretly rewarded Semenov for his services at the trial by granting him an apartment in an elite apartment building and sending him for six weeks of well-earned rest at a Crimean sanatorium with his wife.92 Needless to say, the first group of defendants was not so fortunate. Twelve of them were sentenced to death, including nine of the Central Committee members (Gots, Gendel’man, Gershtein, Timofeev, Evgeniia Ratner, Nikolai Ivanov, Mikhail Likhach, Sergei Morozov, and Dmitrii Donskoi). Elena Ivanova, Arkadii Al’tovskii, and Nikolai Artem’ev were also sentenced to death, while the remaining Central Committee members Florian Fedorovich, Dmitrii Rakov, and Mikhail Vedeniapin each received sentences of ten years. All of the members of the first group of defendants, who had been incarcerated in the prison of the Moscow provincial GPU for the duration of the trial, were taken directly from the courtroom for the short trip to the internal GPU prison in the Lubianka, where any executions would presumably take place.93 Since April, when the prospective execution of the SRs had been a major bone of contention in the negotiations between the three Internationals in Berlin, the Bolshevik leadership had been divided and uncertain about whether to execute the SR Central Committee members. Lenin had been outraged by Radek’s concession that the Soviet government would not execute the SR Central Committee members. At the end of May, however, Lenin suffered his first stroke and spent the summer convalescing at his dacha in Gorki, from which he participated in party and government affairs only intermittently and through intermediaries. Inside the Bolshevik elite, Trotsky seems to have been the most energetic proponent of executing the SRs, although another future leader of the opposition, Evgenii Preobrazhenskii, argued strongly against it. In a note to the Politburo on July 26, Preobrazhenskii argued that the trial had seriously damaged the Bolshevik image abroad among socialists and workers. To cap the trial by executing the defendants would be an “enormous political mistake.”94 Radek, Nikolai Krestinskii, and other Bolsheviks with responsibility for foreign

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affairs and relations with foreign Communists also opposed carrying out the death sentences, as did Lunacharskii, who had played an important role in the trial throughout the summer.95 On August 8 the Central Committee bowed to the impact that an execution would have on the Soviet image abroad and confirmed a plan that Dzerzhinskii, Kamenev, and Trotsky had first sketched in April. It instructed the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee to confirm the death sentences meted out to the twelve members of the first group of defendants but to “suspend” the actual executions. In the statement that the Presidium issued the same day, it cited “the underdeveloped strata of the international working class” in its decision to suspend the executions. It warned, however, that any move by the PSR to resume armed struggle against Soviet power would prompt the immediate execution of the convicted SRs.96 The imprisoned Central Committee members, in other words, were hostages who remained liable to execution at any moment, and they were not even informed that their death sentences had been suspended until September 15.97 In January 1924 the sentences of eleven of the defendants who had been sentenced to death were commuted to terms of five years of solitary confinement.98 They were transferred to internal exile over the course of the next two years, but the twelfth of the SRs who had been sentenced to death, Sergei Morozov, had already committed suicide by slitting his wrists with a piece of glass in December 1923.99 Internal exile for the surviving SRs was repeatedly extended through the 1930s, when the Central Committee members and thousands of other former SRs were shot or sentenced to long terms in camps. Timofeev, Gendel’man, and Rakov were all shot between 1938 and 1941, while Gots and Vedeniapin died in camps, and Donskoi committed suicide on the eve of certain arrest in 1936. Of the defendants in the first group at the trial, only Arkadii Al’tovskii survived the Stalin years, returning from almost twenty years in Kolyma in 1955. He died in Moscow in 1975.100 The Movement of Former Socialist Revolutionaries

In the immediate aftermath of the trial, there is little doubt that the Bolshevik leadership felt that it had not been a political success.101 Lenin had originally conceived the SR trial as the first in a series of “model trials” and had written periodically since 1917 about the importance of the Soviet courts as instruments of education, socialization, and terror. In early September the Politburo dissolved the troika of Kamenev, Dzerzhinskii, and Trotsky and transferred responsibility for wrapping up trial affairs to a Central Committee Agitprop commission whose members included Radek, Andrei Bubnov, the GPU official Timofei Samsonov, and the former Menshevik and now energetic Bolshevik propagandist, Nikolai Popov.102 On September 15 this commission affirmed that

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additional trials remained expedient “in principle,” but it in fact abandoned the plan to organize new trials.103 The damage that the trial had done to the Soviet image among European leftists and the indifferent reaction of the Soviet population were probably the major considerations guiding this decision. An additional clue to Bolshevik dissatisfaction with the trial can be detected in another of the decisions that the commission took on September 15. In June the commission coordinating the agitation campaign against the SRs had drawn up plans to publish the stenogram of the trial along with other documents that would discredit the PSR.104 The new commission shelved that plan and decided to publish only the verdict and the speeches of the defense lawyers for the members of the second group. Eventually, the indictment, the final arguments of the prosecutors, and the final pleas of the second group of defendants were also published. The telling omission—the testimony and final pleas of the first group of defendants—suggests that the Bolsheviks understood that the courageous behavior of the Central Committee members and other members of the first group of defendants rendered the stenogram unsuitable for propaganda. Their behavior was not only exemplary from the point of view of revolutionary ethics, but it might resonate beyond the radical milieu in a culture that attached moral significance to suffering and accorded great respect to persons who had suffered for their understanding of the truth. Better suited to propaganda purposes, and an important complement to the trial and to coercive measures against the SRs generally, was the well-publicized campaign to organize former SRs behind the Communist Party and Soviet state. The movement of so-called byvshie (“former people”) reflected the Bolshevik leadership’s hope that the trial would discredit the SR Central Committee and help it secure and consolidate support for the Soviet state among rank-and-file SRs, former SRs, and SR sympathizers. As Trotsky had informed the Politburo in May: “The most important political tasks of our agitation are to secure definitively for Communism those former SR activists and, in general, those former SRs who have already entered the [Communist] party or are gravitating toward it.”105 After the trial Zinoviev made the same point at a Communist Party conference: “We are not so modest as to limit ourselves to somehow rendering the Mensheviks and SRs harmless. We think that our political offensive will now develop further and we will completely liquidate these antiSoviet parties, taking everything that is valuable in their human material, all that is capable of supporting Soviet power, and destroying the rest.”106 Like the trial, the byvshie campaign thus had a double-edged quality. It sought on the one hand to reveal the isolation and bankruptcy of the Central Committee and the exiled leadership of the party and thereby complete the party’s destruction, and on the other hand to attract former SRs to the Soviet state and Communist

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Party membership. Dzerzhinskii also expressed the cautious hope that the movement might demoralize the SRs incarcerated in Soviet prisons and tempt them to renounce their pasts and party.107 Like many other Soviet public movements, the byvshie movement presented itself, with some justification, as an initiative from below, even as it was in fact carefully controlled by the Communist Party and the Soviet security police. The first sign of a Bolshevik effort to organize rank-and-file SRs became public already during the trial, when Izvestiia published a letter from seventeen working-class SRs in the Urals industrial center of Zlatoust. The signatories condemned the SR leadership but confessed that they too “were guilty of the crimes of the party.” Unequivocally recognizing Soviet power and denouncing any other political platforms as “criminal,” they called for the convocation of a legal, national congress of veteran SRs to liquidate the PSR. The Zlatoust SRs asserted that most ordinary party members now understood the need for “the closest possible cooperation with Soviet power and the Communist Party in the reconstruction of the economy and the formation of a united front against advancing world capital.”108 The Zlatoust letter originated from a demand by the Zlatoust Bolshevik leadership that the local SRs, sympathetic in the past to the MPSR, come out decisively against the party leadership and in favor of the Communist Party.109 Responsibility for organizing the congress, however, quickly passed to the Secret Department of the GPU, headed by Timofei Samsonov. Its charge was combating anti-Soviet political parties, and its third section, now headed by I. F. Reshetov, held particular responsibility for the PSR. Samsonov and Reshetov established a Central Bureau of former SRs to take public leadership of the movement, and it launched a campaign to transform the initiative of the Zlatoust SRs into a mass movement.110 The Central Bureau established regional bureaus throughout Soviet Russia to assist in the preparation of the congress. According to Reshetov, approximately one thousand SRs enrolled in the movement in the fall and winter of 1922–23. To join, SRs were required to make a statement acknowledging their past errors and recognizing Soviet power and the Communist Party without any reservations. According to Reshetov, the vast majority who joined the movement were veteran, rank-and-file SRs of working-class origin, while the so-called March SRs of 1917 had abandoned politics entirely and did not figure in the movement. Reshetov’s classificatory schemes—which laboriously distinguished “working-class SRs,” “veteran SRs,” “March SRs,” and the party intelligentsia—should not be taken too seriously as descriptions of the actual social makeup of the movement. They point instead to the importance Bolsheviks attached to constructing and solidifying the “working-class” base of the dictatorship. With greater accuracy Reshetov reported that most SRs had “left the party long ago and are not carrying out any party work. In the vast majority of cases,

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they have already reconsidered their previous ideology and long since become ‘Soviet,’ although many do not admit this and do not acknowledge it openly.” He concluded that the thousand former SRs represented at the congress comprised only a fraction of those who could be enrolled in the movement if sufficient resources were devoted to it. The great mass of former SRs remained to be reached when the congress convened in March 1923, but Reshetov expressed optimism that most ordinary former SRs were “ideologically and psychologically” prepared to join.111 Fifty delegates convened in Moscow on March 18, 1923, for a three-day-long “All-Russian Congress of Former Rank-and-File Members of the PSR.” Izvestiia enthused that it was an “unquestionably exceptional and extraordinarily outstanding” congress. Rhetorical excesses aside, the All-Russian Congress was indeed a remarkable phenomenon. After years of vilification, the assembled SRs found themselves the objects of lavish praise on the part of the Soviet press, which extolled their revolutionary heroism and urged them to enter common cause with the Communist Party and Third International. Most of the delegates claimed worker backgrounds (only seven presented themselves as peasants and six as members of the intelligentsia). They also brought impressive revolutionary résumés. All told, the delegates had spent eighty-three years at hard labor, twenty-five years in prison, sixty-five years in internal exile, and nineteen years in emigration.112 Several of the leading figures at the congress had also participated in the anti-Bolshevik struggle after 1917. The chairman of the congress, Sergei Kononov, was a longtime Petrograd SR with a worker past. He had been a member of the PSR since the turn of the century, incurred multiple arrests, and spent 1908 to 1917 at hard labor. In 1918 he participated in the SR effort to organize military forces for the defense of the Constituent Assembly and played an active role in the Assembly of Plenipotentiaries. In July 1918, Kononov was arrested as a delegate to the Moscow Congress of the Plenipotentiaries, his last political engagement before the Congress of Former SRs.113 Vasilii Filatov, also a member of the Congress Presidium and one of the signatories of the Zlatoust letter that had launched the movement, had been a member of both the Constituent Assembly and Komuch. The chief business of the assembled former SRs was to enact publicly their repentance of their SR pasts and thereby open the way to Communist Party membership. Izvestiia explained that the congress was a gathering of “former SRs” who had come to make a “collective confession” but was by no means a gathering of “former people” with no hopes for the future. The dominant mood, it reported, was “forward, into the ranks of the Communist Party.” Bukharin welcomed the delegates and expressed satisfaction that they were overcoming their mistaken views and were now entering onto the “correct path.” Kononov avowed that the pain they each felt in their own soul had brought them all to

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the congress. Ivan Prilezhaev, a former member of the Central Committee and the highest-ranking former SR at the gathering, stated simply: “We have come here to repent.”114 After the congress Iurii Steklov explained in the pages of Izvestiia that the Communist Party had forgiven the former SRs their wayward errors, because it knew that ordinary SRs had always honestly believed that they were acting in the interests of the working class. The Bolsheviks were now prepared to admit the prodigal SR sons of the revolutionary movement into their own ranks: “These people themselves recognized the depth of their errors, the full weight of their mistakes. This recognition, expressed openly and confessed publicly, serves as a guarantee for the Communist Party that in the future they will try not to repeat their mistakes, that they will henceforth exert all their strength to repair the damage that they caused, willingly or unwillingly, to the world social revolution.”115 The final resolution of the congress likewise hailed the world social revolution, a subtle concession to populist uncertainty that the revolutionary upheavals in Russian and Europe could justly be characterized as socialist. It called on all SRs to face their revolutionary duty, accept that the PSR no longer existed, and recognize that the principles and traditions of both wings of the Russian revolutionary movement were now incarnated in the Communist Party. It also elected an All-Russian Executive Commission to carry on the work of the congress.116 Shortly after the congress, the Bolshevik Central Committee instructed all provincial and regional party committees to form committees that would organize the acceptance of former SRs into the Communist Party. These committees were chaired by the provincial and regional Bolshevik party secretaries, and they included representatives of both the Executive Commission of the congress and of the GPU, which was concerned to ensure that anti-Bolshevik SRs did not take over the movement and exploit it to rebuild the party. Recognizing that local Communists were apt to have difficulty adjusting to a conciliatory line toward individual SRs, the Central Committee emphasized that the provincial committees were not only to avoid putting obstacles in the way of former SRs joining the Communist Party but were in fact to facilitate this process, give it wide publicity, and report to the center on any conflicts between local Bolsheviks and former SRs.117 Of course, the Central Committee also emphasized that former SRs were to be accepted into the party only after a careful check of their background and motives. All applicants were required to fill out detailed questionnaires that probed their life histories for clues to their reliability and present outlook, as well as for insight into the PSR’s disintegration. The questionnaires pushed applicants beyond simple yes and no answers, and they reflected well the emergent Bolshevik impulse to require autobiographical self-

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examination and a detailed confession of past transgressions for all prospective party members.118 By the summer of 1923 the Executive Commission asserted that the PSR had been completely liquidated across Soviet Russia, and it claimed two thousand former SRs for the byvshie movement. In Petrograd the movement even secured permission to print two issues of a newspaper, fittingly entitled United Front.119 Judging from the questionnaires filled out by participants in the movement in Nizhnii Novgorod, Odessa, Orenburg, Penza, and elsewhere, the vast majority had joined the PSR before 1917 and could indeed claim to be veteran SRs.120 Still, the success of the byvshie movement should not be exaggerated, even before it wound down in 1924. Its role in the liquidation of the PSR was in fact minimal, because the party was effectively dead in Soviet Russia by 1922. There is also no evidence that the movement had much impact on SRs in prison, as Dzerzhinskii had originally hoped. In practical terms, the last of the movement’s aims—serving as conduit to Communist Party membership for former SRs—was probably the most successful and certainly the most important to the participants themselves, although detailed information is sparse and the results hardly suggest a mass phenomenon. In Nizhnii Novgorod, for example, fifty-five of sixty-seven former SRs who applied to the Communist Party were admitted in early 1924. Twenty of the successful candidates had joined the PSR before 1905, and twenty-nine had joined between 1905 and 1917.121 In Penza, by contrast, only thirteen of forty-seven applicants gained admission to the party.122 In Iaroslavl’, Odessa, Tambov, and several other provinces, no former SRs were admitted to Bolshevik party membership under the auspices of the movement.123 Still, the numerical presence of former socialists in the Communist Party was not insignificant. In 1921 they comprised almost 6 percent of the Bolshevik membership, and that figure probably increased at least marginally as a result of the byvshie campaign.124 In the Urals, original home to the movement, there were 616 former members of the socialist parties in the Communist Party as of January 1, 1925, and more than 60 percent of them were former SRs.125 Moreover, the basic message communicated by the movement—that the PSR was dead and the Soviet state offered the only vehicle for rejoining the revolutionary project—undoubtedly resonated widely among former SRs and party sympathizers. By combining incentives to acknowledge the Communist Party and Soviet power with a theatricalized, highly public performance of violence, the byvshie campaign and the SR trial continued the strategy that the Bolshevik leadership had pursued against the PSR since 1918 and adapted it for the post–civil war era. Co-optation and terror each worked to secure the dictatorship by averting efforts to contest Bolshevik rule from positions within revolutionary discourse.

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The byvshie campaign and the SR trial again targeted “renegades of socialism” who might contest the Bolshevik monopolization of revolutionary discourse, and they reenacted the dualist ideological operations that had helped sustain Soviet power since 1918. Those operations organized politics and the social world in terms of stark polarities and worked to destroy any renegade “third force” situated between the homologous “either/or” binaries of Red and White, Soviet power and capitalist restoration, or revolution and counterrevolution. In 1918, Bolshevik control of the revolutionary pole produced by these operations had secured the party control of revolutionary discourse and control of the key site of political power. From that position the Bolsheviks imposed an authoritative vision of the class basis of the civil war, weathered the crisis of 1921, and set out into the uncharted terrain of the NEP, when the importance of mapping the political and social landscape in terms of class and combating potential renegades again assumed critical importance. Bolshevik Oppositions and the “Third Force”

After the SR trial the Bolshevik leadership did not again turn to the large-scale show trial until the Shakhty trial in 1928, but anxiety about hidden and potential enemies remained central to the Bolshevik outlook and Soviet public discourse in the 1920s. This anxiety was continuously fuelled by the Bolshevik understanding of class, which defined the vast peasant majority of the population as potential enemies. The Bolsheviks’ social and political taxonomies reinforced both the political message they had taken from the civil war and the subjective outlook that the civil war had shaped. Convinced they stood alone in a dangerous petit bourgeois world, Bolsheviks believed that the party unity and ideological hegemony held the keys to power. To be sure, through most of the 1920s the very depth of Bolshevik anxiety about the social isolation of the proletarian state dictated conciliatory policies toward peasants and a gradualist emphasis on cultural transformation and the remaking of mentalities. Agitation trials, for instance, in some ways close cousins to the show trial, were on the whole more concerned to acculturate the population to the moral discipline, work habits, and worldview of Soviet modernity than they were to unmask particular political enemies.126 Even so, Bolshevik anxiety about peasants and the petit bourgeois danger to the dictatorship ran deep. For all groups in the party it underscored the paramount importance of finding the correct revolutionary line and maintaining the party’s monopoly on revolutionary discourse. All groups in the party were also deeply concerned about bureaucracy and the presence of potential enemies in the Communist Party and state apparatus in the 1920s. This too had multiple sources. Bolsheviks no less than SRs inherited a narrative of revolution that drew on the French experience and accorded a prominent place to the danger of Thermidorean degeneration. An entire body

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of literature sprung up to explore the social and psychological dimensions of the interlocking problems of degeneration, declassing, and bureaucracy.127 Bolsheviks also understood that state and party service attracted people for careerist reasons, and they realized that their own focus on class gave Soviet citizens powerful incentives to mask their social origins and political backgrounds.128 The uneven social distribution of administrative skills, the continuing dependence on bureaucratic personnel inherited from the Old Regime, and the fragmentation of the Russian social order under the impact of the civil war meant that the Bolsheviks’ insistence on the proletarian makeup of their state and party apparatus also implicated them in massive masking operations of their own. This probably contributed at least as much to Bolshevik anxieties and to the periodic recourse to unmasking and purging as did Soviet citizens’ own efforts to conceal their class backgrounds and life histories.129 Bolshevik leaders were well aware in particular that state service had attracted many persons from both the liberal and socialist wings of the Russian intelligentsia. From the Bolsheviks’ perspective, their own success in co-opting both state-minded liberals and non-Bolshevik radicals had brought thousands of potential political enemies inside the ramparts of the proletarian party and state. In the state bureaucracy, prominent former SRs, Mensheviks, and nonparty socialist intellectuals (such as Nikolai Kondrat’ev, Nikolai Oganovskii, Vladimir Groman, Alexander Chaianov, and Petr Pal’chinskii) were the public faces of a mass phenomenon that remained largely hidden from view.130 Concerned about SR and Menshevik influence, the Politburo instructed all provincial and regional Communist Party committees in March 1922 to form “Bureaus for Cooperation with the GPU” in all economic and cooperative institutions. The GPU subsequently expanded the network of bureaus to all state, social, educational, and private institutions. It ordered the bureaus to draw up lists of all former SRs and former Mensheviks in these institutions and to fill out detailed questionnaires on all former members of the anti-Soviet parties. Alongside the usual concern for life histories and social backgrounds, the questionnaires asked for lists of the former socialists’ acquaintances, the topics of their conversations, the range of the ex-socialists’ personal and professional influence, and the cities to which they were known to travel. The bureaus were also were required to provide regular reports on any SR or Menshevik activities, to assist in the placement of secret GPU agents in positions from which they could watch over the ex-socialists, and to facilitate GPU surveillance of former SRs, Mensheviks, and sympathizers of those parties.131 In the context of these anxieties about the petit bourgeois dangers to the dictatorship, the emergence of organized opposition within the Bolshevik party after 1923 raised the specter of new renegades for the party leadership. The opposition’s breach of party unity and its refusal to abandon its struggle against

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the party’s general line seemed a monstrous crime to the Bolshevik majority, because it threatened the party’s monopolization of revolutionary discourse, violated the ban on factions, and disregarded the lessons of the civil war. Open challenge to the general line of the party appeared to Bolsheviks to hold the danger, however remote it might seem in retrospect, that socially alien elements would fasten themselves to a renegade opposition and thereby secure a political foothold from which to challenge the dictatorship. The opposition shared this fear, but Trotsky and his supporters saw Stalin and Bukharin as the deviationists leading the party to likely catastrophe.132 In the face of this challenge, the Bolshevik leadership adapted the ideological operations and binaries that had structured the campaigns against SRs and other civil war renegades to frame the struggle against the Bolshevik opposition. As the conflict with the opposition unfolded over the course of the 1920s, the Bolshevik leadership mobilized the understanding of the civil war implicit in the ban on factions for use against the Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. As Stalin explained in his habitual catechistic style at a Central Committee plenum in 1927, when the struggle with the so-called Trotskyists was at its climax and the opposition had taken a few halting steps to issue some illegal pamphlets and carry the political struggle outside the party: Have we ever accused the opposition, or are we accusing it now, of plotting a military conspiracy? Of course not. Have we ever accused the opposition or do we accuse it now of participating in such a conspiracy? Of course not. . . . Of what do we then accuse the opposition in this case, and of what do we continue to accuse it? . . . We accuse it of having drawn to itself members of the bourgeois intelligentsia and having conspired with them against the party. Thus the opposition turned out to be, against its will, against its wish, in the surrounding of the so-called “third force.” . . . The opposition wanted to have an illegal, antiparty printing plant; it turned for this to members of the bourgeois intelligentsia for help, and a part of this bourgeois intelligentsia turn out to be connected with out-and-out counterrevolutionaries—this is the chain that resulted, comrades.133

Although Bolsheviks in public settings frequently derided the oppositionists as Mensheviks or “new Kautskys,” the story being retold and adapted in this scenario had more to do with the SRs than it did with Social Democrats. The formative Bolshevik experience with “renegades of socialism” in 1918, and the interpretation of that experience first narrated at the SR trial in 1922, shaped the Bolshevik leadership’s understanding of the danger posed by the opposition and gave it a powerful narrative to use against Trotsky and his supporters. Past experience with renegades also shaped the conditions set by the Bolshevik leadership for those oppositionists who wished to be readmitted to full participation in the revolutionary project after the defeat of the opposition.

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Semenov and his associates in the second group of defendants at the SR trial and the byvshie in 1923 had been required to renounce the PSR unequivocally and publicly, to confess their personal guilt unconditionally, and to participate in public performances designed to mark (and complete) the destruction of the party. They were also expected, of course, to affirm the correctness of the Bolshevik line and to place themselves entirely at its service. As the struggle with the Trotskyists drew to a close in 1927 and 1928, the Bolshevik leadership made the same demands of the oppositionists. Lev Kamenev rightly complained at the Fifteenth Party Congress in 1928 that explicit renunciation of one’s views had never been demanded of Bolsheviks who opposed the main line of party policy or found themselves in the party minority. To ask party members not simply to subordinate themselves to party decisions but to renounce views that they had held only a week or two previously, he complained, was an invitation to “un-Bolshevik” hypocrisy.134 As Kamenev probably understood, however, the demand for a formal apology was grounded in the deeper structure of the Bolshevik worldview that had emerged from the civil war. Apology rituals dramatized the core Bolshevik conviction that the party possessed a monopoly on correct revolutionary theory, strategy, and tactics. In any historical period the general line of the party was the only correct revolutionary line. To deviate from the general line was thus not simply to dissent from the particular policies of the party at a given moment, but to contest the party’s monopolization of revolutionary discourse, which all Bolsheviks understood as the decisive precondition of victory in the civil war and the only sure road to averting future catastrophe. The ban on factions had institutionalized this argument within the Bolshevik party and endowed it with Lenin’s authority. Ritualized acknowledgement of it had already been demanded of former SRs, Mensheviks, and others who might contest the monologic quality of revolutionary discourse. When oppositions emerged within the party as major challengers in this regard, it made good theoretical and intuitive sense not to rest content with the dissolution of opposition organizations, but to demand that individual oppositionists formally acknowledge it as well. It is also not surprising, given the intensity of the conflict with the opposition and the conceptual stakes involved, that the Bolshevik leadership’s demand that the oppositionists acknowledge the party’s general line eventually took the form of a demand for a ritualized performance of apology. The apology ritual that took shape in the Communist Party in the late 1920s was in essence a redressive ritual. Like other such rituals in many societies, it dramatized the crisis brought on by the rupture of group cohesion, redressed it through confession and repentance on the part of the guilty, and reintegrated the breakaways on terms set by the group.135 In view of the later fate of so many of the

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oppositionists—as well as that of the SRs, Mensheviks, and others who pioneered the path through apology and repentance to Communist Party membership and careers—it is easy to dismiss the redressive aspect of the various performances demanded of the oppositionists and to see those performances only as degrading preludes to the eventual destruction of the broken and humiliated renegades in the Great Terror. In fact, however, almost to the eve of the Great Terror, recanting a schismatic past indeed offered a road back to party membership and service to the revolution for thousands of former Trotskyists and right oppositionists, as it had in the 1920s for thousands of former SRs and Mensheviks.136 Grigorii Semenov’s career after 1922 is instructive in this respect, because it combines the history of the former SRs and of the right oppositionists in a single person. His performance at the SR trial opened the way to continued work in the Communist Party as a military specialist under Bukharin’s patronage, but he was expelled from the party in 1928 for his affiliation with Bukharin. Readmitted in 1929 after the requisite apologies, Semenov returned to work in various capacities, including a brief term as a collective farm chairman on the Volga. He momentarily fell into disfavor for his overenthusiastic criticism of the collectivization campaign after Stalin’s “Dizzy with Success” speech in 1930, but he was nevertheless able to secure a series of nomenklatura positions in Moscow and Leningrad over the next several years. After the assassination of Leningrad first party secretary Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Semenov was expelled from the party again on February 1, 1935, only to be readmitted three weeks later by the Volodarskii district party committee in Leningrad. The redressive power of apology even in 1935 is nicely symbolized by the fact that Semenov was readmitted to the party by a committee named for a man whose assassination he had himself organized, in a city named for a man whom he had also attempted to assassinate. Moreover, the incentives for apology remained substantial. In 1936, Semenov was able to fulfill a long-standing desire to return to counterintelligence work, and he traveled to France, Mongolia, and Spain on behalf of Soviet military counterintelligence.137 To be sure, the stain of a heretical past ultimately proved impossible to erase in most cases, as Semenov’s repeated expulsions from the party and his 1937 recall from Spain and subsequent execution indicate. From the civil war through the 1930s former socialists and oppositionists in the Communist Party were a persistent source of disquiet for the Bolshevik leadership and important targets of purging operations.138 Nevertheless, well into the 1930s the leadership continued to pursue the various strands of the strategy for dealing with “renegades of socialism” that it had developed during the civil war and its immediate aftermath. Relentless polarization of the political field, the demonization of such leading figures as Trotsky and Bukharin, and the ideological, moral, and orga-

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nizational destruction of revolutionary alternatives to Bolshevik power and the general line went hand in hand with substantial incentives to acknowledge the general line, particularly for rank-and-file party members who had been caught up in one or another deviation. At the same time, however, the Bolshevik leadership’s very success in coopting former oppositionists fed its anxiety about hidden enemies and underscored the need for vigilance, particularly as political and social tension in the country spiked with the unraveling of the NEP and the launching of collectivization. It was, after all, precisely during the upheavals of collectivization and the renewal of civil war mentalities and practices in the party during Stalin’s “Great Turn” that so many former oppositionists recanted their views, agreed to participate in the requisite performances, and rejoined the party en masse. Apology rituals thus testify on the one hand to the eagerness of the oppositionists to rejoin the revolutionary project and to the willingness of the Bolshevik leadership to accept them and, on the other hand, to the Bolshevik leadership’s continuing concern to elaborate ideological mechanisms with which to combat the emergence of a “third force” in the context of what finally was the “last, decisive battle” in the struggle for socialism. Nikolai Bukharin’s speech at the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934, one of the many apologies at that triumphant “Congress of the Victors” and one of many that Bukharin would deliver in the 1930s, illuminates the continuing importance that Bolsheviks attached to combating a potential “third force.” The speech also neatly articulates the master plot that underpinned the apology rituals and major Soviet show trials and derived in large part from the Bolshevik experiences in 1918 and 1921. It combined a nightmarish vision of the overthrow of Soviet power at the hands of foreign interventionists and domestic enemies masquerading as socialists and revolutionaries, and a heroic account of Bolshevik triumph over the unmasked renegades and their counterrevolutionary masters. In his speech Bukharin heaped fulsome praise on Stalin for having found a “remarkably correct general line” and for having presided over the “merciless destruction” of the so-called right opposition, which Bukharin had himself headed. The right, Bukharin confessed, had advocated a “different political line” and was therefore fundamentally “un-Leninist.” Drawing on the struggle against the PSR and its efforts to carve out a role for itself as a “third force” in the civil war, Bukharin spelled out the dark implications of the right’s deviation from the general line: This political grouping inevitably became the gravitational center for all the forces that were struggling against the socialist offensive—that is, in the first place the kulak strata that were most threatened by the socialist offensive on the one hand and, on the other hand, their ideologists from the urban intelligentsia.

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Moreover, in light of subsequent events it is clear that the victory of this deviation would inevitably have unleashed a third force, would have weakened to an extreme degree the position of the working class, the position of the proletariat, would have led to a premature intervention, which was already feeling out with its antennae our weakest and most diseased spots, and therefore to the restoration of capitalism as a combined result of the deteriorating internal and external situations, the significant weakening of the forces of the proletariat, and the unleashing of the antiproletarian, counterrevolutionary forces.139 Show Trials and the Experience of Civil War

The same ideological concern to combat a potential “third force” motivated the revival of the show trial as a political tool. At the Shakhty trial in 1928, fifty-three engineers from the Donbass mining region were publicly tried to great fanfare. All but four were convicted on charges of wrecking, espionage, and sabotage.140 In the summer of 1930, Soviet security forces arrested a group of distinguished agricultural specialists, of whom the best known were the former SR Nikolai Kondrat’ev and his colleagues Nikolai Makarov and Alexander Chaianov. Like the former Menshevik Vladimir Groman, another distinguished economist and planner who was arrested at the same time, the agricultural specialists had served the Soviet state loyally for almost a decade. Kondrat’ev and his associates were charged with leading a Laboring Peasant Party and plotting with foreign interventionists and kulaks to restore capitalism. Stalin eventually abandoned the plan for a show trial of the Laboring Peasant Party, but testimony from the agricultural specialists figured importantly at the two show trials that did come off: the trial of the Industrial Party at the end of 1930 and the Menshevik trial in March 1931. The first of these trials continued the story of sabotage by technical personnel developed at the Shakhty trial. At the trial of the “Union Bureau” of the Menshevik Party, Groman, the celebrated memoirist Nikolai Sukhanov, and a dozen economists and academics with past ties to the Mensheviks were convicted of wrecking and plotting with the Industrial Party, the Laboring Peasant Party, and foreign espionage services to overthrow Soviet power and restore capitalism.141 There was much that recalled the SR trial in these cases. Krylenko reprised his role as chief prosecutor, and Iakov Agranov again played a leading role in coercing testimony from the prospective defendants and witnesses for the OGPU (the successor to the GPU). The trials again took place in the former Noble Assembly in Moscow. Inside the courtroom, the staging of the trials as political theater drew on the experience of the SR trial, as did the public campaign outside the courtroom.142 A nefarious conspiracy to overthrow Soviet power and restore capitalism again linked non-Bolshevik radicals, bourgeois counterrevolutionaries, and foreign interventionists. Portfolios were even reported

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to have been assigned in the prospective anti-Soviet government. The Menshevik trial in particular resembled the SR trial in its effort to unmask the former Mensheviks as the front men for counterrevolutionary conspiracy, and it remedied the chief defect of the SR trial by forcing all the accused to plead guilty and denying them a platform from which to defend their self-image as socialists and revolutionaries.143 All of these trials centered on non-Bolshevik specialists in Soviet service, and although that focus was new, the SR trial had also reflected Bolsheviks’ unease about the class makeup and political reliability of their own bureaucracy. It too had served as a “warning to the wavering” inside the Soviet apparatus, as the historian André Liebich has pithily characterized the Menshevik trial.144 Nevertheless, there were several important differences between the SR trial and the Shakhty, Industrial Party, and Menshevik trials. The chief practical manifestation of the conspiracy uncovered at the 1928–31 trials was wrecking, or economic sabotage. Wrecking had no precedent at the SR trial but would remain central to the Bolshevik discourse on enemies throughout the 1930s.145 In addition, it should not be forgotten that the organizations that were ostensibly party to the conspiracy uncovered in the trials of 1928 through 1931 were in fact wholly fictitious. The veteran SRs Sergei Maslov and Andrei Argunov did found a Laboring Peasant Party in Prague in 1928, but it had no presence in Soviet Russia, and Kondrat’ev and his associates had nothing to do with it.146 There was no “Union Bureau” of the Menshevik party and no Industrial Party. To borrow a phrase from Alexander Herzen, the founding figure of Russian socialism, these nonexistent organizations had pearls and diamonds but only owned their wealth in effigy!147 The PSR, by contrast, had indubitably existed, whatever the many fictions of the 1922 trial. As the émigré Menshevik organ Sotsialisticheskii vestnik pointed out, the trials of the late 1920s and early 1930s thus displayed the Soviet government in a curious light, as a “government that would seek to fabricate and exaggerate news of plots against itself.”148 Of course, this feature of Soviet public life only became odder and the fictions more fantastic as the 1930s unfolded. The satirist Vladimir Voinovich later marveled at the boundless creativity of the Soviet security organs: “How many stories have come from their fingertips! And what stories!”149 From the elaborate apology rituals at the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934 through the climactic show trial of Bukharin and others in March 1938, Soviet citizens were spectators to a parade of ever more grotesque confessions on the part of the former oppositionists. It can be helpful to think of the performances enacted in these apology rituals and show trials of the late 1930s as definitional ceremonies, particularly as the redressive effects of apology rituals began to dry up after 1935. The anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff has argued that people frequently define themselves by dramatizing and performing stories about themselves, stories

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for which they are themselves in fact the first and most important audience. “Self-definition,” she suggests, “is made possible by means of such showings.”150 Such definitional ceremonies often advance claims that both participants and viewers know to be manifestly untrue. Self-conscious awareness of the fact that their claims about themselves and their world involve invention and dissimulation nevertheless coexists with, and proves no obstacle to, genuine belief in the stories being performed. It is precisely the performance, in fact, that makes the false and patently absurd claims that abound in such ceremonies believable and even convincing. Indeed, performance not only persuades the participants in such ceremonies that their self-conception and understanding of the world are true, it transforms reality by bringing it into conformity with their own imagination.151 The story narrated in apology rituals and in the great show trials of the late 1930s articulated a self-understanding and view of the world that most leading Bolsheviks deeply believed to be true. The specter of “renegades of socialism” had haunted the Bolshevik imagination since 1918. The shadows of the Czechoslovak overthrow of Soviet power, the first “kulak rebellions,” and Fania Kaplan’s attack on Lenin lived on through the crisis of 1921 and the struggle with the Bolshevik opposition in the 1920s. Many years later they could still be discerned in Nikolai Yezhov’s 1935 claim that Kamenev and Zinoviev were “gambling on intervention and terror” in their struggle against Stalin and the party majority. So too do they make sense of Stalin’s 1938 observation to Andrei Vyshinskii, the chief prosecutor at the trials, that the evidence of the trials showed that Lenin had been right in 1921 when he observed that “all those who cling to errors after the revolution sooner or later end up in the camp of the enemy, among white guards and imperialists.”152 The civil war had shaped corrosive Bolshevik anxieties about the prospects for proletarian power in a backward, peasant country and, for most Bolsheviks, had validated Lenin’s insight that without “the proper political approach,” the party’s hegemony would rupture and the “fall of the dictatorship of the proletariat” would ensue in short order. As Lenin said of a minor deviation in the Communist International, “the exaggeration was only slight; but the danger of it was enormous.”153 Collectivization remade the social context that had historically fueled Bolshevik fears, but the party leadership had mobilized the outlook that had been shaped by the civil war for the collectivization campaign. That outlook, although it was hardly uncontested within the party, continued to structure Bolsheviks’ sense of self and party after collectivization, and it was widely understood among Bolsheviks as key to the party’s victories in both the civil war and Stalin’s “Great Turn.” In the aftermath of the collectivization campaign and of the Kirov murder in December 1934, Bolsheviks more than ever believed that relentless, self-critical vigilance and the unmasking of renegades, deviationists,

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and hidden enemies were central to their own revolutionary heroism and to their party’s world-historical significance. As a provincial party organization concerned about “opportunistic complacency” put it in 1935: “It is not for Bolsheviks to rest on their laurels with their mouths wide open.”154 Among the leadership’s most important challenges after 1935 was to find ways to push forward the task of maintaining a semblance of that Bolshevik outlook and sense of self that had first taken shape in the very different circumstances of the civil war. The great show trials of 1936, 1937, and 1938 refashioned the Bolsheviks’ world in accordance with their own self-image and imagination. Replacing Krylenko, who was himself unmasked as an enemy and shot, the chief prosecutor Andrei Vyshinskii walked first Kamenev and Zinoviev, then Radek and Piatakov, and finally Bukharin, Rykov, Krestinskii, and other leading Bolsheviks through detailed confessions of their supposed crimes. Hidden enemies, foreign interventionists, kulak conspirators, and renegade terrorists materialized in full verisimilitude. The arrest of more than twenty-five thousand members of an ostensible underground “SR center” in 1937 lent substance to the notion of a vast conspiracy stretching from the civil war renegades through the left and right oppositionists in the 1930s.155 The master plot narrated in the trials linked these enemies and coordinated Soviet reality with the Bolsheviks’ imagination and their experience in the civil war. As Zinoviev confessed of the Bolshevik opposition, with more truth than might be readily apparent: “We filled the place of the Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, and white guards who could not come out openly in our country. We took the place of the terrorism of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Not the prerevolutionary terrorism which was directed against the autocracy, but the Right Socialist Revolutionaries’ terrorism of the civil war, when the SRs shot at Lenin.”156 At his trial eighteen months later, Bukharin likewise reached back to the struggle against the PSR in 1918. Translating the language of political responsibility that had characterized his repeated apologies into the language of criminal intent and practice, Bukharin confessed: “I admit that I am guilty of treason to the socialist fatherland, the most heinous of possible crimes, of the organization of kulak uprisings, of preparations for terrorist acts, and of belonging to an underground anti-Soviet organization.”157 Fittingly, testimony from the executed Semenov was brought forth to link Bukharin to the August 1918 assassination attempt, now recast as the first episode of a grand, twenty-year plot featuring all the renegades, from the SRs and Left SRs to the Trotskyists and Bukharinites.158 By remaking Soviet reality to align it with the Bolshevik imagination, the great show trials sought to renew an authentically Bolshevik subjectivity. Bolsheviks themselves were the first and most important audience for these

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performances. The trials illuminated the “bottomless pit of renegadism” that Lenin had depicted in the Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky and showed Bolsheviks that its gaping dangers were no less real now than they had been in 1918.159 Vyshinskii explained that historically the “most bitter enemies of socialism always masked themselves with the name of socialism” and added that although the defendants in the Moscow trials “called themselves socialists . . . we all know that there have never been more consistent, more cruel, and brutal enemies of socialism than the Mensheviks and ‘Socialist Revolutionaries.’”160 Vyshinskii’s assertion that there could be no middle ground between the general line of the Communist Party and a “foul-smelling heap of human garbage” graphically underscored that mapping politics in terms of the “either/ or” binaries of the civil war had no less importance now, and no less power, than in the past.161 The confessions of the accused showed that Bolshevik vigilance and what Bukharin termed the “objective grandeur of socialist construction” still doomed the imaginary renegades to crushing defeat. As Bukharin concluded at his trial, perceptively articulating a lesson of the struggle against past renegades and explicating his own fate: “The might of the proletarian state found its expression not only in the fact that it smashed the counterrevolutionary bands, but also in the fact that it disintegrated its enemies from within, that it disorganized the will of its enemies.”162 Experiences have beginnings and ends, but they are not closed. They open backward onto the past, through the cultural concepts and schemes that order them, and unfold toward the present, where their meanings are reshaped as they are expressed and interpreted in new contexts. It would be silly to link the show trials of the 1930s to the SR trial and to the Bolshevik experience in the civil war without recognizing that the later trials were performed in a new environment, in light of intervening, contingent events and experiences, and with radically new effects. The show trials, like the Great Terror itself, were neither inevitable nor simply a coda to the civil war. And it would likewise be wrong to assert that prerevolutionary experiences were of no importance in shaping Bolshevik political culture. From his earliest writings and revolutionary activities, Lenin had laid great stress on combating the danger posed to revolutionary consciousness and the revolution itself by what he defined as schismatic renegades, from the populists and economists of the turn of the century to the defensists and Kautskyites of the World War and the revolution. But 1918 was the Bolsheviks’ collective initiation into power. The dramatic crisis of the summer and its resolution—the party’s monopolization of revolutionary discourse, its imposition of an authoritative vision of the civil war, and its consequent triumph over the unmasked renegades—were a formative experience. Over the next several years the Bolsheviks disintegrated their most dangerous enemies “from within” and rewrote the unhappy ending of

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European revolution, which had eluded the Jacobins and the Communards before them. Groups are shaped by many experiences, and individual subjectivity is continuously in production, but the frontlines of the struggle against the PSR and other “renegades of socialism” were etched more sharply in the Bolshevik imagination than any other civil war front, and they left the deepest, most enduring traces in party culture.

NOTES

Abbreviations Used in the Notes AKP Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda (Komuch) CB Central Bureau CC Central Committee CEC All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) CPC Council of People’s Commissars DN Delo naroda EC Executive Committee GARF Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii / State Archive of the Russian Federation GPU State Political Administration HIA Hoover Institution Archives IISG Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis / International Institute of Social History NKVD People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs NZh Novaia zhizn’ PEC Provincial Executive Committee PLSR Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries PSR Party of Socialist Revolutionaries RGASPI Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii / Russian State Archive of Social-Political History RGVA Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv / Russian State Military Archive RKP Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) SR Socialist Revolutionary TsGASP Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga / Central State Archive of St. Petersburg TsGAIPD Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko-politicheskikh dokumentov / Central State Archive of Historical-Political Documents VK Vestnik komiteta chlenov Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia 279 

280 / NOTES TO PAGES xi–xiii

Introduction 1. Robert C. Tucker and Stephen F. Cohen, eds., The Great Purge Trial (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1965), 657. For the inadequacies of the published transcript of this trial, however, see Wladislaw Hedeler, “Ezhov’s Scenario for the Great Terror and the Falsified Record of the Third Moscow Trial,” in Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott, eds., Stalin’s Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 43–49. 2. The Soviet Central Executive Committee attributed Fania Kaplan’s August 30, 1918, assassination attempt against Lenin to the SRs and described them as “renegades of socialism.” See Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, vol. 3 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1964), 267. 3. J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999); Julie Cassiday, The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000); Igal Halfin, Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003); Elizabeth A. Wood, Performing Justice: Agitation Trials in Early Soviet Russia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005); Igal Halfin, Intimate Enemies: Demonizing the Bolshevik Opposition, 1918–1928 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007); and Wendy Z. Goldman, Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin: The Social Dynamics of Repression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 4. Manfred Hildermeier, Die sozialrevoliutsionäre Partei Russlands (Cologne: Böhlau, 1978); M. I. Leonov, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov v 1905–1907 gg. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1997); and K. N. Morozov, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov v 1907–1914 gg. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998). 5. Michael Melancon, “‘Stormy Petrels’: The Socialist Revolutionaries in Russia’s Labor Organizations, 1905–1914,” Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies 703 (1988): 1–61; and Christopher Rice, Russian Workers and the Socialist-Revolutionary Party through the Revolution of 1905–1907 (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988). 6. For succinct statements of Chernov’s understanding of the Russian Revolution on either side of the 1917 divide, see his comments at the party conference of 1908 and the Fourth Party Congress in December 1917: Manfred Hildermeier, ed., Protokoly pervoi obshchepartiinoi konferentsii Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, avgust 1908 (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus International Publications, 1984), 91–100; and Kratkii otchet o rabotakh chetvertogo s’ezda Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov (26 noiabria–5 dekabria 1917) (Petrograd: Tsentral’noe izdatel’stvo PSR, 1918), 22–28. 7. For the SR understanding of socialization, and the changing place of the commune in SR thinking, see (in addition to the works by Hildermeier, Leonov, and Morozov) Hannu Immonen, The Agrarian Program of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1900–1914 (Helsinki: SHS, 1988); and E. A. Morokhovets, Agrarnye programmy rossiiskikh politicheskikh partii v 1917 godu (Leningrad: Priboi, 1929), 73–116. 8. In addition to the works cited earlier, see R. A. Gorodnitskii, Boevaia organizatsiia Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov (1901–1911 gg.) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998); and Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

NOTES TO PAGES xiii–xvi / 281

9. Boris Savinkov, Izbrannoe (Moscow: Politizdat, 1990), 46. 10. Morozov, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov v 1907–1914, 484–95. 11. Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 22–23. 12. William G. Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution: The Constitutional Democratic Party, 1917–1921 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974). 13. Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), 134. See also Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 12–15. 14. I borrow the phrase “ideological labor,” which I use throughout this book, from Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Becoming National: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 7–8. 15. Important work to bring attention to the socialist opposition after October was done by Vladimir N. Brovkin in the 1980s and 1990s. See Brovkin’s The Mensheviks after October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987) and Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 16. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “The Civil War as a Formative Experience,” in Abbot Gleason, Peter Kenez, and Richard Stites, eds., Bolshevik Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 47–76. The pioneering recent effort to situate the revolutionary upheavals of 1917 and the formation of the Soviet state in the contexts of the World War and the civil war is Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). On the central importance of 1918 in the formation of Bolshevik institutions in Petrograd, see Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 17. An SR imprisoned in 1918 reported that his Cheka interrogator appeared not to recognize the name “Party of Socialist Revolutionaries,” having heard only of “right SRs.” See Cheka: Materialy po deiatel’nosti chrezvychainykh komissii (Berlin: Izdatel’stvo Tsentral’nogo biuro PSR, 1922), 79. 18. Vladimir N. Brovkin, ed., The Bolsheviks in Russian Society: The Revolution and the Civil Wars (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), 1–21; and Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution, 5. 19. Contemporaries, especially Bolsheviks, used “Soviet power” variously to refer to the Soviet government, the emerging institutional structure of the Soviet state, and the principle that sovereign power resided in the soviets. From the outset it was inadequate and misleading as a description of the Soviet state, but I use the term frequently in this book, both because it serves as a convenient shorthand and because of my effort to stick as closely as possible to the usage of contemporaries. 20. For many years the best books on the PSR in 1917 have been the two books by Oliver H. Radkey: The Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism: Promise and Default of the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries, February to October 1917 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958) and The Sickle under the Hammer: The Russian Socialist Revolutionaries in the Early Months of Soviet Rule (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963). The

282 / NOTES TO PAGES xvi–xix

standard Soviet work on the PSR, now of little interest, was K. V. Gusev, Partiia eserov: Ot melkoburzhuaznogo revoliutsionarizma k kontrrevoliutsii (Moscow: Mysl’, 1975). 21. For a more optimistic assessment of the state of SR organizations on the eve of (and during) the February Revolution, see Michael Melancon, The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Russian Anti–War Movement, 1914–1917 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990). 22. Kh. M. Astrakhan, Bol’sheviki i ikh politicheskie protivniki v 1917 godu: Iz istorii politicheskikh partii mezhdu dvum’ia revoliutsiiami (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1973), 233–40; and L. G. Protasov, “K istorii bor’by eserov za armiiu v 1917 g.,” Neproletarskie partii Rossii v trekh revoliutsiiakh (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), 171. 23. Lutz Häfner, Die Partei der Linken Sozial–Revoliutionäre in der Russischen Revolution von 1917/1918 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1994). 24. The Muscovite core of the right-center comprised Gots, his relatives the Gavronskiis, Il’ia Fondaminskii (who married Amal’ia Gavronskaia), and Mark Vishniak. All were assimilated Moscow Jews who had been friends since childhood. Gots and Fondaminskii also had older brothers who had played important roles in the party’s history. Gots, Fondaminskii, Zenzinov, and Avksent’ev studied together in Germany. The ties binding the members of this group lasted from the end of the nineteenth century through the postrevolutionary emigration, where Avksent’ev, Vishniak, V. V. Rudnev, and A. I. Gukovskii edited Sovremennye zapiski, the leading émigré “thick journal.” See V. M. Zenzinov, Perezhitoe (New York: Izdatel’stvo imeni Chekhova, 1953), 73–107; V. M. Zenzinov, “Pamiati I. I. Fondaminskogo-Bunakova,” Novyi zhurnal 18 (1948): 299–316; M. V. Vishniak, Dan’ proshlomu (New York: Izdatel’stvo imeni Chekhova, 1954), 34–84; and M. V. Vishniak, Sovremennye zapiski: Vospominaniia redaktora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957). Chernov’s problematic relations with the group may be chronicled in his Pered burei (New York: Izdatel’stvo imeni Chekhova, 1953), 192–95; “N. D. Avksent’ev v molodosti,” Novyi zhurnal 5 (1943): 344–52; and “Vospominaniia ob Abrame Gotse,” HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 382, folder 5. The nickname “knowledge rats” (gryzuni nauki) was coined by Mikhail Gots, Abram’s older brother, whose death in 1907 deprived the party of the one of its most important and respected leaders. 25. Morozov, Partiia sotsialistov-revolutionsionerov v 1907–1914, 149. 26. For evidence of the leftist views of the SR rank and file, see Michael Melancon, “The Syntax of Soviet Power: The Resolutions of Local Soviets and Other Institutions, March–October 1917,” Russian Review 52 (1993): 486–505. 27. This period is covered in detail in Radkey, Sickle under the Hammer, 18–94. 28. Kratkii otchet o rabotakh chetvertogo s’ezda PSR, 152; and V. M. Chernov, “Izbiratel’naia statistika,” HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 8, folder 5. 29. M. V. Vishniak, Vserossiiskoe uchreditel’noe sobranie (Paris: Sovremennye zapiski, 1932), 132. The composition of the bureau reflected the right-wing cast of the party delegation to the Constituent Assembly. The explanation for this lies in the procedures by which the party prepared its electoral lists, which significantly overrepresented the right wing of the party relative to its actual strength in the party. See Radkey, Sickle under the Hammer, 283–91. 30. On this and what follows below, see the insightful discussion in Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution, 113–42.

NOTES TO PAGES xix–5 / 283

31. William G. Rosenberg, “The Democratization of Russia’s Railroads in 1917,” American Historical Review 86 (1981): 983–1,008.

Chapter 1: Dilemmas of Civil War 1. Compare “Grazhdanskaia voina,” Petrogradskoe ekho, 18 February 1918, p. 1, and “Na russko-russkom fronte,” Petrogradskoe ekho, 20 February 1918, p. 1. Many other newspapers in the capitals and provinces carried regular updates under the heading “Civil War.” For the capital see the regular updates beginning in mid-January in the nonparty Sovremennoe slovo; for provincial examples, see “Grazhdanskaia voina,” Volzhskoe slovo, 17 February 1918, p. 1; “Grazhdanskaia voina,” Volzhskoe slovo, 20 February 1918, p. 1; “Grazhdanskaia voina,” Nash krai, 31 March 1918, p. 2; and “Grazhdanskaia voina,” Nash krai, 3 April 1918, p. 2. 2. For characteristic SR fear of Bonapartism, see “Piatoe ianvaria,” Delo naroda (henceforth DN), 5 January 1918, p. 1; “V Petrogradskom Sovete,” Novaia zhizn’ (henceforth NZh), 24 January 1918, p. 2; and Marc Jansen, ed., Partiia sotsialistovrevoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda: Dokumenty iz arkhiva PSR (Amsterdam: Stichting Beheer IISG, 1989), 33–35. 3. For representative examples of the SR use of the term “democracy” in early 1918, see “Umerlo li Uchreditel’noe sobranie,” DN, 24 January 1918, p. 1; “V Petrogradskom sovete: deklaratsiia fraktsii s.-r.,” DN, 24 January 1918, p. 2; and Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 20. For later uses by leading figures on the left and right wings of the party that show how central the term remained in the party, and how contested it became, see K. S. Burevoi et al., K prekrashcheniiu voiny vnutri demokratii (Ufimskie peregovory i nasha pozitsiia) (Moscow: Tipografiia Moskovskogo okruzhnogo komissariata po voennym delam, 1919), and V. I. Lebedev, Bor’ba russkoi demokratii protiv bol’shevikov (New York: Narodopravstvo, 1919). On “democracy” in 1917, see B. I. Kolonitskii, “‘Democracy’ in the Political Consciousness of the Russian Revolution,” Slavic Review 57 (1998): 95–106. 4. The theses have been published in Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 53–119. 5. Ibid., 50. 6. For Chernov’s conception of the revolution before and after 1917, see his succinct presentations at the party conference of 1908 and at the Fourth Party Congress: Manfred Hildermeier, ed., Protokoly pervoi obshchepartiinoi konferentsii Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, avgust 1908 (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus International Publications, 1984), 91–100; and Kratkii otchet o rabotakh chetvertogo s’ezda Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov (26 noiabria–5 dekabria 1917) (Petrograd: Tsentral’noe izdatel’stvo PSR, 1918), 22–28. For insight into his thinking in early 1918, see Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 68–73, and V. M. Chernov, “Okarikaturennyi sotsializm,” DN, 24 January 1918, p. 1. 7. Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 41. 8. Ibid., 55. See also “Ikh i nashi puti,” DN, 12 January 1918, p. 1; and “Umerlo li Uchreditel’noe sobranie?” DN, 24 January 1918, p. 1 9. The best synopsis of the views of the right wing of the PSR may be found in Narodovlastie: Sbornik statei chlenov Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia fraktsii sotsialistovrevoliutsionerov, vol. 1 (Moscow: Lambert, 1918). See also M. V. Vishniak, Vseros-

284 / NOTES TO PAGES 6–8

siiskoe uchreditel’noe sobranie (Paris: Sovremennye zapiski, 1932), 131–32, and, for a critique from the left wing of the party, M. L. Kogan-Bernshtein, “Pospeshite!” in Iu. Podbel’skii et al., eds., Matvei L’vovich Kogan-Bernshtein: Sbornik statei (Moscow: Narod, n.d.), 103–4. 10. A. A. Minin, “Natsional’noe i sotsial’noe,” Narodovlastie 1: 42–43. 11. Ibid., 44. 12. Untitled manuscript by V. Ia. Gurevich, GARF f. R-5910, op. 1, d. 441, l. 40–43. See also L. Krol’, Za tri goda: Vospominaniia, vpechatleniia i vstrechi (Vladivostok: Svobodnaia Rossiia, 1921), 13. 13. Mart’ianov related the history of the organization to E. E. Lazarev: see Lazarev’s diary, GARF f. R-5824, op. 1, d. 3, l. 176–83. Slightly different accounts may be found in B. F. Sokolov, “Zashchita Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia,” Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii 13 (1924): 46–48; and Boris Sokoloff [B. F. Sokolov], The White Nights: Pages from a Russian Doctor’s Notebook (New York: Devin-Adair, 1956), 139–53. For the Bolshevik investigation and recollections of one of the soldiers who penetrated Smol’nyi, see V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, Tri pokusheniia na V. I. Lenina (Moscow: Federatsiia, 1930), 48–78. See also Richard Abraham, Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 333; Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 48; interrogation of N. N. Ivanov, 8 April 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 347, l. 6; and interrogation of S. E. Kononov, 14 March 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 114. In a letter to M. M. Shneerov on 24 June 1952, V. I. Lebedev improbably claimed that the 1 January attempt had been approved by the Central Committee: see HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 12, folder 8, p. 2. 14. “Novyi triuk,” DN, 3 January 1918, p. 1; N. S. Rusanov, “Svoevremennyi vystrel,” DN, 3 January 1918, p. 1; the Central Committee declaration is printed in the same issue, p. 3. 15. Testimony of Ivanov, 14 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 368, l. 65; testimony of Timofeev, 14 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 368, l. 80–81; testimony of Gendel’man, 14 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 368, l. 90; and V. M. Zenzinov, “Provokator Semenov (k predstoiaschim protsessam),” Novaia Rossiia 42–43 (1938): 9. 16. Testimony of Timofeev, 14 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 368, l. 81; testimony of Gots, 14 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 368, l. 98; testimony of Vedeniapin, 14 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 368, l. 89, 162–63; and testimony of Rakitnikov, 15 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 369, l. 140–42. 17. Ivanov testified at the SR trial that he supported terrorist acts: 14 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 368, l. 58; in an interrogation prior to the trial, he stated that a small number of other Central Committee members favored terrorist methods of struggle: GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 347, l. 4. Unreliable testimony on this point came from the former Central Committee member D. S. Rozenblium (Firsov), who stated that Chernov told him in May or June 1918 that he favored terrorist attacks on Soviet leaders: interrogations of 23 and 30 March 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 191, 194. N. V. Sviatitskii also claimed that Chernov, Gots, Zenzinov, and Timofeev all supported terrorism: interrogation of 19 March 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 168. For rank-and-file SR offers to assassinate Lenin, see the testimony of Timofeev, 15 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 369, l. 9, 17–18. For additional evidence of terrorist sentiment in the party, see the testimony of E. A. Ivanova, 15 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005,

NOTES TO PAGES 8–12 / 285

op. 1A, d. 369, l. 32; interrogation of Ia. T. Dedusenko, 8 April 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 347, l. 10; Zenzinov, “Provokator Semenov,” 9–10; and B. Rabinovich, “Kak eto bylo,” Golos Rossii, 17 March 1922, p. 3. 18. Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 65–69. 19. L. V. Konopleva, “Doklad o voennoi i boevoi rabote PSR,” GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 75–77; “Pokazaniia Lidii Konoplevoi,” Pravda, 28 February 1922, p. 1; interrogations of P. T. Efimov, 12 and 31 March 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 99–100; Rabinovich, “Kak eto bylo,” p. 3; and testimony of Timofeev, 15 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 369, l. 1–9. 20. For illuminating analyses from different perspectives, see Andrzej Walicki, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Utopia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 269–397; and Carmen Sirianni, Workers’ Control and Socialist Democracy: The Soviet Experience (London: Verso Books, 1982), 245–88. 21. For the SR walkout from of the Second All-Russian Congress of Peasants’ Soviets in December, see Oliver H. Radkey, The Sickle under the Hammer: The Russian Socialist Revolutionaries in the Early Months of Soviet Rule (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 226–49. 22. Lutz Häfner, Die Partei der Linken Sozial-Revolutionäre in der Russischen Revolution von 1917–1918 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1994), 301–5, 457–535. For an account of land redistribution and the role of the Soviet state in the countryside, see Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 136–62. 23. See the reports on local Left SR organizations at the Second Congress of the PLSR in April: V. V. Shelokhaev, ed., Partiia levykh sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: Dokumenty i materialy, vol. 1, compiled by Ia. V. Leont’ev (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), 242–314. See also Häfner, Partei der Linken Sozial-Revolutionäre, 139–47, 438–43. 24. For a detailed account of the shootings, see Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 105–10. 25. “Piatoe ianvaria,” DN, 5 January 1918, p. 1. 26. Ibid. 27. “Rabochim i soldatam Petrograda,” DN, 7 January 1918, p. 1. The oprichnina was the private realm established by Ivan IV, traditionally associated with the terror of his reign. Here the oprichnina and oprichniki represent the security forces of the Old Regime. A. D. Protopopov was the last minister of internal affairs under the Old Regime. General S. S. Khabalov was the military commander of Petrograd during the February Revolution. 28. “Rasstrel manifestatsii 5-go ianvaria,” DN, 7 January 1918, p. 2. 29. “Starye priemy,” DN, 5 January 1918, p. 2; and “Nalety na organizatsii s.-r.,” DN, 17 January 1918, p. 4. See also “V eti dni,” DN, 12 January 1918, p. 4; “Nalety na organizatsii s.-r.,” DN, 18 January 1918, p. 3; E. Trupp, “Dva doprosa,” DN, 3 April 1918, p. 2; and “Po staromu retseptu,” DN, 28 April 1918, p. 3. 30. DN, 12 January 1918, p. 1; “Obukhovskii zavod,” Novyi luch, 13 January 1918, p. 2; and “Nalety na organizatsii s.-r.,” DN, 17 January 1918, p. 4. The Smol’nyi Institute was

286 / NOTES TO PAGES 12–16

the seat of the Council of Peoples’ Commissars. 31. Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1990), 552. 32. N. N. Sukhanov, Zapiski o revoliutsii, vol. 1 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1991), 312–13. 33. “Pokhorony zhertv 5-go ianvaria 1918,” Petrogradskoe ekho, 10 January 1918, pp. 1–2; “9-oe ianvaria,” Sovremennoe slovo, 11 January 1918, p. 2; “Pokhorony zhertv 5 ianvaria,” NZh, 11 January 1918, p. 2; and “Pokhorony zhertv 5-go ianvaria,” Novyi luch, 12 January 1918, p. 1. 34. Pipes, Russian Revolution, 485. 35. Pravda, 6 January 1918, p. 1. On enemies of the people, see also “Vragov naroda uznaiut po ikh zloradstvu,” Soldat, krest’ianin i rabochii, 3 January 1918, p. 2. 36. “V Petrogradskom Sovete: vopros o terrore,” NZh, 5 January 1918, p. 4; and “Nakanune,” DN, 4 January 1918, p. 3. 37. “Beregites’!” Pravda, 3 January 1918, p. 1; see also “Belyi terror,” Revoliutsionnyi vestnik, 5 January 1918, p. 1. 38. Pravda, 7 January 1918, p. 1; “Kto vinovat?,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 9 January 1918, p. 1; “Kto vinovat v strel’be 5-go ianvaria?,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 12 January 1918, p. 1; “Es-ery i bomby,” Krasnaia gazeta, 27 January 1918, p. 5; and O. N. Znamenskii, Vserossiiskoe uchreditel’noe sobranie: Istoriia sozyva i politicheskogo krusheniia (Leningrad: Nauka, 1976), 334. 39. “Obukhovskii zavod,” Krasnaia gazeta, 25 January 1918, p. 4. This was the debut issue of the new organ of the Petrograd Soviet, and it converted to the new-style Gregorian calendar (January 25 corresponds to January 12 in the Julian calendar). 40. “Obukhovskii zavod,” Novyi luch, 13 January 1918, p. 2. See also “Na zavodakh i fabrikakh,” NZh, 9 January 1918, p. 2; “Obukhovtsy protiv Smol’nogo,” DN, 17 January 1918, p. 2; compare the Bolshevik accounts in “Obukhovskii zavod,” Krasnaia gazeta, 25 January 1918, p. 4, and “Obukhovtsy i semiannikovtsy ne s oborontsami, a s sovetami,” Krasnaia gazeta, 29 January 1918, p. 4. 41. “Deviatoe ianvaria: na zavodakh i fabrikhakh,” NZh, 11 January 1918, p. 2; see also “Probuzhdenie proletariata,” DN, 12 January 1918, p. 3, and compare the Bolshevik account in “Protiv fal’shivikh rezoliutsii,” Krasnaia gazeta, 3 February 1918, p. 4. 42. For resolutions at other factories—including Erikson, Semiannikov, the Cartridge Plant, Old Lessner, Siemens-Schuckert, the Nevskii shipbuilding plant, the Aleksandrov railworks, and others—see in addition to the previously cited articles: “K razgonu Uchr. Sobraniia,” Petrogradskoe ekho, 8 January 1918, p. 3; V. Stroev, “Nachalo otrezvleniia,” NZh, 11 January 1918, p. 1; V. Zenzinov, “Rabochie protiv Smol’nogo,” DN, 14 January 1918, p. 1; and “Rabochaia zhizn’,” DN, 20 January 1918, p. 4. For Left SR skepticism, see S. Rudakov, “Rabochie protiv Smol’nogo,” Znamia truda, 19 January 1918, p. 1; for pro-Bolshevik resolutions, see “Rabochaia zhizn’,” Znamia truda, 20 January 1918, p. 4; and Krasnaia gazeta, 10 February 1918, p. 7. 43. “V Petrogradskom Sovete,” NZh, 24 January 1918, p. 2; DN, 21 January 1918, p. 3; Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 55, 68–71; and E. M. Timofeev, “Bor’ba za Uchreditel’noe sobranie i nasha taktika v Sovetakh,” Partiinye izvestiia 6 (1918): 12–13. 44. “Perevybory v Petrogradskii Sovet,” DN, 23 January 1918, p. 2. 45. “Perevybory na St. Lessner,” Novyi luch, 20 January 1918, p. 2; and “Perevybory v

NOTES TO PAGES 16–19 / 287

Petrogradskii Sovet,” DN, 19 January 1918, p. 2. 46. “Perevybory v Petrogradskii Sovet,” NZh, 25 January 1918, p. 3; “Rabochaia zhizn’,” DN, 21 January 1918, p. 4; and “Perevybory v Sovet,” Novyi luch, 19 January 1918, p. 3. 47. “Perevybory v Petrogradskii Sovet,” NZh, 25 January 1918, p. 3; and “Rabochaia zhizn’,” DN, 21 January 1918, p. 4. 48. “Perevybory v Petrogradskii Sovet,” NZh, 19 January 1918, p. 7. 49. “Rabochaia zhizn’,” NZh, 16 February 1918, p. 3; “Na fabrikhakh i zavodakh,” Nash vek, 29 March 1918, p. 3; and A. V., “V rabochikh kvartalakh,” Delo 4 (1918): 11. 50. For more on the collapse of the SR membership, see chapter 2 in this book. On the Bolsheviks, see L. M. Spirin, Klassy i partii v grazhdanskoi voine v Rossii (1917–1920 gg.) (Moscow: Mysl’, 1968), 124–25, and Robert Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution: A Study in Organizational Change, 1917–1923 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979), 69–71; the severe shortage of Bolshevik personnel is a central theme of Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power. On the Mensheviks, see Vladimir N. Brovkin, The Mensheviks after October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), 201; on the Left SRs, see Häfner, Partei der Linken Sozialrevolutionäre, 440. 51. The point is made, with different emphases, in William G. Rosenberg, “Russian Labor and Bolshevik Power after October,” Slavic Review 44 (1985): 228–29. 52. “Bespartiinaia rabochaia konferentsiia,” NZh, 20 March 1918, p. 3; “Sobranie fabrichno-zavodskikh upolnomochennykh,” Petrograkskoe ekho, 28 March 1918, p. 3; G. Ia. Aronson, Dvizhenie upolnomochennykh ot rabochikh fabrik i zavodov v 1918 godu (New York: Inter-University Project on the History of the Menshevik Movement, 1960), 5–6; M. S. Bernshtam, ed., Nezavisimoe rabochee dvizhenie v 1918 godu: Dokumenty i materialy (Paris: YMCA, 1981), 53–58, 66; and Leopold Haimson, ed., The Making of Three Russian Revolutionaries: Voices from the Menshevik Past (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 445–48. 53. V. Iu. Cherniaev et al., eds., Piterskie rabochie i ‘diktatura proletariata,’ oktiabr’ 1917–1929: Ekonomicheskie konflikty i politicheskii protest. Sbornik dokumentov (St. Petersburg: Russko-Baltiiskii informatsionnyi tsentr BLITS, 2000), 70. 54. “Sobranie fabrichno-zavodskikh upolnomochennykh,” Nash vek, 28 March 1918, p. 4; “Zasedanie Mezhduraionnogo sobraniia Biuro upolnomochennykh,” 5 April 1918, TsGA SPB f. 3390, op. 1, d. 14, l. 1–2; and “Rabochaia zhizn’,” Strana, 7 April 1918, p. 4. 55. Rosenberg, “Russian Labor and Bolshevik Power after October,” 228–32. 56. For the wartime background, see A. L. Sidorov, Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (Moscow: Nauka, 1973); for the economic crisis in 1917 and its role in the radicalization of Petrograd workers, see S. A. Smith, Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917–18 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 57. Smith, Red Petrograd, 244–45; and D. A. Kovalenko, Oboronnaia promyshlennost’ Sovetskoi Rossii v 1918–1920 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1970), 132–33. 58. V. Z. Drobizhev, A. K. Sokolov, and V. A. Ustinov, Rabochii klass Sovetskoi Rossii v pervyi god proletarskoi diktatury (Opyt strukturnogo analiza po materialam professional’noi perepisi 1918 g.) (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1975), 85–100. 59. David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers and the Fall of the Old Regime: From

288 / NOTES TO PAGES 19–24

the February Days to the July Days, 1917 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1983), 9–33; William G. Rosenberg and Diane P. Koenker, Strikes and Revolution in Russia, 1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 300–24; and William Husband, Revolution in the Factories: The Birth of the Soviet Textile Industry, 1917–1920 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 9. 60. David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power: From the July Days 1917 to July 1918 (New York: A&C Black, 1984), 381; “Rabochaia zhizn’,” Den’, 29 March 1918, p. 7; and Rosenberg, “Russian Labor and Bolshevik Power,” 231–32. 61. Diane P. Koenker, “Labor Relations in Socialist Russia: Class Values and Production Values in the Printers’ Union,” in Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class, Identity (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), 173. 62. V. V. Shelokhaev et al., eds., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: Dokumenty i materialy, 1900–1925 gg., vol. 3, part 2, compiled by N. D. Erofeev (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), 354; “XV Petrogradskaia konferentsiia PSR,” DN, 26 March 1918, p. 4; and “Partiinaia zhizn’,” DN, 28 March 1918, p. 4. 63. Rosenberg, “Russian Labor and Bolshevik Power,” 229. 64. G. Baturskii, “Sredi rabochikh,” Delo 3 (1918): 14. 65. Bernshtam, Nezavisimoe rabochee dvizhenie, 67. 66. The transcripts have been published in Bernshtam, Nezavisimoe rabochee dvizhenie, 65–90. They were originally issued in pamphlet form as Chrezvychainoe Sobranie Upolnomochennykh Fabrik i Zavodov g. Petrograda 1–2 (18 March 1918), a copy of which may be found in TsGA SPB f. 3390, op. 1, d. 17, l. 51–58. See also TsGA SPB f. 3390, op. 1, d. 13. Many additional documents related to the Assembly have been published in Cherniaev, Piterskie rabochie i ‘diktatura proletariata’, 55–156. On “hidden transcripts,” see James C. Scott’s influential Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990). 67. Bernshtam, Nezavisimoe rabochee dvizhenie, 72. 68. Ibid., 69, 71, 82–83. 69. Ibid., 68. Emphasis in the original. 70. Ibid., 73. 71. Ibid., 82. Emphasis in the original. 72. Ibid., 80–81; see also “V sotsialisticheskoi kommune,” DN, 26 March 1918, p. 2. 73. “Krizis Peterburgskikh Sovetov,” NZh, 23 March 1918, p. 3; “Rabochaia zhizn’,” DN, 26 March 1918, p. 4; “Na zavodakh,”Petrogradskoe ekho, 27 March 1918, p. 1; “Chrezvychainoe sobranie upolnomochennykh,” Nash vek, 11 April 1918, p. 3; “Izbienie na Patronnom zavode,” DN, 13 April 1918, p. 3; V. Volodarskii, “Eshche odno pis’mo rabochim Patronnogo zavoda,” Krasnaia gazeta, 13 April 1918, p. 3; and A. V., “V rabochikh kvartalakh,” Delo 4 (1918): 11. 74. “Rezoliutsiia o politicheskom terrore,” NZh, 29 March 1918, p. 2; and “Rabochaia zhizn’,” Strana, 18 April, 1918, p. 4. 75. William G. Rosenberg, “The Democratization of Russia’s Railroads in 1917,” American Historical Review 86 (1981): 984. 76. “V zashchitu klassovykh organizatsii,” NZh, 31 March 1918, p. 4. 77. N. Kuz’min, “Boites’ bezpartiinykh,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo soveta, 25 April

NOTES TO PAGES 24–28 / 289

1918, p. 2. 78. “Ot kogo byt’ nezavisimym?,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo soveta, 4 May 1918, p. 1. 79. I. Mgeladze, “Nezavisimost’ rabochikh organizatsii,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo soveta, 30 March 1918, p. 1. 80. V. I. Lenin, Sochineniia, 3rd ed., vol. 22 (Moscow: Partizdat, 1929), 210; see also ibid., 22: 187, 208–9, 232, 251–53. 81. “Grazhdanskaia voina i voina vneshniaia,” Pravda, 3 January 1918, p. 1. 82. For the ease with which Bolshevik propagandists used the Allies and the Germans interchangeably in the rhetorical and ideological construction of the anti-Bolshevik front, compare “Edinyi front kontrrevoliutsii,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo soveta, 12 April 1918, p. 1; “Soglashateli—v soiuze s chuzhezemnymi imperialistami,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo soveta, 24 April 1918, p. 1; “Kievskaia repetitsiia,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 10 May 1918, p. 1; Iu. Steklov, “Ukrainskii urok: poidet li vprok?,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 11 May 1918, p. 1; and “Maski sorvany,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 16 June 1918, p. 1. 83. My thinking here about symbolic credit and the social power of language has been suggested by Bourdieu, In Other Words, 137–38. 84. See Husband, Revolution in the Factories, for the textile centers of the Central Industrial Region. On Moscow, see William J. Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918–1929 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 11–43. 85. Kopylov to CC RKP, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 82, l. 1. 86. Drobizhev, Rabochii klass Sovetskoi Rossii v pervyi god proletarskoi diktatury, 109. 87. “Podvigi krasnogvardeitsev na Kurskom vokzale,” Zemlia i volia (Tula), 17 January 1918, pp. 2–3; and Golos naroda (Tula), 16 January 1918, p. 2 88. Golos naroda (Tula), 20 January 1918, p. 4; Golos naroda (Tula), 21 January 1918, p. 3; and Golos naroda (Tula), 25 January 1918, p. 3. 89. “Ubiitsy rabochich,” Novyi luch, 19 January 1918, p. 3. 90. The Soviet government moved Russia from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar at the end of January 1918. January 31 was thus followed by February 14. 91. Uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Tul’skoi gubernii: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov: God 1918 (Tula: Tul’skoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1961), 62–65; Golos naroda (Tula), 17 February 1918, pp. 2–3; and Zemlia i volia (Tula), 19 February 1918, p. 1. Six people were killed in a procession the same day in Penza: chairman of Penza EC to CPC, 20 February 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 622, l. 2. One person was killed in Orel: chairman of Orel CPC to Sverdlov, RGASPI f. 71, op. 33, d. 205, l. 1. 92. “Demonstratsiia 15-go fevralia,” Revoliutsionnyi vestnik, 20 February 1918, p. 2; and “Vsemu naseleniiu g. Tuly,” Zemlia i volia (Tula), 21 February 1918, pp. 1–2. 93. Kopylov to CC RKP, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 82, l. 1; Uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Tul’skoi gubernii, 67; and “Plenarnoe zasedanie Tul’skogo Soveta,” Revoliutsionnyi vestnik, 11 April 1918, p. 4. 94. “Rabochaia konferentsiia g. Tuly,” Novyi narodnyi golos, 5 March 1918, p. 3; G. Baturskii, “Sredi rabochikh,” Delo 2 (1918): 16; “Kto oni?” Revoliutsionnyi vestnik, 8 March 1918, p. 1; and Uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Tul’skoi gubernii, 393. 95. G. Erlich, “My trebuem sozyva plenuma Soveta!,” Novyi narodnyi golos, 10

290 / NOTES TO PAGES 28–30

March 1918, p. 2; Novyi narodnyi golos, 28 March 1918, p. 2, and Novyi narodnyi golos, 3 April 1918, p. 3; and “Tula: Rabochaia konferentsiia,” Novaia zaria 1 (1918): 46. 96. Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 137. 97. “Oni reshili,” Revoliutsionnyi vestnik, 7 April 1918, p. 1. The Ukrainian references are to an anti-Bolshevik uprising in Odessa on January 15–16 and to the disarmament of Ukrainian nationalist forces in Nikolaev later in the month. In Tiflis the Georgian Mensheviks disbanded a pro-Bolshevik meeting under fire in February. 98. For the SR role in Sormovo in 1917, see Sarah Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 80–83. 99. Zhizn’, 9 January 1918, p. 3; Narod (Nizhnii Novgorod), 13 January 1918, p. 3; “V zashchitu U. S.,” Novyi luch, 20 January 1918, p. 3; protocols of Sormovo factory meetings, January 1918, RGASPI f. 275, op. 1, d. 120, l. 1; “Zavodskaia zhizn’,” Krasnoe znamia, 17 January 1918, p. 4; and “Zavodskaia zhizn’,” Krasnoe znamia, 23 January 1918, p. 3. 100. Svobodnaia zhizn’, 19 February 1918, p. 4, and Svobodnaia zhizn’, 20 February 1918, p. 3. 101. G. Baturskii, “Sredi rabochikh,” Delo 2 (1918): 16. 102. Sergushev to CC RKP, 2 April 1918, RGASPI f. 60, op. 1, d. 53, l. 65. 103. “Sormovskaia zhizn’,” Raboche-krest’ianskii nizhegorodskii listok, 11 April 1918, p. 3; “Provintsial’naia khronika,” DN, 16 April 1918, p. 4; “Perevybory Soveta R. D. Sormovo, Nizh. gub.,” Vpered, 16 April 1918, p. 4; and I. Upovalov, “Kak my poterialy svobodu (Vospominaniia rabochego sotsial-demokrata),” Zaria 2 (1923): 52. 104. “Sormovskaia zhizn’,” Raboche-krest’ianskii nizhegorodskii listok, 21 April 1918, p. 4. 105. For the background to the wage conflict, see “Sormovskaia zhizn’,” Rabochekrest’ianskii nizhegorodskii listok, 12 April 1918, p. 3. 106. “Protokol ekstrennogo zasedaniia Nizhegor. kom. RKP(b),” 15 May 1918, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 50, l. 21. 107. “Obshchee polozhenie del v Nizhegor. org. RKP(b),” RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 12. 108. Raskol’nikov to CPC, 21 May 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 642, l. 1; and “Doklad o rabochikh volneniiakh v Sormove,” NZh, 24 May 1918, p. 3. 109. This material forms the basis of the account of provincial Soviet elections in Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 126–60. 110. Protocol of Second Congress of PLSR, RGASPI f. 564, op. 1, d. 1, l. 108. 111. Protocol of Kaluga PEC, 25 March 1918, GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 160, l. 36. 112. Report to Moscow Regional Commissariat for military affairs, 30 April 1918, GARF f. 393, op. 3, d. 217, l. 119; and chairman of Riazan’ Military-Revolutionary Committee to CPC, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 625, l. 5. 113. Tver’ RKP committee to CC RKP, 8 April 1918, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 73, l. 14b; and secretary of Moscow Regional Bureau of CC to CC RKP, 18 April 1918, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 48, l. 1. 114. “Doklad VTsIK-u chlena komiteta V. Khristova o polozhenii Sovetskoi vlasti v Orlovskoi i Kalugskoi gub.,” 25 May 1918, GARF f. R-1235, op. 3, d. 242, l. 1. 115. “Doklad o poezdke v Briansk A. V. Perimova,” RGASPI f. 71, op. 33, d. 463, l. 21; and “Doklad VTsIK-u chlena komiteta V. Khristova o polozhenii Sovetskoi vlasti v

NOTES TO PAGES 30–32 / 291

Orlovskoi i Kalugskoi gub.,” GARF f. R-1235, op. 93, d. 242, l. 2. 116. Shelokhaev, Partiia levykh sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 1, 306. 117. Chairman of Saratov RKP Committee to CC RKP, 1 April 1918, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 64, l. 1. The results of the Saratov elections, like those in so many cities, are unclear. The Soviet press was silent on the results at the time, only publishing detailed figures of the supposed Bolshevik victory months later. See Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 50–51. 118. S. Gruzdev, “Bol’shevistskoe podpol’e v Samare v dni uchredilovshchiny,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 12/35 (1924): 178. See also Ia. Andreev, “Rabochie i Komitet chlenov U. S.,” Chetyre mesiatsa uchredilovshchiny: Istoriko-literaturnyi sbornik (Samara: N.p., 1919), 42–43; and P. D. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie, ‘Volzhskoe dvizhenie’ i obrazovanie Direktorii,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 9–10. 119. “V Sovetakh,” Soldat, krest’ianin i rabochii, 23 April 1918, p. 3; “Nakanune perevyborov Soveta,” Soldat, krest’ianin i rabochii, 1 June 1918, p. 1; and Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 153. The fall of Soviet power in June postponed the Samara soviet elections yet again. They took place only in August, under very different circumstances. 120. Vice-chairman of Tambov PEC to CPC, 1 April 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 581, l. 8; protocol of Tambov PEC, 12 April 1918, GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 377, l. 151; “Doklad emissarov NKVD iz goroda Petrograda Shanukhina, Shirokova, Butiugina, Novozhilova,” GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 378, l. 40; and Vasil’ev to People’s Commissar of Labor, 19 July 1918, GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 378, l. 134. 121. See the comments of Ranajit Guha on spontaneity and its conventional metaphors in his “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency,” in Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 45–47. 122. G. Lelevich, “Anarkho-maksimalistskaia revoliutsiia v Samare v mae 1918 g. (Oskolki vospominanii),” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 7 (1922): 141–50; commissar of Voronezh railroad junction to Lenin, 15 April 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 602, l. 1; and Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 54–62. 123. “Sobytiia v Novgorode,” Nash vek, 16 January 1918, p. 4; and Ustanovlenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Novgorodskoi gubernii (Novgorod: Novgorodskaia pravda, 1957), 96–101, 259. 124. Protocol of Novgorod PEC, 20 April 1918, GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 242, l. 5; Ustanovlenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Novgorodskoi gubernii, 103–4; and report on Novgorod province, TsGAIPD f. 1, op. 1, d. 225, l. 19. 125. Chairman of Kholm volost’ Soviet to CPC, 2 March 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 630, l. 1; and “Po Tsentral’noi Oblasti,” Novaia Zaria 1 (1918): 35. 126. Barbara Alpern Engel, “Not by Bread Alone: Subsistence Riots in Russia during World War I,” Journal of Modern History 69 (1997): 696–721; and Iu. I. Kir’ianov, “Massovye vystupleniia na pochve dorogovizny v Rossii (1914–fevral’ 1917 gg.),” Otechestvennaia istoriia 3 (1993): 3–18. 127. “Protokol s’ezda komissarov Ural’skoi oblasti,” 10–15 May 1918, GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 356, l. 228. 128. Morozov to CEC Praesidium, 30 May 1918, GARF f. R-1235, op. 3, d. 248, l. 11–12;

292 / NOTES TO PAGES 32–38

and Petrogradskoe ekho, 28 May 1918, p. 1. 129. “Voennoe polozhenie v Kolpine,” NZh, 11 May 1918, p. 3. 130. “Dvizhenie sredi rabochikh,” NZh, 11 May 1918, p. 3; “Golod i rabochie,” NZh, 12 May 1918, p. 3; “Golod i rabochie,” NZh, 14 May 1918, p. 3; “Rabochaia zhizn’,” Novyi den’, 14 May 1918, p. 4; “Posle kolpinskikh rasstrelov,” DN, 14 May 1918, p. 3; “Na zavodakh,” NZh, 15 May 1918, p. 3; and “Rabochaia zhizn’,” Novyi den’, 17 May 1918, p. 4. 131. “Pokhorony v Kolpino,” NZh, 15 May 1918, p. 2. 132. “Rabochaia zhizn’,” Novyi den’, 15 May 1918, p. 4; and “Pokhorony v Kolpino,” NZh, 15 May 1918, p. 2. 133. “Revoliutsiia v opasnosti,” Krasnaia gazeta, 12 May 1918, p. 1. 134. “Ot Petrogradskogo soveta rab. i krasnoarm. dep.,” Krasnaia gazeta, 14 May 1918, p. 1. 135. “Po povodu kolpinskikh sobytii,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo soveta, 14 May 1918, p. 2; “K sobytiiam v Kolpine,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo soveta, 15 May 1918, p. 2; and “Kolpinskii sovet—delegatam petrogradskikh rabochikh,” Krasnaia gazeta, 15 May 1918, p. 2. 136. “K sobytiiam v Kolpine,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo soveta, 15 May 1918, p. 2; and “Vsem rabochim, krasnoarmeitsam, matrosam, vsem chastnym grazhdanam,” Krasnaia gazeta, 17 May 1918, p. 1. 137. “Golod i rabochie,” NZh, 14 May 1918, p. 3. 138. “Rabochaia zhizn’,” DN, 14 May 1918, p. 4. 139. Gurevich manuscript, GARF f. R-5910, op. 1, d. 441, l. 5. 140. George Denike in Haimson, Making of Three Russian Revolutionaries, 446; see also Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 71–74. On the Menshevik rift with the PSR and subsequent Menshevik strategy, see Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 200–216. 141. See Chernov’s comments at the First Party Congress in 1905: V. V. Shelokhaev et al., eds., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: Dokumenty i materialy, 1900–1925, vol. 1, compiled by N. D. Erofeev (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996), 281–82. 142. Materials of Eighth Council of the PSR, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 5, l. 36–66. 143. For representative SR criticism of the Bolsheviks’ negotiations with the Germans and of the eventual treaty, see Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 57–63, 75–82. 144. A. R. Gots, “Mezhdunarodnaia politika,” DN, 23 April 1918, p. 1; and V. V. Sukhomlin, “Politicheskie zametki,” Volia Rossii 10–11 (1928): 163. 145. Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 75–76. 146. “Sobranie sotsialisticheskikh partii,” Vecherniaia zaria, 1 April 1918, p. 2; DN, 5 April 1918, p. 1; Krasnaia kniga VChK, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1989), vol. 2, 79–80; V. A. Miakotin, “Iz nedalekogo proshlogo,” Na chuzhoi storone 2 (1923): 180; and A. A. Argunov, Mezhdu dvumia bol’shevizmami (Paris: Union, 1919), 3–4. 147. The members of the Union of Regeneration agreed that the Constituent Assembly of January 5 was unlikely to be resurrected, but the recollections of the participants differ on whether it was formally abandoned in the union’s platform. The controversy began after the Ufa Conference in September 1918. The conference established a

NOTES TO PAGES 39–40 / 293

directory that would in the future be responsible to the old Constituent Assembly. From Ukraine, N. A. Astrov denounced the agreement as a violation of the union’s platform. His argument is republished in A. Iziumov, ed., “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” Russkii istoricheskii arkhiv 1 (1929): 273–75. Accounts by other Kadets and by Popular Socialists emphasize that the founders of the union agreed that the Constituent Assembly to be convened would be a new one. See Krasnaia kniga VChK, 2: 196; Miakotin, “Iz nedalekogo proshlogo,” 182; S. P. Mel’gunov, N. V. Chaikovskii v gody grazhdanskoi voiny (Materialy dlia istorii russkoi obshchestvennosti 1917–1925 gg.) (Paris: Rodnik/La Source, 1929), 51; and V. I. Ignat’ev, Nekotorye itogi chetyrekh let grazhdanskoi voiny (1917–1921) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1922). Ignat’ev’s pamphlet, produced in connection with the trial of the SR Central Committee in 1922, is not as reliable as his “Istoriia Soiuza vozrozhdeniia Rossii (istoricheskaia spravka),” Rus’, 11 November 1919, pp. 1–2. Boldyrev also stated at the Ufa Conference that until the formation of the Eastern front, the union had not recognized the Constituent Assembly of January 5: “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” 130; and V. G. Boldyrev, Direktoriia, Kolchak, interventy: Vospominaniia (Novo-Nikolaevsk: Sibkraiizdat, 1925), 25. The unanimity of non-SR opinion is persuasive, but the SRs active in the union denied that they had formally abandoned the Constituent Assembly of January 5. See Argunov, Mezhdu dvumia bol’shevizmami, 4–5; A. A. Argunov, “Omskie dni v 1918 godu,” Sibirskii arkhiv 1 (1935): 193; and Vishniak, Vserossiiskoe uchreditel’noe sobranie, 139. 148. Miakotin, “Iz nedalekogo proshlogo,” 180–94; Argunov, Mezhdu dvumia bol’shevizmami, 4–7; Krasnaia kniga VChK, 2:195–97; and Ignat’ev, “Istoriia Soiuza Vozrozhdeniia Rossii,” p. 2. 149. In his memoirs Noulens distanced himself from the anti-Bolshevik organizations, but Grenard conceded that the anti-Bolshevik organizations had coordinated their plans with the French representatives. Compare Joseph Noulens, Mon Ambassade en Russie Soviétique 1917–1919, vol. 2 (Paris: Plon, 1933), 109–10; and Fernand Grenard, La Révolution Russe (Paris: A. Colin, 1933), 315. The British agent Bruce Lockhart also recalled that Noulens made extravagant promises: R. H. B. Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent (London: Putnam, 1932), 291. On Noulens, see Michael J. Carley, Revolution and Intervention: The French Government and the Russian Civil War 1917–1919 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983), 58–59; Anne Hogenhuis-Seliverstoff, Les Relations Franco-Soviétiques, 1917–1924 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1981), 63–64; for British thinking and ties with the anti-Bolshevik underground, see Geoffrey Swain, The Origins of the Russian Civil War (London: Longman, 1996), 141–45, 160–67. 150. V. M. Zenzinov, “Bor’ba rossiiskoi demokratii protiv bol’shevikov v 1918 godu: Moskva—Samara—Ufa—Omsk,” HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 8, folder 24, pp. 28–29; S. P. Mel’gunov, Vospominaniia i dnevniki, vol. 2, part 3 (Paris: Les Editeurs réunis, 1964), 17; Argunov, Mezhdu dvum’ia bol’shevizmami, 6–7; Ignat’ev, Nekotorye itogi, 15; Miakotin, “Iz nedalekogo proshlogo,” 192; and Delo Borisa Savinkova (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1924), 38–39. 151. Zenzinov, “Bor’ba rossiiskoi demokratii,” 15–18; interrogation of I. S. Dashev­ skii, 11 March 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 144–45; and testimony of Timofeev, 23 June 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 1341, l. 74–75 and d. 1342, l. 26–29.

294 / NOTES TO PAGES 40–45

152. Interrogation of Dashevskii, 11 March 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 146; and V. I. Gurko, “Iz Petrograda cherez Moskvu, Parizh i London v Odessu. 1917–1918 gg.,” Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii 15 (1924): 10. 153. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 367–69; Zenzinov, “Bor’ba rossiiskoi demokratii s bol’shevikami,” 31–34; and A. Sutuzhenko, “Sukhaia gil’otina,” Cheka: Materialy po deiatel’nosti chrezvychainikh komissii (Berlin: Izdatel’stvo Tsentral’nogo biuro PSR, 1922), 47–48. 154. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 375. 155. “Postanovleniia 8-ogo soveta partii s.-r.,” DN, 18 May 1918, p. 1. 156. Thus on the eve of the Council, the Moscow city SR organization voted 40-23 to reestablish the Eastern front, but voted 34 to 26 against coalition government and any cooperation with the propertied classes in the organization of the front. The strength of the left at the conference is further evidenced by the fact that M. L. KoganBernshtein delivered the main political report. See “Moskovskaia gorodskaia konferentsiia partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov,” Zemlia i volia (Moscow), 23 April 1918, p. 2; and G. Aleksinskii, “Moskovskie es-ery o vneshnei i vnutrennei politike,” Edinstvo 1 (1918): 5. 157. Gurevich manuscript, GARF f. R-5910, op. 1, d. 441, l. 12. 158. Ibid., GARF f. R-5910, op. 1, d. 441, l. 13.

Chapter 2: The Shape of Dictatorship 1. V. V. Shelokhaev et al., eds., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: Dokumenty i materialy, 1900–1925 gg., vol. 3, part 2, compiled by N. D. Erofeev (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), 566–67; testimony of E. M. Timofeev, 23 June 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 1341, l. 74–75; and untitled manuscript by V. Ia. Gurevich, GARF f. R-5910, op. 1, d. 441, l. 23–24. 2. Gurevich manuscript GARF f. R-5910, op. 1, d. 441, l. 40–43. 3. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 568; and Gurevich manuscript, GARF f. R-5910, op. 1, d. 441, l. 23. 4. V. Miakotin, “Iz nedalekogo proshlogo,” Na chuzhoi storone 2 (1923): 192; A. A. Argunov, Mezhdu dvum’ia bol’shevizmami (Paris: Union, 1919), 7; S. P. Mel’gunov, Vospominaniia i dnevniki, vol. 2, part 3 (Paris: Les Editeurs réunis, 1964), 17; Delo Borisa Savinkova (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1924), 38–39; V. M. Zenzinov, “Bor’ba rossiiskoi demokratii protiv bol’shevikov v 1918 godu: Moskva—Samara— Ufa—Omsk,” HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 8, folder 24, pp. 28–29. 5. Geoffrey Swain, The Origins of the Russian Civil War (London: Longman, 1996), 156–57. See also chapter 1, note 148. 6. F. G. Popov, ed., 1918 god v Samarskoi gubernii: Khronika sobytii (Kuibyshev: Kuibyshevskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1972), 57; and P. D. Klimushkin, “Pered volzhskim vosstaniem,” Volia Rossii 8–9 (1928): 219–20. 7. I. M. Brushvit, “Kak podgotovlialos’ volzhskoe vosstanie,” Volia Rossii 8–9 (1928): 92–93. 8. The standard Soviet work on the Legion was A. Kh. Klevanskii, Chekhoslovatskie internatsionalisty i prodannyi korpus: Chekhoslovatskie politicheskie organizatsii i voinskie formirovaniia v Rossii, 1914–1921 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1965). 9. For the exact disposition of the Legion in May 1918, see John Bradley, Allied Inter-

NOTES TO PAGES 46–52 / 295

vention in Russia (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1968), 94–95. Reliable accounts of the origin of the Czechoslovak rebellion may be found in Bradley’s book as well as in George Kennan, Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1920, vol. 1, The Decision to Intervene (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 136–65. 10. Klimushkin, “Pered volzhskim vosstaniem,” 220–23; and V. I. Vyrypaev, “Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel’: Vospominaniia uchastnika belogo dvizheniia,” HIA, pp. 3–4. 11. P. D. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie, ‘Volzhskoe dvizhenie,’ i obrazovanie Direktorii,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 17. 12. “Sud’ba Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia: Doklad predsedatelia Komuch V. K. Vol’skogo,” Istoricheskii arkhiv 3 (1993): 124. 13. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vsytuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 21–22. 14. 1918 god v Samarskoi gubernii, 128–29; I. Trainin, “Iiunskii perevorot,” Chetyre mesiatsa uchredilovshchiny: Istoriko-literaturynyi sbornik (Samara, 1919), 37–41; and S. Gruzdev, “Bol’shevistskoe podpol’e v Samare dni uchredilovshchiny,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 12/35 (1924): 174–76. 15. A. P. Nenarokov, Vostochnyi front 1918 (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), 55. 16. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 30; 1918 god v Samarskoi gubernii, 133; and G. Lelevich, V dni Samarskoi uchredilki (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1921), 18. 17. Samarskaia guberniia v gody grazhdanskoi voiny (1918–1920 gg.): Dokumenty i materialy (Kuibyshev: Kuibyshevskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1958), 31–32. 18. I. M. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaia kontr-revoliutsiia (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1923), 50; and V. V. Garmiza, Krushenie eserovskikh pravitel’stv (Moscow: Mysl’, 1970), 20. 19. Zemlia i volia (Samara), 31 July 1918, p. 2; Gurevich manuscript, GARF f. R-5910, op. 1, d. 441, l. 40–43; and “Sud’ba Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia,” 124. 20. “Sud’ba Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia,” 125. 21. Garmiza, Krushenie eserovskikh pravitel’stv, 20; and Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 99–101. 22. Trainin, “Iiunskii perevorot,” 37. 23. Bradley, Allied Intervention, 98; and Swain, Origins of the Russian Civil War, 171–72. 24. Nenarokov, Vostochnyi front, 196. 25. V. I. Lebedev, “Iz arkhiva V. I. Lebedeva: Ot Petrograda do Kazani (Vosstanie na Volge v 1918 godu),” Volia Rossii 8–9 (1928): 137–39; Vyrypaev, “V. O. Kappel’,” 50; and P. P. Petrov, Ot Volgi do Tikhogo okeana v riadakh belykh: Vospominaniia (Riga: Izd. M. Didkovskogo, 1930), 36. 26. N. Podvoiskii, “Zadachi Sovetskoi vlasti v bor’be s Chekho-slovatskim miatezhom,” RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 4, l. 13. 27. Ibid., l. 13. 28. Ibid., l. 14. 29. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., vol. 50 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1965), 133; see also Iu. I. Korablev, V. I. Lenin i sozdanie Krasnoi armii (Moscow: Nauka, 1970), 271–79. 30. That decision had already been made in principle in March, although little had

296 / NOTES TO PAGES 52–54

in fact been done to organize conscription: see Joshua A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905–1925 (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 43–44. 31. S. M. Kliatskin, Na zashchite Oktiabria: Organizatsiia reguliarnoi armii i militsionnoe stroitel’stvo v Sovetskoi respublike, 1917–1920 (Moscow: Nauka, 1965), 192–212; T. V. Osipova, “Krest’ianskii front v grazhdanskoi voine,” in Iu. V. Afanas’ev, ed., Sud’by rossiiskogo krest’ianstva (Moscow: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 1996), 97; and Nenarokov, Vostochnyi front, 148. 32. Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War (Boston: Pegasus, 1987), 59. 33. The following discussion of the impact of the Eastern front on the Red Army draws mainly on Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1990), 32–41. 34. A. G. Kavtaradze, Voennye spetsialisty na sluzhbe Respubliki Sovetov, 1917–1920 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), 166. 35. Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, 37; P. G. Sofinov, Ocherki istorii Vserossiiskoi Chrezvychainoi Komissii (1917–1922 gg.) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1960), 80; and Iu. N. Amiantov, Iu. A. Akhapkin, and V. N. Stepanov, eds., V. I. Lenin: Neizvestnye dokumenty, 1891–1922 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), 250–51. 36. Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, 38. 37. Iu. P. Petrov, Stroitel’stvo politorganov, partiinykh i komsomol’skikh organizatsii armii i flota (1918–1968) (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1968), 20–27. 38. Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, 40. 39. Leninskii sbornik 34 (1942): 44; and Korablev, V. I. Lenin i sozdanie Krasnoi armii, 278. 40. Andrzej Walicki, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Utopia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995), 455–67. 41. Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, vol. 3 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1964), 268. 42. Early in 1918, the term “front” was used in the Bolshevik press mainly to delineate enemies’ campaigns against Bolshevik power, lending them a purpose and unity that they did not usually have. The more characteristic image of an offensive front against enemies or difficulties predominates from the summer. Compare “Grazhdanskaia voina i voina vneshniaia,” Pravda, 3 January 1918, p. 1; “Edinyi front kontrrevoliutsii,” Izvestiia Petrogradskogo Soveta rab. i sold. deputatov, 12 April 1918, p. 1; and the examples in Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 23. 43. Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 23 (Moscow: Partizdat, 1930), 156, 205. See also ibid., 23: 68, 169, 171, 174, and 189. 44. For good illustrations of the ideological functions of the image of encirclement, see two editorials from Bolshevik newspapers in Tula: “Zheleznoe kol’tso,” Revoliutsionnyi vestnik, 5 July 1918, p. 1; and “Kol’tso szhimaetsia,” Kommunar, 4 August 1918, p. 1. 45. On “labor of categorization” and the concept of politics as an effort to impose an authoritative vision of the social world, see Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic

NOTES TO PAGES 55–59 / 297

Power (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 234–36. I borrow the phrase “ideological labor” from Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Becoming National: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 7–8. 46. “Presledovanie eserov i men’shevikov,” Petrograkskoe ekho, 29 May 1918, p. 3. 47. Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, vol. 2 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1959), 430–31; and Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 230. 48. William G. Rosenberg, “Russian Labor and Bolshevik Power after October,” Slavic Review 44 (1985): 233–34. 49. “Brozhenie sredi rabochikh,” NZh, 28 May 1918, p. 2; “Brozhenie sredi rabochikh,” NZh, 29 May 1918, p. 3; “Brozhenie sredi rabochikh,” NZh, 30 May 1918, p. 3; “Brozhenie sredi rabochikh,” NZh, 31 May 1918, p. 3; “Na Obukhovskom zavode,” Petrogradskoe ekho, 28 May 1918, p. 3; “Na Putilovskom zavode,” Petrograskoe ekho, 29 May 1918, p. 1; “Na sobranii upolnomochennykh,” NZh, 1 June 1918, p. 3; “Istina o nastroenii rabochikh,” Krasnaia gazeta, 2 June 1918, p. 4; Cherniaev, Piterskie rabochie i ‘diktatura proletariata’, 106; Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 192–94; Pet. Kom. RKP to district party organizations, 26 May 1918, TsGAIPD f. 1, op. 1, d. 269, l. 2; and secretary of RKP Petrograd Committee to CC RKP Petrograd Bureau, TSGAIPD f. 1, op. 4, d. 128, l. 6. 50. “Protokol sobraniia organizatorov Pet. gub.,” 20 May 1918, TsGAIPD f. 1, op. 1, d. 66, l. 18–20. See also Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 232–33. 51. “Zasedanie Petrogradskogo Biuro TsK RKP,” 30 May 1918, RGASPI f. 466, op. 1, d. 1, l. 15. 52. The electoral statute may be found in NZh, 16 June 1918, p. 3; for a detailed analysis, see Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 240–42. 53. “Dva stana,” Petrogradskaia pravda, 13 June 1918, p. 1; and “Tovarishchi rabochie, krest’iane . . .” Petrogradskaia pravda, 16 June 1918, p. 1. 54. “Otchet o zasedanii Petrogradskogo soveta,” Petrogradskaia pravda, 16 June 1918, p. 2. 55. “Pod znakom paniki,” DN, 18 June 1918, p. 4; and Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 233. 56. A. R. Gots, “Boi puliami ili biulleteniami,” DN, 18 June 1918, p. 1; V. Arkhangel’skii, “Krug revolutiutsii zavershaetsia,” DN, 19 June 1918, p. 1; and “Vsem rabochim i krest’ianam,” Novoe delo naroda, 18 June 1918, p. 1. 57. Biographical information about Semenov is drawn from his interrogation by the State Political Administration (Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie, GPU), the successor to the Cheka, on 20 April 1922: GARF f. 1005, op. 1A, d. 1347, l. 69–71. See also S. V. Zhuravlev, “Chelovek revoliutsionnoi epokhi: Sud’ba esera-terrorista G. I. Semenova,” Otechestvennaia istoriia 3 (2000): 86–105. 58. G. I. Semenov, Voennaia i boevaia rabota Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov za 1917–1918 gg. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1922), 13–27; testimony of D. D. Donskoi, 15 June 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 354, l. 69–76, and d. 355, l. 3–25. See also V. M. Zenzinov, “Provokator Semenov (k predstoiashchim protsessam),” Novaia Rossiia 42–43 (1938): 9. 59. Testimony of A. R. Gots, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 355, l. 30, and d. 350, l. 44; and B. N. Rabinovich, “Kak eto bylo,” Golos Rossii, 17 March 1922, p. 4. 60. Statement of M. A. Tislenko, HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 8, folder 19, p. 1.

298 / NOTES TO PAGES 59–64

61. GPU interrogation of E. A. Ivanova, 7 April 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 347, l. 4; and testimony of N. N. Ivanov, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 350, l. 132. 62. Semenov, Voennaia i boevaia rabota, 27–29; testimony of Gots, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 350, l. 65–68; and Rabinovich, “Kak eto bylo,” p. 4. See also the GPU interrogation of Konopleva, 26 March 1922, GARF f. 1005, op. 1A, d. 347, l. 56. For the statement of the Petrograd Bureau of the Central Committee, see DN, 22 June 1918, p. 1. 63. Kozlov, “Zavod v gody grazhdanskoi voiny,” TsGA SPB f. 9672, op. 1, d. 246, l. 20; Semenov, Voennaia i boevaia rabota, 29–30; and testimony of Gots, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 355, l. 31–32. 64. Cherniaev, Piterskie rabochie, 118–25; and “Repressii,” NZh, 26 June 1918, p. 1. 65. See Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 238–43; S. V. Iarov, Proletarii kak politik: Politicheskaia psikhologiia rabochikh Petrograda v 1917–1923 gg. (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 1999), 139; S. V. Iarov, “Liudi i politika,” in V. A. Shishkin, ed., Petrograd na perelome epokh: Gorod i ego zhiteli v gody revoliutsii i grazhdanskoi voiny (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2000), 222; Cherniaev, Piterskie rabochie, 140; and Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power, 249–52. 66. Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 243. 67. In addition to Novaia zhizn’, see the reports in the SR organ Delo naroda, the printers’ Utro Petrograda, the Kadet Nash vek, and the liberal, nonparty newspaper Sovremennoe slovo, as well as the discussion in Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 240–43. 68. On the way that the need to restore labor discipline and boost production pushed toward bureaucratization in Petrograd labor organizations in 1918, see Smith, Red Petrograd, 230–52. 69. “Perevybory Petrogradskogo Soveta,” NZh, 26 June 1918, p. 3, and “Perevybory Petrogradskogo Soveta,” NZh, 28 June 1918, p. 3; Utro Petrograda, 1 July 1918, p. 2; and Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 240–42. 70. “Perevybory Petrogradskogo soveta,” DN, 18 June 1918, p. 2. On Sormovo, see below. 71. Cherniaev, Piterskie rabochie, 113–15. 72. On the railroad workers, see Latsis to CC RKP, 27 June 1918, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 194, l. 6. For Iaroslavl’, see GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 643, l. 4; for Tver’, see “Po Rossii,” DN, 19 June 1918, p. 4; on Tula, see Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 249–51. 73. “Svedeniia ob otdelakh Nizhegorodskogo Gubispolkoma,” GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 230, l. 172; chairman of Nizhnii Novgorod provincial Soviet to NKVD, 15 June 1918, GARF f. R-393, op. 1, d. 113, l. 36; and “Sormovskaia zhizn’,” Raboche-krest’ianskii nizhegorodskii listok, 11 June 1918, p. 5. 74. “Otchet instruktora Lapidusa o poezdke v Nizhnii Novgorod i Sormovo,” 15 July 1918, GARF f. R-1235, op. 93, d. 29, l. 140; “Doklad instruktora Klenitskogo o poezdke v Nizhnii Novgorod 21–30 iiunia 1918 g.,” RGASPI f. 71, op. 33, d. 463, l. 13–16; “Prikaz no. 3 ot Chrezvychainoi komissii k grazhdanam N.-Novgoroda i gubernii,” GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 230, l. 450; and “Ot Nizhegorodskogo Komissariata Truda,” Rabochekrest’ianskii nizhegorodskii listok, 4 July 1918, p. 1. 75. “Doklad instruktora Klenitskogo,” RGASPI f. 71, op. 33, d. 463, l. 16. 76. Chairman of Nizhnii Novgorod PEC to CC RKP, 21 July 1918, RGASPI f. 17, op. 66c, d. 57, l. 170.

NOTES TO PAGES 64–69 / 299

77. “1 iiulia,” NZh, 3 July 1918, p. 1; “Neudachnaia zabastovka,” Nash vek, 3 July 1918, p. 3; “Neudavshaiasia zabastovka,” Sovremennoe slovo, 3 July 1918, p. 3; Cherniaev, Piterskie rabochie, 147–48; and Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 246–49. 78. “Biuro upolnomochennykh,” Krasnaia gazeta, 3 July 1918, p. 1. 79. Cherniaev, Piterskie rabochie, 153–56; and G. Ia. Aronson, Dvizhenie upolnomochennykh fabrik i zavodov v 1918 godu (New York: Inter-University Project on The History of the Menshevik Movement, 1960), 26–30. 80. See R. A. Abramovich, “Bol’shevistskaia vlast’ i rabochie vesnoi 1918-go goda,” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik 744–45 (1960): 170–76. 81. Rosenberg, “Russian Labor and Bolshevik Power,” 237. 82. Illustrative, although not entirely accurate, data on newspaper closings may be found in A. Z. Okorokov, Oktiabr’ i krakh russkoi burzhuaznoi pressy (Moscow: Mysl’, 1970), 357–76. 83. Okorokov, Oktiabr’ i krakh russkoi burzhuaznoi pressy, 355–56. 84. “Ili-ili,” Molot, 2 August 1918, p. 1. 85. See “Tam, gde net bol’shevikov,” Kommunar, 5 July 1918, p. 3, and “Tam, gde net bol’shevikov,” Kommunar, 6 July 1918, p. 3 (and throughout July and August); “Tam, gde net bol’shevikov,” Pravda, 14 July 1918, p. 3 (and throughout July and August); “Tam, gde net bol’shevikov,” Orlovskie izvestiia sovetov rab., sold. i krest. deputatov, 3 September 1918, p. 3, and “Tam, gde net bol’shevikov,” Orlovskie izvestiia sovetov rab., sold. i krest. deputatov, 4 September 1918, p. 3. For an earlier use of this rubric, see a Bolshevik account of Menshevik rule in Georgia: “Tam gde oni u vlasti,” Soldat, rabochii i krest’ianin, 3 April 1918, p. 1. Compare “Tam, gde tvoritsia novaia zhizn’,” Pravda, 19 July 1918, p. 1. 86. See “Maski sorvany,” Isvestiia VTsIK, 16 June 1918, p. 1; and “Pochemu my nazyvaem ikh kontr-revoliutsionerami,” Petrogradskaia pravda, 21 July 1918, p. 1. 87. “Za massovyi terror,” Molot, 6 August 1918, p. 1. 88. “Za kem idti?” and “Grazhdanskaia voina i terror,” Izvestiia Viatskogo gub. ispolnitel’nogo komiteta soveta krest., rab. i sold. deputatov, 19 July 1918, p. 1. 89. “Doklad informatsionnomu otdelu ot politicheskogo komissara Brovera B. I.,” 29 August 1918, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 33, l. 38; and “Golod,” Novoe delo naroda, 20 June 1918, p. 4. 90. Chairman of Orel PEC to CC RKP, GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 268, l. 5; and “Antisovetskoe dvizhenie,” Nash vek, 14 July 1918, p. 3. 91. Vasil’ev to People’s Commissar of Labor, GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 378, l. 134–35; Erasov to CPC, 19 June 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 583, l. 257, 284; and “Sobytiia v Tambove,” Narodnoe delo (Moscow), 28 June 1918, p. 4. 92. Uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Tul’skoi gubernii, 158–59. See also A. Berelovich et al., eds., Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU, vol. 1 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998), 71–75; and “Anti-sovetskoe dvizhenie,” Nash vek, 14 July 1918, p. 3. 93. Chairman of Penza PEC to CPC, 18 June 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 591, l. 99. 94. Kuraev to Lenin, 10 August 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 622, l. 10. 95. Ruzheinikov to CEC, GARF f. R-1235, op. 93, d. 491, l. 58; protocols of Saratov EC, 29 and 31 July and 7 August 1918, GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 327, l. 37, 43, 51. 96. Nogin to Lenin, GARF f. R-1235, op. 93, d. 491, l. 68. 97. Osipova, “Krest’ianskii front v grazhdanskoi voine,” 105.

300 / NOTES TO PAGES 69–71

98. Chairman of Smolenk regional EC to CPC, 1 July 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 630, l. 11; Sharmanov to Trotsky, 8 July 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 630, l. 12; and Berelovich, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU, 69–71. 99. “Otchet o politicheskom polozhenii za iiul’ mesiats po Iaroslavskoi gubernii,” GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 473, l. 206. 100. Chairman of Novgorod PEC to NKVD, 30 July 1918, GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 242, l. 358. 101. Ustanovlenie i uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Viatskoi gubernii: Sbornik dokumentov (Kirov: Kirovskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1957), 498–523; and Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 170–72. 102. Kedrov to Soviets of Vologda, Iaroslavl’, Petrozavodsk, Cherepovets, Viatka, 16 August 1918, GARF f. R-1235, op. 93, d. 279, l. 21; “Svodki Narkomvoena,” 18–26 August 1918, RGASPI f. 71, op. 33, d. 479, l. 1–2; Osipova, “Krest’ianskii front v grazhdanskoi voine,” 97; and Berelovich, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU, 77–80. 103. VChK to Sverdlov, 25 July 1918, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 194, l. 8. 104. Chairman of Riazan’ EC to PEC, 17 June 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 625, l. 7. 105. Telegram to CPC, 6 June 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 610, l. 5; and “Provintsial’naia khronika,” Narodnoe delo, 28 June 1918, p. 4. 106. “Skhema ezhenedel’noi otchetnosti Kostromskogo gubernskogo soveta r. i k. dep.,” GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 177, l. 388; and telegram to CEC, 22 August 1918, GARF f. R-1235, op. 93, d. 341, l. 29. 107. “Srochnoe zaiavlenie v VtsIK levykh eserov,” GARF f. R-1235, op. 93 d. 491, l. 49. 108. Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power, 326, 333. 109. Kopylov to CC RKP, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 82, l. 3. 110. Uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Tul’skoi gubernii: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, god 1918 (Tula: Tul’skoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1961), 185–86; and Kushner to Sverdlov, 19 August 1918, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 82, l. 24. 111. “Spisok banditov, poimannykh s polichnym pri sovershenii razboinykh napadenii i rasstreliannyikh v noch’ na 14-e avgusta,” Kommunar, 16 August 1918, p. 4; “Smert’ vragam proletariata,” Kommunar, 17 August 1918, p. 1; and “Kto zhaleet rasstreliannykh banditov i kontrrevoliutsionerov ili sam bandit, ili ot’iavlennyi negodiai, ili iavnyi kontrrevoliutsioner,” Kommunar, 22 August 1918, p. 1. See also Kopylov’s effort to defend himself against criticism within the party when his opposition to the shootings became known: N. Kopylov, “Neobkhodimoe raz’iasnenie,” Revoliutsionnyi vestnik, 21 August 1918, p. 1. 112. A. V. Egorov, “Ufimskie zalozhniki i kontrzalozhniki,” in P. V. Volobuev, ed., Revoliutsiia i chelovek: Byt, nravy, povedenie, moral’ (Moscow: Institut istorii RAN, 1997), 180–212. The counterhostages included local Bolsheviks, Red Guards, Left SRs, and the wives of several prominent Bolsheviks, including Nina Podvoiskaia. The women had accompanied several thousand children of Petrograd workers who had been evacuated to Ufa in the spring of 1918. 113. “Pokhorony zamuchennykh bol’shevikami,” Zemlia i volia (Syzran’), 23 June 1918, p. 3. 114. “Rasstrely v Vol’ske,” VK, 1 September 1918, p. 4.

NOTES TO PAGES 71–74 / 301

115. “Po Uralu: Kamyshlov,” Zaural’skii krai, 30 August 1918, p. 4; and “Svedeniia informatsionnogo otdeleniia Komiteta chlenov U. S.,” GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 6, l. 65. 116. Compare N. Sapozhnikov, “Izhevsko-Votkinskoe vosstanie,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 8–9/31–32 (1924): 5–14; A. Gutman [Gan], “Dva vosstaniia,” Beloe delo 3 (1927): 148–73; and A. G. Efimov, “Izhevtsy i votkintsy,” in V. G. Tsvetkov, ed., Izhevskovotkinskoe vosstanie, 1918 (Moscow: Posev, 2000), 87–88. 117. Materials of Eighth Council of PSR, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 5, l. 41; M. S. Bernshtam, ed., Ural i Prikam’e, noiabr’ 1917–ianvar’ 1919: Dokumenty i materialy (Paris: YMCA, 1982), 280; “Iz-za ugla,” DN, 28 March 1918, p. 1; and G. Strumillo, “Iz zapisok rabochego,” Zaria 4 (1922): 116. 118. Izvestiia Izhevskogo Soveta rab. i kr. deputatov, 9 May 1918, pp. 1–2; V. Sergeev, “Izhevskie rabochie v bor’be za Sovetskuiu vlast’,” in Izhevsk v ogne grazhdanskoi voine 1917–1918 gody: Iz istorii revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia izhevskikh rabochikh (Izhevsk: Izdatel’stvo RKP, 1927), 36–44. 119. Izhevsk RKP factory committee to CC RKP, 15 May 1918, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 35, l. 35; Ustanovlenie i uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Viatskoi gubernii: Sbornik dokumentov, 391; and Izhevsk EC to CPC, 29 May 1918, GARF f. R-130, op. 2, d. 606, l. 1. 120. Telegram to CPC and NKVD, 29 May 1918, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 35, l. 36; Brovkin, Mensheviks after October, 154–55; and Bernshtam, Ural i Prikam’e, 280. 121. Materials of Eighth Council of PSR, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 5, l. 44. 122. Shternberg and Kuchin to Moscow, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 35, l. 38. 123. Sergeev, “Izhevskie rabochie v bor’be za Sovetskuiu vlast’,” 51–61; and Sapozhnikov, “Izhevsko-Votkinskoe vosstanie,” 5–14. 124. For this and what follows, see the account of Prikomuch in Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War, 182–88. 125. I. Mikhel’s, “5-ia godovshchina pokusheniia na t. Lenina: Vospominiia byv. zam. Predsedatalia VChK Ia. Peters,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 30 August 1923, p. 1. The confused account in M. Ia. Latsis, Dva goda bor’by na vnutrennem fronte (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1920), 23–24, confirms how little the Cheka knew about the assassination attempt before the preparation of the trial. 126. Semenov, Voennaia i boevaia rabota Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov za 1917–1918 gg. 127. Boris Orlov, “Mif o Fanni Kaplan, Vremia i my 2 (1975): 153–163, and “Mif o Fanni Kaplan,” Vremia i my 3 (1976): 126–59; and Semion Lyandres, “The 1918 Attempt on Lenin: A New Look at the Evidence,” Slavic Review 48 (1989): 432–48. Orlov’s article has been reprinted in Istochnik 2 (1993): 63–74. N. D. Kostin’s response to Orlov, “Sud na terrorom [sic],” Istochnik 2 (1993): 79–87, reiterates the standard Soviet interpretation, but it includes excerpts from Kaplan’s Cheka file. Kostin develops his views more fully in his Sud nad terrorom (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1990). See also “Kto strelial v Lenina: Fanni Kaplan, Lidiia Konopleva ili kto-to drugoi . . .,” Rodina 10 (1993): 59–77. 128. D. Volkogonov, Lenin: Politicheskii portret v dvukh knigakh (Moscow: Novosti, 1994), 1: 396–99; A. L. Litvin, “Delo 2162 i drugie dela,” Sobesednik 42 (1991): 5; A. L. Litvin, “V Lenina ‘strelial’ Dzerzhinskii,” Rodina 7 (1995): 58–60; and A. L. Litvin, “Azef Vtoroi,” Rodina 9 (1999): 82. See also Grigorii Nilov [Alexander Kravtsov] Grammatika

302 / NOTES TO PAGES 75–76

Leninizma (London: Overseas Publications Interchange, 1990), 28–45, 148–55; E. Danilov, “Taina ‘vystrelov’ Fanni Kaplan,” Zvezda vostoka 1 (1991): 113–30; E. Danilov, “Tri vystrela v Lenina, ili za chto kaznili Fanni Kaplan,” Neva 5–6 (1992): 306–24; Oleg Vasil’ev, “Pokushenie na Lenina bylo instsenirovkoi,” Nezavisimaia gazeta (Moscow), 29 August 1992, p. 6; E. Danilov, “Pokushenie na vozhdia: signal k terroru,” Ogonek 35–36 (1993): 10–16; Nikolai Zen’kovich, Pokusheniia v Kremle ot Lenina do Eltsina: Tainy, versii, podopleka (Moscow: INFRA–M, 1995), 5–23; and Nikolai Zen’kovich, Vozhdi na mushke: Terakty i instsenirovki (Minsk: Polymia, 1996), 8–26. 129. Vasil’ev, “Pokushenie na Lenina,” p. 6. Nilov, Grammatika Leninizma, 148–55, has argued for a Stalin-Dzerzhinskii conspiracy, in which Lenin subsequently acquiesced, while Litvin, “V Lenina ‘strelial’ Dzerzhinskii,” 58–60, has opted for the Sverdlov-Dzerzhinskii variant. More cautious is Volkogonov, Lenin, 1: 397, who has asserted that the entire affair may have been “one of the Bolsheviks’ big mystifications.” For an additional circumspect comment on Sverdlov’s role, see Lyandres, “1918 Attempt,” 442n57. 130. The defendants at the 1922 trial were divided into two groups: the twenty-two principal defendants at the trial, including eleven members of the Central Committee, comprised the first group; in the second group were Semenov, Konopleva, and ten other former SRs who cooperated fully with the prosecution. Testimony provided by the second group of defendants, first to the GPU and then at the trial itself, provided the principal evidence against the far more prominent SRs of the first group. Proper use of the trial evidence depends on careful comparison of the testimony of each group of defendants. Most of the émigré testimony appeared in the Berlin SR newspaper Golos Rossii. The most important account was that of the former member of Semenov’s organization, M. A. Tislenko. He submitted a statement to the Berlin SR organization in March 1922. A copy may be found in HIA Nicolaevsky box 8, folder 19, and an edited version appeared as “Razoblachenie lzhi,” Golos Rossii, 23 March 1922, p. 3. The editors of the newspaper corrected grammatical errors and deleted references to members of the first group of defendants (Donskoi, Timofeev, and Elena Ivanova). Years later additional information came from Zenzinov, “Provokator Semenov (k predstoiashchim protsessam),” Novaia Rossiia, 9–12. 131. Testimony of Gots, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 350, l. 64–70, 76–79; testimony of Ivanova, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 350, l. 178–83; testimony of Rakov, 18 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 371, l. 129; and Rabinovich, “Kak eto bylo,” p. 4. 132. Testimony of Timofeev, 20 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 373, l. 2–4; and Tislenko, “Razoblachenie lzhi,” p. 3. 133. Testimony of Gots, 19 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 372, l. 122. 134. Lyandres, “1918 Attempt,” 434–37, clears up the confusion surrounding Kaplan’s name and past party affiliation. 135. I. Volkovicher, ed., “K istorii pokusheniia na Lenina: neopublikovannye materialy,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 6–7/18–19 (1923): 282–84; and Kostin, “Sud nad terrorom,” 83. 136. Zenzinov first reported Kaplan’s proposal in an article on the murder of Fomin and several other members of the Constituent Assembly by a squad of Cossacks in Omsk in December 1918. The article was published in a Paris newspaper in June 1919 and reprinted in V. M. Zenzinov, ed., Gosudarstvennyi perevorot admiral Kolchaka v

NOTES TO PAGES 76–77 / 303

Omske 18 noiabria 1918 goda: Sbornik dokumentov (Paris: Tipografiia I. Rirakhovskogo, 1919), 152–53. He amplified his reminiscences in a letter to Chernov, quoted in V. M. Chernov, “Iudin potselui,” Golos Rossii, 25 February 1922, p. 2. Sergei Morozov also recalled the Kaplan-Fomin proposal and dated it to March. See his testimony of 21 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 374, l. 172. 137. A. V. Liberov, one of the SR defendants of the first group at the trial, recalled later in prison that he had seen Kaplan in the spring and knew she wanted to assassinate Lenin: see E. Olitskaia, Moi vospominaniia (Frankfurt am Main: Posev, 1971), 2: 143. Vladimir Vol’skii testified that he had met Kaplan twice in May 1918 and she told him of her desire to assassinate a top Bolshevik leader: GPU interrogation of Vol’skii, 23 March 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 173; see also GPU interrogation of Semenov, 17 April 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 347, l. 42. 138. Testimony of P. N. Pelevin, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 90; and testimony of Dashevskii, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 146–48. In Voennaia i boevaia rabota, Semenov mistakenly refers to Pelevin as Pepeliaev, and to Rudzievskii as Gruzdievskii. 139. Tislenko statement, HIA Nicolaevsky box 8, folder 19, p. 1. In his statement Tislenko reported that Konopleva and Ivanova, in addition to Semenov and himself, knew of the Central Committee opposition to terror. Because Ivanova was a member of the first group of defendants at the SR trial, the editors of Golos Rossii deleted this detail from the published version of his statement. 140. Testimony of Donskoi, 19 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 372, l. 164–65. According to B. A. Babina, “Fevral’ 1922,” Minuvshee: Istoricheskii almanakh 2 (1986): 24–25, Donskoi gave her a different account of this conversation while in prison before the trial. She quotes him as saying: “She [Kaplan] indeed came to us, and in particular to me personally, with a proposal to send her to kill Lenin. I looked at her then—a rather pretty woman, but unquestionably not normal and with various defects: deaf, half blind, somehow exalted. Like a holy fool! Least of all did it occur to me to take her words seriously.” Donskoi’s testimony at the trial is more reliable than Babina’s account, and it helps make sense of Kaplan’s confession. 141. Semenov, Voennaia i boevaia rabota, 34–35; Ia. Peters, “Ot Vserossiiskoi Chrezvychainoi Komissii po delu pokusheniia na predsedatelia Soveta narodnykh komissarov V. I. Ul’ianova, Lenina,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 1 September 1918, p. 1; and Volkovicher, “K istorii pokushenii,” 277–78. The account Gil’ gave to the investigators on the day of the shooting is more reliable than his Shest’ let s V. I. Leninym: Vospominaniia lichnogo shofera Vladimira Il’icha Lenina (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1947), 38–41. For a thorough analysis of the contradictions in the published evidence, see Lyandres, “1918 Attempt,” 437–40. For the even greater discrepancies in the unpublished evidence gathered by the Cheka, see D. Rudnev and S. Tsybov, Sledovatel’ Verkhovnogo Tribunala: Dokumental’nyi ocherk (Tallin: Eesti Raamat, 1971), 84–85. 142. See Ivanov’s testimony in Volkovicher, “K istorii pokushenii,” 278, and his account in “Podrobnosti pokusheniia na tov. Lenina,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 3 September 1918, p. 4. Compare Ivanov, “Kak ranili Ilicha,” in P. Posvianskii, ed., Pokusheniia na Lenina 30 avg. 1918 g.: Dokumenty, vospominaniia . . . , 2nd ed. (Moscow: Novaia Moskva, 1925), 23. 143. Volkovicher, “K istorii pokusheniia,” 279–80.

304 / NOTES TO PAGES 77–78

144. It should be pointed out that Zenzinov referred to Kaplan’s March proposal to shoot Lenin in his article of June 1919, three years before Proletarskaia revoliutsiia published the protocols of Kaplan’s interrogation. 145. Volkovicher, “K istorii pokusheniia, 282–85; and Rudnev and Tsybov, Sledovatel’ Verkhovnogo Tribunala, 82. 146. Rudnev and Tsybov, Sledovatel’ Verkhovnogo Tribunala, 84. See Istochnik 2 (1993): 75–78 for photographs of the reenactment. 147. “Revol’ver,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 3 September 1918, p. 4; and Volkovicher, “K istorii pokusheniia,” 278. Volkogonov, Lenin, 1: 398, asserts without reference to his source that a gun was found in Kaplan’s briefcase. The protocols of Kaplan’s interrogation make no mention of this gun and it never figured in the prosecution’s case, but see the brief report on the initial search of Kaplan in Kostin, Sud nad terrorom, 80. 148. Volkogonov, Lenin, 1: 398; and Litvin, “Delo 2162 i drugie dela,” 5. Volkogonov and Litvin have each asserted that tests on the Browning cast additional doubt on Kaplan’s responsibility for the shooting. Volkogonov states that the bullet removed from Lenin’s body in 1922 was not fired by the Browning turned in by Kuznetsov. Litvin charges that the caliber of the bullet removed in 1922 differs from the caliber of the bullet removed after Lenin’s death in 1924. It is difficult to address these charges fully because neither scholar cites his source, but tests on the bullets by the Ministry of Security established that one of the bullets was “probably” fired from the Browning; tests on the second bullet were inconclusive. The ministry’s report makes no mention of differing bullet calibers or the presence of a second weapon. See E. Maksimova, “Sledstvie po delu Fanni Kaplan prodolzhaetsia,” Izvestiia, 4 March 1994, p. 7. 149. P. D. Mal’kov, Zapiski komendanta Moskovskogo Kremlia (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1959), 159–61. Subsequent editions of Mal’kov’s memoir supplied fewer details of the execution, which helped fuel rumors that Kaplan had not in fact been shot. For evidence of such rumors among prisoners in the Soviet camps, see A. Solzhenitsyn, Arkhipelag GULag: Opyt khudozhestvennogo issledovaniia, 1918–1956 (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1989), 2: 484. 150. This argument was first advanced by Emile Vandervelde, the Belgian Social Democrat briefly engaged as a defense lawyer for the first group of defendants at the SR trial in 1922, who dismissed the prosecution’s case by claiming: “It is perfectly clear that all this was thought up by Semenov later together with those who incited him” (quoted in V. Voitinskii, “Sud nad sotsialistami-revoliutsionerami v Moskve,” in Dvenadtsat’ smertnikov: Sud nad sotsialistami-revoliutsionerami v Moskve [Berlin: Izd. zagranichnoi delegatsii PSR, 1922], 35). Neither Gots, Donskoi, nor Timofeev, each of whom served at one time as Semenov’s link to the Central Committee, ever made such a claim. 151. This argument hinges mainly on Kaplan’s poor eyesight, although some investigators have also suggested that she was deaf and too unstable emotionally. Kaplan lost her sight in 1909 but regained it in 1913. (See F. Radzilovskaia and L. Orestova, “Mal’tsevskaia zhenskaia katorga 1907–1911 gg.,” Katorga i ssylka 59 [1929]: 123.) None of the people who met Kaplan in 1917–1918 asserted that she was blind. Although her eyewight was not good, the person who shot Lenin stood only three or four meters away from him. Kaplan’s vision did not preclude her shooting Lenin at that distance.

NOTES TO PAGES 78–80 / 305

The only reference to hearing problems is Babina’s half century later recollection of her conversation with Donskoi (Babina, “Fevral’ 1922,” 25). 152. Volkovicher, “K istorii pokusheniia,” 283–85. 153. Testimony of Donskoi, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 349, l. 17, and d. 373, l. 15; and Tislenko, “Razoblachenie lzhi,” 3. The Moscow SR M. A. Davydov rented the dacha for the organization. See his testimony of 6 May 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 348, l. 111. 154. Lyandres, “1918 Attempt,” 447. 155. The most serious uncertainty concerns the fourth cartridge found at the scene. The extra cartridge and the confusion about the gun used in the attempt may indicate the presence of a second gunman, although there is no positive evidence in favor of such a person. It seems unlikely that a second shooter could have escaped entirely undetected and that he or she could have remained unknown to both Ivanova and Tislenko, who would surely have pointed to a mysterious second shooter to undermine the prosecution’s case in 1922. At any rate the confusion in the eyewitness accounts of the shooting is no reason to doubt the complicity of Kaplan and Semenov in the shooting. Authoritative studies by students of criminal justice have established that eyewitnesses frequently make mistakes and contradict each other. In Kaplan’s case the unreliability of the eyewitnesses is problem enough, but the desire of Gil’, Batulin, and Ivanov to capitalize on their role in Kaplan’s arrest adds another layer of confusion, as do various claims of Soviet propaganda, such as distraught children rushing to identify Kaplan after the shooting of their beloved leader. For this claim, see V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, Pokushenie na V. I. Lenina v Moskve 30–go avgusta 1918 g. (Po lichnym vospominaniiam) (Moscow: Kom. po uluchsheniiu zhizni detei i “Zhizn’ i znanie,” 1923), 33. 156. Tislenko statement, HIA Nicolaevsky box 8, folder 19, p. 1; testimony of Timofeev, 20 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 373, l. 12–13; and Semenov, Voennaia i boevaia rabota, 35. 157. “Zaiavlenie levykh eserov,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 6 September 1918, p. 4; testimony of Donskoi, 19 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 372, l. 165; and testimony of Morozov, 21 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 374, l. 172. 158. Testimony of Donskoi, 19 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 372, l. 166; compare Semenov, Voennaia i boevaia rabota, 35. 159. Tislenko, “Razoblachenie lzhi,” p. 3; and Semenov, Voennaia i boevaia rabota, 37–39. 160. Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 65–69. 161. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 579; testimony of Timofeev, 20 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 373, l. 65; and GPU interrogation of Konopleva, 30 March 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 347, l. 67. 162. Testimony of Morozov, 21 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 374, l. 178, and d. 347, l. 72; testimony of E. M. Ratner, 21 July 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 374, l. 199; GPU interrogation of Burevoi, 16 March 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 163; and V. M. Chernov, “Samozashchita predatelei,” Golos Rossii, 18 March 1922, p. 3. 163. Soviet legal codifications give the title “Resolution on the Red Terror” to the resolution adopted by the Council of People’s Commissars on September 5, although

306 / NOTES TO PAGES 80–83

the original resolution had no title. The other principal decree of the Terror was the “Order on Hostages” issued by People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs G. I. Petrovskii on September 4. See Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, 3: 291; Richard Pipes, ed., The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), 56. 164. In the voluminous literature on ideology, I have found most helpful John B. Thompson, Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984); see especially 130–38. Thompson argues that “to study ideology is to study the ways in which meaning (signification) serves to sustain relations of domination.” He identifies three principal ideological operations—legitimation, dissimulation, and reification—and emphasizes close attention to language (especially figurative language) as the principal medium in which meaning is mobilized to sustain relations of domination. 165. On the irreducible unity of text and enactment in performance, see Bruce Kapferer, “Performance and the Structuring of Meaning and Experience,” in Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 192. 166. Walicki, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom, 303–9. 167. “V Petrogradskom Sovete: Vopros o terrore,” NZh, 5 January 1918, p. 4; and “Nakanune,” DN, 4 January 1918, p. 3. 168. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 50: 106. For much of the summer Zinoviev and the Petrograd Bolshevik leadership resisted pressure from local Bolsheviks and from Moscow to launch mass terror. See Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power, 274, 316, 324. 169. I. Steinberg, Gewalt und Terror in der Revolution (Oktoberrevolution oder Bolschewismus) (Berlin: E. Rowohlt, 1931), 23. 170. Lenin, Sochineniia, 23: 205–6. Lenin’s “last, decisive battle” alludes to the Russian version of the refrain of the Internationale, in which “eto est’ nash poslednyi i reshitel’nyi boi” translates the French original “c’est la lutte finale.” 171. Pipes, Unknown Lenin, 50. 172. The phrase “disorganizers of socialism” is from the banner headline in Kommunar, 24 August 1918, p. 1. Lenin’s letter to the Nizhnii authorities may be found in Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 50: 142. On the later importance of the rhetoric of social hygiene and cleansing, see Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin!, 131–35; and Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 125–27. 173. “Samozashchita revoliutsii,” Severnaia kommuna, 25 August 1918, p. 1. 174. On the importance of categorical boundaries, see Mary Douglas’s classic Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966). 175. Ia. Sverdlov, “Vsem sovetam rabochikh, krest’ianskikh i krasnoarmeiskikh deputatov . . . ,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 31 August 1918, p. 1. 176. “Klassovaia voina razgoraetsia,” Severnaia kommuna, 2 September 1918, p. 1. 177. Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, 3: 267. 178. O. V. Budnitskii, ed., Istoriia terrorizma v Rossii v dokumentakh, biografiiakh, issledovaniiakh, 2nd ed. (Rostov-na-Donu: Feniks, 1996), 165. 179. V. V. Shelokhaev et al., eds., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: Dokumenty i materialy, 1900–1925 gg., vol. 1 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996), 82. 180. George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police (New York: Oxford Univer-

NOTES TO PAGES 83–87 / 307

sity Press, 1986), 102, 110, 387n1. The conventions of Soviet justifications for terror are the subject of Dariusz Tolczyk, See No Evil: Literary Cover-ups and the Soviet Camp Experience (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999). 181. Annie Geffroy, “‘Terreur’ et sa famille morphologique, de 1793 à 1796,” in R. Adda et al., Néologie et lexicologie: hommage à Louis Gilbert (Paris: Larousse, 1979), 127. The term “White terror” was first widely used in Russia to describe the government’s response to D. V. Karakozov’s attempt on the life of Alexander II in 1866. 182. See Izvestiia VTsIK, 1–6 September 1918, for the use of banner headlines “Belyi terror” to organize the material on the assassination attempt. 183. Iu. Steklov, “Belyi terror,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 5 September 1918, p. 1; and “K momentu,” Severnaia kommuna, 1 September 1918, p. 1. 184. “K momentu,” Severnaia kommuna, 1 September 1918, p. 1. 185. In his speech to the Tenth Party Congress in 1921, Lenin declared that the “democratic counterrevolution” and “petit bourgeois anarchist spontaneity” had always been the most dangerous enemies of the proletarian dictatorship, more dangerous than all the White generals combined: Desiatyi s’ezd RKP(b), mart 1921 (Moscow: Partiinoe izdatel’stvo, 1933), 35, 42. 186. Ullman, Intervention and the War, 290–93. Izvestiia led with the Lockhart story on both September 3 and September 4, pushing the Kaplan investigation to the back pages: see “Griaznye slugi griaznogo dela,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 3 September 1918, p. 1; and “‘Soiuznye’ zagovorshchiki,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 4 September 1918, p. 1. See also “Glavnyi tsentral’nyi shtab kontr-revoliutsionerov razyskan,” Pravda, 3 September 1918, p. 1. 187. “S kem my voiuem i kto ubivaet nashikh vozhdei,” Petrogradskaia pravda, 10 September 1918, p. 1; and “S kem my voiuem i kto ubivaet nashikh vozhdei,” Severnaia kommuna, 10 September 1918, p. 2. See also “S kem my voiuem,” Kommunar, 19 September 1918, p. 1. 188. “Prikaz o zalozhnikakh,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 4 September 1918, p. 5. 189. “Arest pravykh eserov,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 5 September 1918, p. 3; “Doklad o deiatel’nosti Nizhegorodskoi Gubernskoi Chrezvychainoi Komissii,” Ezhenedel’nik ChK 1 (1918): 21; Cheka: Materialy po deiatel’nosti, 51–52, 80; Vologda VChK to Sverdlov, GARF f. R-1235, op. 93, d. 279, l. 56; and report of Novgorod PEC, GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 242, l. 437. 190. “Prikaz o zalozhnikakh,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 4 September 1918, p. 5. 191. For two lists among many, see G. Bokii, “Otvet na belyi terror,” Severnaia kommuna, 6 September 1918, p. 3; and “Krasnyi terror,” Ezhenedel’nik ChK 1 (1918): 24. 192. For a sampling of such resolutions, see the standing rubric “Otkliki na pokusheniia,” in Izvestiia VTsIK for the first week of September. 193. K. Radek, “Krasnyi terror,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 6 September 1918, p. 1. 194. See Bokii, “Otvet na belyi terror,” for a list of 512 executed in Petrograd and Ezhenedel’nik ChK for lists from the provinces. See also Leggett, Cheka, 112–13. 195. Traskin, “Krasnyi terror,” Ezhenedel’nik ChK 1 (1918): 8. 196. “Nash zhurnal,” Ezhenedel’nik ChK 1 (1918): 3–4. Emphasis in the original. 197. Richard Pipes has pointed out that the paucity of SR victims was “a curious aspect” of the Terror, given that the Bolsheviks identified them as the chief organizers of violent resistance to the regime: see Pipes, Russian Revolution, 821.

308 / NOTES TO PAGES 87–92

198. Bokii, “Otvet na belyi terror,” p. 3; and Cheka: Materialy po deiatel’nosti, 80, 248. 199. Turlo to Petrovskii, 9–27 September 1918, GARF f. R-1235, op. 93, d. 434, l. 46, 48b, 49, 63, 76, 83, 88, and 94. Turlo’s figures should not simply be added up, as it seems likely that some of his numbers are running totals, not new executions. The organ of the Penza Bolshevik committee announced that 152 people had been shot: see “Chto proiskhodit v Penze,” Molot, 25 September 1918, p. 4. See also “Rasstrely i aresty kontrrevoliutsionerov,” Opolchenie bednoty, 14 September 1918, p. 3; and “Po gubernii,” Opolchenie bednoty, 29 September 1918, p. 4. 200. There is some evidence to suggest that the Terror was linked to the proximity of the Eastern front. In Nizhnii, for instance, forty-one hostages were shot after Kaplan’s attempt, seven hundred were seized, and the Cheka “registered” an additional fifteen hundred hostages: see “Doklad o deiatel’nosti Nizhegorodskoi Gub. Chrezv. Kom.,” Ezhenedel’nik ChK 1 (1918): 21–22. In the Urals several studies of the Viatka Cheka have found that there were comparatively few executions in September, but that the pace of shootings stepped up when the front approached over the course of the fall. See V. I. Bakulin, “Nasilie kak komponent gosudarstvennoi politiki: Bol’shevizm v Prikam’e (konets 1917–seredina 1918 g.),” in Volobuev, Revoliutsiia i chelovek, 171–79; G. A. Gavrilov, “Rol’ chekistov v stanovlenii Sovetskoi vlasti na territorii Viatskoi gubernii v 1918 godu,” in V. E. Musikhin, ed., Iz istorii Viatskikh spetssluzhb (pervaia polovina XIX–vtoraia polovina XX v.v.) (Kirov: Upravlenie FSB po Kirovskoi oblasti, 1997), 53–62.

Chapter 3: Komuch 1. See Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 13–126. On the larger problem of war and state building in revolutionary Russia, see Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). 2. Samarskaia guberniia v gody grazhdanskoi voiny (1918–1920 gg.): Dokumenty i materialy (Kuibyshev: Kuibyshevskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1958), 31–32. 3. See, for instance, “S Germaniei ili s soiuznikami?,” Zemlia i volia (Syzran’), 28 June 1918, p. 1; and “Vozzvanie,” Volzhskoe slovo, 4 July 1918, p. 1. The place of publication for all newspapers cited in this chapter is Samara unless otherwise indicated. In the case of Zemlia i volia and Vecherniaia zaria, I have included the Samara place of publication to differentiate them from other newspapers published under the same title elsewhere. 4. “Grazhdane!,” Vestnik komiteta chlenov Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia (henceforth, VK), 14 September 1918, p. 1. 5. See, for instance, F. E. Makhin, “Zapiska o blizhaishikh zadachakh, stoaishchikh na ocheredi, v sviazi s voprosom o vozobnovlenii voiny s Germaniei,” RGVA f. 39551, op. 1, d. 4, l. 3–8. 6. A. Iziumov, ed., “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” in Russkii istoricheskii arkhiv 1 (1929): 67–68. 7. Ibid. 8. V. V. Garmiza, Krushenie eserovskikh pravitel’stv (Moscow: Mysl’, 1970), 20.

NOTES TO PAGES 93–97 / 309

9. “Zhurnal zasedaniia Komiteta chlenov Uch. sob.,” 28 July 1918, GARF f. R-667, op. 1, d. 23, l. 228. 10. M. S. Nureev, “Rol’ obshchestvennykh dvizhenii i politicheskikh partii natsional’nykh raionov Povolzh’ia v natsional’no-gosudarstvennomy stroitel’stve v 1917–1920 gg. (Na materialakh Bashkortostana i Tatarstana),” candidate dissertation, St. Petersburg, 1993, pp. 156–58. 11. Daniel E. Schafer, “Local Politics and the Birth of the Republic of Bashkortostan,” in Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin, eds., A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 166–70; and M. M. Kul’sharipov, Z. Validov i obrazovanie Bashkirskoi Avtonomnoi Sovetskoi Respubliki (Ufa: Bashkirskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1992), 25–48. 12. “Federatsiia Bashkirii,” VK, 1 October 1918, p. 1. 13. VK, 18 August 1918, p. 1. 14. VK, 26 August 1918, p. 2; and Garmiza, Krushenie eserovskikh pravitel’stv, 21. 15. P. D. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie, ‘Volzhskoe dvizhenie’ i obrazovanie Direktorii,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 39. 16. “Instruktsiia partiinym organizatsiiam,” 27 June 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 1b, l. 37. 17. P. D. Klimushkin, “Bor’ba za demokratiiu na Volge,” in Grazhdanskaia voina na Volge v 1918 g., (Prague: Izd. Obshchestva uchastnikov volzhskogo dvizheniia, 1930), 1: 45; and untitled manuscript by V. K. Vol’skii, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 43, l. 2. 18. “Prikaz 85,” 6 July 1918, GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 1, l. 9–10; Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 18–19; and S. Nikolaev, “Vozniknovenie i organizatsiia ‘Komucha’,” Volia Rossii 8–9 (1928): 242. 19. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 91. 20. Nikolaev, “Vozniknovenie i organizatsiia ‘Komucha’,” 233–43. 21. P. P. Petrov, Ot Volgi do Tikhogo okeana v riadakh belykh: Vospominaniia (Riga: Izd. M. Didkovskogo, 1930), 25–28, 50; Garmiza, Krushenie eserovskikh pravitel’stv, 34; Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 144–46; and Shepikhin, “Pod stiagom Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia,” Grazhdanskaia voina na Volge, 1: 198. 22. “Otchet o deiatel’nosti AKP otdela za vremia po 1 noiabria 1918 goda,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 12, l. 70. 23. “Prikaz 83,” 6 July 1918, GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 1, l. 15. 24. “Prikaz 124,” 22 July 1918, GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 1, l. 27; “Ob ispol’zovanii chastnovladel’cheskikh posevov,” GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 1, l. 28; Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 112–21; and S. Nikolaev, “Politika Komucha (Opyt kharakteristiki),” Grazhdanskaia voina na Volge, 1: 118–19. 25. “Prikaz 16,” 12 June 1918, GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 1, l. 6. 26. “Prikaz 4,” 8 June 1918, GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 1, l. 3. 27. “Prikaz 73,” 9 July 1918, GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 1, l. 14. 28. Zemlia i volia (Samara), 18 August 1918, pp. 1–2. 29. I. M. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaia kontrrevoliutsiia (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1923), 90; Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 123; and Garmiza, Krushenie eserovskikh pravitel’stv, 149.

310 / NOTES TO PAGES 97–102

30. “Prikaz 89,” 7 July 1918, GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 1, l. 12; d. 3, l. 4; and Maiskii, Demokraticheskaia kontrrevoliutsiia, 90–92. 31. “Svedeniia informatsionnogo otdeleniia Komiteta chlenov Uch. sob.,” GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 6, l. 110–11; and Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 127. 32. L. M. Spirin, Klassy i partii v grazhdanskoi voine v Rossii (Moscow: Mysl’, 1968), 420. 33. S. Gruzdev, “Bol’shevistskoe podpol’e v Samare v dni uchredilovshchiny,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 12/35 (1924): 178. See also Ia. Andreev, “Rabochie i Komitet chlenov U. S.,” in Chetyre mesiatsa uchredilovshchiny: Istoriko-literaturnyi sbornik (Samara, 1919), 42–43; and P. D. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 9–10. 34. “V Sovetakh,” Soldat, krest’ianin i rabochii, 23 April 1918, p. 3; “Nakanune perevyborov Soveta,” Soldat, krest’ianin i rabochii, 1 June 1918, p. 1; and Vladimir N. Brovkin, The Mensheviks after October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), 153. 35. Gruzdev, “Bol’shevistskoe podpol’e,” 178. 36. “Rabochaia konferentsiia,” Samarskie vedomosti, 15 June 1918, p. 2; and “Konferentsiia rabochich,” Zemlia i volia (Samara), 13 June 1918, pp. 2–3. 37. Zemlia i volia (Samara), 18 June 1918, p. 3. 38. Zemlia i volia (Samara), 23 June 1918, p. 3. 39. “Partiinaia moral’” and “Rabochaia konferentsiia,” Volzhskoe slovo, 23 June 1918, pp. 1, 3. For the work of the investigative commission in Ufa, see the materials collected in GARF f. R-186, op. 1, d. 2. For a report on the situation in Orenburg, see “Rabochaia konferentsiia,” Svobodnoe slovo, 12 August 1918, p. 3. 40. “Rabochaia konferentsiia,” Volzhskoe slovo, 5 July 1918, p. 1. 41. “Ne uspokoenie a bor’ba,” Volzhskoe slovo, 9 August 1918, p. 1; Vecherniaia zaria (Samara), 31 August 1918, p. 2; for the election statute of the Soviet, see Zemlia i volia (Samara), 9 July 1918, p. 4. 42. Vecherniaia zaria (Samara), 12 August 1918, p. 2, and 15 August 1918, p. 2. 43. “Zasedanie Soveta rab. dep.,” Volzhskoe slovo, 16 August 1918, p. 2. 44. Vecherniaia zaria (Samara), 31 August 1918, p. 2; VK, 1 September 1918, p. 4; and F. G. Popov, Za vlast’ sovetov: Razgrom Samarskoi uchredilki (Kuibyshev: Kuibyshevskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1959), 115. 45. Zemlia i volia (Samara), 10 September 1918, p. 2. 46. See Popov, Za vlast’ sovetov, 93–119. 47. Vol’skii manuscript, f. RGASPI 17, op. 84, d. 43, l. 8; V. Arkhangel’skii, “Kazan’ vo vremia bor’by s bol’shevikami,” Volia Rossii 10–11 (1928): 140–42; and Ia. Andreev, “Rabochie i Komitet chlenov U. S.,” Chetyre mesiatsa uchredilovshchiny, 43–45. 48. B. Nikolaevskii, “Iu. Martov i S.-R. (Istoricheskaia spravka),” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik 543–44 (1944): 115; and David Dallin, “The Outbreak of the Civil War,” in Leopold H. Haimson, ed., The Mensheviks: From the Revolution of 1917 to the Second World War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 170. 49. “Svedeniia informatsionnogo otdeleniia Komiteta chlenov Uch. sob.,” GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 6, l. 84. Vecherniaia zaria (Samara), 17 August 1918, p. 2; and Maiskii, Demokraticheskaia kontrrevoliutsiia, 35–36.

NOTES TO PAGES 102–107 / 311

50. Iu. Martov, “Vospominaniia renegata,” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik 23–24 (1922): 15. 51. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaia kontrrevoliutsiia, 37–39. 52. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 110. 53. Dallin, “Outbreak of Civil War,” 173–74. 54. Untitled manuscript by V. Ia. Gurevich, GARF R-5910, op. 1, d. 441, l. 39–53. 55. Gurevich manuscript, GARF f. R-5910, op. 1, d. 441, l. 50–54. 56. L. Krol’, Za tri goda: Vospominaniia, vpechatleniia i vstrechi (Vladivostok: Svobodnaia Rossiia, 1921), 59–63; Gurevich manuscript, GARF f. R-5910, op. 1, d. 441, l. 163–64; and Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 200–1. 57. “Zhurnal zasedaniia Komiteta chlenov Uch. sob.,” 19 July 1918, GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 2, l. 1. 58. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 157–59. 59. William G. Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution: The Constitutional Democratic Party, 1917–1921 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 298–99. 60. Krol’, Za tri goda, 59–60. 61. Elachich, “Obryvki vospominanii,” 36–39; and N. G. Dumova, Kadetskaia kontrrevoliutsiia i ee razgrom (oktiabr’ 1917–1920 gg.) (Moscow: Nauka, 1982), 149. 62. 1918 god v Samarskoi gubernii, 192. 63. Klimushkin, “Bor’ba za demokratiiu na Volge,” 59–60; Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 107–8; and Volzhskii den’, 28 June 1918, pp. 2–3. 64. Volzhskii den’, 27 August 1918, p. 2. 65. My thinking in this section has been much influenced by Holquist’s Making War, Forging Revolution. 66. “Tovarishchi krest’iane,” Volzhskoe slovo, 22 June 1918, p. 1; “Prikazy komiteta chlenov Uch. sob.,” GARF f. R-1405, op. 1, d. 1, l. 35–36; M. Igaev, “Khoziaistvennyi krakh i zadachi gorodov,” Volzhskoe slovo, 30 July 1918, p. 1; V. A. Lapandin, “Komitet chlenov Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia: Struktura vlasti i politicheskaia deiatel’nost’,” candidate dissertation, Samara, 1997, p. 137; and S. Nikolaev, “Politika Komucha (Opyt kharakteristiki), Grazhdanskaia voina na Volge, 1:127–32. A Russian “pound” (funt) is slightly less than an American pound. 67. [V. Almazov], “Voprosy prodovol’stviia,” VK, 3 September 1918, p. 3. 68. [V. Almazov], “Voprosy prodovol’stviia,” VK, 26 August 1918, p. 2. 69. [V. Almazov], “K predstoiashchei khlebnoi kampanii,” VK, 23 August 1918, p. 2; and [V. Almazov], “Voprosy prodovol’stviia,” VK, 3 September 1918, p. 2. 70. [V. Almazov], “Voprosy prodovol’stviia,” VK, 3 September 1918, p. 3. 71. “Samarskii Gubernskii Krest’ianskii S’ezd,” VK, 24 September 1918, p. 3. 72. “Doklad verbovshchika XI raiona,” 15 November 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 152; “Doklad raionnogo organizatora vremenno otkomandirovannogo v prifrontovuiu polosu ot 12 noiabria 1918 g.,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 3; “Doklad agitatora XV raiona,” 15 November 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 7; and “Doklad raionnogo lektora-agitatora N. Bisiarina,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 105.

312 / NOTES TO PAGES 107–110

73. For an account of one episode, see “K grazhdanam Buguruslanskogo uezda,” Narodnoe delo (Buguruslan’), 29 September 1918, p. 1. 74. “Krest’ianskii s’ezd,” Volzhskoe slovo, 19 September 1918, p. 2. 75. In addition to the reports cited above, see the report of agitator Salomasov, 6 November 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 75; and “Doklad raionnogo organizatora Nikiforovskogo raiona,” 16 November 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 13. 76. “Doklad Ufimskogo uezdnogo organizatora,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 44, l. 13. 77. Orlando Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution (1917–1921) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 253; S. A. Sokolov, Revoliutsiia i khleb: Iz istorii sovetskoi prodovol’stvennoi politiki v 1917–1918 gg. (Saratov: Izdatel’stvo Saratovskogo universiteta, 1967), 104. For a detailed account of the 1918 procurement campaign in neighboring Saratov province, see Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 301–7. 78. “Prikazy Komiteta chlenov U.S.,” no. 64, GARF f. R-1405, op. 1, d. 1, l. 41; Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 144–46; Shepikhin, “Pod stiagom Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia,” Grazhdanskaia voina na Volge, 1: 198. 79. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 150. 80. For other memoir accounts, and a good discussion of Komuch’s difficulties in the countryside, see Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War, 177. My estimate of the draft turnout is based on many reports gathered by the Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda (see below), but see “Otchet o khode rabot po Samarskomu gub. otdelu za vremeni s 1-go po 15 sentiabria 1918 g.,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 108–9. 81. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 150. 82. “Protokol soedinennogo sobraniia predstavitelei ot molodykh liudei rodivshikhsia v 1897 i 1898 gg. Timoshkinskoi, Natal’inskoi, Emel’ianovskoi i Matveevskoi vol.,” 21 July 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 4. 83. Report to Buguruslan headquarters of the People’s Army, 7 July 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 85; “Svodka agitatsionnogo biuro s 23 iiulia po 29 iiulia 1918 g.,” GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 51, l. 37. For accounts of other villages resisting mobilizations, see the report of the agitator Bruiak, 22 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 30; Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War, 180–81. 84. “Doklad zaved. Buzulukskim otd. agitatsionnogo biuro,” 8 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 21; “Doklad Buzulukskogo otd. AKP otdela,” 1 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 53. 85. Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War, 180. 86. “Doklad o sluzhebnoi komandirovke v Buzulukskii uezd,” 5 September 1918, RGVA f. 39551, op. 1, d. 13, l. 34–35. 87. On “weapons of the weak,” see James C. Scott’s classic Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985). 88. Report to the head of the Agitation Bureau of the General Staff of the People’s Army, 30 July 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 37, l. 8.

NOTES TO PAGES 110–113 / 313

89. “Doklad o deiatel’nosti agit.-verb. otdela shtaba Narodnoi Armii Ufimskoi gub.,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 35, l. 7. 90. “Doklad ot raionnogo organizatora Iglinskoi i Kal’tovskoi vol.,” 10 November 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 86; among many other examples of this common refrain, see “Vazhneishie dannye obsledovanii AKP deiatel’nosti v Sterlitamakskom uezde,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 27; “Dokladnaia zapiska raionnogo organizatora Kaibysheva,” 28 October 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 74; and “Dokladnaia zapiska o khode rabot v g. Birske i uezde,” 29 July 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 8. 91. “Doklad zav. Samarskim uezdnym otdelom AKP,” 15 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 91. 92. Report on Khvalynskii uezd, 19 August 1918, GARF f. R-669, op. 1, d. 3, l. 21. 93. “Otchet o deiatel’nosti AKP otdela za vremia po 1-oe noiabria 1918 g.,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 12, l. 71. 94. “Prikazy po AKP otdelu,” 1 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 2b, l. 1; “Doklad o postanovke agitatsii i informatsii na mestakh,” 2 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 12, l. 49–50; and report to Samara Bureau of Recruitment, People’s Army, RGVA f. 39551, op. 1, d. 40, l. 32. 95. Head of AKP to Council of Ministers, 25 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 6, l. 11–12; “Otchet o deiatel’nosti AKP otdela za vremia po 1-oe noiabria 1918 goda,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 12, l. 67; limited data on the background of the agitators may be found in the questionnaires they filled out: GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 9, l. 1–15 and f. R-671, op. 1, d. 38, l. 6–28. 96. One hundred seventy-six of these reports have been preserved in the State Archive of the Russian Federation. The reports sketch the peasants’ mood throughout most of Komuch territory, although not all regions are equally well covered: eightythree of the reports are from Samara province, sixty-five from Ufa province, eighteen from Saratov province, and ten from Simbirsk province. The evolution of peasant attitudes may also be charted over time: three are from June, nineteen from July, fortyone from August, thirty-two from September, fifteen from October, and thirty-three from November (an additional thirty-three reports are undated). 97. “Doklad agitatora Takaeva,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 102. 98. Agitator Gorbachev to zaved. Buguruslanskim otdelom Agit. biuro, 31 July 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 42; “Ufimskomu uezdnomu organizatoru AKP otdela. Doklad,” 22 November 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 15. 99. “Doklad o deiatel’nosti agit.-verb. otdela shtaba Narodnoi Armii Ufimskoi gub. za period vremeni ot 10-go iiulia po 3-oe avgusta n. s. 1918 g.,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 35, l. 7; see also “Dokladnaia zapiska uezdnogo org. agit.-verb. otdela Belibeevskogo uezda,” 30 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 44, l. 61; and “Otchet o deiatel’nosti AKP otdela za vremia po 1-oe noiabria 1918 g.,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 12, l. 71. 100. Report to Simbirsk Provincial Department, 17 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 92. 101. “Otchet po ob’ezdu 7-go raiona,” 20 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 56–57. 102. See Daniel Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1976). 103. “Otchet ob agitatsionnoi poezdke po Buguruslanskomu uezdu,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 34.

314 / NOTES TO PAGES 113–115

104. “Doklad o deiatel’nosti Agit.-Verb. otdela shtaba Narodnoi Armii Ufimskoi gub. za period vremeni ot 10-go iiulia po 3 avg. 1918 g.,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 35, l. 5. 105. “Itogi agitatsii po Ufimskomu uezdu s 21 po 30 okt. 1918 g.,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 135. 106. “Doklad Ufimskogo uezdnogo organizatora za period vremeni s 17 po 2 noiabria 1918 g.,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 44, l. 18. 107. “Doklad Ufimskogo uezdnogo organizatora o rezul’tatakh raboty po uezdu za period vremeni s 3-go po 20-e noiabria,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 44, l. 23. 108. Report of the Buguruslan Agitation-Propaganda Department of the People’s Army, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 35, l. 107. 109. Samara district AKP report, 15 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 91. There are many other such reports. See, for instance, the report on Buzuluk district in GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 166–70. 110. See, for instance, “Otchet ob agitatsionnoi poezdke po Buguruslanskomu uezdu,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 33. 111. “Konspektivnye svedeniia o rabotakh po Birskomu uezdu s 20 iiulia po 1-oe sentiabria,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 132. 112. “Doklad o khode rabot Agit.-Verb. otd. shtaba Nar. Armii v Birskom uezde k 1 sent. 1918 g.,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 35, l. 113. 113. Report on Khvalynsk district, 10 August 1918, GARF f. R-669, op. 1, d. 3, l. 29; and report on Khvalynsk district, 9 August 1918, GARF f. R-669, op. 1, d. 3, l. 35. 114. “Doklad chlena agit.-verb. otdela shtaba Narodnoi Armii Ufimskoi gub. podporuchika Efimova,” 19 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 44, l. 26. For additional evidence of anti-Bolshevik sentiment, see the report of the Stavropol’ district AKP, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 175–76; “Vypiska iz dokladnoi zapiski informatora po Buzulukskomu uezdu Kopytina,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 183; report of agitator Stariaev, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 146; “Svodka agit. biuro s 23 iiulia po 29 iiulia 1918 g.” GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 51, l. 37; “Kratkii obzor o rabote po agitatsii i verbovke sredi naseleniia Ufimskogo uezda s iiulia po 1-oe sentiabria,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 44, l. 28; and report to the Ufa provincial organizer, 5 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 35, l. 73 115. “Otchet poezdki po vol. Tushninskoi, Nagatkinskoi i Zagudaevskoi,” 10 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 185. 116. Timoshin to Belozerov, 6 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 141. 117. Report to Buguruslan district AKP, 26 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 33. 118. “Doklad verbovshchika XV raiona,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 9. 119. “Otchet ob agit. poezdke po Buguruslanskomu uezdu,” 22 July 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 33. For more evidence of the same sentiment, see “Doklad o kul’turno-prosvetitel’noi rabote v Nikolaevskom uezde,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 88; and “Otchet po ob’ezdu volostei s tseliu proizvodstva agitatsii,” 5 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 52. 120. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990), xii. 121. Report of Buguruslan district plenipotentiary, 31 July 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 23; and report to Buguruslan district Agitation Bureau, 31 July 1918, GARF f.

NOTES TO PAGES 115–118 / 315

R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 42. See also the report by the agitator N. V. Viteskii, 7 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 38; and report on Khvalynsk district, GARF f. R-669, op. 1, d. 3, l. 17. 122. Report of agitator Stariaev, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 146; and agitators Mustakimov and Munirov to Buguruslan military agitation bureau, 1 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 51. 123. Report to Buguruslan district Agitation Bureau, 31 July 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 42. 124. “Doklad instruktora-priemshchika G. N. Palodutina,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 37, l. 10–11. For further examples of this rumor, see “Doklad Buzulukskogo otdela AKP otdela,” 1 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 54; GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 180; and GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 11. One agitator reported on the great difficulty he had overcoming the rumor that the Constituent Assembly had again been dissolved, as in January: “Doklad raionnogo organizatora N. Bisiarina,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 105. 125. For the ways that peasants had been drawn into national politics over the course of the World War and revolution, see Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914–1922 (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 126. For the Bolshevik role in spreading rumors, see “V otdela administrativnym i samoupravlenii Kom. ch. U. S.,” 7 August 1918, GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 51, l. 33; and “Doklad Buzulukskogo otdeleniia AKP otdela,” 1 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 54. For estate owners and others, see “Doklad chlena Agitatsionno-Verbochnogo otdela shtaba Narodnoi Armii Ufimskoi gub.,” 19 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 44, l. 26; and “Otchet o poezdke agitatorov po Troitskoi volosti, Buguruslanskogo uezda,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 55. 127. See Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 145. 128. Bugul’ma district plenipotentiary to Samara provincial plenipotentiary, 19 September 1918, GARF f. R-681, op. 1, d. 1, l. 5. 129. Stavropol’ district AKP report, 7 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 67; and “Doklad raionnogo agitatora-organizatora A. V. Viliaeva,” 6 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 181. 130. “Dokladnaia zapiska gub. organizatoru Agit.-Verb. otdela,” 31 July 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 44, l. 11. 131. Belibei district organizer to Ufa provincial organizer, 17 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 35, l. 42; see also GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 35, l. 107. 132. These calculations are based on many reports, mainly those in GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30 and f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33. 133. For Chuvash villages, see Report on Second Chuvash region, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 69–70; “Doklad agitatora komandirovannogo v Baituganovskuiu volost’,” 31 July 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 49–50; and Report of agitator Burtaev, 30 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 36–37. For a report on Mordva and Russian villages, see “Svodka,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 215–18. 134. Report on Khvalynsk district, 10 August 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 3, l. 31. 135. “V AKP otdel Samarskoi gubernii,” 20 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 164.

316 / NOTES TO PAGES 118–120

136. Report of agitator for the Tatar villages of Buzuluk district, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 32. 137. “Raionnyi organizator po Iglinskoi i Kal’tovskoi vol.,” 13 November 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 150; “Ufimskomu uezdnomu organizatoru,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 98; and “Protokol s’ezda raionnykh organizatorov Birskogo uezda s 10 noiabria 1918 goda,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 44, l. 37. 138. Nureev, “Rol’ obshchestvennykh dvizhenii i politicheskikh partii natsional’nykh raionov Povolzh’ia v natsional’no-gosudarstvennomy stroitel’stve v 1917–1920,” 79. 139. Iu. I. Smykov, Krest’iane srednego Povolzh’ia v period kapitalizma (sotsial’noekonomicheskoe issledovanie) (Moscow: Nauka, 1984), 42–43, 86–87, and 227. 140. M. L. Murtazin, Bashkiriia i bashkirskie voiska v grazhdanskuiu voinu (Leningrad: Izd. Voennoi tipografii Upravleniia delami Narkom voenmor i RVS SSSR, 1927), 47–51. 141. Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War (Boston: Pegasus, 1987), 66–68; and N. Kakurin, Kak srazhalas’ revoliutsiia, vol. 1 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1925), 244–47. 142. “Doklad Ufimskogo uezdnogo organizatora za period vremeni s 17 okt. po 2 noiabria 1918 g.,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 44, l. 23; and report of agitator Aleksandrov, 19 November 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 94. 143. The comment from the agitator in Buguruslan district is in GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 30, l. 51. 144. “Protokol s’ezda raionnykh org. Birskogo uezda 10 noiabria 1918 g.” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 44, l. 40. 145. Stavropol’ district AKP to central AKP, 7 September 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 34, l. 66. 146. “Doklad agitatora VIII raiona Ufimskogo uezda,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 139; report of agitator Aleksandrov, 19 November 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 94; “Doklad Ufimskogo uezdnogo organizatora o rezul’tatakh raboty po uezdu za period vremeni s 3-go po 20-oe noiabria,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 44, l. 24; and “Doklad Ufimskomu uezdnomu organizatoru ot agitatora po Fedorovskoi, Nadezhdinskoi i Volkovskoi vol.” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 129. 147. See the discussion of the peasant and soldier rebellions in 1905 in John Bushnell, Mutiny amid Repression: Russian Soldiers in the Revolution of 1905 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 226–27. 148. “S’ezd uezdnykh organizatorov Ufimskoi gub. AKP otd.” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 41, l. 3; in addition to the reports cited below, see “Doklad agitatora VIII raiona G. I. Ivanova,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 139; and “Ufimskomu uezdnomu organizatoru. Doklad o tseliakh i metodakh agit. raboty na zavodakh i v derevniakh,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 13. 149. The quotation is from “Doklad verbovshchika XV raiona,” 15 November 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 115; see also “Otchet po ob’ezdu Sergeevskoi, Borovkinskoi, Isaklinskoi, Smaginskoi i Smol’kovskoi vol., Buguruslanskogo uezda,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 63; and “Doklad ot raionnogo org. Iglinskoi i Kal’tovskoi vol.,” 7 November 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 109. 150. Report of agitator Syriakov, 8 October 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 82; see

NOTES TO PAGES 120–127 / 317

also “Doklad verbovshchika XV raiona,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 9; and “Ufimskomu uezdnomu organizatoru. Doklad o tseliakh i metodakh agit. raboty na zavodakh i v derevniakh,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 13. 151. Report of agitator Khilkov, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 70. 152. “Doklad agitatora XI raiona,” 15 November 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 33, l. 7. 153. Kedrov to soviets of Vologda, Iaroslavl’, Petrozavodsk, Cherepovets, Viatka, 16 August 1918, GARF f. R-1235, op. 93, d. 279, l. 21; “Svodki Narkomvoena,” 18–26 August 1918, RGASPI f. 71, op. 33, d. 479, l. 1–2; T. V. Osipova, “Krest’ianskii front v grazhdanskoi voine,” in Iu. V. Afanas’ev, ed., Sud’by rossiiskogo krest’ianstva (Moscow: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 1996), 97; and A. Berelovich, et al., eds., Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU, vol. 1 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998), 77–80. 154. Osipova, “Krest’ianskii front v grazhdanskoi voine,” 113. 155. VChK to CC RKP, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 194, l. 36. 156. Osipova, “Krest’ianskii front v grazhdanskoi voine,” 111–12. 157. Headquarters for the suppression of the rebellion in Kaluga to Petrovskii, 24 November 1918, GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 160, l. 312–21.

Chapter 4: The Politics of the Eastern Front 1. N. L. Rubinshtein, Russkaia istoriografiia (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1941), 382–83; and Wolfgang Faust, Russlands Goldener Boden: Die Sibirische Regionalismus in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Böhlau, 1980), 92–94. 2. I. A. Iakushev, “Grigorii Nikolaevich Potanin (Ego politicheskaia i obshchestvenno-politicheskaia deiatel’nost’,” Vol’naia Sibir’ 1 (1926): 15–41; Stephen Watrous, “The Regionalist Conception of Siberia, 1860–1920,” in Galya Diment and Yuri Slezkine, eds., Between Heaven and Hell: The Myth of Siberia in Russian Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993), 113–32; and N. G. O. Pereira, White Siberia: The Politics of Civil War (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 18–25. 3. On regionalism in 1917, see I. A. Iakushev, “Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia i sibirskie oblastnye s’ezdy (K istorii oblastnogo dvizheniia v Sibiri),” Vol’naia Sibir’ 2 (1927): 13–40; I. M. Razgon and E. N. Babikova, “Ob evoliutsii sibirskogo oblastnichestva v 1917 g.,” in I. M. Razgon et al., eds., Nekotorye voprosy rasstanovki klassovykh sil nakanune i v period Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii (Tomsk: Izdatel’stvo Tomskogo universiteta, 1976), 55–82; and E. N. Babikova, “K istorii sozdaniia narodnykh sobranii Tomskoi gubernii v 1917 godu,” in V. S. Flerov, ed., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Sibiri i na Dal’nem Vostoke, vol. 6 (Tomsk: Izdatel’stvo Tomskogo universiteta, 1970), 130–46. 4. V. Maksakov and A. Turunov, eds., Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri (1917–1918) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1926), 124. 5. V. Vegman, “Kak i pochemu pala v 1918 g. Sovetskaia vlast’ v Tomske,” Sibirskie ogni 1–2 (1923): 129–30. 6. I. A. Iakushev, “Ocherki oblastnogo dvizheniia v Sibiri,” Vol’naia Sibir’ 3 (1927): 23–25; Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 57; V. Vegman, “Oblastnye illiuzii: rasseiannye revoliutsiei,” Sibirskie ogni 3 (1923): 114–16; interrogation of I. S. Iudin, 6 May 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 348, l. 63; and I. Sos’vinskii, “Pis’mo iz Tomska,” Vol’naia Sibir’, 23 March 1918, p. 3. 7. I. A. Iakushev, “Ocherki oblastnogo dvizheniia v Sibiri,” Vol’naia Sibir’ 4 (1928):

318 / NOTES TO PAGES 127–130

103–4; HIA Moravsky coll., box 11, folder 9; and B. V. Ivanov, Sibirskaia kooperatsiia v period oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii i grazhdanskoi voine (Tomsk: Izdatel’stvo Tomskogo universiteta, 1976), 221–22. 8. “Otchet o komandirovke iz Dobrovol’cheskoi Armii v Sibir’ v 1918 godu,” Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii 9 (1923): 252–63; A. A. Kirilov, “Sibirskaia armiia v bor’be za osvobozhdeniia,” Vol’naia Sibir’ 4 (1928): 36–37; and “Kontrrevoliutsiia v Sibiri: Doklad podpolkovnika Glukhareva,” Krasnaia letopis’ 5 (1922): 361–66. 9. “Otchet o komandirovki iz Dobrovol’cheskoi Armii,” 271; and M. A. Krol’, “Sibirskoe Pravitel’stvo i avgustovskaia sessiia Sibirskoi Oblastnoi Dumy (Iz vospominanii),” Vol’naia Sibir’ 4 (1928): 71. 10. Iakushev, “Ocherki oblastnogo dvizheniia v Sibiri,” Vol’naia Sibir’ 4 (1928): 108–9; Paul Dotsenko, The Struggle for a Democracy in Siberia, 1917–1920: Eyewitness Account of a Contemporary (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1983), 28; Kirilov, “Sibirskaia armiia,” 39–41; and I. M. Brushvit, “Kak podgotovlialos’ volzhskoe vystuplenie,” Volia Rossii 10–11 (1928): 92–93. 11. Ivanov, Sibirskaia kooperatsiia, 112–24. 12. The most important of the new appointees was G. K. Gins, professor at the Omsk Polytechnic Institute and a former docent in civil law at Petersburg University, who became the chief-of-staff of the commissariat. The chairman of the Barnaul District Court, A. P. Morozov, took over the Department of Justice. The assistant director of the Omsk railroad, G. M. Stepanenko, was appointed head of the Department of Communications, while the cooperative activist N. S. Zefirov assumed control of food supply, and the veteran Tomsk Social Democrat L. I. Shumilovskii took over at Labor. Academics headed the other departments: V. V. Sapozhnikov and M. P. Golovachev of Tomsk University headed the departments of Education and Foreign Relations respectively; N. I. Petrov, a professor at the Omsk Agricultural Institute, headed the Department of Agriculture; and P. P. Gudkov of the Tomsk Technological Institute took over the Department of Industry and Trade. 13. G. K. Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak: Povorotnyi moment russkoi istorii. 1918–1920 gg. (Peking: Tipo-litografiia Russkoi Dukhovnoi Missii, 1921), vol. 1, 111–12; L. Krol’, Za tri goda: Vospominaniia, vpechatleniia i vstrechi (Vladivostok: Svobodnaia Rossiia, 1921), 68; and A. Iziumov, ed., “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” Russkii istoricheskii arkhiv 1 (1929): 270. Ivan Mikhailov should not be confused with Pavel Mikhailov, the prominent Siberian SR and member of the West Siberian Commissariat, to whom he was not related. 14. Petr Vologodskii, A Chronicle of the Civil War in Siberia and Exile in China: The Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1918–1925, 2 vols., edited by Semion Lyandres and Dietmar Wulff (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), 1: 84–88, 92–93; Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 1, 97–101; and Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 192. 15. Vologodskii’s political affiliations have been the source of considerable confusion in the historiography, in which he is variously referred to as a regionalist, an SR, and even a Kadet. In fact, he was an active SR from the 1890s up to the 1905 revolution and joined the newly formed SR organization in Tomsk after the February Revolution. He quickly moved away from the party, however, and played no role in the Siberian

NOTES TO PAGES 130–136 / 319

PSR in 1917. See Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 21–23, 2: 201; P. V. Vologodskii, “Iz istorii moei zhizni,” Russkoe obozrenie 1 (1920): 98–135; S. P. Shvetsov, “Kul’turnoe znachenie politicheskoi ssylki v Zapadnoi Sibiri,” Katorga i ssylka 41 (1928): 96; N. S. Tiutchev, “Poslednyi iz karakovtsev—Maksimilian Nikolaevich Zagibalov,” Katorga i ssylka 10 (1924): 209; and Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 1, 105–6. 16. Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 1, 106–16; and I. I. Serebrennikov, Moi vospominaniia, vol. 1, V revolutiutsii (1917–1919) (Tianjin, China: Znanie, n. d.), 129. 17. Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 94; and GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 2, l. 4. 18. Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 1, 120, 127–28; and Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 198–99, 208–9. 19. A. A. Argunov, “Omskie dni v 1918 godu,” Sibirskii arkhiv 1 (1935): 195. 20. Kirilov, “Sibirskaia armiia,” 47–58. 21. Ibid., 59–63; and Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 1, 128–31. 22. Diary of E. E. Lazarev, GARF f. R-5824, op. 1, d. 3, l. 187–88; and Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 1, 89. 23. Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 98–99. 24. Ibid., 1: 101. 25. “Svedeniia informatsionogo otdeleniia Komiteta chlenov U. S.,” GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 6, l. 47. 26. Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 196–97. 27. Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 1, 147; and P. D. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie, ‘Volzhskoe dvizhenie’ i obrazovanie Direktorii,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 168–69. 28. Krol’, Za tri goda, 70–79. 29. HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 377, folder 3, pp. 1–2. 30. A. A. Argunov, Mezhdu dvum’ia bol’shevizmami (Paris: Union, 1919), 15. 31. Krol’, Za tri goda, 66. 32. GARF f. R-749, op. 1, d. 2, l. 3. 33. Circular of West Siberian Commissariat, 3 June 1918, GARF f. R-151, op. 1, d. 5, l. 51. 34. Krol’, “Sibirskoe pravitel’stvo,” 76–77. Moisei Krol’ should not be confused with his cousin Lev Krol’, the prominent Kadet and member of the Union of Regeneration. 35. Serebrennikov, Moi vospominaniia, 1: 134; and Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 1, 152. 36. Brushvit-Vol’skii telegrams, 7 August 1918, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 4, l. 1. 37. Ibid.; and Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 176. 38. Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 104–5; and Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 1, 143. 39. Untitled manuscript by V. K. Vol’skii, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 43, l. 5–6; and Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 176. 40. Fomin was the former SR terrorist with whom Fania Kaplan had discussed the possibility of attacking Lenin in the spring of 1918. On his proposal to murder Grishin-

320 / NOTES TO PAGES 136–142

Almazov, see E. E. Kolosov, “Kak eto bylo (Massovye ubiistva pri Kolchake v dekabre 1918 g. v Omske i gibel’ N. V. Fomina),” Byloe 21 (1923): 267; and Krol’, “Sibirskoe pravitel’stvo,” 79. 41. Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 1, 179. 42. Argunov, Mezhdu dvum’ia bol’shevizmami, 14–15; and Krol’, Za tri goda, 80–85. 43. Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, 1: 196; Krol’, Za tri goda, 86; and Serebrennikov, Moi vospominaniia, vol. 1, 146. 44. Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 119–20; and Serebrennikov, Moi vospominaniia, 1: 148–49. Krutovskii had returned to Krasnoiarsk after the August Duma session and had once again ceased to take part in the government. 45. Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 119–24; Serebrennikov, Moi vospominaniia, 1: 150–54; and Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 1, 197–200. 46. For revealing comments on V. A. Zhardetskii and the Omsk Kadets, see Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 88; and Krol’, Za tri goda, 67. According to Pepeliaev, Zhardetskii played no role in the coup d’état of November 18: Pepeliaev diary, GARF f. R-195, op. 1, d. 47, l. 27. 47. For explorations of the liberal understanding of revolution, intelligentsia, and statehood, see Richard Pipes, Struve: Liberal on the Right, 1905–1944 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980); William G. Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution: The Constitutional-Democratic Party, 1917–1921 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974); and Jane Burbank, Intelligentsia and Revolution: Russian Views of Bolshevism, 1917–1922 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 113–69. On the place of the army in statist discourse, see Huburtus Jahn, Patriotic Culture in Russia during World War I (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995). 48. The phrase the “nest of SR-ism” is from Serebrennikov, Moi vospominaniia, 1: 118. 49. I. M. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaia kontr-revoliutsiia (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1923), 216. 50. Serebrennikov, Moi vospominaniia, 1: 169. 51. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaia kontr-revoliutsiia, 219. 52. Iziumov, “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” 67–68. 53. Iziumov, “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” 105–13. 54. V. L. Utgof, “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie 1918 goda: Iz vospominanii uchastnika,” Byloe 16 (1921): 15–18. 55. Krol’, Za tri goda, 85. 56. Iu. Podbel’skii, “M. L. Kogan Bernshtein,” in Iu. Podbel’skii et al., Matvei L’vovich Kogan-Bernshtein: Sbornik statei (Moscow: Narod, n.d.), 52; and F. KoganBernshtein [Fani Arngauz], “K istorii rasstrela M. L. Kogana-Bernshteina (Pis’mo v redaktsiiu),” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 8 (1923): 267–70. 57. Utgof, “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” 31–35. 58. Ibid., 36; N. V. Sviatitskii, Reaktsiia i narodovlastie (Ocherk sobytii na vostoke Rossii) (Moscow: Narod, 1920), 15; and V. M. Zenzinov, “Bor’ba rossiiskoi demokratii s bol’shevikami v 1918 godu: Moskva—Samara—Ufa—Omsk,” HIA, Nicolaevsky coll., box 8, folder 24, pp. 77–78. 59. Iziumov, “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” 113–15.

NOTES TO PAGES 142–147 / 321

60. I. I. Serebrennikov, “K istorii Sibirskogo pravitel’stva,” Sibirskii arkhiv 1 (1929): 10; and Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 232. 61. “Ufimskoe soveshchanie i Vremennoe sibirskoe pravitel’stvo,” Krasnyi arkhiv 61 (1933): 66–72; and Serebrennikov, “K istorii Sibirskogo pravitel’stva,” 8–10. 62. Iziumov, “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” 190–91. 63. N. V. Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia: S’ezd chlenov Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia (Ocherk sobytii na vostoke Rossii v sentiabre–dekabre 1918 g.) (Moscow: Narod, 1921), 57. 64. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaia kontr-revoliutsiia, 240–41. 65. Serebrennikov, Moi vospominaniia, 1: 171–73. 66. Klimushkin, “Chekhoslovatskoe vystuplenie,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 403, l. 229. 67. K. S. Burevoi, “Tragediia na Vostoke (Riad faktov k istorii grazhdanskoi voiny),” in K. Burevoi et al., K prekrashcheniiu voiny vnutri demokratii (Ufimskie peregovory i nasha pozitsiia) (Moscow: Tipografiia Moskovskogo okruzhnogo komissariata po voennym delam, 1919), 17; “Materialy po istorii kontrrevoliutsii: Pis’mo Avksent’eva k s.-r. iuga Rossii,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 1 (1921): 117; Maiskii, Demokraticheskaia kontr-revoliutsiia, 246–47; V. M. Chernov, “Vtoroi razgon Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia,” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik 651 (1952): 36; Utgof, “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” 36–41; V. Chaikin, K istorii Rossiiskoi revoliutsii, vol. 1, Kazn’ 26 bakinskikh komissarov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo I. Z. Grzhebina, 1922), 135–40; and Sviatitskii, Reaktsiia i narodovlastie, 14–15. 68. For the final negotiations and the act, see Iziumov, “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” 194–251. 69. Eight members of the Union attended the Ufa conference: the SRs Avksent’ev, Argunov, Moiseenko, Pavlov, and Viktor Podvitskii; the Popular Socialist Sergei Znamenskii; the Kadet Krol’; and the non-party Boldyrev. 70. Other founders of the Union of Regeneration who were Masons included I. I. Fondaminskii, A. A. Titov, N. N. Shchepkin, and N. K. Volkov. On political freemasonry in the revolutionary era, see B. N. Nikolaevskii, Russkie masony i revoliutsiia (Moscow: Terra, 1990), and V. I. Startsev, Russkoe politicheskoe masonstvo nachala XX veka (St. Petersburg: Tret’ia Rossiia, 1996). 71. Vozrozhdenie, 7 June 1918, p. 4. Among the main contributors to the newspaper were Avksent’ev, Argunov, Zenzinov, and Gendel’man. The participation of the latter two, not members of the Union of Regeneration, foreshadowed their close cooperation with Avksent’ev, Argunov, and other Union members at the Ufa conference. 72. N. D. Avksent’ev, “Natsional’naia vlast’,” Narodovlastie 1 (1918): 12–14. 73. For SR criticism of the introduction of the tricolor, see K. S. Burevoi, Kolchakovshchina (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1919), 14. 74. The most important source for the September events is the large body of material collected by the Extraordinary Investigative Commission set up by the Siberian government and taken over by the Directory. Argunov headed it, but work continued after his arrest by Kolchak in November. Testimony before the commission and many documents relevant to these September events may be found in GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 1–5.

322 / NOTES TO PAGES 147–151

75. Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 239. 76. Ibid., 181–85. 77. Testimony of Shatilov, 5 October 1918, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 1, l. 69; testimony of Iakushev, 7 October 1918, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 1, l. 85; Gattenberger to Mikhailov, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 2, l. 113; and protocol of the Second Siberian Congress of the PSR, September 1918, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 5, l. 12 78. Testimony of Mikhailov, 8 October 1918, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 1, l. 126. 79. Mikhailov to Gattenberger, 11 September 1918, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 2, l. 109–10. 80. Protocol of the Second Siberian Congress of PSR, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 5, l. 13. 81. Gattenberger to Mikhailov, 16 September 1918, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 2, l. 111; and military intelligence report, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 5, l. 3. 82. Testimony of Vologodskii, 26 October 1918, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 2, l. 91. 83. Testimony of Krutovskii, 4 October 1918; testimony of Iakushev, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 1, l. 47, 69, 86; and I. A. Iakushev, “Popytka gosudarstvennogo perevorota,” GARF f. R-5871, op. 1, d. 229, l. 1. 84. Testimony of Shatilov, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 1, l. 74–75; Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 127. On Novoselov, see V. M. Krutovskii, “Tiazhelye utraty: Nekrologi,” Sibirskie zapiski 4 (1918): 99–101; and G. Viatkin, “Pamiati A. E. Novoselova,” Sibirskie ogni 6 (1928): 239. 85. Testimony of Krutovskii, Shatilov, Iakushev, Mikhailov, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 1, l. 49, 71–72, 88–90, and 127. 86. Volkov claimed he acted on his own initiative: testimony of Volkov, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 2, l. 40–44. Not only is this implausible, but Krutovskii showed in his testimony that Volkov knew details of the crisis that he could only have received from Mikhailov: GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 1, l. 52–53. On the Omsk military organization, see A. S. Stepanov, memoir proposal, HIA; D. F. Rakov, V zastenkakh Kolchaka (Golos iz Sibiri) (Paris: Pour la Russie, 1920), 18–19; and Jonathan D. Smele, Civil War in Siberia: The Anti-Bolshevik Government of Admiral Kolchak, 1918–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 82. 87. Order of V. I. Volkov, 21 September 1918, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 1, l. 9; testimony of Krutovskii, Shatilov, and Iakushev, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 1, l. 50–53, 73–74, 90–91; testimony of V. I. Narbut, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 2, l. 45; and Krutovskii, “Tiazhelye utraty,” 101–2. 88. Iakushev, “Popytka gosudarstvennogo perevorota,” GARF f. R-5871, op. 1, d. 229, l. 6; testimony of G. N. Solov’ianov, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 2, l. 17, 20; testimony of Gattenberger, 1 December 1918, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 4, l. 65; protocol of Siberian Regional Duma, 22 September 1918, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 5, l. 99–100; and HIA, Nicolaevsky coll, box 213, pp. 1–2. 89. Boldyrev, Direktoriia, Kolchak, interventy, 49–52; and Argunov, Mezhdu dvum’ia bol’shevizmami, 29. 90. Iakushev, “Popytka gosudarstvennogo perevorota,” GARF f. R-5871, op. 1, d. 229, l. 12–21; and Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 260. 91. Iziumov, “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” 247–48. 92. Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia, 34–39;

NOTES TO PAGES 151–158 / 323

Boldyrev, Direktoriia, Kolchak, interventy, 63–64; and Argunov, Mezhdu dvum’ia bol’shevizmami, 30. 93. Krol’, Za tri goda, 140. 94. Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 168–71; Serebrennikov, Moi vospominaniia, 1: 203; and H. H. Fisher and Elena Varneck, eds., The Testimony of Kolchak and Other Siberian Materials (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1935), 163. 95. Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 255–56 96. Ibid., 249–50. 97. Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 170–71. 98. “Rezoliutsiia po taktike partii v sviazi s tekushchem momente,” GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 3, l. 109. 99. Protocol of the Second Siberian Congress of PSR, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 5, l. 16–17. 100. “Rezoliutsiia o taktike partii,” GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 3, l. 109–10. 101. Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia, 40–53. 102. Ibid., 57–58. 103. V. M. Chernov, “‘Chernovskaia gramota’ i Ufimskaia Direktoriia,” HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 10, folder 4, p. 3. Present were Burevoi, Chaikin, Chernov, Fedorovich, Gendel’man, Ivanov, Rakitnikov, Rakov, and Vedeniapin. The following account is based on Chernov’s manuscript unless otherwise noted. 104. S. Nikolaev, “Konets Komuch-a (Svidetel’skoe pokazanie),” Sovremennye zapiski 45 (1931): 352. 105. “Prikaz po AKP otdelu,” 18 October 1918, GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 2b, l. 43; “Doklad Natsional’nomu sovetu o russko-cheshskikh chastiakh,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 12, l. 62–63; and P. D. Klimushkin, “Likvidatsiia demokratii,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 405, l. 67–69, 80–81. 106. Klimushkin, “Likvidatsiia demokratii,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 405, l. 23. 107. “Doklad Natsional’nomu sovetu,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 12, l. 61; and Klimushkin, “Likvidatsiia demokratii,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 405, l. 5. 108. “Otchet o deiatel’nosti AKP otdela za vremia po 1-oe noiabria 1918 goda,” GARF f. R-671, op. 1, d. 2, l. 75. 109. Klimushkin, “Likvidatsiia demokratii,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 405, l. 99; Maiskii, Demokraticheskaia kontrrevoliutsiia, 309–10; Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia, 64–65; and Serebrennikov, Moi vospominaniia, 1: 203. 110. Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia, 66. 111. Chernov, “‘Chernovskaia gramota,” 44; and V. M. Zenzinov, ed., Gosudarstvennyi perevorot admirala Kolchaka v Omske 18 noiabria 1918 g.: Sbornik dokumentov (Paris: Tipografiia I. Rirakhovskogo, 1919), 69. 112. Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia, 71–76, 87–90. 113. G. Z. Ioffe, Kolchakovskaia avantiura i ee krakh (Moscow: Mysl’, 1983), 135; and Pereira, White Siberia, 106. 114. Argunov, Mezhdu dvum’ia bol’shevizmami, 32–33. 115. Pepeliaev diary, GARF f. R-195, op. 1, d. 47, l. 6–7. 116. Ibid., l. 19.

324 / NOTES TO PAGES 158–164

117. Ibid., l. 19. 118. Varneck and Fisher, Testimony of Kolchak, 149. 119. Pepeliaev diary, GARF f. R-195, op. 1, d. 47, l. 21. 120. Varneck and Fisher, Testimony of Kolchak, 166–69. 121. Argunov, Mezhdu dvum’ia bol’shevizmami, 37–38; V. M. Zenzinov, Iz zhizni revoliutsionera (Paris: Tipografiia I. Rirakhovskogo, 1919), 116–17; Varneck and Fisher, Testimony of Kolchak, 171–72; and Rakov, V zastenkakh Kolchaka, 5. 122. Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 183–87; and Varneck and Fisher, Testimony of Kolchak, 171–75. 123. Zenzinov, Gosudarstvennyi perevorot admirala Kolchaka, 11–12; and Pereira, White Siberia, 106. 124. Zenzinov, Gosudarstvennyi perevorot admirala Kolchaka, 11. 125. See Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 164–70. 126. The link between the liberal conception of statehood and the defense of privilege is emphasized in Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution. 127. Serebrennikov, Moi vospominaniia, 1: 131. 128. Boldyrev, Direktoriia, Kolchak, interventy, 528. 129. “Pis’mo Avksent’eva k s.-r. iuga Rossii,” 118; for the tense discussion of the directive in the Directory, which learned of it in early November, see Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 173–77; Boldyrev, Direktoriia, Kolchak, interventy, 93; and Zenzinov, Gosudarstvennyi perevorot admirala Kolchaka, 192. 130. Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia, 96–107; Nikolaev, “Konets Komuch-a,” 351–57; and Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 272. 131. Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 270–71; and Klimushkin, “Likvidatsiia demokratii,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 405, l. 110. 132. Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 270; and Klimushkin, “Likvidatsiia demokratii,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 405, l. 113–17. 133. J.F.N. Bradley, La Légion Tchéchoslovaque en Russie 1914–1920 (Paris: Delmas, 1965), 109. 134. Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia, 107–15. 135. Ibid., 122–25; and K. S. Burevoi, Raspad, 1918–1922 (Moscow: Novaia Moskva, 1923), 58. 136. Klimushkin, “Likvidatsiia demokratii,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 405, l. 182–94; and Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 273. 137. Kolosov, “Kak eto bylo,” 267–96; “Omskie sobytiia pri Kolchake,” Krasnyi arkhiv 7 (1924): 201–46, and “Omskie sobytiia pri Kolchake,” Krasnyi arkhiv 8 (1925): 176–92; A. Ia. Gutman, “Dva vosstaniia,” Beloe delo 3 (1927): 160–71; Rakov, V zastenkakh Kolchaka, 13–20; Testimony of Kolchak, 198–208; and Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 196–97. For a good discussion of the massacre’s place in the internal politics of the Kolchak regime, see Smele, Civil War in Siberia, 168–82. 138. Worker unrest in the Urals in late 1918 was particularly notable at the Motovilikha plant and at Izhevsk. In response to a strike at Motovilikha in December, the Bolsheviks declared martial law, temporarily closed the factory, and dismissed all the workers. See Beloborodov to Sverdlov, 6–7 December 1918, GARF f. R-1235, op. 93, d.

NOTES TO PAGES 164–167 / 325

445, l. 38, 40; and Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War, 94–96. In Izhevsk a writer in the local Bolshevik newspaper lamented after Soviet elections in December: “We hoped too quickly to turn yesterday’s supporters of the Constituent Assembly (uchredilovtsy) into upholders of the proletarian revolution. . . . Izhevsk was and remains a bastion of petit bourgeois illusions. . . . [The] uprising that we suppressed two months ago by force of arms has not yet been overcome in the realm of consciousness.” See I. Aronshtam, “Bol’she vnimaniia,” Izhevskaia pravda, 18 December 1918, p. 2. 139. Iarov, Proletarii kak politik, 98. 140. Daniel T. Orlovsky, “State-Building in the Civil War Era: The Role of the Lower-Middle Strata,” in Diane P. Koenker, William G. Rosenberg, and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War: Explorations in Social History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 180. On the impact of personnel shortages on the formation of Soviet institutions and development of the Bolshevik party in Petrograd, see Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 141. Evno Azef was one of the founding leaders of the PSR and head of the SR Combat Organization, the party’s most important terrorist detachment. As head of the Combat Organization, Azef played a key role in organizing several of the most spectacular SR terrorist attacks, but he was exposed at the end of 1908 as a longtime police informant. For judicious accounts of Azef’s career and exposure, see Jonathan W. Daly, The Watchful State: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1906–1917 (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 84–87; and R. A. Gorodnitskii, Boevaia organizatsiia Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov (1901–1911 gg.) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998), 87–183. 142. K. N. Morozov, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov v 1907–1914 gg. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998), 26. On the 1917 membership, see Kh. M. Astrakhan, Bol’sheviki i ikh politicheskie protivniki v 1917 godu: Iz istorii politicheskikh partii mezhdu dvum’ia revoliutsiiami (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1973), 233–40; and L. M. Spirin, Klassy i partii v grazhdanskoi voine v Rossii (1917–1920 gg.) (Moscow: Mysl’, 1968), 49. 143. E. I. Cherniak, Eserovskie organizatsii v Sibiri v 1917-nachale 1918 g. (K istorii bankrotstva partii) (Tomsk: Izdatel’stvo Tomskogo universiteta, 1987), 56–61. 144. On the army organizations in 1917, see Astrakhan, Bol’sheviki i ikh politicheskie protivniki, 233; and L. G. Protasov, “K istorii bor’by eserov za armiiu v 1917 g.,” Neproletarskie partii Rossii v trekh revoliutsiiakh (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), 171. 145. Materials of Eighth Council of PSR, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 5, l. 36, 64, 66. 146. “Iz Sovetskoi Rossii,” RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 23, l. 24. 147. See the reports from the Voronezh, Nizhnii Novgorod, Penza, and IvanovoVoznesensk organizations to CC PSR, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 25, 1. 6–7, 33, 45. 148. See the illuminating discussion in Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution, 113–42. 149. Volkovicher, “K istorii pokushenii,” 281. Of course, Tarasova had good reason to emphasize her political inactivity to the Cheka, but her remarks are nevertheless revealing. 150. See chapter 5 in this book for further discussion about the overturning of the hierarchy of discourses in the party and the rethinking of the civil war from the end of 1918.

326 / NOTES TO PAGES 168–170

151. V. I. Lenin, Sochineniia, 3rd ed., 30 vols. (Moscow: Partizdat, 1927–35), 23: 289–93. Lenin did not mention that Sorokin had been held in a Soviet prison for most of the fall of 1918: see Pitirim Sorokin, Leaves from a Russian Diary (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950), 182–202. 152. Lenin, Sochineniia, 23: 212–14. For a provincial echo of Lenin’s article, see “O chem nuzhno pisat’,” Opolchenie bednoty, 24 September 1918, p. 1. 153. Lenin, Sochineniia, 23: 340, 344, 357. The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky is suffused with the “rhetoric of fear” that Eric Naiman has identified as “NEP Gothic” in his Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 148–60. Foreign villains, monsters and shadows, stinking corpses, and the walking dead all populate Lenin’s nightmare about Kautsky’s betrayal of Marxism. As Naiman has shown, the generic conventions of gothic fiction provided the “ideological envelope” for Bolshevik discourse about revolutionary legitimacy and the dangers of capitalist contamination in the 1920s. Their presence in a text devoted to legitimating the dictatorship and defending revolutionary purity against social democratic contamination thus makes good sense. 154. See Vladimir N. Brovkin, ed., The Bolsheviks in Russian Society: The Revolution and the Civil Wars (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), 1–21; and Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution, 5. 155. On the power of naming and dualist operations, see Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 234–43, and Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), 137–38. 156. I treat “regionalism” here as part of the larger discourse of nationhood and nationalism. That does not mean that all regionalist movements inevitably transform themselves into national movements, or that regionalism should be understood simply as an immature form of nationalism. Nevertheless, regionalism and nationalism constitute legitimate authority in the same terms: it emanates from, and embodies the aspirations of, the region or nation, which may be imagined either as a political, territorially bounded community or an ethnocultural community of descent. See Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1–54. Siberian regionalism constructed Siberia as a political, territorially bounded community, not an ethnocultural community of descent. Siberia encompassed the non-Russian, aboriginal population as much as the Russian settlers, and indeed the settlers were ironically assimilated to the aboriginal population’s status as innocent victims of imperialist domination on the part of the centralized Russian state. 157. On nationally relevant conflicts of interest, see Miroslav Hroch, “From National Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation: The Nation-Building Process in Europe,” in Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Becoming National: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 67–68. On national movements during the civil war, see Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964). 158. For interpretations that attribute more mobilizational power to nationhood during the civil war, compare Joshua A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905–1925 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois

NOTES TO PAGES 171–182 / 327

University Press, 2003), 96–100; and Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 6–8, 63–67. 159. On the Bolshevik turn to statist discourse in 1918, see Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 63–66; and Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution, 285. 160. Jane Burbank, Intelligentsia and Revolution: Russian Views of Bolshevism, 1918–1922 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 111–12. 161. The significance of the term “People’s Army” was well understood by the SRs’ opponents. In the commission set up to form the all-Russian government at the Ufa conference, Sapozhnikov specifically and vehemently resisted the use of this title for the armed forces of the prospective directory: Iziumov, “Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie,” 151–52. For an SR effort to use the concept to propagandistic effect, see S. Kalistov, “Narodnaia armiia i trudovoe krest’ianstvo,” Narodnoe delo (Kazan’), 21 August 1918, p. 1. 162. Andrzej Walicki, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Utopia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995), 322–46. 163. Ivanov, Sibirskaia kooperatsiia, 183–88, 221–24; and Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki, Kolchak, vol. 1, 275. 164. N. I. Rakitnikov, Sibirskaia reaktsiia i Kolchak (Moscow: Narod, 1920), 11; and Ivanov, Sibirskaia kooperatsiia, 241–44. 165. Orlovsky, “State Building in the Civil War Era,” 187. The following discussion is greatly indebted to Orlovsky’s essay. 166. S. P. Mel’gunov, Tragediia admirala Kolchaka: Iz istorii grazhdanskoi voiny na Volge, Urale, i v Sibiri, part 2 (Belgrade: Russkaia tipografiia, 1930), 76; and Maksakov and Turunov, Khronika grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri, 204–6. 167. For Soviet interpretations of the cooperatives that emphasize their bourgeois outlook, see Ivanov, Sibirskaia kooperatsiia; and V. V. Kabanov, Oktiabr’skaia revoliutsiia i kooperatsiia (1917 g.–mart 1919 g.) (Moscow: Nauka, 1973). Populist paternalism is emphasized in Yanni Kotsonis, Making Peasants Backward: Agricultural Cooperatives and the Agrarian Question in Russia, 1861–1914 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). 168. Ivanov, Sibirskaia kooperatsiia, 245. 169. Zenzinov, Gosudarstvennyi perevorot admirala Kolchaka, 109–10, 116. 170. Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki, i Kolchak, vol. 2, 34–35. 171. For the frantic efforts of the cooperative activists on behalf of the December victims and their spouses, see Kolosov, “Kak eto bylo,” 267–96; and Vologodskii, Diaries of Petr Vasil’evich Vologodskii, 1: 197–98. For cooperative support of Kolchak, see Ivanov, Sibirskaia kooperatsiia, 258–59. 172. Protocol of the Second Siberian Congress of PSR, GARF f. R-189, op. 1, d. 5, l. 15–16.

Chapter 5: Between Red and White 1. Marc Jansen, ed., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota: Dokumenty iz arkhiva PSR (Amsterdam: Stichting Beheer IISG, 1989), 144.

328 / NOTES TO PAGES 182–186

2. V. Vol’skii, “Ufimskie peregovory,” in K. S. Burevoi et al., K prekrashcheniiu voiny vnutri demokratii (Ufimskie peregovory i nasha pozitsiia) (Moscow: Tipografiia Moskovskogo okruzhnogo komissariata po voennym delam, 1919), 40; K. Burevoi, Raspad 1918–1922 (Moscow: Tipografiia Moskovskogo okruzhnogo komissariata po voennym delam, 1923), 57; N. V. Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia: S’ezd chlenov Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia (Ocherk sobytii na vostoke Rossii v sentiabre–dekabre 1918 g.) (Moscow: Narod, 1921), 69; and “Ko vsem organizatsiiam PSR dlia svedeniia i rukovodstva,” 31 December 1918, RGASPI f. 557, op. 1, d. 3, l. 4. 3. Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia, 135–37; Vol’skii, “Ufimskie peregovory,” 40–41; and P. D. Klimushkin, “Grazhdanskaia voina na Volge: likvidatsiia demokratii,” GARF f. R-5881, op. 2, d. 405, l. 198. 4. I. A. Rubanovich, V. V. Sukhomlin, and V. M. Zenzinov, eds., Sovremennyi moment v otsenke Partii Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov (fevral’–mart 1919 g.) (New York: PSR, 1919), 9–15; and V. V. Shelokhaev et al., eds., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: Dokumenty i materialy, 1900–1925 gg., vol. 3, part 2, compiled by N. D. Erofeev (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), 425. 5. Shumiatskii letter, RGASPI f. 557, op. 1, d. 3, l. 1–2. 6. V. M. Chernov, “Pered burei,” HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 378, folder 9, pp. 263–64; Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 143–44; Iu. I. Shestak, “Bol’sheviki i eserovskaia gruppa ‘Narod’ (O vzaimootnosheniiakh RKP(b) s men’shinstvom partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov),” Voprosy istorii KPSS 8 (1978): 96; and Vladimir N. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 27–56. 7. Shumiatskii letter, RGASPI f. 557, op. 1, d. 3, l. 2; Vol’skii, “Ufimskie peregovory,” 43–44; and V. M. Chernov, Pered burei (New York: Izdatel’stvo imeni Chekhova, 1953), 399. 8. N. Shmelev, “Sostoianie Narodnoi armii k momentu Ufimskikh peregovorov,” in Burevoi, K prekrashcheniiu voiny, 30–36; Vol’skii, “Ufimskie peregovory,” 42; and Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia, 145. 9. “Ko vsem organizatsiiam PSR dlia svedeniia i rukovodstva,” 31 December 1918, RGASPI f. 557, op. 1, d. 3, l. 3–5; and Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia, 145–47. 10. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 50 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1965), 239. 11. Telegraph communication, 15 January 1919, RGASPI f. 557, op. 1, d. 2, l. 38. 12. “Protokol zasedaniia peregovorov VRK g. Ufy i Ufimskoi gub. s predstaviteliami s’ezda chlenov U. S.,” 18 January 1919, RGASPI f. 557, op. 1, d. 1, l. 15; Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia, 149–52; and Vol’skii, “Ufimskie peregovory,” 46–50. 13. Smirnov and Mikhailov to CEC Presidium and Sverdlov, 14 February 1919, RGASPI f. 557, op. 1, d. 3, l. 22. 14. Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State, First Phase, 1917–1922, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 162–63; and M. N. Petrov, “Vozniknovenie i raspad men’shinstva partii eserov,” Voprosy istorii 7 (1979): 52–53.

NOTES TO PAGES 186–190 / 329

15. See “Perelom v partii pravykh eserov,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 7 February 1919, p. 2, and the regular updates in the same newspaper under the heading “K peregovoram s pravymi eserami.” 16. Sviatitskii, K istorii Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia, 134. 17. V. M. Chernov, Meine Schicksale in Sowjet-Russland (Berlin: Der Firn, 1921), 15–19. 18. Rubanovich, Sukhomlin, and Zenzinov, Sovremennyi moment v otsenke Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, 14. 19. “Rezoliutsiia konferentsii Moskovskoi organizatsii PSR o tekushchem momente i taktike partii,” RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 11, l. 11. 20. Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 144–45. 21. Rubanovich, Sukhomlin, and Zenzinov, Sovremennyi moment v otsenke Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, 19–22; and Vsegda vpered, 14 February 1919, p. 2. 22. Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, vol. 4 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1968), 436–37. 23. “Nas legalizali,” DN, 20 March 1919, p. 1. 24. Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 157; G. Svirov, “Stachki i rabochii klass,” Narod, 17 August 1919, p. 2; and Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines, 70. 25. “Protokoly Petrogradskogo Komiteta RKP,” 15 March 1919, TsGAIPD f. 1, op. 2, d. 26, l. 2. 26. “Protokoly Petrogradskogo komiteta RKP,” 28 March 1919, TsGAIPD f. 1, op. 2, d. 26, l. 4. 27. Chairman of Sormovo RKP committee to CC RKP, RGASPI f. 17, op. 4, d. 51, l. 71; and Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines, 77. 28. Head of agit.-prop. department of Moscow regional commissariat for military affairs to RKP Moscow regional bureau, RGASPI f. 60, op. 1, d. 60, l. 20. 29. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines, 75–76. 30. “Rezoliutsiia priniataia na zasedanii konferentsii Tul’skogo otdeleniia Vserossiiskogo Soiuza Rabochikh-Metallistov,” RGASPI f. 17, op. 65, d. 71, l. 7. 31. Protocol of Tula Gubkom RKP, 9 April 1919, GARF f. R-6935, op. 7, d. 167a, l. 17; and RGASPI f. 17, op. 66c, d. 59, l. 167. 32. A. Berelovich et al., eds., Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK—OGPU: Dokumenty i materialy, vol. 1 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998), 116–25. Compare “Provokatorskaia rabota eserov,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 20 March 1919, p. 3. 33. On the inadequacies of the notion of spontaneity and its conventional metaphors, see Ranajit Guha, “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency,” in Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 45–47. 34. For a nuanced account of desertion and the observation that deserters were not necessarily political opponents of the Soviet state, see Erik C. Landis, Bandits and Partisans: The Antonov Movement in the Russian Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), 17–40, 106. See also Joshua A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905–1925 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 49–50, for the suggestion that desertion should be seen more in terms of state-soldier relations than in terms of state-peasant relations.

330 / NOTES TO PAGES 191–196

35. Berelovich et al., Sovetskaia derevnia, 118–21, 747. See also Orlando Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917–1921 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 325–53. 36. George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 132–51. 37. Plenum of CC RKP, 14 March 1919, RGASPI f. 17, op. 2, d. 10, l. 2–3. 38. D. B. Pavlov, Bol’shevistskaia diktatura protiv sotsialistov i anarkhistov, 1917–seredina 1950-kh godov (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), 55. 39. Plenum of CC RKP, 13 April 1919, RGASPI f. 17, op. 2, d. 16, l. 2; and protocol of Politburo RKP, 16 April 1919, RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 1, l. 1. 40. Protocol of Politburo RKP, 26 April 1919, RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 4, l. 2; and Petrov, “Vozniknovenie i raspad men’shinstva Partii eserov,” 54. 41. Chernov, Meine Schicksale in Sowjet-Russland, 22–28; and “Sotsialisty-revoliutsionery v tiur’me,” Narod 1 (1919): 4. 42. Both documents are printed in Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 146–63. 43. Ibid., 148. 44. Iu. Gardenin [V. M. Chernov], Voina i ‘tret’ia sila’: Sbornik statei (Geneva: Impr. E. Chaulmontet, 1915). 45. Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 156–57; see also Listok dela naroda 4 (1919), p. 1. 46. See V. M. Chernov, “Krovavye psikhozy,” in Cheka: Materialy po deiatel’nosti (Berlin: Izdatel’stvo Tsentral’nogo biuro PSR, 1922), 3–18; and Jane Burbank, Intelligentsia and Revolution: Russian Views of Bolshevism, 1917–1922 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 66–85. 47. Burevoi, Raspad 1918–1922, 67–71; and Sviatitskii, “O sud’bakh narodovlastiia,” 80–85. 48. Burevoi, Raspad 1918–1922, 73. 49. Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 167–68. 50. I. A. Rubanovich, ed., Deviatyi sovet Partii i ego rezoliutsii (iiun’ 1919, Moskva) (Paris: Union, 1920), 15. 51. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2: 579; interrogation of L. I. Konopleva, 30 March 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 347, l. 67; and testimony of E. M. Timofeev, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 373, l. 65. Semenov’s arrest was presumably fictitious, because he was probably an agent of Soviet military counterintelligence by this point. See S. V. Zhuravlev, “Chelovek revoliutsionnoi epokhi: Sud’ba esera-terrorista G. I. Semenova (1891–1937),” Otechestvennaia istoriia 3 (2000): 91. 52. Letter of CC PSR, 5 October 1919, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 2, l. 39. 53. Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 171–72. 54. Letter of “Donskoi konsul,” RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 27, l. 8. 55. Burevoi, Raspad 1918–1922, 82. 56. “V partiiakh,” Narod, 17 August 1919, p. 4; Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistovrevoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2: 581; and Burevoi, Raspad 1918–1922, 83. 57. Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 176–77.

NOTES TO PAGES 197–200 / 331

58. Ibid., 183–88. 59. Ibid., 7. 60. K. Burevoi et al., “Zaiavlenie v Sovet Oborony RSFSR,” 15 October 1919, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 27, l. 7. 61. Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 206–8. 62. Burevoi, Raspad 1918–1922, 87–88. 63. Chernov to editors of Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, 2 August 1922, HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 8, folder 19. 64. Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 209–14. 65. Burevoi, Raspad 1918–1922, 91–92; and resolutions of the Khar’kov SR organization, December 1919, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 18, l. 31–37. Most of these SR organizations, notably Khar’kov, Petrograd, and Ufa, had been bastions of the left wing of the party since 1917. 66. “Vybory v Petrogradskii Sovet,” Narod 2–3 (1920): 34–36; “Iz protokolov 1-oi Vserossiiskoi Konferentsii Men’shinstva Partii S.-R.,” Narod 4–5 (1920): 32; and “Deklaratsiia Men’shinstva Partii Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov na VII s’ezde Sovetov,” Narod 2–3 (1920): supplement. 67. CC PSR, “Ko vsem organizatsiiam partii,” 18 January 1920, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 139, l. 18. 68. See the letters from the Voronezh, Penza, and Ivanovo-Voznesensk organizations to CC PSR, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 25, l. 6–7, 25, 45. 69. Penza SR organization to CC PSR, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 25, l. 45. 70. Report on the Nizhnii Novgorod organization of PSR, 21 October 1919, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 25, l. 33. 71. “Iz Sovetskoi Rossii,” RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 23, l. 24. See also “Iz protokolov 1-oi Vserossiiskoi Konferentsii Men’shinstva Partii S.-R.,” Narod 4–5 (1920): 32. 72. Mikhail Lindberg, Nevedomaia stranitsa (Popytka pokusheniia na Kolchaka) (Chita: Tsentral’noe biuro Sibirskogo soiuza sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, 1921), 5–12. 73. Resolution of PSR Siberian Regional Committee, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 23, l. 4. 74. “Rezoliutsiia po tekushchemu momentu i taktike partii, priniataia SibirskoUral’skoi konferentsiei PSR,” RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 23, l. 1. 75. Ia. D. Ianson, “Vostochno-sibirskoe gosudarstvo,” RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 140, l. 4–5; Irkutsk Governor to Ministry of Internal Affairs, GARF f. R-147, op. 10, d. 8, l. 12, 23; and K. V. Gusev and Kh. A. Eritsian, Ot soglashatel’stva k kontrrevoliutsii (Ocherki istorii politicheskogo bankrotstva i gibeli partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov) (Moscow: Mysl’, 1968), 365. 76. Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 360–66; Sibkomuch, “Ko vsem grazhdanam Sibiri,” July 1919, HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 213, folder 14; “Pamiati B. D. Markova,” Katorga i ssylka 4 (1922): 192–93; and “Rezoliutsiia Vsesibirskogo Kraevogo Komiteta PSR po voprosu o Sibirskom soiuze s.-r.,” RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 23, l. 5. 77. “Rezoliutsiia Vsesibirskogo Kraevogo Komiteta po voprosu o Sibirskom soiuze s.-r.,” RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 23, l. 5, 10; and RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 8, l. 90. 78. Jonathan D. Smele, Civil War in Siberia: The Anti-Bolshevik Government of

332 / NOTES TO PAGES 201–206

Admiral Kolchak, 1918–1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 224–27, 312–14. 79. Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War (Boston: Pegasus, 1987), 138. This is not to deny that the authoritarian proclivities of the White armies in Siberia and the government’s inability to rein them in did not cause the Kolchak government serious problems. See N. G. O. Pereira, White Siberia: The Politics of Civil War (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 143. 80. Smele, Civil War in Siberia, 308–17. 81. Konstantinov, M. M., ed., Poslednye dni Kolchakovshchiny (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1926), 21. 82. Smele, Civil War in Siberia, 455, 594–96. 83. Diary of V. N. Pepeliaev, GARF f. R-195, op. 1, d. 1a, l. 11. 84. G. K. Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak: Povorotnyi moment russkoi istorii, 1918–1920 gg., vol. 2 (Peking: Tipo-litografiia Russkoi Dukhovnoi Missii, 1921), 22–23, 216–17, 225–30. 85. “Rezul’taty vyborov v gorodskie Dumy,” Russkaia armiia, 4 July 1919, p. 3; and “Iz itogov vyborov v gorodskie samoupravleniia,” Novoe zemskoe delo 26–27 (1919): 16–17. 86. “Vypiska iz zhurnala Chrezvychainogo Eniseiskogo Gubernskogo Zemskogo Sobraniia,” 4 June 1919 and Perm’ provincial zemstvo to Kolchak, 19 June 1919, GARF f. R-1700, op. 1, d. 55, l. 4, 31; and L. Krol’, Za tri goda: Vospominaniia, vpechatleniia, vstrechi (Vladivostok: Svobodnaia Rossiia, 1921), 173–75. 87. Krol’, Za tri goda, 172, 179–80. 88. Ibid.; “L. A. Krol’ o zemskom soveshchanii,” Rus’, 19 September 1919, p. 1; and “A. V. Sazonov o zemskom soveshchanii,” Rus’, 23 September 1919, p. 2. 89. Svobodnyi krai, 18 July 1919, p. 1; Svobodnyi krai, 24 July 1919, p. 1; Svobodnyi krai, 14 August 1919, p. 1; and “Starye pesni,” Sibirskaia rech’, July 25, 1919, p. 1. 90. “Sozyv gosudarstvennogo zemskogo soveshchaniia,” Rus’, 18 September 1919, p. 2; “K sozyvu zemskogo soveshchaniia,” Rus’, 19 September 1919, p. 1; and Krol’, Za tri goda, 191–92. 91. Resolution of Siberian Regional Com. PSR, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d . 23, l. 4; and “Izvestiia Vsesibirskogo Kraevogo Komiteta PSR,” 17 March 1920, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 8, l. 74. 92. V. G. Boldyrev, Direktoriia, Kolchak, interventy (Novonikolaevsk: Sibkraiizdat, 1925), 551; N. S. Kalashnikov, “V. I. Lebedev: Vospominaniia iz epokhi grazhdanskoi voiny,” in G. Aronson et al., Pamiati V. I. Lebedeva (New York: Rausen, 1958), 43–51; and S. P. Mel’gunov, Tragediia admirala Kolchaka: Iz istorii grazhdanskoi voiny na Volge, Urale i v Sibiri, vol. 3, part 1 (Belgrade: Russkaia tipografii, 1931), 293. 93. “Itogi vesennogo nastupleniia,” Sibirskii arkhiv 2 (1929): 81–87. 94. See Mel’gunov, Tragediia admirala Kolchaka, vol. 3, part 1: 149–51. 95. In his book Kolosov obscures the nature of his conversation with Gajda (Kolosov, Sibir’ pri Kolchake, 181–83). See Kolosov to the Committee to Assist the Convocation of the Assembly of the Land, in GARF f. R-5871, op. 1, d. 99, l. 137; “Kharakteristika Krasnoiarskoi gruppy PSR,” RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 8, l. 90; and N., “Poslednie dni Kolchakovshchiny,” Sibirskie ogni 2 (1922): 78. 96. I. A. Iakushev, “Komitet sodeistviia sozyvu Zemskogo Sobora,” Sibirskii arkhiv

NOTES TO PAGES 206–211 / 333

2 (1929): 78–79; “Gramota predsedatelia Sibirskoi Oblastnoi Dumy,” Sibirskii arkhiv 2 (1929): 88–91; and Boldyrev, Direktoriia, Kolchak, interventy, 547. 97. Boldyrev, Direktoriia, Kolchak, interventy, 546–49. 98. Iakushev to Siberian zemstvo activists, Sibirskii arkhiv 2 (1929): 95; and Kurenkov to Sukin, HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 213, folder 10. For more on the Allied role in the Vladivostok events, see Smele, Civil War in Siberia, 558–64. 99. “Telegrafnaia perepiska D-ra Girsa i Pavlu s Vladivostokom,” GARF f. R-5871, op. 1, d. 99, l. 2–5; B. Solodovnikov, Sibirskie avantiury i general Gaida (Iz zapisok russkogo revoliutsionera) (Prague: Politika, n.d.), 66; and “Vosstanie Gaidy vo Vladivostoke,” HIA Melgunov coll., box 13, folder 7. 100. Solodovnikov, Sibirskie avantiury i General Gaida, 28; and [I. A. Iakushev], “Memorandum,” Sibirskii arkhiv 2 (1929): 92. 101. “Doklad nachal’nika kontr-razvedki pri Shtabe Glav. Kom. po partii s.-r.,” 22 October 1919, GARF f. R-1700, op. 7, d. 38, l. 62–64; and Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 2, 336–41. 102. The SR organizations took a negative attitude to the movement from the start, while the zemstvo activists had supported it. See “Poslednye dni Kolchakovshchiny,” 79. 103. Girsa to Pavlu, 16 October 1919, GARF f. R-5871, op. 1, d. 99, l. 3; Girsa to Krzhizhek, 20 October 1919, GARF f. R-5871, op. 1, d. 99, l. 4; and Kolosov to KSSZS, GARF f. R-5871, op. 1, d. 99, l. 138. 104. Kolosov, Sibir’ pri Kolchake, 27–28. 105. “Pis’mo podpolkovnika A. A. Krakovetskogo komanduiushchemu voiskami Severo-Amerikanskikh Shtatov generalu Grevsu,” Sibirskii arkhiv 4 (1932): 184; and Solodovnikov, Sibirskie avantiury i general Gaida, 50. 106. Solodovnikov, Sibirskie avantiury i general Gaida, 42, 56; “Vosstanie Gaidy vo Vladivostoke,” 1–4; and GARF f. R-195, op. 1, d. 10, l. 1–2. 107. Girsa to Čeček, 8 November 1919, GARF f. R-5871, op. 1, d. 99, l. 5. 108. Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 2, 441–43. 109. “Pis’mo podpolkovnika A. A. Krakovetskogo,” 185; Solodovnikov, Sibirskie avantiury i general Gaida, 60–71; GARF f. R-1700, op. 7, d. 37, l. 1; and Smele, Civil War in Siberia, 567–70. 110. Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 2, 458–59; Konstantinov, Poslednye dni Kolchakovshchiny, 5; “Poslednye dni Kolchakovshchiny,” 83–84; and G. Z. Ioffe, Kolchakovskaia avantiura i ee krakh (Moscow: Mysl’, 1983), 246–50. 111. Konstantinov, Poslednie dni kolchakovshchiny, 123–24; and “Poslednie dni Kolchakovshchiny,” 79–80. 112. Ianson, “Vostochno-sibirskoe gosudarstvo,” RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 140, l. 11–12. 113. Ivanov, V grazhdanskoi voine, 69. 114. Smele, Civil War in Siberia, 588–90. 115. Konstantinov, Poslednie dni kolchakovshchiny, 89–92; RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 8, l. 92; and Narodnyi golos (Krasnoiarsk), 1 January 1920, p. 1. 116. K. V. Sakharov, Belaia Sibir’ (Munich, 1923), 207–11, 242–60; and Ivanov, V grazhdanskoi voine, 80. 117. Konstantinov, Poslednye dni kolchakovshchiny, 182.

334 / NOTES TO PAGES 211–216

118. “Kharakteristikia Krasnoiarskoi gruppy PSR,” RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 8, l. 92–93. 119. Gins, Sibir’, soiuzniki i Kolchak, vol. 2, 471; and Konstantinov, Poslednie dni kolchakovshchiny, 164–66. 120. The best account of the last days of Irkutsk is in “Poslednie dni Kolchakovshchiny,” 86–95. This anonymous account was probably written by P. D. Iakovlev, a former SR who served as Kolchak’s governor in Irkutsk but maintained ties to some of his former party comrades. The account by the leader of the Irkutsk Bolsheviks, A. Shiriamov (“Irkutskoe vosstanie i rasstrel Kolchaka,” Sibirskie ogni 4 [1924]: 125–30), greatly exaggerates the Bolshevik role in the Irkutsk uprising. 121. “Armed Uprising at Irkutsk by Followers of the Social-Revolutionary/Zemstvo Party,” report of American Vice-Consul Glaman, March 4, 1920, HIA Harris coll., box 2, folder 9. 122. Gen.-Leit. Zakharov, “Obstoiatel’stva, soprovozhdavshie vydachy admirala Kolchaka revoliutsionnomu pravitel’stvu v Irkutske,” Beloe delo 2 (1927): 151–57; Biulleten’ Informatsionnogo Biuro Politicheskogo Tsentra, 17 January 1920; and Elena Varneck and H. H. Fisher, eds., The Testimony of Kolchak and Other Siberian Materials (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1935), 215–16. 123. “Zhurnal ob’edinennogo zasedaniia mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra s Revvoensovetom 5 armii i Sibrevkomom ot 19 ianv. 1920 g.,” RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 8, l. 46–47. 124. Shiriamov, “Irkutskoe vosstanie i rasstrel Kolchaka,” 132–33; and Konstantinov, Poslednie dni kolchakovshchiny, 192–95. 125. “Protokol zasedaniia mirnoi delegatsii Politicheskogo Tsentra i predstavitelei Sibrevkoma i Revvoensoveta 5 v g. Krasnoiarske 24 ianvaria 1920 g.,” RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 8, l. 48–52. 126. Gershtein’s appeal is in “Protokol ob’edinennogo zasedaniia Kraevykh komitetov PSR, S.-D. s predstavieliami Partii Kommunistov i Predsibrevkomom I. N. Smirnovym i upol. Sibrevkomom Krasnoshchekovym,” RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 8, l. 65. 127. Report of Vladivostok delegate to SR party conference, September 1920, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 138, l. 23. 128. “God raboty PSR v Sibiri,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia 5 (1921): 30–31; “TsOB PSR, Otkrytoe pis’mo PSR,” 5 July 1921, HIA Nicolaevsky coll, box 9, folder 1, p. 2; and A. V. Dobrovol’skii, Esery i men’sheviki Sibiri v usloviiakh perekhoda k NEPu (Novosibirsk: Novosibirskii universitet, 1995), 6–14.

Chapter 6: The End of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries 1. George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters, vol. 1, An Age Like This, 1920–1940, edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1968), 380. 2. Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 155. 3. V. V. Shelokhaev et al., eds., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: Dokumenty i materialy, 1900–1925 gg., vol. 3, part 2, compiled by N. D. Erofeev (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), 610–13, 626–28; and CC PSR resolution, June 1920, IISG PSR coll., folder 844. 4. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 608, 612. The

NOTES TO PAGES 217–221 / 335

Central Committee planned the council for April, but it would be repeatedly postponed until it finally met in August 1921. 5. CC PSR protocol, 16 March 1920, GARF f. R-9591, op. 1, d. 24, l. 5. Slightly different versions of the draft resolution may be found in RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 2, l. 109–11, and RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 138, l. 139–41. 6. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 637–38. 7. Ibid., 618, 636, 639; [Viktor Chernov], “Proekt programmy Soiuza Trudovogo Krest’ianstva,” IISG PSR coll., folder 876; and “Platforma i ustav Soiuza Trudovogo Krest’ianstva,” IISG PSR coll., folder 876. See also the GPU interrogation of E. F. Tiapkin, later a defense witness at the SR trial: RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 272, l. 35. 8. “Doklad Odesskoi organizatsii PSR,” June 1921, IISG PSR coll., folder 856. 9. Voronezh organization to CC PSR, 16 April 1920, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 25, l. 6. 10. Penza and Ivanovo–Voznesensk organizations to CC PSR, RGASPI d. 274, op. 1, d. 25, l. 25, 45. 11. “Ko vsem organizatsiiam Partii,” 28 September 1920, IISG PSR coll., folder 844. The lack of a quorum was due also to the fact that Lev Gershtein and Florian Fedorovich were in Siberia, and that Mikhail Likhach may have left Moscow as well on an inspection tour of provincial SR organizations. See CC PSR protocol, 8 April 1920, GARF f. R-9591, op. 1, d. 24, l. 8; and Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistovrevoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 629. 12. “Pravitel’stvennoe soobshchenie,” Pravda, 30 November 1920, p. 1; and Marc Jansen, A Show Trial under Lenin: The Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Moscow 1922 (The Hague: Springer, 1982), 20. 13. O. E. Chernova-Kolbasina, Vospominaniia o sovetskikh tiur’makh (Paris: Izdatel’stvo Parizhskoi gruppy sodeistviia PSR, n. d.), 8–19; Sovetskaia katorga (Izd. Zagranichnogo predstavitel’stva TsK PSR: n.p., n.d.), 2–14; and S. Volodin, “Epopeia uvoza v Iaroslavl’, 12 Avgusta 1920 g.,” in Cheka: Materialy po deiatel’nosti chrezvychainykh komissii (Berlin: Izdatel’stvo Tsentral’nogo biuro PSR, 1922), 179–86. 14. Olga Chernov Andreyev, Cold Spring in Russia (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1978), 209–40. For more on the extensive, and important, personal connections among leading Bolsheviks and SRs, see K. N. Morozov, Sudebnyi protsess i tiuremnoe protivostoianie (1922–1926): Etika i taktika, protivoborstvo (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2005), 124–32. 15. Grigorii Aronson, “Anglichane v Moskve,” Novyi zhurnal 11 (1945): 338. For Chernov’s account of this episode, see his Meine Schicksale in Sowjet-Russland (Berlin: Der Firn, 1921), 35–44, which also reprints his speech. The speech may also be found in Narodnoe delo (Revel’), 13 November 1920, although this nominally SR newspaper should be used with caution. On the British delegation, see Stephen Richards Graubard, British Labour and the Russian Revolution, 1917–1924 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956), 214–22. 16. V. M. Chernov, Pered burei (New York: Izdatel’stvo imeni Chekhova, 1953), 412. 17. Sukhomlin to CB PSR, 20 November 1920, HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 9, folder 3, pp. 2–5. 18. Of the émigré newspapers in Western languages, the longest lived was Pour la Russie, which appeared in Paris between 1919 and 1921. For the public appeals, see “Zapiska po voprosu o natsional’nostiakh v Rossii” and “Memorandum, predstavlennyi sotsialisticheskoi konferentsii v Liutserne,” HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 10, folder 18.

336 / NOTES TO PAGES 221–225

19. Chastnoe Soveshchanie Chlenov Vserossiiskogo Uchreditel’nogo Sobraniia (Paris: Zemgor, 1921), 5–6. 20. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 737–40; and Marc Jansen, ed., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle Oktiabr’skogo perevorota 1917 goda (Amsterdam: Stichting Beheer IISG, 1989), 673–81, 719. 21. CC PSR to Foreign Delegation, 28 January 1921, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 138, l. 183–89; Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 646–47; Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 743–45; and protocols of the Foreign Delegation, 1922, HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 9, folder 8. 22. Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 643; and Marc Raeff, Russia Abroad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 61–64, 87. 23. The protocols of the administrative center may be found in GARF f. R-5893, op. 1, d. 2, l. 34–198. Lists of the SRs who joined the union may be found in GARF f. R-5893, op. 1, d. 5, l. 7–17. These documents were stolen by Soviet agents and selections were published as part of the propaganda campaign accompanying the SR trial in 1922. See Rabota eserov zagranitsei: Po materialam Parizhskogo arkhiva eserov (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1922). 24. V. Chernov, “Na temy dnia: Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia 1 (1920): 1–2. 25. For the remainder of the party’s history, it is impossible to reconstruct fully the membership of the leading party bodies. The surviving protocols of the Central Committee and Central Organizational Bureau refer to their respective members only by pseudonyms, most of which cannot be decoded on the basis of the available evidence. The reconstituted Central Committee in September probably consisted of Likhach, Gendel’man, Fedorovich, Gershtein, and N. I. Artem’ev, who joined the Central Committee at the Ninth Party Council in June 1919. They co-opted “Pavlovskii” and “Petrushin” on the eve of the September party conference and added “Andreev” and “Rostovskii” in October. Likhach and Gendel’man were arrested in the winter and spring of 1921 and the Central Committee again collapsed, despite the release of Rakov, Vedeniapin, and Donskoi from Soviet prison. Dzerzhinskii ordered Rakov and Donskoi arrested again in March, but at least two of the released Central Committee members remained at large until August 1921. 26. CC protocol, 23 September 1920, IISG PSR coll., folder 845; and “Protokol Vserossiiskoi konferentsii PSR,” September 1920, RGASPI f.17, op. 84, d. 138, l. 16. 27. CC protocol, 23 September 1920, IISG PSR coll., folder 845; and “Tezisy doklada po tekushchemu momentu,” RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 138, l. 35. 28. V. Danilov and T. Shanin, eds., Krest’ianskoe vosstanie v Tambovskoi gubernii v 1919–1921 gg. (“Antonovshchina”): Dokumenty i materialy (Tambov: Intertsentr, 1994), 63–64. 29. “Protokol Vserossiiskoi konferentsii PSR,” September 1920, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 138, l. 20–29. 30. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 653. 31. Ia. Kozhevnikov, “O tret’ei sile,” RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 2565, l. 21. 32. D. B. Pavlov, Bolshevistskaia diktatura protiv sotsialistov i anarkhistov, 1917–seredine 1950 godov (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), 50, 151, 168. 33. See, for instance, Samsonov to CC RKP, 6 February 1921, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d.

NOTES TO PAGES 225–228 / 337

273, l. 116; and Samsonov to Lenin and Molotov, 23 March 1921, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 273, l. 28. 34. See the collections of documents edited by V. I. Shishkin: Za sovety bez kommunistov: Krest’ianskoe vosstanie v Tiumenskoi gubernii 1921, Sbornik dokumentov (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 2000); and Sibirskaia vandeia, 2 vols. (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond “Demokratiia”, 2001). 35. A. Berelovich and V. Danilov, Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU, vol. 1 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998), 363–447; and Vladimir N. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 315–23. 36. For a sober, intelligent analysis of Antonov’s movement and the Soviet state’s response, see Erik C. Landis, Bandits and Partisans: The Antonov Movement in the Russian Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), as well as the documents in Danilov and Shanin, Krest’ianskoe vosstanie v Tambovskoi gubernii. Although now obsolete in many ways, Oliver H. Radkey’s The Unknown Civil War in Soviet Russia: A Study of the Green Movement in the Tambov Region, 1920–1921 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976) remains valuable for the author’s deep knowledge of the SR milieu, his many acerbic and entertaining judgments, and his admirable effort to sift the truth from patchy, contradictory, and unreliable evidence. 37. Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 388; and Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 271. 38. Shishkin, Sibirskaia vandeia, vol. 2, 691. 39. V. Iu. Cherniaev, et al., eds., Piterskie rabochie i ‘diktatura proletariata,’ oktiabr’ 1917–1929: Ekonomicheskie konflikty i politicheskii protest. Sbornik dokumentov (St. Petersburg: Russko-Baltiiskii informatsionnyi tsentr BLITS, 2000), 17. 40. There is a large literature on the Kronstadt rebellion, but see especially the massive documentation in Kronshtadtskaia tragediia 1921 goda: Dokumenty v dvukh knigakh, 2 vols. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999). 41. Danilov and Shanin, Krest’ianskoe vosstanie v Tambovskoi gubernii, 61. 42. Ibid., 109. 43. Shishkin, Sibirskaia vandeia, vol. 2, 689. 44. On the role of demobilized soldiers in western Siberia and the Don, see Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines, 380; and Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution, 273. 45. This judgment is based on the documents published by Vladimir Shishkin in Sibirskaia vandeia, vol. 2, 136, 178, 196–97, 232, 236–37, 316–17, 325–26, and Za Sovety bez Kommunistov, 139, 169, 179, 211, 233–34, 300–1, 303–6, 329, 353–54, 369, 391, 467–68, 603, 635–36. See also N. G. Tret’iakov, “K voprosu o politicheskoi napravlennosti ZapadnoSibirskogo vosstaniia 1921 g.,” in N. P. Nosova, ed., Istoriia krest’ianstva Urala i Sibiri v gody grazhdanskoi voiny (Tiumen’: Tiumenskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1996), 64–66. 46. Danilov and Shanin, Krest’ianskoe vosstanie v Tambovskoi gubernii, 63–64, 198–217; and Radkey, Unknown Civil War, 139–47. 47. For Podbel’skii’s report, see Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle

338 / NOTES TO PAGES 228–233

oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 551–55; on its weaknesses, see Landis, Bandits and Partisans, 74. 48. On the expansion of the unions and their role in the rebellion in early 1921, see Landis, Bandits and Partisans, 127–33. 49. Ibid., 129. 50. “Platforma i ustav Soiuza Trudovogo Krest’ianstva,” IISG PSR coll., folder 876. 51. Radkey, Unknown Civil War, 70 52. Danilov and Shanin, Krest’ianskoe vosstanie v Tambovskoi gubernii, 79–80; and Radkey, Unknown Civil War, 70. For a contrasting view that downplays the SR influence on the program, see Landis, Bandits and Partisans, 124–26. 53. Landis, Bandits and Partisans, 76–87. 54. Shishkin, Za sovety bez kommunistov, 605–6; and V. I. Shishkin, “K voprosu o roli Sibirkskogo krest’ianskogo soiuza v podgotovke Zapadno-Sibirskogo miatezha 1921 goda,” in M. V. Shilovskii, ed., Sibir’ na rubezhe XIX–XX vekov (Novosibirsk: Novosibirskii universitet, 1997), 89–90. 55. Obvinitel’noe zakliuchenie po delu Tsentral’nogo Komiteta i otdel’nykh chlenov inykh organizatsii partii s.-r. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1922), 44–45; and V. I. Ignat’ev, Nekotorye fakty i itogi chetyrekh let grazhdanskoi voiny (1917–1921) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1922). 56. Shishkin, “K voprosu o roli Sibirskogo krest’ianskogo soiuza,” 92–93. 57. Shishkin, Za sovety bez kommunistov, 344–47. 58. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 704–5. 59. Ibid.; and “Taktika Partii v sviazi s krest’ianskim dvizheniem,” 25 February 1921, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 273, l. 3–4. 60. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 706–9. 61. “Nadlom bol’shevistskogo stroia,” March 1921, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 138, l. 155–58. 62. V. Chernov, “Peresmotr partiinoi programmy,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia 3 (1921): 14. 63. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 712. Emphasis in the original. 64. Rabota eserov za granitsei, 62–70; and Kronshtadtskaia tragediia, vol. 1, 451–54. 65. Kronshtadtskaia tragediia, vol. 1, 393–94, 403, 517–18, 545, 571; and Kronshtadtskaia tragediia, vol. 2, 100, 403–4. 66. Desiatyi s’ezd RKP(b), mart 1921 (Moscow: Partiinoe izdatel’stvo, 1933), 35, 42. 67. In addition to Lenin’s speech at the Tenth Party Congress, see Sheila Fitzpatrick’s discussion of the larger Bolshevik reinvention of class in the early 1920s, reprinted in her Tear Off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-century Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 29–50. 68. Kronshtadtskaia tragediia, vol. 1, 609. 69. Dzerzhinskii to Samsonov, 26 March 1921, RGASPI f. 76, op. 3, d. 49, l. 54. 70. Dzerzhinskii to Menzhinskii, 20–21 April 1921, RGASPI f. 76, op. 3, d. 49, l. 58, 62–63; and Pavlov, Bolshevistskaia diktatura, 174. 71. I. Mgeladze, “Ob otnoshenii k partiiam melkoi burzhuazii,” 11 April 1921, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 269, l. 1–2; and “Protokol Politbiuro RKP,” 14 April 1921, RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 150, l. 1.

NOTES TO PAGES 233–239 / 339

72. “PredVChK tov. Dzerzhinskomu,” RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 271, l. 23. 73. On the impact of the ban on factions and the evolution of Soviet discourse about the Bolshevik opposition in the 1920s, see Igal Halfin, Intimate Enemies: Demonizing the Bolshevik Opposition, 1918–1928 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007). 74. Desiatyi s’ezd RKP (b), 586. 75. Ibid., 589. 76. Statement of Central Organizational Bureau, 2 June 1921, IISG PSR coll., folder 847. 77. See the August 1921 letter of Shterin, a member of the Central Organizational Bureau, which was intercepted by the Cheka and sent by Samsonov to Lenin in February 1922: RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 2578, l. 17–18. The Cheka was quite successful intercepting correspondence between SRs in Russia and the emigration: see Morozov, Sudebnyi protsess i tiuremnoe protivostoianie, 267. 78. Central Organization Bureau to Zenzinov, 26 July 1921, IISG PSR coll., folder 847. 79. Shterin letter, RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 2578, l. 18. 80. Ibid. 81. “Desiatyi sovet Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov,” Za narod! 1 (1921): 25. 82. Jansen, Show Trial under Lenin, 16. 83. Because a small leadership group and a few scattered groups survived after 1921, K. N. Morozov has argued that the demise of the PSR should be dated to the end of 1925 or early 1926, but I find more apt his earlier notion of an “atomized populist milieu,” a phrase he has used to describe the nearly destroyed PSR in the last years before 1917. See Morozov, Sudebnyi protsess s.-r. i tiuremnoe protivostoianie, 332, and K. N. Morozov, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov v 1907–1914 gg. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998), 26. 84. Zenzinov’s remark is quoted in Morozov, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov v 1907–1914 gg., 227. 85. B. Olenin [V. Chernov], “Gipnoz uspekha,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia 2 (1921): 3. 86. Quoted in Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 63–64. 87. Mikhail Petrovich to CC PSR, RGASPI f. 274, op. 1, d. 20, l. 37. 88. “Spisok chlenov PSR i privlekaemykh po delu PSR, soderzhashchikhsia v bol’shevistskikh tiur’makh na 20/X 1921 goda,” Volia Rossii 2 (1922): 18. 89. The Cheka was reorganized and renamed the GPU (Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie, or State Political Administration) on February 6, 1922. 90. Morozov, Sudebnyi protsess s.-r. i tiuremnoe protivostoianie, 496–569; and E. Olitskaia, Moi vospominaniia, vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Posev, 1971), 190–278. 91. See Jansen, Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr’skogo perevorota, 641–48, 737–57.

Chapter 7: “Renegades of Socialism” and the Making of Bolshevik Political Culture 1. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “The Civil War as a Formative Experience,” in Abbot Gleason, Peter Kenez, and Richard Stites, eds., Bolshevik Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 47–76. 2. Victor W. Turner, “Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama: An Essay in the Anthropology

340 / NOTES TO PAGES 240–242

of Experience,” in Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner, eds., The Anthropology of Experience (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 35. 3. Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 159. 4. The quotations are from Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: PAJ Publications, 1982), 13. I have also drawn on Edward M. Bruner, “Experience and Its Expressions,” and Barbara Myerhoff, “‘Life Not Death in Venice’: Its Second Life,” in Turner and Bruner, Anthropology of Experience, 4–29, 261–86. 5. My thinking about apology rituals, show trials, and Bolshevik political culture owes much to J. Arch Getty, “Samokritika Rituals in the Stalinist Central Committee, 1933–1938,” Russian Review 58 (1999): 49–70, and to J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999). 6. N. V. Krylenko, Za piat’ let, 1918–1922 gg.: Obvinitel’nye rechi po naibolee krupnym protsessam, zaslushannym v Moskovskom i Verkhovnom Revoliutsionnykh Tribunalakh (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1923); Partiia men’shevikov i denikinshchina: Protsess Kievskikh men’shevikov (21–22 marta 1920 g.) (Moscow: Krasnaia nov’, 1923); and Marc Jansen, A Show Trial under Lenin: The Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Moscow 1922 (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1982), 28. 7. Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1964), vol. 3, 267. 8. It is not clear, even from the Cheka and GPU files that K. N. Morozov has examined, when exactly Semenov confessed to his Communist patrons and Cheka handlers that he held responsibility for the terrorist attacks of 1918. See K. N. Morozov, Sudebnyi protess sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov i tiuremnoe protivostoianie (1922–1926): Etika i taktika, protivoborstvo (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2005), 166; see also S. A. Krasil’nikov, K. N. Morozov, and I. V. Chubykin, eds., Sudebnyi protsess nad sotsialistami-revoliutsionerami (iiun’–avgust 1922 g.): Podgotovka. Provedenie. Itogi. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002), 22–23. 9. S. V. Zhuravlev, “Chelovek revoliutsionnoi epokhi: Sud’ba esera-terrorista G. I. Semenova (1891–1937),” Otechestvennaia istoriia 3 (2000): 91. 10. Testimony of Semenov, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 349, l. 94; testimony of Vol’skii, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 347, l. 103; and S. Maslov, “Proshloe provokatora,” Golos Rossii, 17 March 1922, p. 1. 11. See the excerpts from Semenov’s reports sent by Dzerzhinskii to Lenin and Trotsky in RGASPI f. 76, op. 3, d. 226, l. 6–10. See also the testimony of I. D. Smilga, A. A. Mazalov, and Semonov himself in GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 349, l. 88–104. Semenov’s information probably provided the basis for Savinkov’s false claim of credit for the August 30 assassination attempt in his Bor’ba s bol’shevikami (Warsaw: Izd. Russkogo politicheskogo komiteta, 1920), 32. Savinkov later denied to his Soviet interrogators any connection to Kaplan or the assassination attempt. See Delo Borisa Savinkova (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1924), 36. Semenov’s 1920 reports to the Cheka also stood behind the Soviet statement of November 30, 1920, announcing the discovery of plans for terrorist attacks against Soviet leaders. The Soviet government declared that imprisoned SR Central Committee members, followers of Savinkov, and officers of Wrangel’s army would henceforth all be considered hostages.

NOTES TO PAGES 242–245 / 341

12. G. I. Semenov and N. T. Bogdanova, “V Tsentral’nyi Komitet RKP,” 18 January 1921, RGASPI f. 17, op. 112, d. 116, l. 79 and l. 5; and Zhuravlev, “Chelovek revoliutsionnoi epokhi,” 92–93. 13. Testimony of Semenov, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 349, l. 98. 14. Zhuravlev, “Chelovek revoliutsionnoi epokhi,” 94. 15. Konopleva to Serebriakov, 15 January 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 71. 16. A. L. Litvin, “Azef Vtoroi,” Rodina 9 (1999): 81. 17. G. I. Semenov, “V Tsentral’nyi komitet RKP(b),” 5 December 1921, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 45, l. 8–9. 18. V. I. Lenin i VChK: Sbornik dokumentov (1917–1922 gg.) (Moscow: Politizdat, 1975), 546. 19. Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 152–61. See also Unshlikht to Molotov, 30 January 1922, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 393, l. 149. 20. “‘Rabota’ eserov: Ot Gos. Politicheskogo Upravleniia,” Pravda, 28 February 1922, p. 1. The Cheka was reorganized and renamed the State Political Administration (Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie, GPU) on February 6, 1922. 21. V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., vol. 44 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1964), 396–97. 22. Trotsky to Kamenev, Dzerzhinskii, and Politburo, May 1922, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 272, l. 94. 23. “Pokazaniia Lidii Konoplevoi,” Pravda, 28 February 1922, p. 1. 24. G. Semenov, Voennaia i boevaia rabota Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov za 1917–1918 gg. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1922), 27–35. 25. A. V. Lunacharskii, Byvshie liudi: Ocherk istorii partii es-erov (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1922), 79. 26. Here and subsequently I use the term “script” in a figurative sense. As the historian Elizabeth Wood has pointed out, Soviet show trials were carefully planned and the testimony of the pro-Bolshevik defendants well rehearsed, but there is no evidence that trial scripts existed in the literal sense. See Elizabeth A. Wood, Performing Justice: Agitation Trials in Early Soviet Russia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005), 195. 27. Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 194, 209. 28. The five former members of the detachment were Filipp Fedorov-Kozlov, Pavel Pelevin, Konstantin Usov, Faina Stavskaia, and Fedor Zubkov. Usov claimed that he was present at a conversation in which Donskoi supported an attack on Lenin, but the others testified that their knowledge of the Central Committee’s approval of terror came from Semenov. It should be pointed out that Usov, like Semenov and Konopleva, was a member of the Communist Party (he joined in 1919). His claim may be found in his interrogation of 26 April 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 106. Protocols of interrogations of the other members of the detachment, including extensive interrogations of Semenov and Konopleva, may be found in GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346; and GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 348. 29. Interrogations of P. T. Efimov, 11–12 March 1922 and 31 March 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 95–100. For the development and occasional fabrication of the second group’s testimony, which Agranov needed to coordinate with Semenov’s charges, see Morozov, Sudbnyi protsess s.-r. i tiuremnoe protivostoianie, 186–98.

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30. See GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 134–38; and GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 162–65, for protocols of the interrogations of Rakitnikov and Burevoi respectively. Protocols of Vol’skii’s interrogations may be found in GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 173–75; and GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 347, l. 103. The other prominent former member of the Central Committee to be brought in for interrogation was Dmitrii Rozenblium (Firsov), from the party’s right wing. Copies of his interrogations may be found in GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 191–94; and GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 1347, l. 64–66. Of the imprisoned Central Committee members, Nikolai Ivanov provided the most significant testimony at this stage of the investigation. He insisted to Agranov that the Central Committee had not approved the terrorist actions but conceded that a minority in the Central Committee, himself included, had favored them. See GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 347, l. 4–7. 31. Unless otherwise indicated, the following account of the place of the SR trial in international socialist politics relies on Jansen, Show Trial, 30–43. On the leaflets distributed in Moscow, see GPU to Politburo, 9 March 1922, RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 2578, l. 32. 32. B. N. Rabinovich, “Kak eto bylo,” Golos Rossii, 17 March 1922, p. 3; and M. A. Tislenko, “Razoblachenie lzhi,” Golos Rossii, 23 March 1922, p. 3. A copy of Tislenko’s unedited statement may be found in HIA Nicolaevsky coll., box 8, folder 19. 33. V. V. Shelokhaev et al., eds., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: Dokumenty i materialy, 1900–1925 gg., vol. 3, part 2, compiled by N. D. Erofeev (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), 820–43. 34. André Liebich, From the Other Shore: Russian Social Democracy after 1921 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 159. 35. Jansen, Show Trial, 39–41. Kurskii’s “interview” was in fact drafted by Trotsky on the instruction of the Politburo: Trotsky to Dzerzhinskii and Kamenev, 14 April 1922, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 271, l. 90. 36. Julius Braunthal, History of the International, vol. 2 (New York: Nelson, 1967), 253–54. Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 276; see also the June 3 protocol of the troika organizing the trial, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 453, l. 8. 37. Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 211. The following account of the preparation of the trial relies mainly on the protocols of the meetings of the troika, in RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 453, l. 2–12. Protocols from the first two meetings of the troika are published in Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 392–98. See also the records of a separate troika set up to coordinate the agitation campaign, which may be found in the same archival holding: RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, l. 453, d. 13–25; and in Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 401–5, 412–20, 489–93. 38. Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 214. 39. Morozov, Sudbnyi protsess s.-r. i tiuremnoe protivostoianie, 175–78. 40. For a full treatment of the propaganda campaign, see Jansen, Show Trial, 141–55. 41. For a complete list of the approved slogans, see Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 414–15. See also the guidelines for Bolshevik agitators drawn up by Lunacharskii, Krylenko, and Bukharin in Sud nad Partiei sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov: tezisy i materialy (Petrozavodsk: Politicheskii otdel 16-i strelkovoi imeni Kikvidze divizii, 1922), 1–12.

NOTES TO PAGES 248–253 / 343

42. Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 403. 43. L. Trotsky, “Kto i chemu izmeniaet,” in Protsess PSR, vol. 2, Rechi zashchitnikov i obviniaemykh (Moscow: Krasnaia nov’, 1922), 3–6. A similar tone characterizes the indictment, which was printed in five thousand copies for use by agitators. 44. Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 407–8, 18–19. 45. Obvinitel’noe zakliuchenie po delu Tsentral’nogo Komiteta i otdel’nykh chlenov i inykh organizatsii partii s.-r. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1922), 108–9. The accused were indicted under the criminal code that came into effect on June 1—several days after the indictment had been submitted to the Supreme Tribunal and one week before the opening of the trial. The new criminal code authorized the use of capital punishment in criminal cases. See Jansen, Show Trial, 54. 46. Obvinitel’noe zakliuchenie, 42–48. 47. On March 4 the Politburo authorized the GPU to include any former SRs among the indicted, including present members of the Communist Party—an oblique reference to Semenov and Konopleva. See Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 192. 48. Bukharin’s remark is from his speech for the defense at the conclusion of the trial: Protsess PSR, vol. 2, 109. 49. Jansen, Show Trial, 42–46, 59. 50. Trial stenogram, 10 June 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 1338, l. 28–30. 51. Jansen, Show Trial, 80. 52. On the importance of the figure of the provocateur in Soviet discourse about the Bolshevik opposition in the 1920s, see Igal Halfin, Intimate Enemies: Demonizing the Bolshevik Opposition, 1918–1928 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), 1–17. 53. Protsess PSR, vol. 2, 110. 54. Interrogation of G. M. Ratner, 19 May 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 348, l. 352. 55. Jansen, Show Trial, 81. 56. Protsess PSR, vol. 2, 16. 57. The trial stenograms for these days may be found in GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 353–61; and GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 1340. 58. Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 68–69. 59. “Protokol zasedaniia troiki,” 3 June 1922, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 453, l. 7–9. 60. Jansen, Show Trial, 67–70. 61. “Deklaratsiia moskovskikh i piterskikh rabochikh,” Izvestiia, 22 June 1922, p. 2. One of the “worker witnesses” was N. Ia. Ivanov, the chairman of the Mikhel’son Factory Committee and eyewitness to Fania Kaplan’s assassination attempt against Lenin on August 30, 1918. 62. For cases of worker opposition to resolutions in support of the trial, see the following references in the “Gosinfosvodki” of the Information Department of the GPU in May–June: RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 2633, l. 95, 120; RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 2634, l. 66, 101; and RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 2635, l. 4, 70. For more typical reports, see RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 2633, l. 23, 95, 138; RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 2634, l. 2, 48; and RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 2635, l. 90. See also Morozov, Sudbnyi protsess s.-r. i tiuremnoe protivostoianie, 92–93, 212–20. 63. “Gosinfosvodka informatsionnogo otdela GPU,” 7 June 1922, RGASPI f. 5, op.

344 / NOTES TO PAGES 254–257

1, d. 2634, l. 12; and “Gosinfosvodka informatsionnogo otdela GPU,” 24 June 1922, RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 2635, l. 70, 82, 101. 64. Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 282–83. The Politburo’s instructions to Piatakov stemmed from an embarrassing episode on June 19. Called to testify on the underground work of the Union of Regeneration and its links with the SR Central Committee in 1918, the former General Aleksandr Verkhovskii let slip that Agranov had informed him that the trial was merely a “political” exercise. The Supreme Tribunal reprimanded Agranov for this indiscretion, although Dzerzhinskii privately assured him it was nothing to worry about. See Marc Jansen, Sud bez suda, 1922 god: Pokazatel’nyi process sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov (Moscow: Vozvrashchenie, 1993), 212; and Dzerzhinskii to Agranov, 21 June 1922, RGASPI f. 76, op. 3, d. 49, l. 67. 65. Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 489. 66. V. Kuibyshev, “Redaktsiiam vsekh moskovskikh gazet,” 22 June 1922, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 424, l. 58. 67. Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 491. 68. For the key testimony of Gots, see GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 350, l. 63–120; for Timofeev, see GARF f. 1005, op. 1A, d. 373, l. 1–64; and for Donskoi, see GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 372, l. 164–97. 69. See the Politburo’s instructions to Piatakov on July 20: RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 304, l. 3. 70. Krylenko, Za piat’ let, 235–303. 71. Protsess PSR, vol. 1, Rechi gosudarstvennykh obvinitelei Lunacharskogo, Pokrovskogo, Krylenko, predstavitelei Kominterna: K. Tsetkin, Muna, Bokani (Moscow: Krasnaia nov’, 1922), 79–116. 72. Protsess PSR, vol. 2, 110. 73. Ibid., vol. 2, 144. 74. Ibid., vol. 2, 18. 75. Shubin in ibid., vol. 2, 57. 76. Ibid., vol. 2, 205. 77. Ibid., vol. 2, 210. 78. Jansen, Show Trial, 126. 79. The last speeches and final pleas of the defendants in the first group were first published in Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia in 1922 and have been reprinted in Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 855–921; and in Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 515–44. The printed versions are not in fact transcripts. Rather, they are apparently drafts of what the defendants planned to say, which were smuggled to the SR underground by the wives and other relatives of the defendants. 80. On the construction of the radical concept of personality in the romantic circles of the 1840s and among the nineteenth-century populists, see Lydia Ginzburg, On Psychological Prose (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 27–101; and Andrzej Walicki, The Controversy over Capitalism: Studies in the Social Philosophy of the Russian Populists (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 29–37. 81. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 915–19. 82. On the eschatological dimensions of Russian radical discourse, see Igal Halfin,

NOTES TO PAGES 257–262 / 345

From Darkness to Light: Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000). 83. Timofeev in Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 920. 84. Ivanova in ibid., 912. 85. Ratner in ibid., 919. 86. Gots in ibid., 910. 87. Ibid., 862. 88. Ibid., 875–86. 89. Piatakov in ibid., 868. For Gots’s entire speech, see ibid., 863–74. 90. Ibid., 872–73. 91. Gershtein in ibid., 906. Iurii Kliuchnikov was a Kadet and former minister of foreign affairs in the Kolchak government who became one of the leading figures in the “Changing Landmarks” movement in the emigration. 92. Zhuravlev, “Chelovek revoliutsionnoi epokhi,” 97. 93. Morozov, Sudbnyi protsess s.-r. i tiuremnoe protivostoianie, 275–77; and Jansen, Show Trial, 126–30. 94. Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 309. 95. Lunacharskii to Trotsky, Kamenev, and Dzerzhinskii, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 453, l. 92; Jansen, Show Trial, 134–40; and Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 304–5, 315–16. 96. Dzerzhinskii, Kamenev, and Trotsky to Zinoviev, 29 April 1922, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 453, l. 27; and Jansen, Show Trial, 130–31. 97. Morozov, Sudebnyi protsess s.-r. i tiuremnoe protivostoianie, 498. 98. Shelokhaev et al., Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, vol. 3, part 2, 964. 99. O. Kolbasina, “Pamiati S. V. Morozova,” Volia Rossii 3 (1924): 68–74. 100. The pioneering work on the fate of the Central Committee members and other victims of the 1922 trial was done by Marc Jansen. In addition to Jansen’s Show Trial, see his “E. M. Timofeev i drugie chleny TsK PSR posle protsessa 1922 g.,” Minuvshee 7 (1989; reprint, Moscow 1992): 193–231. See also Morozov, Sudebnyi protsess s.-r. i tiuremnoe protivostoianie, 649–701; and Ia. A. Iakovlev, comp., and E. I. Cherniak, ed., Dmitrii Dmitrievich Donskoi (Tomsk: Izdatel’stvo Tomskogo universiteta, 2000). 101. For Jansen’s persuasive judgment on this, see his Show Trial, 194–95, and Sud bez suda, 213–14. 102. “Vypiska iz protokola Politburo ot 7/XI –22 g.,” RGASPI f. 76, op. 3, d. 49, l. 102. 103. Krasil’nikov, Morozov, and Chubykin, Sudebnyi protsess nad s.-r., 569. 104. Ibid., 490–92. 105. Trotsky to Kamenev, Dzerzhinskii, and Politburo, May 1922, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 272, l. 94. 106. G. Zinoviev, Ob antisovetskikh partiiakh i techeniiakh (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1922), 11. 107. Dzerzhinskii to Samsonov, 21 March 1923, RGASPI f. 76, op. 3, d. 49, l. 111. 108. “Golos partiinykh nizov o likvidatsii partii s.-r.,” Izvestiia Vserossiiskogo Tsentral’nogo Ispolnitel’nogo Komiteta Sovetov rabochikh, krest’ianskikh i soldatskikh deputatov (VTsIK), 13 July 1922, p. 1. 109. Morozov, Sudebnyi protsess s.-r. i tiuremnoe protivostoianie, 346.

346 / NOTES TO PAGES 262–267

110. I. Reshetov, “Doklad o legal’nom s’ezde byvshykh riadovykh chlenov PSR,” 22 March 1923, RGASPI f. 76, op. 3, d. 49, l. 112. 111. Reshetov, “Doklad o legal’nom s’ezde,” 22 March 1923, RGASPI f. 76, op. 3, d. 49, l. 112. 112. “Na s’ezde byvshykh eserov,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 20 March 1923, p. 3. 113. Interrogation of S. E. Kononov, 14 March 1922, GARF f. R-1005, op. 1A, d. 346, l. 112–15. 114. “Na s’ezde byvshykh eserov,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 20 and 21 March 1923, p. 3; and “Otchet o s’ezde,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 22 March 1923, p. 3. 115. Iu. Steklov, “V obshchie riady,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 22 March 1923, p. 1. 116. “Rezoliutsiia s’ezda,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 21 March 1923, p. 2. 117. Reshetov, “Doklad o legal’nom s’ezde,” RGASPI f. 76, op. 3, d. 49, l. 113–14; I. V. Stalin, “Vsem gubkomam,” 4 April 1923, RGASPI f. 17, op. 34, d. 235, l. 220; “Protokol no. 1 zasedaniia Komissii ob es-erakh,” 4 June 1923, RGASPI f. 17, op. 34, d. 235, l. 245–46; and Rutzutak to all provincial and regional committees, 8 June 1923, RGASPI f. 17, op. 34, d. 235, l. 221. The Bolshevik Central Committee’s concern that local Communists might obstruct the work of the congress was well founded, as provincial Bolshevik organizations indeed on occasion showed themselves reluctant to organize the byvshie and even had them arrested. See the complaints in RGASPI f. 17, op. 34, d. 235, l. 214–15, 223, 271. 118. The collection of materials in RGASPI f. 17, op. 34, d. 235, contains many of these questionnaires. For a reminder from Molotov to the provincial committees of their importance, see his circular of 10 September 1923, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 500, l. 22. On autobiographical narratives in Bolshevik political culture and practice, see Igal Halfin, Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 43–95. 119. Copies of the August 5 and August 23 issues of Edinyi front: Biulleten’ Petrogradskogo organizatsionnogo biuro byvshykh chlenov PSR may be found in RGASPI f. 17, op. 34, d. 235, l. 117–19. The membership claim is from Kononov’s article on the movement in the first issue. 120. This conclusion is based on the questionnaires in RGASPI f. 17, op. 34, d. 235, l. 8–18, 52–112. 121. Nizhnii Novgorod Gubkom to Uchraspred TsK, 5 February 1924, RGASPI f. 17, op. 34, d. 235, l. 326–29. 122. “Doklad o deiatel’nosti komissii po priemu v RKP(b) byvshykh es-erov,” RGASPI f. 17, op. 34, d. 235, l. 324–35. 123. See the reports in RGASPI f. 17, op. 34, d. 235, l. 284–91. 124. Halfin, Terror in My Soul, 78–79. 125. F. A. Faizrakhmanova, “Agitatsionno-propagandistskaia deiatel’nost’ partiinykh organizatsii Urala sredi rabochikh v sviazi s sudebnym protsessom nad rukovodstvom partii pravykh eserov,” in V. Kulikov, ed., Klassovaia bor’ba na Urale (1917–1932 gody) (Sverdlovsk: Ural’skoe gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1974), 65. 126. Wood, Performing Justice, 85–107. 127. Halfin, Terror in My Soul, 101–8. 128. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Tear Off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentiethcentury Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 3–37.

NOTES TO PAGES 267–273 / 347

129. This has been a principal argument in the work of Daniel T. Orlovsky. See Orlovsky’s “The Hidden Class: White-Collar Workers in the Soviet 1920s,” in Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class, Identity (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), 222–24, and his “The AntiBureaucratic Campaigns of the 1920s,” in Theodore Taranovski, ed., Reform in Modern Russian History: Progress or Cycle? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 290–310. 130. On the prominent role of former SRs and SR sympathizers in the Commissariat of Agriculture, see James W. Heinzen, Inventing a Soviet Countryside: State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917–1929 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 83–85. See also the sensitive portrait of Pal’chinskii, a prominent engineer and former SR sympathizer, in Loren R. Graham, The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). 131. “V. I. Lenin: ‘Khoroshii kommunist v to zhe vremia est’ i khoroshii chekist,” Istochnik 1, no. 20 (1996): 115–19; Unshlikht and Samsonov, “V TsK RKP,” 28 July 1922, RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 393, l. 193; and Unshlikht and Samsonov to Stalin, RGASPI f. 76, op. 3, d. 49, l. 92–93. 132. Nathan Leites and Elsa Bernaut, Ritual of Liquidation: The Case of the Moscow Trials (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1954), 27–28; and Halfin, Intimate Enemies, 52–64, 232. 133. Stalin in Leites and Bernaut, Ritual of Liquidation, 198. 134. XV S’ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii—(b): Stenograficheskii otchet, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1928), 252. 135. Turner, “Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama,” in Turner and Bruner, Anthropology of Experience, 39–41. 136. Halfin, Terror in My Soul, 220–30. 137. Zhuravlev, “Chelovek revoliutsionnoi epokhi,” 100–1. 138. See, for instance, the particular attention given to former socialists in K proverke, peresmotru i ochistke partii (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo RKP, 1921), 5–7. On the Bolshevik opposition, see Halfin, Intimate Enemies, as well as his Terror in My Soul, 79–90. 139. XVII s’ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi partii (b), 26 ianvaria–10 fevralia 1934 g.: Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Partizdat, 1934), 124. Emphases in the original. 140. Kendall E. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917–1941 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 69–94; and Wood, Performing Justice, 192–95. 141. On the Menshevik trial, see Liebich, From the Other Shore, 199–214. On the case of the Laboring Peasant Party, see N. D. Kondrat’ev, Osoboe mnenie, vol. 2 (Moscow: Nauka, 1993), 573–608; and Heinzen, Inventing a Soviet Countryside, 216–17. On the Industrial Party trial, see Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, 95–121. 142. Julie Cassiday, The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000), 110–33; and Wood, Performing Justice, 194–95. 143. Liebich, From the Other Shore, 203.

348 / NOTES TO PAGES 273–276

144. Ibid., 211. 145. On the central role of wrecking charges in spreading the Terror, see Wendy Z. Goldman, Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin: The Social Dynamics of Repression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 146. See Krest’ianskaia Rossiia: Trudovaia krest’ianskaia partiia (Prague: Krest’ianskaia Rossiia, 1928). 147. Alexander Herzen, Sochineniia, vol. 6 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1957), 237. 148. Quoted in Liebich, From the Other Shore, 200. 149. Vladimir Voinovich, Ivan’kiada (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1976), 53. 150. Myerhoff, “Life not Death in Venice,” in Turner and Bruner, Anthropology of Experience, 261. 151. Ibid., 268–84. 152. For the Yezhov quote, see Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 164. Stalin wrote his remarks in 1938 on the draft of Vyshinskii’s opening speech for the prosecution at the Bukharin trial: see Wladislaw Hedeler, “Ezhov’s Scenario for the Great Terror and the Falsified Record of the Third Moscow Trial,” in Barry McLoughlin and Kevin McDermott, eds., Stalin’s Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 45. 153. Leites and Bernaut, Ritual of Liquidation, 28–29. 154. Getty and Naumov, Road to Terror, 208. 155. Morozov, Sudebnyi protsess s.-r. i tiuremnoe protivostoianie, 657. 156. Report of Court Proceedings: The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Centre (Moscow: People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR, 1936), 170–71. 157. Robert C. Tucker and Stephen F. Cohen, eds., The Great Purge Trial (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1965), 657. For the inadequacies of the published transcript of Bukharin’s trial, see Hedeler, “Ezhov’s Scenario for the Great Terror,” 43–49. 158. Semenov had been convicted and shot on October 8, 1937, five months before Bukharin’s trial. See Zhuravlev, “Chelovek revoliutsionnoi epokhi,” 103. For the use of his testimony at Bukharin’s trial, see Tucker and Cohen, Great Purge Trial, 566. There appears to have been some discussion of including Gots and Timofeev in the Bukharin trial as well, although Stalin decided against it. See Morozov, Sudebnyi protsess s.-r. i tiuremnoe protivostoianie, 656–57. 159. V. I. Lenin, Sochineniia, 3rd ed., vol. 23 (Moscow: Partizdat, 1930), 344. 160. Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre (Moscow: People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR, 1937), 470. 161. Tucker and Cohen, Great Purge Trial, 520. 162. Ibid., 665. Chernov, it should be recalled, referred to both a paralysis of the SRs’ will and the hypnotic power of Bolshevik success in his Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia articles of 1921. See V. Chernov, “Na temy dnia: Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia 1 (1920): 1–2; and B. Olenin [V. Chernov], “Gipnoz uspekha,” Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia 2 (1921): 3.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archives Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF / State Archive of the Russian Federation), Moscow. Hoover Institution Archives (HIA), Stanford, Calif. Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (IISG / International Institute of Social History), Amsterdam. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI / Russian State Archive of Social and Political History), Moscow. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv (RGVA / Russian State Military Archive), Moscow. Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv istoriko-politicheskikh dokumentov (TsGAIPD / Central State Archive of Historical-Political Documents), St. Petersburg. Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga (TsGASPB / Central State Archive of St. Petersburg), St. Petersburg.

Newspapers These newspapers are available in the collections of the Russian State Library, the State Public Historical Library of Russia, the Hoover Institution Library, and the Slavic Library of the Czech National Library in Prague, which houses the newspaper collection of the former Russian Historical Archive Abroad (Russkii zagranichnyi istovicheskii arkhiv, RZIA). Most of the non-Bolshevik newspapers were of short duration. In Soviet territory newspapers that were closed by censorship often reappeared under a title closely related to that of the original paper. Such titles are listed in brackets after the main title, because libraries usually incorporate the short runs under the modified titles in their holding of the main title. The place designation “Petrograd-Moscow” indicates that a newspaper was published in Petrograd until the Soviet government moved the capital to Moscow in March 1918. In most cases I indicate the newspaper’s political orientation in parentheses, because this too can be helpful in evaluating the sources used: SR = Socialist Revolutionary; B = Bolshevik; K = Kadet; LSR = Left Socialist Revolutionary; SD = Social Democrat, a designation that includes mainline Menshevik organs as well as 349 

350 / BIBLIOGRAPHY

newspapers affiliated with other Social Democratic groups, such as the Social Democrat–Internationalists and Unity. Such designations do not necessarily mean that the newspaper was an official organ of the party in question. In the notes, references to Delo naroda and its related titles are shortened to DN, references to Novaia zhizn’ are abbreviated NZh, and references to Vestnik komiteta chlenov Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia are given as VK. Biulleten’ informatsionnogo biuro Politicheskogo tsentra, Irkutsk (SR). Delo, Petrograd (SD). Delo naroda, Petrograd (SR). [Dela naroda; Delo; Delo narodnoe; Delo narodov; Narodnoe delo.] Delo Sibiri, Omsk. Delo sotsial-demokrata, Orel (SD). Den’, Petrograd (SD). [Griadushchii den’; Novyi den’.] Edinstvo, Moscow (SD). Ekho, Petrograd. [Petrogradskoe ekho.] Ezhenedel’nik chrezvychainykh komissii po bor’be s kontrrevoliutsiei i spekuliatsiei, Moscow (B). Golos naroda, Krasnoiarsk. Golos naroda, Tula (SD). [Novyi narodnyi golos.] Golos Rossii, Berlin (SR). Gorodskoi vestnik, Samara (SR-M). Izhevskaia pravda, Izhevsk (B). Izvestiia Izhevskogo soveta rabochikh i krest’ianskikh deputatov, Izhevsk (B). Izvestiia Petrogradskogo soveta rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov, Petrograd (B). Izvestiia Vserossiiskogo Tsentral’nogo Ispolnitel’nogo Komiteta Sovetov rabochikh, krest’ianskikh i soldatskikh deputatov, Petrograd-Moscow (B). Izvestiia Vsesibirskogo kraevogo komiteta Partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, Irkutsk (SR). Kommunar, Tula (B). Krasnaia gazeta, Petrograd (B). Krasnoe znamia, Nizhnii Novgorod (B). Listok dela naroda, Moscow (SR). Molot, Penza (B). Narod, Moscow (SR). Narod, Nizhnii Novgorod (SR). Narodnoe delo, Buguruslan (SR). Narodnoe delo, Kazan’ (SR). Narodnoe delo, Revel’ (SR). Narodnyi golos, Krasnoiarsk. Narodovlastie, Moscow (SR). Nasha zaria, Omsk.

BIBLIOGRAPHY / 351

Nashe slovo, Moscow. Nashi zadachi, Krasnoiarsk. Nash krai, Viatka (nonparty socialist). Nash vek, Petrograd (K). Novaia zaria, Moscow (SD). Novaia zhizn’, Petrograd-Moscow (SD). Novoe delo naroda, Moscow (SR). Novyi luch, Petrograd (SD). Opolchenie bednoty, Penza (B). Orlovskie izvestiia sovetov rab., sold. i krest’iansk. deputatov, Orel (B). Partiinye izvestiia, Petrograd (SR). Petrogradskaia pravda, Petrograd (B). Pravda, Petrograd-Moscow (B). Protsess es-erov, Moscow (B). Put’ naroda, Tomsk (SR). Raboche-krest’ianskii nizhegorodskii listok, Nizhnii Novgorod (B). Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, Prague (SR). Revoliutsionnoe delo, Petrograd (SR). Revoliutsionnyi vestnik, Tula (B). Rodina, Moscow. Rus’, Omsk. Russkaia armiia, Omsk. Samarskie vedomosti, Samara (SR). Severnaia kommuna, Petrograd (B). Sibirskie zapiski, Krasnoiarsk. Soldat, krest’ianin i rabochii, Samara (B). Sovremennoe slovo, Petrograd. Svoboda Rossii, Moscow (K). Svobodnoe slovo, Samara (SD). Trud, Moscow (SR). Ufimskaia zhizn’, Ufa (K). Ufimskii vestnik, Ufa. Utro Petrograda, Petrograd (SD). Utro Povolzh’ia, Samara (SD). Vecherniaia zaria, Petrograd (SD). Vecherniaia zaria, Samara (SD). Vestnik komiteta chlenov Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia, Samara (SR). Vestnik Vremennogo Pravitel’stva Avtonomnoi Sibiri, Vladivostok (SR). Volia, Vladivostok (SR). Volzhskii den’, Samara (K). Volzhskoe slovo, Samara.

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INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italic type indicate photographs. activists, 6–7, 223–24, 230 Administrative Center, 230–31 Administrative Council of Provisional Siberian Government, 131, 137, 147–51 agitation: Komuch and, 111–14; and show trials, 247–48. See also propaganda agitation trials, 266 Agranov, Iakov, 245, 272, 342n30, 344n64 Akhmatov, I. I., 212 Aleksandrov (Bolshevik), 98 Alekseev, Mikhail, 39, 144, 158, 249 Alekseevskii, Aleksandr, 202, 204 allies: Bolsheviks and, 186; and Czechoslovak Legion, 45; and Siberian government, 137, 206–8; as threat, 182, 192; underground communication with, 39–40, 44 All-Russian Congress of Former Rank-and-File Members of the PSR, 263–64 all-Russian government, 44, 47–49, 65, 94, 103–4, 123, 132–36, 138–57 All-Siberian Congress of Cooperatives, 173–74 All-Siberian Military-Socialist Union, 211 Almazov, Valentin, 106–7 Al’tovskii, Arkadii, 41, 259, 260 anarchists, 171 An-skii, S. A., 7 Antonov, Aleksandr, 223, 225, 228–29 Antonov-Ovseenko, Vladimir, 8 apology rituals, xii, 240, 269–70, 273–74 Argunov, Andrei, xvii, xviii, 38, 103, 104, 133, 141, 145, 159, 273, 321n71 army. See Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch): army of; People’s Army; Red Army; Siberia: military in; Volunteer Army Artem’ev, N. I. (Nikolai), 259, 336n25 assassinations and assassination attempts:

Antonov-Ovseenko as target of, 8; IvanovRinov as target of, 199; by Kaplan, 74–80; Kirov as target of, 270; Kolchak as target of, 80, 195, 196, 199; Lenin as target of, 7–8, 13, 54, 59, 74–80, 83, 167, 241, 244, 254, 275, 280n2, 302n129, 305n155, 340n11; Mikhailov as target of, 199; by Semenov’s organization, 58–60, 74–80, 241, 244; Trotsky as target of, 79; Uritskii as target of, 83; Volodarskii as target of, 59–60, 81, 241, 244, 253; Zinoviev as target of, 13, 59, 244 Assembly of Factory Plenipotentiaries, 17–23, 56, 62, 64 Astrov, N. I. (Nikolai), 38, 39, 145 authority: abuse of, 20–22, 27; types of discourse for constituting, 163–76 Avksent’ev, Nikolai, xvii, xviii, 5, 38, 39, 44, 103, 141, 144–46, 151, 156, 158, 159, 161, 178, 220–22, 238, 282n24, 321n71 awakening (probuzhdeniie), 31 Azef, Evno, 236, 251, 325n141 Azef affair, 165, 236 backwardness, Russian, 4–5, 28 Baltic Fleet Mine Division, 60 Baltic states, 221 Bashkirs, 93, 117–18 Batulin, S. N., 77 Beneš, Eduard, 222 Berg, Efrem, 19, 64, 233, 255 betrayal, of the revolution, 248, 251–52, 255–57 Bloody Sunday, 11–13, 15, 23 Bobrik, P. A. (general), 139 Bogdanov, B. O., 17 Bogdanova, Natal’ia, 242 Boldyrev, Vasilii, 38, 39, 142–45, 150, 157, 159–62, 206 Bolshevik Central Committee, 26, 63, 189, 241–43, 259–60, 264 Bolsheviks: civil war framed by, xiv–xv, 54, 371 

372 / INDEX

65–74, 86–87, 121, 163–64, 168–69, 193, 232, 239; and class, 25–26, 266–67; and counterrevolution, 13, 30, 233–34; as counterrevolutionaries, 2–3; Czechoslovak rebellion against, 45–50; and Eastern front, 50–54; enemies of, 25, 266; Mensheviks and, 3, 196; and nationhood, 171; Old Regime compared to, 11–12, 235; opposition to, 3–4, 6–14, 20, 26–45, 51, 98, 169, 189–90; opposition within, 267–68, 275; political culture of, 239–77; political discourse controlled by, xiv–xv, 163–64, 168–69, 265–66; political strategy of, 10, 13; power/authority exercised by, 21–23, 27; PSR and, 182–92; PSR opposition to, 3–4, 6–14, 192–98, 224–25, 232–38; and revolutionary democracy, 183–84; selfunderstanding of, 274–76; in Siberia, 126–28, 131, 184–214; success of, 164–65, 169; and terrorism, 8, 67–68, 70; and violence, 11–15; and workers, 14–26, 62–65, 98, 189–90; and World War, 18, 36, 39 Bonapartist counterrevolution, 2–3, 181 Borodin, N. A., 158 Bosh, E. B., 81 Bourdieu, Pierre, xiv bourgeoisie: Bolsheviks linked to, 235; coalition with, 6, 38, 41; hostages from, 84–85; PSR/ Mensheviks linked to, 13–14, 28, 34, 81, 85, 244; Red Terror and, 67–68, 82–85; as threat, 24–26, 28, 65–66 Breshko-Breshkovskaia, Ekaterina, xvii Brest-Litovsk Treaty, 20, 36–37, 41–42, 145, 182, 183, 228, 258 Britain, 39–40, 44, 162, 216 Brooks, Jeffrey, 253 Brovkin, Vladimir, xvi, 61 Bruderer, A. A., 163 Brushvit, Ivan, 45, 46, 93, 94, 133–35, 220, 222, 231 Bubnov, Andrei, 260 Bukharin, Nikolai, xi, 180, 249, 251, 253, 255, 257, 263, 268, 270–72, 275, 276, 348n158 bureaucracy, 266–67 Bureaus for Cooperation with the GPU, 267 Burevoi, Konstantin, 93, 184, 187, 191, 195–97, 199, 245 Burtsev, Vladimir, 82–83 Butyrki prison, Moscow, 219, 237 Buzanov, V. I., 72, 73 byvshie movement, 261–66, 269 Čeček, Stanislav (general), 49, 155–56, 207 Central Committee Agitprop commission, 260–61 Central Committee, Bolshevik. See Bolshevik Central Committee Central Committee of PSR: Cheka harassment of, 218–19, 234–38; and civil war, 2–3, 182–83; and class, 4; and coalition policies, 6; and

coup d’état, 161; and Eighth Party Council, 41; and Lenin’s attempted assassination, 59, 79–80, 244; membership of, 336n25; and nationhood, 4; and party organization, 218, 220–23; and peasant rebellion, 229–31; political strategy of, 9–14, 16, 19, 35–38, 43–44, 223–24; and PSR, 218–19; show trial of, 248–60; and terrorism, 7–8, 75–76, 199, 244–45, 258, 341n28, 342n30; and third force, 195; and Ufa Conference, 144; after Whites’ defeat, 216–17; and World War, 40 Central Executive Committee, 16, 55, 188 Central Organizational Bureau of PSR, 220, 222, 234, 236, 336n25 ceremonial funerals, for murdered demonstrators, 12–13, 33–34 Chaianov, Alexander, 267, 272 Chaikin, V., 141, 144 Chaikovskii, N. V. (Nikolai), 38, 39, 145 Chapan War, 190 Cheka: authority of, 191; interrogation by, 77–78; oppressive tactics of, 189, 191, 218–19; propaganda by, 84; and PSR, 224–25, 232–38, 339n77; and Red Terror, 85–86; reorganization and renaming of, 339n89; in Siberia, 214; violent tactics of, 40, 63, 64, 70–71. See also Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie (GPU) Chernov, Viktor, xii, xviii, 3–4, 8, 11, 35, 41, 83, 144, 154–56, 161, 162, 177, 182, 186–88, 192–94, 197, 199, 218–22, 230–31, 238, 284n17, 348n158; “The Hypocrisy of Success,” 236 Chernov Manifesto, 155 Chernova-Kolbasina, Olga, 219 Chicherin, Grigorii, 186, 188 Chlenov, S. V., 256 civil war: Bolsheviks and, xiv–xv, 54, 65–74, 86–87, 121, 163–64, 168–69, 193, 232, 239; class and, 2, 4–6, 54, 65, 86–87, 167, 232; complexity of, 168–69; dilemma of, 3; either/ or character of, 168; framing the meaning of, xiv–xv, 2–9, 14, 24–26, 54, 65–74, 86–87, 121, 163–76, 181–82, 193; Mensheviks and, xv, 67–68, 101; nationhood and, 2, 4–6; normal, 182; peasants and, 111–22; PSR and, 2, 35, 67–68, 121, 181–82, 192–94, 258–60; public awareness of, 1–2; revolution and, 2–3, 37; state building during, 89–90; terminology concerning, xvi; workers and, 62; World War and, 2, 5–7, 35, 37–38, 42, 167, 181, 182. See also revolution class: Bolsheviks and, 25–26, 266–67; and civil war, 2, 4–6, 54, 65, 86–87, 167, 232; ideological focus on, xiv; PSR and, xiv; worker politics and, 22 Combat Organization of the Latvian Social Democracy, 58 Comintern, 246–47

INDEX / 373

commissarocracy, 12, 15 Committee for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly, 6, 12 Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland and Revolution, 252 Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch), 7, 43, 57, 73, 89–122; army of, 90, 95; arrests made by, 99; and conscription, 108–11; decline of, 118–22; Department of Agitation, Culture, and Propaganda, 91, 107–8, 110–12; and grain procurement, 105–8; institutional structure of, 95; Kadets and, 103–4; membership of, 93–95; Mensheviks and, 99–102; and nationhood, 90–95; origins of, 47–50; party politics and, 101–5; and peasants, 111–22; PSR and, 89, 92–94, 102–3; Siberian government and, 132–50; social and economic policies of, 95–101; and Ufa Conference, 139–50; and workers, 97–101 Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly, 120, 140, 141, 143, 151, 153–56, 161–62, 182–85 consciousness (soznatel’nost), 24, 31 conscription, 52, 108–11, 190 conspiracy, Bolshevik claims of, 13–14, 23, 28, 33–34, 275 Constituent Assembly: and all-Russian government, 140–43; Bolshevik attitude toward, 13; demonstrations in support of, 11–15; dissolution of, 2–3, 8, 9, 11, 14; Kadets and, 38; Komuch and, 92; Land Law of, 95, 228; Mensheviks and, 11; PSR support for, 2–7, 22, 38, 171–72, 228; Siberian government and, 125–26, 132–34; Union for the Regeneration of Russia and, 292n147; workers and, 22–23, 27; and World War, 36. See also Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch); Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly Constitutional Democratic Party, anti-Leninism of, 7; and Constituent Assembly, 38; and Komuch, 103–4; and National Center, 39; and nationhood, xiv; press of, 66; PSR and, xvii, 5, 38, 47; regionalism opposed by, 125; and Siberian government, 204 cooperatives, Siberian, 128, 173–75 Cossack Hosts, 94, 129, 136, 140 Cossacks, 49, 51, 88, 93–94, 103, 109, 116, 127, 131–32, 136, 149, 157–59, 163 Council of Ministers: of Provisional Siberian Government, 130–31, 137, 147–51, 153, 157, 159–60; Ufa, 155–57, 161–63, 182–83 Council of Peoples’ Commissars, 9, 15, 27, 28, 41, 52, 59 counterrevolution: Bolsheviks on, 13, 30, 233–34; Bonapartist, 2–3, 181; democracy vs., 214;

executions as weapon against, 70–71; foreign and domestic, 34; PSR and, 181–82, 216–17, 222–24, 235 Czechoslovak Legion, 44–50, 107, 115–16, 127–28, 149–51, 162, 198, 200 Czechoslovak National Council, 46, 162, 206 Czechoslovakia, 208–9, 211, 212, 222 Dan, Fedor, 11 Dashevskii, Iosif, 40, 256 De Lauretis, Teresa, 240 Delo naroda (newspaper), 11–12, 57–58, 60, 66, 188, 191, 192 democracy: counterrevolution vs., 214; meaning of, 3; revolutionary, 182–84, 214 demonstrations, shooting of demonstrators during, 11–15, 23, 28 denationalization of industry, 96–97 Denikin, Anton, 144, 158, 181, 194–97, 207, 208, 216, 249 Derber, Petr, 126, 127, 147–48 deserters, 119 Deviatov, I. I., 163 dictatorship: military, 39, 84, 100, 103, 132, 135, 137–38, 157–63; one-party, 9; revolutionary, 215 directory, of Provisional All-Russian Government, 141–63, 292n147 discourses, political, 163–76 district conferences, 56–57 Donskoi, Dmitrii, 43, 58, 76, 77, 79, 80, 144, 177, 218, 233, 244, 246, 249, 252, 254, 255, 259, 260, 336n25, 341n28 draft. See conscription Dutov, Aleksandr, 93, 103, 139 Dzerzhinskii, Feliks, 75, 78, 83, 189, 191, 219, 232, 243, 245, 247, 260, 262, 265, 336n25, 344n64 East Siberian Commissariat, 127 Eastern front: anti-Bolshevism on, 38–42, 44–45, 49–50, 118–19; Bolsheviks and, 50–54, 118–19; politics of, 123–76; Red Terror and, 308n200 economy: decline of, 17, 18, 26–27; industrial, 18, 26–27, 96–97; Komuch policies on, 95–101; New Economic Policy, 232, 234–35, 243; political effects of, 17, 18, 20, 26–27; sabotage of, 273 Efimov, Petr, 8, 245, 256 Egorov, A. V., 71 Eighth Party Council (PSR), 35–36, 40–42, 73, 254 Ekaterinburg, 151 elections: factory, 17–18, 21, 61–62; indirect, 56; reform of, 194, 217; to soviets, 15–17, 21, 28–29, 31, 56–57, 60–62, 99 émigrés, 220–22, 238, 246, 335n18 enemies. See hidden enemies

374 / INDEX

Enukidze, Avel,’ 242 Eremeev, Grigorii, 60 Ermekov, A. A., 126 executions, 70–71, 85–88, 109, 149, 163, 191, 259–60 Executive Committee of the Railway Workers’ Union (Vikzhel’), xviii experience, concept of, 239–40, 276 Extraordinary Commission of the Eastern Front, 53 Ezhenedel’nik ChK (newspaper), 86 factions, ban on, 234, 268, 269 factories: elections in, 17–18, 21, 61–62; Komuch and, 96–97; political unrest in, 14–17. See also workers factory committees, xix Factory Plenipotentiary movement, 17–24, 26, 31 Fainberg, S. I., 199 Far Eastern Republic, 213–14 February Revolution, 12 Fedorovich, Florian, 163, 179, 187, 209, 219, 223, 259, 336n25 Fedorov-Kozlov, Filipp, 341n28 Fel’dman, M. S., 149, 212 Fifth Army, 52, 119, 184, 186, 212–13 Filatov, Vasilii, 263 Filippovskii, Vasilii, 120 Finland, 221 Fitzpatrick, Sheila, xv, 239 Fomin, N. V. (Nil), 76, 136, 163, 175, 319n40 Fondaminskii, Il’ia, xviii, 7, 38, 102, 180, 221–22, 238, 282n24, 321n70 food supply, 18, 105–8, 189 Foreign Delegation of PSR, 220–22, 238, 246 Fortunatov, Boris, 45, 46, 50, 93, 94, 108, 118, 131, 155, 184, 186 Fourth Party Congress (PSR), xvii, xviii, 2, 6, 38 France, 39–40, 44, 83, 162, 216 freemasonry, 145, 321n70 French Revolution, 2, 147 front, concept of, 296n42. See also Eastern front; Western front fuel supply, crisis in, 18 funeral ceremonies. See ceremonial funerals Gajda, Rudolf, 49, 127, 157–58, 162, 205–8 Galkin, Nikolai, 46, 49–50, 95, 133 Gattenberger, A. N., 148 Gavronskaia, Amal’ia, 282n24 Gavronskii, Dmitrii, 220 Gavronskii family, 282n24 Gendel’man, Mikhail, xviii, 93, 100, 136, 141, 143, 144, 154, 159, 179, 187, 219, 221, 255, 258, 259, 260, 321n71, 336n25 Germany: November revolution in, 42, 167, 181; peace treaty with, 36–37; as threat, 91; in World War, 17, 20, 39

Gershtein, Lev, 179, 209, 214, 219, 223, 259, 336n25 Gil,’ S. K., 77 Gins, G. K. (Georgii), 129, 136, 202, 318n12 Girsa, Vaclav, 206–8 Glebov, N. N., 62, 64 Gol’dberg, Isaak, 153, 176 Golos Rossii (newspaper), 246 Golovachev, M. P., 133, 318n12 Gorky, Maxim, 187 Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie (GPU), 243, 245, 247, 253, 262, 264, 267, 339n89. See also OGPU Gots, Abram, xi, xvii, xviii, 6, 37, 38, 41, 57–60, 75, 177, 219, 221, 237, 244, 246, 249, 252, 254, 255, 257–60, 282n24, 284n17, 348n158 Gots, Mikhail, 282n24 GPU. See Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie grain procurement, 105–8, 226. See also requisitioining detachments Gratsianov, Aleksandr (prisoner), 150 Greens, 190, 194, 225 Grenard, Fernand, 40, 44, 293n149 Grishin-Almazov, Aleksei, 127–28, 131–32, 136–37 Groman, Vladimir, 267, 272 Gudkov, P. P., 318n12 Guinet, Alphonse, 49, 133 Gukovskii, A. I. (Aleksandr), 221, 282n24 Gurevich, Vissarion, 6–7, 12, 34, 42, 103, 250 Gusev, S. I., 53 “healthy socialist policy,” 3–4 Herzen, Alexander, xii, 257, 273 hidden enemies, xii, 14, 24, 266, 271, 275 Holquist, Peter, xvi Horvath, Dmitrii (general), 147, 157, 159 hostages, 71, 84–85, 219 Iadrintsev, Nikolai, 124 Iakushev, Ivan, 126, 129, 148–49, 205–8 idealism, xvii ideology: defined, 306n164; ideological labor, xv, 54–55, 66, 146, 244; and Red Terror, 68, 80–82. See also propaganda Ignat’ev, V. I., 229 Industrial Party trial, 272–73 industry, 18, 26–27, 96–97 inflation, 18 intelligentsia: and PSR, 11, 173; radical, 138; revolution as understood by, 215, 236; Siberian, 124–25, 128, 160; in state service, 267 Inter-fractional Council of the Constituent Assembly, 6 Iurovskii, Iakov, 78 Ivanov, I. P., 60 Ivanov, N. Ia., 77 Ivanov, Nikolai, 8, 59, 73, 144, 163, 187, 219, 259, 284n17, 342n30

INDEX / 375

Ivanova, E. A. (Elena), 59, 76, 79, 80, 246, 249, 257, 259 Ivanov-Rinov, Pavel, 127, 131, 137, 163, 199 Izhevsk, 26, 71–73, 155, 184, 186, 249 Izvestiia (newspaper), 66, 79, 85, 262, 263, 264 Janin, Maurice, 162, 198, 212 Japan, 39, 147, 206, 208, 211, 213, 214 Jones, Gareth Stedman, xiii–xiv Junker rebellion, xviii, 252 Kabtsan, A. I., 47, 99 Kadets party. See Constitutional Democratic Party Kalashnikov, N. S., 127, 205, 207, 209–12 Kaliaev, Ivan, xiii Kamenev, Lev, 186, 188, 243, 247, 260, 268, 269, 274, 275 Kaminskii, G. N., 69 Kanegisser, Leonid, 83 Kaplan, Fania, 54, 82, 83, 178, 244, 280n2, 319n40 Kappel,’ Vladimir, 50, 95, 108, 118, 131, 210 Katanaev (Cossack), 157 Kautsky, Karl, 168 Kefali-Kammermakher, M. S., 17 Kerensky, Alexander, 13, 180, 221, 222, 231 Khabalov, S. S., 12, 285n27 Khodukin, Ia. N., 209 Kingesepp, Viktor, 78 Kirov, Sergei, 270 Klimushkin, Prokopii, 45–48, 93–94, 99, 104, 108, 120, 144, 162, 220, 238 Kliuchnikov, Iurii, 151, 259, 345n91 Kobiakov, Pavel, 250 Kogan-Bernshtein, M. L. (Matvei), 55, 141, 144, 195, 294n156 Kolchak, A. V., 57, 66, 80, 90, 95, 123, 128, 132, 144, 151, 157–63, 175, 181, 183–86, 193–96, 198–214, 216, 332n79 Kolosov, Evgenii, 7, 205, 209, 210–12 Kolpino, 32–34 Komuch. See Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly Kondrat’ev, Nikolai, 267, 272, 273 Konogov, V. M., 212 Kononov, Sergei, 263 Konopleva, Lidiia, 8, 59, 76, 79, 80, 242–45, 249, 254, 256, 259, 341n28 Kopylov, N. V., 26, 71 Kornilov affair, 13 Korobov, Aleksandr, 104 Kozhevnikov, Iakov, 224 Krakovetskii, A. A., 206 Krasil’nikov, S. A., 157, 159 Krasnaia gazeta (newspaper), 14, 61, 64 Krasnoiarsk, 210–11 Krasnoshchekov, A. M., 213 Krasnov, G. A., 95, 151

Krasnov, Piotr, 249 Krestinskii, Nikolai, 186, 188, 242, 259, 275 Krol,’ Lev, 103, 104, 133, 134, 142–43, 145, 151, 202 Krol,’ Moisei, 135 Kronstadt sailor rebellion, 226, 231 Kropotkin, Petr, 220 Krutovskii, Vladimir, 127, 129–30, 135, 148–50 Krylenko, Nikolai, 247, 252–55, 272, 275 Kuibyshev, Valerian, 254 kulaks, 68–69, 81, 87, 121 Kuraev, V. V., 81 Kurskii, Dmitrii, 243, 245, 247, 342n35 Kuznetsov (worker), 78 Labor Party (Britain), xiii–xiv, 220 Laboring Peasant Party, 272–73 land: Kadets and, 104; Komuch policies on, 95–96; socialization of, xiii Land Law, 95, 228 Larin, Iurii, 196 Lashevich, M. M., 56 Latsis, M., 53, 83 Latvian Riflemen, 50, 52, 63 Latvian Social Democracy, 58 Lavrov, Piotr, 257 League of Nations, 192 Lebedev, Vladimir, 7, 50 Left SRs. See Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries (PLSR) Lena gold fields massacre, 22–23 Lenin, Vladimir: assassination attempts against, 7–8, 13, 54, 59, 74–80, 83, 167, 241, 244, 254, 275, 280n2, 302n129–305n155, 340n11; on civil war, 24–25, 167–68; and Eastern front, 51; on errors, 274; and militarization of party, 54; and nationhood, 172; political principles of, 9, 10; and popular rebellions, 232; The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 168, 276, 326n153; and PSR, 185, 225; and show trials, 243, 247, 259, 260; on socialist opposition, 168, 276; State and Revolution, 172; stroke suffered by, 259; and terror, 81, 83; “Valuable Confessions of Pitirim Sorokin,” 167 Lepskii, Solomon, 100 Liebich, André, 273 Liebknecht, Theodor, 250 Likhach, Mikhail, 219, 223, 224, 259, 336n25 Lindberg, Mikhail, 127 Litvin, A. L., 74 Lockhart, Bruce, 84 Lubianka prison, 237, 259 Lunacharskii, Anatolii, 248, 255, 260; Byvshie liudi, 245 Lyandres, Semion, 74 Maiskii, Ivan, 95, 97, 102 Makarov, Nikolai, 272

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Makhin, F. E. (Fedor), 108, 118, 155 Maklakov, Vasilii, 221 Mal’kov, P. D., 74 Mandel’shtam, Nadezhda, 236 Markov, Boris, 127, 199, 200, 211 Mart’ianov, N. N., 7 Martov, Iulii, 11, 101 Marx, Karl, xii Maslov, Sergei, 6–7, 273 Masons, 145, 321n70 Mawdsley, Evan, 200–201 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 146, 170 Mensheviks: Bolsheviks and, 3, 196; bourgeoisie linked to, 28, 34; and civil war, xv, 67–68, 101; and Constituent Assembly, 11; disappearance of, 168; and Komuch, 99–102; legalization of, 188; in provinces, 28–30; PSR and, 11, 47; purging of, 54–55; show trial of, 272–73; and spontaneous rebellion, 34–35; and workers, 16–17, 19, 28 Menzhinskii, Viacheslav, 233 Merkhalev, V. N., 148, 149, 199 metalworkers, 18–19, 29–30 Mgeladze, I. V., 24, 56, 233 Miakotin, V. A., 38 Mikhailov, Adrian, 129 Mikhailov, Ivan, 127, 129–34, 137, 142, 144, 147–51, 157–59, 175, 199, 203, 318n13 Mikhailov, Pavel, 127, 128, 135, 149, 199, 199–200, 211, 318n13 military. See Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch): army of; People’s Army; Red Army; Siberia: military in; Volunteer Army military dictatorship: fear of, 84, 100, 132, 135; Kadets/National Center in favor of, 39, 103; nationhood and, 138–39; in Siberia, 132, 135, 137–38, 157–63 military specialists, 52 Miliukov, Paul, 221 Minin, Aleksandr, 5–6 Minkin, A. E., 81 Minor, Osip, 12 Minority of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (MPSR), 197–98, 241, 242, 245, 262 Moiseenko, Boris, 38, 40, 44, 145, 157 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 225, 232 Morachevskii, Iurii, 255 Moravskii, V. I., 206 Morozov, A. P., 318n12 Morozov, K. N., 165 Morozov, Sergei, 80, 218, 238, 259, 260, 339n83 Murav’ev, M. A., 52 Murav’ev, Nikolai, 249 Myerhoff, Barbara, 273–74 Naiman, Eric, 326n153 Narod (newspaper), 111, 196

Narod (organization), xv, 196–97, 200, 241, 242 Narodnoe delo (newspaper), 66 Narodnyi golos (newspaper), 28 Narodovlastie (journal), 146 Nash vek (newspaper), 66 Naslegin (Socialist Revolutionary), 72 nation and nationhood: Bolshevism and, 171; and civil war, 2, 4–6; ideological focus on, xiv; military dictatorship and, 138–39, 160; opposition movements and, 169–72; peasants and, 117–18; popular sovereignty and, 90–95, 146; Provisional Siberian Government and, 152–53; PSR and, xiv, 41, 90–95, 171–72, 174, 221; regionalism and, 326n156; strength of, in Russia, 170–71; Ufa Conference and, 146–47; Union of Regeneration and, 145–47, 174; weakness of, in Russia, 169–70. See also all-Russian government National Center, 39–40, 44, 103–4, 146 negosudarstvennost’ (lack of national state consciousness), 141 Nekrasov, Nikolai, 7 Nesterov, Ivan, 46, 93, 94, 120 Nevskii district, 17, 60 New Economic Policy (NEP), 232, 234–35, 243 Nicholas II, 15 Ninth Party Council (PSR), 195–96, 216, 222–24, 230 Nizhnii Novgorod, 29–30, 32 Noulens, Joseph, 40, 44, 45, 293n149 Novaia Sibir’ (newspaper), 175 Novaia zhizn’ (newspaper), 61, 66 Novikov (worker), 77 Novoe delo naroda (newspaper), 66 Novoselov, Aleksandr, 126, 148–49 Novyi luch (newspaper), 66 Novyi mir (newspaper), 243 Obukhov plant, 14–17, 21, 60 Oganovskii, Nikolai, 152, 202, 267 OGPU, 272 Old Regime: Bolsheviks compared to, 11–12, 235; and collapse of Russia, 5; hostages connected to, 84–85; SRs vs., xii, xiii; worker unrest during, 23 Omsk: Siberian government in, 123–51 Omsk Bloc, 173–75 Omsk coup, 157–63 Onipko, F. M., 7 opposition: within Bolshevik Party, 267–68; nationalism and, 169–72; peasant, 68–70, 190–91, 224–34; in provinces, 26–35; regionalism and, 169–70; socialist, 14–26, 28, 35, 54–65, 168; worker, 14–35, 51, 62–65, 189–90 “Order on Hostages,” 84 O’Reilly, W. E., 206 Orlov, Boris, 74 Orwell, George, 215

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Pal’chinskii, Petr, 267 Pankratov, Vasilii, 202 Paris, émigrés in, 220–22, 238, 335n18 Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries (PLSR), xv, xvii, xviii, 10–11, 17, 98, 166, 189 Party of Popular Socialists, 38 Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (PSR), 44; armed struggle advocated by, 193–95, 223– 24; Bolshevik opposition to, 57, 82, 192–98, 224–25, 232–38, 240–60; and Bolsheviks, 182–92; bourgeoisie linked to, 13–14, 28, 81, 85, 244; Cheka and, 218–19, 232–38, 339n77; and civil war, 2, 35, 67–68, 121, 181–82, 192–94, 258–60; and class, xiv; and Constituent Assembly, 2–7, 22, 38, 171–72, 228; and counterrevolution, 181–82, 216–17, 222–24, 235; and the Directory, 153–55; discourse of, 172–73; disintegration of, 165–68, 176, 198, 215–38, 265, 339n83; diversity within, xiii; divisions within, xvii–xix, 135–36, 140–41, 176, 186–87, 197–98; Eighth Party Council of, 35–36; émigrés of, 220–22, 238, 335n18; in factory elections, 61–62; history of, xvi–xix, 165; internationalist wing of, xvii; Kadets and, xvii, 5, 38, 47; and Komuch, 89, 92–94, 102–3; Left SR split with, 10–11; left wing of, 2–5, 41–42, 141, 154, 176, 183, 195–96, 294n156; left-center wing of, xvii–xviii, 141; legalization of, 188, 214; local characteristics of, xv; Mensheviks and, 11, 47; and nationhood, xiv, 41, 90–95, 171–72, 174, 221; Omsk coup and, 161–63; and peasants, 217–18, 223–34; political strategy of, 41–42, 90–95; and popular rebellions, 226–30; and popular sovereignty, 171; principles and tenets of, xii–xiv, 171–72; Red Terror and, 87, 166; and revolution, 216; right wing of, xvii–xix, 2, 5–7, 41–42, 136, 141, 157, 176, 195, 282n29; right-center wing of, xvii–xix, 6, 41, 141–42, 153–54, 282n24; show trial of, xi–xii, 232, 237, 240–61; and Siberia, 124–26, 129, 131–50, 153–54, 173, 198–209, 214; and spontaneous rebellion, 35; strategy of, 35–37; and terrorism, xiii, 7–8, 59–60, 75–76, 80, 82–83, 195, 199, 219, 223–24, 244–45, 284n17, 325n141; as third force, 192–98, 214, 216, 222, 224, 230, 266; and Ufa Conference, 139–50; value of studying, xiv; and workers, 10, 14–26, 29–30, 253–54. See also Central Committee of PSR; Socialist Revolutionaries Patushinskii, Grigorii, 126, 127, 129–30, 135, 137, 148–49 Pavlov, Vladimir, 38, 103, 104, 133, 145 Pavlu, Bogdan, 208 Pavlunovskii, Ivan, 229 peasants: attitudes of, 111–22; Bolsheviks and, 10; and conscription, 109–10; Left SR and, 10–11; non-Russian, 117–18; PSR and, xii, 10, 217–18,

223–34; and requisitioning detachments, 107; resistance by, 68–70, 190–91, 224–34 Pelevin, Pavel, 341n28 People’s Army, 50, 90, 95, 107, 109–11, 116, 155, 172, 327n161 People’s Will, xii, xiii, 82–83, 245 Pepeliaev, A. N. (Anatolii), 127, 131, 205–7, 210 Pepeliaev, Viktor, 104, 127, 137–38, 157–58, 202, 209, 212 performance: apology rituals and show trials as, 269–71, 273, 341n26; Bolshevik use of, 265, 275–76; Red Terror as, 81, 85–86; social and individual functions of, 240, 273–74 Peshekhonov, A. V., 38 Peshkova, Ekaterina, 219–20 Peters, Iakov, 78 Petrichenko, Stepan, 231 Petrograd, xvii, 7–8, 10–20, 32–34, 40, 53, 55–62, 64, 66, 71, 74, 78, 81, 84, 87, 164, 189, 197–98, 226–27, 233, 244, 248, 253, 265 Petrogradskoe ekho (newspaper), 1–2 Petrov, N. I., 318n12 Petrovskii, Grigorii, 84 Piatakov, Grigorii, 248, 253, 258, 275 Pipe factory, 16 Plenipotentiary movement. See Factory Plenipotentiary movement PLSR. See Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries Podbel’skii, Iurii, 227 Podbel’skii, P. P., 104 Podvitskii, Viktor, 141 Podvoiskaia, Nina, 300n112 Podvoiskii, Nikolai, 47, 50–51 Pokrovskii, G. K., 6–7 Pokrovskii, Mikhail, 255 Poland, 216, 223, 241 Politburo, 191, 233, 242, 245–48, 254–55, 260 Political Center, 198, 207, 209–14 political parties: prerevolutionary status of, xix; weakness of, 166 Popov, Nikolai, 260 Popular Socialists. See Party of Popular Socialists popular sovereignty, 4, 5, 6, 90–95, 146, 171 Potanin, Grigorii, 124–26 Pour la Russie (newspaper), 335n18 Prague, émigrés in, 220–21, 238 Pravda (newspaper), 13, 14, 25, 167, 243, 244 Preobrazhenskii, Evgenii, 259 Preobrazhenskii, V. L., 102 Presidium of the Central Executive Committee, 259, 260 Presidium of the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly, 184–85 press, closures of, 66–67 Prilezhaev, Ivan, 264 prison experience of SRs, 219, 237–38, 259–60 propaganda: Bolshevik, 13–14, 25–26, 57, 83–84;

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Komuch, 91, 111; SR, 4, 12–13, 15. See also agitation; ideology Protopopov, A. D., 12, 285n27 provinces, politics in, 26–35 Provisional All-Russian Government, 143–57 Provisional Government, xvii, xviii, 5 Provisional Siberian Government, 129–34, 137, 147–63, 170 Provisional Siberian Regional Council, 126 provocateurs, 250–51 punitive detachments, 70–71, 109, 113–14 purges, 54–55 Putilov Factory, 189 Rabinovich, Boris, 58–59, 246 Radek, Karl, 85–86, 247, 259, 260, 275 Radkey, Oliver, 228 railroad workers, 63 Rakitnikov, Nikolai, xviii, 144, 174, 184–85, 187, 194–97, 199, 245 Rakov, Dmitrii, 93, 159, 187, 219, 233, 259, 260, 336n25 Raskol’nikov, F. F. (Fedor), 30, 51, 63 Ratner, Evgeniia, 179, 218, 251, 257–59 Ratner, Grigorii, 251–52, 256 rebellion. See opposition Rech’ (newspaper), 66 Rechkin plant, 15 Red Army: on Eastern front, 50, 52–54, 118–19; Kolchak defeated by, 200–201; party members in, 53–54; party relationship to, 90; peasant attitudes toward, 121; and peasant rebellion, 225–26 Red Guards: effectiveness of, 52; opposition to, 15; violent tactics of, 16, 21–23, 27–28, 32–33, 64 Red Terror: context for, 82; decrees of, 305n163; and Eastern front, 308n200; as ideological system, 68, 80–88; as performance/theater, 81, 85–86; promotion of, 13–14; and PSR, 87, 166 regionalism, 124–28, 138, 169–70, 326n156 “renegades of socialism,” xi, xv, 82, 88, 168, 241, 268, 270, 274, 276 requisitioining detachments, 68–70, 107, 190–91, 226, 229. See also grain procurement Reshetov, I. F., 262–63 resistance. See opposition “Resolution on Party Unity” (Communist Party), 233 Revkom. See Provisional Revolutionary Committee Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia (journal), 222, 231, 238 Revoliutsionnyi vestnik (newspaper), 28 revolution: civil war and, 2–3, 37; and dictatorship, 215; framing the meaning of, 22–23, 236–37; politics of, 9–10, 160, 232. See also civil war

revolutionary democracy, 182–84, 214 revolutionary ethics, 250–51, 255–57 Revolutionary Military Councils, 53 Revolutionary Tribunal, 240–41 Richter, František, 149 Right Center, 39 rituals, 240. See also apology rituals Rogovskii, Evgenii, 95, 120, 141, 151, 159, 222 Romanov, Mikhail, 57 Rosenberg, William, 22, 55, 65 Rosenfeld, Kurt, 250 Rozanov, Sergei, 206–8 Rozenblium, D. S. (Dmitrii), 141, 154, 202, 284n17, 342n30 Rubanovich, Il’ia, 220, 222 Rudnev, Vadim, xviii, 6, 102, 180, 221, 282n24 Rudnev, Vera, 180 Rudzievskii, V. K., 76 rumors, 115–16 Rusanov, Nikolai, 220, 222 Rykov, Alexei, 275 Sahlins, Marshall, 215 sailor rebellion, Kronstadt, 226, 231 Sakharov (general), 210 Samara, 31, 44–49, 89–122 Samara Merchants’ Bank, 96 Samsonov, Timofei, 225, 232–33, 260, 262 Sapozhnikov, V. V. (Vasilii), 142–44, 318n12 Savinkov, Boris, xv, 13, 39, 40, 44, 219, 241–42, 252, 255, 258; Bor’ba s bol’shevikami, 340n11 Sazonov, A. V., 173, 174, 202 Second International, xii, 246–47 Semenov, Ataman G. M., 211, 213 Semenov, Grigorii, 40, 59–60, 74–80, 241–46, 249, 254–56, 258, 259, 269, 270, 275, 330n51, 340n8, 340n11, 341n28, 348n158 Serebrennikov, Ivan, 127, 130, 137, 142–44, 149, 160, 175 Serebriakov, Leonid, 242 Sergushev, M. S., 29–30 Seventeenth Party Congress (Communist Party), 271 Severnaia kommuna (newspaper), 61, 82, 83–84 Shakhty trial, 272–73 Shapron, V. G., 116 Shatilov, Mikhail, 126, 129–31, 135, 137, 148–50 Shchapov, Afanasii, 124 Shchepkin, N. N., 38, 39, 321n70 Shiriamov, A. A., 201 Shmelev, Nikolai, 185 shock troops, 53 show trials, xi–xii, 232, 237, 240–61, 266, 272–76, 341n26 Shubin, P. A., 256 Shumiatskii, Boris, 184 Shumilovskii, L. I., 318n12 Siberia, 1, 44–45, 57, 123–76; Bolshevism in,

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126–28, 131; city Dumas in, 202, 206–7, 209; cooperatives in, 128; coup d’état in, 157–63; Gajda coup in, 205–8; government in, 125–39, 147–63, 201–14; Komuch and, 132–50; military in, 127–28, 131–32; PSR and, 124–26, 129, 131–50, 153–54, 173, 198–209, 214; regionalism in, 124–28, 138, 170, 326n156; State Economic Conference of, 202–4; two fronts in, 123; zemstvos in, 201–9 Siberian Regional Committee, of the PSR, 198–200, 207, 209, 214 Siberian Regional Duma, 125–27, 134–35, 147–50 Siberian Regionalist Congress (1917), 125 Siberian Union of Socialist Revolutionaries, xvi, 200 Sibirskie zapiski (journal), 130 Sibirtsev, G. P., 210 Sidorov, V. O., 206 Sidorov, Vasilii, 127, 149 Sikhanov, Nikolai, 12 Sizikov, V. S., 128 Skoropads’kyi, Hetman, 37 Smirnov, I. N., 212–13 sobering-up (vytrezvlenie), 5, 31 Social-Democratic Internationalists, 98 socialist opposition, 14–26, 28, 35, 54–65, 168, 276 Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs): assimilation of former, 261–66; Bolshevik portrayal of, xi, xv, xvi; and civil war, xv; dilemma facing, 181; imprisonment of, 219, 237–38, 259–60; principles and tenets of, xii–xiii; in provinces, 28–30; purging of, 54–55; Red Terror and, 84–85, 87; show trial of, xi, 180; Siberian, 1, 198–204. See also Left SR; Party of Socialist Revolutionaries Socialist Revolutionary Military Commission, 7 Society of Factory-owners and Industrialists, 97 Sokolov, A. I., 100 Sokolov, Boris, 7 soldiers’ committees, xix Sormovo, 26, 29–30, 62–64, 189, 198 Sosulin, A. I., 72 Sotsialisticheskii vestnik (newspaper), 273 Soviet Central Executive Committee, 280n2 Soviet-Polish War (1920), 216 soviets: Bolsheviks and, 16–17; elections to, 15–17, 21, 28–29, 31, 56–57, 60–62, 99; Mensheviks and, 16; model of, 23; political role of, xix; PSR and, 16; symbolic capital of, 23; workers’ dissatisfaction with, 20–21 Sovremennye zapiski (journal), 221, 222, 238, 282n24 spontaneity (stikhiinost’), 31–35, 190 SRs. See Party of Socialist Revolutionaries Stalin, Josef, 75, 242, 243, 268, 270, 271, 274, 348n158 Stavskaia, Faina, 341n28 Steinberg, Isaak, 81

Steklov, Iurii, 220, 245, 247, 248, 264 Stepanenko, G. M., 318n12 strikes, 55–56, 63–65, 189–90 Sukhanov, Nikolai, 272 Sukhomlin, Vasilii, 220, 222, 238, 250 Sumgin, Mikhail, 8 Supreme Tribunal, 247, 250, 254, 344n64 Sverdlov, Iakov, 70–71, 75, 82, 185 Sviatitskii, N. V. (Nikolai), 154, 185, 284n17 Sychev, K. I., 211 Syromiatnikov, A. D., 157 Syrový, Jan (general), 149–51, 162, 207, 212 Tambov, 225–29 Tarasova, Vera, 166–67 Tatarov, Nikolai, 251 Tatars, 117–18 Tenth Party Congress (Communist Party), 232, 233 Tenth Party Council (PSR), 216, 220, 223–24, 234–36 terminology, xvi terrorism: Bolsheviks and, 8, 67–68, 70; justifications of, 82–83; PSR and, xiii, 7–8, 59–60, 75–76, 80, 82–83, 195, 199, 219, 223–24, 244–45, 284n17, 325n141. See also assassinations and assassination attempts; Red Terror Teterkin, Ivan, 73, 195 textile workers, 18–19, 26 Third Congress of Soviets, 24 third force: Bolshevik fear of, 266, 271–72; PSR as, 192–98, 214, 216, 222, 224, 230 Thompson, John B., 306n164 Timofeev, Evgenii, xi, xviii, 6, 8, 41, 59, 75, 76, 79, 144, 178, 188, 219, 221, 237, 246, 249, 250, 252, 254, 255, 257, 259, 260, 284n17, 348n158 Tislenko, M. A. (Mikhail), 59, 75, 76, 78–79, 246 Titov, A. A., 38, 321n70 Toward an End to the War within the Democracy (Vol’skii group), 191–92 Trans-Siberian railroad, 45–47, 49, 131, 201, 208, 210–11 Trauberg, Albert, 59 Trepov, Dmitrii, 12 Trotsky, Leon, xiv, 46, 53, 75, 76, 79, 231, 232, 241, 243, 247, 248, 259–61, 268, 270, 342n35; “Who Is Betraying What,” 248, 255 Tseitlin, Mikhail, 219 Tula, 26–29, 63–64, 69, 71, 164, 189–90, 196–98 Tula Arms Plant, 27–28 Tula Cartridge Plant, 27–28 Tula Provincial Executive Committee, 28 Turlo, S. S., 87 Turner, Victor, 239–40 Ufa, PSR and Bolsheviks in, 184–87 Ufa Conference, 139–50, 292n147 Ukraine, 1, 36–37

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Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly, 17 Union for the Defense of the Fatherland and Freedom, 39, 40, 44 Union for the Regeneration of Russia (Union of Regeneration), xvi, 136; and Eastern front, 38–41, 44, 104, 133; government role of, 104, 133; influence of, 202; Komuch vs., 103–4; and nationhood, 145–47, 174; principles and aims of, 38–39, 146–47; and Ufa Conference, 141–42, 145–46, 292n147 Union of Siberian Buttermaking Cooperatives, 128 Union of the Toiling Peasantry, 217, 223, 227–29 Union of Unions of Consumers’ Cooperatives, 128 unions, xix, 218, 222 United Front (newspaper), 265 Unity (political group), 38 unmasking. See hidden enemies Uritskii, M. S., 13, 74, 83 Usov, Konstantin, 341n28 Ustrugov, Leonid, 151 Utgof, Vladimir, 255 Validov, Zeki Akhmed, 93 Vandervelde, Emile, 250 Vatsetis, I. I., 52 Vedeniapin, Mikhail, 48, 94, 120, 133, 162, 187, 199, 219, 259, 260, 336n25 Ventsek, F. I., 47 Verkhovskii, Aleksandr, 344n64 Vienna Union, 246–47 Vinogradov, Vladimir, 145, 159, 202 Vishniak, Mark, 38, 102, 180, 221, 282n24 Voinovich, Vladimir, 273 Voitsekhovskii (general), 49, 162, 210 Volia naroda (newspaper), xvii, 7 Volia Rossii (journal), 221, 222, 238 Volkogonov, Dmitrii, 74 Volkov, V. K. (Viacheslav), 149, 157, 321n70, 322n86 Volodarskii, V., 57–60, 75, 241, 244, 253 Vologodskii, Petr, 127, 129–30, 132, 135–37, 145, 147–49, 151, 153, 157, 159, 175, 209, 318n15 Vol’skii, Vladimir, xv, 6–7, 46–48, 91–94, 99, 132, 135, 139–40, 144, 156, 161, 162, 185–86, 194, 197, 245

Vol’skii group, 185, 187, 188, 191, 194, 196, 241, 245 Volunteer Army, 40, 90 Volzhskii den’ (newspaper), 104 Vostrotin, Sergei, 7 Vostrotin, Stepan, 158 Votkinsk, 71–73 Vozrozhdenie (newspaper), 146, 321n71 Vsegda vpered (newspaper), 188 Vyshinskii, Andrei, 274, 275, 276 Wauters, Arthur, 250 West Siberian Commissariat, 127–31 White Terror, 82–84, 307n181 Whites: and civil war, xiv–xv; PSR and, 192–93; PSR opposition to, 182–83, 195, 197; Russia after defeat of, 216; in Siberia, 211, 332n79 Wood, Elizabeth, 341n26 workers: Bolsheviks and, 14–26, 62–65, 98, 189–90; and civil war, 62; economic effects on, 18–20, 26–27; Komuch and, 97–101; Mensheviks and, 16–17, 19, 28; opposition by, 14–35, 51, 62–65, 189–90; political aims of, 20–22; PSR and, 10, 14–26, 29–30, 253–54; Red Terror and, 86. See also factories Workers’ Conference (1918), 98–99 World War: Bolsheviks and, 18, 36; civil war and, 2, 5–7, 35, 37–38, 42, 167, 181, 182; end of, 42, 181; PSR and, xvii Wrangel, Baron, 216, 223 wrecking, 273 Yezhov, Nikolai, 274 Zakharov, E. V., 126 Zaria (newspaper), 175 Zefirov, N. S., 318n12 Zemlia i volia (newspaper), 100 Zemstvo Political Bureau, 207, 209 zemstvos, in Siberia, 201–9 Zenzinov, Vladimir, xvii, xviii, 6, 40, 76, 93, 141, 144, 145, 151, 156, 158, 159, 180, 220–22, 231, 234, 236, 238, 282n24, 284n17, 321n71 Zhardetskii, Valentin, 175 Zinevich, B. M., 210–11 Zinoviev, Grigorii, 13, 56, 57, 59, 60, 81, 244, 261, 268, 274, 275 Zlobin, Pavel, 255 Zubkov, Fedor, 341n28