Democracy Burning? : Urban Fire Departments and the Limits of Civil Society in Late Imperial Russia, 1850-1914 [1 ed.] 9780773580695, 9780773537798

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democracy burning?

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Democracy Burning? Urban Fire Departments and the Limits of Civil Society in Late Imperial Russia, 1850–1914 nigel a. raab

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2011 isbn 978-0-7735-3779-8 Legal deposit first quarter 2011 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from Loyola Marymount University. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Raab, Nigel A., 1968–    Democracy burning? : urban fire departments and the limits of civil society in late Imperial Russia, 1850–1914 / Nigel A. Raab. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-7735-3779-8   1. Fire departments – Russia – History. 2. Russia – History – 1801–1917. 3. Russia – Social conditions – 1801–1917. 4. Russia – Politics and government – 1801–1917. i. Title. th9565.r32 2010   363.37’8094709034   c2010–905570–5

Typeset by Jay Tee Graphics Ltd. in 10.5/13 Sabon

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To my parents, Alice and Tony Raab

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Contents

Acknowledgments  ix List of Photographs  xi Introduction  3 1 A Tale of Two Ministries: The Ministry of War, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Reform of the Russian Fire Department, 1855–65  24 2 The Implementation of Reform: Developing Urban Autonomy in the Public Fire Department, 1865–80  55 3 Disagreement without Opposition: The City, the State, and the Fight for Control of the Municipal Fire Department in Kazan, 1881–86  91 4 A Conservative Public Sphere: Volunteer Fire Departments, 1880–1914  122 5 The Imperial Russian Society of Firefighters, 1893–1914  151 6 Visualizing Civil Society: The Photographer and the Firefighter  177

Conclusion  198 Notes  209 Bibliography  243 Index  259

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Acknowledgments

Over the years, many people have contributed to this project, and now I finally have an opportunity to thank them. An important aspect of any research project is having a roof over one’s head. I want to thank Marguerite and Jürg Brandenberger, Mirella Caroni, and Madlen Vogel in Zurich for their hospitality. In St Petersburg and Perm, I have fond memories of home away from home at Galina and Adrian Temkin’s and at Vladimir Dallada and Svetlana Dvinskikh’s. Intellectually, Carsten Goehrke at the University of Zurich offered advice as a teacher and colleague and helped me find my way in the Russian provinces. Conversations with Arthur Danto made me think outside the parameters of Russian history and consider the perspective of the philosopher of art. Elise Wirtschafter Kimerling helped turn some critical phrases to clarify the argument. Archivists and curators in Moscow, St Petersburg, Kazan, Tver, Perm, Arkhangel’sk, and Riazan pointed me in the right direction. Anastasia Smirnova made sure all the soft signs were in place. Feedback from blind readers, comments at conferences, and talks with friends softened the edges of this project. I thank Shawn Howard and Tim Roy for their friendship. New York City also played a role in this book. Long walks up and down Manhattan helped crystallize thoughts, and the stimulating environment at Columbia University brought them into focus. At my home base in Los Angeles, I have been lucky to have great colleagues in the history department of Loyola Marymount University. In particular, John Grever has helped in so many different ways. I would also like to recognize the support of Paul Zeleza,

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dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts; Ernie Rose, professor and former chief academic officer; and Joe Hellige, chief academic officer. I am also grateful to John Carfora, associate vp for Research Development and Compliance, whose wit kept the candle lit when the energies were waning. Jonathan Crago, editor at mqup, was incredibly understanding of the topic and always had suggestions to improve the project. I could not have asked for more. Joan McGilvray and Joanne Richardson also made it a better book. I would like to thank History of Photography for permission to reprint previously published material in chapter 6. Bianca Pietrow Ennker, Walter Sperling, and Galina Ul’ianova allowed me to spread my ideas in languages other than English. Transliteration is done according to the Library of Congress standard, but soft signs have been omitted at the end of city names, and some names, such as Dostoevsky, are presented in their most common form. Dates are all Old Style from the pre-revolutionary calendar. My parents, Alice and Tony Raab, have been devoted editors and sympathetic listeners; the book is dedicated to them. Carolyn, Devin, Casey, and Sienna took me into the wilderness when I needed to fill my lungs with fresh air. The last thank you goes to my wife, Carolyn Peter, who has heard me talk about this project since the first day we met. Nineteenth-century Russian fire departments are not the best topic for a first date, but she nevertheless agreed to marry me and has helped me ever since.

On a foggy day in Los Angeles, Autumn 2010

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Photographs

6.1  Maria Alekseevna Ermolova, 1910, Pozharnoe delo, cover page,   186 6.2  Irkutsk Fire Department, 1910, Pozharnoe delo, cover page,   188 6.3  St Petersburg, city hall, 1915, Pozharnoe delo, cover page,   191 6.4  Kazan Volunteer Fire Department, 1913, Pozharnoe delo, cover page,   194 6.5  Champ de Mars, inspection of volunteer fire departments, 1912, Pozharnoe delo,   195

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Introduction Russia gets drunk in the fall, starves in the winter and the spring, and burns in the summer. These are the seasons of our lives. a Russian saying

Dramatic fires fill the pages of Russian history. In War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy vividly depicts the burning of Moscow and the destruction of the city after the arrival of Napoleon’s Grande Armée in 1812. In seeking to understand the causes of the fire, Tolstoy refused to accept explanations that spoke of the barbarity of the French or of Russian patriotism; instead, he suggested that “Moscow was burned because it found itself in a position in which any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite apart from whether it had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior fire engines.”1 In tune with the historical determinism of his epic, the great novelist was reluctant to acknowledge human intervention as a possible deterrent, but throughout the nineteenth century state and municipal officials actively pursued ways to fight the massive conflagrations that ignited cities across the Russian Empire. As cities doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in size, fire prevention and firefighting became one of the most pressing problems: in 1842, 1902, and 1909, whole sections of Kazan were swallowed by fire.2 To prevent disaster, cities had to support fully equipped fire departments: by the early 1860s, every city had a fire department in one form or another. At that point, Moscow and St Petersburg had fire departments with more than one thousand employees, and even in much smaller centres, where there may have been as few as twenty firefighters, the watchtower of the fire department would be visible throughout the town, reminding ­residents that this urban institution was there to protect them. In Kazan, seven hundred kilometres east of Moscow, each of the city’s five sections had a watchtower, from which a firefighter conducted

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surveillance twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. Throughout the darkest nights of Russian history, firefighters kept an eye on the cities they strove to protect. When the fire departments were not actively engaged at the scene of the fire, they could still be seen training on city streets and conducting exercises on some of the more important urban structures. Moreover, in rapidly growing cities it soon became clear that the professional fire departments were unable to meet urban needs alone, so volunteer fire departments emerged to fill the gap. Not only did the volunteer fire departments offer a pragmatic solution to combat a dangerous urban foe but they also provided a locus for civic engagement. In fact, scholars have portrayed the volunteer fire departments operating throughout western Europe and the United States as the paradigmatic case for citizens acting to solve their own problems independently of the state.3 In effect, the history of fire departments in the Russian context is a history of public activity, but it is not a history of challenge to authority. Although many studies equate public activity with a progressive political consciousness, I argue that, no matter the energy and vigour of these fire departments, they consistently supported the traditional values of an authoritarian state. It was civil society but a conservative version of what is normally considered a democratic ideal. While not all public activity reflects this standpoint, municipal authorities and volunteers in smaller fire departments, prominent actors in the public sphere, insisted upon some form of state involvement. In the history of firefighting it thus becomes impossible to isolate society from the state, as has often been done in studies on associational and municipal life in the public sphere. The history of firefighting, then, is as much about the analytic issues of civil society as it is about the fires that burned throughout the empire. To be sure, fires are not new to the historiography. Years ago, James Billington named his work on the revolutionary faith after a line from Fedor Dostoevsky’s Demons.4 The title of his work, Fire in the Minds of Men, suggests that fire was more important in the heads of revolutionaries than in the towns and villages that had burned to ashes. Fire, however, was not a metaphorical phenomenon since pundits claimed that Russia burned to the ground in thirty-year cycles. In a popular history, N. Shchablov provides some colourful descriptions of fire departments, their fire chiefs, and the fires they fought.5 A recent monograph by Cathy Frierson addresses fire as a pressing social problem in the rural areas of the empire.6

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As her analysis clearly indicates, fires were not just a threat to home and hearth: they affected the very social make-up of village life. Her extensive research has investigated the psychological power of fire in the peasant household and the peasants’ ability to cope with new technologies associated with fire prevention. Rural issues differed from urban ones, but the title of her work, All Russia Is Burning, suggests the broad scope of the problem. As peasants learned to cope with fire in their villages, urban residents advanced their own understanding of the phenomenon in the urban and industrial environment of the late nineteenth century. Despite the obvious importance of fire, there is still no history of urban fire departments that exploits their critical social, cultural, and political position in society. Democracy Burning? hopes to fill this gap while addressing analytic issues that dominate a broader historiography on the changing mood in an increasingly volatile empire. As cities expanded throughout the nineteenth century, fire departments became an essential component of a stable urban environment. Without the finances necessary to provide every city with fully staffed fire departments, the central bureaucracy found it expedient to urge the creation of municipally run or volunteer fire departments, thus encouraging the solidification of local self-administration and, subsequently, a specifically Russian style of civil society. These apparently neutral organizations became regularly embroiled in political issues of the day. Thus, their public face and the breadth of participation make them ideal vehicles for addressing a number of related issues relevant to late nineteenth-century European society: the role of nationalism in associational life, the restructuring and/or maintenance of traditional social hierarchies within these associations, gender biases in all-male organizations, the presence of a military ethos in the urban public sphere, city-state relations, and the inner dynamics of municipal politics in the provinces.

the changing landscape of the russian city and the emergence of an urban public sphere Before the nineteenth century, the Russian city developed at a different pace than did its western counterparts. If “city air made free” in many early modern German cities, the same could not be said of Russian cities in which urban dwellers served the state.7 ­Moreover, the centralizing tendencies developing in the Kremlin suffocated

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the independence of cities such as Pskov and Novgorod. These cities never recovered their medieval independence after the rise of Muscovy, and, until the construction of St Petersburg in the early eighteenth century, Moscow dominated the urban landscape. It was only under the influence of Catherine the Great, towards the end of the eighteenth century, that cities emerged in greater numbers. The Charter of the Towns, promulgated in 1785, established urban centres throughout the empire. The Charter was not entirely successful since many of the new “towns” still retained their rural appearance. Well into the nineteenth century, visitors to Russia remarked on how the Russian countryside blended seamlessly into the cities.8 Yet, what were once rural regional centres under Catherine the Great flourished in the next century. Odessa on the Black Sea, Perm in the Urals, and other towns grew exponentially until the revolution of 1917. With few exceptions, this growth came after the Crimean War in the 1850s and the emancipation of the peasants in 1861. The population in Perm, for example, remained steady in the first half of the nineteenth century and then skyrocketed at the end of the 1860s. In 1852, the population was 13,391; in 1868, it was 19,556; and by the turn of the century it was almost 100,000 people.9 Between 1815 and 1861, the city of Odessa grew from 35,000 to over 100,000 people. By 1914, over 600,000 people lived in this multi-ethnic agglomeration.10 On the Volga, Kazan grew from 60,000 in 1859 to 206,000 in 1917.11 As urbanization proceeded apace throughout the empire, towns shed their rural appearance and matured into modern cities. The Crimean War may not have taken place in an urban setting, but it inspired a series of reforms, such as the Municipal Statute in 1870, which altered the urban environment and changed the official attitude towards urban growth.12 Official change mirrored unofficial or societal developments that had altered urban demographics. The slow growth of a working class and the emergence of an urban elite transformed Russian cities into modern, quasi-European centres of industry and technology. Soon city-dwellers could enjoy the advantages and disadvantages of urban life. Wealthier quarters benefited from recently installed water mains, whereas residents in poorer areas struggled to find a clean supply of water. Newspapers and the print media enhanced the public sphere; newly literate citizens could scan the penny-press for information about all the attractions of urban life.13 And, if the necessary pomade was not available in one’s hometown, by the end of the century intercity rail connec-

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tions created close-knit urban networks.14 In the capitals and in the provinces, affluent residents could spend an evening of refinement in a centrally located theatre.15 Theatre-goers surely wanted to concentrate on the spectacle before them, but they must have considered the possibility of the theatre in flames – perhaps thoughts of their local fire departments put their minds at rest. Although fire departments underwent few significant changes before the Great Reforms, their history after the Crimean War belongs to that of a society in motion. In the reformist spirit of the early 1860s, the state decentralized its operations and promoted opportunities for self-administration, such as with the creation of the rural zemstvo. At approximately the same time, the state freed itself of its responsibility to manage urban fire departments, reforming their administration throughout the entire empire so that individual communities would have sole responsibility for administering this urban service.16 As the state receded, municipal officials and urban dwellers found themselves with an independent sphere of authority. For the next half-century, however, the attitude of the authorities in St Petersburg wavered: they continued to exert an influence on the reformist mood and challenged peasants, publishers, and urban officials to maintain their independence. As Thomas Pearson has shown, the initial reforms were far from perfect, and the autocracy continued to tamper with them.17 The vacillating autocracy may have infuriated contemporaries, but the changing climate provides ample opportunity to judge how local officials involved with fire prevention reacted to state interference. The introduction of a municipal statute in 1870 has been considered a benchmark event in Russian urban history since it radically restructured local government and provided councillors with limited autonomy. The statute certainly affected municipal fire departments, but their structure had already changed with the onset of other reforms in the early 1860s. When the Ministry of War decided to disband its Internal Guard (soldiers who performed a variety of civilian services in urban centres), it withdrew its men from fire departments throughout the empire and forced the creation of public, municipally run fire departments. Here the history of firefighting dovetails with the larger issue of military reform that has been so carefully explored in John Keep’s social history of the Imperial army.18 As the army reduced its urban presence, municipal residents had to fill ­crucial voids. In terms of firefighting and fire

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prevention, this resulted in the creation of an independent sphere of urban authority well before the Municipal Statute. The state called upon the initiative of urban residents and urged the development of a civic consciousness. In an empire that was overwhelmingly rural, this reform of urban fire departments may not have drawn as much attention and intellectual effort as the emancipation of the peasants in 1861 or the creation of rural zemstvos in 1864, but it helps answer crucial questions about state motives for urban reform. Was this a matter of enlightened bureaucracy or a pragmatic solution to the pressing needs of the military? Beyond exposing specific motives for an urban reform, it reveals the important role of the Ministry of War in altering the administrative landscape of urban centres. The initial reform came at a defining moment in urban history. In the early 1860s, before the uprisings in Poland and before the first assassination attempt on Alexander II, urban residents breathed some of the freest air. The intellectual ferment of the early 1860s has been well documented in a historiography focused on the revolutionary movement. Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Dobroliubov, and others took full advantage of a “crucial period in modern ­Russian history beginning in 1855 with Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War and ending in 1866 with Karakozov’s unsuccessful attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II.”19 These writers helped pave the ground for future revolutionary generations. Dobroliubov’s revolutionary thoughts may have failed to reach the ears of most urban residents, but these residents were no less active in their own non-revolutionary sphere. More recently, historians have written about the establishment of schools, charities, and educational evenings that abounded in the early 1860s. In this critical period, the pages of provincial newspapers were filled with activities that had otherwise been reserved for elite society in the capitals.20 In Perm, for instance, residents attended a fundraiser during which one woman discussed the emancipation not of the peasants but of women.21 At the same time as local residents met to discuss such philosophical issues, they also met to determine the future operation of their fire departments. Thus, municipal fire departments add another, more militaristic and administrative, perspective to the obshchestvennoe dvizhenie (public movement) in the early 1860s. Interestingly enough, the reform only applied to provincial centres: the citizens of Moscow and St Petersburg were not called upon

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to operate their own fire departments since these would remain in the hands of the state. This, therefore, offers an ideal opportunity to look at regional issues in an otherwise highly centralized state.22 The reform of provincial fire departments provides a barometer for measuring the tensions and mutual reliance that existed between local and state authorities at this defining moment. Over the next decade, municipal authorities adjusted to their new responsibilities, managed what had once been a military-controlled operation, and learned to cooperate with the state police. Thereafter, the Municipal Statute of 1870, a result of the reforming tendencies of Alexander II, created a limited sphere of autonomy for all sections of urban administration. Historians have gauged the willingness of the state to allow the growth of independent local authority and the effectiveness of urban officials with regard to administering their own affairs. Lutz Häfner submits that the Municipal Statute of 1870 constituted a critical step towards the creation of an independent urban sphere because it ensured the publication of council minutes and rational debate within the chambers of the town hall.23 In his interethnic study of Kiev, Michael Hamm shows the inability of city officials, who offered too little too late, to keep pace with the needs of a modern city.24 Even more pessimistic observers, such as V.A. Nardova, admit that, in the years immediately following the reforms, the state was kindly disposed towards self-administration but increased its interference as cities sought to steer their own destinies.25 However, her statistical analyses also demonstrate the poor attendance and indifference at city council meetings, especially in St Petersburg.26 The traces of a Marxist interpretation endure in her emphasis on the unbalanced composition of city councils: representatives came overwhelmingly from noble and merchant groups.27 Nardova’s statistics indicate important trends, but these data do not tell the whole story.28 For though attendance may have been low and may have favoured the upper strata, those present vociferously defended their right to operate a municipal fire department. A critical test came in Kazan in the 1880s, when city council battled state officials for a full six years. Councillors were not “lethargic,” as was the case in St Petersburg, for there was no lack of energy and emotion in the debate.29 Yet, they did not oppose state authorities. Rather, city officials negotiated their relationship with the governor and other state-appointed officials without questioning the absolute

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authority of those same officials. City officials simply wanted everyone to play by the rules, even if those rules gave extensive authority to the governor. To analyze the debates in which councillors sought control of their municipal fire departments is to refine our perception of the relationship between city and state. A number of historians, more sympathetic to city councillors, have emphasized growing divisions between city officials and the autocratic state. In his work on Moscow at the start of the twentieth century, Robert Thurston writes of an ideological gap that separated the city from the state.30 In the provinces, Lutz Häfner demonstrates the presence of quasi-political parties in Kazan’s city council, thus suggesting not only a rift among council members but also the growth of an independent-minded faction.31 Häfner’s work invokes a Habermasian paradigm that translates the separation between state and society into one between state and city. Thus, the actions of city council belong to the public sphere. While this may not fit the requirements of traditional theories on the public sphere since the urban administration is part of a government structure, the move seems justified because city officials worked at a substantial distance from the administrative state.32 Yet, both of the above studies focus on the revolution of 1905, a time during which Russian society was politicized as never before. These perspectives polarize the urban environment and affirm the notion of a critical gap between the autocracy and its urban citizens, whereas the debate in Kazan offers an earlier, depolarized perspective. Although city councillors enjoyed self-administration, thus positioning them at a distance from the central state, they worked together with local state officials such as the governor and central officials in the ministries in St Petersburg. There were few fundamental differences: the fierce arguments suggest disagreement without opposition.

social change, civil society, and urban fire departments Fire departments were of central concern to municipal officials who worked within the parameters of the municipal statutes. The history of fire departments, however, also belongs to less formal aspects of urban history. Both the highest and lowest strata of society found representation in volunteer fire departments. Their frequent pres-

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ence on city streets, in theatres, and in homes makes it appropriate to situate them within a historiography that deals with social identity in these changing cities. Outside the walls of city hall, historians have documented urban demographic changes at different levels. In an age when the Soviet Union was at its peak, historians focused on the growth of an urban proletariat and its relationship to the upheavals in 1905 and 1917. Reginald Zelnik, for example, studies the development of an urban proletariat in the immediate years surrounding the emancipation of the peasants.33 After the introduction of Marxism in the early 1880s, professional revolutionaries reached out to the working classes in an effort to awaken their “consciousness” and convince them to fight for a communist revolution. Perhaps most forcefully, Leopold ­Haimson argues that the workers’ movement continued to threaten the autocracy until the eve of the Great War.34 In a similar vein, historians have also tried to establish the strength of a middle class in this new urban setting. If the working classes were to be the source of revolution, a strong middle class might provide a buffer against both revolutionary violence and the whims of the autocracy.35 It was Catherine the Great’s intention to beget a bourgeoisie with the Charter of the Towns, but the intention was only weakly fulfilled a century later. Without carelessly adopting a western European definition of the bourgeoisie, the contributors to Between Tsar and People study the activities of urban residents who maintained a distance from official autocratic channels.36 Essays on theatre goers, volunteer associations, and philanthropists evaluate the strength and unity of the middle class in the face of the autocracy. Alfred Rieber writes of a “sedimentary” society in which the different layers could not find a harmonious voice to advance their ideas.37 Joseph Bradley demonstrates the fragile existence of volunteer associations but nevertheless emphasizes their ability to create their own space, independent of the autocracy.38 The developments in urban fire departments are closely related to the above historiography since they were integral components of the urban social fabric and operated at a distance from official channels. They fit very neatly into scholarly debates on civil society and the public sphere, though they offer a more conservative interpretation than most scholars would allow. Participants came from every possible social background and thus it would be impractical to situate these associations within a working or middle class.

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­ evertheless, similar issues emerge with respect to their relationship N to the autocracy: How did they react to an intrusive bureaucracy? Did fire departments manage to carve out their own space in the public sphere, a space that lay somewhere “between tsar and people”? The very notion of a space or a gap is an instrumental part of a growing historiography on civil society, a historiography that has swept the humanities. In response, historians have focused on the rapid increase in associational life and any activity independent of the state at the end of the Imperial era. Wrapped in the discourse of civil society, these studies examine how associational life challenged the hegemonic aspirations of the autocracy. In the years after Gorbachev’s glasnost’ and perestroika, the most popular theoretical impulse came from Jürgen Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, a work that was only translated into ­English twenty-seven years after the first German edition.39 This work emphasizes both the bourgeois origins of the public sphere and the necessity of a strict separation between state and society. In contrast to Hegelian theory, Habermas argues that the intermingling of state and society would lead to the collapse of the public sphere.40 Although the rigorous delineation of these spheres is awkward in an authoritarian state such as Imperial Russia, Habermas’s theories resonate in the works of many historians.41 Whereas his early Marxist analysis focuses on the bourgeoisie, he has responded to a spate of criticism. In reaction to theorists who suggest the limitations of this model, he has expanded his approach to include gender analysis and the participation of broader groups in volunteer associations.42 The emphasis on volunteer associations closely approximates a Tocquevillian ideal that permits a looser understanding of the public sphere.43 The Russian historiography has accommodated challenges to Habermas’s approach. Works on charities and other public associations have taken advantage of these theories.44 Most recently, Joseph Bradley provides a broad overview of the theoretical debate in which he outlines the potential of volunteer associations. The statutes of these associations are referred to as micro-constitutions, and their meetings are perceived as exercises in micro-democracy.45 Fire departments fit squarely into this theoretical and historical debate. Professional urban fire departments dominated in the 1860s, but volunteer fire departments flourished towards the end of the century. Cities mushroomed at such a rate that professional municipal

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fire departments could not cope with the fires that engulfed whole sections of Russian cities. Volunteer fire departments were indeed a response to this problem, but, more important perhaps, they occupied a place in a public sphere that continued to develop under the restrictive conditions imposed by the last two reactionary tsars. The volunteer fire departments cannot, however, be neatly placed in either a Habermasian or a Tocquevillian framework. Although they can be considered prototypical volunteer associations, since they had statutes and their membership came from every imaginable social class, they never developed political tendencies antithetical to the autocracy: the form may have been Tocquevillian but the content was not. The formal separation between state and society, so essential to most theories of civil society, was fulfilled, but the actions of the fire departments did not speak to the democratic values civil society is meant to promote.46 Indeed, members were staunch supporters of the autocracy, and the conservative atmosphere offered an unwelcome home to liberal-minded citizens. And, since fire departments were such public organizations, they had ample opportunity to parade their support for autocracy and state. They certainly did not oppose the legitimacy of the autocratic state, and that fact upsets any belief that they were expanding civil space in a Habermasian sense. Moreover, the militarism of these associations creates a paradox: How do we reconcile a “militaristic” organization with “civil” society? In a rural context, Cathy Frierson demonstrates how this movement of volunteer fire departments “began to assume attributes of civil society” and explains the militarism of these organizations; however, she does not attempt to harmonize these apparently opposing tendencies.47 Since Frierson has not explored this paradox, the militarism of fire departments warrants further attention. On the one hand, the militaristic aspects should not be surprising because the practical necessity of fighting fires requires strict discipline. At the scene of a blazing fire, there is no room for debate or deliberation: rank-andfile members have to take commands from their superiors. In this respect, the Russian fire departments were no different from their counterparts in western Europe or the United States. One might even argue that the French fire departments were more extreme in that their members actually carried weapons.48 This pragmatic issue is, however, the less problematic aspect of militarism. The more complex aspect arises when one takes the analysis beyond the practical

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aspects of firefighting and places militarism within the parameters of civil society. In his work on army and society in the Russian Empire, John Keep provides guidelines that can help situate the militarism of fire departments. Keep is concerned with the empire as a whole, so his definition is quite sweeping. For example, he writes that a militaristic society is defined by the state’s “extensive controls over the life of society for military ends” and a “readiness to commit the armed forces in foreign and domestic conflicts.” These components of his definition are clearly too broad to apply to volunteer and public fire departments as they deal with policy at the highest level of government and relate militarism directly to acts of war or physical violence on the part of armed forces. Yet, if one considers the various activities that fire departments performed, there is ample overlap with Keep’s definition. Volunteer fire departments were not going to engage in a military conflict, but they did have “a heavy emphasis on military ceremonial” and “an ideology supportive of military ideals.”49 As will become increasingly evident in the pages that follow, fire departments had regular contact with military officials, were often photographed in formations that resembled military units, and even applied to parade alongside the army at festive occasions. Even if “ideology” is too strong a term to describe the attitude of firefighters, it should be pointed out that, in so far as their publications were pervaded by a discourse of militarism, firefighters continually supported a military ethos. The weapons may have been missing, but the printed sources on Russian firefighting continually refer back to military ideals. Numerous authors expected military discipline in fire departments, while others regularly used soldierly language when referring to firefighters. One reporter at a parade in Nizhnii Novgorod in 1896 wrote that the fire­fighters in their “copper helmets” had “a military look.”50 This ethos and language went well beyond the practical requirements of fighting fires. At the same time, a limited application of Keep’s definition of militarism prevents equating the militarism of fire departments with the full-blown militarism sometimes associated with European states of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.51 Even if the militarism described here is not linked to combat forces or “a willingness to incur high casualty tolls in warfare,” it does further nuance our understanding of civil society in so far as the military “ceremonial” and ideals drew these associations into a more

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symbiotic relationship with the state.52 Whereas Frierson does not seek to explain how this militarism forces a conceptual re-evaluation of civil society, I offer a more penetrating analysis of the phenomenon. If we accept a restricted version of Keep’s definition, we can see how the militarism of these organizations blurred the boundaries between state and society. They were neither fully independent of the state nor helpless appendages of a central ministry; rather, they occupied a grey area somewhere in between. It is this vague position that makes these fire departments central to a re-evaluation of civil society at the end of the Imperial era. If we discovered that all public organizations in Russia were arranged according to military values encouraged by the autocracy, would we still allow these associations to be part of our structural definition of civil society? In a discussion on civil society, this backand-forth between a public association and an Imperial ministry whose main offices were in view of the Winter Palace dramatically complicates our understanding of the relationship between the state and volunteer or public associations. Other tensions arise in the historiography because of awkward theoretical mechanisms and Western historians’ overly rosy aspirations for the possibilities of Russian civil society. First, consider the awkward theoretical frameworks. In his recent work on science in the late Imperial and early Soviet era, James Andrews invokes Habermas to theorize about the voluntary activity of scientific associations, but he pays little attention to the structural transformations so important in Habermas’s analysis: Why does Habermas suggest the public sphere is collapsing in Germany at the exact moment Andrews proposes it is growing in Russia?53 Moreover, since Andrews omits the oppositional element in Habermas’s analysis and instead writes about mediation between state and society, much of the original Habermasian analysis is lost, though the development of civil society is still portrayed as a positive, pseudo-democratic phenomenon. In contrast, the study of fire departments takes the shine off associational growth to demonstrate that it was not just a question of mediation but of cooperation between state and society. Second, much of this hopeful historiography of the last fifteen years has of course been influenced by contemporary events in Russia. The translation of Habermas’s Structural Transformation appeared during the heyday of perestroika, and the edited collection Between Tsar and People was published as the Soviet Union

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was about to collapse. The whole world hoped that the collapse of the Communist Party would mean democratic reform, the withdrawal of the state from public life, and the emergence of a confident and active citizenry. During the chaotic years of Boris Yeltsin, the state simply did not have the wherewithal to take an active role in public life, and, thus, historians of the late Imperial era and political observers of the contemporary scene continued to focus on an active citizenry as the future of a democratic Russia, be it decades before the revolution or at the start of the third millennium. Almost twenty years later and after substantial upheaval, life in the ­Russian Federation has stabilized under Vladimir Putin, and the state is now reasserting itself in public life – to the relief of many citizens. As the current situation in Russia nears an equilibrium in which the state cooperates (and interferes) in public life, a version of civil society is required that addresses the positive role of both the state and the citizenry. In this light, it is perhaps time to reconsider some of the theoretical and methodological assumptions about civil society. Instead of simply emphasizing a proactive citizenry seeking to distinguish itself from the state, one must also consider a proactive citizenry that actively sought a strong degree of interference from the authoritarian state. Unlike the original aspirations of the Habermasian strain, which sought to separate state and society, there were many members of civil society who saw no separation between the two. At times, it was the noble leaders of society who dominated associational life. In Dostoevsky’s Demons it is the landowner Varvara Stavrogina who hopes to create a web of charitable associations.54 Many Russians in volunteer associations perceived the state as a binding element, though they had certain reservations about the extent of its authority. Thus, in the narrative that follows, extensive and growing public participation in fire departments should be seen as an integrated complement, not an opponent, of a strong centralized and authoritarian state. Therefore, the tidy references to state and society that dominate the literature give way to incredible conceptual challenges associated with organizations that belong to society yet are in some strange way extensions of the tsarist bureaucracy. It is this murky zone that is fundamental to understanding civil society, and, in many ways, it resembles a Hegelian rather than a Habermasian version of the relationship between the state and civil society.55

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Moreover, although civil society encouraged a maximum of public participation, it was not a springboard to democracy or some form of liberal constitutionalism. Civil society did not challenge the state but complemented its activities, ensuring the proper functioning of the polity, even if the polity had authoritarian undertones. This contrasts with the sanguine view of Joseph Bradley, who, for example, suggests that the statutes of volunteer associations “were micro-constitutions written in the language of representation.”56 The timing of the explosive growth of these volunteer fire departments was auspicious because it came as the autocracy clamped down on associational life. The Temporary Regulations introduced in the summer of 1881 had been designed to limit terrorist activity, but they also resulted in the supervision of public activity. Yet, it was in exactly this context that volunteer fire departments emerged into the public sphere. Richard Pipes refers to the growth of the police state and “a bureaucratic-police regime with totalitarian overtones,” but it is hard to square the activities of volunteer fire departments with either a bureaucratic-police regime or common definitions of totalitarianism.57 Why, then, would volunteer fire departments flourish just as the state was refining its methods of police control over its citizenry? Did autocratic authorities view them as useful tools of propaganda? A study of the volunteer fire departments not only enlightens historians’ understanding of expressly conservative values in the public sphere but also refines comprehension of the autocracy’s attitude towards volunteer associations in general. The emphasis on the content rather than on the form of a public organization allows a more intimate look at the dynamics of the social values moulded within these associations. As much as the function of temperance societies was to decrease alcoholism and the function of volunteer fire departments was to extinguish fires, these associations are often more interesting for the habits and values cultivated by participation. Members of volunteer fire departments were frequently accused of wasting their time on social functions instead of attending to urban fires. Yet, the property owner’s loss is the historian’s gain. Amy Greenberg, in her study of American fire departments, shows how fire departments were instrumental in forging masculine identity across class lines.58 As Russian fire departments encouraged militarism and forbade female participation in anything but an auxiliary role, opportunities were ripe for idealizing characteristic attributes of manhood.59 Carefully selected

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uniforms, flags, and medals could be as influential in shaping identity as holding a pump or providing security at the scene of a fire. Moreover, since firefighters were often photographed on city streets and in town halls, volunteers could craft their masculine identity for posterity (or at least for contemporary men, women, and family). The social and celebratory aspects of associational life also open windows upon internal hierarchies, religious life, regionalism, and the concomitant ability of these associations to organize nationally. At regular jubilees and conferences in St Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities, members in uniforms not only exercised in standard drills but also took part in an exercise of identity formation. This involved, but was not limited to, celebrating the name day of a tsar or receiving a handshake from a member of the royal entourage. Fire itself may have a primordial effect on all human beings, but these volunteer associations were instrumental in dividing, categorizing, and socializing their constituents.60 The ability of fire departments, both professional and volunteer, to reflect social dynamics towards the end of the Romanov era make them ideal objects of analysis. Moreover, their conservative tendencies and willingness to work within the autocratic system provides an important example of the limits of the public sphere. It was not that civil society was “unrealized” for the history of firefighting is the history of energetic public activity.61 More often than not, however, this industriousness favoured the interests of a traditional autocracy and a centralized state.

structure of analysis Each of the above issues is incorporated within the structure of Democracy Burning?. First, chapter 1 investigates the implementation of reform after the end of the Crimean War in 1856 and how the Great Reforms affected urban structures. Most studies that treat the urban aspects of reform concentrate on the Municipal Statute of 1870, which altered the urban administration and gave city councils a broader scope for urban action. Already in the early 1860s, however, state officials called upon urban residents to reform the operation of their fire department and transform it from a state-run institution into an organ of municipal self-administration. Throughout the empire, state officials encouraged cities to take sole responsibility for administering urban fire prevention in much the same

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way as the Municipal Statute of 1870 expanded the administrative duties of city councils and diminished those of the state-appointed governor and police. The era of the Great Reforms has, of course, been studied in detail.62 While most studies concentrate either on the emancipation of the peasants (understandable in a peasant society) or on the motives of central bureaucrats, particularly in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, for initiating certain reforms, I analyze the reform process at an urban level. Furthermore, I highlight the key role played by the ­Ministry of War in the reform process. In the majority of interpretations, the Ministry of War plays a minimal role relative to a ministry such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was busy discussing the peasant problem. To be sure, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was dominant in the reform era, but it was by no means the source of inspiration for all reforms. At the urban level, where the military had soldiers posted in garrisons, the decisions of the Ministry of War held important ramifications for the structure of urban society and administration. When the Ministry of War declared it was recalling all the soldiers it had loaned to municipal fire departments, first the Ministry of Internal Affairs and then municipal residents had to find alternative solutions. The result was the creation of publicly run fire departments throughout the empire. Chapter 2 turns to public reaction to the reform. Once the reform had been communicated to urban residents, they held local meetings and formed committees to operate and manage this important urban service. Most residents recognized the benefits of local selfadministration, but pragmatic requirements had to be balanced with a desire for more self-control. Since operating a fire department was a complicated matter, many cities chose continued cooperation with state authorities. While this chapter highlights activity in urban centres throughout the empire, the main focus is Kazan, where some of the liveliest discussions were held. In this city, residents arranged a transitional phase with the state police. Chapter 2 also looks within the institution and examines personal values conducive to running a fire department. As was the case throughout the western Europe of the nineteenth century, fire departments were organized along military lines. The strict discipline and rigid hierarchical structures found in the army could also be found in the public fire departments, and, thus, a military ethos pervaded these organizations. Not only did urban residents

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call upon former military men to run their fire departments but city councillors were also involved in monitoring the activity of former soldiers who continued to serve as firefighters. Urban residents with a decisively military bent were instrumental in developing an urban civic consciousness. The ambiguities surrounding the creation of public fire departments are clearly demonstrated in chapter 3, a case study of urban self-administration in Kazan during the extremely unsettled years following the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. In the year of the regicide, a new governor arrived in Kazan province and demanded more police control over what, for almost fifteen years, had been a municipally run public fire department. The mayor and city councillors immediately went into action to protect their fire department from state control: they refused to relinquish control of the fire department, they petitioned the Senate, and, through vigorous discussions, they made their voices heard. For almost six years, the fire department was the dominant agenda item for council meetings as the city battled to maintain control of its fire department. No doubt, it would be tempting to depict this conflict in a manner that maintains a city-versus-state model. Yet, a closer look at city council minutes and the actions of urban residents makes it clear that the whole affair revolved around disagreement rather than opposition. Council members violently objected to specific actions of the governor but still maintained that the governor had a vital place in the urban scene. As long as the governor acted within the limits of his statutory power, which already gave him ample prerogatives, they accepted his presence in the city. If, however, the personal actions of the governor exceeded these limits, councillors made it clear they would petition higher instances of authority, such as the Senate or the Ministry of Internal Affairs, to rectify problems. As we shall see, even during the most contentious phases of the debate, councillors were willing to support the governor against their own firefighters. This chapter shows how they could agree with the governor on certain points and simultaneously disagree on others without challenging the principles of state institutions. The events in Kazan concerned the operation of a municipal fire department with paid and professional firefighters. In the early 1880s, volunteer fire departments started to appear in urban centres. These volunteer organizations had existed in small numbers since the early 1860s, but it was only after the inauguration of ­Alexander III

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that volunteer fire departments popped up throughout the empire. Paradoxically, it was during the conservative and reactionary reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II that volunteer fire departments flourished to such an extent that, by 1905, there were more than one thousand volunteer fire departments in Imperial Russia. In chapter 4, the discussion focuses on these volunteer fire departments but highlights themes familiar to the professional fire departments: How did these organizations interact with state authority? What values did they spread throughout the public sphere? What was the source of the competitive spirit that existed between volunteer and professional firefighters? What opportunities did membership in a volunteer fire department offer to a poor, middle-class, or wealthy citizen? Thus, the analysis emphasizes the wide variety of motives – militaristic, social, athletic – people could have for joining up. Furthermore, the answers provided to these questions show how a volunteer fire department transcended its institutional separation from the state and, through its functional and symbolic presence in urban space, focused attention on the positive attributes of the autocracy. The analysis has also been placed in a comparative context. By the time volunteer fire departments started to evolve in Imperial Russia, they had long since been active in the United States, France, and Germany. In the Tocquevillian world of the United States, they were pillars of society and often played a role in the political decisionmaking process. In Germany, the volunteer fire departments were politically active; liberals and conservatives fought to control these prominent organizations. Yet, there were some fundamental differences between, say, a volunteer fire department in a democracy such as the United States and one in the authoritarian climate of Imperial Russia. Seen in juxtaposition with the fire departments of other states, the Russian fire departments provide us with an increased appreciation for the peculiarities of the urban public sphere in Imperial Russia. Chapter 5 turns away from the local and addresses the national. In authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states throughout nineteenth-century Europe, it was extremely difficult for associations to operate at the national level. An authoritarian state may have little to fear from small local organizations; however, nationally organized groups could mobilize broader support.63 In Imperial Russia, national umbrella organizations did emerge towards the end of the

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nineteenth century: doctors, teachers, and musical groups organized annual conferences for their members – conferences that were often held in different cities. In 1893, the first state-wide association of firefighters was started, and, in 1898, concerned activists in St Petersburg renamed it the Imperial Russian Society of Fire­fighters (irsf), an association that soon had the names of more than one thousand fire departments on its membership rolls. Rather than challenging the autocracy, this organization of volunteers became an effective tool for mobilizing support throughout the empire. At conferences and in its journals, it remained a staunch supporter of the state and the autocracy. Chapter 6 provides a visual analysis of civil society based on printed and photographic images of firefighters in Imperial ­Russia. The blossoming of volunteer fire departments corresponded with an increased consumer demand for photography, which was growing in popularity in urban centres. At the end of the nineteenth century, the purchase of salon photographs was still limited to the wealthier strata of society. Participation in a volunteer fire department, however, allowed both peasant and noble to see their likenesses reproduced on photographic paper. Since volunteer fire departments had such a public face, they were ideal subjects for the photographer’s lens. Thus, the abundant visual images, when put within the context of art history and the philosophy of art, further our understanding of the relationship of an artistic medium with actors of the public sphere. Methodologically, chapter 6 represents a substantial shift from its predecessors. Whereas previous chapters encompass a familiar institutional environment, which accepts events such as the Great Reforms and the assassination of Alexander II as historical markers, this chapter provides a brief history of photography in Imperial Russia. Thus, much of the analysis must be considered within the technological and artistic maturation of photography. The language of the analysis reflects the predilections of art historians and philosophers of art. It would, of course, have been possible to integrate these photographs into previous chapters, but then the methodological momentum would have been lost. Too often, historians use photographs as auxiliary illustrations to a textual analysis, and the photographs appear as afterthoughts rather than as important sources in their own right. This reflects the textual prejudices of historians. Years

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ago, in what has become a classic work, Jeffrey Brooks wrote about Russians learning to read.64 The research is, in part, premised upon the idea that reading skills are critical to the development of a modernizing society. A modification of the title of Brooks’s work leads to the interesting fact that Russians were also learning to see. The advent of photography and the heightened methods of technical reproduction exposed individuals to a host of images that might otherwise never have reached their unsuspecting eyes. The focus upon photography also affords an opportunity to engage with additional interdisciplinary partners whose thoughts are pertinent to broader historical questions. Philosophers such as Walter Benjamin and Ludwig Wittgenstein have made statements about the social and epistemological role of photography that bear upon access to information and current concerns with representation. In the context of the multi-ethnic Russian Empire, the visual analysis overlaps with the work of photo historians who have studied these images in a colonial context. While many of these historians see the colonial photograph as just another means of possessing the Other, the photographs of firefighters printed throughout the empire emphasize the sharing of values and the slow establishment of a visually imagined community. Hundreds of thousands of photographs depicting the multifaceted experience of urban life were being taken at the start of the twentieth century. If only for a moment, this last chapter isolates this visual phenomenon to ensure that a medium so indispensable in our own digital age receives the attention it deserves when it was just establishing itself as a powerful social force. Firefighters were not the only ones to be photographed, and the fire department was certainly not the only urban service to develop in the nineteenth century, but it was perhaps the most important, then and now. Beyond the hooks and ladders, an understanding of these organizations highlights the peculiarities of the public sphere in late Imperial Russia and sheds light on that blurry zone between state and society.

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1 A Tale of Two Ministries The Ministry of War, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Reform of the Russian Fire Department, 1855–65 After a stunning defeat in the Crimean War, the inadequacies of the administration of the Russian Empire were plain for all to see. The system of Nicholas I, the father of Alexander II, had revealed itself as woefully inadequate in the face of crisis; the intellectual and administrative stagnation that had persisted since the Decembrist uprising in 1825 had acted as a brake against reform and progress. Two events, however, opened a window that looked out on change. The death of Nicholas I in 1855 and the end of the Crimean War ushered in a new era led by officials who sensed a deep need for extensive reform throughout the empire. With the support of a young and more liberal tsar, the late 1850s and early 1860s witnessed both extensive reform by administrators in the capitals and the emergence of a civic consciousness in growing cities. The administrators in St Petersburg drafted and implemented some of the most wideranging reforms heretofore seen in an authoritarian state not known for its liberal spirit. In 1861, after polling noble opinion and encouraging extensive internal debate at the highest levels of government, Alexander II issued a manifesto liberating the peasants and shortly thereafter encouraged rural self-administration with the zemstvo reform. The same bureaucracy issued a judicial reform in 1864 that, for the first time in the history of the empire, created an independent judiciary based for the most part on Western models of law.1 In 1870, the Municipal Statute encouraged local self-administration throughout the empire, and in 1874 the entire structure of the army was revamped.2

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Given the importance of these reforms, historians have naturally examined them from a number of perspectives – the changing attitude of the autocrat, liberal tendencies in higher government, the influence of peasant uprisings on administrative thought, the emergence of an educated elite, and the need to create a more efficient fighting force with the available military resources.3 Although historians have studied the restructuring of the military and the positions of reform-minded bureaucrats within the Ministry of War, much less attention has been paid to how military reform could have wideranging consequences for a civilian population or how the needs of the military could affect the shape of civilian reform. One exception is Alfred Rieber’s provocative and controversial article, in which he suggests that the emancipation of the peasants came at the behest of military reformers seeking a larger cohort for conscription.4 This position may be exaggerated as most scholars have focused on other sources for reform, but it is instructive in so far as it warns the researcher not to overlook the influence of the military in a highly militarized state. It is with this caveat in mind that the following discussion analyzes a critical urban reform provoked by the Ministry of War, legislated by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and carried out by urban residents throughout the empire. In 1860, the tsarist government reformed urban fire departments in all but the empire’s largest cities. When the Ministry of War cut back its own operations and refused to supply fire departments with its soldiers, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was forced to find an alternative so that urban areas did not find themselves without fire departments. In the spirit of the age, fire departments that had been staffed by soldiers and managed by the state police were now handed over to municipal officials. Municipal control of fire departments became one of the first experiments in local self-administration at the urban level. The reform demonstrates the state’s willingness to decentralize its operations to relieve the bureaucracy of burdens it could no longer bear and provides a framework for understanding the difficult transition from a highly centralized bureaucracy to an administrative system that encouraged local autonomy. The analysis therefore reassesses the role of the Ministry of War in the reform process, examines the attitude of the Ministry of Internal Affairs towards local selfadministration, and evaluates the willingness of urban residents to govern their own affairs.

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Significantly, the reform took place several years before the implementation of urban self-administration, so urban residents were still unaccustomed to acting independently (despite the efforts of ­Catherine the Great almost a century before). The city administration continued to be organized according to social class, and the governor, who answered directly to the state in St Petersburg, still held sway over municipal decisions. Thus, some hesitancy was to be expected with the reform. Moreover, the barely adequate revenue from property taxes and other local concessions made the operation of a fire department a prohibitively costly affair. Be this as it may, the bureaucratic and financial constraints in the centre forced the local hand and, in turn, offers the historian an ideal opportunity to examine the reform process in the turbulent urban environment of the early 1860s.

historical background: urban fire departments in a well-ordered police state After the beginning of the eighteenth century, firefighting and fire prevention fell under the jurisdiction of the police. In 1718, with the establishment of central police in St Petersburg, all responsibilities for fighting fires were placed in the hands of the city’s police chief, A.E. Devier.5 The city did not have an official fire department, thus firefighting was a joint effort of the police, local soldiers, and the inhabitants of St Petersburg. On the official side, the soldiers received axes, buckets, and other equipment to help them fight the fires.6 From the civilian perspective, the regulations required inhabitants of the city to run to the scene of the fire with their own equipment as soon as they heard alarm bells ringing.7 This cooperation involving the police, soldiers, and inhabitants was characteristic of cities throughout the empire for much of the eighteenth century. For example, Catherine the Great’s Police Ordinance of 1782 placed a fire assistant (brandmeister), a number of firefighters, and some equipment in each of St Petersburg’s ten police precincts. The firefighters, however, were provided by contractors and thus were not considered permanent. Their presence did not relieve locals of their civic duty to appear at fires.8 This organization of firefighting conforms, in principle, to the concept of the well-ordered police state suggested by Marc Raeff. According to this model, Peter the Great and his advisors wanted

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to create a highly centralized administration based on the Prussian Polizeiordnungen.9 Whereas the Muscovite government had interfered in local affairs on an ad hoc basis, the Petrine état bien policé aimed at subduing “all subordinate and local institutions” to the will of the central administration.10 Using the police ordinances as a guide, Peter the Great wanted the state to take the leading role in coordinating and realizing the economic and social potential of the immense territory he ruled. The Russian Empire could then be administered according to the models that functioned in western Europe. An important corollary of this theory deals with the development of public initiative in the Russian Empire. Raeff suggests that the centralization and systematization of the administration had a negative effect on the development of local initiative. Whereas Western governments encouraged volunteer associations and private production, the Imperial Russian state became an obtrusive and interfering force that undermined the development of public initiative. Instead of participating in the administration of government, the Petrine reform separated the administrators from the administered, and those who were not part of the administrative elite “reacted by sulkily withdrawing.”11 Even Catherine the Great, who wanted urban residents to share public responsibilities with the police, was unwilling to give urban residents extensive autonomy.12 When we consider this aspect of the theory, eighteenth-century firefighting does not entirely fit the model of the well-ordered police state. The regulations enacted under both Peter the Great and ­Catherine the Great ensured that the police had the dominant role in organizing firefighting. Nonetheless, local citizens were required to provide the police with assistance. Although it was still directly subordinated to the authority of the police, the public was not totally excluded from taking an active role in urban affairs. In the late eighteenth century, for example, city officials in Riazan discussed the importance of increasing the number of horses to carry equipment to fires.13 It was only towards the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the emergence of professional fire departments, that the police started to acquire sole responsibility for firefighting. In St Petersburg, urban firefighting remained a cooperative affair of the police and urban residents until Alexander I issued an order to create the first full-time fire department in 1803. The decree created a fire department in which the fire chief and his assistants commanded 528 rank-and-file soldiers cum firefighters, whom the local

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military governor had supplied because they were deemed “unsuitable” for active military duty. The firefighters lived in barracks in the precinct in which they served and submitted themselves to the “military order” of their superiors.14 The fire chief (brandmaior), who was normally a military officer, had control over the fire department in all sections of the city. Shortly thereafter Moscow received its first professional fire department organized on similar lines. By 1815, Moscow had more than one thousand firefighters.15 In 1818, Alexander I issued an edict that required every provincial city to have a fire chief under the command of the local police. The ukase stipulated that these cities be divided into precincts to systematize firefighting; it indicated the type of equipment to be used and that firefighting was the responsibility of the police. 16 In 1824, a police fire department was organized in Ufa; in 1835, Nizhnii Novgorod established a fire department for the annual fair. Soon other provincial cities followed suit.17 However, not all provincial cities established their own fire departments, and in many towns little was done to regulate firefighting. There were, of course, financial obstacles to creating such unwieldy institutions, and the state was reluctant to cover the expenses from its own pockets. In the case of Ufa, the state ordered widespread taxation to raise the necessary funds. A levy was raised on homeowners, baths, stores, and other local sources.18 While the state used local taxes to pay for regular expenses, cities could also receive funds from the central authorities to cover one-time expenses. In 1847, a fund was created based upon revenue taken from insured property to help larger cities with their fire departments. Although most of the revenue came from Moscow, St Petersburg, and Odessa, the money was distributed throughout the empire, permitting cities to buy needed equipment.19 In 1854, Kronshtadt received over twenty thousand roubles.20 Despite the enormous amount of monies that were distributed, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was not convinced that the money had been used effectively, thus suggesting the performance of fire departments still left a lot to be desired.21 After the Great Reforms, when the ministry ceased to take an active interest in firefighting, this aid was drastically reduced, even though the city of Kazan did receive forty thousand roubles in 1867.22 The fire departments had been established in the capitals to tackle a critical issue with the methods of the modern and rational state. They became an important line item in the budget, and the separa-

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tion of duties allowed fire departments to concentrate on their own unique needs. As such, one might expect the fire departments in the capitals to have improved with experience. There are few exact statistics on performance, but some key fires highlight the struggles these fledgling departments faced. The absence of the Moscow fire department during the great fire of 1812 gives some credence to Tolstoy’s determinism, predicated on the ineffectiveness of human intervention. But the sheer size of the Moscow fire put it beyond the ability of humans to control.23 Not all fires were so large, and localized fires could have been stopped by an efficient fire department. In the winter of 1836, a fire broke out in the Leman Theatre in the heart of St Petersburg. This fire belongs to a long and agonizing history of fires in Imperial Russian theatres – a history that lasted until the revolution.24 At the Leman Theatre, over one hundred of the people in attendance died as many did not realize that the cries of “fire” were not part of the spectacle and thus remained in their seats long after it was too late. Eyewitnesses described three characteristic elements of the fire scene: chaos, the weakness of the fire department, and the presence of soldiers. One eyewitness depicted the rapid spread of the fire and the chaos that ensued when the spectators could no longer find their way through the smoke: “the people burned without any hope to be saved.” The firefighters had started to axe the walls of the building but “were already too late.” 25 The soldiers and firefighters were left to drag the bodies out of the fire. Significantly, when Nicholas I took command of the fire, he immediately called for more soldiers to help. In this instance, Nicholas I did not have to worry about the safety of his own family; however, a little over a year later, his own home was engulfed by flames. In December 1837, a massive fire completely destroyed the Winter Palace. Historians have equated the inability of the tsar to deal with natural disasters with the waning of the symbolic power of the autocracy.26 Since one historian has asserted that “the palace was necessary also for the sake of the historical continuity of his rule,” one could place the disaster within the framework of autocratic politics.27 But the fire at the Winter Palace was not just a political phenomenon: it also helps situate the role of the fire department in the urban society of the time. First, some details of the fire are necessary. Almost two days before the actual fire broke out, smoke had been reported within a section

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of the Winter Palace, but the warning signs were not taken seriously, in part because there had never been a fire in the building. On the evening of 17 December 1837, Nicholas I was attending the theatre with members of his family when he received word that there was smoke but that the situation was under control. Shortly thereafter, he received another warning to the effect that the smoke was such that it was becoming difficult to breathe in certain parts of the palace. ­Nicholas left the theatre and immediately called military units and the St Petersburg fire department to stand ready in case of emergency.28 With the rapid spread of smoke and the call to the city fire department, one might have expected the latter to intervene. It was the tsar, however, who took control, aided by the palace’s own fire department; and both sides operated inadequately. The tsar ordered windows to be broken and thus increased the oxygen supply, whereas the “firemen were inexperienced, and after about 10 minutes the pumps, which had not been well maintained, broke down.” At this point, the members of the St Petersburg Fire Department had yet to act since the tsar had not authorized them to enter the building.29 Once they did enter the fray, they were ill-equipped to deal with the flames. The flames had spread out of control, and the fire department’s “efforts were largely without effect, since the pumps were too weak to throw streams of water into the upper part of the building, where the fire was.”30 If the fire department only played an auxiliary role in the catastrophe, soldiers from local garrisons were instrumental. It is hardly surprising that the martinet tsar relied on his army in a moment of great need. Thousands of soldiers helped evacuate the contents of the Winter Palace. They managed to take out almost all moveable items, including precious jewels and personal belongings of the palace staff, and place them next to the Alexander Column at the front of the building. Remarkably, almost nothing was lost. The reliance on soldiers reflected the status quo of firefighting until at least the early 1860s, when the influence of soldiers was slowly reduced. The fire at the Winter Palace also embodied another equally impor­tant aspect of firefighting – the assembled crowds who stood by to gaze at the spectacle. In 1834, a law had been passed to prevent onlookers from interfering with the police and firefighters, but the crowds could still watch from the edge of the security lines.31 In 1837, the fire attracted thousands of locals as well as foreigners who watched the building crumble. Almost a hundred years later,

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f­ oreigners came to St Petersburg to gaze at volunteer fire departments training on the Champ de Mars, a stone’s throw from the Winter Palace. At the start of the twentieth century, however, the mood was celebratory and lacked the trauma associated with the great fire of 1837. In sum, there were no effective fire departments or officials with sufficient experience in firefighting to save the Winter Palace. The tsar and his soldiers managed to save the Hermitage, but the main building was abandoned, and, for about thirty hours, the flames had their way with the tsar’s residence. The interior was almost entirely destroyed, and the building looked like a skeleton from the outside.32 In order to maintain his prestige, the tsar ensured that his ancestral home was rebuilt as swiftly as possible. By 1839, the palace was again ready for its occupants. Was the performance of the St Petersburg fire department at the Winter Palace indicative of those of fire departments across the empire? Before answering this question with some examples from the provinces, a word of caution is in order. In the wooden cities of Imperial Russia, fires spread at such a rate that not even the most efficient fire departments stood a chance. It was almost more important to prevent fires since the fire department could easily be overwhelmed after the initial spark. This was certainly the case in 1842, when massive fires spread across cities in the Ural region and urban fire departments were overpowered. Unfortunately, the sources offer only a vague indication of how these provincial fire departments performed, and not enough statistical evidence is available to draw broader conclusions. Edward Turnerelli, a traveller from England, described the great fire of 1842 in Kazan, where more than fifteen hundred buildings burned to the ground, including churches, monasteries, and factories.33 Besides depicting the terror of Kazan’s inhabitants, he also wrote of the “fire pumps,” which “knocked down everything that stood in their way.”34 His assessment was not entirely pessimistic for he did admire the vigilance of the police chief and his ability to maintain order amidst the chaos.35 Significantly, he ascribed the leading role to the state police and not the fire department: “despite all the efforts of the police to oppose the fire” it continued to grow. No wonder the citizens prayed to God and not to the fire department for help.36 Although fire departments were helpless in many respects, officials did pay attention to this fledgling urban institution. By the 1830s,

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most major urban areas had some form of official fire ­department that was subject to inspections that resulted in suggestions to improve performance and to secure the safety of urban dwellers. In 1842, a tragic year for many cities, the police chief in Riazan submitted a report about the condition of the city’s fire department to the governor. The police chief was not critical of the performance but worried that the fire department was understaffed. Although the fire department consisted of fifty people (thirty soldiers and twenty hired hands), most of these bodies were unavailable at the scene of a fire because they were occupied with other duties. As a result, the police chief recommended doubling the number of personnel. In addition, the police chief wanted to replace the “careless” chimneysweeps, who were drawn from the population, with soldiers who would have a better sense of duty. The report also indicated that both the police and the firefighters were grossly underpaid.37 Later that year, the governor of Riazan submitted a follow-up report to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in which he summarized some of the main problems. Significantly, he recognized that the transient nature of service in the fire department affected performance. Since “hired firefighters frequently change … and because it is difficult to find capable [replacements],” the governor recommended staffing the fire department with soldiers who were unable to serve actively in the military. With soldiers, there would also be fewer disciplinary problems since they would be under the direct command of the police.38 These were recurrent themes that eventually led to the new directives published in 1853. Since the fire departments were unreliable, officials were interested above all in preventing fires from starting. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the state introduced laws to heighten awareness in urban areas. Peter the Great initiated the process by encouraging the construction of stone buildings, but there were also laws unrelated to large construction projects, which affected the day-to-day activity of residents. Under Alexander I, laws in St Petersburg stipulated the minimum distance between homes, or, if the minimum distance was impossible, a protective fire wall had to be erected. Homeowners were required to keep courts clean of wood and other objects.39 In 1848, the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a circular requiring the establishment of what might be considered a neighbourhood watch. At the risk of paying a fine should they be remiss, groups of homeowners were required to assign individu-

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als on a rotational basis to troll for fires in their neighbourhoods.40 After the reforms of the early 1860s, many of these fire prevention measures were taken care of by cities and not by the state.41 With the above episodes in mind, how can one characterize fire departments in the first half of the nineteenth century? As will become evident below, urban growth caused numerous officials to complain bitterly about their fire departments, but some progress had been made. Even if most fire departments were continually overwhelmed by fires in wooden cities, slow steps were taken to increase funding, acquire equipment, and institutionalize both firefighting and fire prevention. Moreover, the slow reaction of city officials with regard to taking substantive measures against fires can hardly be considered a knock against urban officials. In the 1850s, the city duma in Samara considered installing water mains to provide the fire department with an adequate water supply but failed to implement its plans and was plagued with further fires. At the time, however, not a single city had an effective water supply, so the issue was much greater than the efforts of any one city administration.42 In technological terms, in the absence of a local manufacturing industry, these fire departments had yet to take advantage of important technologies as they would towards the end of the century. For example, when looking at requirements for fire departments from 1853, one reads about handpumps, horses, and other pieces of equipment that would only be replaced more than a generation later.43 In a broader framework, the Nikolaevan system was not stagnating, as many interpreters would have it, but it was hardly racing ahead. At the same time, one should not allow the performance statistics to distract one from other key issues. Whatever baby steps had been made, it was never the specific performance indices that caused concern among local and state officials. The plethora of subsequent debates on the issue indicate a general concern with the performance of this urban institution, but once the Ministry of Internal Affairs introduced the concept of a public fire department, debates quickly shifted to encompass broader questions about urban administration and the cultural habits of urban residents. One must therefore approach these performance-related issues with the utmost caution since they rarely tell as much as do the debates that fire departments inspired. Officials did not bicker about the purchase of individual items but were instead troubled by residents’ apparent unwillingness to

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shoulder the necessary responsibility. From the reverse perspective, while residents wanted to live in a safe environment, much of their energy was focused on determining the relationship between different levels of authority. As long as fire departments operated at less than full efficiency, which was for the rest of the imperial period, they remained a focal point of discussion in urban circles. The ups and downs of performance – so difficult for the historian to judge when performance metrics were closely tied to the political needs of a specific group – took a background role to the intricate discussions that emerged simply because the very operation of a fire department became contested terrain. Finally, a feature of early firefighting deserves special emphasis. There was a close association between the police and the fire department. Even when cities started to develop professional fire departments in the first half of the nineteenth century, they remained under police control. Further, many official documents maintained the close links between the two brigades because they often mentioned the two teams – politseiskaia i pozharnaia komanda – in sequence.44

regulation of fire departments under nicholas i Despite all the above regulations and efforts of officials (such as those in Riazan), until 1853 firefighting had been carried out in an almost totally haphazard manner. In the province of Tver, for example, the fire department operated with the combined efforts of the police (who maintained order) and of the locals (who contributed equipment). In 1847, the governor reported that the fire departments were insufficiently staffed, poorly housed, and short of horses. Only the provincial capital Tver had an effective soldier-staffed professional fire department.45 According to one ministry official, except for the capitals and a few other cities, fire departments “did not exist” in the empire, and if they did exist they were in such poor condition that they did not fulfill any recognizable need.46 The above statements reveal an important dynamic about firefighting in the empire. Although existing laws stated that “the cities’ fire departments belong to the police administration” (this would fit the model of the well-ordered police state through law), the fire department was actually organized according to local needs. In some cities, firefighting was a spontaneous act, with both locals and the police

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coming together to fight a common foe. In other cities (predominantly the provincial capitals), the fire department operated independently of urban citizens and only used their aid peripherally.47 In the era of Nicholas I, the lack of official organization was recognized as a detriment to the proper evolution of a rationalized bureaucracy. In 1853, the state introduced a law designed to impose the rigidity of the Nikolaevan bureaucracy upon the operation of fire departments.48 At a meeting of the Committee of Ministers in March 1853, a table was drawn up indicating the number of firefighters, horses, and equipment required for each fire department.49 In this manner, the state prescribed the strength of the fire department in every single city. For example, cities with populations between 20,000 and 25,000 inhabitants were assigned, among other things, a total of 63 firefighters, 53 horses, 40 axes, and 18 crowbars. The insistence on exact numbers mirrored the bureaucratic pettiness of the Nikolaevan system. Furthermore, the new table ensured a strict and uniform hierarchy of operation. Each fire department was required to have a fire chief (brandmaior), assistant fire chiefs (brandmeistery), and “privates” (riadovye). Finally, the law stated that the fire departments would be “staffed by people from the military.”50 The table was introduced in 438 cities across the empire, even if official sanction did not necessarily mean that the fire department operated exactly as it required.51 This type of fire department became known as a police fire department (politseiskaia pozharnaia komanda).52 In a European context, a police fire department was not an anomaly. In England, at approximately the same time, municipalities introduced police firefighters, who, in certain instances, continued to operate until 1941.53 In ­Britain, each individual municipality could choose this option, whereas in the Russian Empire the police fire department became a requirement for every city, thus reflecting the distinct political culture of each country. Once the state absolved locals of both responsibility and participation with regard to protecting their own property from fire, the idea of a well-ordered police state through law had even greater applicability to fire prevention and fire departments (though much later than Raeff envisioned).54 From an administrative perspective, the law made it clear that the state, in general, and the police, in particular, retained the initiative. The state remained the regulating force to which Raeff’s theory of the well-ordered police state ­continually

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refers. Whereas the original statutes specified that the police were responsible for the fire department, the law of 1853 dictated exactly how the police force was to organize it. This first modest attempt at standardizing urban fire departments did not bring the anticipated gains. Because of the diversity of the urban landscape, any attempt to implement a uniform system was bound to face substantial obstacles. It became increasingly difficult for individual municipalities to adapt their fire department so that it fitted the template of a systematic table that had been drawn up in a distant capital. A few examples can be used to demonstrate this point. Provincial governors transmitted two basic complaints to the authorities in St Petersburg. First, there was general dissatisfaction with the quality of the firefighters, which the army had supplied with soldiers from the Internal Guard (vnutrenniaia strazha). The governor of Samara complained that fully half of the soldiers provided by the army were in poor health.55 In 1859, the governor of Kazan referred to the soldiers as “incompetent,” and a year earlier the governor general of Grodno and Kovensk had complained that these unhealthy soldiers were the source of large hospital bills. The army had provided the fire department (and the police force) with “old, unhealthy … and physically deformed” soldiers, who, due to “continual illness,” rather than providing the expected assistance and service, simply ate up city funds for the treatment of their sickness.56 The governor of Tver complained that the new table to regulate the size of fire departments was badly suited to the needs of the city because it did not provide it with enough firefighters.57 Furthermore, the table could not accommodate the geographic diversity of a city that was located at the confluence of three rivers. Because the law had not foreseen a fire station in all four sections of the city, it was impossible for the fire department to fight a fire when it had to cross a river to get to a borough that did not have fire protection.58 The law of 1853, therefore, did little to improve the quality of firefighting and would be altered in 1860. The law did establish one lasting feature of the Russian fire department – its military organization. Although there were cities, such as St Petersburg, Moscow, and Kazan, that already had fire departments staffed with soldiers, the law disseminated the idea that the fire department should be organized along military lines. Instead of encouraging local homeowners to carry buckets of water to fires, the drafters of the law called upon private soldiers (riadovye) to obey the commands of officers and fire

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chiefs. This was an important development because when it came time for locals to take control over their own fire departments, they inherited organizations that were structured along military lines.

the ministry of war initiates the reform process In 1860, the shortcomings of firefighting and the problems inherent in the law of 1853 led to new discussions about the future of firefighting in the Russian Empire. In a time of reform, when the government was interested in renovating the structure of the empire, the inadequacies of the fire department drew the attention of reformers. Despite the importance of this reform at the urban level, it has been completely overlooked in the literature on the Great Reforms. In assessing the underlying motives for the reform, we should not underestimate the spontaneity of the process. Following Bruce ­Lincoln’s analysis, one might conclude that changing attitudes within the state bureaucracy were singularly responsible for the reform of the Russian fire department. He argues that, towards the end of the Nikolaevan era, “enlightened” and university-educated servitors started to rise in the ranks of the bureaucracy. These bureaucrats, who still supported the autocracy, set out to reform the system from within.59 They encouraged local self-administration and fought to replace the arbitrary rule of the nobility with a systematized bureaucracy.60 But the spontaneity of the reform of fire departments precludes assigning too great an intellectual role to these bureaucrats. Many of the leading bureaucrats who do fit Lincoln’s model were too preoccupied with the peasant emancipation to worry about urban fire departments. It was only once the military provided them with a fait accompli that officials within the Ministry of Internal Affairs initiated their own reform process. The reform effectively began with an Imperial edict of 1859, which stated that the Ministry of War would no longer supply soldiers to the fire departments.61 The army had been responsible for providing soldiers to the fire departments, and, when it sought to reform itself, it became increasingly reluctant to provide its soldiers to help with non-military functions. When the military decided that it would no longer provide any soldiers, the Ministry of Internal Affairs had to find a solution to this problem: urban areas could not function without firefighters (no matter how ill-trained the army fire­fighters had been).

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Ever since the end of the Crimean War, the Ministry of War had been concerned with reducing the number of forces to regular peacetime levels. In his coronation manifesto of August 1856, Alexander II stated that the draft levies would not be implemented between 1856 and 1859. This action removed a burden from the peasants’ shoulders, saved the army money, and reduced its size.62 Another means of eliminating expenditures involved reducing the size of the Internal Guard. The army had about 145,000 soldiers spread throughout the empire who were engaged in non-combative positions such as prison guards and firefighters.63 The clearest exposition of this position came once the reform of the fire departments was well under way. In a famous report to the tsar on 15 January 1862, Dmitrii Miliutin, the minister of war, expressed the intentions of the military with respect to the Internal Guard.64 Miliutin was concerned with the size of the army, the efficiency of the combat forces, and its strength relative to its European competitors. An important part of his proposal dealt with the realignment of forces. Miliutin argued that the army was supporting an expensive contingent of permanent soldiers while the quantity of reserve forces remained negligible. He reasoned that a properly trained reserve would reduce the size of the peacetime force without weakening the active strength of the army.65 Limiting the size of the army also meant reducing the number of non-combatant (nestroevoi) soldiers that the army had spread throughout the empire. Miliutin wrote that one of the main tasks was to “cut back or restructure those parts [of the army], which served only in peacetime and did not have any useful significance for the development of fighting strength in times of war.” 66 The most obvious example of non-combatant forces was the soldiers of the Internal Guard.67 Firefighters belonged to the group of soldiers to which Miliutin referred. They had no combat function and simply added an extra burden to the administration of the army. From a numerical perspective, the Ministry of War supplied the Ministry of Internal Affairs with just over twenty thousand soldiers to staff the police and fire departments. Of these soldiers, almost ten thousand served in fire departments across the empire.68 From the perspective of the army, the absolute number of firefighters was negligible, a small percentage of a small section of the army.69 Regardless of their actual number, the need to remove this small quantity of soldiers from fire departments helped to spark a major urban reform.70

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the ministry of internal affairs takes over the reform process With the military clarifying its position, the Ministry of Internal Affairs began its own reform process. On 27 June 1860, the ministry issued a circular to promote the creation of public fire departments. The circular spoke of the need to improve firefighting and fire prevention but said nothing about the actual reason for the reform.71 The Ministry of Internal Affairs simply stressed that the state was no longer interested in controlling urban fire departments outside of St Petersburg, Moscow, and a few other cities. Instead of a centrally controlled police-run fire department, the Ministry of Internal Affairs offered each city the opportunity to operate its own public fire department. The Ministry of Internal Affairs was willing to abandon the police-state model that had inspired the law of 1853. And, once the state gave locals the initiative, it never again tried to control or organize urban fire departments on an empire-wide basis. In exploring the motives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, we should bear in mind S. Frederick Starr’s emphasis on the inability of the state to provide sufficient personnel to the under-governed provinces. In practice, there were not enough state officials in the provinces, and “vital civic functions were not being fulfilled.”72 Furthermore, local officials such as the provincial governors were overburdened by paperwork.73 The military’s withdrawal from firefighting provided the Ministry of Internal Affairs with an ideal opportunity to relieve itself of an unnecessary administrative burden. At the same time, the eventual decision of the ministry to devolve authority relating to the fire department can be considered as part of the reformers’ plans to downsize the operations of the police. While the reform of the police was conducted after and independently of the reform of the fire department, the two reforms bear some similarities. Robert Abbott argues that liberal police reformers were interested in improving the efficiency of the tsar’s regular police. Instead of overcoming the chronic shortage of police personnel with the addition of personnel, the statute proposed by the (Nikolai) Miliutin Commission in the spring of 1860 sought to reduce the number of the police, narrow the range of police activity, and promote the idea of better trained and more specialized police officers.74 Sergei Lanskoi, the minister of internal affairs from 1855 until April 1861, whom Abbott sees as a supporter of decentralization and local self-

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administration, was also interested in reducing the scope of police activity in the provinces. At this level, the interests of the Ministry of War coincided with those of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.75 The ministry soon declared its intention of shifting responsibility for firefighting from the police to urban residents and municipal authorities. Defining these reformed fire departments as public and volunteer, the ministry hoped that they would develop and activate the civic consciousness of urban residents while saving the central government costly expenses. To this end, the ministry invited urban residents in all the cities included in the planned reform to discuss the feasibility of that reform. Some cities eagerly seized upon the opportunity for more municipal independence, while others hesitated to bear responsibility for such an expensive and cumbersome organization. Nonetheless, the reform was instrumental in both mobilizing public opinion and in establishing the idea that municipalities and not the police had the right to control their fire departments. Instead of telling governors how to implement the reform, the circular of 27 June 1860 began by asking the governors to find out whether local citizens were willing to accept the responsibility of running their own fire departments.76 The circular avoided any mention of the planned withdrawal of soldiers and, instead, emphasized the importance of local initiative. Rather than asserting autocratic authority, the language of the circular made it clear there was room for compromise. The willingness of the ministry to canvas local opinion offers a stark contrast to Daniel Orlovsky’s image of nineteenthcentury ministerial officials who held “the deeply rooted belief that political matters were their concern solely and that political acts outside the chancery walls were illegitimate if not treasonous.”77 Perhaps reforming a fire department was not as politically charged an issue as was reforming the judiciary. Nonetheless, urban residents throughout the empire were asked to deliberate on the fate of an organization that would eventually develop a strong political presence. As the reform unfolded, it became clear that one could speak neither of a top-down nor of a bottom-up approach. Interaction between local officials and state authorities evolved as the main characteristic of the reform and the whole future of urban fire departments. The circular explained that the ministry had received numerous complaints about the quality of firefighting in the provinces. Furthermore, an insurance subsidy that had been introduced in 1847 to help cities pay for necessary equipment was being reduced by a

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factor of three.78 The ministry, which was unwilling to provide funds of its own, recognized that Russia’s cities had insufficient funds for the fire department. Therefore, the circular suggested that it was “now necessary to turn to other local means.”79 To avoid expenditures for civilian professionals and for the purchase of equipment, the ministry concluded that the cheapest expedient was for locals to provide the personnel and horses themselves. Because a properly maintained fire department was in the best interests of each citizen and “especially homeowners,” the ministry wanted each city to establish its own “public [fire] department.” The few expenses that still remained could be paid for from the city’s budget and what was left of the insurance subsidy.80 The cities could then replace their poorly staffed and badly motivated soldier-firefighters with people who had a direct interest in the performance of the fire department. The public fire department was not an invention of the ministry. To a certain degree, it represented a traditional solution, a throwback to the days before the law of 1853 when locals fought fires on their own. For a more organized and systematized local answer, the ministry turned to one of the rare cases in which a provincial fire department functioned effectively. Ostashkov, “where for ages fires have been put out by the combined strengths of [the city’s] inhabitants,” was provided as the perfect example of the benefits of a public fire department. It was through Ostashkov that the ministry expressed its faith in public initiative and the development of organized public activity.81 In the public fire department, different social groups were to come together to fight a common foe. Ostashkov, in the northeastern part of Tver province, a few hundred kilometres south of St Petersburg, had been operating its own fire department since the beginning of the nineteenth century.82 It was a small manufacturing town of about ten thousand inhabitants, who came primarily from the merchantry and the meshchanstvo (lower middle class).83 The local community elected members of the fire department, which consisted of one hundred people. The youth of the city fought the fires, and other citizens committed themselves to provide the horses and other equipment; thus, operational costs were minimal. Ostashkov was, in fact, so effective in fighting fires that it was exempted from the law of 1853, which would have drastically reduced the size of its fire department and filled its ranks with soldiers rather than with committed citizens who were fulfilling their civic duty. From the perspective of the Ministry of Internal

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Affairs, the fiscal advantages of this type of organization could not be mistaken. The example of Ostashkov is important for a number of reasons. First, the public fire department required all urban citizens to participate in organized public activity. Unlike voluntary associations, where membership was a matter of choice and thus could easily cater to one social group, the Ostashkov fire department forced all citizens to become aware of their civic duties.84 To be sure, in a later circular, the Ministry of Internal Affairs did write that the new model public fire department could only work effectively if municipalities “voluntarily” (dobrovol’no) expressed their willingness to accept this public duty.85 Here, however, the word “voluntary” was applied to a group of people taking control of an organization rather than to an individual choosing to join an already established organization. The distinction was between civic duty and voluntary participation – a distinction that became increasingly important when volunteer fire departments started to flourish in the 1880s. With the example of Ostashkov, the ministry, though it had its own motivations, brought the empire’s urban population into a forum that had an enormous potential for public expression. Second, the selection of Ostashkov was significant because it meant that the focal point of a major reform came from some place other than the two capitals. As we shall see in the next chapter, when locals in other Russian cities debated the future of their own fire departments, their point of reference would be this very same small town in Tver province. In fact, the development of public fire departments in all cities except Moscow, St Petersburg, and a few others ensured that locals set up communication networks that did not go through major centres.86 Finally, the Ostashkov fire department was important for its name – Ostashkovskaia obshchestvennaia pozharnaia komanda (Ostashkov public fire department).87 In this context, obshchestvennaia (m.s. obshchestvennyi = public) was used in the broadest sense to include all members of the urban community, regardless of any estate, class, or other affiliation. The term has near synonyms that have more restricted meanings. For example, obshchestvo is often translated as “liberal educated society.”88 The term obshchestvennost’ has been translated as public service or has been equated with civil society or, once again, educated society.89 All three of these terms stress an exclusive public sphere independent of and (often) opposed to the

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state.90 However, obshchestvennaia, in the context of the fire departments, had much broader connotations. It emphasized a whole nonexclusive community of public actors. Because of the breadth of its meaning, as public fire departments developed across the empire, the term gained in importance. In fact, although the public fire departments never developed into an oppositional force, state officials preferred to hear the age-old adjective “police” rather than the more suggestive adjective “public” when fire departments were discussed. The circular of June 1860 specified Ostashkov as a model for reform, but it did not specify how it wanted locals to realize that reform. It was only clear that the actual reform would involve the urban public. The reform therefore was only “from on high” in so far as the circular emanated from a central ministry; otherwise, it was completed at the local level.91 The idea of involving the public in the reform process was not entirely novel. Before the serfs were emancipated, gentry committees were created to discuss the peasant problem, and, before the Municipal Statute of 1870 was promulgated, committees composed of city residents submitted their suggestions for reform to the centre.92 These participants, however, had been invited to make suggestions for a reform that would be drawn up in the centre, after which it would provide official operating guidelines for almost all cities within the empire. When the ministry asked for local participation in the reform of the fire department, it was asking urban society to take the final decision itself. The reform was never finalized at a higher level. Since the reform involved public participation, the Ministry of Internal Affairs wanted to poll public opinion. In an effort both to understand and to coerce the urban public, the ministry sent envoys into the provinces to discuss the issue with local governors and town councils in selected cities. These envoys arrived in the cities at varying stages of the reform (some went in the fall of 1860, others in the spring of 1861) and sent their reports back to the ministry in St Petersburg. Although as many as five envoys were sent, only two of the reports contain sufficient material to provide a preliminary assessment of the initial local reaction to the reform. The first is a seventy-page report submitted by a civil servant named Izmailov, who did a short tour of Orel province. Evgenii Vasil’evich Bogdanovich, a high-ranking military official who had been commissioned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, submitted the ­second

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report, which was the result of a tour conducted in 1861. Even though Bogdanovich conducted his tour after official legislation, it can still help us understand the ministry’s motivation for reform. At Izmailov’s first stop in the small town of Sevsk, he came across a totally disorganized fire department. Not only did the soldiers who had been assigned to it not know if they were serving in the police force or the fire department, but, when Izmailov managed to sort out the difference, he found only injured and unhealthy firefighters.93 His main task, however, was not to evaluate the quality of the fire department but to personally introduce the ministry’s circular to the local town council. Soon after his arrival in the city, he called the mayor and his councillors together to discuss the future of the fire department.94 The short discussion in Sevsk revealed two primary elements of the reform. First, the local town councillors were well aware of the real reasons for the reform. When the mayor expressed his reluctance to take control of the fire department, one of his councillors replied that, whether or not they took control of the fire department, the present one had to be changed because “they are no longer giving us soldiers.”95 Second, in spite of the mayor’s unwillingness to add another portfolio to what he considered a demanding job, he did accept the idea that the fire department should be removed from the control of the police and placed in the hands of the city council.96 This desire to operate local affairs without state interference was a precursor to the wish that was articulated a few years later by the citizen committees that were formed prior to the enactment of the Municipal Statute of 1870.97 And, in spite of disagreements about the financing of the fire department, the mayor and the town councillors were, according to Izmailov, willing to take the initiative. When Izmailov arrived in the city of Orel to meet with the governor of the province, he confronted someone who was sceptical of local self-administration. The governor of Orel told Izmailov that the urban residents in his province were “unprepared” for such a reorganization of the fire department. Because of their “underdevelopment,” they were totally “indifferent to civic duty.”98 The governor said that he had already broached the subject in the districts when he did the inspection of his province and received the uniform answer that locals were just not interested in the suggestion. The governor presented in this report offers a contrast to the governors depicted in S. Frederick Starr’s study, who are portrayed as support-

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ers of local initiative as a means of overcoming under-government.99 While not all governors shared the same worldview, it is important to emphasize that some distrusted local initiative. The governor’s attitude obviously ran counter to Izmailov’s own aims. The Ministry of Internal Affairs had sent Izmailov to Orel not just to judge local opinion about the idea but also to convince them that the idea was a good one: the greater the willingness of locals to bear responsibility, the easier it would be for the ministry to slip the burden of the fire department into local hands. Thus, Izmailov quickly defended the residents of Orel. He told the governor that the towns he had visited displayed nothing of the “indifference to civic [obshchestvennyi] affairs” that the governor emphasized; rather than being against the idea they were actually happy for the opportunity.100 Furthermore, Izmailov did not believe that firefighting required any special skills from society, and, therefore, the creation of a public fire department did not require the “preliminary development in society of the instincts of self-administration [samoupravlenie].”101 Izmailov also had the opportunity to speak with the police chief of Orel, whom he characterized as a “complete antagonist of the fire department he administered” and a very reluctant fire chief.102 The police chief complained that the army provided him with incompetent soldiers and that he himself did not have the time to attend to the fire department.103 This complaint supports criticisms of a police force characterized as “undermanned” and “overburdened.”104 The police chief of Orel believed that the creation of a public fire department under the control of city council would relieve him of an unnecessary burden. Izmailov’s indifference to the development of a civic consciousness was an important aspect of the reform process. The Great Reforms have, in part, been seen as an attempt to elicit greater participation from urban and rural residents. When the reform of the fire department was being implemented, the ministry wrote of its wish to encourage local initiative, yet this was but a measure of expediency. Neither Izmailov nor Bogdanovich who followed him had expressed the slightest interest in public initiative, and this is because they represented the fiscal concerns of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The main worry of men like Lanskoi, the minister of internal affairs, as Starr writes, was “to turn security affairs over to the police” and “civic issues to the local public.”105

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The second envoy, Bogdanovich, was sent on a planned tour of all cities in the provinces of Kursk, Poltava, and Kharkov as well as of some cities in the province of Orel. Although he visited numerous cities, his reports all resembled one another and were all as mechanical as the original circular. In each town, he invited the mayor, merchants, and meshchane to a discussion in the town hall and expressed “the concerns of the government, [and] explained the goal and benefits of establishing a public fire department.”106 In every town hall, he wrote that, “in my presence,” local residents willingly obligated themselves to answer any fire alarm and put out the fire themselves.107 And in almost every city, he explained that soldiers would no longer be available to the fire department. The endless repetition and the emphasis on his presence in the town hall when the decision was taken suggest a strong element of coercion. Bogdanovich’s reaction to those few towns that were perfectly satisfied with their police-run fire departments best expressed the necessity for change. The merchants in the town of Elets unanimously petitioned to maintain their existing fire department because of its “speedy operation” under the auspices of the local police chief. They told Bogdanovich that the fire department completely satisfied the needs of residents. Bogdanovich was forced to tell these merchants that the military was withdrawing its soldiers and that the only alternative was to have the town select local meshchane to serve in the fire department.108 Bogdanovich conveyed the message that the state would no longer take responsibility for the fire department. Significantly, nowhere in his report does he mention local initiative or self-administration as a motive for the reform. Nor do his reports show interest in the opinions of the people with whom he spoke: their repetitiveness hardly gives a sense of local deliberation. Furthermore, his willingness to accept alternate plans suggests the urgency of the reform. Whereas the original circular offered Ostashkov as a model because local participation significantly reduced costs, Bogdanovich was not concerned when locals suggested that the fire department include hired hands (vol’nonaemnye). The employment of hired hands would make the fire department even more expensive than it had originally been and, thus, subverted the original idea.109 Finally, he did not recognize that a fire department with hired hands, though an acceptable alternative, was radically different from a true “public fire department” because it no longer repre-

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sented broad public participation. Later on, when the Senate stated that a public fire department could not have hired hands because it  had been conceived as a civic organization, this distinction became crucial.110 In the 1870s and beyond, the Department of Police used the presence of hired hands as an excuse to justify its reappropriation of the public fire department. This was an effective ploy since it became almost impossible to determine whether a city had a police fire department or a public fire department. This lack of attention to detail indicated that Bogdanovich was more interested in relieving the Ministry of Internal Affairs of its responsibility to run the fire department than he was in providing a model for its reorganization.111 Bogdanovich was not solely responsible for initiating the confusion. The decision to allow hired hands was hinted at well before the ministry’s circular in June 1860, and it was reiterated in another circular that was sent out in August 1860. During his tour, Izmailov also mentioned the possibility of resorting to paid professionals.112 That the ministry allowed each and every city two possibilities is significant in itself. Rather than imposing a standard table or model for the reform as had been done in 1853, the availability of choice forced every town to gather and decide how it wished to run the fire department. There was certainly no third choice, such as maintaining the status quo, but the reform put everyone in a position to make an important civic decision. Since a choice had been made available to Russia’s urban residents, it was inevitable that not all cities would go for the same option. Some cities chose public fire departments modelled after Ostashkov, whereas other cities chose “public” fire departments with paid professionals.113 The reform of the fire department planned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs forever eliminated any possibility of standardizing firefighting in the Russian Empire. While Izmailov toured the provinces, the plans to reform Russian fire departments were brought to the attention of the Committee of Ministers on 13 December 1860. Sergei Lanskoi, who presided over the Ministry of Internal Affairs when the emancipation of the peasants had been discussed, presented the official proposal for approval, and it entered the complete collection of laws on 28 December 1860. The proposal contained the standard commentary about the withdrawal of soldiers, the success of the fire department in Ostashkov, and the discontinuation of the insurance subsidy. Official documents

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emphasized two other themes relevant to the fire department. First, the push to enact the law came from another small municipal community in Tver province. It was the initiative of residents in Zubtsov, not that of ministers in St Petersburg, that provided the impulse for reform. Second, for the first time, the law spoke of the relationship between the fire department and the local police. The wording of the law represented a major step towards establishing a municipal sphere that was autonomous from the police. The minutes of the Committee of Ministers’ meeting on 13 December 1860 reveal that the city of Zubtsov had petitioned the governor of Tver to allow it to construct a fire department modelled on the one functioning in Ostashkov. It proposed replacing the six current soldiers with twenty-four people from the city itself, while other locals would volunteer equipment as needed. Its only condition was that the fire department be placed under the complete control of the mayor and the local city council.114 The proposal, with slight modifications, was approved and published as law in the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire (Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii). The first sentence of the law echoed the military necessity behind the reform and reiterated the inability of cities to pay for a paid professional fire department.115 It restated the petition that the Zubtsov town representatives had submitted, effectively making it seem as if the law had been thought up in this small town in the Tver province. It accepted their insistence on having complete control over the fire department and then discussed the future role of the police. The law recognized that, according to the current fire statutes (Ustav pozharnyi), operating the fire department was the responsibility of the police.116 It also recognized that current plans to reform the police excluded the fire department from its jurisdiction because running a fire department was “a managerial [khoziaistvennyi] affair” and thus, strictly speaking, was one of the duties of municipal society.117 In response, the law stated that the command of the firefighters and of all equipment was to be held by the city council. The only remaining concern the police had with firefighting was to “maintain order and ensure public security during a fire.”118 This last sentence marked the emancipation of the fire department from the state and from the police. From this moment on, locals had access to a public sphere of their own.

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In broader terms, the law can be understood as taking the fire department out of the well-ordered police state as the police and the state ceased to play an active role in firefighting. But, as Marc Raeff warns us, the end of the well-ordered police state need not imply the development of an embryonic Rechtsstaat, a state based on “immutable and coherent laws.”119 The law on fire departments was conceived as a “provisional measure” to improve the performance of fire departments “on a trial basis.” It was vague in so far as it did not require the empire’s cities to have public fire departments; the law said nothing about explicitly replacing all police fire departments with public fire departments. It only stated that petitions requesting permission to create a public fire department should be honoured and approved.120 Furthermore, publication in the 1860 edition of the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire did not guarantee that firefighting would now be subject to proper legal procedure and uniform standards. The law on fire departments published in the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire was defined broadly enough not to limit the activity of the state, and only a portion of the law was introduced into the Law Code (Svod zakonov). A footnote (primechanie) added later to article 1 of the Ustav pozharnyi (in vol. xii, sec. I of the Svod zakonov) carried over the last paragraph of the law into the Law Code. The paragraph, among other minor details, noted that public fire departments were to operate without police interference. The main body of article 1, however, still stated that, in cities, the fire department belonged to the police administration.121 Effectively, only state-sanctioned public fire departments operated beyond the police sphere.122 And Article 4 of the statute maintained that the number of firefighters in each city was to be determined by the table that had been created in 1853.123 Finally, the law made no attempt to define an obshchestvennaia pozharnaia komanda, other than through the already familiar proviso that locals administer it. It is perhaps paradoxical to suggest that the law encouraged local self-administration, when it only appeared as a footnote in the Svod zakonov and was still ambiguous enough to give the state room for manoeuvre. Yet, even if the law was not obligatory for everyone and remained nebulous, it provoked enormous discussion in numerous cities. Since the original reform was discussed at length, everyone became familiar with it, and when conflicts arose in the years

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that followed, it would be a point of reference for local officials who were trying to protect their independence. Therefore, despite the fact that the law and the circulars might not have corresponded to Western ideals of legislation, it had a real and lasting effect on firefighting and local self-administration in the empire. It provided a structure within which municipal officials believed they could function effectively.

implementing the reform As with many hastily introduced imperial reforms, implementation proved more difficult than legislation. Because the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not explicitly state its exact intentions, not every city understood what the ministry actually wanted. According to ministry statistics, two years after it had decided to initiate public fire departments only eight cities in the entire empire had agreed to the reform. A further fifty-seven cities implemented public fire departments; however, instead of using local volunteers, these cities proposed using paid firefighters. An additional forty-one cities wanted nothing to do with the fire department, and from the remaining cities the ministry had yet to hear.124 The initial reluctance to agree to the proposal can be partially explained by state officials in the provinces. In the region of Kiev, administrators passed out tables indicating the funds that local communities would have to provide for horses and equipment. The exorbitant figures quickly scared many cities away from the idea, and they refused the introduction of “such an expensive” fire department.125 To clarify its intentions, the ministry sent another circular to the provinces in January 1862, which gave a detailed explanation of the internal structure of the ­Ostashkov public fire department. In an article that appeared at about the same time in the Severnaia pochta (Northern post), the official organ of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the ministry addressed some common sources of confusion and provided solutions to them. While the ministry’s circular reiterated some of the specifics about the fire department in Ostashkov, it clarified operational aspects of the public fire department. When asked, “Who was to serve in the public fire department?” the circular answered “from the very first to the very last, [in Ostashkov] no one considers himself free from this obligation.” The members of the fire department only “took first place at a fire” with their hoses and equipment, but putting out the

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fire itself was the job of the “whole population” (an obviously unrealistic expectation in larger cities). Firefighters were to be elected by city council members for an undefined period of time, and they were not to receive any compensation for their work, though their estate society (i.e., the merchant society) could help pay tax-duties. In contradistinction to a police fire department, where firefighters were quartered at the fire station, members of a public fire department “lived in their own homes” and assembled at a given point if the alarm bell was rung. Members of a public fire department also differed from members of a police fire department in that they did not wear a standard uniform. Instead, the ministry planned for public firefighters to wear “a peaked cap with a silver or gold band” that identified them as actors independent of state authority. Individual citizens provided horses, and equipment was to be stored in a central shed.126 Two fire chiefs, under the watchful eye of the mayor and the city council, were responsible for the whole set-up. The expectations of the ministry indicated that it hoped that muni­ cipal citizens would organize themselves outside traditional channels. Here we can contrast the civic potential of this reform with that of the Municipal Statute of 1870. The Municipal Statute is often given credit for its “creation of a civic public sphere and its recognition of a civil society.”127 The Municipal Statute of 1870 states that “the municipal public government, within the limits of authority granted to it, functions independently [samostoiatel’no].”128 Yet, for the overwhelming majority of urban residents, participation was limited to casting a ballot, a privilege that was often left unused.129 Furthermore, activity in city council was only available for those who could afford to vote. The Municipal Statute therefore granted the administrators but not the people of the city the freedom to act independently. On the other hand, anyone could participate in the public fire department, and residents often elected their own fire chiefs. To be sure, there is certainly a difference between a public sphere of activity and a public sphere of regular discussion, where public opinion can act as a force against the absolutist claims of the state. Habermas, for instance, treats the public sphere as a place where an educated and propertied public could carry on critical and rational discussion.130 Although the possibilities for regular discourse in the administration of the fire department were more limited than they were in a literary society, city council, or estate assembly, the fact that citizens could organize themselves is of significant import.

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At the most basic level, the public fire department was an exercise in public organization, which theoretically provides a springboard to political participation. It created the potential for the development of what Charles Taylor calls a metatopical public space – that is, a public space that transcends the “common space arising from assembly in some locale” and that links urban residents in “a discussion potentially engaging everyone.”131 As it turned out, public fire departments often exercised this potential. The next official response to the reception of the reform was published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Severnaia pochta (Northern post). In paternalistic language, it explained the apathetic reaction to the reform in terms of the traditional Russian habit of placing the burden of all one’s affairs, even domestic ones, on the government.132 The ministry questioned the civic consciousness of its own subjects, but it stubbornly defended the independence of local authorities. In one example from Saratov, a governor interfered in the discussions of one municipality. This governor wanted the police to be in charge of the fire department during actual emergencies, and he demanded that the police conduct monthly inspections of the fire department, after which the police chief was to report any problems to the city council, which was to remedy the situation accordingly. The ministry officially disapproved of this action because it contradicted the law of 28 December 1860, which explicitly stated that the police role was limited to keeping law and order at the fire. As this document suggested, wouldn’t “society [obshchestvo] itself be the best and most reliable inspector of its own business?”133 In the province of Tver, government officials had interfered in local plans by changing the number of fire chiefs and firefighters that local assemblies had prescribed. Because the ministry wanted this reform to be conducted at the local level, it recognized this interference as “discordant with the views of the ministry.”134 A second source of confusion was the decision of many communities to opt for hired firefighters, a move that negated any effort on behalf of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to reduce urban expenditures. According to the ministry, the predilection for hired firefighters demonstrated “a complete misunderstanding” of the suggested reform.135 Eventually, however, most public fire departments would be composed of paid firefighters rather than of locally elected volunteers, defeating any cost-saving measures the reform was intended to achieve. This development was significant because it demonstrated

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how locals could mould a reform to suit their own needs. The ministry saw no alternative but to accept hired firefighters because it knew that military necessity required the removal of soldiers from the fire department. The Ministry of Internal Affairs made its last two formidable statements on the reform in the circular and in the article that have been discussed above. The ministry monitored the situation from a distance, but after 1862 most decisions were made at the local level. The government interfered sporadically and sent out the occasional circular, but, for the most part, the Ministry of Internal Affairs had solved the firefighting problem to its own satisfaction. The rest of the work was left to urban residents.

militarizing a part of the public sphere The withdrawal of soldiers from urban fire departments was part of a broader urban phenomenon that saw a reduced military presence in cities throughout the Russian Empire. In the first half of the nineteenth century, visitors to provincial cities of the empire had often described these agglomerations as army garrisons; indeed, the Russian word for city, gorod, is also associated with the term “citadel.” As these cities grew after the Crimean War, the military flavour changed and soon civilians were in the majority. The reduced military presence also came as a result of the Great Reforms as the military was no longer interested in monitoring every facet of civilian life. In his work on Russian army and society, John Keep stresses that the reform era changed the nature of the army’s relationship with society. After the Great Reforms, the Russian Empire ceased to be a militaristic state as the army withdrew from urban space. A new ethos had developed, and the state’s elite sought to advance themselves in civilian spheres.136 The removal of the military from all of the empire’s fire departments did represent a substantial demilitarization of an important part of civil administration and opened up the public sphere. The absence of soldier-firefighters, however, did not necessarily imply that locals would operate the fire department along civilian lines. The public fire department and, eventually, the volunteer fire departments that municipal officials became involved in starting in the 1880s retained a strong military ethos and continued to maintain ties with the imperial military. In effect, although the military had

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withdrawn from the public space represented by the fire department, the space itself had become, and remained, militarized. The reform of urban fire departments represented but one of many changes in a vast empire confronting the realities of a European continent in transition. While neither the Ministry of War nor the Ministry of Internal Affairs actively sought to improve firefighting, military circumstances forced both ministries to alter the organization of what was perhaps the most important urban service in cities built of wood. If not accidental, the reform discussed here was more spontaneous than were other major reforms, but it gives a clear indication of the military’s ability to influence the structure of urban politics. Moreover, the indirect presence of the military continued long after the elimination of the Internal Guard, and municipal authorities often turned to military men for guidance and assistance. It took years to eliminate all soldiers from the fire departments, and the military returned to check up on them. Officially, the military had withdrawn, but unofficially it lingered as there were still common points of interest between urban and military representatives. Most tellingly, the restructuring of fire departments provided municipal authorities with an entry point into a public sphere that continued to expand in Russia’s growing urban landscape. If civil society is to be equated with a broad citizenry participating in self-administration, then the Ministry of War unwittingly abetted the establishment of a fragile civil society. Yet, there was something special in this case: it was civil society, to be sure, but with a military twist.

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2 The Implementation of Reform Developing Urban Autonomy in the Public Fire Department, 1865–80 After the Ministry of War withdrew its soldiers from urban fire departments, the Ministry of Internal Affairs forced urban residents to accept control of public fire departments. Rather than dictating the terms of the reform to the municipalities, the ministry presented a hastily drawn-up plan to be realized at the local level. In many cities, members of every social estate came together to deliberate upon the future of their fire departments. These public discussions soon went to local committees, where activists worked out the salient points in greater detail. By about 1865, elected local representatives had replaced the tsarist police as administrators and operators of urban fire departments in almost all cities in the Russian Empire. The establishment of public fire departments represented a remarkable change in urban administration. For the first time, a well-organized and essential public institution lay outside police control. As a forum for public meetings and decision making, operating the fire department exposed urban residents to an inchoate public sphere. Thus, the subsequent analysis shifts the discussion from the state’s efforts to craft a reform to the response to the reform of cities throughout the empire. As such, it provides a link between the origins of the reform in the early 1860s and the period two decades later, when both municipal and volunteer fire departments played an even more instrumental role in the public sphere. In theoretical terms, once citizens started to discuss the eventual reform of the fire department, the historian can evaluate the effectiveness of this activity in so far as it relates to notions about civil society and the public sphere. To what degree do the actions depicted below fit the conceptual framework of civil society? In order to ­provide

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parameters, two issues need to be addressed from the outset. The first, evident from the last chapter, concerns the apparent paradox of including the military in civil society, whereas the second concerns the important distinction between volunteer public activity and civic duty within the public sphere. Although the military was reducing its presence in the empire’s cities, citizens involved with fire departments had continual discussions with military officials because the bulk of firefighters were either soldiers or former soldiers. In many instances, the boundary between the military and urban activists was never that clear. Yet, the presence of the military in civil society is conceptually awkward because, at its root, civil society is intended to provide citizens with the flexibility and pluralism that is rarely associated with military discipline. But one cannot ignore the role of the military as civilian participants in fire departments were infected by the militaristic values they encountered, and, as demonstrated in the visual chapter at the end of this book, they continued to interact with military structures and values until the revolution in 1917. In this case, the militarism was more administrative than physical or belligerent since the firefighters were not armed or engaged in conflict. Despite the militaristic undertones to this portion of the public sphere, citizens were establishing a sphere of independence. While Hegel did not focus on the role of the military in his civil society, the dialectic process of interaction between the state and the individual is mirrored in activities of citizens who were drawn into discussions with an arm of the central state. Selecting a verb to describe the entry of urban residents into the public sphere is always problematic. The last sentence of the paragraph above indicates a shade of reluctance as the verb phrase “drawn into” does not indicate a determined willingness. This linguistic issue is directly tied to the contrast between performing a duty and volunteering. Whereas, towards the end of the century, the structure of volunteer associations was such that people could choose to join for any number of reasons, the discussions in this chapter are premised on the idea that urban citizens had a duty to help reduce the financial, psychological, and spiritual loss due to fires. In assessing the reform, at least one commentator suggested that the proposal was nothing new since, even in the time of Ivan III in the fifteenth century, edicts were passed that made this type of activity a duty.1 Many residents even felt they were being forced to participate and therefore rejected

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the ministry’s proposal. If there is this element of coercion, can one still consider the widespread discussions as occurring within even the loosest definitions of civil society? A purist would certainly object to their inclusion but, as Herbert Lussier has indicated in the case of France, instances of pure voluntarism are rare as there is often some form of social pressure being exerted.2 Moreover, the researcher has to distinguish between the people who fought the fires and the people who administered the fire departments. Many cities, in contrast to the original ­Ostashkov model, rejected citizen-firefighters and decided to keep soldiers or paid firefighters. There is no more reason to include a paid firefighter in the ranks of civil society than there is to include a butcher simply because he cuts meat: exercising a professional obligation does not secure entry into civil society. The situation of those who administered the fire departments was, however, different. The circumstances had changed radically because citizens were called upon to discuss important issues and, even if the reader chooses to disparage the extent of their commitment, the choices made in the early 1860s were instrumental in fuelling debates until the end of the imperial era: city councillors and homeowners were learning to debate the laws of the empire. It is no surprise that, when the governor of Kazan clashed with city council over control of the fire department in the early 1880s, both sides based their arguments on what had happened in the time period of concern here. This is not to say that urban residents were sowing the seeds for future opposition, but they were laying the ground for continual debates between shifting layers of authority. Therefore, despite what might be considered remnants of a classic form of duty within an authoritarian state, the issues that evolved from the reform and the matters that confronted residents went well beyond the parameters of duty per se. What follows then is not a triumphant story of zealous city officials who felt liberated from statist chains but, rather, a modest story full of stops and starts as urban officials adjusted to the reform. Some cities actively followed an independent path, whereas others let things slide and state officials had to intervene to keep the fire department in good order. In almost all cases, cities continued to burn. This might suggest that residents were still struggling to develop a civic consciousness, but it is unwise to draw a strict equation between performance and the willingness of residents to take charge of matters. In many cases, fires continued to destroy cities

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despite extensive efforts at the local level. Most important, however, the continual conflagrations guaranteed that the issue would be discussed at all levels, and it is these discussions that provide insights into the habits and political attitudes of urban officials adjusting to a new era of urban growth. The transformation of fire departments began almost immediately after the Ministry of Internal Affairs put forth its plan for municipal fire departments, but the transition took years and never really achieved an equilibrium. Cutting the umbilical cord was no easy matter, and the emergence of public fire departments had a number of phases. In the early 1860s, all urban residents across the empire were invited to express their opinions. The variety of views indicated how the bureaucratic thinking of the central authorities, which imagined that one model could easily be applied to all the diverse cities of the empire, was insufficient as each city returned with its own modification of the original proposal. These diverse responses endangered the attempt to systematize fire departments, but other problems soon made the central ministries question their original decision. As political tensions grew in St Petersburg, the state began to rethink the reforms and, in what can be considered the second phase of this story, placed a renewed emphasis on police participation. The Ministry of Internal Affairs never made a systematic effort to repeal the reform, but the inconsistency of its actions spurred further discussions at the urban level. Significantly, all these discussions came before the introduction of the Municipal Statute of 1870 and, thus, provide a means to measure urban activity before the supposed emancipation of Russian cities. After 1870, the analysis enters a new period. The Municipal Statute gave cities official control over fire departments and other urban services. This did not, however, stop the endless string of debates over control of this particular urban service. When we look at the decade immediately after the Municipal Statute became effective, we see that the discussion highlights some of the continuing problems with urban self-administration. This relationship is critical to understanding the degree to which urban officials accepted state interference. While interaction between these two spheres was often clouded by tension, more often than not cooperation and compromise overshadowed the diverging interests of two groups of authority that are normally construed as antagonistic.3 Finally, to evaluate more practical concerns, the last section of chapter 2 looks at the

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specific measures cities took to fight and prevent fires in their respective jurisdictions.

the locals in the public sphere: discussing the future of fire departments In scores of cities, citizens discussed the actual details of the reform of the fire department. In Nizhnii Novgorod, a city of about fifty thousand people, town officials circulated a pamphlet to all homeowners, urging them to participate in the public discussions. It stated that “in all the cities of the Russian Empire” committees were being formed to discuss the creation of public fire departments. The meetings were open “to all residents of Nizhnii Novgorod without exception,” and those present had the “right to tell the committee their opinion” about the creation of a public fire department. Even the meetings of the local editing commission for this reform were open to the public because, in a matter of such public importance, “chancellery secrets … had no place.”4 Since everyone was invited to these meetings, they provide some initial clues to the power dynamics in urban Russia in the 1860s. In most cities, the discussions revolved around a few central issues. As we have seen in the last chapter, not all cities welcomed the idea of public participation in the fire department. Many cities wanted self-administration in the fire department but preferred hired firefighters to local participants. The numerous requests that dismissed the need for police involvement in the fire department highlighted the relationship between local officials and the police. In the pages that follow, a few general examples will be presented to establish the context of the reform before turning to Kazan for a more detailed analysis of the reformers’ discussions. Initially, many governors reported that no cities in their provinces had decided to create a public fire department.5 The early problems stemmed from a reluctance to organize the fire department strictly according to the model of Ostashkov. For instance, in Nizhnii Novgorod the committee that had been organized to oversee the transformation of the fire department rejected the possibility of using inexperienced residents. The governor’s report claimed that, because the city was spread over such a large area and because many of the city’s inhabitants were involved with trade “in different parts of the city,” prompt arrival at the scene of a fire was

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i­mpossible.6 In Samara, at a meeting attended by 177 homeowners, the Ostashkov model was rejected for similar reasons.7 In the province of Vologda not one city wanted to establish a public fire department.8 The governor told the cities to rethink their decision, but even this brought limited change. In 1863, the governor wrote the Ministry of Internal Affairs that the city council of the provincial capital had decided to keep the original “military fire department.”9 The fact that many of the discussions held in smaller cities were similar is further evidence of the hesitancy of local officials to take control of their fire departments. The discouraging response might also prompt the reader to question local attitudes towards self-administration. If the population of Samara was in the tens of thousands and only 177 residents attended the meeting, are claims about a growing public consciousness exaggerated? Evidence from later years, when it became increasingly difficult for the city to find volunteers to fill administrative gaps, could also be used to highlight shortcomings in the public consciousness. But the low numbers and the trickle of volunteers have to be put in perspective. Quantitatively, participation in the public fire departments was neither better nor worse than in city councils, which regularly failed to meet quorum despite the introduction of the municipal statute. Towards the end of the century, cities across the empire suffered from low turnouts at the polls and just as low turnouts in town hall on the part of those who had been elected.10 Yet, the change with the reform of fire departments was qualitative rather than quantitative. The debates surrounding the introduction of public fire departments are not interesting because they provide the historian with an absolute number of participants but, rather, because they indicate the views of those who chose to participate. And many of the most active citizens spent an enormous amount of energy negotiating their relationship with authorities. In a comparative perspective, the reluctance of urban residents to offer their time should not immediately be seen as an instance of Russian backwardness just because citizens were unwilling to take control of their own affairs. In England, at approximately the same time, municipal councils refused to accept responsibility for the fire department.11 Operating a fire department was an expensive and time-consuming exercise. Rather, these signs of reluctance demonstrated the extent to which a reform of the fire department could significantly alter the administration of municipal affairs. Although

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the costs were prohibitive for smaller cities, larger cities (such as Kazan, Nizhnii Novgorod, and Tver) seized the opportunity for more municipal self-administration. Of course, the Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to abide by the decisions of the recalcitrant cities as it rejected any suggestion that maintained the status quo. Instead of imposing a final decision, however, it encouraged these cities to meet again. Most cities did reconsider the issue and decided to use the hired firefighters (which negated the ministry’s initial intention to save money and highlights its lack of interest in local affairs). In many of these discussions, one witnesses a willingness on the part of homeowners to discuss the issue but not to participate in the activity itself. In his discussions on civil society, Hegel was concerned that individual and private interests in the modernizing world would overwhelm and isolate society. He referred to individuals as the particulars in contrast to the universal, which was embodied by the state. Hegel did not want to eliminate the individualism of the home­owner (in this case) but reckoned that the state had to act as a mediator to draw the individual into the public sphere: “Although particularity and universality have become separated in civil society, they are nevertheless bound up with and conditioned by each other.”12 The universal should not be confused with the well-ordered state, which administers almost all essential services for the people; rather, the state is to ensure that people remain active within the public sphere. Hegel wrote of “oversight” rather than of the state’s performing every function.13 Thus, in those moments when the state had to tug at the homeowners of different estates, this can be considered a modified form of the Hegelian system. The state had to prompt these urban residents to administer a service they had not previously controlled.14 The second round of discussions required more strategy from urban activists. The additional costs of hired firefighters forced municipal councils to juggle their already stretched budgets. In the city of Ustiug, the city council decided to avoid using city resources and instituted a voluntary tax on homeowners to support the fire department. When it became clear that a small percentage of homeowners was paying for a service that benefited everyone, the city council decided to make the contribution obligatory.15 In Vitebsk, a city on the western periphery of the empire, the city council prepared extensive budget adjustments to guarantee the operation of the fire

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department. Because a fire department that included paid firefighters cost almost double what it had before the reform, other budget items had to be sacrificed.16 The city proposed to save three hundred roubles by reducing street lighting where there was only limited need or by saving on the sanitation budget by having convicts clean the streets in front of city buildings.17 Although the difficulties presented by the unexpected expenses suggested the cities were struggling to cope with the ministry’s demands, the former could invoke stipulations of their own. The most common concern in all the municipal plans was the definition of the relationship between the police and the new model fire department. The original circular had emphasized complete independence between the two spheres of authority, but both city officials and local police chiefs discussed the ramifications of this change in their own cities. In 1862, the Tver city council had approached the provincial administrative board (gubernskoe upravlenie) about problems that had arisen with the local police chief, who wanted the fire department subordinated to his authority.18 Deciding in favour of the city council, the provincial administration ascertained that the police chief had no right to run the fire department. It recognized that, “as representatives of urban society,” the members of the city council knew “much better than the police” which urban residents were best able to fulfill the duties of the firefighters.19 It cited the example of nearby Ostashkov, where the police did not involve themselves in the internal operation of the fire department and restricted themselves to maintaining order at fires.20 They concluded that the new public fire departments in the province should be “freed of any meddling [vmeshatel’stvo] … from the police.”21 The fire committees (pozharnye komitety) established to oversee the transfer from police control to public control were emphatic on this point. They had been introduced, with the reform statute, to provide local officials with a regular forum for discussing issues of relevance. Until the city executive council (uprava) took over the responsibilities of the fire committees in 1870, these committees had wide-ranging public duties. With elected representatives from the homeowners of every estate, the fire committees had regular contact with army officials, the local police, and the governor. At a policy level, they all agreed to limit the role of the police in firefighting. In Samara, the fire committee requested that all equipment, all firefighters, and every administrative aspect of the department rest in

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its hands. The role of the police was limited to keeping order at the scene of a fire.22 In Vitebsk, the reaction was equally pronounced. The fire committee paraphrased the ministry’s original circular from June 1860 and stated that it was “not subordinate to any administrative institution.”23 In Kazan, the fire committee (Kazanskii pozharnyi komitet) was established in 1863 when the city still had a six-headed municipal council, one that was divided into six separate categories according to estate, property, and occupation.24 In other words, this was a time when the municipal administration was under the direct authority of the tsarist provincial administration. Until the introduction of the Municipal Statute in 1870, the fire committee was one of the few organs of the municipal administration that operated independently of the police. Thereafter, and until 1870, it met twice a week and ensured that firefighting and fire prevention in Kazan operated according to the wishes that had been expressed in the public discussions. An elected public committee was not entirely novel. In the early 1860s, public libraries and charitable associations elected their representatives as well. These organizations had statutes that regulated participation but that allowed and even encouraged a forum for discussion.25 They are therefore considered as key elements in the development of a civic consciousness in Imperial Russia.26 The fire committees must be seen in the context of these organizations for they represented the greater interests of the public. In so far as it had the broader task of protecting the whole city from fires, the fire committee’s mandate differed from that of a philanthropic organization, which held that the wealthy should care for the poor. Although the fire committees were an all-estate organization, they were dominated by homeowners. This is an important category because, in any given city, as much as half the population were home­owners.27 The ability of the fire committees to transcend estate boundaries appears to lend credence to Daniel Brower’s claim that “the estates may not be a meaningful way to describe the social identity of the urban population.”28 His work shifts the emphasis from official state categories to the social realities evidenced in the urban centres themselves. In Brower’s migrant cities, where groups were continually in motion, official state categories offer an insufficient explanation of social hierarchies. The above discussions of fire departments brought all these varied urban groups together, but merchants, nobles, and meshchane

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(lower middle class) were well aware of their estate identities. Home­ownership (or property) united the interests of a broader social group than did classification by estate, yet estate differences remained. In Vitebsk, the fire committee was composed of homeowners, but each position on the committee was assigned according to estate.29 In Kazan, estate differences were a major concern.30 One of the sectional committees called to discuss the issue argued that, for the meshchane, participation in the fire department represented an enormous burden.31 Another section of the city, home to more peasants, meshchane, and merchants, asserted that firefighting was below a wealthy peasant or merchant and that, therefore, these residents would be inappropriate firefighters.32 Estate differences were not the only problem discussed in Kazan. The geographical expanse of the city was presented as an obstacle to a public fire department staffed with urban residents as, if they were spread across the city, public firefighters would not be able to assemble in time.33 Concerned citizens added that firefighters could hardly be effective if they lived at home. One section of this city was more open to having an elected public fire department with paid firefighters billeted at the barracks (kazarmy) in the section of Kazan in which they served.34 In support of this idea, another section recognized that barracks for the firefighters already existed next to the buildings of the regular police.35 The sectional committees thus rejected the idea of a truly public fire department (in the sense of having unpaid residents act as firefighters), but they wanted a publicly administered fire department with paid firefighters who lived in the existing barracks. Therefore, when the public fire department began operating, this decision placed the city-run firefighters in the police chief’s backyard. Already in 1866, the governor of Kazan recognized that problems could arise if the newly hired firefighters lived on the same premises as the police. Indeed, the fire chief was meant to have his apartment in one of the buildings that the police occupied.36 Owing to a lack of space, however, the fire chief stayed in his own apartment not far from the grounds of the police.37 Traditionally, the rank-and-file members of the police were lodged together with the rank-and-file members of the fire department. Governor N. Ia. Skariatin (1866– 80) informed the city council that, with the fire department now under the orders of the fire committee and its fire chief, one could

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expect conflicts between the two spheres of authority, not only between the lower ranks but also between “the commanders.”38 Most of these sectional committees in Kazan raised the problem of transforming the current police fire department into the new model public fire department. The fourth section wrote that the only way to fulfill the requirements of the reform was through gradual change. The committee suggested that the soldiers of the fire department should serve until they were released from the army. The suggested transition period, which also included additional time to consider the implementation of a new water supply system, would allow the city to prepare itself for a “radical transformation of the fire department.”39 At the end of the transition period, the police chief was supposed to transfer control of the fire department to the city. The general consensus demonstrated an inherent trust in the police chief’s ability to act as commander of the fire department until the city was ready for the transfer. The sectional committees recognized that the police chief, Baron Vitte, had successfully commanded the fire department while it was in his hands and, thus, decided to wait until they had selected their own officials before finalizing the takeover. In anticipation of the transition, in the summer of 1863 the fire committee presented its proposal to city council for the new fire department. Instead of using state officials to staff the fire department, it suggested selecting one fire chief and five assistants from among the city’s homeowners.40 However, by the end of the year, no one had stepped forward to accept the position of fire chief; thus, ultimate responsibility for the fire department remained in the hands of the police, contrary to the wishes of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But this was only temporary for, on 28 October 1866, the state approved the fire committee’s rules and the police chief handed control of the fire department over to the fire committee.41 The acceptance of a transition period had an important side effect. Since soldiers were not replaced immediately, this meant that city officials had limited control over them. As long as these soldiers remained in the fire department, they were subject to the direct orders of the standing fire committee. This fact is even more extraordinary if one considers that homeowners elected the fire committee. Thus, until the mid-1870s, when almost all soldiers had left the fire department, municipal officials accustomed themselves

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to ­commanding a small number of soldiers and to having regular contact with the army regarding the status of its soldiers. In 1866, a document entitled Regulations of the Kazan Fire Committee (Pravila kazanskago pozharnago komiteta) expressed the full extent of the fire committee’s responsibilities.42 Article 9 gave every member of the fire committee the right to inspect the firefighters and equipment at any time. Members could exercise individual sections at their own discretion as long as they informed the sectional fire chief of their intentions. Article 9 had crucial ramifications for the development of firefighting because it allowed city officials to flaunt their authority in front of the police. Previously, the well-ordered police trained the uniformed soldiers in a military fashion. With the city in control, municipal officials in Kazan could parade up to 170 uniformed firefighters from their barracks next to police headquarters into the city streets, as they did when conflict erupted in the early 1880s. Not just in Kazan but throughout the empire, the police and city authorities clashed over this prerogative. Once in control, the fire committee appointed a fire chief with military rank. The first fire chief of the Kazan public fire department was Rotmistr Nikolai Ivanovich Butlerov, an original member of the fire committee.43 Butlerov’s tenure was notable for an event that occurred before he was even elected. According to a report of the fire committee in March 1866, the police chief had insulted and arrested Butlerov because he had interfered with putting out a fire. The fire committee wrote that the decision of the police chief was “out of place” because Butlerov, in attending the fire, was fulfilling the duty that the homeowners of Kazan had entrusted to him. Further, the committee asserted that, until it had found an official fire chief, the police chief was to administer “the fire equipment according to the decisions of the fire committee.” 44 Finally, so that “other members” of the committee did not meet with “similar obstacles in fulfilling their duties,” the committee asked the governor to pay attention to this incident. In essence, the fire committee was appealing to one state authority (the governor) to chastise another state authority (the police chief). The clash between Butlerov and the police chief, so shortly after the fire committee began operation, gave a clear indication of the potential for conflict. This incident, however, was peacefully resolved in June 1867 when the governor of Kazan, Skariatin, recommended the dismissal of Butlerov (who, in the interim, had been named fire

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chief).45 Butlerov’s dismissal, however, should not be misconstrued as a victory for the police chief since Butlerov was already in legal trouble for mishandling his peasants in nearby Chistopol.46 On the contrary, Skariatin continually defended the interests of the fire department and ensured its independence from the police. The fire committee replaced Butlerov with Shtab-Rotmistr A. E. fon-Gel’man, another appointee with military rank. The use of military officials as fire chiefs was not limited to Kazan. In Nizhnii Novgorod, the fire committee stated that it wanted its fire chiefs to come predominantly from retired military officers.47 Using men with military experience in civilian posts was not unusual.48 ­Fon-Gel’man inherited a team of 248 firefighters, of which at least 165 came from the military because, by 1867, the fire department had only sixty hired firefighters.49 By 1870, the number of soldiers in the fire department shrank to 122, and the number of full-time paid firefighters rose to eighty-nine.50 The current discussion reflects notions of a Hegelian civil society – that is, a dialectical relationship between a robust state and the particular interests of society. From another perspective, the presence of fon-Gel’man and Butlerov can be associated with Adam Ferguson’s late eighteenth-century notion of civil society. Ferguson emphasized the role of military values in a public sphere characterized by a strong civil society. In a general sense, Ferguson argued that, “without the rivalship [sic] of nations, and the practice of war, civil society itself could scarcely have found an object, or a form.” It was this aggressive attitude towards the outside world that strengthened “the bands of society at home.”51 Of course, Ferguson was not considering the interaction of state and society, but his thoughts indicate how a highly influential theorist could argue that military values had to be taken seriously within the framework of a progressive, enlightened society. Ferguson’s thoughts can help to reconcile the presence of a statist military with the development of a civic consciousness – positions that are often at odds with one another. In addition to selecting the fire chief, the fire committee was responsible for hiring his assistants and for finding firefighters. It placed advertisements in the official provincial newspaper, the Kazanskie gubernskie vedomosti (Kazan provincial news), to announce publicly that positions were available. In July 1866, the fire committee was looking for residents to assist the understaffed fire department. In a letter addressed to the “inhabitants of Kazan,” it asked the city’s

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artisans and tradespeople to help put out fires. The fire committee had observed that crowds regularly gathered to gape whenever a fire broke out. Instead of standing around at fires, it wanted residents to come to the aid of the fire department. The fire committee, with the support of the city council, wanted to enlist helpers and reward them with a small fee for their troubles.52 In another advertisement placed one month later, the committee announced that it was looking for an assistant fire chief.53 Members of the fire committee could be seen at fires, and, as prescribed by the regulations, they exercised the fire department during “false alarms.” A false alarm, used to test the reaction speed of the firefighters, involved preparing the horses and the equipment for a sortie from the fire station. On a given signal, the whole team would charge out of the fire station. The fire committee, however, did not have a unique right to exercise the fire department, and even the governor became involved with “surprise” (vnezapnye) alarms. In 1868, the fire committee reported that the fire department had been exercised to everyone’s satisfaction, including the governor’s.54 The exercising of the fire department allowed city officials to take their authority to the streets. Urban space was not just the buildings and architecture that represented homes and institutions but also the streets, where the city’s inhabitants, rich and poor, came into contact.55 In the early 1860s, the fire carriages were perhaps the fastest thing to be seen on the city streets, and city fathers could use the visibility of the fire department to express their authority in town. Although there are no available descriptions of these exercises for the early reform period, they did draw the attention of the Russian press towards the end of the century, and, as we will see, the exercising of the fire department became a source of conflict in many cities. The history of the fire department remained linked with the army, and the fire committee had regular contacts with the military. The military had a legal obligation to inspect its soldiers in both the fire and police departments once every year.56 From the municipal perspective, this transformed part of the fire committee’s civil obligation into a military exercise. For the military, however, this was an unnecessary burden. Therefore, in 1867, the Ministry of War petitioned the State Council to change the existing law. The State ­Council decided that, with the exception of St Petersburg, Moscow, and Warsaw, inspections were only necessary if a complaint had

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been issued; in these cases, the military had the right to inspect the lodgings and supplies of the soldiers.57 The law indicated how eager the military was to remove its presence from the fire department. At the same time, it unintentionally broadened the responsibilities of the fire committee. Though the military did not want to perform yearly inspections, it was occasionally interested in the individual performance and condition of the soldiers it had lent to the fire committee. In one incident, the head of the Kazan Military District had inspected the soldiers in the fire department and discovered that they did not have proper gloves. On behalf of the military, the governor asked the fire committee to supply the gloves, a request that was promptly fulfilled.58 At other times, the military had direct contact with either the fire committee or the fire chief. In 1869, a member of the military wrote the fire chief requesting the return of a soldier who was needed for other duties. In this case, the fire chief passed the letter on to the fire committee, which refused the request.59 The regular contact between the military and the fire committee is confirmed by their frequent correspondence.60 Not all of the fire committee’s tasks were related to military matters as it was also accountable for the financial security of the fire department. Every year the city council assigned the fire department a specified amount of money. In 1867, the fire committee received almost twenty-five thousand roubles from the city (typically, the city spent about 5 to 10 percent of its budget on the fire department).61 The Ministry of Internal Affairs occasionally supplemented these funds with grants from the insurance fund, and, in 1867, the fire committee received forty thousand roubles to purchase proper equipment.62 This was a one-time grant, however, so there is no reason to believe that the Ministry of Internal Affairs could use its financial support as a lever to influence the committee’s decisions.

evaluating the success of the reform In all the above matters, the fire committee operated without any external interference. Throughout the initial phases of the reform, the state remained aloof and permitted local authorities to address and solve their own problems. Only years later did the state check on the progress being made in urban areas. In April 1867, the Ministry of Internal Affairs sent out a circular to all governors in an effort

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to determine how the reform was progressing and what changes might be necessary.63 The answers, which arrived from almost every province, provided a broad view of the progress that had been made. The governor of Poltava wrote that, in one of the cities in his province, the city council had, in an effort to save money, sold all the fire department’s horses and distributed all the equipment to individuals who were responsible for storing it in their own homes.64 When a fire broke out, none of the homeowners showed up with the equipment. The fire was only quelled because of the calm weather and the help of soldiers in a nearby garrison. This governor concluded that the fire department should remain under the auspices of the state administration.65 In the city of Penza, the governor reported that the homeowners had not even chosen members for its fire committee.66 Other reports were less negative. The governor of Chernigov wrote that, in the larger cities of his province, the fire committees ensured that the fire departments were in the best possible condition, but not all cities had formed public fire departments.67 The governor of Arkhangel’sk supported the public fire departments but worried that residents did not have the necessary skills for the job. In Arkhangel’sk, the city had organized a core cadre of thirty paid professionals, who were helped by one hundred local residents.68 Outside the provincial capital, however, all the fire departments were different. Skariatin related that, in Kazan, the public fire departments operated satisfactorily. In the city of Kazan, the fire department was “successfully putting out” urban fires, and the fire committee was busy looking for solutions to increase the number of firefighters in the city.69 The most detailed description of the public fire departments came from Saratov. Although the city of Saratov had retained its policerun fire department, the governor was worried about the relationship between the police and the fire department in other towns of the province. He agreed that cities should manage the fire department, but because the fire chief was responsible for the “safety of the city,” his responsibilities with respect to firefighting needed to be more clearly defined. The governor wanted the police to ensure that the fire department was well trained and that, at the scene of a fire, the police had absolute command over it. The governor was also aware of the political ramifications of the public fire departments. He noted

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that, with the election of a new mayor, the relationship between the police chief and the city council could change drastically. 70 The governors’ responses defy generalization. Not only did each governor report different levels of success with the implementation of the public fire departments but every city had a different kind of fire department. Some smaller cities used local residents who received a small compensation for their services; other cities made firefighting a civic duty; larger cities (like Kazan) had a fire committee to oversee paid professionals; and, in Saratov, for reasons unknown, the status quo ante had been preserved and the police chief was in control of the fire department. Surveying this institutional diversity, one historian of the Russian fire department asserted that the Ministry of Internal Affairs, due to its inability to regulate the situation, had “given full range for arbitrariness.”71 At the beginning of the twentieth century another activist wrote that “two neighbouring cities could have absolutely identical fire conditions, yet have totally different fire departments [protivopozharnye organizatsii].”72 Though the Russian city was defined in statutes and regulations that prescribed a well-ordered urban space, there seemed to be no method with regard to how the empire’s fire departments were organized. In an era when city planners in western Europe were trying to bring order to urban space and to regulate future growth, the fire department offers a different perspective on urban harmony.73 The numerous variants in the structure of fire departments suggest that the urban landscape was more varied than the statutes and laws suggest. Daniel Brower correctly argues that conceptualizing the Russian city in terms of tsarist codes gives “voice to a statist view of urbanism,” but even this somewhat over-emphasizes the order contained within the statutes themselves.74 The statutes were not entirely consistent. They were vague, at times contradictory, and gave all those they affected a broad range of possibilities for action. Furthermore, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was not overly interested in establishing uniform fire departments within the empire. The ministry let locals solve their own problems since it had other, more pressing, concerns. For example, in 1868, the governor of Nizhnii Novgorod petitioned the ministry to keep soldiers in the fire department in the capital of his province because the locally hired hands were ineffective.75 The minister of internal affairs at the time, General Aleksandr Egorovich Timashev (1868–78), responded that

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the soldiers must be replaced with hired hands. Despite his ignorance of the situation, he stressed that hired hands were working much better in urban public fire departments than the soldiers ever had.76 This was the response of a career military man, who was more concerned with removing soldiers from the fire departments than he was with their performance.77 As a result, residents had to solve their own problems. While the governors had been drafting their responses to the reform of the fire departments, the political climate in the Russian Empire was changing. With the relaxation of censorship and the growing fora for public expression, radicals challenged the reformist mood, upsetting the smooth flow of government. In 1862, a series of suspected arson fires broke out in St Petersburg; in 1863, there was an uprising in Poland; and, in April 1866, Dmitrii ­Karakozov attempted to assassinate the tsar. P.A. Valuev, the minister of internal affairs and a strong proponent of governmental authority, feared that these challenges to authority indicated that the government was losing control.78 To fight the growing unrest, Valuev committed himself to strengthening the position of the government and to “reasserting administrative and police authority” in the lives of the tsar’s subjects.79 Valuev’s successor, Timashev, supported those aspects of Valuev’s policy that upheld autocracy and the primary role of the police in the administrative life of the empire.80 These ministers attempted to reverse the tide that had brought self-administration to many of Russia’s regions. In the words of S. Frederick Starr, “by the late 1860s the anticentralist fervour of the post-Crimean years had cooled considerably.”81 Urban fire departments felt this change as well. In spite of the ministry’s lack of interest in the fire department, it attempted to reassert police authority. It did so with a poorly thought out compromise solution designed both to alleviate the type of problems reported by the governor of Saratov and to increase the police presence in municipal affairs. For, at this time, officials in St Petersburg were drawing up plans for sweeping urban reform, and they continued to debate the role of the police.82 The questions reformers posed dealt with the extent to which police authority should be separated from the authority of city government. More conservative reformers wanted the police and city officials to agree on “which enactments would be obligatory for city inhabitants,” thus blurring the

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distinction between the legislative authority of the city council and the executive authority of the police. Liberal reformers, on the other hand, wanted to establish “a police power that would respond to, not dominate, elected institutions of local government.”83 In terms of firefighting, the decision of the ministry fell somewhere between conservative and liberal demands. After the government had presumably reviewed the governors’ responses, the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a circular to address the conflicts that had arisen between the police and local authorities. The circular, issued on 27 March 1868, stated that, “during fires [vo vremia pozharov], fire departments, composed of citizens [grazhdan] … must be under the complete command of the local police” on a level with fire departments composed of soldiers.84 This new regulation reduced the scope of the fire committee’s activities, but it was not a systematic attempt to interfere in the operation of public fire departments.85 The government’s interest in the public fire department was merely part of the conservative shift in policy that was taking place in St Petersburg. As with many orders that came from St Petersburg, this circular was not entirely clear. It recognized that almost all cities in the Russian Empire had public fire departments staffed by citizens or paid firefighters, but it seemed to be unaware that most fire departments operated with a mixture of paid professionals and soldiers, all of whom were under the command of the fire committee. When the circular referred to the police commanding soldier-firefighters, its authors were no doubt thinking of the fire departments in St Petersburg and Moscow, where the police were in charge. The centre’s ignorance of local conditions was even more in evidence when the Department of Police (a division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) ruled that the fire department in Astrakhan was under the jurisdiction of the police. In fact, it had been a public fire department for years.86 Unfortunately, this had negative consequences for Astrakhan’s fire department for it appears that control of the latter was subsequently transferred back to the police. A decade after the reform had been introduced the governor of Astrakhan complained that residents had little protection from fire even though the fire department was now in the hands of the police. In his province, fire-related losses increased dramatically from the 1860s to the 1870s; in 1875 and 1877, cities experienced an almost fivefold increase over the previous year in the annual financial loss

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due to fires.87 In the summer of 1875, on the heels of two major fires, the governor of the province wrote the Ministry of Internal Affairs and noted that the means to fight fires were “insufficient.”88 There was not enough cooperation between residents and the police who ran the fire department. The governor recommended the creation of a pseudo-volunteer force of local individuals that would operate under the auspices of the city.89 The volunteer force operated from about 1875 until 1881, when it disbanded for unknown reasons.90 There is, however, no statistical evidence that these volunteers made an effective difference, since 1876, 1877, and 1880 saw devastating losses in the cities of the province. In fact, the city of Astrakhan saw the situation improve after 1881, when losses due to fire slightly decreased.91 Despite an effort to reassert police authority, this round of state intervention had its limits, and it did not fundamentally affect the independence of the fire department. First, the circular only stipulated new police powers during fires. Since the fire department was rarely on active duty, the fire committee had control at all other times. Whereas the governor of Saratov wanted the city administration to manage the fire department (i.e., to fund it and provide supplies) and the police to operate it (i.e., to exercise it and take control at fires), the circular limited police activity to emergencies. In this case, the state was not acting against local independence so much as it was trying to regulate command at the scene of a fire. Furthermore, as much as the state may have wanted to extend the powers of the police, it was limited by its ability to place an added burden on urban Russia’s already understaffed police forces.92 Never­ theless, throughout the 1870s, the police reasserted their presence in many cities. In Kazan, the fire committee accepted the circular and, in its annual report, wrote that command of the fire department was to rest in the hands of the fire chief until the fire was being extinguished (do pozharotusheniia), after which time the police chief was to take charge. The circular prevented members of the civil administration from interfering at fires, but it placed command of the fire department in the hands of the wrong official. No report suggested that the circular brought improvements, and the reassertion of police command created a sphere of dual authority within the administration of the fire department that continued to hamper its effectiveness.

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The performance of the fire departments and the fire committees is extremely difficult to determine. In general, local newspapers rarely provided more than a few lines about any but the biggest fires, and most individual reports tended to have their biases. The following discussion paints a general picture, with statistics compiled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and then provides a comparative analysis that looks at reports from the governor, the police, and the fire committee in order to establish a framework for understanding the effectiveness of the Kazan fire department. In line with most modern states of the nineteenth century, the Imperial ministries gathered massive amounts of statistics in order to keep track of its citizens and monitor the health of the realm. Fire statistics did not relate to individuals in the same way as did health statistics, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs monitored the number, the reasons, and the seasonal distribution of fires. The ministry wanted to know, for example, if it was the alleged carelessness of the Russian peasant or arson that was the bigger threat. In taking a closer look at these statistical trends, one should note that there is no direct correlation between the performance of a fire department and the number of fires since a homeowner’s lax attitude to fire prevention could negate all of a fire department’s efforts. Examined at a general level, the statistics do give an indirect indication of the atmosphere within which these fire departments worked. Moreover, the numbers do indicate that even the best efforts of municipal officials could not prevent disconcerting statistical trends. The Ministry of Internal Affairs published statistics for each guber­niia (province) from the 1860s onward. Although the number of fires could fluctuate from year to year, the general trend was upwards. For example, in the 1860s, cities in the province of Astrakhan suffered a total of 191 fires, costing almost 600,000 roubles; in the 1870s, 304 fires cost the province 2,024,071 roubles. The number of buildings that burned during each fire increased from 1.58 to 2.24, suggesting that fire departments could not prevent the flames from spreading.93 In the province of Kiev, there were 728 urban fires, costing 2,112,826 roubles in the 1860s, and 1,027 fires, costing 3,558,687 roubles, in the 1870s – a dramatic increase in the amount of damage per fire. There was, however, a slight decrease in the number of buildings affected by each fire.94 The urban statistics from the province of Kazan were no less discouraging since the

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number of fires almost doubled from one decade to the next. In the 1860s, there were 280 urban fires, whereas in the 1870s the number swelled to 549.95 The fluctuations from year to year do not correlate with the type of fire department. In the early 1860s, the numbers were neither higher nor lower than in the early 1870s, when the public fire department was in full operation. Perhaps the most interesting statistics in this regard come from the city of Kazan in the early 1880s, when the number of fires actually decreased for a while.96 Drawing a conclusion here is extremely difficult because this period corresponds to a time when control of the fire department lay half way between the state and the city. Finally, the statistics also reveal the devastating potential of fires. In 1878, cities in the province of Orenburg lost approximately 122,000 roubles to fire damage. In 1879, the year of the great fire, the amount swelled to over 14 million roubles before dropping the next year to about eleven thousand, when there was nothing left to burn!97 Of course, state-wide statistics are not the only way to consider the issue as local officials voiced their own opinions. In Kazan, ­Governor Skariatin, who had had a positive view of the fire department when it was in the hands of the police, continued to support the public fire department.98 In 1869, he wrote in his yearly report that the fire department was in proper condition.99 The governor, a regular attendee at fires, gave the fire department compliments and recommended awards. After one inspection, the satisfied governor wrote the fire committee that “in all respects” the fire department was in excellent condition and that he wanted to “express his gratitude” to the fire committee for its work.100 Even if the governor just wanted to use bold phrases to exaggerate the image of his province to officials in St Petersburg, his reaction suggested there was a proper working relationship between himself and city officials. While Skariatin complimented the fire department for its efforts, he also criticized the police department for its performance at fires. In a letter sent to the police chief in 1874, Skariatin wrote that, at fires, he had noticed that the police “do not pay sufficient attention to order” and that they must ensure that “the public” does not interfere with the work of the fire department. Apparently, members of the public had been giving orders of their own. Skariatin asked the police chief to instruct his men to maintain proper order at fires so that the firefighters could do their work.101

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In its surprisingly short list of yearly fires, the Kazan fire committee reported that the fire department was quick to arrive at fires and effectively extinguished the flames. After having witnessed its activity, an insurance agent, who had his own interests in the performance of the fire department, thanked the committee for maintaining such an excellent fire department. As the fire committee reported, the insurance agent wrote that, “day and night” and in any weather, the fire department “always arrived quickly at the fire.”102 In another report emphasizing cooperation among the authorities, the fire committee wrote that the police were instrumental in ensuring that residents understood the dangers of fire.103 The fire committee reported deficiencies as well, as when it recognized that, in some instances, the fire department could do nothing to prevent a building from burning.104 Lyn H. Lofland, in her work on the public realm in the urban environment, has challenged the “conventional wisdom … that much or all public realm activity was thoroughly asocial.” Instead, she suggests, “a goodly portion of urban public space activity consists of humans responding ‘immediately’ and apparently ‘unreflectively’ to others’ bodily movements and expressions.” 105 The urban public realm allowed apparent strangers to meet and gain an awareness of each other’s presence. In Kazan of the 1860s, the fire department had a significant urban presence, and firefighters were certain to be seen by most Kazanites. For example, at a fire that involved four sections of the fire department, approximately one hundred firefighters raced through the streets from four different locations in the city.106 For the firefighters, many of whom were soldiers, going to a fire was like heading into battle. The orderly drill they knew from exercises was replaced by the urgency, uncertainty, and confusion that awaited them when they raced to a blaze. And, as indicated above, crowds assembled at the fire to watch the proceedings. The governor, the mayor, the police chief, and other city officials joined the crowds in watching the fire department do its job. In this manner, government officials integrated themselves into the lives of the city’s inhabitants. A major blaze also gave firefighters a moment to enjoy a position of power. The members of the fire department, predominantly from the lower echelons of society, gained access to houses that were otherwise off limits to them.107 If they wanted, firefighters could use their axes to destroy the property of the upper classes.108 In other

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instances, they could take advantage of these moments of urban disorder to pilfer from the wealthy.109

firefighting and the municipal statute of 1870 After approximately five successful years of operating the fire department, the fire committees in Kazan and other cities were dissolved when the state introduced the Municipal Statute in 1870. The Municipal Statute, one of the last of the Great Reforms, is considered a landmark in urban Russian history because it allowed municipalities (as a whole) a strong degree of municipal freedom from the central government. The statute defined the powers of city government, which closely resembled the powers that had been granted to the zemstvo governments in 1864. Article 5 of the statute announced that the “municipal public government, within the limits of authority granted to it, functions independently.”110 Thus, the city took over responsibility for public services, welfare, taxation, and standard economic functions.111 While the statute granted the city certain rights, municipalities had numerous obligations assigned to them. The city was responsible for maintaining streets, bridges, and other roadways, ensuring the public health and taking measures to prevent the outbreak of fires. Article 139.7 stipulated that the city had to pay the maintenance costs for “police” fire departments. The statute also addressed the role of the police and the governors, the most prominent state representatives in cities. Although the intent of the reform was to reduce state influence in municipal affairs, the police administration “retained the right to initiate legislation in the city assembly.”112 The governor ceased to have direct administrative duties in municipal government and, instead, became a “general supervisor” in urban affairs. In this manner, the administrative duties of the governor were reduced, yet this official still had a strong voice in municipal affairs. If the governor overstepped the role defined for him in the statute, municipal authorities had the right to appeal to the Senate.113 Although the statute did not entirely remove the influence of state officials from the municipal administration, it enhanced and encouraged the role of a publicly elected council with regard to controlling its own affairs. In one respect, the municipal statute had a negative impact on an independent municipal administration because the only provision touching firefighting required the dissolution of the fire committees.

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Although the fire department continued to be under the authority of the city council and was legally protected from the police, the dissolution of the fire committee was a minor step backwards rather than a step towards the development of an independent urban administration. The fire department no longer had its own elected body to represent its best interests, and its yearly reports soon stopped. This independent body was absorbed into the city’s own central administrative structure, and the city’s executive council (uprava) took over responsibility for the fire department. 114 In Kazan, the change was without incident as the fire department had worked harmoniously with the police and the governor. The police reports of fires indicated that the fire department performed as required.115 In a council meeting held in 1871, the mayor thanked Governor Skariatin for helping at a major fire and for helping to improve firefighting and fire prevention in the city.116 At other meetings, the council hired, fired, or accepted the resignations of fire chiefs and their assistants. In fact, in 1872, when the current fire chief resigned from his position, the city council considered whether it wanted to replace him or simply let the police chief, who was now in charge at the scene of a fire, take over his responsibilities. The police chief (the same official who, ten years later, would clash with Kazan’s mayor) offered to bear responsibility for ensuring discipline in the fire department not only at fires but also at all other times. The city council, which gave the proposal serious consideration, thanked the police chief for his offer but maintained that, since the position of fire chief had been established with the public fire department in 1862, the position would remain as it had previously.117 The council went ahead and searched for a new fire chief. Throughout the 1870s, the city council continued to discuss the operation of the fire department. In 1873, it awarded a pension to one of its retired fire chiefs, and, in the same year, it promoted one of its assistant fire chiefs to head the city’s fire department.118 In 1876, the mayor and an aide travelled to St Petersburg to review the purchase of new equipment for the fire department. Upon their return, they provided the city council with a detailed report that recommended the purchase of fire engines that had springs that would absorb the impact of the city’s streets. The city council had no objections and approved the new acquisition.119 In 1879, the council discussed reducing the number of firefighters (which had been fixed since 1825 when the first table was introduced) in order to save

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money. In the end, the council recognized that the fire department was too important to tamper with, and an extra tax was suggested to cover the added expenses. At the same time, the council recognized the valuable contribution of the governor, the police, and their assistants.120 In addition, council’s yearly budgets presented itemized lists of all the fire department’s financial activities. These examples are important because they demonstrate that the relationship between the different levels of authority was not necessarily controversial. While the city continued to operate the fire department on its own, it recognized that it needed the help of other urban officials, such as the governor and the police chief. This suggested a working relationship between the public sphere of the city councillors and the official sphere of the police chief and the governor. Part of the harmony in Kazan must be attributed to the governor’s personal style of rule as problems became evident once Skariatin was no longer governor. Another explanation for the harmonious relationship can be found in the composition of city council. In 1874, one-third of its members came from the nobility and the rest came from the city’s wealthier merchants. Neither of these groups had any reason to incite unnecessary conflict.121 Until 1880, eighteen years after its inception, the public fire department in Kazan functioned effectively at the nexus of three levels of authority. The positive reports that emanated from Kazan tell only part of the story. In other cities, the relationship between the police and council officials was not as smooth. In Viatka, Tver, and Saratov, for example, municipal officials and the regular police clashed where their responsibilities were ill-defined in law. By and large, problems were only resolved when municipal officials or the local police appealed to higher state authorities. The state arbitrated these individual cases but otherwise remained aloof, making no sustained effort to standardize the operation of fire departments. In 1873, the governor of Viatsk province wrote the Ministry of Internal Affairs that the merchant Charushin, the interim mayor, had interpreted the city’s control of the fire department in its “broadest sense.” Apparently, Charushin, “without informing the police chief and the police department … had, on his own … conducted an exercise [repetitsiia] of the fire department.” Charushin arrived “at the fire department, ordered the alarm bells to be rung,” saddled the horses, and “rode around” a section of the city. The governor did not

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believe that this was permitted because city officials did not have the right to inspect “people … who had been appointed from the armed forces.”122 The governor complained that the laws did not contain a solution to the aforementioned problem. In May 1874, the Senate replied with a reference to a similar problem in Kursk, where the administration of the fire department alternated between the police and the city council. The final decision, echoing the response to the people in Kursk, stated that the city was not to “interfere” in reviewing and inspecting the fire department.123 The Senate based its decision on the assumption that Viatka had a police fire department, not a public fire department, though it did not know this for certain. Thus, this response was a tentative reassertion of police authority. Whereas, in the early reform era, the state had hoped to reduce the scope of police responsibilities, by the mid-1870s, the government was once again placing increased burdens upon the shoulders of the police. Even though the government recognized that the police were overworked and understaffed, it could not bring itself to lighten the load of the local police.124 The above examples indicate how city officials could use the fire department to challenge the authority of the police. It is not surprising that most of the conflicts concerned the right of the city council to parade the fire department through the streets. The city council, when it exercised the fire department, had the opportunity to partake in a quasi-military activity in which it exercised soldiers in public. Furthermore, the example from Viatsk indicated that, in spite of all efforts on behalf of the military to remove their men, soldiers still acted as firefighters. In fact, the military reform of 1874, which introduced all-estate conscription, recognized that, although the military did not want to provide soldiers, many cities had not made the transition because they could not afford the hired hands.125 Another conflict, similar to the one in Viatsk, began in Tver. In 1873, the city council petitioned the Senate, requesting that the fire chief rather than the police chief command firefighters at the scene of a fire.126 Citing an 1867 circular from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Senate rejected this petition in the fall of 1874. A year later, the local Guberniia Board for City Affairs decided that the mayor and the members of the city council could only exercise the fire department if they gave the police chief prior notice. In another petition to the Senate, the city council complained that this ­decision

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“deprived the municipal administration” of its ability to “independently” administer the fire department. Once again the Senate rejected the petition.127 The Senate decisions did nothing to resolve conflicts between the police chief and the city council.128 As a reaction to the situation in Tver, the police chief wrote the governor a letter asking him to clarify his position with respect to the fire department: Who was responsible for monitoring the sentries on the fire towers? Who was to hire, fire, and discipline the firefighters? Did the regular exercising of the firefighters require a police presence? These issues were sent to the Guberniia Board for City Affairs, which decided that, because the “police chief should always be familiar with the condition of the fire department,” he should occasionally conduct “inspections” of it.129 The sweeping privileges given to the police chief not only placed the city council’s actions under police surveillance but also seemingly contradicted the existing law. In response, the mayor of Tver argued that, in 1861, the Ministry of Internal Affairs had confirmed the existence of a public fire department in Tver and that, according to the law, the fire department was under the sole jurisdiction of the city council. Since that time the fire department had functioned under the authority of the city administration, and the Guberniia Board decision went against the existing law. Furthermore, the mayor stated that, with the introduction of the new municipal statute, “the rights of the public administration … had not been reduced but, on the contrary, had been increased.”130 The mayor asked the Senate to reverse the board’s decision as unlawful. The Senate refused to support the municipal authorities. It argued that, because the broad mandate of the police was to ensure public safety, its responsibilities included inspections of the fire department, even though it recognized that Tver had a public fire department. At the same time, the Senate did not believe that this reduced the competencies of the city council because the board decision only affected the scope of the police chief’s responsibilities. According to the ­Senate, the board had made its decision solely in the interest of reducing conflicts between the two levels of authority. In reality, however, the board and, thereafter, the Senate only perpetuated the problem by blurring and overlapping the lines of authority.131 Peter Liessem, in his study on the first department of the Senate, argues that, increasingly, almost all Senate decisions favoured local

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self-administration.132 Furthermore, Liessem contends that, because the Senate relied on a strict interpretation of the law, state authorities such as the governor and the minister of internal affairs were, “in an unprecedented way,” forced to consider this law in matters of self-administration.133 However, in the decisions that concerned firerelated issues, the Senate both favoured the representatives of central authority and flaunted strict laws that should have allowed municipal communities to keep control of the fire department. Although the Senate did not expressly oppose municipal autonomy, it did nothing to clarify local problems; nor did it give any indication that it understood the local conditions of fire departments. For instance, in 1875 the Senate announced a decision that redefined the essence of a public fire department. It ruled that fire departments composed of hired firefighters could not be considered public fire departments: public fire departments had to be composed of unpaid locals.134 The Senate made no reference to the performance of the fire department, and, thus, there is no evidence to suggest that it was reacting to the performance of local administrators.135 Rather, the Senate, and the guberniia boards whose decisions it upheld, was more concerned with reintroducing the paternalistic authority of the police. As is evident from its decision, it believed that it was expanding the competency of the police without affecting the independence of the municipal government. Unfortunately, the Senate decision did little more than create ambiguities in the law, which became impossible to interpret. D.N. Borodin, an Imperial historian of the Russian fire department, wrote that the Senate, “in a series of edicts,” such as the ones above, “gave contradictory explanations and definitions,” which only confused the situation at the local level.136 What had started as a reform that clearly eliminated the police from one part of the public sphere was now being modified to create dual authority in an important section of urban administration. As a result, one cannot evaluate the record of the fire department without considering its ambiguous position between the police and city council. Urban authorities were forced to deal with the interference of the state, the Senate, and the local police throughout the 1870s, despite the guarantees provided by the Municipal Statute and the original reform of the fire department. According to Daniel Brower, this persistent interference, even after municipal authorities had been guaranteed independence, came from “the pervasive autocratic habits of domination and supervision.”137 Yet, though the ­development

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of fire departments can confirm this observation, municipal officials managed to work together with representatives of the tsar and no major conflicts emerged. Most of the conflicts were between municipal officials and the local police and not between the municipality and central authorities. For when problems between the police officials and municipal authorities did surface, both parties felt comfortable referring the issue to the Senate, whose decisions were final. In many instances, the state was forced to intervene to help municipal authorities. The confusion at the administrative level had a detrimental effect on performance, but it did not prevent city council from addressing performance issues, sometimes more successfully than others. In Riazan, council members understood that performance could be drastically improved with the introduction of water mains. The matter was discussed in the 1870s, but no action was taken, and, in fact, Riazan was one of the last major cities in European Russia to have water mains installed.138 In one report in the newspaper Molva (Rumour), the blame was placed not on state interference but on the ineptitude of city council. Without any faith in city council, some homeowners in the early 1880s hoped to solve the problem with volunteer fire departments.139 As discussed in chapter 4, these volunteer fire departments became a prominent part of the urban landscape in the 1880s. In contrast to the active city councillors in Tver and Viatsk, Riazan offers the case of a city council that had control of its fire department yet seemed indifferent to its fate. There were numerous criticisms aimed at the apathy of Riazan’s city council in the 1870s, and cities in the whole province suffered stupendous losses from fire.140 This did not, however, mean that the situation was lost because central authorities continually pressured city councillors throughout the entire province to take measures to prevent fires. In the spring of 1879, the governor of Riazan wrote to the mayors of his province indicating that much too little had been done to prevent fires, which, as his letter noted, had been the responsibility of cities since 1870. In surveying cities throughout the province, the governor recognized that many had taken measures such as implementing building codes, setting regulations for stoves and chimneys, and even establishing night watches. The governor was concerned that the preventive measures were being ignored and therefore told city councillors to pursue those residents who did not abide by the codes.

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He offered the full support of the state and encouraged cooperation with the local police.141 In his review of the city of Riazan, the governor suggested the job was only half complete since the city had taken steps to monitor the cleaning of chimneys and similar measures but had yet to establish proper building codes for the construction of important urban structures. The city did not react immediately, and, in a follow-up from 1881, addressed specifically to Riazan city council, the governor indicated that the “fires in Riazan from 1878 and 1880” demonstrated that the densely constructed wooden homes denied the “fire department any possibility whatsoever to combat the fire” without endangering the lives of the firefighters.142 In a familiar refrain, the governor also mentioned the extreme difficulties of supplying water to the firefighters. City council finally reacted, and, in 1882, the “obligatory” codes were published in the official newspaper, the Riazanskie gubernskie vedomosti (Riazan provincial news). The codes contained specific sections on roofs, stoves, chimneys, storage of flammable goods, and night watches; many of the directives were inspired by the governor’s suggestions. Homeowners were required to have ladders, new homes were to have iron roofs, samovars were banned from businesses during market times, and homeowners were to select a starosta (head) to monitor the night watch.143 Many of these codes were not specifically urban as officials were also pushing similar reforms in the countryside.144 The statistics would suggest that the code was not sufficiently followed, but one can also note that, a year after the publication of the code, the elections for a starosta had yet to proceed, and the police chief was pushing to have officials elected.145 The modern state has been accused of gathering personal statistics to monitor and control its citizens in discrete ways; however, in this instance many of the general statistics correlate with the concerns of the governor and the police chief. In the 1870s, almost every province had a traumatic year followed by years of “normal” fire damage. In 1875, urban centres in the Tambov province saw the rate of fire-loss increase almost twentyfold; from 1870 to 1871, losses in Tver province increased tenfold; from 1869 to 1870, the rate of fire loss in the province of Perm jumped tenfold. Each city could expect its turn when it came to devastating fires.146 Some of the worst fires could be found in the steppes, where dry springs and densely packed wooden homes created the perfect

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witches’ brew for devastating blazes. In 1879, the city of Orenburg was almost entirely ruined. According to state figures for the entire province, in 1878 sixty-three buildings had burned down as the result of thirty-two fires; the next year, seventy-three fires destroyed 1,499 buildings.147 In certain respects, the fires in Orenburg were simply too large to enable us to draw conclusions about firefighting and fire prevention; in the late nineteenth century, the steppes had yet to be brought under control, and nature could have its way with its inhabitants. Officials could investigate and understand the ­reasons for these fires – arson, carelessness, or adverse meteorological conditions – but it was much more difficult to control them before and after the fact. The high winds in the early morning of 16 April 1879 caused a fire, which had begun on the outskirts of Orenburg, to spread quickly from house to house in a densely populated area. In such instances, the most important task of the public fire department was to prevent the spread of the fire – an ounce of prevention would have been worth an entire city. The fire department arrived quickly but without water, and, thus, there was a delay as the firefighters went to the river to fetch it. In the meantime, the high winds fuelled the fire, and the crowd that had gathered to watch other people’s property burn became concerned for their own possessions. As the fire spread, the firefighters only contributed to the chaos because they were in “disorder, without any system.”148 The governor of Orenburg telegraphed the Ministry of Internal Affairs to inform it that, very quickly after igniting, “no human means” could prevent the fire from spreading.149 In a third fire in early May, the fire department also arrived late.150 The April fire received international attention, and the New York Times wrote about the disaster on its front page.151 The editors of the American newspaper were sympathetic with residents of ­Orenburg because they could remember the devastation recently wrought by fire in Chicago.152 The newspaper naturally reported the extent of the damage, noting that “more than half of the population are now destitute of food and shelter,” but what is of greater interest is the description of the measures taken to alleviate the suffering. City council and the firefighters were not even mentioned as the reporter focused on the efforts of the governor to bring the situation under control and the lack of preparedness of local soldiers: “and though there was a heavy garrison of troops in the place, Russian soldiers

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are not likely to have proved very good firemen.”153 One can criticize the journalist for having only a partial understanding of local administrative structures, but the report again suggests how the military could still play a decisive role in municipal affairs. The illustrated weekly from St Petersburg, Niva (Field), took a different approach in reporting the incident. Although it related some of the tragic details, the editors chose to adorn their first page with an idealized engraving of the city in its former glory.154 Instead of acquainting their readers with a damaged and destroyed city, they presented an image of a beautiful southern city featuring the governor’s residence and the minaret of a local mosque. The editors played a visual memory game, reminiscent of the narrator in Proust’s Recherche, who is confronted by a photograph of his recently deceased grandmother.155 The photograph presents a healthy-looking woman whose illness is not apparent to the viewer. The narrator uses the photograph as a means to bring back to life the grandmother of his own imagination as he juggles with the idea that the dead are always with us. The editors of Niva followed a similar strategy in that they invited their viewers to situate the city somewhere between the old image of its splendid past and the charred husk that remained hidden from view; neither the engraving nor the thought of it after the fire presented a mimetic image of the city, and, therefore, each individual reader had to create her or his own version of Orenburg. Whereas Niva was more concerned with the imaginary past, the article published in the New York Times was more concerned with the state. Yet, one must recognize that the initial state response was inadequate: the governor was out of town, and his replacement avoided the problem. The public prosecutor A.T. Timanovskii blamed the police chief, who lost control of the situation despite having the firefighters at his command.156 It was left to the public prosecutor to summon soldiers to help.157 With a series of fires this large, the focus of attention very quickly shifted from fighting the fire to providing for the needs of those who had been affected. The state had to deal with theft, the rise in lodging rents, and cabbies (izvozchiki) who were charging exorbitant prices.158 Even in this later phase, there was ample confusion.159 In fact, neither the state nor the city knew quite what to do. There were obvious issues with the performance of the fire department, but the real question concerns the responsibility for its inadequacies: Should one blame city council, the state, or both for the

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lamentable circumstances? This question has no direct answer, but an understanding of the situation can be enhanced by taking a brief look at the June fires in Irkutsk, more conflagrations that received international attention. The New York Times gave some recognition to the “worn out” fire brigade but otherwise described a scene in which nothing could be done to prevent the town from resembling a “sea of flame.”160 In St Petersburg, Novoe vremia (New times) reported that “Irkutsk had ceased to exist.”161 The fire was reported extensively by the local Irkutskie gubernskie vedomosti (Irkutsk provincial news), which recognized the extent of damage that stemmed from the two fires at the end of June. The fires had destroyed approximately one thousand homes, and the local river had become a “living city” as people tried to cross it to safety.162 After returning from a trip to the east, the governor addressed the people and recognized that measures would be taken to help provide lodging and food for thousands of people who had been left homeless. His address stressed that he had received information that the fire could have been contained if the fire department and the local soldiers had been more organized.163 The governor may have been looking for scapegoats because the subsequent reports on the fire in the same newspaper indicated that, although a slow response allowed the fire to spread, every effort was made to limit the damage. One writer even mentioned that throughout the 1870s, Irkutsk had had an excellent fire department.164 Given the size of the fire, it is extremely difficult to judge what even the best firefighters might have done. But the reports hint at the prominent role played by the police chief and the governor. Again, city council and the fire department were rarely mentioned; instead, the police chief ordered the placement of equipment, and, when the high winds spread the fire, it “incapacitated” the police rather than the firefighters.165 The governor was also reported giving commands at the scene of the fire. In a similar vein, soldiers, as much as firefighters, were called to help the city.166 It was only weeks later that the mayor published a note in the newspaper asking homeowners to, in future, bring water to fire scenes (a suggestion that already seems to have been made by the police chief).167 Despite a reform that had been initiated almost twenty years hence, a lot still needed to be done. If this discussion takes the last years of Alexander II’s reign as its end point and leaves the reader with major disasters in Orenburg

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and Irkutsk, one could conclude that the reform had little impact on the urban landscape. At a functional level, illustrated by deplorable statistics, this would certainly be correct. One might even be tempted by this apparent failure into the tired old conclusion that both the state and the passive Russian people had stuck hard to their traditional roles. In Irkutsk, at a time of crisis, city council abandoned its responsibilities to the governor and the police chief. However, despite the horrendous statistics, something had changed in these cities. As is evident, cities such as Kazan and Tver vigorously pursued their interests and fought for their rights, whereas Riazan was almost entirely ineffective. In general, many of the larger cities embraced the opportunity and took every occasion to petition central authorities, whereas smaller centres did not have the money or time for such an ambitious undertaking. However the historian evaluates the performance metrics, the more critical issue concerns the public activity of urban residents and their relationship with the state. Does increased urban activity suggest an antagonistic relationship with the centre? If so, how can one describe that antagonism? There can be no doubt that city councillors in Tver had a complete understanding of the statutes that governed them and, more than a decade after the introduction of the reform, hoped to minimize the role of the police in their jurisdiction. In the 1870s, when the state was broadening the role of the police, they fought back. This was a central issue in many cities that were adamant about limiting police authority as they grew accustomed to self-administration. While this position is often used to equate this antagonism with a growing distaste for the autocracy, one cannot forget the amount of cooperation reflected in the implementation of the reform; the interests of state officials and municipal authorities overlapped in numerous ways. At the start of the 1860s, officials in Kazan were willing to work together with their police chief; and, throughout the 1870s, under the admittedly watchful eye of Governor ­Skariatin, Kazanites in city government had regular contacts with state officials. In a similar vein, many of the first people involved with the public fire departments had close ties to the military sphere; this aspect of firefighting never really changed and was evident in the volunteer fire departments discussed in chapter 4. Implementing the reform, then, cannot be read as a confrontation with the bureaucracy, even if many paranoid state officials of the 1870s saw a threat in any independent governing body.

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Other officials were not paranoid but made an effort to assist city officials who needed some encouragement. Skariatin went after the police, and the governor in Riazan pestered city council to implement adequate preventive measures. In a place like Kazan, the governor attended most fires. The military checked up on its soldiers, and the fire committees responded to the needs of this ministry. Significantly, even if in a lesser manner than it had in the Nikolaevan era, the military cast a shadow on many of the urban decisions throughout the two decades discussed here. This was certainly state interference, as many historians would have it, but it was hardly detrimental. This active participation in urban affairs is explored in detail in the next chapter, but here it is worth noting that the governors were instrumental in encouraging the growth of volunteer fire departments as soon as it became clear that more help was required. In this sense, both the state and society took an active role and shared a similar fate. In fact, it is incredibly difficult to separate their interests. In returning to an issue addressed at the outset, one can now say more about the role of duty and the emergence of what might be considered a bona fide civic activism. First, one should not exaggerate the level of activism: it had its limits, though the reform was a huge improvement over what had occurred in previous decades. Second, as much as the reform may have mirrored efforts made during the reign of Ivan III and thus been established as a sense of duty, the most industrious city officials acted less out of a sense of duty than out of a desire to define the contours of self-administration and, hence, an independent urban public sphere. While civic activism was embedded within these contours, there was plenty of room for state involvement, even if the inability of the state to provide a uniform and systematized approach to firefighting led to massive problems at the end of the century. Finally, though the development of public fire departments never led to a full-fledged antagonism between the police and municipal authorities, it ensured that one section of the municipal sphere, represented by an essential urban service, had the potential to promote substantial conflicts. On a daily basis, the proximity of the public fire department to the police heightened urban tensions, and, in exceptional cases, it became the locus of extensive disputes. It is through an analysis of these disputes, particularly the one in Kazan, which lasted from 1880 until 1886, that we can further our understanding of the urban public sphere and the attitudes of municipal authorities towards state interference.

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3 Disagreement without Opposition The City, the State, and the Fight for Control of the Municipal Fire Department in Kazan, 1881–86 In the twenty years following the creation of public fire departments, individual cities navigated the uneven terrain between municipal independence and overweening state control. The history of fire departments was no different from the history of other aspects of city-state relationships as both sides wanted to assert control over municipal fire departments. Thus, there is an enormous temptation to cast these conflicts within a typical dichotomy that pits the city against the state. In his historical exegesis on Moscow, Robert Thurston writes of an “old ideological antagonism between city and state in the late tsarist period.”1 When the historical interpretation is placed within the theoretical context of civil society, the urban administrators represent society in an equation that posits an opposition between state and society.2 This model has a perceptible weakness in so far as it equates disagreement with opposition: all the small quarrels, when added together, are supposed to amount to a basic, underlying opposition between the city and the state. As this chapter argues, however, municipal authorities could clash with state officials without threatening the autocracy or its institutions. For example, from 1881 until 1886, municipal officials in the city of Kazan contested the governor’s right to control what, for the past fifteen years, had been a municipally run fire department. The importance of this debate for our understanding of municipal politics is heightened since the debate involved nearly all possible levels of authority – the mayor, the governor, city councillors, the Senate in St Petersburg, and even the firefighters themselves. Yet, in spite of the

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increasing tensions between city officials and state authorities evident at each stage of the discussion, the claims of municipal officials did not threaten existing institutional structures; rather, municipal officials objected to the personal actions of the governor, not to his institutional role as established by the autocracy. Moreover, despite evident tensions, the interests of municipal and state officials often overlapped. By placing the analytic focus on disagreement in lieu of opposition, we can broaden our knowledge of the mechanisms of municipal politics in an era of reform and reaction.

origins of the municipal fire department In 1860, Alexander II introduced a law that encouraged the transfer of the state-run urban fire departments to municipal officials. Kazan’s elite took advantage of the law and thus were soon in control of their obshchestvennaia pozharnaia komanda, a municipally controlled fire department. Except for some minor problems at the outset, the Kazan public fire department operated effectively and without major incidents from its inception in the early 1860s until the fall of 1881. Throughout this period the mayor and other municipal officials worked together with Governor Skariatin. Once Governor Skariatin ended his tenure in the province, however, the fire department became the focus of an enormous power struggle between municipal representatives, the new governors, and central authorities who were called in to mediate the dispute. Shortly after Governor Alexander Konstantinovich Geins (1880– 82) arrived to replace Skariatin, he demanded that authority for operating the fire department be placed in the hands of the police. His instruction to the fire chief, requiring him to report to the police chief and not the city council members, sparked a fierce debate in town hall since town councillors refused to surrender their statutory right to operate the fire department. The debate required both the mayor and the governor to research the historical origins of the fire department and present their arguments to city council. These detailed reports, filled with references and footnotes from the empire’s statutes, forced council members to consider their position vis-à-vis the person of the governor, the tsar’s representative in Kazan. After a dizzying array of discussions, petitions, and public displays of municipal power, the city actually lost its right to operate a municipal fire department, and, in 1884, the police took over control of what had been a vital domain

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of municipal authority. Although the debate continued unabated until 1886 and recurred occasionally until the turn of the century, the municipality never again fought with such vigour to defend its right to operate the fire department.3 The timing of the conflict only adds to its significance for a historical analysis. The dispute surfaced at a time when many historians consider the Russian autocracy to have been in crisis. In the 1870s, the formation of revolutionary groups such as the Will of the People (Narodnaia volia) made tsarist officials increasingly suspicious of the nature of public activity. In 1878, a jury failed to convict Vera Zasulich for shooting and wounding the military governor of St Petersburg, and, in 1881, after numerous attempts on his life, Alexander II was finally assassinated. State administrators, who were worried about the security of the autocracy, became increasingly suspicious of public organizations and public institutions within the empire. In 1881, the state introduced a “security law” to protect state security and public safety.4 This law allowed tsarist administrators more freedom to interfere in the day-to-day operation of provincial institutions. While there can be no doubt that the rising tide of terrorism was a source of anxiety for the regime, not all of the problems in the 1870s were political; the late 1870s, in the words of Thomas ­Pearson, represented “the breakdown of tsarist administrative order.”5 The senatorial inspections carried out in 1880–81 revealed that peasant self-administration was inefficient and corrupt and that the peasants themselves were calling for more state interference. As reports of rural administrative chaos reached St Petersburg, state administrators began to recognize that the reforms introduced in the early 1860s were themselves in need of reforming. Afraid that these “shortcomings jeopardized the autocracy itself,” state officials started to reassert bureaucratic authority in the countryside.6 Seen in the context of these political and administrative problems, the crisis of the Kazan fire department provides a window into the attitudes of urban officials, the governors of Kazan province, and the police in the troubled transitional period between one reign and the next. The detailed discussions in this debate provide a rare insight into urban power relationships and demonstrate the difficulty of conceptualizing the conflict. Throughout the crisis, urban officials simultaneously defended their own rights while recognizing the right of the state to interfere in urban affairs.

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If bureaucratic transitions were in the air, the same transitional mood was evident in Kazan: the city was in the middle of a boom period. In 1859, the city had a population of approximately sixtyone thousand, and, by 1883, the population had grown to almost 140,000, its peak population in the nineteenth century.7 Like many other cities in the empire, Kazan had spent the last few decades trying to modernize its services. Although it would take a long time before Kazan became linked with the empire’s railway network, a horse-drawn railway was introduced in 1875 as a primitive form of municipal transport.8 In the same year, Kazan installed its first water supply system.9 Though this installation had no immediate effect on the performance of the fire department, which continually complained about the poor water supply, it did form part of general urban improvements. In cultural terms, Kazan, with its state university, was already a centre for lectures and theatre performances.10 In many ways, Kazan was a bustling city just like any of its Western equivalents. The premises of the city council could be found in the centre of the city, surrounded by other important administrative buildings. From 1870 until the Municipal Statute was changed in 1892, the city council consisted of seventy-two representatives, or twenty-four representatives from each of the three tax-based curias. The Municipal Statute of 1870 had replaced the estate-based six-headed city council. With the new statute, “division of the qualified electorate into three curiae was done solely on the basis of the fiscal dues the persons and institutions had paid the city.”11 In 1882, the majority of these representatives came from the merchantry (62.5 percent) and the next largest group came from the nobility (27.78 percent), the group that dominates the discussions analyzed here.12 In this respect, although the reform of 1870 was intended to create all-estate city councils, the nobility and merchants held the overwhelming majority of council seats in provincial capitals of the empire.13 Despite the attempt to broaden participation in urban affairs, city council was not always a vigorous organ of municipal government. To begin with, voter turnout was always problematic. In 1878, only 3.66 percent of eligible voters from the third and poorest curia cast a ballot, compared to 71.76 percent of voters from the first and wealthiest curia. In total, only 7.52 percent of all eligible voters cast ballots.14 In an era during which the act of voting may have caused numerous difficulties for poorer citizens, the low numbers are to

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a certain degree understandable. More problematic, however, was the extent of absenteeism with regard to the people who were actually elected. In 1884, one-quarter of all council meetings were cancelled because quorum (one-third of all elected council members) had not been met.15 Some of the most intense debates about the fire department only attracted thirty-two representatives, or just slightly more than quorum.16 Civic consciousness, however, is not just a quantitative phenomenon; it cannot be judged on the basis of participation alone. No matter how many people attended these meetings, we will only be able to understand the dominant attitudes of municipal authorities through a detailed investigation of the debates themselves. Debates about the fire department persisted from 1881 until 1886, a time during which Kazan saw the arrival of three governors and at least one mayor, each new personality shifting the dynamic of the conflict. To avoid the confusion that contemporary urban Kazanites must have found themselves in when trying to follow the debate, a few preliminary words need to be said about the organization of this chapter. The debate can be divided into three different phases. In the first phase, starting in late 1881, Governor Geins initiated the whole process with his order to the city’s fire chief. This first, and perhaps most important, phase lasted until the spring of 1882, when both municipal officials and the governor were content to wait for a resolution from the Senate in St Petersburg. The second phase began after a hiatus of approximately eighteen months. In November 1883, the new governor, L.I. Cherkasov (June 1882 – May 1884), again challenged the competency of the municipal officials and, in terms similar to those of Geins, demanded police control of the fire department. This phase lasted until February 1884, when the fire department became a dominion of the police. The third and final phase began immediately thereafter, when council officials refused to pay for a fire chief because, legally, a police fire department did not require one. This final debate lasted until 1886, when the Senate ruled against the city.

phase 1: governor geins attempts to regain control of the fire department Unlike the preceding chapters, in this chapter the focus shifts to a complex web of events in a provincial city. Centrist scholars may

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balk at the following adventure into provincial politics, but they are invited to embrace a short excursus into Geertzian thick description, for what follows is perhaps the most extensive debate in the urban history of Imperial Russia. Thick description, when applied to an urban debate, requires some explanation as Geertz is most often associated with ethnographic studies and semiotic approaches. He taught historians to look at apparently innocuous symbolic forms and to squeeze meaning from, say, a court ritual or a peasant wedding. Thick description made the researcher aware of the multiple conceptual structures that “are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit.”17 Yet, thick description was as much about local phenomena as it was about symbolic structures. Geertz opposed the notion that a sample anthropological study could “find the essence of national societies” in small towns or village life.18 In the present context, I employ thick description to describe the strange irregularities of a local debate and, in so doing, look beneath the surface of what is often presented as a straightforward opposition between state and society. Where possible, I link the debate to the larger picture of Imperial Russia, but this should not distract the reader from the issues of major concern to the officials in Kazan. Urban historians have touched upon and mentioned the numerous sources of conflict between different sources of authority, but much less attention has been paid to the actual dynamics of these debates. Thick description permits the historian to muddy the boundaries between the various levels of authority involved. For a historiography dominated by the ministers and ministries in the two traditional capitals of Russia, the following debate is sure to contain an element of the obscure. The Plehves, Lanskois, and Miliutins have been replaced by local officials whose names are unfamiliar to most readers. It thus seems appropriate to insert a cast of characters to simplify the following debate: Alexander Konstantinovich Geins E.P. Ianishevskii K.A. Iushkov Mosolov Governor L. I. Cherkasov Asseev Amontov N. Osokin P.T. Zhukovskii

Governor, 1880–82 Mayor of Kazan, Nobleman and city councillor, supporter of the mayor Police chief Geins’s successor, June 1882 – May 1884 Fire chief accused of inebriation Assistant fire chief accused of inebriation City councillor City councillor

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V.I. Zausailov A.A. Lebedev

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City councillor Ianishevskii’s replacement

The use of a cast of characters is certainly apt since one of the most important incidents revolved around problematic behaviour at a theatre. We must now turn our attention to the drama itself and see how the story unfolds. The debate started when the city council reported that, after the arrival of Governor Geins, the police chief, Mosolov, was acting in ways that “directly negated the rights of the city’s public administration.”19 This interference began only in September 1881, when Mosolov, on the governor’s initiative, gave the fire chief an official set of instructions to reformulate the relationship between the police chief and the fire department. The fire chief immediately wrote the mayor of Kazan and complained that this instruction infringed upon established rules. Previously, the police chief had controlled the fire department only when the fire department arrived at a fire; the fire chief had control at all other times (v khoziaistvennom otnoshenii). The new instruction required the fire chief to provide the police chief with a post-fire report after every incident. Furthermore, though hiring and releasing firefighters was the responsibility of the fire chief, the police chief had occasionally submitted demands to have certain firefighters released. In addition to these complaints, the report stated that the police chief had been using firefighters as domestic helpers.20 And, whereas most of the report addressed the actions of Mosolov, it also mentioned that the governor had ordered the fire department to answer calls beyond the city limits, thus leaving the city itself without any protection. As soon as the mayor, the mathematics professor E.P. Ianishevskii, received the fire chief’s letter, he brought the actions of the governor and the police chief to the attention of the city council. In this first phase, the conflict forced both the mayor and the governor to become historians in their own right. The governor, who had just arrived in the province and was presumably unfamiliar with the detailed history of the city, researched the origins of the public fire department in Kazan. His testimony to the Senate, on behalf of placing the fire department under police authority, made lengthy references to the original reform laws and to the relevance of the word obshchestvennaia in describing Kazan’s fire department. The mayor, who had sifted through the city’s archival papers, had as much

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­ istorical research to do as did the governor.21 In January 1882, he h presented his material to the city council in a lengthy speech that defended the city’s right to administer a public fire department. In fact, he even apologized to the council members for his “excessively thorough” speech, but he felt that “the present question [was] so important” that town councillors needed to have a detailed understanding of the situation.22 Governor Geins focused his argument on two main points. First, he wanted to show that the Kazan fire department could not be referred to as a public fire department and, therefore, had to be under the command of the police. Second, the governor argued that, regardless of the name of the fire department, it had always been de facto in the hands of the police. The governor recognized that the current Ustav Pozharnyi (the fire prevention ordinances in Section xii of the Law Code, or Svod zakonov) did not actually say what defined a public fire department.23 He therefore turned to the original circulars distributed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs beginning in 1860. He reviewed these circulars and concluded that, “in all similar instructions,” references to a public fire department implied that it was composed of “local residents [iz mestnykh grazhdan]” who had been elected as members of a public fire department. One circular from 1861 suggested to urban officials that they could form either “a public fire department or one with hired servitors.”24 Since the Kazan fire department hired its firefighters, it was not public and belonged to the administrative sphere of the police. When Geins shifted his attention from the law to the circular, his actions reflected the ambiguities of Imperial law. While the laws were meant to have the final say, their force was often undermined by administrative orders.25 In the above case, Geins strengthened his argument by referring to administrative orders, which technically were subordinate to the laws contained in the Law Code. However, since the Law Code was unclear, Geins could circumvent the proper laws and use administrative orders to his advantage. Geins believed a public fire department was only suitable for small cities, where citizens could actually run to the scene of any fire; however, in large cities, he believed that this type of organization was “senseless.” In a larger city, one needed trained professionals who had all the necessary skills. The essential element in running a proper fire department was “strict discipline, [and] the establishment of precise order in the fire department, during normal

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times and during fires.” Consequently, command of the fire department should be in the hands of those who actually have the power and authority to assert themselves. Since city officials lacked the power to discipline and control the hired hands, the police should command the fire department.26 The governor then proceeded to answer the question: “What type of fire department does Kazan have?”27 Geins argued that Kazan, from a historical perspective, never actually had a public fire department. Turning once again to a historical review of the fire department in Kazan, the governor maintained that, from 1860 until 1867, all documents spoke only of a professional (vol’nonaemnaia) fire department. The only reference to anything resembling a public fire department came towards the end of 1866, when city council discussed the idea of establishing a small group of volunteers to help the main fire department. The governor concluded that, despite the presence of the word “public” on a government document, there had never been a fire department so named in Kazan. 28 The main thrust of his argument was that, if he could recategorize the name of the fire department, it could, without any further complications, be placed under the command of the police. Following his semantic argument, Geins used more historical material to show that, whatever one called the fire department, it had always been under direct police control. He conceded he was not aware of the exact relationship between the fire chief and the police chief, but he did know that, during the Skariatin years, “the police had total control over the fire department.” He quoted a report of 1879 from the city council thanking the local representatives of the state for their support in preventing fires.29 In other words, he claimed that even local officials had understood who was in charge. As both the governor and the mayor investigated historical records to weave a convincing argument, one might well ask about the role of rationality in this debate. In the classic Habermasian scheme, a measure of civil society is the presence of rational-critical debate, or a “public of rationally debating” people; this is the same standard Lutz Häfner invokes in his brief mention of this debate.30 Yet, one can observe that both sides of this debate adhered to the same standard. In appealing to documents and laws, both state and city officials were adhering to a standard that would place them within the parameters of a Habermasian civil society. But, paradoxi-

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cally, because both sides employed similar procedures, one cannot invoke the rational standard to distance society from the state, as is implicit within the Habermasian model. It thus forces one to question the validity of invoking terms such as “rational-critical debate” to develop notions of a democratic civil society as they are equally relevant to the authoritarian state. In the present instance, rationality works just as well to favour a statist and Hegelian civil society. A few weeks after Geins’s analysis was submitted, the city council challenged him on almost every point. At a meeting held in January 1882, thirty-two city council members listened to the mayor’s historical research and then offered their own thoughts on the situation.31 The city council was almost unanimous in defending the city’s right to administer its own fire department, but, more important, council members emphasized the need to follow the law. For these council members, the conflict was not between the state and local society; rather, they believed that the governor had transgressed the authority invested in him by law. If the council members appealed to the force of law, then higher instances of authority, such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the Senate in St Petersburg, would recognize that the governor had acted illegally. The mayor’s report referenced many of the same legal documents the governor had used against the city, but this time in its defence. The report maintained that, since the early 1860s, the fire department in Kazan had been called public. It relied on a circular from 21 May 1861, which explained that “the establishment of a public fire department does not exclusively have to be done according to the example of Ostashkov, but [can be done] on other terms, more appropriate for local conditions.”32 In Kazan, the fact that the fire department was composed of hired firefighters made no difference, especially since there had already been a complete transfer of all the equipment from the police to the municipal authorities. Furthermore, the fire department had always been referred to as public. The report argued that a police-run fire department must follow legally approved standards (such as those instituted by the law of 1853) that had been reviewed in the city council. On the other hand, a public fire department only needed the sanction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to exist, which, as the report confirmed, had actually been the case in Kazan.33 Here the mayor referred to a legal statute that had appeared in the Law Code when the fire department was transformed in the mid-1860s.34

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This report relied on laws issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs or other central bureaus in order to argue that the governor had acted illegally. This attitude demonstrated an underlying faith in the ability of Imperial laws to solve local conflicts. After citing the laws to demonstrate that Kazan had had a public fire department, the report contested the governor’s claims that, wherever it stood de jure, de facto it had always been in the hands of the police. The mayor’s argument stressed how the Kazan public fire department had operated in cooperation with Governor Skariatin. Simply because the city council recognized the governor’s right to command at the scene of a fire did not mean that it did not control the fire department. Throughout Skariatin’s tenure as governor, the city council was responsible for personnel problems, except for the occasional instance when the governor felt a need to interfere.35 Further, the city council argued that, in 1877, it had revised its instructions to the fire chief, indicating that it was involved in operating the fire department.36 These instructions stated that, at the scene of a fire, only the fire chief, the mayor, or the governor could give commands. The police were instructed to keep away curious onlookers. Although this analysis of the instruction did not entirely correspond to the one published in the city council minutes of 8 December 1877, it nevertheless emphasized the ability of municipal officials to work together with the governor.37 After the mayor submitted his report to the city council, members discussed its contents. This initial debate had three main characteristics that supported the tone of the original report. Members were concerned that any decisions follow the letter of the law, emphasized the extent to which the city council had involved itself in operating the fire department, and highlighted the proper working relationship that had existed between the police chief, the governor, and city council. K.A. Iushkov, a noble who played an active role in all subsequent fire department-related debates, concluded that, because “[Iushkov] had become accustomed to following nothing but the letter of the law,” a central question had to be asked: Were the demands of the governor legal?38 In his eyes, Kazan had a public fire department that the Ministry of Internal Affairs had sanctioned almost twenty years ago. Since the ministry had confirmed the status of the fire department, only “a higher, not lower, authority” could change its status. In other words, the governor did not have the authority

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to initiate the change, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs did.39 Iushkov contested Geins’s idea that the police could not exercise its disciplinary authority over the firefighters if it did not have control over the fire department. Iushkov argued that, in this case, the police had the exact same rights as did the executive (the executive branch of city council): either authority could use “known legal procedure” to prosecute any wayward firefighters.40 Despite his objections to the governor’s actions, he still supported the police, even if this implied the arrest of fire department personnel. Iushkov proposed that the governor’s orders would “destroy the whole structure of the present fire department.” 41 While he criticized one state authority – the governor – he praised another. He said that the “present police chief was a good participant at all fires” and that there was no point in discussing who was more energetic, the police chief or the fire chief. Iushkov ended by suggesting that the city council petition the Senate to rectify the situation. Iushkov did not challenge the statutory position of the governor, a position in which he firmly believed. He simply recognized that the governor had exceeded the power granted to him in the statutes. At the same time, his interpretation never questioned whether or not a law or statute was just. Everyone in Kazan was meant to follow these statutes, and the ultimate power to adjudicate or alter them was invested in the higher authority of central bodies such as the Senate or Ministry of Internal Affairs. Iushkov was a follower and interpreter of the laws, not a judge of their worthiness. In principle, all the other participants in the discussion agreed with Iushkov. The points they made contributed to the idea of an active executive that had operated the fire department in conjunction with Kazan’s last governor. For example, in response to Geins’s complaint that the fire chief was an alcoholic, the mayor stated that, in the two years Asseev had been fire chief, he reported “every day” to the executive or personally to the mayor on holidays and had never appeared “intoxicated.” In the last year, the mayor had attended almost every single fire in the city and never witnessed Asseev in an inebriated condition. In fact, until Geins’s complaint, no one had ever criticized Asseev’s behaviour. A former member of the executive, who had been responsible for the fire department over the last four years and had often inspected it, had never seen Asseev in a drunken state.42 To emphasize the cooperation that had prevailed, one council member tried to explain why the fire department was in

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such good condition: “until this time, at fires the police chief and the fire chief gave commands.” No one else, including city council members, interfered in its operation, leaving the two main authorities to do their jobs. Only the mayor objected to this comment, responding that “neither the governor nor the police chief” was responsible for the excellent condition of the fire department. Credit for this work lay solely in the hands of the city administration.43 The meeting closed with two decisions. First, because all the discussants asserted that laws had been broken, they empowered the mayor to petition the Senate. Second, they instructed the uprava (executive) to inform the fire chief that he should continue to command the fire department according to the prevailing rules and instructions of the public fire department until the Senate passed judgment on their petition. In essence, the council instructed the fire chief to disobey the will of the governor, thus creating a tension that lasted at least until the Senate resolved the issue in November 1883. A few days after the city council decided to disobey the orders of the governor, the question of command was brought to the Guberniia Board for City Affairs (Gubernskoe po gorodskim delam prisutstvie). The Guberniia Board had been established with the introduction of the Municipal Statute of 1870 as a means of mediating disputes between city officials and state authorities.44 The board included the mayor, one local representative each from the zemstvo, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Justice. The governor, who presided over the meetings, and the vice-governor completed the membership of the board.45 Presumably, because the governor presided over the board, he was in a better position to ensure that its decisions represented the interests of the state. At a meeting held on 20 January 1882 to discuss the city’s decision to countermand the instructions of the governor, the board initially defended the interests of the city.46 The vice-governor (Geins was away in St Petersburg) challenged the decision, and he forced the board to meet again on 1 February 1882 to review its original resolution. Against the expressed wishes of those members who had voted in favour of the city council, the board reversed its original decision.47 On 20 January, the representative of the zemstvo stated that, according to a Senate decision of 1873, “neither the mayor, nor the city council” was bound to execute “personal orders [edinolichnyia rasporiazheniia] of the governor” that concerned the independent

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sphere of urban autonomy, as described by Article 5 of the Municipal Statute.48 The majority concurred with this opinion and objected when the chair of the board wanted to overturn the city council’s instructions to the fire chief. The majority decision claimed that, because “the appropriate authority had confirmed the instructions,” they must remain in effect until further instructions from the Senate said otherwise.49 The governor also wanted the board to discuss whether Kazan had a public fire department or a police fire department. Four of the six board members affirmed the fire department was public (obshchestvennaia). However, for a final decision, the board unanimously agreed to await word from the Senate.50 It was this decision that was overturned on 1 February 1882 in the meeting hastily called by the vice-governor. At the city council meeting of 12 March 1882, the mayor reported that the second decision was in opposition to established statutory procedure. With detailed references to the Municipal Statute, the mayor emphasized that the governor’s orders were in no wise obligatory until the Senate had taken a decision on the issue. The mayor even referred to a Senate decision of 1877, which had regulated state interference in another region. In this case, the Senate decided in favour of the city council, recognizing that the Guberniia Board could not force the city council to comply with the governor’s request before the issue had reached the Senate. Therefore, the mayor concluded that the Guberniia Board had acted against the will of Article 8 of the Municipal Statute, which gave the city council the right to petition the Senate. Furthermore, the mayor alluded to an article in the Law Code that forbade administrative bodies to alter their own decisions.51 The city council immediately and unanimously supported the mayor’s proposal to submit a petition to the Senate contesting the most recent decision of the Guberniia Board.52 The procedure here is certainly confusing, but it is important to focus on the council’s attitude towards the law. Even though there was never any talk of upsetting or opposing the statutory status quo, there had been direct challenges to the authority of the governor, with the mayor leading the initiative. On 21 January 1882, the mayor had exercised the fire department in the first section of the city within the department’s grounds and, on 31 January 1882, took the second and fifth sections of the fire department and exercised them in the city streets.53 Taking advantage of the governor’s absence in St Petersburg, the mayor was no doubt asserting

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his authority by marching the firefighters through the city streets and making the dispute a public affair.54 These actions demonstrated the fire department’s potential as an instrument for expressing force and power. The mayor had committed what amounted to an act of civil disobedience. The police chief reported to the Guberniia Board that the mayor had undertaken this action without informing him or any other members of the police force. The Guberniia Board met to consider the police chief’s assertion that the mayor had acted illegally. Here, the discussion focused on Senate decisions that had been brought against the city council in Tver almost five years ago. In this case, the Senate forced the Tver city council to inform the police authorities before it ran the fire department through the city streets. Based on the Senate decision in Tver, the Guberniia Board declared the actions of the mayor illegal and passed its decision on to the city council.55 After it had heard the position of the Guberniia Board, the city council engaged in another lengthy legal discussion. First, it wanted to determine whether the Senate decision in the Tver case, in which the mayor had to notify the police chief whether he wished to exercise the firefighters, was applicable to every province. Once it determined this was not the case, it examined standard statutes to evaluate and vindicate the actions of the mayor.56 The city council denied that what happened in Tver was relevant to its city. The council secretary affirmed that, according to current laws, only those Senate decisions that were published in the Pravitel’stvennyi vestnik (Governmental Messenger) applied to all provinces. Clearly, this indicated that, for the secretary, laws and statutes only had validity if they were published and thus belonged to the public domain. In the Tver case, the decision was neither published in the Pravitel’stvennyi vestnik nor did it introduce changes to the Municipal Statute published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.57 Given the above information, the secretary concluded that “separate orders” are not obligatory for all provinces. It was impossible to find the mayor guilty for something that “no law prohibits.” Indeed, K.A. Iushkov suggested that, since the city council had already submitted its own petition to the Senate, the Senate would soon be sending its “separate orders” to Kazan, thus negating any need for it to consider the Tver case binding. Their ability to exploit complex laws supports the idea of a city council that was becoming increasingly educated as it drew its members from the universities and educated professions.58

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In a letter to V.K. Plehve in the Department of Police, the vicegovernor identified the secretary and Iushkov as the mayor’s ­primary supporters.59 Although this conclusion was correct in so far as the secretary and Iushkov did support a maximum amount of municipal independence, they were not alone. N. Osokin, an active councillor of state, considered the Tver decision irrelevant for Kazan, and N.M. Mel’nikov, a professor at Kazan University, considered the original instruction issued at the time of the public fire department’s inception binding, which, “if his memory served him correctly,” did not require the mayor to notify the police before exercising the fire department. P.T. Zhukovskii, whose profession and estate were unidentified, thought the mayor actually should have informed the police but found no malicious intent in his actions. The only voice of opposition came from the merchant V.I. Zausailov, a regular critic of increased municipal activity, who stated only that the mayor should have informed the police.60 The question of the mayor’s guilt was then submitted to a secret ballot in city council, and, with a majority of forty-one votes to five, a decision was approved, stating “the city council found that the mayor’s actions” did not constitute the “violation of any law.” Furthermore, according to Article 67 of the first volume of the Law Code, separate Senate orders for Tver were not applicable to Kazan.61 This decision provoked further conflict. Police officials and the vice-governor took things into their own hands, and, once again, city council raised new questions. In a well-publicized incident, the police reported that an assistant fire chief had been drunk while on duty at the local theatre, a central meeting place for Kazanites. The assistant fire chief was arrested and incarcerated, and the incident was brought to the attention of council members. In the discussion that follows, careful attention must be paid to how council members interpreted the vice-governor’s actions. They understood and did not challenge his right to punish the fire chief, but they questioned the validity of his decision in this specific case. The actual incident occurred on 5 February 1882 and was first discussed in the city council at a meeting on 19 March 1882.62 According to the official police report, the assistant fire chief of the fourth section was drunk while on duty at the theatre.63 After he left the theatre, witnesses stated that they had seen him in a state of intoxication on the streets of Kazan.64 He then returned to his fire station at one in the morning, announced a training alarm, and exercised all

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forty-five members of his section. He was immediately arrested on the orders of the vice-governor and incarcerated for two days.65 Sometime thereafter, the acting mayor (Ianishevskii was out of town) went to the fourth section to check the reliability of the police chief’s report. He asked all forty-five members of the fire department “whether the fire chief actually returned from the theatre drunk and in what state [he carried] out the training alarm.” To a man, they all defended their superior. They reported that, before going to the theatre, the fire chief had instructed them not to leave the grounds, to remain completely sober, and to prepare for an inspection upon his return. Furthermore, some of them said that they had served ­Brandmeister Amontov for approximately ten years and had never seen him consume vodka. These firefighters were prepared to confirm their statements under oath.66 The importance of the dispute was highlighted by the mayor’s willingness to bring the opinions of the rank-and-file firefighters – generally considered to be recruited from the lowest rung of society – into the reasoned, rational debates of the city council. In the tense atmosphere that surrounded the fire department, the acting mayor’s report was perhaps biased in favour of a position that opposed that of the police chief. Both reports, however, clearly demonstrated the high public profile of the fire department and the importance of public opinion with regard to helping to resolve the conflict. The discussion in council had two parts. First, the debate focused on the reliability of the assistant fire chief and whether, as requested by the police chief and governor, he should be released from his responsibilities. Ianishevskii thought that, even if one allowed that the assistant fire chief had become “tipsy,” there was no reason to dismiss a man who had served loyally for thirteen years, especially since the state had already punished him, holding him under arrest for two days.67 K.A. Iushkov saw the question in even broader terms: it was irrelevant whether Amontov had been intoxicated at any given moment. If city council demanded complete sobriety from all its firefighters, it could hardly expect to attract employees. He considered it “unjust” to release Amontov because he “drank a little at Shrovetide.” Iushkov added that it would have been a different matter had no one punished him. A “double punishment” was totally unnecessary, and it sufficed to keep a strict eye on Amontov’s behaviour.68 The significance of this discussion is that both Ianishevskii and Iushkov, the two main antagonists for local management of the fire

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department, never questioned – and even supported – the decision to punish Amontov. Although the decision to arrest Amontov apparently infringed upon the city’s right to administer the employees of its own fire department, neither Ianishevskii nor Iushkov perceived the state’s action in this manner. Other supporters of a locally managed fire department were less favourable towards the assistant fire chief. P.T. Zhukovskii questioned the discrepancy between reports that suggested that Amontov was a teetotaller and the police reports in which he was portrayed as a drinker. One could not simply dismiss “the official investigation of the police.” 69 In a separate dissent, co-signed by Osokin, Zhukovskii stated that “there was no reason not to believe the police inquest” because it had been completed according to the formalities “required by law.” A two-day arrest provided no guarantee that similar incidents would not repeat themselves. Furthermore, “as long as the governor remained the unconditional authority at fires,” the assistant fire chief would remain in an undeniably awkward position.70 In this case, the city should not tolerate his service as assistant fire chief; instead, if he was a truly reliable servant, the city could find him another service position within the city administration.71 To reiterate a central point, these two officials, who had supported the petition to the Senate asking it to countermand the governor’s order to transfer control of the fire department, also affirmed that the governor and the police could freely intervene in certain circumstances. N. Osokin and P.T. Zhukovskii had initiated the separate dissent because of the manner in which the city council dealt with the issue. The executive had brought the issue to the attention of the city council after it had decided not to prosecute the assistant fire chief, but the majority of city council members had no interest in the matter. Since the executive had full responsibility for the fire department, there was no need for the city council to involve itself in this affair. Only if the governor had registered a complaint about the executive would the city council have a responsibility to pass judgment. The city council refrained from offering an opinion and voted to allow the executive to act according to its original guidelines.72 Although this opinion accorded with the regulations, the dissenters suggested that the city council was shirking its responsibility. Because of the serious clashes between the executive and the provincial administration on all issues concerning the fire department,

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the dissenters wrote that the city council “must state its own opinion” with respect to the executive’s report and decide either for or against the assistant fire chief. The dissenters were recognizing the broader public responsibility of the city council. “So that the population trusts the activities of the municipal administration,” wrote the dissenters, “it is essential to dismiss any doubts the population might have about the high quality” of people working for the city.73 While they were obviously withdrawing their support from the assistant fire chief, they wanted the matter resolved in such a way that the reputation of the city council and the police would not be harmed. Once again, the dissenters considered the reputation of the police and city council, indicating the importance they attached to both. Their concerns were not unfounded for, although the problems in Kazan never became a full-fledged national issue, the occasional report from St Petersburg questioned the judgment of city councillors. An article that appeared in January 1882 in the newspaper Golos (Voice) indicated some support for the city councillors in so far as it related how the firefighters appeared to be performing mundane tasks, such as shovelling snow, for the governor. Since this was a clear violation of the firefighters’ duties, the author of this article sympathetically related how the city council telegraphed the Ministry of Internal Affairs.74 Months later, however, the tone changed. Whereas the original article did not offer direct support to the city council, the Kazan correspondent for Golos now wrote that the “bickering about city rights” in the duma had simply distracted these urban officials from more important affairs. Although the correspondent had issues with the governor’s absence in St Petersburg, the harshest criticisms remained for the city council – “an entire epic, a series of loud meetings … [all] at the expense of real business.”75 To be fair to city councillors, the correspondent provided a brief summary that glossed over important details of the debate. The presence of the above dissenting opinion might suggest the development of factions within the Kazan city council. Later on, in the highly politicized atmosphere that followed the revolution of 1905, two factions, the “progressives” (novodumtsy) and the “conservatives” (starodumtsy) became entrenched in municipal politics.76 In the heated discussions from the early 1880s, however, there is no evidence that any city council members spoke according to party lines; rather, the debaters found themselves, along a

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c­ ontinuous ­spectrum of opinion, somewhere between radical support for municipal self-government and feeling that the police should play a more active role. Opinions freely overlapped, and this openness contributed greatly to the diversity of viewpoints that council members expressed. Another perspective on the entire sequence of events came in the form of a missive. In a letter of 24 April 1882 addressed to V.K. Plehve in the Department of Police, the vice-governor expressed his doubts about the city’s ability to cope with the fire department. He wrote that, during the Skariatin years, the city had simply rubberstamped the appointments made by the governor. He therefore did not think the mayor of Kazan was defending the city’s historical right to operate the fire department; rather, he proposed that the mayor had “dug out” the documents demonstrating the establishment of a public fire department to affirm his own position vis-à-vis the police chief. According to this letter, Mayor Ianishevskii considered the police chief a “competitor for the position of mayor.”77 The mayor had exercised the fire department to “exacerbate his already strained relationship with [Chief of Police] Mosolov.” Furthermore, to discredit the police chief, Ianishevskii published news in the papers, which suggested that Mosolov had misappropriated funds intended for the rank and file of the police.78 Ianishevskii, and even K.A. Iushkov, had taken advantage of the public forum provided by the city council, where they used “inappropriate expressions, scoffing at the governor and the police chief.” 79 In other words, the mayor had fabricated the whole crisis as a local publicity stunt to enhance his own political prestige in Kazan. The vice-governor was worried that, without police authority, firefighters could not be disciplined. Because Ianishevskii continued to exercise the fire department, it slowly slipped from police control; the firefighters “openly disobeyed the police chief” while the fire chief had stopped reporting to the police. The hiring and firing of firefighters, which occurred regularly because the department had such a high turnover rate, was now performed “not only without any participation on behalf of the state administration or police,” but the city council also disregarded the suggestions of the governor. 80 If the fire department continued to operate in city hands, the vice-governor worried that the safety of the city would be jeopardized.81 Unfortunately, the vice-governor lacked the necessary

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“means to keep [Ianishevskii] within bounds.” His own position in the city was “uncertain” in the governor’s absence because he was not the “full master of the province.”82 He concluded his lengthy brief with the opinion that “the relationship between the city administration of Kazan and the … [state] administration and police had become insufferable.”83 Only a year after the assassination of Alexander II, and at a time of crisis for the autocracy, the vice-governor was evidently worried that the problems in his province would escalate. In the tense political atmosphere that followed the assassination of Alexander II, a dispute between the mayor and the police chief was cause for alarm. Furthermore, because the vice-governor presumed the dispute centred upon an electoral campaign, he was no doubt afraid it would have broader public resonance. The very fact that he submitted his letter to the Department of Police demonstrated the gravity of the situation. By sending the letter to the Department of Police, the vice-governor was probably expressing hope for swift action. He wrote the letter when the state had just started to reassert its presence in rural and urban self-administration. After the death of Alexander II, new official attitudes emphasized “the assertion of autocratic political authority to unify society and the extension of state power to influence any aspect of civil life deemed essential to its interests.”84 In this atmosphere, the vice-governor expected the central authorities to respond in his favour; the eventual outcome would surprise him. After the city council meeting of 19 March 1882, and after the letter of the vice-governor, the debate settled down as the municipal officials, the police chief, and the governor waited and waited for the decision of the Senate. For the next eighteen months, the city prevailed in maintaining control of the fire department. The issue had caused such a distraction in city council that it decided it was time to turn its attention to other municipal issues. In the meantime, in June 1882, the province had received a new governor in L.I.Cherkasov, the old police chief (Mosolov) retired, and the problem, while it was not raised in council, continued to fester in the city. The new governor had raised concerns about problems with the fire department at fires in March and April of the same year.85 During the summer, he arrested an assistant fire chief for apparently being drunk while on duty. The assistant fire chief, in turn, accused the police chief of having beaten him.86

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phase 2: governor cherkasov reasserts his authority over the fire department The tensions described above finally led to another full-blown conflict between the governor and city officials. Like his predecessor Geins, Cherkasov required the fire chief and his five assistants to report to the police chief in person every morning.87 On 11 November 1883, the city council met to discuss the legality of the governor’s actions. In this round of discussions, which lasted about five months, some familiar themes reappeared. While most council members reaffirmed their right to operate the fire department, even supporters of municipal control (such as Iushkov) did not want to prevent the governor from aiding the fire department. And since the governor raised doubts that the fire department was properly managed, council members had an opportunity to evaluate its performance. This part of the discussion demonstrates how council members perceived their responsibilities and how they defined the role of the governor in urban affairs. At the 11 November meeting, the city council decided to ignore the governor’s orders and required the fire chief to follow the instructions that had been established with the original transfer of the fire department in the mid-1860s. This harsh rebuttal was tempered by more moderate opinions. V.I. Zausailov found the governor’s request “entirely natural” because the governor “gave the commands” at fires. Iushkov confirmed the governor’s right to receive reports through the executive but rejected the governor’s apparent attempts to change the whole structure. Osokin, the dissenter from a year earlier, did not object to the governor’s request because it was fundamentally different from Geins’s earlier order. According to Osokin, whereas Geins had wanted to give the fire department to the police, Cherkasov only wanted to be better informed. In this action, he saw no breach of the city’s rights. Osokin was mistaken. Immediately after the city rebutted the governor’s request, Cherkasov imprisoned the fire chief and ten more of the city’s firefighters. When the governor released the fire chief on 16 November, he told him: “I held you in the guard house for four days and I hope that this taught you a lesson. [From now on] you will carry out my orders with precision otherwise I’ll do the same [to you] again.” When the fire chief tried to explain that the governor’s orders had put him in an extremely awkward position between the

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authority of the governor and the authority of the city council, the governor restated his original position and dismissed him. 88 In the back and forth that was so characteristic of this whole exchange, the fire chief reported the above conversation to the mayor, and once again the issue was brought to the attention of the city council. In the first meeting to discuss this issue, a rather short debate reasserted the need to follow the laws as well as the need to protect the fire chief. Using his standard rhetoric, Iushkov recognized the governor had overstepped his legal bounds. He suggested that, if the problem persisted, the city council, “using those rights bestowed upon it by the autocratic power,” could petition the Senate, and what the Senate decided, “we [would] accept, obeying the higher authority.”89 Other members were concerned that, if they forced the fire chief to follow the orders of municipal officials, he would be openly opposing the will of the governor. In this case, the fire chief would risk being incarcerated by the latter. At the next meeting, held about one week later, the city council discussed the performance of the fire chief as well as the governor’s complaint that the fire department was not operating effectively. Indeed, on 21 November 1883, Cherkasov wrote to the mayor, explaining that, in order to raise the level of discipline in the fire department, he was making discipline a police responsibility until the Senate reached a decision on the issue. Furthermore, he wanted to know why the fire department, after having been “completely in the hands of the executive for over a year,” was in such a disorganized state.90 The answer in city council supported the governor’s claims. P.T. Zhukovskii noted that the fire department had its “shortcomings,” and, indeed, many of the councillors were of this opinion. The new mayor, A.A. Lebedev, agreed that the fire department had its problems, but he was not convinced of the correctness of the governor’s extreme position. Only recently, he had exercised the fire department and it had reacted swiftly and effectively. Further, firefighters who appeared intoxicated while on duty were immediately released. And finally, at a recent fire at which the mayor was present, in spite of poor roads, the fire department arrived punctually. Another council member trusted the mayor’s belief that improving the public fire department required solving a few minor problems rather than transforming it into a police fire department.91 The other suggestions for improvement pertained to the structure of the fire department. Some

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members proposed buying a new steam engine, and others proposed the purchase of lanterns for night fires. Had the mayor believed the fire department to be as poorly operated as the governor claimed, he would have “reported this earlier to the city council.”92 The mayor was more concerned with the performance of the fire chief. At one fire “the mayor did not give the commands” because the governor and fire chief were in charge. While here the mayor implicitly suggested that he did not question these officials’ right to supersede his authority at the scene of a fire, he was clearly troubled by the fire chief’s behaviour in front of the governor: when the governor indicated that the fire chief was not listening to his orders, instead of defending the recently arrested fire chief, the mayor agreed the man had not fulfilled his duty.93 K.A. Iushkov, the adamant supporter of a local fire department, now supported the governor, who told city council to instruct the fire chief “to obey the orders of the governor at fires.” To improve the fire department’s performance, the municipality had to eliminate major factors, such as a disobedient fire chief at fires.94 The Senate Responds to the Petition Submitted by Kazan’s City Council Sometime in November 1883, while municipal officials discussed these issues, the Senate judged the petition submitted by the mayor in January 1882 and sent the response to Kazan.95 We recall that the city council had petitioned the Senate to overturn Governor Geins’s claim that the fire department was police-operated rather than publicly operated. The petition also argued that the Guberniia Board had acted illegally when, under the pressure of the vice-governor, it had reversed its own previous decision in support of the city council. In both cases, the Senate ordered in favour of Kazan city council and affirmed its right to operate a public fire department. In the first instance, the Senate wrote that, because, in 1866, the Ministry of Internal Affairs had confirmed the public “decision of the Kazan Municipal Administration,” a public fire department (obshchestvennaia pozharnaia komanda) was established in Kazan. Thus, the responsibility for operating the fire department belonged to the city council. If the governor had problems with this established structure, he had to petition the Ministry of Internal Affairs in St Petersburg as it was illegal for him to change the status quo by

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issuing a personal order. This meant that city councillors had interpreted the statutes correctly. As far as the decision of the Guberniia Board was concerned, the Senate ruled that the former could not reverse a prior decision.96 The Senate decision recognized that the municipal authorities, not the governor or his assistants, had interpreted the law properly. The most important aspect of the Senate decision was that it recognized the city’s historic right to operate a public fire department. The response not only stated that it is a public fire department but also that it always had been a public fire department. It rejected the governor’s suggestion that the fire department had somehow never been in municipal hands. The decision also affirmed that, since the Ministry of Internal Affairs approved the public fire department, this decision was binding upon the municipality, the governor, and the police. The Senate decision should by no means be used as an example to support the claim that the Senate generally favoured local selfadministration. Although in this case the Senate ruled in favour of local self-administration, state interference occurred in cities in which problems with fire prevention continued. In numerous cities, the original public fire departments were transferred back into the hands of the police. For example, in 1882, the Senate ruled that the fire department in Uglich was not public because it had paid firefighters on its staff. Although the local governor recognized that, ever since the early 1860s, Uglich had operated its own public fire department, the Senate’s decision could not be changed.97 A year later, when the Uglich city council appealed to change the name of the fire department, it was turned down once again for the simple reason that the Ministry of Internal Affairs had not confirmed its original charter.98 The ruling in Kazan restated a recent Senate order that redefined the meaning of a public fire department. On 12 October 1883, the Senate ruled on a petition that was submitted by the city of Tim in Kursk province. This town was having similar problems to those in Kazan and had turned to the Senate for help. The Senate order stated that, for a fire department to be public, the Ministry of Internal Affairs must have confirmed its foundation and its statutes. On the other hand, a police fire department was one established by law (i.e., one that followed the regular tables provided by the law of 1853).99 The previous definition had stated somewhat vaguely that a fire

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department could only be public if it was composed of volunteers; thus, if the firefighters were paid, then it could not be considered public. However, when the Senate altered what was meant by “public fire department,” its definition became more statutory. Instead of anchoring its definition in the status of the individual firefighters who composed each fire department, the Senate anchored it in laws and statutes. The interference of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is also crucial to an understanding of fire prevention. At times, the more locals tried to manage their own affairs, the more the Ministry of Internal Affairs disrupted the running of municipal government. Although there was never any systematic policy that somehow tried to disengage municipal authorities’ interest in running their own fire department, the ministry obstructed operations with numerous halfmeasures and decisions that affected one city but not another. As Robert Thurston notes for the turn of the century, a city “might try to act on its legal right to regulate some aspect of local life, only to find that a state agency had the same right and had overruled it.”100 The Senate decision for the town of Tim also demonstrates the broader context of Kazan’s problems, which were well known in other cities of the empire. In fact, the fire department was a cause for interregional correspondence. In August 1883, the executive city council in Perm wrote to its municipal counterparts in Kazan, stating that they were having similar problems and would be grateful if the people in Kazan kept them informed.101 In October 1884, the mayor of Samara sent a letter to Kazan asking for information about the organization of its fire department. Unfortunately, the answer he received was that the fire department was in police hands.102 The City Loses Its Public Fire Department In a strange sequence of events, Governor Cherkasov did not abide by the Senate decision and, in January 1884, ordered the police to take control of the Kazan fire department. On 9 January 1884, the minister of internal affairs, after reading the decision of the Senate, decided to change the statute that had guided the Kazan public fire department since 1866.103 When the ministry indicated that it was no longer willing to support its confirmation of the public fire department in Kazan, the status of the Senate decision, which had relied upon this confirmation, changed drastically. However arbitrary the

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ministry’s decision may seem, this move gave the governor a statutory means to initiate the transformation of a public fire department into a police fire department. Not only did the governor transfer all authority in this matter to the police, but he also threatened the mayor and his interim replacement with arrest if they so much as approached fire department personnel at the scene of a fire.104 The governor’s order arrived before the city council even had time to discuss and celebrate the Senate’s favourable ruling. At the meeting held on 24 January 1884, the Senate decision was presented in full to the city council members, but it raised absolutely no discussion; instead, they simply acknowledged the Senate’s decision and the meeting dealt with other municipal matters.105 Presumably, members were already aware of the governor’s order, which was made public three weeks later. This episode in the history of the Kazan fire department was significant not because a strong, centralized state represented by a powerful ministry of internal affairs stepped in to reassert authority but, rather, because of the way local municipal officials reacted to another seemingly provocative action on the part of the governor. After more than two years of intense battles, one would expect the city to renew the struggle and to fight what again appeared to be the governor’s transgression of the laws. Instead, the same councillors who had vigorously defended their public fire department recognized the actions of the governor as legal. Even the most adamant defender of the fire department, K.A. Iushkov, said: “now the Ministry of Internal Affairs has decided against the city, and thus we have nothing more to do but follow its orders.”106 Discussions now revolved around a proper transfer of authority within the fire department.

phase iii: the last echoes of disagreement the third phase of this debate, the transformation of the Kazan public fire department into the Kazan police fire department, required city council to discuss the new arrangement. The change in responsibilities necessitated a number of budgetary and administrative adjustments, which the council mulled over with the same seriousness with which it had debated the organization of the public fire department. Although Iushkov just wanted to follow the letter of the law, he was concerned with the structure of the fire department. In his view, now that the police chief was in command, the fire department no longer

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needed a fire chief. According to the laws of the empire, only the police-run fire departments in Moscow and St Petersburg required a fire chief; in all the provincial capitals, assistant fire chiefs (brandmeistery) helped the police chief.107 Iushkov was worried that, if Kazan continued to employ a fire chief, the problem of dual authority would remain unsolved. Furthermore, in a public fire department the fire chief had been a publicly elected official, whereas in the new order of things, the fire chief was an official appointed by the governor.108 Finally, the city could not justify paying the fire chief’s salary if the position was not sanctioned by law.109 In a council meeting held ten days later, he again stated that “what was legal in the time of the public fire department becomes illegal when it is transformed into a police [fire department.]”110 Iushkov’s objections to the continued financing of the fire chief met with sharp criticism from other council members, who perceived the fire chief to be an essential urban figure. P.T. Zhukovskii commented that the city had eighteen years of experience with a fire chief, and therefore he saw no need to make sudden changes. He noted that, even though the new fire chief was not known to municipal officials, he did not believe that the governor would appoint someone incompetent as local representatives of the state were just as “interested in protecting urban property” as was the city council.111 N.A. Osokin, an original supporter of the public fire department but someone who was more concerned with resolving an issue that disrupted the functioning of urban management, wanted to keep the fire chief on the city’s payroll. He felt that, in the past, Kazan had had a “model” fire department, and though its operation had changed in administrative terms, its practical set-up should remain the same. Furthermore, since the salary of the fire chief was a negligible expense, it was unnecessary to remove it as a budget item.112 Though there were vocal objections to Iushkov’s views, the silent majority carried the vote. The city council ordered the executive, which, since 1870, had been responsible for the fire department, to hand it over, with all its equipment, to the police. The city council confirmed the salaries of the assistant fire chiefs and the firefighters but refused to continue to pay the salary of the brandmaior, the head fire chief. Since the position of fire chief was not specified in the laws for a police fire department, the councillors voted to abolish it.113 Two aspects of this discussion are particularly noteworthy. First, no one who had bothered to voice an opinion contested the governor’s

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actions. Exactly the same people who, two years ago, had defended the public fire department, meekly accepted the governor’s orders. Iushkov, Osokin, and Zhukovskii abandoned their previous defence of the fire department and argued over whether or not the policerun fire department should have a fire chief. There is no evidence to suggest that external factors, such as the heightened security of the early 1880s, may have provoked this radical change. Second, there is no reason to believe that city council members had aligned themselves with the wishes of the governor. That this was not the case is evident from Iushkov’s position. He accepted the higher authority of the Ministry of Internal Affairs but again challenged the decision of the governor, who had personally appointed the fire chief.114 The reasons for this are difficult to understand, but he may have wanted to stall for time and thus use existing laws to aggravate the governor and his entourage.115 Iushkov’s speech certainly did nothing to reduce the tension between the city council and the governor, but his arguments did no more than follow the letter of the law. He was concerned that, if the issue was not settled de jure, an avenue to misunderstanding would constantly remain open and “could pop up every year.”116 Legal resolution only came two years later when the Senate ruled that the city must maintain a fire chief: the city council accepted this decision without comment.117 The attitude towards the governor suggests that city officials were shifting their understanding of this figure from something personal to something institutional. Whereas, in the period before the Great Reforms, city officials were subjected to the personal whims of individual governors, the slow process of bureaucratization placed the governor within the framework of institutional rules. In a Weberian sense, the personal charisma of the local leader gave way to the rational structures of late nineteenth-century bureaucracies.118 To be sure, this did not mean that urban officials questioned the still extensive powers of the governor, but they did relate his actions to a standard set in written protocols. While city officials evaluated the governor within the context of these laws, the process of bureaucratization should not let one forget that the governor was a local personality who interacted on a personal basis with city officials who often shared with him a common social background. Unfortunately, a reliance on institutions meant that the Kazanites had to abide by decisions made in a distant capital. Ultimately, the fire department was transferred into the hands of the police, and,

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except for a few minor delays, the transfer went smoothly.119 In November 1884, the governor reported to the mayor that he had performed an inspection of the fire department. All the equipment was in order, and the firefighters themselves “were perfectly prepared for their jobs.”120 The era of the public fire department in Kazan was over. The close analysis of the conflict over the Kazan fire department demonstrates the intricacies of local self-government. Instead of opposing the state, city councillors used state laws to ensure that their local interests were protected; through their petition to the Senate, they sought protection from the same absolute state that obshchestvo should presumably have opposed. One cannot forget that the timing (during a “crisis of autocracy”) and the importance of this conflict were such that it should have presented an ideal opportunity for true opposition. Though the majority of council members voted consistently to defend their mayor, they were only protecting what they believed to be the status quo ante. For all the energy spent discussing the administration of the fire department, one is left to wonder whether the debate left its mark on performance. The comments made by city councillors and the governors hardly provide an adequate perspective since their assessments were inevitably tied to other arguments. In 1909, however, P.K. Iavorovskii visited cities in the Volga region to review their fire departments.121 In Kazan, Iavorovskii was shocked to discover a dilapidated fire department run by lethargic officials, one of whom was apparently under investigation by the law.122 The firefighters lived in squalor and, according to this author, had been required to wear numbered badges so that they could be easily identified should one of them be accused of theft.123 Iavorovskii also noted the sharp contrast between a city known for its “scientific and educational prowess” and the lack of attention paid to the fire department.124 He did not wonder that the fire of 1902 destroyed more than six hundred homes. Who is to blame here? Had city officials continued to manage their own fire department without state interference would the problems have been solved? Would self-administration have saved the day? The interests of local state officials and city councillors were so intertwined it is almost impossible to answer these questions. As the above discussion indicates, even in the heyday of the

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public fire department in the 1870s, the governor and police chief played an essential role in aiding city officials. Perhaps one should conclude that neither city officials nor the local state authorities rose to the occasion for, as Iavorovskii’s comments indicate, there was much room for improvement within the general parameters of what could be accomplished. Throughout the see-saw battle in Kazan, city councillors never expressed any doubt in the authority of the governor, the police chief, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or the Senate. The state had established a set of rules for everyone to follow, and, as long as the governor followed them, the city would abide by them as well. The problems with the fire department arose not because the state had created inappropriate administrative guidelines but because the governor refused to abide by them. When the governor acted according to the statutes and the laws, he was a welcome participant in urban affairs, even if this meant acting as commander at the scene of a fire. They only challenged the governor when his personal commands went beyond the statutory rights that the empire’s laws had bestowed upon him. Therefore, instead of challenging the state, council members sought to work within the system the state had created for them because they thought it functioned in their own best interests. From 1881 until 1886, there was radical disagreement but no opposition in Kazan.

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4 A Conservative Public Sphere Volunteer Fire Departments, 1880–1914

By the end of the 1870s, the problems encountered in Kazan and in other cities led many urban officials to believe that the professional fire departments could not cope with their assigned obligations. Although many municipalities had taken control of their professional fire departments in the early 1860s, they had been unable to administer these organizations in a manner that protected citizens from a major urban danger. In Saratov, after a public inspection of the fire department revealed gaping inadequacies, residents petitioned the governor to create a volunteer fire department.1 At about the same time, the newspaper Bereg (Shore) wrote that, if the fire department of Riazan had anything of which to be proud, it was the “crudity of its firefighters,” who “squabbled with the public.”2 Bereg noted that a few enlightened citizens had given up waiting for the city duma to act and wanted to form a volunteer fire department.3 Paradoxically, as Alexander III started to reassert state authority in the provinces, fire departments became an even more important part of the urban public sphere. In the nineteenth century, there was perhaps no better organization for demonstrating public initiative and a developed civic consciousness than the volunteer fire department. In the United States, the volunteer fire departments had significant political power. In New York City, the volunteers had constant conflicts with city aldermen who tried to interfere in the operation of their organizations. In one incident, volunteers successfully demanded the reinstatement of their fire chief after city council had dismissed him.4 In Germany, the volunteer fire departments became a focal point for a struggle

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between liberals and conservatives. As membership in a volunteer fire department signified political affiliation, they attracted some of society’s most prominent citizens.5 In France, the volunteer firefighters were highly militaristic, almost indistinguishable from the National Guard, and these departments became local organizations involved in struggles with central authorities to protect their independence.6 The Russian volunteer fire departments offered the same possibilities. Many important people joined these organizations, which met in city hall to discuss affairs and to vote on issues; eventually they developed a strong public presence. In 1898, the Imperial Russian Society of Firefighters had 228-member rural and urban volunteer fire departments. In 1907, membership of this empire-wide organization surpassed the thousand mark.7 Indeed, by the beginning of the twentieth century, volunteer fire departments had become one of the most important free social organizations in the empire. They possessed all the elements of a German or American volunteer fire department and offered urban subjects an opportunity to participate in the public sphere.8 In tsarist Russia, however, the volunteer fire departments never became vehicles for expressing diverse political opinions and instead remained a well-controlled conservative arena of public action. Even during the revolutionary struggles of 1905, these fire societies never came into conflict with the state. While most theories of civil society see volunteer associations as a threat to autocratic power, I argue that they could do as much to support as to oppose autocratic values. Volunteer fire departments, with their broad-based membership, were ideal organizations for inculcating members with traditional autocratic values. As we shall see, their high-profile activity propagated a message that closely approximated the Winter Palace’s official line. Many of the themes discussed below, such as the associational ties to Orthodoxy, have been discussed in Cathy Frierson’s work on peasant volunteers in the countryside. Despite the presence of these apparent conservative tendencies, her analysis follows dominant attitudes towards civil society in so far as she depicts volunteer associations as representing “society” as opposed to the state.9 Moreover, her conclusions are faithful to the Tocquevillian model in that responsibility for accounting and communicating with other members is portrayed as providing “detailed instructions in local

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democracy.”10 As the tsarist nature of these associations indicates, one should be careful before allowing one’s theoretical inclinations to overwhelm the empirical evidence. The analysis starts with a short investigation of the origins of the volunteer fire departments in the Baltic provinces. Thereafter, it focuses on their growth and development in the primarily Russian parts of the empire. It looks at the problems of gaining official approval for establishing a volunteer fire department, the composition of its members, major celebrations, and the ability of these fire societies to maintain social hierarchies despite their presumably integrative function.

baltic origins of volunteer firefighting The volunteer fire departments developed both as a complementary force to the standing urban fire departments in larger centres and as the sole form of firefighting in smaller urban and rural areas. The first volunteer fire departments appeared in the Baltic provinces. In 1862, local residents formed a volunteer fire department in Revel (Tallinn); in 1865, Riga founded its own and soon many other areas followed suit. According to the statistics compiled by A.D. Sheremetev, by 1892 the Revel organization had 402 active members, 452 supporters, and 22 musicians for the orchestra. This team of almost one thousand uniformed urban residents was responsible for an area that included 2,600 buildings and fifty thousand inhabitants.11 As a rule, the volunteer fire departments in the Baltic German areas had greater success than did their Russian counterparts. They had their own newspaper, Feuerwehr-Nachrichten (Fire department news), which appeared well before either Pozharnyi (Firefighter) or Pozharnoe delo (Firefighter’s cause). They held their own congresses and often corresponded with their counterparts in Germany.12 In 1889, when most Russian volunteer fire departments were just getting started, Dorpat celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. Fifty volunteer fire departments from the Baltic Association of Firefighters were invited to celebrate the growth of a volunteer fire department, which, from “small beginnings” and as a result of “true civic consciousness [Bürgersinn],” had become an integral part of local society.13 Not surprisingly, when Baltic delegates attended a conference of firefighters held in 1896 in Nizhnii Novgorod, they reported that “much of what had been decided and projected [at the confer-

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ence] had already existed for a long time in the Baltic States [Ostseeprovinzen].”14 The status of volunteer fire departments in this part of the empire demonstrates an interesting aspect of the Russian Empire itself. As Andreas Kappeler writes, “the Russians were hardly the privileged ‘master race’ of the Empire” as there was a “socio-cultural developmental gradient” according to which the Russians lagged far behind other ethnic groups.15 The status and organization of the volunteer fire departments in the Baltic States caused a certain amount of envy and criticism among Russian observers. K. Iordan, perhaps the most prolific of writers on firefighting, said that the public fire departments structured according to the one in Ostashkov, the first Russian citizen-run fire department, were fundamentally different from the ones in the Baltic provinces. The volunteer fire departments founded according to German statutes were “totally incomprehensible, strange, and alien” organizations.16 Russian observers at the conference held in 1896 in Nizhnii Novgorod noted that, at a parade, much German was heard and the “whole procession had a foreign, non-Russian … flavour” to it.17 In Ostashkov, the fire department had appealed to a supposedly traditional Russian sense of community, with all members of society pitching in accordingly. Here Iordan was almost parroting the conservative values inherent in Slavophile sobornost’. The foreign model volunteer fire departments, on the other hand, had been organized by a small “clique” of fire enthusiasts who participated in what many other urban citizens considered to be a type of sporting organization. Iordan concluded that the volunteer fire departments became isolated not just from many urban residents but also from the municipal authorities who were responsible for the professional fire departments.18 Iordan mistrusted the Russian volunteer fire departments, which modelled themselves according to the statutes of the Baltic German organizations.19

statutory regulation of volunteer firefighting As advanced as the Baltic provinces may have been, the Russian areas did not remain stagnant. In spite of original setbacks – such as in Kazan in the 1860s, when an unsuccessful attempt to form a team of enthusiasts failed – the idea of volunteer fire departments slowly caught hold.20 In Pskov, one of the oldest of Russian cities and

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situated close to the Baltic States, a volunteer fire department was created in 1870, and in 1892 Sheremetev reported that it had at least 136 uniformed members.21 In Minsk at around the same time, young intellectuals, professionals, and merchants tried to establish a fire society after a recent fire had destroyed the core of the city. After a decade of problems, it finally managed to establish itself in the 1880s.22 By 1892, the society had over one hundred uniformed members.23 In an empire in which public association was looked upon with suspicion, forming any association was not without its difficulties. In 1879, thirty residents of Ekaterinburg in Perm province took the initiative and suggested creating a volunteer fire department.24 The petitioners submitted a proposed statute to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, requesting permission to organize their own fire department. Their original statute wanted the head of the volunteer fire department to be in complete command of his subordinates at the scene of a fire. However, in the margins next to the original, a ministry official wrote that the volunteer fire department would actually be under the command of the police.25 The Ministry of Internal Affairs approved this revised statute in November 1879 and sent it back to the Perm provincial governor. When the petitioners discovered that the statute had been changed to favour police participation, the original membership quickly declined.26 Whenever a draft statute was submitted, changes were almost inevitably required as many of the drafts requested that the police not be involved with the operation of the volunteer fire department. When the economic department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs received a statute, it passed it on to the Department of Police. The Police approved most of the applications but insisted that the volunteers be under the authority of the police. For example, in a project suggested in Vologda, the statute was changed to make it perfectly clear that the police chief would be in command at the scene of a fire.27 The state police wanted to ensure they remained in control in the hectic atmosphere surrounding a fire. In 1868, a Ministry of Internal Affairs circular introduced the same proviso. Because fighting fires was viewed as a military exercise, authorities believed the police were in the best position to ensure the necessary discipline. There was always concern that volunteer fire departments consisted of undisciplined bands of revellers. One author wrote that it was impossible to maintain military discipline within the volunteer fire

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departments because they were composed of people from “different estates [and] professions.” Furthermore, the average urban citizen was more educated than was a soldier and, thus, tended to be “less compliant.”28 Nonetheless, the insistence upon strict discipline and the autocracy’s unwillingness to leave locals alone only served to maintain the structure of dual authority that had existed since 1868. Here there was no resurgence of police authority, just the continuation of a well-established tradition of police command at the scene of a fire. And, as before, most people continued to complain about police ineptitude.29 Finally, the continual revisions of the draft charters delayed the process and discouraged applicants. To improve the application process and to reduce the number of draft charters, the Ministry of Internal Affairs introduced a model charter in 1897. At this time the ministry was standardizing many of the empire’s public institutions. In the 1890s, it created a model charter to simplify application for charitable societies. If a charitable society submitted a draft charter that approximated the model charter, the governor could confirm it without delay.30 The same procedure was introduced for the volunteer fire departments. The model charter, borrowed from the one used in Riga, not only accelerated the application procedure but also allowed the state to regulate and curb the activities of volunteer organizations.31 As part of her effort to document the growth of civil society, Adele Lindenmeyr correctly stresses that the model charter actually encouraged people to submit charters. At the same time, however, the volunteer fire departments became centrally regulated. Whereas previously, the proposed statutes almost inevitably wanted the volunteer fire departments to operate independently of the police, the model charter avoided this issue altogether and simply reasserted police authority.32 Article 74 stated unequivocally that the police were in charge at the scene of a fire.33 As another requirement standard for most public organizations, Article 19 obliged the board to inform the police before it convened its general meeting. The charter was also problematic because, rather than basing the volunteer fire departments in law, it only defined how they were to be organized. Iordan even referred to the position of the fire societies as outside the law (he used the term nelegal’nost’ to express their ambiguous position) because, though the state had supplied a charter, they were “private enterprises” and thus their organization was not included in the Law Code. Their ill-defined status allowed

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municipal administrators and insurance companies to ignore them. Iordan intimated that the only way to ensure that these groups respected the volunteer fire departments was to script their operation into the law books.34 Iordan’s comments repeated many of the arguments that sought to reform fire departments in the Russian Empire. The desire for increased legislation indicated not only a certain faith in the existing laws and a belief that everyone would follow them but also the recognition of the state’s role as protector. As private organizations, the volunteer fire departments could not defend themselves against some municipal authorities who favoured the public fire departments; therefore, Iordan requested the state to come to their aid. In this respect, the state could continue to play a vital role in a voluntary association. As much as the volunteer fire departments were independent of the state once their charters had been approved, a reciprocal relationship was to their advantage. Another peculiarity of the statute was the strict division of membership. The model charter defined three categories: enthusiasts, honourable members, and active members. The enthusiasts (okhotniki), who were not automatically entitled to vote, were defined as those “who personally participated in extinguishing the fire.”35 The active members (deistvitel’nye chleny) participated in extinguishing fires but also made a yearly cash contribution and helped with the administration of the society.36 The active members were privileged in so far as they enjoyed the exclusive right to lead the society’s different detachments (otriady – the military term was not accidental).37 The volunteer fire departments had detachments of hosers, climbers, and security guards staffed primarily by urban residents. These detachments were led by those who could afford the privilege. The category of honourable members, the only one that provided access to women, consisted of those who had made a significant donation, monetary or otherwise, to the society.38 Only honorary or active members had the right to command the fire department. In this manner, the statute preserved existing societal hierarchies. In his recent theoretical précis concerning the development of civil society, Joseph Bradley suggests that the charters of volunteer associations can be considered as “micro-constitutions.”39 However, it would take an enormous leap of faith to suggest that the charters and statutes of the associations described above could actually provide a model for future constitutional development. The state

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issued the statute as a decree (how different would the American ­Constitution look if there had not been a constitutional convention in Philadelphia!), it reinforced societal divisions, determined the role of the police, and instituted voting restrictions so that the overwhelming majority of those who could vote were already familiar with the process from their noble or merchant assemblies. If anything, the statute brought the volunteer association closer to Imperial authority. The limitations of statutes can also be highlighted by reference to a satirical poem written in Weimar Germany. The journalist Kurt Tucholsky poked fun at membership in associational life. Not only did he recognize the ability of the association to overwhelm minority opinion but he also saw statutes as commandments that imbued members with a higher sense of self – “high above us soar the statutes.” Under cover of these statutes, members could look down on anyone “who was on the outside.”40 In Tucholsky’s view, the statutes promoted obedience rather than creative conversation. Despite their numerous drawbacks, the statutes in Imperial Russia did actually encourage people to form volunteer fire departments. In some areas, the initiators were intellectuals who had recently arrived in the city.41 In Saratov and in Irkutsk, it was the mayor who suggested the creation of a volunteer fire department.42 In Tver, the petition to establish a volunteer fire department was accompanied by a list that indicated the social breadth of membership in these departments. Of the 57 signers, at least 19 identified themselves as peasants, 16 as meshchane, 3 as merchants, and 14 as noblemen.43 The estate identity of the signers is revealed by the estate labels they attached to their own names and by the order in which the names appeared in the list: the noble ranks came first. In this manner, the volunteer fire department integrated the estates (it was an all-estate organization) but confirmed and maintained the estate membership of the participants. The diverse social profile of the enthusiasts in Tver corresponds to what we find in other volunteer fire departments. In an official report compiled in 1910 to determine the political reliability of the members of one volunteer fire department, the list indicated a host of different professions, further confirming the wide participation in these organizations. In the list of sixty-six members of the Aleksandrovskoe dobrovol’noe pozharnoe obshchestvo, there were merchants, traders, members of city council, copyists, shoemakers, metalworkers, and factory employees. Virtually every profession was represented.44

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In Kazan, the picture was similar. In 1903, two of the honourable members of the volunteer fire department were the governor and the police chief. Membership included the mayor, a retired general, a teacher at a school for artists, a merchant, at least ­sixteen duma members, and teams of hosers, climbers, and security guards.45 Though these last three teams are listed by name only, we can presume that the hosers and climbers came from diverse peasant, worker, and meshchane backgrounds. The security forces most probably came from the more prosperous strata because they were specifically assigned to protect property that was evacuated during fires. Indeed, this small security force was probably established to ensure that the firefighters themselves did not pilfer the evacuated property.46 The presence of the governor and the police chief as honorary members suggests that the public sphere of the volunteer fire department was not too distant from the official sphere of the state. Indeed, governors played no small role in founding these organizations. In Chernigov, in the western part of the empire, the inaugural report of the volunteer fire department thanked the local governor for presenting the idea.47 As a result, the governor was considered an honorary member of the organization. In 1897, this organization also included the former minister of internal affairs I.N. Durnovo as an honorary member.48 The presence of higher state officials helped gain financial support and influence for the volunteer fire department.49 In Vladimir, northeast of Moscow, the trend repeated itself. The volunteer fire department that was formed in 1896 had the governor, the vice-governor, and the head of the provincial noble assembly as honorary members.50 This membership profile was similar to that of the charitable organizations in the empire. In Ostrogozhsk, the membership of the local charitable society read “like a Who’s Who of provincial society.”51 The close association with state officials does not contradict the assertion that these organizations operated within a public sphere that actually enjoyed independence from the state. The volunteer fire departments were never mandated as necessary by the state, unlike both the public and the police fire departments: no community was legally obliged to have a volunteer fire department. Because participation in these organizations was voluntary, membership reflected this choice: many but not all state servants volunteered their free time and, in fact, most of the members were not state servants at all but, rather, ordinary members of the urban population. In Aleksin

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in Tula province, the initiators of the project went from “house to house” recruiting members for the volunteer fire department.52 The separation between the state and the unofficial public sphere was blurred, but these organizations offered an enormous scope for public activity. The volunteer fire departments attracted some of urban Russia’s most active citizens, and a strong competitive spirit existed between the volunteers and the professional firefighters, who often came from the lower ranks of society. The volunteers were eager to demonstrate and even flaunt their prowess in front of the professional firefighters. For example, in a public speech, the head of the volunteer fire department in Riazan stated that the volunteers wanted to keep their discipline at a higher level than did the hired firefighters.53 In Kazan, the reports of the volunteer fire department indicated who had first arrived at the scene of a fire, the volunteers or the professionals from the municipally controlled fire department. Most of the time, they confirmed that the volunteers had arrived first.54 In an unidentified provincial city the regular fire department made an official complaint to the governor, arguing that the volunteers had been interfering in its activities.55 The appeal to the governor suggests that city officials saw the governor as an arbitrator in urban affairs. The social origins of the two groups certainly played a major part in causing disagreements. The volunteers were those citizens who could afford to sacrifice their time, whereas most of the professional firefighters were poorly paid and lived in squalor.56 In one city, this situation was described as a conflict between the “blues” and the “reds.”57 From this perspective, the volunteer fire departments gave its members a way of expressing their dissatisfaction with the lower ranks of society.58 When the volunteers reported that they had arrived before the professionals, they were flaunting their presumed superiority. And even when the two fire departments marched together, often the volunteers marched in front. In Irkutsk, the volunteers marched first, followed by their equipment; bringing up the rear of the procession were the members of the professional fire department.59 On the other hand, the professional firefighters also asserted their authority over the volunteers. At a fire in Riazan in 1899, the professionals were accused of using hoses to spray water in the faces of volunteers and even of pushing a volunteer off a building. At a fire in 1907, the assistant fire chief had apparently told one volunteer

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“to go to hell” and shoved another, even though both were “in uniform.”60 According to the volunteer fire society, the fire chief “could not wait to insult the members of the volunteer society,” whom he referred to as “scum.”61 In the above examples, the volunteer fire departments had an exclusive function within society. In the American case, one sociologist has commented that, “in a way Tocqueville never intended, these [voluntary] associations substituted for aristocracy (or a system of inherited status) a new system for sorting people out and assigning status on the basis of their achievement within the local community.”62 The existence of two journals dedicated to firefighters, one for the elite and one for the rank and file, further emphasizes this point. In April 1906, an assistant fire chief in St Petersburg took advantage of the new publishing freedoms granted by the ­October Manifesto of 1905. He published Drug pozharnago (Fireman’s friend) because the articles in Pozharnoe delo did not satisfy the taste of the “rank and file fireman or regular volunteer.”63 In this manner, though the volunteer fire departments brought together a colourful assortment of urban citizens, they could function to exclude as much as to include members of society.

why volunteer? We know who volunteered, but we do not know what it meant to be a volunteer, what motivated people to volunteer, or even if one can truly consider the time spent in these organizations as volunteer activity. Sociologists, for instance, distinguish between different types of volunteer organizations. For some, an organization can only be volunteer if members are not paid, whereas for others it is only required that membership be voluntary and not coerced. In some definitions, an association can be considered voluntary if it pursues philanthropic ends, whereas other definitions see volunteer organizations as satisfying the needs of their members.64 These different opinions provide an initial framework for understanding an individual’s motive for joining a volunteer fire department. In the American case, Amy Greenberg contests the notion that firefighters were truly volunteers. Although she recognizes that they did not receive monetary rewards, they did receive payments by other means. For example, they had the opportunity to use a modern

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firehouse, were freed from jury duty, and, most important, enjoyed a “public tribute that elevated their status in a republican-liberalist political culture, where heroic deeds largely determined a man’s worth as a citizen.”65 Yet, despite the possibility of non-monetary remuneration, these were typical volunteer groups. They were well organized, they encouraged broad-based civic activity, their membership was open to all male citizens, and, thus, they transcended class lines.66 In the Russian Empire, firefighters can be considered volunteers for a number of reasons. Like their American counterparts, Russian volunteers were unpaid. Although they were occasionally eligible to receive monetary rewards, this was the exception rather than the rule. Instead of money, they received accolades from their peers, the public, and the state. Members were motivated both by the opportunity to be recognized and by the opportunity to protect their own goods and community. For those who enjoyed rank and privilege, the benefits of volunteering were obvious. They could engage in military games and festivities, travel to conferences, and enjoy parading before admiring crowds. For those lower down in the social hierarchy, volunteering offered an opportunity to adopt another identity. They partook in the same parades, festivities, and celebrations as did their superiors. They could also don helmets to re-enact the glories of war without suffering its pains and agonies. The volunteerism discussed here thus speaks to more than the altruistic motives that often accompany visions of the volunteer firefighter. In the context of an autocratic state, however, it would be incorrect to suggest that people were not volunteers simply because they received non-monetary remuneration. If one were to apply ­Greenberg’s formulation to the Russian case, one would overlook the non-coercive element of participation. The state never forced anyone to join a volunteer society. A fire society was always referred to either as a dobrovol’naia pozharnaia komanda (volunteer fire department) or as dobrovol’noe pozharnoe obshchestvo (volunteer fire society). Membership was open and non-compulsory, and responsibility for the organization’s existence lay with the public and not with the state or the municipality.67 Because membership was non-coercive, the values members expressed must be considered their own rather than those of the state. And, even though these ­values often overlapped, the volunteers were agents in the urban public sphere.

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militarism in volunteer life The most dominant values in the volunteer fire departments had militaristic undertones. They were not belligerent, but they shared an ethos with more formal military structures. Commentator after commentator remarked about the military character of the volunteer fire departments. In 1883, the police officials in Warsaw were concerned that a local volunteer fire department was trying to “give its organization, its exercises, and its uniforms a military look.”68 The person who reported the parade at the Nizhnii Novgorod conference in 1896 wrote that the firefighters in their “copper helmets gave the procession a military look.”69 In 1911, an article in Golos pozharnago reported that the serious business of the fire society had been turned into “soldierly games.”70 A classic example of volunteer behaviour is related in an episode that occurred in Orel in 1892. The mayor of the city, on behalf of the head of the volunteer fire department, Lieutenant-General ­Dukhonin, asked the chief of the local garrison if the volunteers could march alongside the soldiers at an upcoming celebration. The volunteers wanted to express their “patriotic” sentiments in a public forum. The head of the garrison did not want to deny these “faithful” subjects a right to express themselves, and they were allowed to join the left flank of the soldiers. According to the report from the Ministry of War, this satisfied both the volunteers and the “public.” The same report stated that the volunteers were trying to “assimilate a militaristic order” as they wanted to welcome the governor back into town with an “honour guard.” As a result, the volunteers received permission to march in future parades as long as they took their orders from the head of the garrison.71 This type of activity was not unique to Orel. In Omsk, where “the whole city came to watch the parade,” the volunteers marched with the soldiers as well. According to Pozharnoe delo, “the participation of firefighters in the parade together with soldiers made an agreeable picture.”72 In marching with the soldiers, the volunteers adopted military discipline and order, drew themselves closer to the existing state structure, and expressed these values to an admiring public. When the volunteers entered these parades, they subjected themselves to a higher authority and, as a group of men, paraded their masculinity in a disciplined and domineering manner through city streets.

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The discipline was important. In America, the men in the volunteer fire departments had a reputation for being rowdy, obnoxious, and pugilistic. The St Louis fire department “shared in a culture that sanctioned some acts of violence” and, in 1849, participated in a riot.73 Perhaps the Russian state police would not have let things get that far. Nonetheless, the Russian volunteer fire departments managed to subdue any rowdy instincts. The militaristic fashion in which they disciplined themselves was characteristic of an autocratic state rather than of a frontier society. Although certain critics claimed that volunteer firefighters did not have the day-to-day iron discipline of a soldier-firefighter, when they marched, they marched in order.74 As is evident from the example in Orel, volunteer firefighters also marched to confirm the authority of state representatives. The first parade was to celebrate the name day of the empress, and the second was to welcome the governor back to town. In Vladimir, the volunteer fire department had the “high honour” of presenting itself to Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, uncle to the Emperor Nicholas II, who had arrived in town to inspect the local garrison.75 After breakfasting with the military, the grand duke greeted the volunteers and listened to a report from their commander-in-chief. The Vladimir fire society reported that: “this day would remain eternally etched in the memories of those who took part in the parade.”76 In these cases, volunteers knew they could join the association in order to draw closer to the state. Furthermore, volunteers were in a position to receive public praise and positive reinforcement from their superiors. In 1898, after a series of fires near Vladimir, the governor expressed his sincere thanks to the volunteers.77 After the October Manifesto of 1905 was announced in Torzhok, the volunteer fire department organized a procession to demonstrate its support for the autocracy. Accompanied by their orchestra, a portrait of the tsar, and three thousand followers, the firefighters marched through the city’s streets.78 Someone who did not join a fire society missed a chance to get close to members of the immediate royal family and/or to state officials like the governor. The volunteers, therefore, could move closer to the very authority structure that most volunteer organizations were presumed to oppose. As much as participation in these parades was meant to confirm the military might of the Russian Imperial forces, there was unease among tsarist officials who thought that an independently organized

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group of citizens could pose a potential threat to the autocracy. Although no such incidents emanated from European Russia, reports from the non-Russian areas in the west caused a certain amount of concern. As early as 1874, the governor of Warsaw wrote that one had to be extremely careful with the volunteer fire departments.79 In 1883, one report from Poland stated that the fire society’s tendency to form strictly disciplined units could “in the case of an uprising” become “a ready cadre for the formation of a detachment of insurgents.”80 In Riga, the governor wrote that the public and volunteer fire departments formed the “Riga city army”; that, taken together, they outnumbered the police two to one; and, thus, that they threatened the stability of the city.81 There is also evidence that Polish volunteer fire departments did have a radical side. In his work on the Polish volunteer fire departments, Jozef Ryszard Szaflik documents the role they played in the revolution of 1905 and beyond.82 They sang Polish songs, put on Polish theatrical pieces, and disseminated patriotic messages.83 Despite Szaflik’s interpretation, there is no need to suggest that this type of political radicalism would infect volunteer fire departments in ethnic Russian areas. First, it testifies to the diversity of political cultures within the empire; second, it clearly demonstrates that the form and structure of an organization does not determine its content. Both the Russian and Polish organizations had almost identical statutes, yet their internal values served different aims. The Polish associations wanted independence from the autocracy, whereas the Russian associations wanted to be closer to the autocracy. The ­juxtaposition of these two groups adds salience to the argument that the existence of a volunteer organization says little about its political orientation. Whatever values inhered in the Polish organizations, in European Russia there were only two small incidents and both came after the violent unrest of the 1905 revolution. In the province of Tver, a leader of a small fire society took his team of volunteers for a horse ride through the countryside. In full uniform, they went from village to village. A report stated that the leader had “two red flags with ‘Land and Freedom’ and ‘Freedom’” written on them.84 In Ufa, a rural group of volunteers was reported to have “leftist” members, who were inclined to “spread revolutionary ideas.” It also engaged in “violent activity” against those who did not agree with its radical

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notions. The governor of Ufa recommended that this fire society be closed down.85 A counter-example from a town in Tver province shows that volunteer firefighters were quite capable of violence when attempting to protect conservative interests. In 1906, volunteer firefighters disrupted a parade of youths who were walking with a red flag. A peasant member of the fire society started to tear the flag apart. When the youthful protesters fought back, the rest of the volunteers jumped in to help, and the flag was eventually destroyed.86

celebrating the volunteer fire department In addition to their military activity, the volunteer fire departments staged numerous celebrations and festive parades that offered their members an escape from the monotony of daily routine. They were not a peculiarly Russian phenomenon as, in the Baltic provinces, the Feuerwehr-Nachrichten inserted regular reports of lively festivities.87 And, in England, “there was a good deal of jollity or even drunkenness” in the volunteer fire brigades.88 Many of these Russian celebrations were held within or just outside the city duma, the supposed centre of the municipal public sphere. It was the same place where city councillors had discussed the fate of their own public fire departments in the 1860s. In Kazan, for example, the volunteer fire department had its inaugural meeting in the town hall.89 The space within the duma, where urban residents both discussed and celebrated their volunteer fire departments, had broad public meaning. Furthermore, this inaugural meeting in Kazan allowed members, who were otherwise not involved with the municipal political process, to witness the forum within which municipal decisions were made. In this respect, the volunteer fire department brought a much broader audience into the centre of municipal politics. The role of the duma can be examined in Tver, whose volunteer fire department organized a “family evening” in 1893. The purpose of the celebration in the city duma was to allow members to get acquainted and “to amuse themselves with their families.” The popularity of the event, which attracted primarily “working-class” members of the society, was such that not all of the thirteen hundred participants could fit into the duma. Those who did fit danced all

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night “in the great hall of the duma.” The governor of the province was also in attendance, and throughout the whole evening “strict order was maintained.”90 No doubt, members of the police were in attendance, as they were at most public events. These events had a unifying function that transcended gender. As in America, where women were not allowed to participate as firefighters but could partake in celebrations, so in Russia these volunteer events allowed Russian women to get involved in the extracurricular activities of the volunteer fire departments.91 In addition, during these events, women could enter the duma, which, otherwise they could only enter by proxy (i.e., to vote).92 The less prosperous members of the society could achieve closer access to the town hall. Perhaps it would be naive to suggest they danced right next to the noble matrons of Tver, but they did come closer to members of high society than they ever would have done in their daily lives. At the same time, the proximity of all these social groups at one celebration should not be used to exaggerate the integrative function of the volunteer fire departments. While these celebrations encouraged members of all estates to mingle, they also preserved many social boundaries. We have already seen how membership was divided into categories. At dinners and banquets, tables were set up to reflect these categories and, thus, to preserve traditional structures of authority. In Irkutsk, the members of the police fire department were permitted to eat their breakfast outside but not inside the city duma. 93 Another important celebration that emphasized these familiar themes took place in Ostashkov. In 1894, the fire department celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. For a purist, the Ostashkov celebration might fall outside the parameters of a volunteer association because participation was associated with an element of duty. However, it will be remembered that, at the outset of this discussion, Iordan touted the communal values of this fire department as an ideal for other volunteer departments; therefore, it fits the parameters of our current concerns. Moreover, many of the activities in ­Ostashkov were common to volunteer fire departments across the empire. As the model fire department for the reform of 1860, Ostashkovites let their celebration carry on for three days. On the first day, the 187 members of the fire department received new caps and a commemorative jeton from the city council.94 The next day, the volunteers marched through the city streets with their decorated fire

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equipment, surrounded by a throng of people. The volunteers eventually arrived at city hall, which they all entered to hear a public prayer that was performed in front of an icon. The volunteers then left the duma, which had for a moment shed its function as a forum for secular discussion, and arranged themselves in formation in front of it. With the orchestra present, the governor’s representative gave a supportive speech to the assembled crowd.95 At the same time, a new badge was revealed, which displayed the tsar’s name, the coat of arms of the city of Ostashkov, and the dates 1843–93. The mayor himself offered thanks to the emperor.96 On the next day, the families of the volunteers and honoured guests congregated at the premises of the local theatrical society, whose members had put up a Christmas tree for the celebration. All the firefighters and their families received “surprises” as part of the festivities. Five hundred and seventy people attended the event, and no unruly behaviour was observed. According to the official report, the masses were accustomed to “discipline and respecting the rules.”97 The cooperation between the firefighters and the members of the theatre society suggests that these two public associations shared common interests and an admiration for the autocracy. This celebration had many interesting elements. First, it demonstrated that the duma was obviously more than just a debating chamber. Women, workers, and (presumably) children could enter it alongside the governor’s representative and the clergy. The governor, as the representative of state authority, was allowed into a building that has been conceived as a bastion of municipal independence.98 His presence (or that of his proxy) within the duma and his delivery of a speech on its steps could have been perceived as tainting the independence of the municipalities. Yet, there were no apparent objections to the attendance of this official, and there was no evidence of any antagonism between these two separate spheres of authority. In terms of religious values, many of the volunteer fire departments celebrated their yearly jubilee on a day that corresponded with some type of religious commemoration. In Smolensk, the jubilee corresponded with the name day of the Smolensk Mother of God.99 A brief look at the official calendar of firefighting celebrations indicates a similar trend. Two of the most popular jubilee days were 6 and 15 August because they corresponded with the Transfiguration of the Lord and the Assumption of the Holy Mother

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of God, ­respectively.100 Moreover, volunteer fire departments were not the only volunteer associations whose activity was associated with religion. In Tver, the local archival commission devoted much of its time to the study of ecclesiastical affairs.101 Religion was also closely associated with charitable associations that emphasized a Christian duty to aide the less fortunate.102 Here, the volunteer associations could be used to mobilize traditional Orthodox values at a time when Alexander III and, thereafter, his son, Nicholas II, were reaffirming the historical connection between Orthodox belief and the autocracy. The volunteer fire departments enjoyed public prominence through their festivities, but budget issues also helped raise their profile as they were forced to organize fundraisers. The volunteers in Vladimir organized a skating rink and a bowling alley. The budget items reveal that these were no small affairs. The bowling event had music and fireworks, and the skating event involved having the volunteers rent space in a local theatre so that their band could practice. The events resulted in a satisfactory profit for the fire department’s accountants.103 The fundraiser at the Vladimir bowling alley inevitably invites comparisons with Robert Putnam’s now classic work on American associational life, Bowling Alone.104 Using a wealth of statistical examples, Putnam employs the bowling metaphor to argue that a drop in membership in bowling alleys can be equated with the weakening of American democracy. When fewer people were involved in their bowling associations, fewer people were involved in the democratic decision-making process. The people in Vladimir were obviously not running a bowling association, but their fundraiser did bring people together to support a common cause: they were not bowling alone in Vladimir. At the same time, like so many other volunteer fire departments throughout the empire, there is no evidence of a link between democratic values and participation in, say, the Vladimir volunteer fire department. In all these examples, the city duma played an essential role. The question arises as to why volunteers chose to have their celebration in the town hall. In smaller towns, it was perhaps the only available common building, but in cities the size of Ostashkov and Tver, other buildings – a theatre, a noble assembly, or a merchant’s club (all of which were occasionally used) – would have been available. The town hall had the advantage of being a supra-estate building – that is, it was not associated with any estate in particular. Furthermore,

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most of the leaders of the fire societies, prominent members of their respective cities, were probably already familiar with the duma. The duma was not always the scene of ordered celebrations. In 1911, an article in Golos pozharnago depicted an apparently fictitious celebration in the small town of P-k. By focusing on the celebration, the author wanted to offer a satirical perspective on provincial fire societies. The humorous piece was intended both to demonstrate to urban residents the importance of a firefighter’s jubilee and the tendency of the volunteers to take their celebrations more seriously than their duties.105 Even though the story may be fictitious, its substance mirrors the themes addressed at the celebrations described above and, thus, has one foot firmly anchored in reality. The account is important because it brings us closer to the activities in and around city hall. In many respects, this celebration was similar to the ones already described above. After a week of preparation and practice, sixtyfour volunteers from all walks of life donned their uniforms and their bronze helmets (reminiscent of those of Roman warriors). To the applause of local society they paraded through the city’s streets. After the parade the volunteers displayed the manoeuvres they had been practising all week. These manoeuvres were important because they were performed from the roof of the town hall. A ladder had been placed next to the town hall and volunteers “rushed up onto the roof.”106 The volunteers demonstrated their skills, and one firefighter even used the opportunity to douse two society ladies with enough water to ruin their new hats.107 This example demonstrates how working in the volunteer fire department allowed participants to exceed the boundaries of the everyday. After the manoeuvres, all the volunteers were invited into city hall for a small dinner in the company of the mayor and a retired general. The general entered first, followed by the mayor, the association’s honoured members, and then the rank-and-file volunteers. A special table was set up for the honoured guests, and the rest of the volunteers sat by themselves. However, as our satirist noted, there is no better way to bring people together than to have them share a meal. Once the mayor had consumed a sufficient amount of alcohol, he began to fraternize with the members of the volunteer fire department, joking that, at the next fire, he would be fighting next to them.108 The volunteers, who had also lost their inhibitions, decided that, instead of listening to the mayor, they wanted to “swing” him up

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and down. In an instant, the mayor of the city was being thrown to the ceiling and caught again as he fell to the ground.109 Like “wild animals,” the firefighters continued to throw the mayor until their attention fell upon the head of the volunteer fire department. This activity continued until “there were no more objects” for the firefighters to toss into the air. Their animalistic behaviour ceased, the atmosphere calmed, and soon everyone left the town hall and went to their respective homes. Although the author may have used poetic licence to emphasize certain negative aspects of the volunteers’ behaviour, he provided another indication of the intricate links between city hall and firefighting, and of how volunteering gave everyone access to a building that, due to suffrage restrictions, normally only the wealthy could enter. In the fictitious city of P-k, the volunteers made a mockery of the building. When they climbed on it, they dented the roof; and when inside, they got drunk and tossed the mayor about. Although this may seem to contradict the image of well-disciplined and militarized volunteers, the latter simply used the opportunity to reverse roles, if only for an instant. These celebrations, like widely distributed newspapers or pamphlets, could be used to express a range of sentiments. Naturally, towards the end of the nineteenth century, when russification became an issue in tsarist circles, parades could have nationalistic or imperialistic undertones.110 In Riga, for example, the governor expressed grave concern that the German language was the official language of the volunteer fire department, despite the fact that many of the volunteers were Russians or Letts.111 In the examples above, some volunteers wanted to express their “patriotic” sentiments, while others sang the Imperial hymn as they marched through the streets. The next example is much less urban and much less provincial. For a moment, it brings the narrative closer to the seat of Imperial power and, thus, demonstrates the broader meaning of fire departments. In 1909, on his estate just outside St Petersburg, the fire department of Count A.D. Sheremetev celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. Although Sheremetev sponsored the fire department in a private manner, its structure and activities were effectively identical to those of other volunteer fire departments and it solicited member donations to ensure its survival. The celebration took place on the name day of the Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna, the patroness of the Peter the Great

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Volunteer Fire Brigade. A small group of volunteers marched from the train station to the grounds of the empress’s palace, where she greeted them from her terrace. Later in the afternoon, the complement of 480 volunteers formed themselves into eighteen separate detachments and were accompanied by two orchestras on the road to their training grounds. The rays of the summer sun reflected off the firefighters’ helmets, and each detachment displayed its own colourful flag. In addition to Sheremetev’s troops, “representatives of different Russian fire societies and brigades” displayed their flags as well. No mention was made of non-Russian fire societies. At the training grounds, this battalion of firefighters was met by Grand Duke Mikhail Aleksandrovich, himself an honourable member of the volunteer fire department. The firefighters were called to “attention,” and Count Sheremetev and the grand duke inspected the eighteen separate attachments as a general would inspect an army. After the inspection, a public service was held, and proclamation of support for the Imperial family was met with an eight-gun salute; this was repeated when the memory of Peter the Great was proclaimed to be eternal. After the grand duke left the firefighters, the atmosphere did not change. As a gift from his men, Count Sheremetev received a silver axe, a symbol of “work, power and … leadership.” Sheremetev thanked his men and reminded them that it was their Christian duty to help their fellow men. Afterwards, dinner was served for six hundred people, toasts were raised, and a telegram was composed to the tsar. When the telegram to the “ardently loved Tsar” was read out loud, it was met by a “powerful hurrah,” and the orchestra played the anthem. After dinner, the firefighters moved in one huge column to the nearby estate of Count Sheremetev to attend fireworks and to participate in a torch-lit parade. In the dark of night, the fireworks lit up the monogram of the emperor and empress, which was on display. After the fireworks faded, “in the dark alleys of the park, the torches blazed, the helmets shone, and the detachments of volunteers with the orchestra at its head” moved slowly towards the palace. The volunteers moved like a “shining, fiery snake (400 torches)” through the grounds until their own torches faded.112 So close to the capital, this jubilee outdid many of the smaller ones from the provincial cities. Yet, while the scale may have been different, the themes were all similar. The volunteer fire ­societies

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had become an ideal vehicle for transmitting conservative values to a broader public. On Sheremetev’s estate, many of those in attendance were probably already committed to the cause. In most of the other examples, distant from the centres of power, the volunteer fire societies had a strong integrative function. The celebrations demonstrated the militaristic tendencies of those participating in urban civil society.113 They incorporated what are usually perceived as passive citizens into an active framework of support for the autocracy.

volunteer firefighting and regionalism On other occasions, celebrations that did not directly involve the volunteer fire departments were used to promote a similar message. In 1891, in Saratov, a celebration was organized to commemorate the city’s three hundredth birthday. There was a solemn public service and a procession led by local officials through the city streets. This procession was followed by a cannonade, and then the soldiers from the local garrison, accompanied by the military orchestra and local schoolchildren, marched towards the town hall. When they arrived at the town hall, all present listened to the Imperial anthem. A short duma meeting was called, and council members sent off a telegram to both the tsar and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.114 The marching, the music, the telegrams, and the central location of the town hall were all familiar aspects of celebrations of the volunteer fire departments, though in this example from Saratov residents were celebrating the city’s triennial. Lutz Häfner argues that the jubilee was constructed so as to develop both a local identity and independence. The public festivities were a means to demonstrate “local vitality and power.” Further, the elites in Saratov had no “national political aspirations beyond claims of urban hegemony.”115 Despite the singing of the anthem, the religious ceremony, and the telegram to the tsar, the jubilee also provided the elite with an opportunity to create a “border with respect to the autocracy” by affirming their “regional identity.” The celebration was thus a means for the city to define itself as an “independent subject with respect to the state.”116 Since the similarities between the celebration in Saratov and those of the volunteer fire departments are so striking, the question naturally arises as to whether the latter could also be used to form a

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regional identity. There is ample evidence to suspect any connection between volunteer fire departments and regional identity. As much as they may have brought urban residents together in a purely local enterprise, there are no real grounds to assume that their energy was devoted to creating a specifically local identity that stood in opposition to the state or autocracy. The examples taken from Tver, Ostashkov, Orel, and the estate of Count Sheremetev indicate that these volunteers actually wanted to bring their associations closer to the state. Here it is significant that, although the members of fire societies congregated in regional centres, they chose to commemorate the autocracy in the capital. The volunteer fire department in the Siberian city of Irkutsk asked the authorities in St Petersburg if they could wear a medallion commemorating Alexander III because they (mistakenly) believed that he had done so much for firefighting.117 Thousands of kilometres from the capital, this appeal could only hamper the development of a regional identity. Furthermore, because many of the volunteers were city council members, instead of distancing themselves from tsarist power, these celebrations brought tsarist symbols and tsarist authority much closer to the seat of this municipal power than Häfner suggests. The same interpretation also applies when one considers the singing of the Imperial hymn just outside the city duma. If anything, the presence of the volunteer fire department within the city duma only served to compromise municipal independence. To borrow a phrase, many of these fire societies created their own small scenarios of power, which linked them to the autocratic authority.118 In fact, the celebrations of the volunteer fire departments evoked some of the favourite symbols of the Russian radical right, which arose as a movement after 1905. The right used religious symbols and thus helped to promote the idea, prominent during the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II, that the church was a pillar of the Russian state.119 In addition, the radical right used “banners, icons, a procession to communicate a sense of power and triumph, and the military element – military marches signifying triumph and discipline –” to disseminate its conservative message.120 The processions of the radical right, within which estate groups were segregated, recreated the same divisions that were apparent within the volunteer fire departments.121 The similarity between these symbolic displays and those of the volunteer fire departments speaks to the political attitude of the volunteers involved with the latter.

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Thus, rather than creating an oppositional public sphere, these voluntary associations became vehicles that encouraged the development of a civic consciousness, while simultaneously providing a support base for the autocracy. This interpretation can help us explain their enormous growth in the 1880s and 1890s. This growth came at a time when the Russian Empire moved from the more liberal reign of Alexander II to the more conservative reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II. As far as charitable societies are concerned, except for a short period from 1886 to 1890, by far the greatest growth came after the reign of Alexander II.122 In other words, the naturally suspicious state did not clamp down on voluntarism, the anti-state exercise par excellence, because many of these volunteers used their free time to support the status quo.123 Although the state took the necessary precautions, such as issuing a standard charter and occasionally warning the gendarmerie that these fire societies had the potential for anti-state activity, these precautions were minimal and there was rarely an occasion for real concern.124 By keeping its distance from these organizations, the state could rely on these volunteers to spread its gospel without prompting. One senses that, when governors began suggesting the creation of volunteer fire departments in the early 1880s, they had something other than firefighting in mind.

did they actually serve a purpose? So far the discussion has focused on the cultural and political habits of the volunteer fire departments without paying attention to the function for which these groups were formed. In fact, a reader might even get the impression that these volunteers did no more than celebrate yearly jubilees. Yet, the volunteer fire departments did fight and help prevent fires, thus playing their role in these growing cities. It is, however, extremely difficult to determine their actual effectiveness since central ministries published statistics on the number of fires and the causes of fires but not on the individuals who were responsible for extinguishing them. The volunteers published very few statistics that reflected performance rather than participation. In the rare cases when they did issue performance statistics, they were often designed to emphasize the superiority of the volunteers over the low-class professionals. The statistics reflected social stratifica-

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tion, and the historian who relies too strongly upon these would simply be reconfirming the divisions these volunteers hoped to maintain. Over the last thirty years or so, historians and philosophers of science have demonstrated not only the unreliability of statistics but also the means by which state bureaucracies employed them to serve their own agenda.125 With this caveat, the discussion turns to statistics about volunteers with hoses in their hands. Most of the volunteer fire departments published yearly reports. Some groups published monthly lists of the fires they had attended, whereas other groups wrote short descriptions of major incidents. The results are surprising for their diversity. In the Chernigov report from 1894–95, the board stated that there had been no fires in the city but that seventeen volunteers had helped with a fire beyond the city limits.126 In the yearly report for 1896, the volunteers went to eleven fires, three of which were within the city limits. The most important urban fire occurred at the local orphanage, which belonged to another volunteer group, the Chernigov Charitable Society. The volunteers were quick to point out that they arrived before the city’s official fire department (this reflects a difference in social composition and not a competition between society and the city since, typically, city duma members were involved with the volunteer fire departments).127 In 1898, the volunteers reported arriving at seventeen fires, eleven of which were in the city.128 If the numbers in Chernigov appear sparse, other organizations were more active. In the last six months of 1903, the Kazan volunteers made it to twenty-three fires. Their yearly report indicates the size of the fire and the number of firefighters who showed up. At the largest fires, more than one hundred volunteers were present. These statistics also proudly note that, at one fire, the volunteers received an official commendation from the police and that their efforts were noted in the local newspaper.129 For 1899, the volunteer department in Vladimir reported twenty-five fires, fourteen of which were extinguished without the volunteers. At the rest of the fires, an average of eighteen volunteers appeared. In a fire in the late spring, the volunteers worked together with the professional firefighters and successfully prevented its spread.130 The same report also indicated that the financial loss from fires had decreased over the past year. The statistics were encouraging, but, only two years later, the volunteers reported that, despite

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a reduction in the number of fires, the losses caused by fire had approximately doubled.131 It is almost impossible to correlate these statistics with the efficiency of the volunteers. There are, however, other indicators of industriousness. Financial security, for instance, was at the forefront of the minds of the leaders of these fledgling organizations. It took innovative methods to ensure a steady source of revenue. The most common sources of funding were membership dues, contributions from city councils and the rural zemstvo, and money from insurance companies (who believed the volunteers would reduce the size of insurance claims). In the year 1899–1900, the volunteers in Aleksinsk received 16 percent of their revenue from a local insurance company. They received a similar amount from membership dues and just slightly less from the zemstvo. The largest source of revenue, just over 30 percent, came from the spectacles and lotteries organized by the volunteers.132 In 1908, the Tver volunteer fire department received most of its funds from city council.133 In Kazan in 1903, most of the money came from membership dues and private donations.134 In comparison with the professional city fire department, one can note that the volunteers listed about 2,500 roubles in total expenses, whereas typically the city fire department spent over eighty thousand roubles.135 The Smolensk pozharnoe obshchestvo received about half its revenues from the city insurance company and another 20 percent from the city itself. The rest of the money came from member donations and the public events the group organized.136 The distribution of funds was no less important than the collection of funds because it gives an indication of the priorities of these fire departments. In good bureaucratic fashion, these volunteers provided line items regarding their equipment. The most pressing issues were the maintenance of premises and the orderly repair of hoses and axes, but the volunteers made all sorts of acquisitions (e.g., photograph frames within which to display photographs of their activities).137 In Tver, the volunteers paid for delegates who came to visit a local exhibition on firefighting.138 In Chernigov, volunteers spent their scarce resources on building a shed to protect equipment, and, two years, later they purchased a stirrup-pump to increase water pressure.139 The purchases were not all mundane as volunteers were also interested in the technological efficiency of the equipment. Members who attended the occasional conferences of the Imperial

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Russian Society of Firefighters could visit displays featuring the latest improvements, and even those who did not have time to travel to the conference could read the regular ads in Pozharnoe delo, the journal for volunteer firefighters. Members wrote about purchasing telephones and installing electrical signalling to communicate urgent messages. In 1907, the fire society in Ostrov, which played a pivotal role as the official city fire department was entirely ineffective, bought a steam pump from Stockholm at a cost of just over five thousand roubles.140 Not only did the equipment help volunteers but it also helped usher firefighters into the modern age. In Vladimir, the volunteer society also purchased some equipment for the chimney-sweeps it hired. Since clogged chimneys were one of the major sources of fires, they took steps to prevent this danger. The service was not free to homeowners, therefore the association made a small profit from the activity.141 This did not involve much technical prowess, but it offers another index for judging the functional activities of these volunteer associations. Ultimately, the volunteer fire departments did more than celebrate jubilees. Their reports indicated regular attendance at fires and a willingness to invest in the necessary materials. However, at the same time, there is no statistical indication that these volunteers pushed cities in one direction or another. They could not substantially reduce financial losses from fires. This being the case, their main contribution to the urban landscape remained their ability to cultivate and to spread a set of values popular with central authorities.

conclusion The Russian volunteer fire departments continued a tradition that the Ministry of Internal Affairs had hoped to establish with its 1860 reform, which promoted the local self-administration of urban fire departments. In the era of the Great Reforms, the circulars and statements that issued from St Petersburg spoke of the development of a civic consciousness, and, in typically paternalistic tones, indicated that it was time for locals to participate in their own affairs. The fire department in Ostashkov was brought forth as a model of excellence, and the ministry believed that the urban residents who had been mobilized across the empire would rush to emulate the people in Ostashkov. The ministry also hoped that the volunteers would

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work together towards a common goal. The result would save everyone money and would help wooden Russia win the battle against one of its greatest foes. Almost thirty years later, the volunteer fire departments that had emerged to help the public and police fire departments were expected to fulfill the same aims. The principles that guided these volunteer fire societies mirrored the statutes that urban residents proposed in the 1860s. Once again, urban residents were called upon to express their views in public and to partake of the frequent discussions that concerned fire departments. The same people, the elected members of city council, initiated and monitored most of the proceedings. Yet, despite the similarities, a number of important changes need to be highlighted in order to outline the actual transition. Throughout the reign of Alexander II, the public fire departments acted in a reserved manner. Local committees were active and militaristic, but there were no organized parades, public demonstrations, or attempts to involve the fire departments in celebrations. Their role was strictly limited to fighting fires. The pomp and circumstance of later years was almost totally lacking. In the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II, volunteers publicized the inherent value of order and discipline both to their fellow members and to the public before whom they paraded. Independently of state authority, they transformed part of the public sphere into an open forum of support for the regime in a way that the more neutral fire departments of the 1860s never did. No longer was a militaristic attitude limited to training alarms and fires: now it had become a fundamental aspect of volunteer life. At fires, during military parades, and at their numerous celebrations, these uniformed and helmeted volunteers expressed a very active civic consciousness. If public activity is the sign of a good citizen, then the volunteers described in this chapter were much better citizens than were their fathers a generation before. Similarly, with more public recognition some volunteer firefighters took on the role of local hero. Most of the heroics described in firefighting journals came from celebrations and not from conflagrations. Although these fire societies did alleviate problems in many cities, they were not the panacea that men like Iordan had hoped they would be. While these volunteer fire departments may not have accomplished their firefighting mission, they succeeded in spreading conservative values. Although the form of these associations may appear democratic to an outsider, a close look inside tells a different story.

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5 The Imperial Russian Society of Firefighters, 1893–1914

By the end of the nineteenth century, almost every city in the empire had a volunteer fire department ready to act in the case of emergency. Despite the number of associations, in reality little could be done to stop cities from burning to the ground.1 In 1879, there were major fires in Orenburg and Irkutsk; in 1895, there was a major fire in Brest-Litovsk; in 1901, there were fires in Vitebsk, Penza, and Pavlodar; and, in 1902, a conflagration devastated whole sections of Kazan. As a result, in the early 1890s firefighting evolved into a matter of national importance under the auspices of the Imperial Russian Society of Firefighters (irsf). Although hundreds, even thousands, of kilometres separated what appeared to be isolated volunteer associations, they were united under one national umbrella organization. At national conferences, in the state duma, and in journals, firefighting activists discussed how to modernize urban Russia by improving its fire departments, enhancing their technologies, and reducing rates of fire. For the first time since the Great Reforms, firefighting became an issue of national importance. In studying the activities of this organization familiar themes emerge. The members of the irsf were almost exclusively volunteers, yet procedural debates actually supported and fortified the position of the autocracy. The ethos within this all-Russian association helped to enhance the prestige of the autocrat through panegyric speeches, celebrations, and ceremonies. Barely resembling the Tocquevillian ideal of associational life, this ethos engendered a conservative public sphere. At a less political level, the focus on the irsf offers an opportunity to assess the introduction of new technologies into fire departments. The irsf’s concern to modernize fire depart-

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ments can be linked with broader processes in the urban environment. Furthermore, the study of the irsf supplies additional insights into the relationship of volunteer organizations and the state. In their attempts to remedy the problems, members continued to encourage the interaction of central officials with municipal officials. Despite the increasing political and social tensions, no conflicts emerged that placed the state against society, against municipal officials, or even against volunteers. Most of the people involved with firefighting still believed they could interact with the state, and they wanted a strong centralized state to regulate firefighting in the Russian Empire.

the establishment of an empire-wide association The impetus for reform at the national level emerged in the 1890s, when activists published the first printed commentaries on firefighting. In a booklet entitled The Question of Firefighting and Fire Reform, K. Bezsonov, the fire chief in Kherson, wrote that, in the previous twenty-five years, almost every facet of the empire had been reformed save firefighting.2 Odessa, one of the empire’s largest cities, functioned without its own steam fire pump and was forced to borrow from a factory owner.3 Bezsonov appreciated the fact that many of the volunteer fire departments had already celebrated their tenth or twenty-fifth jubilees, but he added succinctly that a twentyfifth jubilee was just a reminder that most of the equipment had become outdated.4 In 1892, volunteers organized the first national conference to address these problems. The Imperial Russian Technical Society (Imperatorskoe russkoe tekhnicheskoe obshchestvo) hosted a forum in St Petersburg to discuss matters of firefighting. Emphasizing the importance of creating a national forum, Bezsonov commented that the opening of the conference represented “the birth of culture in firefighting.”5 Count A.D. Sheremetev pointed out that it was an opportunity to demonstrate “the necessity of solidarity amongst all the fire departments in Russia.”6 Of the 269 people who attended the conference, fifty-seven representatives came from volunteer fire departments, sixty-two from municipal fire departments, and only two from state ministries.7 Despite the absence of officialdom, Minister of Internal Affairs I.N. Durnovo opened the conference.8 At the start of the conference, the volunteers paraded through the city,

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displaying their patriotic flags as they marched towards the arsenal.9 These conservative elements ensured that the firefighting conferences would never become “parliaments of public opinion.”10 Despite the conservative undertones at the first conference, for some members of the Union of Russian Fire Societies (formed in 1893) this was not enough. In 1894, Pozharnyi published an editorial that criticized the Union because it had apparently taken a stance opposed to the central government (the complaint related to a letter received from the Union, which encouraged fire departments to join it as a means of protecting them from the central administration). The editorial concluded that the Union was offering to help these fire departments “in their struggle” against the central administration. This suspected insubordination was linked to the fact that many of the Union’s members came from the western provinces and were seeking some sort of “fire constitution.” The editors mocked these members and asserted: “we are Russian and we demand that only the Russian government commands us.”11 The Pozharnyi editors’ fears were exaggerated. Indeed, when, in 1898, the Union of Russian Fire Societies became the Imperial Russian Society of Firefighters, it drew even closer to the autocracy.12 Furthermore, ever since the Union’s inception, Grand Duke Vladimir Aleksandrovich had been its honorary chairman.13 The close association with the Imperial family gave the Union greater credence among its members, heightened the image of the grand duke, and allowed the latter to participate in an organization that could spread traditional values at the grassroots level.14 Despite the distractions caused by their overt expressions of nationalism, the national firefighting conferences attempted to deal with serious issues. Those attending the conference in St Petersburg in 1892 discussed the professionalization of firefighters and the need to create a supervisory organ to enforce standards across the empire.15 For our purposes, the proposals that sought increased centralization are of particular interest because they would have reduced local autonomy.16 E.V. Bogdanovich was one of the strongest proponents of a centralized inspectorate. In the 1860s, Bogdanovich had been sent into the provinces to oversee the reform of the urban fire departments and had demonstrated little concern for local needs. A nobleman, an ardent supporter of the autocracy, and a fervent nationalist, his desire for a central inspectorate

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reflected a traditional suspicion that urban residents were unable to manage their own affairs. The central inspectorate, which was envisioned as an organ of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was planned to monitor fire departments at the local level and to relieve both the governor and city councils from the time-consuming task of running the fire department. Bogdanovich recognized that, even with the modest advances in firefighting technology, neither the governor, nor the city council, nor zemstvo members had the technological know-how to satisfactorily command the firefighters; only the state could coordinate such a technologically demanding task.17 His solution was intended to improve the mutual relations between the central administration and the local fire departments, while at the same time sidestepping the bureaucratic problems that continued to emerge between the city councils, the governors, and the central state.18 This proposal was debated at the next national conference, which was held in 1896 during the All-Russian Exhibition in Nizhnii Novgorod. At the outset of this conference, the mood favoured renewed centralization. The conference began on 25 June, the birthday of Nicholas I, the martinet tsar who had little interest in local selfadministration. In his opening remarks, Count T.S. Tatishchev commented that it was only during the reign of Nicholas I that an administrative organ was established in Russia (na Rusi) whose specific goal was to deal with firefighting.19 In a later remark, Tatishchev found the root of all problems in the liberal reign of Alexander II, during which responsibility for firefighting was given to “local institutions” and laws enacted under Nicholas I “lost their meaning.” If it was true that “Russia burns to the ground every thirty years,” then firefighting and all matters related to fire prevention were a matter “not for individuals but for the state [gosudarstvo].” 20 Except for the fact that Tatishchev disapproved of police interference in firefighting, his proposal would have made it the responsibility of the state, as it had been under Nicholas I.21 Although his suggestions can be considered a conservative move away from the self-administering fire departments of the 1860s and 1870s, only one sustained objection was raised against the proposal for a central inspectorate. A representative from a zemstvo organ in the traditionally liberal Tver province justifiably saw this as a return to the “pre-reform” period.22 But most agreed that, without a central

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inspectorate, one could not even begin to assess the status of the empire’s numerous fire departments let alone improve firefighting.

the ministry of internal affairs re-enters the debate The irsf was not alone in analyzing the status of firefighting and fire prevention in the empire. In 1901, as the Ministry of Internal Affairs shifted responsibility for firefighting back onto the municipalities, it simultaneously established a committee to deal with firefighting in the empire. After two major fires in Penza and Vitebsk, the government decided that firefighting was worthy of its attention. The report submitted by Privy Councillor Fesenko gave the first official recognition of problems that had existed since the 1860s. The main thrust of the report was the lack of supervision at every level of firefighting. The ministry had incomplete information about the status of fire departments and their equipment throughout the empire, the municipalities themselves paid little or no attention to the regulations in the Law Code, there was no way to regulate the competency of the empire’s fire chiefs, and the problem of water supply had not been solved in most cities (despite their proximity to major rivers).23 The most important element of the report on urban firefighting was the section that suggested the creation of a central inspectorate. Influenced by the demands that had been formulated at the national conferences, Fesenko concluded, “in the interests of firefighting, it was necessary to create an independent (that is, independent of the urban administration) … inspectorate.”24 The plan to create a central inspectorate was compared to other central inspectorates, such as the ones organized by the Ministry of Education.25 Finally, the report dealt with the problem of financing the new inspectorate. It recognized that “compulsory participation” in this program would be financially burdensome for the “poorer cities” but that “there was no other way out of the situation.”26 The conclusions drawn in the report were problematic. Just as the ministry was moving to devolve authority to the municipal governments, it tried to superimpose more control over the cities by means of an added layer of bureaucracy. Such a move would financially cripple many cities that were already reluctant to spend money on their fire departments. The ministry wavered between its plans for

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moderate decentralization and complete recentralization with traditional bureaucratic solutions. Those hoping for more municipal autonomy could not have welcomed a reference to the highly centralized school system.27 Such anxieties were, however, unnecessary for neither a central inspectorate nor a reversion to complete municipal control was ever introduced. The ministry’s feeble commitment to firefighting was evident from the small number of bureaucrats it maintained to solve the problems. In 1910, the Department of Fire and Insurance within the Ministry of Internal Affairs only had two officials who dealt with fire-related issues.28 K. Iordan’s calls for a “radical reform” were as valid as ever.29 Here, radical meant more rather than less state participation. As was the case in the 1860s, the provinces were still under-governed. Officials recognized gaping inadequacies in the manner in which the state dealt with the issue: the state had yet to commit itself to a pragmatic solution. While most municipalities remained silent, the problems re-emerged at the conference of the Imperial Society of Russian Firefighters in Moscow in 1902. Approximately seven hundred representatives, mostly members from volunteer fire societies, met for the opening ceremonies on the premises of the Imperial Musical Society. The conference, which lasted from 30 March to 6 April, was opened with the traditional panegyrics that celebrated the tsar. In 1896, the conference in Nizhnii Novgorod had celebrated the memory of Nicholas I; in 1902, the conference in Moscow revived memories of Alexander III. An opening speaker commended a speech given by Alexander III at the first conference of firefighters in 1892, which would “forever remain inscribed not only in the history of firefighting, but … in the history of [Russia’s] great monarchs.”30 Different sections of the conference discussed issues ranging from fire insurance to education to the well-being of the firefighters themselves. For our purposes, it serves to take a closer look at discussions that dealt with the role of the police in firefighting. In these discussions, members of the irsf expressed their greatest criticism regarding the state’s ability to cope with the problem. In addition, since many sections discussed technology, the conference also creates an opportune moment to take a general look at the interaction between firefighting and technology. At the conference held in Nizhnii Novgorod in 1896, one keynote speaker who favoured a central inspectorate had claimed that the

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police were “totally incompetent in firefighting.”31 At the conference in Moscow, a representative from Chernigov described the situation after the Ministry of Internal Affairs had arbitrarily given the police control. The fire department began to arrive late at fires, its efficiency declined, and soon it performed no better than it had a half century hence.32 Another speaker suggested that a police fire department had been necessary when cities were without well organized local self-administration but that now their participation was unnecessary. He suggested that, in order to improve and maintain the fire department, it must be in the hands of the city duma. Since the fire department was such an important municipal service, it should be subjected to “free criticism” at “public meetings of the town council” as well as in the press.33 The head of one group of volunteers asserted that, when he commanded the volunteer fire departments, they were “always successful.” On the other hand, “when the head of police interfered,” the volunteers did not understand his commands and, as a result, did not perform their duties. This soon discouraged the volunteers and the number of members decreased. He added that, because many of the volunteers “were intelligent people, often with a higher education, and occupying well-known and leading positions in society,” police interference was an insult to them.34 On the surface, these comments might testify to hostility between the state and the public sphere and thus correspond to a standard narrative, with state and society as separate entities. The volunteers did express anger at the police, the pre-eminent representatives of the state in provincial towns, but they did not make a strict correlation between the state and the police. The urban police force was a ragtag bunch, staffed by retired soldiers and even former criminals.35 The volunteers rejected the interference of these socially inferior officials. The state, on the other hand, was a body to which they could appeal for support. Therefore, their antipathy to the police in particular should not be misconstrued as antipathy to the state in general. At this and other conferences, the irsf sought to address issues of technology in firefighting. The irsf began its existence as a group within the Imperial Russian Technical Society, and, therefore, it was only natural that it encouraged the development and application of innovative technologies. The Russian manufacturers may have lagged behind their German or English counterparts, from whom they purchased substantial amounts of equipment, but the urge to

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enjoy the technological advantages of the industrial age was very evident at conferences and other meetings of the irsf, where members could examine the latest inventions from home and abroad. Moreover, the use of technologies was not just a means of attaining greater efficiency but also a symbol of modernization. Firefighters were often photographed surrounded by their equipment (a theme that is fully displayed in chapter 6), and the proper usage of this equipment became a critical symbol of the modernization (or lack thereof) of firefighting across the empire. The promotion of firefighting technologies was not an isolated irsf project as it fits nicely within the parameters of urban history in the second half of the nineteenth century. If Russian cities were not becoming high-tech, they were certainly modernizing. By the late 1860s, Kazan had a telegraph system, and, about a decade later, the train station in Kazan was receiving its first passengers. By 1912, Moscow already had a substantial number of telephones – a technology that was particularly important for fire departments. By this time, many provincial capitals had an interest in acquiring tram systems to provide public transport, and the emergence of automobile clubs indicated the slow growth of an embryonic car culture.36 The automobile was important to firefighting since, even though it did not immediately help in the fighting of fires, it was developed using technologies that would soon revolutionize firefighting and replace horse-drawn water pumps. There were, in fact, many technological aspects of the new urban environment that were directly or indirectly related to the performance of firefighters. In this regard, perhaps the most important development came with the construction of urban water mains. Despite an abundance of water in lakes and rivers, most fire departments did not have an adequate supply of water since the overwhelming majority of cities lacked the capital to install proper water mains, which could supply residents with clean water and fire departments with high-pressure sources of water throughout the city. By 1870, only a handful of cities had water mains; Kazan had them installed in 1875.37 When installed, the water mains only supplied the central areas of the city, and, even by the start of the twentieth century, huge sections of these urban centres had no water supply.38 Even cities with water supplies had regular breakdowns. In Grodno in the west, the water supply stopped functioning at the very start of a fire.39 In a report issued on fire prevention in 1906 in St Petersburg,

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the authors noted that, almost fifty years after the mains were first completed, the low pressure of the water made the supply effectively useless for the fire department. Since the city council lacked “initiative,” nothing had been done to improve the situation. Significantly, shortly after commenting on the water mains, the authors charted an increase in the number of fires over the last decade of the nineteenth century.40 In contrast, when water mains were installed in Samara in 1886, the insurance premiums decreased, thus suggesting a decreased danger of fire.41 The lack of urban water mains certainly indicated the slow introduction of advanced engineering projects. An example from Kharkov shifts the perspective to indicate that, even at sites of modern technology, the issue was not solved. In an article on the various types of firefighting in the empire, K. Iordan looked at how fires were being handled on the railways. It stood to reason that the advanced technological requirements of the railways might make them more likely candidates to engineer solutions for the water supply. Iordan noted that the well-funded railways could easily afford to take greater measures to improve the quality of firefighting. But a railway station near Kharkov burned down, in part, because the fire department had to get its water supply from more than a kilometre away.42 Even if the water supply may have been lacking, fire departments still tried to equip themselves with the latest available technologies. Often this meant shopping abroad, but in the early 1860s, the Russian engineer Gustav List opened his workshop in Moscow. Using the experience he gained from studying American systems, his factory of fifteen workers started to develop a line of technological instruments for firefighters, the intent being to increase, among other things, the rate of water flow in a hose.43 What began as a small operation had approximately thirteen hundred employees by 1913. Over the years, List’s factory played a key role in introducing Russian firefighters to these technologies and began production of the first Russian-made steam pumps. As the company could not keep up with demand in the capitals, many provincial cities would have to wait years before they could enjoy the benefits of List’s inventiveness.44 While most of the larger Russian provincial cities did not purchase steam pumps until the turn of the century, French cities such as Bordeaux and Lyon bought steam pumps in the 1860s.45 Significantly, List and his competitors displayed their inventions at the industrial fairs that were so popular in the second half of

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the nineteenth century. A Russian firm might display its wares in Paris, indicating the international dimension to List’s inventions; but the most important exhibitions came in places such as ­Nizhnii Novgorod, where sections were devoted specifically to firefighting. In 1896, when the conference for firefighters was held in the Volga city, visitors could see the first Russian-made prototype steam engines.46 A French visitor to Nizhnii Novgorod commented that, although the Russian development of steam pumps still lagged behind that of the Americans, “national production was improving” and the steam pumps of Gustav List “appear[ed] to be carefully made.”47 Because the conference was combined with the yearly fair in Nizhnii Novgorod, the social experience of the visitor involved both an industrial and urban experience. The carefully constructed displays, with the alluring metal surfaces of the equipment, helped distract the observer from the awkward fact that much of this technology did not operate as required once it was placed in the hands of an inexperienced firefighter on the uneven streets of urban Russia. In this spirit, the irsf also took enormous steps to spread technological aide and advice to peasants. The group of artists called the peredvizhniki, who wandered the countryside with their easels, is well known to historians.48 But there was also the lesser known peredvizhnaia pozharnaia vystavka, or travelling fire exhibition, which began its tour of the Neva and Volga in 1897. The exhibition had been placed on a boat that could dock on the rivers’ shores. Pozharnoe delo regularly reported on the progress of the ship and the number of peasants who came to visit the exhibition. The exhibition was perhaps less elaborate than what one would expect to find at the fair in Nizhnii Novgorod, but the organizers made an effort to explain the disadvantages of thatched roofs and the availability of modern materials that burned less easily than did older materials.49 Moreover, the exhibition was developed to highlight advances in Russian technologies, and foreign exhibitors were only allowed in exceptional circumstances.50 A few years later, the exhibition was put on rails, thus linking the technical symbolism of the railway with the technology of the fire equipment. To cover as much ground as possible, the train headed to the western parts of the empire.51 These travelling exhibitions were instrumental in spreading the word to outlying areas, but technological manufacturers could also take advantage of a new press culture to advertise their wares.52

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Firms such as Gustave List’s had access to Pozharnoe delo, in which they placed regular ads. They could also distribute their official brochures with tempting pictures on the cover. In 1912, the preis’-kurant of the List factory showed a proud fire chief sitting at the wheel of a gleaming automobile, or proto-fire truck. In the background a steam pump was chugging away as it supplied water to firefighters who were dousing a fire in a three-story building.53 It was axiomatic for these inventors that a modern predilection to construct taller buildings required more efficient steam pumps. It was not just idle curiosity that led one commentator on firefighting to note the progressive growth of tall buildings in Moscow.54 Obviously, serious efforts were being made to improve the technology available to firefighters, but comfortable exhibitions were isolated from the unpredictability of the real world. The purchase of better equipment did not always mean immediate results. In the 1870s, the city of Iaroslavl purchased a steam pump and gave it a dry run, which was reported in the Iaroslavskie gubernskie vedomosti (Iaroslavl provincial news), the official provincial newspaper. According to an eyewitness report, a large crowd came out to witness this technology in action. This reporter questioned how the machine could be supplied with water when the city had no water mains: “the main function of the steam pump would be paralyzed.”55 In other cases, cities ordered foreign equipment but were delinquent in paying their bills, as in 1894, when the city of Riazan was called upon to pay for the new hoses it had purchased from the RussianAmerican Rubber Factory.56 And, as mentioned earlier, as late as 1891, Odessa was still forced to borrow a steam pump from a private factory owner.57 Other technological purchases were made to enhance status rather than performance, and this could lead to the abuse of technology. In 1910, the editors at the Kazanskii telegraf objected to a duma decision to purchase an automobile for the fire department so that the city would be “entirely up-to-date.” The decision to improve the ability of the fire department to race to the fire scene appeared reasonable, but the authors argued that the state of roads in Kazan would make it nearly impossible for the automobile to get to the fire scene. Given the public presence of fire departments and the general admiration of technology, it also appears likely that the city councillors envisioned the automobile as a status symbol rather than as a practical tool.58

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The shortcomings associated with this misapplied enthusiasm for technology share a page with the ineffectiveness of many of the discussions at the irsf’s regular conferences. To be sure, there were certain achievements, but did the conferences actually prevent fires or improve the performance of fire departments? Had progress been made under Alexander III and Nicholas II? This question can be assessed both by looking at published reports in newspapers and by providing some statistical data on the rate of fires. As a grim reminder of the ineffectiveness of the Moscow conference in 1902, a major conflagration devastated portions of Kazan only a few months later. Approximately eight city blocks burned to the ground, causing millions of roubles worth of damage.59 Residents fled their homes with their belongings in hand, and, from 8 June until 9 June, they watched their city burn. The main local publication blamed not the state but the municipal administration for the fire. The Kazanskii telegraf reported the whole affair as “one of the saddest pages in the history” of the city’s administration. The favourable weather conditions should have helped the firefighters, but the ease with which the fire spread suggested that there was “something abnormal” with either the fire equipment or with the way the buildings had been built. The newspaper accused the city council of refusing to spend money to improve the fire department’s equipment. Instead of proper equipment, the fire hoses spouted fountains of water from holes every thirty inches.60 A letter from an “eyewitness” added to complaints about the fire department’s poor equipment.61 The city council was urged to increase the pay of its firefighters and to improve the equipment they used. What had only recently been described as “one of the best [fire departments] in Russia” had failed to serve the city in its moment of greatest need. 62 These trends had been evident for more than a decade, with similar reports appearing in other newspapers. In 1883, Novoe vremia (New times) wrote about a fire in Kherson, during which, due to a lack of equipment, the efforts of the assembled crowd and the fire department were in vain. It did not help that the water supply was frozen.63 In the winter of 1887, Moskovskie vedomosti (Moscow news) reported that the police had discovered a firefighter hiding under a bed in a burned out apartment; he had stolen valuables and was therefore arrested.64 The inability of fire departments to guarantee the safety of citizens also fed an age-old rumour mill

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(which included stories about old men lighting fires in the middle of the night) that belied the rationalizing tendencies of the nineteenth century. In 1842, when fires burned across the Volga region, wild rumours quickly spread from town to town. This phenomenon persisted at least into the 1880s.65 Another common theme in the published commentaries, reflecting the more traditional prejudices of state officials, was the immaturity of the Russian population. These articles did not attempt to understand how state interference played a role in this apparent immaturity for writers still spoke about raising the “cultural” level of the population. In 1882, Golos welcomed the formation of volunteer fire departments as they were seen as an indication that the population was “maturing.”66 Much of what these journalists reported can be confirmed with statistics, but the numbers also indicate that some improvements were being made. However, before delving into statistics a few caveats about their reliability are in order. The available statistics do not directly indicate whether the fire department played a role as they explain why a fire started and not what happened once it was under way. A fire department may have conscientiously purchased equipment only to discover that some other aspect of urban life had remained problematic (the continual concern for clean chimneys ­testifies to this). The statistics do not suggest that the causes of fire, such as carelessness, clogged chimneys, arson, and lightning, may have been substantially reduced had the fire department acted more efficiently.67 In broad terms, the number of fires and the monetary loss due to them increased every five years since at least 1860. P.I Georgievskii, a state bureaucrat, reported that, if there were approximately 59,000 fires between 1860 and 1864, which caused over 131 million roubles worth of damage, in the five-year period from 1890 to 1894, 241,000 fires caused 351 million roubles worth of damage.68 In urban centres, the loss per fire in 1900 may have decreased slightly since the 1860s, but the average loss per fire remained somewhere between four thousand to six thousand roubles. These numbers can be contrasted with those from more rural areas, where a massive increase in the number of fires was set against a consistent drop in losses per fire.69 This is, in part, explained by the fact that property values in the cities were higher and, therefore, one expected more concentrated losses. While fires still caused enormous losses, their

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strength was decreasing in urban areas. Between 1895 and 1899, the average number of buildings affected by each fire in Kazan was 1.7, whereas for the next five-year period the number dropped to 1.2.70 There were exceptions to this rule, such as the volatile western areas, but in general the strength of fires was decreasing.71 Composite urban statistics may be a little misleading because they smooth over vast differences between cities in each province: a city such as Kazan was a provincial capital with a renowned university, while a secondary city in the province, such as Laisheva, was little more than a village. As such, some more specific statistics from Moscow can help round out the urban picture. The absolute increase in the number of fires from 1870 to 1894 in Moscow overtook the rate of population growth of the city.72 The increase was most likely a function of the inflow of immigrants, the poor living conditions, and the unwillingness of landlords to provide safe conditions.73 At the same time, the increase in the number of fires was matched by a decrease in their strength. In 1903, 78.6 percent of fires lasted fewer than three hours, whereas by 1912, 85.2 percent of fires lasted fewer than three hours.74 It is extremely difficult, however, to correlate this decrease with the activities of the fire department because it came at almost exactly the same time as Moscow’s city council was reducing the percentage of the budget spent on its fire department.75 Returning to more general statistics, a city in 1892 spent approximately 5 percent of its budget on its fire department, although the number decreased to about 4 percent at the turn of the century. In a comparative perspective, cities spent 8.7 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively, on supporting the police. In the same period as funding for the fire department decreased, funding for education increased from 7.4 percent to 10 percent.76 Given the last set of statistics, one might be tempted to conclude that there was absolutely no relation between the quantity of fires and the performance of fire departments. While this would be a gross exaggeration, it is worth noting that, when P.I. Georgievskii explained the causes for urban fires, he never mentioned fire departments, and their absence from his argument is suspicious. His emphasis was on the prevention of fires rather than on the fighting of fires. In other words, the real solution was not to buy equipment for fire departments but, rather, to teach people to regularly clean their chimneys and to obey the building codes. Overcoming carelessness or stopping insurance-related arson fires was a more

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pressing issue than was accommodating the needs of volunteers who did not appear able to influence these statistics.77 If the statistics and the newspaper reports are disparaging of the efforts of firefighters, one must note that fire departments were as much about preventing fires as they were about fighting fires. Indeed, this might be considered the missing element in Georgievskii’s report: he wrote about fire prevention without discussing the involvement of fire departments in this topic. As mentioned above, volunteer fire departments made an effort to organize a band of chimney sweeps. In fact, an enormous amount of energy was devoted to prevent fires due to clogged chimneys. An 1899 article in Pozharnoe delo addressed the unsuccessful measures city council in Odessa had taken to force homeowners to employ chimney sweeps who were associated with the fire department. In typical fashion, the issue had been addressed but was not translated into action.78 At the fire congress held in Moscow in 1902, E.E. Lund wanted to regulate chimney sweeps in Odessa and to give the city a monopoly over the profession.79 Exactly a decade later, the same activist was still complaining that there was no general regulation of chimney sweeps.80 As late as 1915, Pozharnoe delo continued to publish articles highlighting the difficulties city council had in circumventing low-paid and unprofessional chimney sweeps.81 Sweeping chimneys was necessary but it was not a technologically demanding task, so the irsf hoped to get qualified, if not educated, people to do the job. On the other hand, activists were fully aware that technological advances in firefighting required that firefighters have additional education. If no one could operate the steam pump, the steam pump was useless. The problem was similar to one that occurred years later in the Soviet Union, when the Bolsheviks made a big push to industrialize farming without realizing that there were not enough trained people to operate the tractors. In order to educate its firefighters, in 1905 the city council of St Petersburg ordered the creation of a technical school to give them the necessary instruction. The sudden attentiveness of city council may have been prompted by the wave of fires so characteristic of this revolutionary year, but whatever the motive, it did open a school in 1906. Subjects such as math, electrotechnics, and labs relating to chemical methods of firefighting reflected a concern for technological advances in firefighting.82 Despite the positive news about a school, the irsf’s efforts before the 1905 revolution must be considered discouraging. Steps had

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c­ ertainly been taken to improve technologies, and, despite continuing fires, the statistics lend an iota of support to the claim that some progress had been made. But the most pressing issues – the structural administration of fire departments and the centralization of oversight – did not result in a more organized approach to firefighting. The rhetoric was for naught; despite lengthy appeals for more government involvement, the irsf was still a long way from achieving a systematized approach to firefighting at a national level. A moment had been lost, and the changing socio-political climate of Imperial Russia would make subsequent efforts more difficult. After 1905, the increased politicization of Russian society did little to improve the irsf’s effectiveness.

fire and revolution If the official colour of the revolution was red, then the spread of flames throughout urban areas served as an ominous portent of civil unrest. In 1905, the revolution changed the context of the dilemmas confronting state officials, workers, political party members, intellectuals, and urban residents. Weakened by failure in the Russo­Japanese War, discredited by the events of Bloody Sunday, and worried by the increasing unrest throughout the Russian Empire, the government of Nicholas II was forced to make concessions to the people. The October Manifesto of 1905 announced the creation of a state duma (the first national, elective political assembly in the empire’s history) and civic freedoms such as the freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. It gave official sanction to much of the nonstate activity that had been growing in the last decades.83 The events of 1905 did not alter the status of firefighting in the empire, but they did affect firefighting in several ways. Volunteers continued to assert their immunity to the revolutionary upheaval, maintaining that their work was apolitical, but many of the most pertinent issues had indirect effects on fire departments. First, the united front of the irsf began to show cracks as its more conservative members turned to emerging nationalist organizations. Second, distracted by other events, the Ministry of Internal Affairs only tangentially addressed the firefighting issue. Finally, firefighting found a voice, if somewhat muted, in the Third State Duma. All these issues overlapped and intermingled in the confused atmosphere between 1905 and 1914.

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At the height of revolutionary events, the irsf held another national conference. In August 1906, members of the irsf met in the town of Pskov. This conference was not on the scale of those held in Moscow or Nizhnii Novgorod, but it was noteworthy because a few of the society’s members tried to use the occasion to address “political questions.” Given the irsf’s conservative nature, it is not surprising that the few dissenting opinions were quashed.84 Clearly, there was no need for police interference as the citizens themselves monitored each other’s behaviour. Although the irsf silenced dissenters at its conferences, its disunity became apparent once Pozharnoe delo was no longer the sole carrier of news for people involved with the empire’s fire departments. Four new journals appeared between 1905 and 1914 – Drug pozharnago (1906–07) (Fireman’s friend), Strakhovshchik i pozharnyi (1906–08) (Insurer and firefighter), Vestnik protivopozharnoi bor’by (1907–08) (Fire prevention news), and Golos pozharnago (Voice of the firefighter) (1911–13). In addition to these publications, journals sponsored by insurance companies had sections dedicated to firefighting, and these were also highly critical of the irsf.85 These growing differences notwithstanding, the irsf’s national conferences never became “parliaments of public opinion,” in which participants had a platform for initiating “antigovernment resolutions.”86 Because the fire departments, especially the volunteer ones, had tended to support the autocracy, in times of crisis, the conferences were increasingly used to spread a conservative agenda.87 Instead of the political discussions that Bradley’s model of a quasi-democratic parliament presupposes, discussion of any sort was sidetracked as irsf members turned to the Imperial pomp and circumstance that had always been a focal point of volunteer fire departments. While the volunteers discussed their concerns at national conferences, the Ministry of Internal Affairs planned reforms of its own. In order to understand the dominant attitudes within the ministry, one may turn briefly to the attempts at reforming the fire department in St Petersburg. City officials wanted to transform the empire’s longest standing police fire department into one that was controlled by municipal authorities. In 1901, the municipality had taken over responsibility for the fire department’s finances but not its day-today operation. The proposed reform sought to eliminate the problem of dual power, which persisted when the city financed and equipped

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the fire department, which, otherwise was under police control.88 Municipal officials wanted the same kind of control as was enjoyed by their counterparts in Nizhnii Novgorod. In this respect, St Petersburg lagged well behind many provincial cities. In 1906, a municipal anti-fire commission (Protivopozharnaia komissiia) investigated the possibility of such a transformation. It wrote that, if the city was responsible for water supply, sewage, and the maintenance of public buildings, it “was totally incomprehensible” that the “fight against fire” should be in the hands of the police.89 The commission found that “there was not one aspect of St Petersburg’s fire [department] that did not require fundamental reorganization.”90 Further, the report mentioned that, even though “the external appearance and the discipline” of the firefighters was in excellent condition, from a technical point of view, the fire department was in dire need.91 There was a high turnover rate of firefighters (many were dismissed because of incompetence), members had no training in how to deal with specialized equipment, and, when a fire broke out, the city’s water system could not supply the fire department with sufficient water.92 The commission concluded the fire department could not “guarantee the safety of its citizens and their property.”93 The city council applied to the Ministry of Internal Affairs for permission to operate its fire department. Its efforts were in vain, however, because the ministry was not forthcoming. In 1910, even though an official circular had encouraged municipalities to apply, city officials in St Petersburg were turned down.94 Two years later, city officials reckoned that, if “important [centres] such as Kazan, Nizhnii Novgorod, Kiev, [and] Kharkov” had already had their petitions approved, there was no good reason to “once again” turn down theirs.95 Neither political motives nor fears that a municipally run fire department might engage in anti-state activity were ever enunciated. Although by 1912 the ministry had approved the transfer of 159 fire departments to municipal officials, it was unwilling to give the same rights to city officials in St Petersburg.96 There was never an official explanation for the rejection, but the decision was consistent with the history of firefighting in St Petersburg. In the 1860s, when almost every urban fire department was municipally run, the St Petersburg fire department remained in police hands. State officials were chary of trusting municipal officials with the protection of the empire’s most important buildings:

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providing urban residents with water and building maintenance was not the same as preventing the Winter Palace, the Admiralty, and the offices of the various ministries from burning to the ground. Finally, the fire department had always been more than just a tool for extinguishing fires: in St Petersburg, the only positive aspect of the fire department was its outward appearance and rigid discipline.97 Ministry officials probably feared that a municipally run fire department would lack the necessary discipline and that the firefighters would cease to “fulfill the severe respect for military rank” that the current fire department’s statutes required.98 As a public fire department, it could maintain neither the capital’s safety nor its position as an ersatz showcase of the empire’s military prowess. The inconsistent attitude of the ministry upset members of the irsf who were trying to standardize fire departments throughout the empire. Yet, while the irsf pursued its goals and demanded more regulation, it was not without its own problems. Major criticism did not appear in its own organ, Pozharnoe delo, but many of the new publications noted inconsistencies in the society’s program. First, at its conference in Riga and then at an international conference of firefighters in St Petersburg, the irsf came under attack both for its elitism and for sidetracking important issues. In 1910, four years after the meeting in Pskov, another national conference was held in the Baltic German city of Riga. At a time of heightened nationalism, the decision to hold the conference in a non-Russian city could be considered a conciliatory gesture to the non-Russian members of the irsf. Detractors, however, saw the displacement of the national conference to the edge of the empire as a political move. According to one report, the society had appointed rather than elected new members to its council because it wanted to avoid controversy at its conference. Critics believed the conference was held in Riga because the board of the Imperial Russian Society of Firefighters was facing re-election and the conservative board did not want to run the risk of losing. By holding the conference in Riga, it could keep dissenting electors away and ensure a vote in its favour; few Russian delegates outside of St Petersburg could afford the trip to Riga, which was situated at the edge of the empire.99 The members from the Baltic provinces, who were almost totally independent of the irsf and had little interest in its resolutions, represented the majority of attendees and had no reason to object to the council’s actions.100 Furthermore, representatives from the zemstvo, who had

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played an influential role at the conferences in Moscow and Nizhnii Novgorod, were suspiciously absent in Riga.101 As a result, except for two new additions, the old council members kept their places.102 The Riga conference was criticized because the political intrigues distracted members from their actual goals. Strakhovoe delo reported that the council members made no reports and that there had not been any written reports submitted for discussion.103 According to its calculations, only ninety minutes of the whole three-day conference had been devoted to business.104 And the final resolution did little more than recognize that “the fight with fire was an urgent matter.”105 Responding to the unproductiveness of the conference, K. Iordan asked, “What type of firefighting conference do we now need?” He demanded that the tone of irsf conferences be changed so that conservative members could no longer use them to pursue political ends. One had to stop talking about “festivals and celebrations” and turn to the actual issues that would improve firefighting. There was still a need for national conventions, but for serious ones, in which participants included not just the central elite but also representatives from the provinces.106 Iordan made similar comments after a conference that was held in Kiev in 1913. One journal calculated that more than half of this conference had been devoted to ceremony.107 To these statistics, Iordan added what he saw as the impossibility of “introduc[ing] serious questions” about firefighting at the irsf conferences. He complained of the “corporate” nature of the conference, which excluded many of the society’s rank-and-file members.108 The dissatisfaction with the conferences expressed above highlighted growing divisions within the irsf. Journals started to speak of reactionaries and partiinost’ (party membership) within the organization. K. Iordan wrote of political reactionaries such as General E.V. Bogdanovich, who, at conferences held before 1905, had been “extremely progressive.”109 In other words, Bogdanovich had not allowed his political views to interfere with the task of improving firefighting. Afterwards, as the climate in Imperial Russia became more politicized, he had become a member of the right-wing nationalistic Union of Russian People. Prince A.D. L’vov, the chairman of the irsf, was also seen at its meetings.110 Even volunteers who were not as openly nationalistic as Bogdanovich and L’vov had appeared at political meetings. In 1911, K. Iordan criticized activists for appearing at a meeting of the central committee of the Octobrists,

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a dominant party in the Third Duma. He questioned whether it did more harm than good to have fire reform decided under the “flag of the Octobrists.”111 In this atmosphere, there were attempts at finding alternate solutions to the irsf. A.S. Ermolov, a member of the State Council, recognized that next to nothing had been accomplished. He did not believe that the irsf was responding to the needs of Russia as it had no contact with many provincial regions. He suggested the creation of a new society, the Society of Firefighting Zealots (Obshchestvo revnitelei pozharnago dela), to fill the gap left by the irsf.112 In 1911, in the city of Tver, locals had their own conference, exhibition, and even a film on firefighting for participants who arrived from all across the province. The state had forbidden public access to the meetings, but this first attempt at a local conference brought together a much broader spectrum of the public than did the irsf conferences held at the national level.113 Two years later, the experiment was repeated in Iaroslavl.114 The provincial conferences testify to local residents’ willingness to manage their own affairs. At the same time, the growing rifts among the members of the irsf mirrored the radicalization of Russian society in the years after 1905. The political compromises that had existed gave way, and even coalitions within the duma started to break apart.115 The political climate had changed, and groups that had worked together before 1905 now went their separate ways. Because the irsf had demonstrated its inability to solve the problem, discontented members were compelled to seek alternate solutions. In Tver and ­Iaroslavl, locals formed their own conferences, and, in St Petersburg, men like K. Iordan persevered in their belief that the state could supply the answers. The politicization of firefighting should not have surprised Iordan because reform of the fire departments was being considered in the Third State Duma. The first two state dumas had ignored the issue, and it was only in the more conservative Third State Duma that firefighting received official recognition.116 In 1910, an internal committee led by the right-wing nationalist politician V.M. Purishkevich, made firefighting a national political issue. Purishkevich had already written a book about fire-related issues, and he now led a duma committee whose members represented the entire political spectrum.117 The committee used its meetings to address standard issues. For instance, it emphasized the need to create a central inspectorate, an idea that had been considered since the 1890s.118 Not surpris-

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ingly, however, no committee discussion ever resulted in a law that affected urban fire departments. Only three of the committee’s members had experience with firefighting, and rarely did more than half its members show up at its meetings.119 Further, its work was limited to “purveying suggestions.” As K. Iordan noted, “a mountain had given birth to a mouse.”120 Understandably, firefighting was not a dominant theme in the Third State Duma. The State Duma had to deal with matters of more pressing importance, like peasant agrarian reforms, the western zemstvo bill, and the reform of local self-government.121 Nonetheless, the inability of a standing committee to undertake any initiatives whatsoever underlines the impotence of the State Duma itself.122 Despite the reassurances of Count V.N. Kokovtsev, Stolypin’s successor as prime minister, who, in 1912, told the State Duma and the State Council that the state must invoke serious measures to reduce the number of fires, nothing had been done.123 Furthermore, the multiparty composition of the committee offers no explanation for the lack of discussion on this issue. Finally, because the duma committee proved unable to initiate changes to improve firefighting, volunteers had no reason to believe that their problems could be solved in the national political setting provided by the State Duma. Like the State Duma, the irsf managed to assemble elite members of the firefighting community, but it could not effectuate any significant improvements to firefighting; instead, in the face of numerous criticisms, it continued to hold its festive conferences. In May 1912, St Petersburg was host to the sixth international conference of firefighting organizations. Russian representatives dominated at the conference, but at least twenty-five foreign delegates did attend. In an era of increasing tensions across the European continent, organizers used the conference to give foreigners an example of the militarization of Russia’s fire departments. The conference opened with music and a procession of fortynine participant volunteer fire departments at the noble assembly in the centre of the city.124 Later, a ceremonial inspection was held on the Champ de Mars. Over three hundred participants, including St Petersburg’s municipal fire department, walked in regimental formation before the spectators who had congregated to watch the celebrations. The helmets of the firefighters “glistened in the sun” as the foreign delegates looked on. To end the day, Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich hammered a memorial token into the flag staffs of

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the volunteer fire departments so that they could take a piece of the Romanov family back home with them.125 Gorodskoe delo reported that the only successful part of an otherwise embarrassing conference was the parades, the appreciation for which Russians had learned from the “old regime.”126 Gorodskoe delo did admit that a number of participants had attempted to make professional presentations. They addressed the same problems that had been discussed in the 1890s, indicating how little progress had been made. E.E. Lund, the fire chief from Warsaw, reiterated the need for reform as the threat of fire had become “worse than any epidemic and worse than any war.”127 As a solution, he proposed the creation of a central fire committee, an idea that had first surfaced over twenty years ago. This most recent proposal involved certain modifications, such as locally elected fire committees, but it reasserted the need to monitor progress at the local level through a central inspectorate under the auspices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.128 Lund’s idea called for more state involvement in firefighting. In another presentation, a representative from Ufa demanded a “fundamental improvement” of volunteer firefighting in Russia. He questioned the current ability of the volunteer fire departments and suggested that, to ameliorate the situation, “the state” must pay “attention to the work of the volunteers.” He added that the government should even consider making the heads of volunteer fire departments state servitors within the Table of Ranks.129 D.N. Borodin, a member of the irsf’s council, addressed the issue of power and control at the scene of a fire.130 This question had been raised ever since the 1860s, when municipalities gained control of their fire departments, and had plagued firefighting ever since. Borodin employed a military metaphor to emphasize that dual control of a fire department was detrimental to firefighting. He pointed out that, whenever “companies, squadrons, battalions, regiments [and] divisions … of soldiers … march, run and bear arms,” one single officer instructs them how to proceed.131 Commanding a fire department was no different, yet police interference continued to be a “sore spot” in the business of firefighting, especially since it had been scripted into the statutes of urban fire departments.132 Borodin asked for the support of the congress in denying the police “the right to command at the scene of a fire.” This suggestion was met with “loud applause” from everyone in attendance.133

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Borodin’s comments offer another perspective on individual attitudes towards the state as his public activity was not limited to firefighting. Joseph Bradley indicates that D.N. Borodin was involved with the official state-sponsored temperance societies. He represents Borodin as a conservative official who tried to resist the demands of liberal members. Since Bradley wants to show that conferences became fora within which society confronted the state, he points out how members of society at a temperance conference rejected the proposal of a state official (Borodin) and, instead, used the forum to express a wide range of political concerns. Temperance society members made broad demands on education, women’s rights, and other important social issues that went well beyond the limited intentions of Borodin’s proposal.134 In terms of civil society, this is presented as a classic case of society against the state. Without denying the importance of the politically charged atmosphere of the temperance society, Borodin was not squarely on the side of officialdom. As someone concerned with fire prevention, he was critical of the official police and wanted to remove their influence at fires so that the volunteer fire departments could become independent and autonomous civil organizations. Borodin also scorned the law that made it a criminal offence for a volunteer to insult a police officer at the scene of a fire.135 However, he agreed that the police should keep control of crowds at a fire, and he continued to look to the state to provide consistent solutions to firefighting. He occupied a position somewhere between state and society, the same position that the fire departments across the empire had occupied for over fifty years. As we will see, his attitude and his experiences with the government would become vital for the irsf in the years following the revolution of 1917. While Borodin occupied a middle position, the congress did have dissenters like the ones Bradley describes. The representatives from the Kingdom of Poland protested the lack of zemstvo and municipal participation allowed by the presidium and walked out on the proceedings.136 The very fact that the Polish representatives left the discussions demonstrates how the atmosphere within the association discouraged the participation of liberal members, who were supposed to form the nucleus of an emergent democratic society: liberal members would have to seek their fortunes elsewhere. In real terms, the absence of the Polish contingent reflected the lack of consensus when it came to firefighting and fire prevention. Instead of fighting

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fires, different groups fought each other. Strakhovoe delo reported that volunteer firefighters fought with professional firefighters, who, in turn, attacked the police, while the private insurance agents fought with the mutual insurance agents. The report concluded that, of all the conferences held by the irsf, the one in St Petersburg was the least successful.137 Repeatedly, the divisions at these conferences reflected the tensions throughout the Russian Empire. Only weeks before the conference had opened, there had been a wave of mass strikes protesting the massacre of workers at the Lena gold mines in eastern Siberia. At about the same time, the political parties of the extreme right began to show divisions when V.M. Purishkevich created his own splinter nationalist party, the Union of the Archangel Michael.138 Borodin and his colleagues had suffered a number of setbacks. The State Duma had not legislated effective measures, the conferences made resolutions that had no practical results, and the troubled state showed almost no interest in the problem. Nonetheless, the active members of the irsf had not lost total confidence in the state, which still offered the most hope for improving urban firefighting. In October 1913, the council of the irsf made an official plea to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, asking it to take a more active role in firefighting and to free urban fire departments from police interference.139

in search of the state Firefighting had become a national problem since the early 1890s, but fire departments across the empire had shown little improvement. Activists at the numerous all-Russian conferences, seven in total, had discussed every aspect of firefighting, but few of their resolutions brought about change; instead, the fire department’s potential as a political vehicle distracted participants from their stated aims. Serious discussion gave way to ostentatious swagger and outright displays of militarism and nationalism. Through participation in these activities, the elite core of the irsf created a world of its own, isolated from the real problems of the day. Historians often look to worker strikes, a radicalized intelligentsia, and an increasingly conservative gentry to emphasize the turmoil that prevailed within the Russian Empire from 1905 until the eve of the First World War.140 Firefighters did not organize major

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strikes, and the members of the irsf were not renowned intellectuals; however, volunteers experienced their own brand of polarization at all levels. Members of the irsf had managed to put aside their differences until the revolutionary events of 1905. Thereafter, political affiliations within the irsf became evident as the nationalist members and their dissenters gave voice to their opinions. This polarization within the irsf - between the volunteers and the professionals, and between members in the centre and on the periphery – reduced the possibilities of improving the performance of urban fire departments. On the eve of Russia’s involvement in the First World War, every level of firefighting was in disarray. The strongest bond that held these groups together was their belief that firefighting was a matter of state importance. Although the state had proved as incapable as anyone of providing solutions, men like Iordan, a dissenter among the conservative irsf members, remained confident that the answer must come from the state. In 1915, he bemoaned the state’s inability to recognize the extent of the problem, but he still insisted the same state find the appropriate answers.141 Iordan may have been alienated by the autocracy’s ineptitude, but the notion that firefighting could be improved without a strong, centralizing, and organizing state remained foreign to him. Like almost all of the people who had been involved with volunteer fire departments before them, activists wanted to interact with a strong state, not oppose it. It should thus come as no surprise that, after 1917, D.N. Borodin, an otherwise staunch supporter of the autocracy, welcomed the Soviet state with open arms because “Soviet power recognized that firefighting was state business.” After years of frustration with the autocracy, he now proudly proclaimed that “a new era in the history of firefighting had begun.”142 And, while Borodin looked ahead to the Soviet system, it is perhaps time to take a step back and investigate visual representations of firefighters in the public sphere. After all, many of the textual themes explored in this and preceding chapters have their visual counterparts in the thousands of photographs of firefighters and their fire departments.

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6 Visualizing Civil Society The Photographer and the Firefighter

For centuries, firefighters have performed their duties before the watchful eye of the public as crowds gathered to watch them fight the flames. While many onlookers were distracted by the danger, others recorded the action. At the start of the nineteenth century, Russian artists painted dramatic scenes of fires and portraits of important firefighters. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, lithographs printed in newspapers visually depicted the performance of firefighters. With the advent of photography and enhanced technological methods of reproduction, entirely new possibilities appeared. By the end of the century, Russian photographers were taking portrait photographs of fire chiefs and outdoor group portraits of entire fire departments. The firefighter also became an important subject in an emerging film industry.1 Imperial Russian firefighters played a key role in Sergei Eisenstein’s classic display of tsarist oppression, Strike (Stachka, 1925). In the penultimate sequence, the camera focused on firefighters brandishing their hoses as they repelled the striking workers with high-pressured blasts of water. And later, during the Second World War, Time Magazine put Dmitrii Shostakovich, wearing a firefighter’s helmet, on its cover page.2 In turning to a visual analysis, this chapter offers a methodological shift from previous discussions in that it situates and isolates fire departments within the history of photography. In order to ensure that the photographs are regarded as primary sources in their own right and not just pleasing accoutrements to textual excerpts from the vast archives of the Imperial bureaucracy, I situate the history of fire departments within the history of photography. While this represents a conceptual jump, it remains inextricably linked to the

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preceding analysis. If one recalls the mayor of Kazan, who took the fire department for a joyride in the early 1880s, one can see how this event can easily be related to photographs that portray the military presence of fire departments in the urban setting. Furthermore, photographs taken in and around city halls relate to the intersection of city and state, which was so evident when city officials challenged their governor in the early 1880s. Finally, the conservative tendencies of the volunteer fire departments, witnessed in textual depictions of celebrations such as the one held on Sheremetev’s estate, emerge forcefully in many photographs. Thus, a relatively tiny sampling of the thousands of unpublished photographs of volunteer firefighters reveals elements of conservatism, military values, and the horseplay that so attracted volunteers. Moreover, the relationship between the photographer and the firefighter lurks just below the surface of these images. Both characters were important players in the public domain at a time when Russian society had already entered a phase of prolonged transition. Urban growth, social unrest towards the end of the nineteenth century, and events such as the 1905 revolution were fundamentally changing the empire and the manner in which residents constructed their own lives. If we bring together the ability of the camera to capture a moment in time and the strong public presence of the fire department in each city, we gain another angle from which to evaluate the public sphere at this crucial moment in Russian history. Statutes of volunteer associations and city debates have been studied to enable us to comprehend a particularly Russian style of civil society, yet we still do not know what it looked like. Would we recognize it if we saw it? Fortunately, there are hundreds of photographs of firefighters taken in all corners of the empire to help fill a gap in our understanding of a complex political culture. In a plethora of poses, many men and a few women placed themselves in front of a photographer. It is almost impossible to conceptualize civil society without analyzing the interaction of these volunteers, the quintessential representative of the public sphere, and the photographer, the person responsible for disseminating the values of these volunteers. The invention of the daguerreotype was announced in 1839, and by the 1850s photography was already booming in Paris, yet ­Russian photography still lagged far behind.3 It was only at the end of the nineteenth century, at about the same time as the Imperial

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Russian Society of Firefighters experienced its greatest growth, that the lens of the photographer started to immortalize street scenes in the capitals. Shortly thereafter, photographers in the provinces were taking shots of their own as they recorded both the famous and the infamous in their midst.4 Photographers might have expanded their operations much earlier had it not been for the watchful eye of the tsarist censor. Then as now, the photograph was a powerful medium that could be used to communicate any amount of information; in an autocracy, a photograph was worth much more than a thousand words. Even as the first daguerreotypes entered Russia, the censors kept a watchful eye on the images reproduced. In the 1840s, A. Davin’on travelled to Siberia and met with some of the Decembrists who had been exiled after they had rebelled against Tsar Nicholas I in 1825. While there, he sat these men before his camera and recorded the likenesses of these personae non gratae. When the authorities heard of his activities, they confiscated the prints and arrested him.5 The situation would improve, but in the early years of Alexander II’s reign, when press laws were relaxed, visual images still had to undergo stricter perusal than did textual material.6 In the 1880s, censors forbade the Sankt-Peterburgskaia Gazeta (St Petersburg gazette) to publish illustrations.7 At the end of the nineteenth century, the well-known photographer Karl Bulla required permission to photograph subjects outdoors.8 The situation would soon change, however, for by the time of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–05, popular journals such as Niva (Field) printed regular battlefront shots from its war correspondents. Firefighters were, of course, not the only people to have their photographs taken for soon professional photographers registered as much as they could of urban life. In 1896, there were already 443 professional photographers in St Petersburg and 279 in Moscow.9 Wealthier citizens could pay to have their pictures taken in an expensive professional studio. Other residents would have to wait until the photographer came to them. Karl Bulla, who owned the most important studio in St Petersburg in the late Imperial era, roamed the streets and buildings of the city with his associates, looking for the perfect shot; Bulla left behind as many as 200,000 photographs. He caught women at work and men relaxing in the public baths; he took official photographs of royal visitors, recorded the tumultuous revolutionary events of 1905, and avidly photographed the State

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Duma following the October Manifesto of 1905. Bulla was also the official photographer for the National Library and for the Imperial family, thus many of the photographs from the tercentenary of the Romanov family in 1913 bear his name.10 Owing to the importance of firefighting, Bulla was also the official photographer of the Imperial Russian Society of Firefighters. He followed the firefighters wherever they went in and around St Petersburg. His camera took shots from the Champ de Mars right near the Winter Palace and from the Gostinyi Dvor on the Nevskii Prospect. Bulla took literally hundreds of shots of firefighters plying their trade. Whether shooting at the scene of a fire or preparing an elaborate portrait of a fire chief, Bulla’s direct involvement highlights the prominent public position of the firefighters. If Bulla was the most important photographer in St Petersburg, there were numerous photographers in other cities who also understood the photogenic qualities of the fire department. In much the same way that some of the most active volunteer fire departments could be found outside the capitals, some of the most creative photographers were in far away places such as Irkutsk and Kazan. Unfortunately, these photographs rarely bore the name of the photographer himself (or herself – although 92 percent of photographers in St Petersburg in 1890 were male).11 These photographers took careful shots that created visual guides for the historian. In posed photographs, where volunteers or professionals stood at attention for a special occasion, the social hierarchies within the fire departments become clearly evident. In addition, many of these images provide an indication of how women participated in volunteer associations. While the official statutes worked to exclude women, they were represented in a minority role; their visual representation in an overwhelmingly male domain indicates the role they played in the public sphere. The photographs also generated a physical space for the cities of late Imperial Russia. Town halls, churches, markets, and main squares often provided a backdrop for the activities of firefighters, who brought their own values to the structures they visited. These images help us explore the multifunctionality of buildings such as the city hall. Finally, the photographs offer a silent insight into the motivations volunteers had for joining the local fire department. The photographs reproduced here come from the official organ of the Imperial Russian Society of Firefighters, Pozharnoe delo. In

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1901, the editors of the journal started to place photographs on the cover page and, thus, the images quickly became available to approximately one thousand member associations throughout the empire. The first issue proudly displayed the photograph of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, the honorary chairperson of the society. The next issue featured a shot of his wife Maria Pavlovna, who replaced him as honorary chairperson after his death in 1909. In the next four issues, the editors published photographs of Imperial bureaucrats such as Minister of Internal Affairs I.N. Durnovo. Thereafter, however, the field was open. Almost any firefighter could expect to find his likeness on the cover page as the editors started to publish group photographs of fire departments from throughout the empire. As with most modern magazines, the cover page acts as a visual invitation to explore further; you might not be able to judge a book by its cover, but editors could certainly impress their subscribers with a vibrant cover page.12 Significantly, the cover pictures often stood alone without any additional text save for the masthead and the name of the featured fire department; text did not distract the reader from the importance of the image. The front page could also single out a firefighter for honourable service or present an obituary for a fallen friend. In these cases, a short, respectful, and descriptive text accompanied the photo. More photographs could be found within the covers of the journal. Other publications devoted to firefighting – Golos pozharnago and Drug pozharnago – also featured pictures of firefighters, if less prominently. Fire departments were also occasionally featured in less specialized journals such as Niva. Since Karl Bulla and his associates submitted many photographs to Niva, on the rare occasion they provided interesting shots of firefighters celebrating a jubilee.13 The decision to place a photograph on the cover page of the society’s journal reinforced the importance of the visual element in firefighting. The photographs created visual links between members of the organization, which was, effectively, a visual imagined community.14 At a period in the empire’s history when not everyone could read with ease, a quick glimpse at the cover page promoted the idea that each individual fire department was part of a greater whole spread throughout an enormous territorial expanse. The names of the fire departments printed above the photographs – Irkutskaia, Kazanskaia, Riazanskaia, Pskovskaia – brought distant cities closer to home. Firefighters could immediately recognize, if not familiar

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faces, familiar circumstances: they saw uniforms and equipment akin to their own. In the literature on photography, scholars have emphasized the element of possession inherent in this particular art form. Years ago, Giselle Freund argued that photographic art became dominated by capitalist concerns with possession.15 In a postmodern mode, the idea of possession has been shifted from its economic origins to accommodate cultural interpretations. Photographs taken of distant places are seen as acquiring the subject of the photograph: a daguerreotype or photograph of Egyptian hieroglyphics can be interpreted as the colonization of Ancient Egyptian culture.16 A photograph of an ethnographer in native clothes can be interpreted as a repossession of native identity.17 This style of interpretation could be applied to Russian ethnographers who displayed subject photographs at their exhibitions in the 1860s.18 The idea of possession, however, is an inappropriate interpretive tool with respect to the photographs published in Pozharnoe delo. From an economic vantage point, the photographs lacked the key component of capitalist possession. Seldom, if ever, did they bear the name of the artist in the bottom corner, as one would expect in a painting (the artists cannot be identified in any of the photographs presented in this chapter). The photographs of the firefighters, though they also captured moments in time from distant places, evoke a sense of sharing rather than a sense of cultural possession. The reproduction of these images permitted otherwise isolated groups to share in each other’s activities. Even in 1910, when the editors published a photograph of the fire department in Constantinople, the image invited members to share and compare their activities with like-minded people in a city in the Ottoman Empire.19 The image of a Polish-language fire department served a similar function.20 In this sense, the photograph had a liberating and educating rather than a colonizing function. Before the Second World War, Walter Benjamin recognized the liberating function of photography in art. He wrote about the quasiproletarian aspect of this new reproductive technology.21 In contrast to traditional art forms, the possession of an original had little meaning in photography. Although there was a negative to each photo, this was not the object of visual satisfaction. From one negative an almost infinite number of equally valuable copies could be made. Unlike a painting, whose originality was as important as were the

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origins of a noble family, the photograph had no such genealogy. Liberated from these constraints in an era of “technological reproduction,” the photographs could reach a greater audience. While Benjamin was thinking about art in a direct sense, his illumination of the topic is relevant to the photographs reproduced in Pozharnoe delo. Since there were many copies of the journal available, firefighters did not have to visit a museum or an official institution to see the images: they could peruse them in the comfort of their own depot. And yet, in spite of the proletarian form of the medium, the content offered a noble image of life in the empire. The idea of an original has additional importance in this context because the reproductive methods of Pozharnoe delo did not achieve the highest standards. The quality of the published pictures was far worse than that of the photographic prints, many of which arrived after an extensive journey in the mail. It was therefore not always possible to discern exact detail or to recognize faces in the pictures. The occasional retouching could create an epistemological gap between the firefighters posing for the photograph and the manner in which they appeared in Pozharnoe delo. In this sense, the grainy and often blurred photographs did not represent an objective reality. Thus, it might be tempting to invoke a postmodern and/or perspectivist thesis questioning the objective validity of the images. Yet, though the lens can select the reality it chooses to display, this thesis is inappropriate in this context; instead, we should heed the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote that a blurred picture of a human being is still a sufficient picture of a human being.22 Despite the inadequacies of the photographs and the possibility that the images did not recapture the world-as-it-is, they provided enough detail to enable firefighters to visually communicate with each other in an effective manner. The firefighters enjoyed advantages over their colleagues in other volunteer associations. Not every societal journal published regular photographs of its members. Avtomobilist (Automobilist), for example, certainly published photographs of cars and drivers, but this style of photography limited exposure to a few select people. Group photographs rarely, if ever, appeared in its pages.23 The news organs of charitable societies were similar. Most of them contained pages of text without presenting images of their members. When photographs were included, they often portrayed the recipients of goodwill rather than the providers themselves. For instance, the

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Vestnik blagotvoritel’nosti (Journal of charity) published a single photograph towards the front of each issue. The images showed schoolchildren and orphans learning to sew or how to hoe a garden; however, the members of the society are either peripheral to the photograph or entirely absent.24 This is not to say that pictures of these do-gooders did not exist. Karl Bulla’s photo studio took hundreds of photographs of subjects such as deaf children learning to read, young boys eating their lunch in large mess halls, and matronly women selling goods to raise money for the institutions they supported. Photographers also took group portraits of men and women in front of their institutions and, with these pictures, tried to put a benevolent face on a grave and growing problem.25 Despite the quantity, these photographs did not have the same type of distribution as did those in Pozharnoe delo, though they may have found their way onto the walls of orphanages. Members of a hockey club or a football team in St Petersburg could expect to have their photograph taken, but there was no guarantee the image would appear in a journal.26 One certain reason for the difference, an element that has been discussed earlier, was the prominent public position of the fire departments. These professional and volunteer associations drew crowds at their celebrations, and, thus, members were conscious of the image they presented to the outside world. The meticulous care with banners and uniforms was easily translated onto a silver-coated plate and then distributed for public consumption. Given the vital role of proper presentation, the pictures published in Pozharnoe delo also told its membership how they should look. Effectively, the journals were not just an organ of communication but also a means of providing a code of conduct. An emphasis on discipline was entirely consistent with the internal mores of volunteer fire departments. The discussion can now turn to an analysis of individual photographs. The images reproduced here represent but a fraction of the total, but they invite general speculation on different aspects of firefighting. The first image addresses the role and representation of women in these volunteer societies. The statutes of volunteer organizations officially denied women participation in anything but an honorary role. Photographs tend to confirm these textual rules as women were, for the most part, beyond the purview of the lens. They were not totally absent: the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna graced the front page of the first January issue after she became the

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honorary head following her husband’s death in 1909. Thereafter, her visage appeared regularly in ceremonial photographs taken on special occasions.27 Be this as it may, women still had a better chance of being photographed if they joined a charitable association. In 1910, Pozharnoe delo published a shot of Maria Alekseevna Ermolova in front of a fire engine, as seen in figure 6.1.28 The photograph is to some extent an anomaly since it presents a single, isolated woman standing in front of the technologically advanced equipment of the fire department. This picture first appeared on the cover page in 1910 and was reproduced as part of an insert three years later. To commemorate the three hundredth anniversary of the Romanov dynasty in 1913, D. Borodin published a serial history of firefighting under the Romanovs. In the April issue of this series, the photograph of Ermolova reappears, accompanying the text of the history. The publication of the photograph in 1913 reflects the spirit of the recent international congress that had been held in St Petersburg as the attendees nominally proclaimed the equality of women in firefighting. This reflects an intent rather than a state of affairs since women were still largely excluded from firefighting.29 Whereas in 1910 she had been the only woman in the issue, this time Ermolova has company on one of the pages in the same article. A French advertisement for an exhibition on safety and hygiene (Exposition internationale Hygiène-Sauvetage) illustrates a neo-classically half-dressed woman with one of her breasts visible: Ermolova had been unwittingly placed near a commercial version of Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. In the text, Borodin mentions that Ermolova had been elected as an honorary member of irsf and was the first woman to take an active interest in firefighting.30 Significantly, Borodin also states that Ermolova is the daughter of Alexei Ermolov, state-secretary, member of the state council, and a man whose interests in firefighting prompted him to write a book on the subject.31 Her close link to officialdom is typical for these societies. The image reprinted here as figure 6.1 has been taken directly from the journal of 1910. While the archival original, which is of better quality, is available, the grainy image provides a more accurate indication of what subscribers saw.32 The photograph is provocative because most women kept their distance from the nuts and bolts of the irsf. Even though men often referred to the mechanical symbols of the industrial revolution with female names, women were rarely

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Figure 6.1 Maria Alekseevna Ermolova, 1910, Pozharnoe delo, cover page.

shown identifying with the machinery in the Imperial era.33 The furry dog at her feet softens the image, but otherwise Ermolova is leaning right up against the hard steel of the steam pump. And yet, despite her proximity to the machinery, Ermolova hardly appears ready to fight a fire. Her elevated heels, her soft hat, fur-coat, and scarf would only be considered fire hazards should action be called for. Although men did appear in suits in other photographs, for the most part they were depicted in the uniforms appropriate to the task at hand. The editorial selection of the photograph is also of interest. Based on the archival record, two photographs were taken consecutively: the one presented here and another in which Ermolova poses with seven uniformed male firefighters who stand between her and the fire engine.34 They shield her from the engine, while the engine itself

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is barely visible. The unpublished photograph highlights a more traditional difference between men and women, whereas the published photograph is more daring. The photograph demonstrates the ambiguous role of women in firefighting. While they were officially excluded from active membership, the photograph of Ermolova suggests that they could play a larger role in these associations. Yet, Ermolova and these few women were more the exception than the rule. In the same issue that published a front-page photograph of Ermolova in 1906, an article entitled “Women and Fire Prevention” welcomes the “few” women who had taken positions as secretaries in volunteer fire departments.35 The comment is apt since the extremely limited number of photographs that depicted women speak to this point. In 1909, the cover page of Pozharnoe delo featured the Elizavetgrad volunteer fire society. The picture is entirely in keeping with earlier submissions as it presents joyful members posing in uniform. But here, a woman in a white dress sits in the middle of the shot – presumably a secretarial assistant for the society. The clean white dress contrasts sharply with the darker uniforms of the other volunteers.36 In a photograph of the Pargolovo volunteers taken in 1910, a few feathered hats can be spotted in the background.37 In fact, women did not even occupy second place in front of the camera. They may have been the second sex, but young boys were far more likely to be photographed. The occasional society had a youth division, and a few photographs demonstrated the boys doing exercises or marching on the Champ de Mars in St Petersburg.38 Boys also appeared regularly in the group photographs, and their presence gave a multi-generational feel to the event, suggesting the future prospects of the association. Most of the photo-ops favoured the men in these organizations who acted out unfamiliar or atypical roles in front of the lens. The men in professional fire departments could take a break from their daily routine. The departure from the everyday was even stronger among the volunteers, who had other lives to live outside their association. In the photographs, they displayed what might be considered a second self. No doubt, they knew beforehand when the photographer would arrive with his cumbersome equipment so they had time to think about the manner in which they would present themselves for these staged productions. Thus, these group photos offer a wealth of imaginative poses. While these were not composed

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Figure 6.2 Irkutsk Fire Department, 1910, Pozharnoe delo, cover page.

studio shots of a bourgeois family, within certain limits, each group could choose the image it presented to other members throughout the empire. The almost limitless number of group photographs of fire departments complicates the process of selection, but the image of the professional fire department from Irkutsk published in 1910, seen here as figure 6.2, provides a representative starting point for investigation.39 First, the complexity of the composition indicates the importance of these occasions. Approximately one hundred firefighters had to be positioned within view of the lens. The photographer needed a sufficiently large space in the city to take the photograph, thus suggesting that a crowd could gather to watch the event (though they might not find themselves within the scope of the lens as the lens could also exclude people). The effort involved in the photograph was tremendous. Almost every imaginable piece of equipment was brought forth. The ladders, the escape blanket to the left of the tower, the hoses and axes on the ground at the front, and the fire engine to the right indicate a pride in technological aptitude. While the skill level of the firefighters can be debated, the importance of the equipment in this and many other photographs is

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clearly ­evident. In an age of rapid industrialization within the Russian Empire, proximity to the machinery was proximity to progress. Yet, the people were still more important than the machinery. The individual firefighters have been carefully placed on and around a training tower. The elderly and more decorated members sit at the front in the middle with their feet firmly on the ground. The rankand-file members, who surround their leaders, had their images immortalized next to the elite of their city. The most adventurous souls took positions on top of the tower, where they hung precipitously on the ledge. At least eight members can be seen on the ladder to the right of the tower. Arthur Danto, the philosopher of art, has proposed that walking up a flight of stairs symbolizes the adoption of a new role. For the firefighters, the rungs of the ladders took the place of steps. In the time it took to take the picture, the men on the ladder distanced themselves from their colleagues, looked down upon the leadership, and enjoyed a novel perspective on the surrounding landscape. The photographer also demonstrates a measure of aesthetic sensitivity by cutting off the ladder at the top of the picture, creating the impression that it extends into the heavens above. Certainly an apt metaphor since participation in these associations involved risk, and the soul of the occasional firefighter did rise to the heavens. Fortunately, the men in this photograph could descend the ladder after the photograph had been taken. The clothing and helmets were also an important part of membership in these associations because they transformed a piebald spectrum of citizens into visually identical parts of a greater whole. The uniforms reflected an emphasis on discipline, and the helmets promoted the image of the firefighter as pseudo-soldier. While the Irkutsk shot is relatively loose in terms of organization, a majority of photographs show firefighters standing side by side, almost at attention. The medals on the chests of the senior members, which distinguish them without individualizing their uniforms, add to the disciplined atmosphere. Since military themes were so prominent in these photographs, it is perhaps worthwhile reiterating what was mentioned in the introduction. The militarism of these images speaks not to aggressive or expansionist tendencies but, rather, to a value system that favours order and discipline over the pluralism normally associated with civil society. To resituate the discussion within John Keep’s

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­ efinition, the volunteers depicted here were not going to engage d in an international conflict, but they did put “a heavy emphasis on military ceremonial” and they did follow “an ideology supportive of military ideals.”40 This further blurs the distinction between state and society because many participants who had little or no connection with the state acted as though they were associated with one of its largest ministries. Returning to the photograph, the men at the bottom evince a serious mood, while the men at the top seem to be having fun. The symbolic smiles so ubiquitous in snapshot photography of the late twentieth century are almost entirely absent from these photographs; however, as a smile is a culturally defined expression, we need to look for other signs of playfulness in these pictures.41 The men of the Irkutsk fire department leaned away from the tower as they dared the forces of gravity. Shown hanging in the air or standing on a small ledge gives a sense of lightness, even youthfulness, to the activities of the firefighters, in keeping with the celebrations and festivities they sponsored. If the public sphere is to occupy actual physical space, then these outdoor photographs must be interpreted in the broadest possible terms. In many ways, these group photographs were standard fare for the volunteers. Similar to a yearly team photograph, they drew all the members together to craft a memento for posterity. Yet, it is only with the utmost difficulty that these photographs can be associated with the development of a democratically vibrant civil society. The element of fun allowed middle-aged men to engage in role-playing, but this never appeared to be an attempt to express unfamiliar political ideas. The militaristic aspect of the photographs also speaks either to the apolitical dimension of these associations or to their willingness to confirm traditional values. Despite its public prominence, the photograph from Irkutsk offers an ill-defined image of geographic space. If the name of the fire department had not been printed above the image, the viewer would have lacked reference points to assist him or her in identifying the whereabouts of these men. Even with the nametag, the picture provides little information about the city itself. The firefighters, however, were not always represented in such an isolated fashion. In a variety of photographs, photographers include an urban backdrop that displays the architectural structures firefighters might be called upon to save. Banks, schools, city halls, conservatories, and military

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Figure 6.3 St Petersburg, city hall, 1915, Pozharnoe delo, cover page.

academies are often seen behind the uniformed firefighters. In some cases, the photographer takes his apparatus inside the buildings, displaying the chamber of city hall. The next photograph returns us to St Petersburg. The geographical shift mirrors the visual journey readers of Pozharnoe delo could enjoy as consecutive issues rarely offered photographs from the same place; the imagination of the reader travels with the lens of the photographer. A cover photograph from 1915, shown as figure 6.3, depicts a meeting of irsf members inside the town hall of St Petersburg.42 The members had assembled to initiate fundraising, and the indoor shot, like a studio portrait of a merchant family, presents a more orderly perspective on the proceedings. If the outdoor shots convey the impression of dusty streets and random crowds, the indoor view is tidier and more exclusive as there are no crowds looking on. The only apparent onlooker is the photographer, who took the photograph from the balcony above. Interestingly, the higher perspective

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of the lens reduces the size of the members of the presidium and makes their physical surroundings that much more impressive. This photograph also demonstrates the multifunctionality of city hall. The fundraising activities were a combined effort between professionals and the volunteers, with the result that both had representatives in city hall. Nor was this the first time the firefighters had used city hall. In 1903, Karl Bulla photographed officials celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of St Petersburg’s fire department. At a festive breakfast, members toasted the occasion, while an orchestra, seated below an Imperial portrait, played in the background.43 Firefighters were not the only groups photographed in city hall. Members of charitable associations, even members from the town of Uglich to the west of the capital, had their photographs taken in the chambers where council members met.44 The congress of artists also had photographs taken on the premises.45 City hall was the official location for city council, yet other people met there as well and brought their own values to the space they occupied. For the historian, the photograph is a vital source because it adds a face to a name. The political position of city hall has been much discussed in the literature. Whereas much effort has been spent on attempting to get inside the minds of city councillors, much less effort has been spent on thinking about the interior of the physical space itself. From a historical perspective, the photographs also gave provincial members a tour inside an important building in a far-away city. The caption underneath the photograph states that, in the presence of the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, the honorary members of the irsf and invited guests were singing the Imperial hymn. The emphasis on invited guests suggests that entry into the hall was by invitation only. This certainly reflects the suffrage restrictions, which limited access to city hall to regular council members. In this composition, the photographer has carefully placed his camera so as to avoid interference from the chandelier. The angle allows the tsar to be the dominant personality in the room. A photograph of a painting – a further step removed from the real world – allows Nicholas II to be present yet regally aloof from the proceedings. Larger than life, his visage faces the camera, while most of the other attendees have their backs to it. The board members standing directly below the tsar establish a buffer zone between the emperor and the invited guests. In the middle of the row, the Grand Duchess

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Maria Pavlovna in her soft, feathered hat contrasts with the medalchested men on either side of her. Though light pours in through the windows, suggesting the existence of a disorderly outside world, the tone of the photograph is serious and conservative. As the Imperial Russian forces were engaged with German forces to the west, it was an appropriate time to sing the Imperial hymn. In general, the indoor shots tend to reduce the jovial aspect of these associations and, instead, present an even more exclusive view. Doors are ideal mechanisms for excluding people, and many firefighters did not enter the premises to have their photograph taken. Although the photograph from within town hall displays these characteristics, it retains a relative lightness since the participants did not pose for the camera (in this one way, it was less formal than many outdoor shots). Typically, however, the indoor shots required careful preparation and elaborate stage management. In the studios where these photographs were taken, the backdrops and the props had to be carefully set; firefighters even appeared before stylized scenery. The Vol’marskoe volunteers have a faint garden scene at their back, which includes a barely visible neo-classic column.46 The leaders of the Zhlobinsk fire department also sit before blurred trees and flowers, an apparently feminine touch.47 In Arkhangel’sk, individual firefighters pose in a local studio with flora and fake bridges at their backs.48 These indoor images feature a romanticized sense of the outdoors that is incongruous with the everyday activities of firefighters. The Kirillovskoe firefighters pose before a group of windows and a wardrobe set off to the side, thus conveying an impression of warm, prosperous living quarters.49 In Riazan, the photographer had members sitting at or near two desks, one of the few visual reminders that these fire departments also performed administrative duties.50 The desks also promote the idea of order and literacy that was to be expected from the leadership. The photograph from Riazan best exemplifies the similarity these shots have to the bourgeois family studio portraits of the nineteenth century. The other resemblance between the indoor studio shot of firefighters and those of a bourgeois family involves the proximity of the lens. These are close-up shots in which the features of each individual are visible. Single members are not completely invisible in the outdoor group shots, but, in many cases, the sheer number of people and the distance of the camera complicates identification. Furthermore, the members in indoor shots are often identified by

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Figure 6.4 Kazan Volunteer Fire Department, 1913, Pozharnoe delo, cover page.

name, position, and even number. For instance, below the photograph of the Kirillovskoe volunteers the caption reads “members of the board.” A number has been pencilled in next to each member, and, at the bottom of the page, the number corresponds to the member’s name and position. The members in Riazan also had numbers and, not surprisingly, given the attention to discipline and hierarchy in these associations, the nobleman Count Tatishchev had a “1” at his feet. He is shown protected behind a desk with members “2” and “3” at his side. In the photograph presented as figure 6.4, the firefighters are volunteers in Kazan who mirror the public image of the fire department in the city. 51 The curtains in the background add warmth and imply that the firefighters were actors upon a stage. This is entirely consistent with the role-playing of the volunteers and of photographs of Kazan firefighters scaling the perimeter of the local theatre.52 Those in attendance, including one Tatar member in a traditional hat, suggest a mix of the civilian and the military. The ladders in the background, absent the normal climbers, remind the

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Figure 6.5 Champ de Mars, inspection of volunteer fire departments, 1912, Pozharnoe delo.

viewer of other members while, at the same time, suggesting their exclusion from the shot. Is this an image of a progressive civil society? If we remove the uniforms, will we find constitutionalists underneath? The stiff collars and medalled chests do little to encourage affirmative answers to these questions. There is little doubt from the photograph that the association encouraged members to come together and to deal with their own problems, but this did not mean abandoning the rigid discipline so characteristic of an autocratic state. However they may have led their private lives, these senior members did little to convey anything but the most conservative image in photographs, an image that matched well with textual descriptions of their activities. If the indoor shots evoke a static view of the fire departments, the next photograph exemplifies their ability to move through city streets. On the Champ de Mars, steps away from the Winter ­Palace, photographers recorded the exercises of various volunteer fire departments, here depicted in figure 6.5.53 The central location of the parade was to be expected, but the photograph shows an event that was replicated in provincial cities as well. In 1909, Pozharnoe delo released another extremely blurred photograph of regimental formations in the centre of Irkutsk.54 Individual faces defy recognition, but orderly lines with men in uniform are plain to see. In fact,

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if the photograph were to be viewed outside the context of Pozharnoe delo, one might suspect that it represents a military inspection. Karl Bulla also took photographs on the perimeter of St Petersburg. At Ulianka, on the estate of Count Sheremetev, Bulla captured firefighters parading down a tree-lined street.55 Photographs of firefighters in motion included solemn funerary processions to honour fallen friends.56 The inspection photographed on the Champ de Mars took place within the context of the Sixth International Conference on Fire Prevention held in St Petersburg in 1912. In an effort to impress foreign delegations, the irsf staged a series of events, many of which were photographed and later published in Pozharnoe delo. There are images of children marching down the square, representatives of member societies standing with their banners, and rows of firefighters training on mechanical ladders. In this shot, the photographer places his equipment dead centre on the square to give the broadest possible angle and to magnify the space the volunteers occupied. Through a corridor formed by a wall of volunteers on one side and fire engines on the other, the mounted cavalry moved towards the photographer and the reader of the article. On one of the horses (the features of the individual riders are indiscernible) sits the Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich, who helped conduct the inspection. At centre-right, another rider salutes the volunteer firefighters. The visual perspective shows the long row of fire engines to the right, fading into a distant focal point. The organizers clearly arranged their equipment to resemble the artillery of the army. To the left of the horses, the volunteers stand at attention with their standards on display, waiting for the review to pass. Not every public photograph of a parade bears such strong militaristic overtones, but this image captures a dominant feature of the volunteers’ celebrations. The powerful combination of the photojournalist, the printed journal Pozharnoe delo, and the ubiquitous firefighters offered enormous opportunities. Since the visual representation of these volunteer fire departments was such an important part of their own identity, the five photographs here serve to adumbrate their public image. A common perception of civil society suggests that, through volunteer associations, citizens learn to create an embryonic form of democracy. If such a thesis is to hold at a general level, visual representations should confirm this. Yet, the photographs of both

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­ rofessional and volunteer firefighters resist the conclusion that they p fostered the development of a progressive public sphere. Independent citizens stepped out of their homes and assembled to make important decisions, but the external face of these associations bore all the most prominent symbols of a conservative autocracy. The photographs are emphatic on this point. The limited evidence of women and the more exclusive indoor pictures favour a similar interpretation. Military-style uniforms are ubiquitous in almost all the photographs, and military symbols of the autocracy are continuously on display. Alongside what might be considered overt support for the state comes the apolitical element. The men just wanted to have fun, and, thus, their involvement in the volunteer association was miles away from the mass amount of theorizing on volunteer life. Many of the images contain an element of the festive and the theatrical. The joviality contrasts with the gravity of their actual duties, but membership did allow these men to join a brotherhood, which fostered a work-hard, play-hard attitude. There was little time to think about political change.

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A few years before the outbreak of hostilities in the First World War, members of city council in Kazan received a proposal to purchase an automobile for the fire department. Council members who supported the idea expressed concern about maintaining a technologically advanced fire department. Yet, in an age when the automobile was as much a sign of social prestige as it was of scientific advancement, no doubt these council members envisioned themselves racing down the streets in a prized car, just as Mayor Ianishevksii had done with the fire department’s horses in 1882. They may even have dreamed of having their photograph taken. Although the car itself may have suggested forward progress, its purchase could do nothing to improve the quality of fire prevention in the city. The important local newspaper, the Kazanskii telegraf, presented the idea to its readers as an extravagance. It lamented the incredible expense and the unwillingness of city council to test the automobile on Kazan’s roads before committing itself to the purchase.1 It was a waste of roubles at a time when the city continued to burn. And, in the same year, another fire that destroyed entire city blocks prompted further public concern with the fire department. At a city council meeting following this blaze, one council member noted that the volunteers had arrived forty minutes before the municipal fire department.2 One report from the committee responsible for revising the fire department remarked how the public, with the encouragement of the police, verbally abused the firefighters.3 With the fire department being attacked from all sides, the same committee noted that every aspect of firefighting required ­“reorganization

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and improvement.”4 In effect, a city that had more than doubled in size since the creation of public fire departments in the 1860s kept returning to the drawing board. A similar story could be told about fire departments throughout the empire. While the effectiveness of these fire departments stagnated, through­out the reform period their position in urban life was continually in flux, reflecting both the mood changes in St Petersburg and the metamorphosis of urban life in Imperial Russia. In the most liberal years of Alexander II’s reign, from approximately 1858 to 1862, the state took a bold step towards the creation of a public sphere when it legislated the public fire departments. This was entirely in the spirit of other reforms that encouraged local self-initiative. Though it was more a money-saving venture than a conscious effort to encourage local initiative, the original reform sparked a wave of activity throughout the empire. Hundreds of city officials became their own administrators in at least one domain. Thereafter, however, as conservative values resurfaced in St Petersburg, the increasingly arbitrary autocracy chipped away at the public sphere it had created and sanctioned. In 1867, the role of the police was expanded, and this heralded the gradual reintroduction of state authority throughout the last years of Alexander II’s reign, a time when the conservative voice of the tsar-liberator started to muffle the reforming voices of the 1850s and 1860s. Under Alexander III and Nicholas II, the state resisted the systematization of firefighting and continued to condone the petty interference of the police without any regard for the effect this would have on firefighting. In this respect, there was no real break dividing the rule of Alexander II from that of his son and grandson. In the cities themselves, participants took the changes in stride. When presented with the reality that the military was withdrawing its soldiers from urban areas, city leaders gained their first exposure to the reforms that were restructuring the administrative face of the empire. In the early 1860s, they debated the transformation of the police fire departments staffed with soldiers and negotiated this change with the local police. While some cities were more reluctant than others to accept the change, the majority were eventually forced to accede to it, and thus began a prolonged experiment with local self-administration within the public sphere. If the outcome of the experiment were to be judged on the actual success of the individual fire departments, we could well refer to it as a failure.

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Looking beyond the functional, Democracy Burning? investigates the peculiarities of the urban public sphere and the willingness of urban residents to act on their own without abandoning the idea that the autocratic state and its emissaries had a pre-eminent function in urban affairs. It highlights and examines the relationship between different levels of authority in Imperial Russia as they navigated the new urban environment in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is now time to draw some conclusions.

understanding the cast of urban actors My narrative shifts ground quite often as it moves from the central ministries in St Petersburg to public and volunteer fire departments in a number of provincial cities and back again to the capital to study the Imperial Russian Society of Firefighters. However much the scene and the physical backdrop may have changed, human actors were playing much the same parts in an extended drama. Governors, the police, mayors and their fellow city councillors, urban residents, and representatives of the central ministries had a part to play wherever a fire department was needed. As these various citizens interacted, came into conflict, argued, and debated, they told a story about their role in the interstitial spaces of a changing society. The Governor In such a vast empire one can only summarize the role of the governors with great caution for each governor had his own personal style of rule. As the viceroys of the tsar, the provincial governors had broad prerogatives in the provinces they administered. First, the governor, as defined institutionally, was an integral part of the urban landscape. Urban residents, be they city councillors or volunteer firefighters, understood the need for a central authoritative figure. The governor was always welcome at the scene of a fire, and no objections were made if he decided to review or exercise the fire department. Protesters only cried foul if the personal authority of the individual governor exceeded his statutory legitimacy: in the eyes of the natives, the governor could do many but not all things. Such was the case in 1881 in Kazan, where the mayor and city council stepped in to curb the personal excesses of the governor and rein in his actions to accord with prescribed institutional limits. Throughout the ensuing battle,

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even the most adamant protagonists for urban self-administration supported the continued presence of the governor at the scene of a fire. Despite the cooling of relations, there was no hostility towards the governor simply because he was an appointee of the tsar. The governor was both a state appointee and a local personality – a physical body in the everyday lives of urban residents.5 In so far as the governor was a local personality, city councillors could challenge his personal actions without asking for institutional change. The Police Whereas municipal authorities strove to cooperate with their respective governors, they frequently clashed with the police. At one level, the public tensions reflected a differing social background. Except for the police chief and a handful of his associates, with whom the mayors would cooperate, the average rank-and-file police officer was a member of the lower echelons of society. Thus, when the police interfered or bungled their duties at the scene of a fire, urban residents perceived them not as representatives of the state so much as members of a lower class, unable to adequately perform the most menial tasks. In much the same way, volunteers scorned low-class professional firefighters who shared the same social background as the police. The state was certainly to blame for its inability to provide adequately trained police, but the focus of urban ire was the police first and only thereafter the state that administered them. At a second level, municipalities resented the continued interference of the police because of its arbitrary nature. The Imperial ­Russian Society of Firefighters regularly protested police interference at fire scenes, citing their incompetence and participation in an activity for which they were not trained. These activists wanted the police at a fire scene as gendarmes and crime stoppers but not as commanders of the fire brigade. To achieve this end, irsf members appealed to the administrative apparatus of the autocracy. Thus, at this level, criticism was directed at the state, but the state did not have the solutions. At a time when the personal authority of autocrats like ­A lexander III and Nicholas II dominated the decisionmaking process, this should come as no surprise. The important point here is that irsf members, until the outbreak of the First World War, believed the state could reduce police interference yet still give the police a large role to play in urban affairs.

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The Mayor and the City Councillors As a general rule, detailed biographies of any but the most important ministerial officials are extremely difficult to assemble; thus, without an extensive array of memoirs and diaries, we can only judge urban officials by their actions as they are presented to us in other documents. In the numerous, if not infinite, number of cases in which mayors and city councillors were forced to contemplate urban fire prevention, we get an excellent indication of how they viewed their role and their relationship to other authorities in their cities. In the post-reform era, a time when the ministries and mayors were continually reassessing their administrative stances, there was ample opportunity for dissension in the ranks. Inconsistent policies and incomplete reforms failed to satisfy the demands of mayors who were acutely aware of desperate urban needs. In an effort to gain the attention of ministerial officials, mayors and city councillors readily voiced their disagreements with the police, the governors, and with decisions taken in St Petersburg. The sum of the disagreements, however, did not amount to opposition. Until at least 1905, when the political rules in the empire changed dramatically, these voices never challenged the supreme authority at the centre. In fact, they made regular appeals to the ministries in St Petersburg with the hope that a higher authority could iron out local problems. In the final analysis, these issues were never really solved as life in the empire’s urban centres was always precarious; few students of revolution are surprised to discover that revolutionary upheavals started in the cities. A classic question thus arises – kto vinovat (whose fault is it)? Who was responsible for the inability of urban officials to administer their cities, in general, and to maintain proper fire departments and to raise the standard of urban safety, in particular? Did state interference hamper the honest desire of city councillors to improve living conditions? Is this just another case of a bureaucratized autocracy meddling in urban affairs? The relationship had certainly changed since the days of the service city in the seventeenth century or even since the start of the nineteenth century, when many cities were still rural villages in disguise. But even the introduction of the Municipal Statute in 1870, which provided for greater autonomy, never suggested a strict separation between state and society (the governor remained responsible for confirming the selection of mayor). The symbiotic relationship

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between mayors and the state officials continued throughout the reform period, and the two sides continued to cooperate as best they could. To be sure, city officials never welcomed inconsistent state policies, as was plainly evident when the government tried to define and redefine the difference between police and public fire departments. Be this as it may, the fate of city and state were inextricably intertwined. Though they disagreed at times, and though cities did clamour for increased independence, the relationship was not oppositional or ideological in the sense that the city councillors sought a fundamental reconsideration of their relationship with the state. They had a deep understanding of the laws and knew how to craft subtle arguments, but this did not lead to opposition. The composition of city council can help explain the cooperation with state authorities. Given the restricted suffrage embedded in the Municipal Statute of 1870, its further reduction in 1892 and low voter turnout, city councillors represented the upper elite of the city. Nobles and wealthy merchants dominated city councils both before and after 1892, and they had few structural disagreements with the statutes. In many ways, city officials were as much to blame for the shortcomings in their jurisdiction as was the state for its interference. If the state was unable to formulate consistent laws, city councillors failed to concentrate on the needs of their fire department, preferring to spend their money on pricey technological toys. Furthermore, the attendance figures for city council meetings do little to encourage the notion that it was fully active in managing urban fires. Those who did attend were certainly concerned citizens with a vigorous agenda, but the absenteeism of their colleagues hampered council’s ability to address urgent urban needs. It is perhaps no wonder that, despite a willingness to debate the status of the fire department, they could not turn words into deeds. The apocalyptic reports at the national conferences of the irsf testify to the lack of progress that had been made throughout the empire. The major fires in Kazan in 1909 and 1910 provide deadly confirmation of this fact. Neither the state nor urban officials had the answers. Urban Residents It would of course be impossible to use the fire departments as a base for making sweeping conclusions about all urban residents for not all urban residents participated in fire prevention. While this is

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certainly true, the very fact that so many people with such different backgrounds did participate allows us to explore some values evident in the urban sphere at a moment when, throughout the empire, traditional estate boundaries were being challenged. Societal boundaries in the cities of the empire had become more fluid: the nobility had started to enter the professions, the merchants had gained in prestige, and numerous peasants were slowly being transmogrified into an urban proletariat. Society had become stratified, with any number of intersecting groups. With all these swirling changes, the volunteers could use their time in the fire department to preserve certain values and to cultivate an identity that bespoke a bygone era. Throughout the nineteenth century, whether in police, public, or volunteer fire departments, the dominant ethos had strong military undertones. While the military was reducing its urban presence, thus encouraging the transition from early modern garrison to industrial city, an absence of military personnel did not suggest the immediate elimination of the military ethos from the urban public sphere. In the early 1860s, city councillors involved with the operation of the fire department experienced this ethos first hand as they managed and exercised soldiers who remained behind in the fire departments. The civil, civilian, or simply non-military face of the gorod (city) was certainly on the rise, but elements of the army remained. As we seek to piece together the motives and values of city councillors, we must keep this element in mind. If city councillors were exposed to a military ethos, the volunteer fire departments took it a step further. Militaristic parades, helmets, and the presence of a deadly enemy mirrored many of the adventures to be expected in the army. Even the close camaraderie and interdependence in the line of fire mirrored the military experience. Perhaps the only missing components were the weapons, though spraying water was as much an aim-and-shoot exercise as was firing a rifle, and entering a burning building was equivalent to entering a combat zone. Moreover, these activities represented a remarkable transition from the reform era. Whereas the militaristic aspect was a persistent characteristic of firefighting, nurtured by the nature of the task itself, firefighting in the 1860s was a functional activity: the pomp and circumstance of the 1890s was almost entirely absent. It was only during the conservative reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II, when the official mood was nationalist, that these volunteer organizations adopted the signs and symbols of autocracy

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and promulgated a public vision amenable to the tsar. These volunteers were thus co-opted into the sphere of conservative state values. To allocate a place for a militaristic organization in the realm of civil society, or zivilgesellschaft, suggests a manifest analytic tension: civilians were participating but their actions were not necessarily civil. Yet, these groups were instrumental in promoting a civic consciousness to the degree envisioned when historians and sociologists speak of civil society in the late Imperial era. They recognized that, if they continued to rely on the paternal authority of the state, their neighbourhoods would continue to burn; and, in their attempts to assist official fire departments, they stepped into the public sphere. Upon entering this stage, they continued to identify with the autocracy. These volunteer associations helped to construct personal identities in a manner conducive to Imperial authority. Just as a church environment encouraged an individual to identify with “the Lord,” so the environment of the volunteer fire departments encouraged their members to identify with the tsar. Patronage by the Romanovs, regular visits from ministerial authorities, and celebrations on the name-days of the tsar were all part of formulating an identity sympathetic to autocratic values. In this respect, the volunteer fire departments were like other associations (e.g., charitable societies and artists’ groups) during the reign of the last two Romanov tsars.6 They became part of a system that supported the values of an Imperialist and ethnocentric autocracy. As Alexander III, and thereafter Nicholas II, continued to press his nationalist agenda, fire departments proved to be ideal vehicles for transmitting his message. Far from encouraging constitutional or parliamentary ideas, these associations were an integral part of the autocratic project. This explains the paradox of associational life flourishing during an age of reaction and counter-reform. Many of these associations were co-opted or influenced by the state. The story is little different when we assess fire departments as a regional phenomenon. At a time when local archival committees were researching their provincial pasts and regional historians started to produce local histories, the volunteer fire departments were potential virtual sites for the establishment of a specific regional identity, a place to think about one’s hometown as more than just the physical space in which one lived. Despite the enormous opportunities, regional identity was never an issue in these associations. While they may have celebrated local achievements – such as the twentieth or

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fiftieth year of their existence – these occasions feted local achievements in the larger context of the autocracy. Ostashkovites certainly felt a sense of pride when they celebrated their fiftieth anniversary, but validation of this sentiment came with official approval from St Petersburg in the form of telegrams and commemorative jetons. Here, a weak sense of regional identity (they did after all celebrate their own achievements) coexisted with a stronger sense of identity within a larger national and imperial framework. If an individual were truly interested in developing a unique regional identity, he or she would have been well advised to abstain from participation in the volunteer fire departments. Finally, to take a step back from theory and interpretation, we must not forget that many members joined for no other reason than that they enjoyed the experience: it was fun. In the English case, Peter Clark warns of the “flatulent” tendencies of over-theorizing public space.7 While it would be difficult, if not impossible, to individually separate the values of participants, we must keep this possibility in mind. In the same way that membership in a football association need not have transcended the kicking of a ball, participation in a volunteer fire department may have remained an exercise in sprinkling water on a burning schoolhouse.

reassessing the role of associations: content over form By first analyzing the intellectual and quasi-political content of individual organizations and city councils, it has been possible to reassess the values of urban residents without relying on a theoretical structure that would immediately telegraph these values into a rudimentary starting point for democracy. Far from inviting liberals with a democratic bent, this type of organization discouraged liberal participation in the public sphere: Why would a democratically inclined individual consider joining a volunteer fire department? Or, to broaden the perspective, why would the same liberal want to join a charitable society after 1862 when the wives of governors started to dominate these organizations? To help us here, we can return to Alexis de Tocqueville for inspiration. As is reflected in the scholarly literature his ideas have influenced, he emphasized the important role associations played in securing democracy in America. At the same time, he understood

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that associations in a democratic state differed in function from those in authoritarian states. He writes: I do not say that there can be no civil associations in a country where political association is prohibited, for men can never live in society without embarking in some common undertakings; but I maintain that in such a country civil associations will always be few in number, feebly planned, unskillfully managed, that they will never form any vast designs, or that they will fail in the execution of them.8 The Russian volunteer fire departments were neither few in number nor feebly planned, but Tocqueville’s remarks indicate that an association in and of itself contains no magical properties: it is nurture, not nature, that determines the political potential of a volunteer association. This analysis has relevance to the Russian case for, in the restrictive autocratic atmosphere, the volunteer fire departments never formed “any vast designs.” These thoughts should protect us from the over-hasty assumption that there is some necessary connection between associational life and the type of civil society envisioned by Tocqueville, Habermas, and various historians who place themselves within this debate. In looking for new ways to consider the structure of civil society, it might be better to choose a neo-Hegelian path. Scholars are familiar with Hegel’s influence on the Russian intelligentsia, but they have treated him as a historical phenomenon rather than as a philosopher who can provide contemporary insights. Throughout Democracy Burning?, elements of a Hegelian civil society have never been far from the surface. The Hegelian dialectic is premised upon the interaction between state and society without this interaction ever leading to democratic values or a democratic polity. Hegel envisioned a statist civil society that comes close to mirroring associational life in late nineteenth-century Imperial Russia. The Russians in volunteer fire departments were not passive citizens waiting for the state to act; rather, they were active citizens hoping to interact with a strong and powerful state. A scholar reared on Habermas would consider a statist civil society an oxymoron, but it helps us to understand the limitations of civil society within the Russian Empire. In fact, this statist civil society reflects what is happening in the Russian Federation today.9

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the russian city at the end of the imperial era The disruption caused by urban conflagrations only added to the unsteadiness of Nicholas II’s reign. Before and after the revolution of 1905, turmoil in the form of strikes, assassinations, and revolution had rocked the stability of the empire. The October Manifesto of 1905 and concessions to national representation, free speech, and freedom of conscience did little to quell the growing unease as Nicholas II continued to play with the freedoms he had granted. His arbitrary style had become characteristic of the autocracy since the death of Alexander II. In this context, the continued threat of urban fire had greater symbolic meaning. Activists who lamented the condition of fire departments and fire prevention throughout the empire were fond of proclaiming that Mother Russia burned to the ground in its entirety every thirty years. Ashes to ashes, the citizens of this enormous empire were engaged in a perpetual rebuilding project. Despite the long cold winters, in the nineteenth century fires added an unwanted source of warmth to the relatively new urban experience of most residents. Johan Goudsblom has argued that humankind’s continued ability to control fire was part of the civilizing process: as humans learned to cook with heat and used heat to forge materials civilization evolved and progressed.10 We can alter this thesis to accommodate the Russian case, where control of urban fires continued to stutter along into the twentieth century. In this scenario, the collapse of the civilization of Imperial Russia in 1917 should come as no surprise.

Notes

introduction 1 Tolstoy, War and Peace, 999. 2 For a sense of the incredible urban expansion in a Russian city, see Herlihy, Odessa, 234. 3 Greenberg, Cause for Alarm; Engelsing, Im Verein mit dem Feuer; Lussier, Les Sapeurs-Pompiers au xixe Siècle. For the case of Poland, see Szaflik, Dzieje ochotniczych stražy požarnych. In Roman times, Pliny the Younger also evinced concern about the political potential of fire departments. See Levick, “Pliny in Bithynia,” 120. 4 Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men. 5 Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’. 6 Frierson, All Russia Is Burning. 7 Knackstedt, Moskau; Hittle, Service City. 8 Hildermeier, Bürgertum und Stadt in Russland. Walter Benjamin commented on Moscow’s rural look when he visited in the late 1920s. See Benjamin, Moskauer Tagebuch, 99, 161. 9 Verkholantsev, Gorod Perm, 13–16. 10 Herlihy, Odessa, 234. 11 Istoriia Kazani, 158, 262. 12 Hamm, City in Russian History; Hamm, City in Late Imperial Russia. 13 On literacy, see Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read. 14 Marks, Road to Power. On the structure of earlier urban networks, see Rozman, Urban Networks in Russia. 15 Clowes, “Social Discourse in the Moscow Arts Theater.” 16 Starr, Decentralization and Self-Government. 17 Pearson, Russian Officialdom in Crisis.

210

Notes to pages 7–12

18 Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar. See also Beyrau, Militär und Gesellschaft im vorrevolutionären Russland. 19 Walicki, History of Russian Thought, 183. 20 Burmistrova, Provintsial’naia gazeta v epokhu russkikh prosvetitelei. 21 Rabinovich, Krug N.G. Chernyshevskogo, 40–52. 22 For an earlier view on this activity in the provinces, see Seregny and Wade, Politics and Society. 23 Häfner, “Stadtdumawahlen und soziale Eliten in Kazan,” 246–7. See also Brower, Russian City between Tradition and Modernity. On the introduction of the municipal statute itself, see Hanchett, “Tsarist Statutory Regulation.” 24 Hamm, Kiev, 232–3. 25 Nardova, Samoderzhavie i gorodskie dumy, 8, 137. See also Bater, St Petersburg. 26 Nardova, Samoderzhavie i gorodskie dumy, 93. See also Nardova, Gorodskoe samoupravlenie v Rossii. 27 Nardova, Samoderzhavie i gorodskie dumy, 45. 28 Ibid., 58. 29 Ibid., 93. Nardova is referring to the early 1890s after the introduction of the new Municipal Statute. 30 Thurston, Liberal City, Conservative State, 195. 31 Häfner, “Stadtdumawahlen und soziale Eliten in Kazan.” On the mechanics of reform, see also Hutton, “Reform of City Government.” 32 This approach is mirrored in Brower, Russian City between Tradition and Modernity. 33 Zelnik, Labor and Society in Tsarist Russia. 34 Haimson, “Problem of Social Stability.” 35 On the role of the bourgeoisie in Germany, see Blackbourn and Eley, Peculiarities of German History. 36 Clowes et al., Between Tsar and People. 37 Rieber, “Sedimentary Society.” 38 Bradley, “Volunteer Associations.” On leisure activity in the late Imperial period, see McReynolds, Russia at Play. 39 Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. 40 For a contemporary version of the Hegelian system, see Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society; and Taylor, “Liberal Politics and the Public Sphere.” 41 Brower, Russian City between Tradition and Modernity; Bradley, “Russia’s Parliament of Public Opinion”; McReynolds, News under Russia’s Old Regime. 42 Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere; Habermas, Between Facts and Norms.



Notes to pages 12–24

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43 Tocqueville, Democracy in America. 44 Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice. 45 Bradley, “Subjects into Citizens.” Bradley’s most recent empirical thoughts on civil society can be found in Bradley, “Pictures at an Exhibition.” 46 A similar point is made in Tenfelde, “Civil Society and the Middle Classes.” 47 Frierson, All Russia Is Burning, 247. 48 Lussier, Les Sapeurs-Pompiers au XIXe Siècle, 18. 49 Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 4. See also Keep, “Origins of Russian Militarism.” 50 rgia, f. 1288, op. 21, d. 16, l. 45. 51 Berghahn, Militarism. 52 This is point 5 of Keep’s definition. See Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 4. 53 Andrews, Science for the Masses, 26. 54 Dostoevsky, Besy, pt. 1, chap. 4. 55 For a modern interpretation of Hegel’s views, see Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society. 56 Bradley, “Subjects into Citizens,” 1122–23. 57 For a charged description of autocracy in the 1880s and beyond, see Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, 298, 297–311. On the limitations of police authority, see Daly, Autocracy under Siege. 58 Greenberg, Cause for Alarm. This point is echoed in Frierson, All Russia Is Burning, 261. 59 On masculinity in Russia, see Clements, Friedman, and Healey, Russian Masculinities in History and Culture. 60 On the primordial effects of fire, see Bachelard, Psychoanalysis of Fire. 61 Kassow, “Russia’s Unrealized Civil Society.” 62 Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform; Eklof et al., Russia’s Great Reforms. 63 This theme is carefully examined in most of the essays in Bermeo and Nord, Civil Society before Democracy. The importance of federal organization in an American context is explored in Skocpol, Diminished Democracy. 64 Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read.

chapter one 1 Wortman, Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness; Baberowski, Autokratie und Justiz; Eklof et al., Russia’s Great Reforms. 2 Hamm, City in Late Imperial Russia; Brower, Russian City between Tradition and Modernity; Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar; Zaionchkovskii, Voennye reformy 1860–1870 godov v Rossii.

212

Notes to pages 25–30

3 Emmons, Russian Landed Gentry. 4 Rieber, “Alexander II,” 47. See the introduction to Rieber, Politics of Autocracy. Rieber stresses the primacy of foreign policy in influencing the decision to emancipate the serfs. For other interpretations of the peasant emancipation, see Emmons, Emancipation of the Russian Serfs. On the reform process in general, see the collection of essays in Taranovski, Reform in Modern Russian History. 5 Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 97–9. 6 Chekhov, Istoricheskii ocherk pozharnago dela v Rossii, 69. 7 Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 106. 8 Ibid., 152. 9 Raeff, Well-Ordered Police State, 196–7. 10 Ibid., 202. 11 Ibid., 203, 217. 12 Ibid., 243. 13 Mel’nik, Iz istorii protivopozharnoi sluzhby Riazanskogo kraia, 84. 14 Shchablov, Brandmaiory Sankt-Peterburga, 5–6. 15 Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 159. 16 Ibid., 158. 17 Chekhov, Istoricheskii ocherk pozharnago dela v Rossii, 166–7. 18 Ibid., 166. 19 Milashevich, “Ob obshchestvennykh pozharnykh komandakh,” no. 30, 10. 20 Chekhov, Istoricheskii ocherk pozharnago dela v Rossii, 169. 21 Milashevich, “Ob obshchestvennykh pozharnykh komandakh,” no. 30, 119. 22 Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1867 g, 7. 23 Chekhov, Istoricheskii ocherk pozharnago dela v Rossii, 103. Chekhov writes that “the fire department was idle” during the fire. 24 There was a major fire at the new Narodnyi Dom in St Petersburg in 1912. Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 207. 25 Quoted in Ibid., 214. 26 Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 1:242. For example, Wortman describes Alexander I’s inability to cope with the flood of St Petersburg at the end of his reign. 27 Haywood, “Winter Palace in St Petersburg,” 168. 28 Ibid., 163. For an officer’s perspective on the fire, see Kolokol’tsov, “Pozhar Zimniago dvortsa.” For an American perspective, see Dallas, Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, 44–51. 29 Haywood, “Winter Palace in St Petersburg,” 164. 30 Ibid., 165.



Notes to pages 30–6

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31 Chekhov, Istoricheskii ocherk pozharnago dela v Rossii, 167. 32 Haywood, “Winter Palace in St Petersburg,” 166. 33 Turnerelli, L’incendie de Kazan 1842, 17. 34 Ibid., 6–8. 35 Ibid., 18. 36 Ibid., 8–9. 37 Mel’nik, Iz istorii protivopozharnoi sluzhby Riazanskogo kraia, 92–3. 38 Ibid., 95–6. 39 Chekhov, Istoricheskii ocherk pozharnago dela v Rossii, 120–3. 40 Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 158. 41 Mel’nik, Iz istorii protivopozharnoi sluzhby Riazanskogo kraia, 165. 42 Fal’kovskii, Istoriia vodosnabzheniia v Rossii, 220. 43 Chekhov, Istoricheskii ocherk pozharnago dela v Rossii, 67. 44 See, for example, the instruction from the State Council in 1867 entitled “O poriadke inspektirovaniia politseiskikh i pozharnykh komand v Imperii” (my emphasis), rgia f. 1149 op. 7–1867 d. 183, l. 18. 45 rgia f. 1281, op. 4, d. 14 (1848), l. 14ob. 46 Milashevich, “Ob obshchestvennykh pozharnykh komandakh,” no. 30, 119. 47 rgia f. 1281, op. 5, d. 29 (1851), l. 11. 48 On the Nikolaevan bureaucracy in general, see Lincoln, Great Reforms, 19–21. 49 rgia f. 1263, op. 1, d. 2329, l. 37. Minutes of meeting from 4 March 1853. 50 ii psz xxviii 27180, 24 April 1853. 51 Iordan, “Pozharnoe delo v Rossii,” Pozharnoe delo 1897, no. 7, 423. 52 Iordan, “Pozharnoe delo v Rossii,” Pozharnoe delo 1897, no. 6, 356. These developments fit larger trends for, in June 1853, a similar law also provided soldiers for the local police force. See Abbott, “Police Reform in Russia.” 53 Blackstone, History of the British Fire Service, 146. 54 Raeff, Well-Ordered Police State, 229. 55 rgia f. 1287, op. 31, d. 1687, l. 3. 56 rgia f. 1287, op. 31, d. 1695, l. 27; rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 795, l. 24. Similar complaints were voiced about the soldiers serving in the police forces. See Abbott, “Police Reform in Russia,” 27–8. 57 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 754, l. 59. 58 Ibid., l. 4. The governor of Samara also informed the Ministry of Internal Affairs that the forces foreseen for Samara were insufficient. See rgia f. 1287, op. 31, d. 1687, l. 9.

214

Notes to pages 37–41

59 Lincoln, Great Reforms, 68, 172, 175. 60 Ibid., 49. 61 Vsepoddanneishii otchet o deistviiakh voennago ministerstva za 1859 god, 15. 62 Brooks, “Reform in the Russian Army,” 76. 63 Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 335. 64 N.S., “Po povodu zameny nizhnikh chinov sluzhitel’skikh komand vol’nonaemnymi liud’mi,” 321. See Brooks, “Reform in the Russian Army,” for the extent of Sukhozanet’s activities before Dmitrii Miliutin replaced him in 1861. For a more detailed analysis of Miliutin’s report to the tsar, see Zaionchkovskii, Voennye reformy 1860–1870, 51–62, esp. 53. 65 Bushnell, “D. Miliutin i Balkanskaia voina,” 245. 66 rgia f. 1275, op. 1, d. 27, l. 16. 67 Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 355. 68 Ibid. 69 Consider that, at the end of the Crimean War, Russia’s active army consisted of more than 1,500,000 soldiers. See Brooks, “Reform in the Russian Army,” 64. 70 There is no evidence that Miliutin insisted on the change as part of his concept of military education as a form of national education. See Hosking, Russia, 195. 71 Chudovskii, Sbornik tsirkuliarov i instruktsii (1860), 208. 72 Starr, Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 47. 73 Ibid., 123. 74 Abbott, “Police Reform in Russia,” 107. 75 Ibid., 113. 76 Chudovskii, Sbornik tsirkuliarov i instruktsii, (1860), 208. 77 Orlovsky, Limits of Reform, 11. 78 Chudovskii, Sbornik tsirkuliarov i instruktsii, (1860), 208. The government introduced the insurance subsidy in 1847 to help police and fire departments in the empire. In 1858, two-thirds of the subsidy was collected in Moscow, St Petersburg, and Odessa and distributed to needy citizens throughout the empire. This imbalance is one reason why the subsidy was reduced and eventually cancelled altogether. See Milashevich, “Ob obshchestvennykh pozharnykh komandakh,” no. 30, 119. 79 Chudovskii, Sbornik tsirkuliarov i instruktsii, (1860), 209. 80 Ibid. 81 Daniel Brower referred to this phenomenon as the development of “community,” an idea that transcends both estate and class boundaries. See Brower, “Estate, Class and Community,” 13–14.



Notes to pages 41–5

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82 Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk blagoustroistva pozharnoi chasti goroda Ostashkova, Tverskoi gubernii, 3. 83 Ekonomicheskoe sostoianie gorodskikh poselenii evropeiskoi Rossii v 1861–1862 gg., Province of Tver, 26–9. 84 See Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 171. Shchablov refers to Ostashkov’s fire department as “voluntary,” when participation in it was actually a civic duty. The use of the term “voluntary” obscures the element of duty associated with Ostashkov’s fire department. 85 Chudovskii, Sbornik tsirkuliarov i instruktsii, (1860), 208. 86 On urban networks, in general, see Rozman, Urban Networks in Russia, 159–221. Rozman focuses on urban networks before industrialization in the Russian Empire. 87 This name would seem to contradict Cathy Frierson’s assertion that the word komanda was used in contrast with the term obshchestva: “By the mid-1890s, komanda was used in firefighting literature to refer only to police and military units whose members received regular salaries. Volunteer firefighting organizations in cities and towns, by contrast, were called societies (obshchestva).” See Frierson, All Russia Is Burning, 247. 88 Wirtschafter, Structures of Society, 16. A semantic discussion of the word “public” in the Russian context is provided by Smith, Working the Rough Stone, 54–61. 89 Clowes et al., Between Tsar and People, 3. 90 Gleason, “Terms of Russian Social History,” 22. 91 Yaney, Systematization of Russian Government, 387. Zakharova, “From Reform ‘from above’ to Revolution ‘from below,’” 97. 92 Orlovsky, Limits of Reform, 155. 93 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1258, l. 13. 94 Ibid., l. 21. 95 Ibid., l. 22. 96 Ibid., l. 23. 97 Hanchett, “Tsarist Statutory Regulation of Municipal Government,” 96–7. 98 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1258, l. 49ob. 99 Starr, Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 133. 100 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1258, l. 50ob. 101 Ibid., l.52. 102 Ibid, l. 48ob. 103 Ibid. 104 Abbott, “Police Reform in Russia,” 59. By the same author, see Abbott, “Police Reform in the Russian Province of Iaroslavl,” 292–302.

216

Notes to pages 45–51

105 Starr, Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 160. 106 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1318, l. 12. 107 Ibid., l. 45. 108 Ibid., l. 27. 109 Ibid., l. 12. 110 See Iordan, “Pozharnoe delo v Rossii,” Pozharnoe delo (1897), no. 8, 503–18. 111 The haphazardness of the reform process is highlighted in Pearson, Russian Officialdom in Crisis, 21–58. 112 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1258, l. 60. 113 Iordan, “Pozharnoe delo v Rossii,” Pozharnoe delo (1897), no. 8, 510. 114 rgia f. 1263, op. 1, d. 2848, l. 47–56. 115 psz ii xxxv 36470, 28 December 1860. 116 Svod ustavov pozharnykh, St. 1. The fire statutes were included in vol. xii, sec. I of the Svod zakonov. 117 psz ii xxxv 36470, 28 December 1860. 118 Ibid. The law thus accorded with Abbott’s proposition that the police were to become a security force. See Abbott, “Police Reform in Russia,” 105. 119 Raeff, “Codification et droit en Russie Impériale,” 51. Raeff believes that a Rechtsstaat was precluded in Russia because “the substitution of the autonomous application of law for the personal supervision and interference of bureaucrats” was impossible. See Raeff, “Russia’s Autocracy and Paradoxes of Modernization,” 122–3. For an interesting analysis of how Imperial Russian scholars interpreted the term Rechtsstaat, see Liessem, Verwaltungsgerichtsbarkeit im späten Zarenreich, 1. 120 psz ii xxxv 36470, 28 December 1860. 121 Ustav pozharnyi, article 1. The text reads: pozharnaia chast’ v gorodakh prinadlezhit k sostavu politseiskago ikh upravleniia. 122 The text reads: chtoby vse rasporiazheniia po zavedyvaniiu pozharnym obozom i komandoiu byli sosredotochivaemy v gorodskikh obshchestvennykh upravleniiakh [so that the entire command of the management of the fire equipment and fire department is found in the public administration of the city]. 123 Ustav pozharnyi, article 4. 124 Milashevich, “Ob obshchestvennykh pozharnykh komandakh,” no. 30, 119. 125 Ibid., no. 32, 128. 126 Chudovskii, Sbornik tsirkuliarov i instruktsii, (1862), 12–13. 127 Brower, Russian City between Tradition and Modernity, 104.



Notes to pages 51–60

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128 Quoted in Hanchett, “Tsarist Statutory Regulation of Municipal Government,” 103. 129 See Nardova, Gorodskoe samoupravlenie v Rossii v 60–kh – nachale 90-kh godov xix v., 61–70 for a detailed analysis of voting habits in urban Russia. 130 Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 14–26. In her work on Russian newspapers, Louise McReynolds has employed Habermas’s theory to demonstrate how a commercial press contributed to the development of a sphere independent of state control. By spreading information concerned with politics, the press brought its readers into areas of discussion that had previously been reserved for tsarist officials. See McReynolds, News under Russia’s Old Regime, 12. McReynolds has certain reservations about Habermas’s pessimism with respect to mass communications. Daniel Brower uses the term “public sphere” in the Russian context to denote a sphere where political discourse is possible and is “defended by writers and politically active representatives of influential social groups … that are convinced of the legitimacy of their own public action.” See Brower, Russian City between Tradition and Modernity, 94. 131 Taylor, “Liberal Politics and the Public Sphere,” 263. 132 Milashevich, “Ob obshchestvennykh pozharnykh komandakh,” no. 30, 119. 133 Ibid., no. 32, 128. 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid. 136 Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 379. Again, see page 4 for Keep’s definition of a militaristic state.

chapter two 1 Iordan, “Pozharnoe delo v Rossii,” Pozharnoe delo, 1897, no. 7, 429. 2 Lussier, Les Sapeurs-Pompiers au xixe Siècle, 52. 3 In his work on the famine in 1891–92, Richard Robbins demonstrates how the state could play a positive role in local self-administration. See Robbins, Famine in Russia, 95–109, 168–83. 4 na rt f. 114, op. 1, d. 3364, l. 198. 5 For example, the governors of Perm and Vologda both reported that no one wanted to form a public fire department. See rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1464, l. 1; f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1328 , l. 1. 6 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1284 , l. 31ob.

218

Notes to pages 60–4

7 Ibid., d. 1364 , l. 28ob. 8 Ibid., d. 1328, l. 1. 9 Ibid., d. 1328, l. 17ob. The people in Cheboksar referred to a “military fire department” as well. See rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1320, l. 131ob. The military term of reference is not insignificant. 10 Nardova, Samoderzhavie i gorodskie dumy, 29. 11 Blackstone, History of the British Fire Service, 153, 184. Blackstone writes that, in the 1860s, “Many other towns were taking an increased interest in firefighting and protection, but just as many still ignored their responsibility” (184). 12 Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right , §184, 199. 13 Ibid., §235. To be sure, the Hegelian use of the term “oversight” is strong, but it must not be confused with a state that takes responsibility for everything. Hegel’s own concerns with respect to an all too present police are evident in passage §234. 14 On the importance of estates, see Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §207. The attitude of homeowners is not dissimilar to the modern volunteer who writes a cheque rather than attends a meeting. See Putnam, Bowling Alone, 40. 15 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1328, l. 45–46ob. 16 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1342 , l. 82. The old budget required 4,256 roubles for the fire department each year. With paid firefighters, the budget would have jumped to 7,770 roubles. 17 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1342, l. 107. 18 Ibid., d.1326, l. 11. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., l. 12. 21 Ibid., l. 11. 22 Ibid., d. 1364, l. 6. 23 Ibid., d. 1342, l. 112. 24 Brower, Russian City between Tradition and Modernity, 16–17. 25 In Perm, for example, both the library for local civil servants and the women’s charitable society used regular voting procedures at their meetings. See Permskie gubernskie vedomosti 1861, 33; Permskie gubernskie vedomosti 1862, 44. 26 Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 120. 27 Brower, “Estate, Class and Community,” 17. 28 Brower, Russian City between Tradition and Modernity, 4. 29 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1342, l. 111ob. In Samara, the committee was also assembled according to estate. See rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1364, l.



Notes to pages 64–8

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5ob. Estate differences were also cited as a major obstacle to reform in Kiev. See rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 96. 30 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1320, l. 74ob. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., l. 87. 33 Ibid., l. 75ob. 34 Ibid., l. 77ob. 35 Ibid., l. 87ob–88. 36 na rt f. 98, op. 1, d. 1583, l. 8–10ob. 37 Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1867 g., 9. 38 na rt f. 114, op. 1, d. 4173, l. 26–28. 39 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1320, l. 92. 40 Ibid., l. 117. 41 Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1870 god, 5. 42 na rt f. 98, op. 1, d. 1583, l. 12–17. 43 Ibid., f. 1, op. 3, d. 274, l. 1. 44 Ibid., l. 2. 45 Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1867 g., 4. 46 na rt f. 1, op. 3, d. 274. 47 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1284, l. 57. In Samara, the city council made the same request. See rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1364, l. 60. 48 Starr, Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 318. In describing a return to more centrist habits in the mid-1860s, Starr writes that “reformist governors passed out of office and were replaced either by non-entities or by men whose sole qualification was their impeccable military background.” See also Robbins, “Choosing the Russian Governors,” 550–1. 49 Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1867 g., 2. 50 Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1870 god, 16. 51 Ferguson, Essay on the History of Civil Society, 24–5. 52 “Ot Kazanskago pozharnago komiteta, zhiteliam g. Kazani,” Kazanskie gubernskie vedomosti 1866, 27. 53 Kazanskie gubernskie vedomosti 1866, 31. 54 Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1868 god, 5–6. 55 For the Viennese city planner, Otto Wagner, the “street was king, the artery of men in motion.” See Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, 100. 56 The obligations of the military are outlined in a report of the state council from 30 December 1867. The report is entitled “O poriadke inspektirovaniia politseiskikh i pozharnykh komand v Imperii.” rgia f. 1149, op. 7 (1867), d. 183, l. 18.

220

Notes to pages 69–73

57 rgia f. 1149, op. 7 (1867), d. 183, l. 18. 58 na rt f. 634, op. 1, d. 7, l. 4–6. 59 Ibid., d. 12, l. 90–1. 60 Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1869 g., 5. 61 See the budget item Soderzhanie pozharnoi chasti in Otchet kazanskago gorodskago obshchestvennago upravleniia za chetyrekhletie s 1879 po 1883 god. I was unable to find exact budget figures for the city before 1870. However, throughout the 1870s the budget remained approximately the same. 62 Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1867 g., 7–8. 63 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 2127, l. 1. 64 Ibid., l. 14. 65 Ibid., l. 15–16. 66 Ibid., l. 12. 67 Ibid., l. 38. 68 Ibid., l. 5. 69 Ibid., l. 72–5. 70 Ibid., l. 26–7. 71 Iordan, “Pozharnoe delo v Rossii,” Pozharnoe delo 1897, no. 8, 516–17. Iordan listed five different types of fire departments: (1) Shtatnyia politseiskiia pozharniia komandy, (2) gorodskiia pozharnyia komandy, (3) obshchestvennyia pozharnyia komandy, (4) dobrovol’nyia pozharnyia obshchestva, and (5) psevdo-gorodskiia pozharnyia komandy. 72 Landezen, K voprosu o bor’be s pozharami v Imperii, 5. 73 See, for example, Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, 24–115, esp. 72–3. 74 Brower, Russian City between Tradition and Modernity, 4. 75 rgia f. 1287, op. 34, d. 1284, l. 98–9. 76 Ibid., l. 100. 77 Timashev’s career as a military man is described in Orlovsky, Limits of Reform, 84–93. 78 Ibid., 75. 79 Ibid., 75. 80 Ibid., 88. See also Pearson, Russian Officialdom in Crisis, 34–5. Pearson stresses the primacy of ministerial conflict as a brake on Valuev’s and Timashev’s desire to assert ministerial authority in the provinces. 81 Starr, Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 337. 82 Hutton, “Reform of City Government in Russia,” 83–6. 83 Ibid., 84. 84 Russian trans: “O tom, chto pozharnyia komandy, obrazovannyia iz grazhdan, dolzhny sostoiat’ vo vremia pozharov v podchinenii politseiskago



Notes to pages 73–7

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nachal’stva,” Sbornik tsirkuliarov i instruktsii Ministerstva vnutrennikh del za 1868, 350–1. 85 The question of state interference was also discussed in England. See Blackstone, History of the British Fire Service, 287–8. 86 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 817, l. 30. 87 “Pozhary v Rossiiskoi imperii v 1883–1887,” 120–1. 88 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 817, l. 33. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid., l. 54. 91 “Pozhary v Rossiiskoi imperii v 1883–1887,” 120–1. 92 See Abbott, “Police Reform in Russia.” 93 “Pozhary v Rossiiskoi imperii v 1883–1887,” 120. 94 Ibid., 129. 95 Ibid., 128. 96 Ibid., 26–7. 97 Ibid., 137. 98 Vsepoddanneishii otchet, rgia f. 1281, op. 7, d. 24 (1866), l. 33ob. 99 Vsepoddanneishii otchet, rgia f. 1281, op. 7, d. 19 (1870), l. 24ob. At the same time, the governor noted that, in the province’s smaller towns, the fire departments were in worse shape. 100 Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1869 g., 7. 101 na rt f. 1, op. 3, d. 3440, l. 39. 102 Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1870 god, 56. 103 Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1869 g., 12. 104 Ibid., 40. 105 Lofland, Public Realm, xvi, 22. Lofland emphasizes that her use of the term “public realm” does not carry the political and economic meaning that is often associated with terms such as “public sphere.” 106 As occurred on 25 June 1870. See Otchet kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1870 god, 51. For a description of the excitement that occurred at an English fire, see Blackstone, History of the British Fire Service, 233. 107 Priscilla Roosevelt has demonstrated the possibility of intermingling in early nineteenth-century noble households, where theatres brought together serf and master on the same stage. At a fire, however, the roles were truly reversed. The firefighter became master while the ownermaster helplessly looked on. See Roosevelt, “Emerald Thrones and Living Statues,” 1–23. 108 Unfortunately, I have been unable to find reactions to the fire department in Kazan for this period. In 1909, a contributor to Pozharnoe delo wrote

222

Notes to pages 78–82

that, when the firefighters arrived, residents rushed to “lock [them] out” and they would fight the fire themselves. The firefighters had been hired from the “scum of society.” See “Chto my, pozharnye, dolzhny davat’ obyvateliu?” Pozharnoe delo, 1909, no. 14, 271. 109 In a play dedicated to members of the St Petersburg fire department, E.E. Prokhorov dealt with the temptation of theft, which every firefighter faced. In the play, the hero steals a casket (shkatulka) but recognizes his immoral act and returns the item. Prokhorov, Brantmeister, dramaticheskii epizod v odnom deistvii, 42. After the Winter Palace burned down in 1837, a legend circulated that not one item had been stolen. Because the tsar was such a beloved figure, all his belongings were returned to him. See Chekhov, Istoricheskii ocherk pozharnago dela v Rossii, 150–1. 110 Quoted in Hanchett, “Tsarist Statutory Regulation of Municipal Government,” 103. 111 Hutton, “Reform of City Government in Russia,” 104. 112 Ibid., 105. 113 Ibid., 107. 114 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy [Protocol of Kazan city council meeting], 16 March 1871, 69. 115 na rt f. 1, op. 3, d. 2604, l. 179. 116 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 5 July 1871. 117 Ibid., 30 November 1872. 118 Ibid., 20 February and 29 October 1873. 119 Ibid., 22 June 1876. 120 Ibid., 28 August 1879. 121 Häfner, “Stadtdumawahlen und soziale Eliten in Kazan 1870 bis 1913,” 252. 122 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 837, l. 3. 123 Ibid., l. 12. 124 Abbott, “Police Reform in the Russian Province of Iaroslavl,” 299. 125 Chekhov, Istoricheskii ocherk pozharnago dela v Rossii, 192. 126 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 1559, l. 160–160ob. 127 Ibid., l. 161. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid., l. 161ob. 130 Ibid., l. 162. 131 A few years earlier in Saratov, the mayor had asked the Ministry of Internal Affairs to place the fire department under local control. The mayor, however, emphasized that, if the ministry was not willing to accede to this proposal, it should then place the fire department in the hands of



Notes to pages 83–7

223

the police. The mayor wrote that this would avoid the problems of dual authority. See rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 524, l. 2. 132 Liessem, Verwaltungsgerichtsbarkeit im späten Zarenreich, 337. 133 Ibid., 336. 134 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 1564, l. 33ob. This delo provided a reference to the Senate decision rather than the Senate decision itself. 135 Pearson, Russian Officialdom in Crisis, xiii–xvi, 27. For example, Pearson writes, “peasant officials were a force in helping to ruin the village economy.” 136 Borodin, Imperatorskoe rossiiskoe pozharnoe obshchestvo, 118. 137 Brower, Russian City between Tradition and Modernity, 119. 138 Nardova, Samoderzhavie i gorodskie dumy, 65. According to Nardova, by 1904, it still had no water supply. 139 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 928, l. 21. 140 “Pozhary v Rossiiskoi imperii v 1883–1887,” 142. 141 Mel’nik, Iz istorii protivopozharnoi sluzhby Riazanskogo kraia, 169. 142 Ibid.,173. 143 Ibid., 174–80. 144 Chekhov, Istoricheskii ocherk pozharnago dela v Rossii, 47–55, 55. 145 Mel’nik, Iz istorii protivopozharnoi sluzhby Riazanskogo kraia, 181. 146 “Pozhary v Rossiiskoi imperii v 1883–1887,” 147, 139. 147 Ibid., 137. 148 Timanovskii, “Orenburgskie pozhary,” 852. 149 Orenburgskie gubernskie vedomosti, 19 April 1879. 150 Timanovskii, “Orenburgskie pozhary,” 863. 151 “A Russian City in Ashes: Orenburg Visited by a Disastrous Fire,” New York Times, 1 May 1879, 1. 152 “Editorial,” New York Times, 1 May 1879, 4. 153 Ibid. 154 “Pozhar v Orenburge,” Niva, no. 19, 30 April 1879. It seems as though the image was based upon a photograph as subsequent images were done in such a manner. When reporting the June fire in Irkutsk, the editors followed a similar strategy and the image was based upon a photograph. See Niva, no. 32, 8 June 1879. 155 Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe, 776–81. A similar version of the Proustian theme is presented in Barthes, Die helle Kammer, 73. Barthes quotes Proust to the effect that thinking about the absent person brings about stronger feelings than does seeing the person in the photograph. Both Barthes and Proust contest the notion that a photograph has an objective moment.

224

Notes to pages 87–93

156 Timanovskii, “Orenburgskie pozhary,” 857. While the foreign papers placed many of these fires within the context of revolutionary terrorism, Timanovskii saw no reason to believe that arson was the cause, despite the rumours that were spread throughout the city. 157 Ibid., 854. 158 Ibid., 853. 159 Ibid., 863–6. 160 “The Burning of Irkutsk,” New York Times, 4 August 1879, 3. 161 “Pozhary,” Novoe vremia, 28 June 1879. The author of this article wanted more attention paid to the possibility that arson was the cause of many fires. 162 “Vtoroi pozhar v g. Irkutske (24 iiunia 1879 g.),” Irkutskie gubernskie vedomosti, 18 July 1879. 163 “Pozhar v Irkutske (22 iiunia 1879 g.),” Irkutskie gubernskie vedomosti, no. 52, 11 July 1879. 164 “Vtoroi pozhar v g. Irkutske (24 iiunia 1879 g.),” Irkutskie gubernskie vedomosti, no. 53, 18 July 1879. 165 “Pozhar v Irkutske (22 iiunia 1879 g.),” Irkutskie gubernskie vedomosti, no. 52, 11 July 1879. 166 “Vtoroi pozhar v g. Irkutske (24 iiunia 1879 g.),” Irkutskie gubernskie vedomosti, no. 53, 18 July 1879. 167 “Ot i d. Irkutskago gorodskago golovy,” Irkutskie gubernskie vedomosti, no. 54, 25 July 1879.

chapter three 1 Thurston, Liberal City, Conservative State, 195. A similar point is made in Nardova, Gorodskoe samoupravlenie v Rossii, 180. 2 Many urban studies rely on a theoretical framework provided by Jurgen Habermas, which emphasizes a distinction between state and society. In particular, see Brower, Russian City between Tradition and Modernity. For a less institutional view of the city, see also Hildermeier, “Bürgerliche Eliten im ausgehenden Zarenreich,” 1–4; Häfner, “Städtische Eliten und ihre Selbstinszenierung;” Hausmann, “Die wohlhabenden Odessaer Kaufleute und Unternehmer.” 3 This debate has not gone unnoticed in the historiography. Lutz Häfner, who argues within the Habermasian dichotomy of civil society versus the state, makes a brief reference to the incident as exemplary of the development of a civic consciousness in Kazan. See Häfner, “Stadtdumawahlen und soziale Eliten in Kazan,” 247. 4 See Zaionchkovskii, Krizis samoderzhaviia na rubezhe.



Notes to pages 93–101

225

5 Pearson, Russian Officialdom in Crisis, 60. 6 Ibid., 61. 7 Abdullin et al., Istoriia Kazani, 158, 198. 8 Ibid., 212. 9 Fal’kovskii, Istoriia vodosnabzheniia v Rossii, 218. 10 Abdullin et al., Istoriia Kazani, 216, 238. 11 Hanchett, “Tsarist Statutory Regulation of Municipal Government,” 101. 12 Häfner, “Stadtdumawahlen und soziale Eliten in Kazan,” 252. 13 Nardova, Samoderzhavie i gorodskie dumy, 45. 14 Häfner, “Stadtdumawahlen und soziale Eliten in Kazan,” 250. 15 Ibid., 247–8. See especially n123. 16 See Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 11–15 January 1882. 17 Geertz, “Thick Description,” 10. 18 Ibid., 22. 19 na rt f. 98, op. 2, d. 261, l. 51. 20 Ibid., l. 1. 21 Häfner, “Stadtdumawahlen und soziale Eliten in Kazan,” 245. This article provides an excellent prosopographic analysis of city council members in Kazan. 22 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 11–15 January 1882, 64–5. 23 rgia, f. 1287, op. 35, d. 1559, l. 70. 24 Ibid., l. 70ob. Emphasis in original. 25 Wortman, Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness, 16. 26 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 1559, l. 71. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., l.71ob–72. 29 Ibid., l. 72. 30 Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 211. 31 In 1882, Kazan had seventy-two council members. Of this number, twenty came from the nobility and forty-five were merchants. See Häfner, “Stadtdumawahlen und soziale Eliten in Kazan,” 252. 32 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 11–15 January 1882, 60. 33 Ibid., 60–1. 34 Ibid., 61–2. 35 Ibid., 47. 36 Ibid., 6. 37 Ibid., 6–7. The instruction published in 1877 dealt with administrative matters and not command structures. See Postanovleniia kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 1877, 635. 38 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 11–15 January 1882, 66.

226

Notes to pages 102–6

39 Ibid., 67. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., 68, 71. 42 Ibid., 69–70 43 Ibid., 71–2. 44 Hanchett, “Tsarist Statutory Regulation of Municipal Government,” 104. 45 For an organizational flow chart of the board, see Hutton, “Reform of City Government in Russia,” 110. 46 This type of decision was not unique. Hanchett gives examples from Moscow, where, in the 1880s, numerous decisions favoured the city. See Hanchett, “Tsarist Statutory Regulation of Municipal Government,” 105. 47 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 12 March 1882, 164. 48 Ibid., 154. 49 Ibid., 158. 50 Ibid., 157. 51 Ibid., 162–5. The reference to the law is Svod zakonov, T. II, Art. 250 from section 1 of the 1876 edition. 52 Although the vote was unanimous, council members had not been interested in forming a commission to discuss the petition. 53 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 19 March 1882, 208. 54 The governor’s absence is reported in an unsigned letter of 24 April 1882, which was written by the vice-governor of the province and sent to Viacheslav Konstantinovich [Plehve] in the Department of Police in St Petersburg. See na rt f. 1, op. 3, d. 5160, l. 226–35. 55 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 19 March 1882, 208–29. 56 Ibid., 230. 57 Ibid. The minutes stated that the Tver decision was not even published in the collection of Senate orders. 58 Häfner, “Stadtdumawahlen und soziale Eliten in Kazan,” 245. 59 na rt f. 1, op. 3, d. 5160, l. 234. 60 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 19 March 1882, 230–4. 61 Ibid., 233–4. If forty-seven members (the mayor did not vote) were present at the meeting, then only 65 percent of council members actually bothered to show up for the debate. Attendance at council meetings was never high. See Häfner, “Stadtdumawahlen und soziale Eliten in Kazan,” 248. 62 Although this discussion was published in the minutes for 9 April, it appears as though the actual discussion took place on 19 March as a subsequent dissenting opinion is dated 22 March 1882. See Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 9 April 1882, 272–88.



Notes to pages 106–14

227

63 na rt f. 1, op. 3, d. 5160, l. 68. 64 Ibid., l. 70–1. This information is taken from a police report of 12 February 1882. 65 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 9 April 1882, 272–3. The official report states that it was the governor, but it appears as though the vice-governor acted in his absence. See 274 of the duma minutes. 66 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 9 April 1882, 274. 67 Ibid., 276–7. 68 Ibid., 277–8. 69 Ibid., 278. 70 Ibid., “V Kazanskuiu gorodskuiu dumu: Otdel’noe mnenie glasnykh N.A. Osokina i P.T. Zhukovskago,” 287–8. 71 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 9 April 1882, 278. 72 Ibid., 282–3. 73 Ibid., 288. 74 Golos (St Petersburg), 24 January 1882. 75 Ibid., 8 May 1882. 76 Häfner, “Stadtdumawahlen und soziale Eliten in Kazan,” 240. 77 na rt f. 1, op. 3, d. 5160, l. 226ob. 78 Ibid., l. 232ob. 79 Ibid., l. 227. 80 Ibid., l. 228ob. 81 Ibid., l. 230ob. 82 Ibid., l. 234. 83 Ibid., l. 235. 84 Wcislo, Reforming Rural Russia, 85. 85 na rt f. 98, op. 2, d. 261, l. 157. 86 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 25 November 1883, 300. 87 “Doklad Kazanskago gorodskago golovy,” 18 November 1883, na rt f. 98, op. 2, d. 261, l. 139–43. 88 na rt f. 98, op. 2, d. 261, l. 141ob. 89 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 15 November 1883, 268. Although the minutes were published as though they came from a meeting of 15 November 1883, it appears as though the meeting was held a few days later as reference is made to the mayor’s report of 18 November 1883. 90 na rt f. 98, op. 2, d. 261, l. 157. 91 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 25 November 1883, 298–305. 92 Ibid., 299–302.

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Notes to pages 114–20

93 Ibid., 301. 94 Ibid., 302–4 95 The Senate decision was dated 31 October 1883 but only presented (yet not discussed) in the city council on 24 January 1884, less than a week after the governor countermanded the Senate decision and ordered the fire department to be placed in the hands of the police. See Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 24 January 1884, 37–46. 96 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 24 January 1884, 45. 97 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 209, l. 61, l. 62, l. 75–80. 98 Ibid., l. 33–34ob. 99 “Po voprosu o tom, v ch’em zavedyvanii – politsii ili gorodskago upravleniia dolzhna sostoiat’ pozharnaia komanda,” Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii pravitel’stva 7 (1883): 1403–4. 100 Thurston, Liberal City, Conservative State, 42. 101 na rt f. 98, op. 2, d. 261, l. 126. 102 Ibid., l. 257. 103 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 14 February 1884, 111. 104 Ibid., 128. 105 Ibid., 24 January 1884, 37–45. 106 Ibid., 14 February 1884, 118. 107 Ibid., 119. 108 Ibid., 121, 24 February 1884, 147. 109 Ibid., 14 February 1884, 120. 110 Ibid., 24 February 1884, 147. 111 Ibid., 144. 112 Ibid., 148, 150. 113 Ibid., 153. 114 Ibid., 149. 115 In early March, the governor had already informed the executive that the new fire chief had not been paid. Apparently, a member of the executive had told the fire chief that he was not going to be paid at all, indeed, that he was going to be fired. See na rt f. 98, op. 2, d. 261, l. 205. 116 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 17 April 1884, 425. 117 na rt f. 98, op. 2, d. 261, l.268–271ob. The Senate stated that, since Kazan had a fire chief before the introduction of the public fire department in 1866, the fire chief belonged to the official table, according to which all police fire departments were run. It was therefore illegal for Kazan to be without a fire chief. 118 Weber, “Charismatismus,” 277. 119 na rt f. 98, op. 2, d. 261, l. 195–196, l. 211, l. 223.



Notes to pages 120–5

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120 Ibid., l. 259. 121 Iavorovskii, Pozharnaia okhrana gorodov Povolzh’ia. 122 Ibid., 41. 123 Ibid., 46. 124 Ibid., 41.

chapter four

1 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 524, l. 20. 2 Ibid., d. 928, l. 21. 3 Ibid. This article appeared in Bereg on 21 June 1880. 4 The importance of the volunteer department to politics in New York City is presented in Calhoun, “From Community to Metropolis.” 5 Engelsing, Im Verein mit dem Feuer, 33. 6 Lussier, Les Sapeurs-Pompiers au XIXe Siècle, 18, 21. 7 Pozharnoe delo, 1898, 1; Pozharnoe delo, 1907, 56. 8 On the development of the urban public sphere, see Conroy, Emerging Democracy in Late Imperial Russia. 9 Frierson, All Russia Is Burning, 247. 10 Ibid., 250. 11 The German volunteer fire departments are explored in Engelsing, Im Verein mit dem Feuer. See also Würth, Zur 50-jährigen Jubelfeier der Nürtinger Feuerwehr, 1856–1906. Details on the Revel fire department and other volunteer fire departments in the Estlandskaia Guberniia can be found in Sheremetev, Kratkii statisticheskii obzor pozharnykh komand Rossiiskoi imperii, 177–9. The statistics on volunteer fire departments in the Lifliandskaia Guberniia can be found on 61–6. 12 See the report on the XVI Deutscher Feuerwehrtag in Mainz in Feuerwehr-Nachrichten, 1905, no. 1, 3. 13 Feuerwehr-Nachrichten, 1890, no. 1. In his statistical collection, Sheremetev reported that the Dorpat volunteer fire department had 520 members. See Sheremetev, Kratkii statisticheskii obzor pozharnykh komand Rossiiskoi imperii, 62. 14 Feuerwehr-Nachrichten, 1896, no. 9. The conference, which was held at the well-known All-Russian Exhibition in Nizhnii Novgorod, is discussed in the next chapter. 15 Kappeler, Russland als Vielvölkerreich, 265–6. The advanced status of the Baltic volunteer fire departments was evident to Russian observers as well. See Pozharnyi, 1895, no. 13. 16 Iordan, “Pozharnoe delo v Rossii,” Pozharnoe delo 1897, no. 7, 435.

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Notes to pages 125–9

17 rgia f. 1288, op. 21, d. 16, l. 45. This comment appeared in an article in the Nizhegorodskii listok, 25 June 1896. 18 Iordan, “Pozharnoe delo v Rossii,” Pozharnoe delo 1897, no. 7, 435. 19 Ibid., no. 11, 775. 20 Otchet Kazanskago pozharnago komiteta za 1868 god, 10. See also rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 1559, l.72. 21 Sheremetev, Kratkii statisticheskii obzor pozharnykh komand Rossiiskoi imperii, 116. 22 Pozharnyi, 1892, no. 17, 778. 23 Sheremetev, Kratkii statisticheskii obzor pozharnykh komand Rossiiskoi imperii, 72. 24 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 1480, l. 1. 25 Ibid., l. 8. 26 Ibid., l. 46. In the summer of 1880, Novoe vremia reported that members were insulted by the required changes and started to abandon the project. 27 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 1484, l. 4. See also rgia f. 1288, op. 19, d. 6, l. 3. 28 Palibin, Chego nedostaet v pozharnykh komandakh, 7. 29 Pozharnoe delo, 1900, no., 1, 68. 30 Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 199. 31 Iordan, “Pozharnoe delo v Rossii,” 1897, no. 11, 772. 32 The Department of Police regularly approved applications with the singular remark that, at the scene of a fire, the volunteers must answer to the police. See rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 1484, l. 4. 33 “Normal’nyi ustav gorodskikh pozharnikh obshchestv,” §19, 74 in Il’inskii, Chastnyia obshchestva. 34 Iordan, “Pozharnoe delo v Rossii,” Pozharnoe delo, 1897, no. 11, 774. 35 “Normal’nyi ustav gorodskikh pozharnikh obshchestv,” §7 in Il’inskii, Chastnyia obshchestva. 36 Ibid., §8. 37 Ibid., §69. 38 Ibid., §10 39 Bradley, “Subjects into Citizens,” 1123. 40 Tucholsky, “Das Mitglied,” 455–6. 41 Grigor’ev, V., “Vol’nyia pozharnyia obshchestva pred sudom gorodskago samoupravleniia,” Pozharnyi, 1892, 777. 42 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 524, l. 20; rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 1431, l. 13. 43 rgia f. 1288, op. 21, d. 15 (1895), l. 10. Because the list was handwritten, a few of the signatures were impossible to decipher, thus the “at least.” The Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed the wish of these enthusiasts in 1895.



Notes to pages 129–32

231

44 rgia f. 1288, op. 19, d. 10 (1910). 45 Otchet kazanskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva za 1903 god, 27–33. 46 Volunteers claimed that this was the case in Riazan, where discipline in one section of the city’s fire department was so low that residents were “not safe.” Thus, the volunteer fire department was responsible for guarding public safety. See Mel’nik, Iz istorii protivopozharnoi sluzhby Riazanskogo kraia, 290–1. 47 Otchet pravleniia Chernigovskago vol’nago pozharnago obshchestva za 1894/5 god, 3. The fire society in Ostrov also recognized the initiative of the governor as instrumental. See Ostrovskoe vol’noe pozharnoe obshchestvo, 4. 48 Otchet pravleniia Chernigovskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva, uchrezhdennago 22-go iiulia 1894 goda, za 1897 g., 23. 49 Pozharnyi, 3 December 1894, 1042–3. 50 Otchet pravleniia Vladimirskago gorodskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva, uchrezhdennago 1 sentiabria 1896 g. za 1898 god, 40. This pamphlet was published as an insert in the Vladimirskie gubernskie vedomosti, 4 June 1899. 51 Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 211. 52 K desiatiletiiu sushchestvovaniia: Kratkii ocherk razvitiia Aleksinskago Dobrovol’nago Pozharnago Obshchestva, 1899–1909,6. 53 Pozharnoe delo, 1906, no. 15, 231. 54 na rt f. 98, op. 5, d. 419, l. 2,l. 15, l. 30, l. 33, l. 41, l. 52, l. 56, l. 69, l.70, l. 72, l.75, l. 77. 55 Pozharnoe delo, 1904, no. 36, 570. 56 A description of the miserable living conditions of firefighters can be found in Iavorovskii, Pozharnaia okhrana gorodov Povolzh’ia, 45–6. 57 Golos pozharnago, 1911, no. 6, 11. 58 Haimson, “Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia,” Slavic Review 23 and 24. 59 Pozharnoe delo, 1899, no. 5, 305–7. 60 Mel’nik, Iz istorii protivopozharnoi sluzhby Riazanskogo kraia, 290–1. 61 Ibid., 292. 62 Doyle, “Social Functions of Voluntary Associations,” 336. A similar observation can be found in Blackbourn, “Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” 226. In Germany, the volunteer fire departments could also have an exclusive function. See Engelsing, Im Verein mit dem Feuer, 61, 75. 63 Drug pozharnago, 1906, no. 1, 1. 64 Richter, Soziokulturelle Dimensionen freiwilliger Vereinigungen, 22–37.

232

Notes to pages 133–7

65 Greenberg, Cause for Alarm, 9. A similar point is made in Thompson, “Volunteer Firefighters,” 11–24. 66 Greenberg, Cause for Alarm, 9. For Greenberg, gender, not class, provides the key to understanding the volunteer fire departments. 67 See Tomeh, “Formal Voluntary Organizations,” 89. Tomeh writes: “the formal or voluntary association may be interpreted as an organizational invention that aids in the continuing transitional process of urbanization.” 68 garf f. 102, op. 3, 1883, d. 551, l. 2. 69 rgia f. 1288, op. 21, d. 16, l. 45. 70 Golos pozharnago, 1911, no. 5. 71 rgia f. 1288, op. 19, d. 156, l. 1 (1892). 72 Pozharnoe delo, 1902, no. 23, 362. 73 Greenberg, Cause for Alarm, 94. 74 L’vov, Gorodskie pozharnye komandy, 4. 75 The Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich was assassinated in 1905. See Daly, Autocracy under Siege, 156–8. 76 Otchet pravleniia Vladimirskago gorodskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva, uchrezhdennago 1 sentiabria 1896 g. za 1898 god, 2. 77 Pozharnoe delo, 1898, no. 4, 267. 78 Lavrikov, “Pravomonarkhicheskoe dvizhenie v Tverskoi Gubernii,” 47. 79 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 953, l. 11. 80 garf f. 102, dp. 3, 1883, d. 551, l. 10ob. 81 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 683, l. 178. 82 Szaflik, Dzieje ochotniczych stražy požarnych. Szaflik claims that the fire departments encouraged democratic sentiments, but he does not explain how this functioned within the fire department. The claim seems to be based on the assumption that the form of the association determines the content of its activity. 83 Szaflik, Dzieje ochotniczych stražy požarnych, 186–7. 84 rgia f. 1288, op. 19, d. 21, l. 7. 85 Ibid., l.1. 86 Lavrikov, “Pravomonarkhicheskoe dvizhenie v Tverskoi Gubernii,” 64. 87 Feuerwehr-Nachrichten, 1892, no. 1. In an article entitled “Rückblick auf das Jahr 1891,” the author wrote that “the most important event … was undeniably the 26th jubilee [Jahresfest].” These descriptions of celebrations appeared regularly. In Germany, the volunteer fire departments were closely related to the Turnvereine. See Engelsing, Im Verein mit dem Feuer, 28. 88 Blackstone, History of the British Fire Service, 234.



Notes to pages 137–44

233

89 Otchet kazanskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva za 1903 god, 4. 90 Pozharnyi, 1893, no. 4, 87. 91 Greenberg, Cause for Alarm, 70–1. 92 Hanchett, “Tsarist Statutory Regulation of Municipal Government,” 100. 93 Pozharnoe delo, 1899, no. 5, 307. 94 Providing tokens or badges was a common aspect of celebration. See Häfner, “Städtische Eliten und ihre Selbstinszenierung,” 32. 95 Piatidesiatiletnii iubilei Ostashkovskoi obshchestvennoi pozharnoi komandy, 8–9. 96 Ibid., 11. 97 Ibid., 19. 98 The recent implementation of a new Municipal Statute in 1892 had granted the governor “supervision over the correctness and legality of the actions of municipal public administration.” Quoted in Hanchett, “Tsarist Statutory Regulation of Municipal Government,” 112. 99 Pozharnyi, 1893, no. 32, 637. 100 Pozharnyi calendar’ za 1907 g., 9, 54–6. 101 Makarikhin, Gubernskie uchenye arkhivnye komissii Rossii, 57. 102 Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 172–3. 103 Otchet pravleniia vladimirskago gorodskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva, uchrezhdennago 1 sentiabria 1896 g. za 1900 god, 26–7. 104 Putnam, Bowling Alone, 28, 112–15. 105 “Pozharnyi prazdnik,” Golos pozharnago, 1912, nos. 14, 15–16, 17–18. 106 There are ample photographs of firefighters climbing different urban structures for their training exercises. Because of their size and susceptibility to fire, the most likely candidates were theatres and opera houses. 107 “Pozharnyi prazdnik,” Golos pozharnago, 1912, nos. 17–18, 9. 108 Ibid., 11–12. 109 Ibid., 12. 110 There are many books on the question of russification. Anders Henriksson, in his study of the nationality question in Riga, mentions the problems with the fire department. See Henriksson, Tsar’s Loyal Germans, 41. 111 rgia f. 1287, op. 35, d. 683, l. 136. 112 Pozharnoe delo, 1909, no. 16, 312–14. 113 For a work that emphasizes the emergence of civil values at the expense of military ones, see Fuller, Civil-Military Conflict in Imperial Russia. 114 Häfner, “Städtische Eliten und ihre Selbstinszenierung,” 22–3.

234

Notes to pages 144–8

115 Ibid., 33. 116 Ibid., 34. The insistence on another dichotomy comes ,no doubt, from the original dichotomy proposed by Habermas. 117 Trudy pervago obshchago s”ezda, 125, 169. 118 See Wortman, Scenarios of Power. 119 Lowe, “Political Symbols and the Rituals of the Russian Radical Right,” 442. 120 Ibid., 446. 121 Ibid., 445–6. 122 Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 236–7. 123 Ibid., 204. 124 na rt f. 1, op. 4, d. 4091. This file contains a circular issued in September 1909 by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, warning the police that a number of rural fire societies had engaged in illegal activity. 125 Desrosières, Politics of Large Numbers. See chapters 5 and 6. 126 Otchet pravleniia Chernigovskago vol’nago pozharnago obshchestva za 1894/5 god, 4. 127 Otchet pravleniia Chernigovskago vol’nago pozharnago obshchestva za 1896 god, 6. 128 Otchet pravleniia Chernigovskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva, uchrezhdennago 22-go iiulia 1894 goda, za 1897 g., 5. 129 Otchet Kazanskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva za 1903 god, 7–9. 130 Otchet pravleniia Vladimirskago gorodskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva, uchrezhdennago 1 sentiabria 1896 g. za 1899 god, 2. 131 Otchet pravleniia Vladimirskago gorodskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva, uchrezhdennago 1 sentiabria 1896 g. za 1901 god, 3. 132 K desiatiletiiu sushchestvovaniia: Kratkii ocherk razvitiia Aleksinskago Dobrovol’nago Pozharnago Obshchestva, 1899–1909, 18. 133 Otchet Tverskago vol’nago pozharnago obshchestva za 1908 god, 39. 134 Otchet Kazanskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva za 1903 god, 10. 135 Iavorovskii, Pozharnaia okhrana gorodov Povolzh’ia, 46. 136 Otchet Smolenskago pozharnago obshchestva za 1913 god, 16–18. 137 Ibid., 19. 138 Otchet Tverskago vol’nago pozharnago obshchestva za 1911 god, 34. 139 Otchet pravleniia Chernigovskago vol’nago pozharnago obshchestva, uchrezhdennago 22-go iiulia 1894 goda, za 1896 god, 5; Otchet pravleniia Chernigovskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva, uchrezhdennago 22-go iiulia 1894 goda, za 1898 g., 5.



Notes to pages 149–54

235

140 Ostrovskoe vol’noe pozharnoe obshchestvo: Obzor za dvadtsat’piat’let, 1887–1912, 15. 141 Otchet pravleniia Vladimirskago gorodskago dobrovol’nago pozharnago obshchestva, uchrezhdennago 1 sentiabria 1896 g., za 1901 god, 4.

chapter five 1 The extent of urban growth in the late nineteenth century is outlined in Hamm, City in Late Imperial Russia, 89. Between 1883 and 1913, about half of the empire’s larger cities doubled their population. 2 Bezsonov, Protivopozharnyi vopros i pozharnaia reforma, 1. 3 Ibid., 6. 4 Ibid., 9. 5 Trudy pervago vysochaishe utverzhdennago s”ezda russkikh deiatelei po pozharnomu delu, 30. 6 Ibid., 13. 7 Ibid., 27. 8 Ibid., 33. 9 Ibid., 34. 10 Bradley, “Russia’s Parliament of Public Opinion,” 216, 224. 11 Pozharnyi, 19 November 1894, no. 117, 150. Rather, the editor’s comments point to a personal feud between the Union and the paper’s sponsor, Count A.D. Sheremetev, who had recently withdrawn his volunteer fire department from the Union because it did not have the financial means to act effectively and also because its statutes, a poor translation from a German charter, did not correspond to the conditions of Russian national life. 12 Pozharnoe delo, 1898, no. 5, 293. 13 Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 335. 14 Pozharnyi, 10 October 1894, no. 107, 753. 15 Cathy Frierson deals extensively with the improvements made by peasants in rural areas. See Frierson, All Russia is Burning, 204–30. 16 Trudy pervago vysochaishe utverzhdennago s”ezda, 270–85. 17 35-ti letnie trudy E.V. Bogdanovich po pozharnoi chasti (1861–1896), 83–4. 18 Ibid., 86. 19 Trudy pervago obshchago s”ezda, 35. Tatishchev was apparently referring to the law of 1853, which standardized firefighting across the empire. 20 Ibid., 73. 21 Ibid., 75–6.

236

Notes to pages 154–60

22 Ibid., 81–3. On the less conservative nature of Tver province, see Timberlake, “Tsarist Government’s Preoccupation with the ‘Liberal Party.’” 23 rgia f. 1288, op. 19 – vn. op. 1, d. 81 (1901), l. 42ob. On the problem of arson in the countryside, see Frierson, “Of Red Roosters, Revenge, and the Search for Justice.” And, more recently, see Frierson, All Russia Is Burning, 108–73. 24 rgia f. 1288, op. 19 – vn. op. 1, d. 81 (1901), l. 54ob. 25 Ibid., l. 64, l. 62. 26 Ibid., l. 67ob. 27 On education, see Ruane, Gender, Class, and the Professionalization of Russian City Teachers. 28 Gorodskoe delo, 1910, no. 6, 354. On the understaffed police forces, see Daly, Autocracy under Siege, 123. 29 Pozharnoe delo, 1901, no. 50, 994. 30 “Torzhestvennoe otkritie s”ezda,” 70. 31 Trudy pervago obshchago s”ezda, 75–6. The speaker was V.S. Tatishchev. 32 Imperatorskoe rossiiskoe pozharnoe obshchestvo, 108–12. 33 Ibid., 103–4, 98–9. 34 Ibid., 27. For a general survey on public attitudes towards the police, see Weissman, “Regular Police in Tsarist Russia.” 35 Imperatorskoe rossiiskoe pozharnoe obshchestvo, 50–5. 36 Nizhnii Novgorod had a tram installed in 1896 to highlight industrial progress at the fair. See Brower, Russian City between Tradition and Modernity, 53–4. 37 Fal’kovskii, Istoriia vodosnabzheniia v Rossii, 218. 38 Ibid., 285. According to statistics published in 1914, only 66 percent of residents in Kazan and Ufa had access to a water supply. In Mogilev, the number was 12 percent. See Nardova, Samoderzhavie i gorodskie dumy, 65. 39 Bezsonov, Protivopozharnyi vopros i pozharnaia reforma, 6. 40 K voprosu o pereustroistve pozharnoi okhrani S. Peterburga, 289–91. 41 Landezen, K voprosu o bor’be s pozharami v Imperii, 17. 42 Pozharnoe delo, 1898, no. 2, 83. 43 Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 292. 44 Ibid., 294–6. 45 Deville, Sapeurs-pompiers de France, 89. 46 Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 295. 47 Verstraete, La Russie industrielle, 108. 48 Valkenier, Russian Realist Art.



Notes to pages 160–5

237

49 Pozharnoe delo, 1897, no. 8, 492. 50 Katalog vserossiiskoi peredvizhnoi pozharnoi vystavki, 9. 51 Pozharnoe delo, 1899, no. 6, 366. 52 On the growth of newspapers, see McReynolds, News under Russia’s Old Regime. 53 Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 297. 54 Semenov, Pozhary i strakhovanie ot ognia v g. Moskve, 19. 55 Quoted in Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 296. 56 Mel’nik, Iz istorii protivopozharnoi sluzhby Riazanskogo kraia, 260. 57 Bezsonov, Protivopozharnyi vopros i pozharnaia reforma, 6. 58 “Iz zala gorodskoi dumy,” Kazanskii Telegraf (Kazan), 9 October 1910. 59 Kazanskii telegraf, 9 June 1902, 3. 60 Ibid., 11 June 1902, 3. 61 Ibid., 12 July 1902, 3. 62 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 2 April 1897, 100. 63 rgia, f. 1287, op. 9, d. 1417, l. 120. 64 Ibid., d. 1418, l.7 65 Ibid., d. 1417, l. 41. 66 Golos (St Petersburg), 1 May 1882. 67 Typically, arson represented around 12 to 13 percent of fires, carelessness 33 percent, and clogged chimneys about 13 percent. The largest category (38 percent) was “unknown causes,” which may have contained cases of unreported arson. See Georgievskii, “Statistika pozharov v Rossiiskoi Imperii,” 22. 68 Ibid., 13–14. 69 Ibid., 16–17. 70 Ibid., 11. 71 Ibid., 31. 72 Semenov, Pozhary i strakhovanie ot ognia v g. Moskve, 28. 73 Ibid., 34. 74 Ibid., 39. 75 Ibid., 48. 76 Nardova, Samoderzhavie i gorodskie dumy, 58–9. 77 On the phenomenon of insurance or “speculative” fires, see Shakht, Pozhary i strakhovanie ot ognia v Rossii, 23. 78 Pozharnoe delo 1899, no. 4, 263. 79 E.E. Lund, Reforma trubochistnago dela, Imperatorskoe rossiiskoe pozharnoe obshchestvo, sec. 4, 16–18. 80 E.E. Lund, O reorganizatsii pozharnago dela v Rossii, Trudy shestogo mezhdunarodnago pozharnago kongressa, D.N. Borodin, ed., 43.

238

Notes to pages 165–70

81 Pozharnoe delo 1915, no. 16, 557. 82 Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 460–1. 83 See Hagen, Die Entfaltung politischer Öffentlichkeit in Russland. 84 rgia f. 1288, op. 19 d. 76 (1906), l. 10. 85 These publications included Strakhovoe delo (1907–18) Tver, Strakhovoe obozrenie (1890–1916), Strakhovye vedomosti (1890–1905), Strakhovye novosti (1903–06). 86 Bradley, “Russia’s Parliament of Public Opinion,” 224–7. 87 Bradley does, however, recognize that, at “the same time that society and government were vying for control of the public sphere, various interest groups within society were vying with each other for a voice within that sphere.” See Bradley, “Russia’s Parliament of Public Opinion,” 228. 88 Borodin, S.-Peterburgskaia pozharnaia komanda. 100-letie narvskoi chasti, 17. 89 K voprosu o pereustroistve pozharnoi okhrani, 152. 90 Ibid., 20. 91 Ibid., 23. 92 Ibid., 152, 284–9. 93 Ibid., 250. 94 Strakhovoe delo, 1910, 242. 95 tsgia (St Petersburg) f. 513, op. 1 d. 413, l. 197ob. 96 Strakhovoe delo, 1912, no. 23. 97 Although the fire department had enormous technical problems, it received Imperial commendation for its performance in 1895. It is not unlikely that, despite the official reference to fires, the outward appearance of the fire department had been the deciding factor. See Kleigel’s, Instruktsiia dlia S.-Peterburgskoi pozharnoi komandy, 1. 98 Ibid., 44. 99 Vestnik vzaimnago strakhovaniia, July 1910, 37. 100 Strakhovoe delo, 1910, no. 10–11, 310–312. 101 Ibid., no. 12. 102 Vestnik vzaimnago strakhovaniia, July 1910, 37. 103 Strakhovoe delo, 1910, no. 12. 104 Ibid., nos. 10–11, 312. 105 Vestnik vzaimnago strakhovaniia, July 1910, 37. 106 Iordan, “Kakoi pozharnyi s”ezd seichas nuzhen,” 2. 107 Strakhovoe delo, 1913, no. 13, 408. 108 Ibid., no. 15, 469. A similar comment was made in Golos pozharnago, 1913, nos. 2–3, 7–8. 109 Strakhovoe delo, 1909, no. 13.



Notes to pages 170–6

239

110 Vestnik russkago sobraniia, 1907, no. 7, 1–3. 111 Golos pozharnago, 1911, no. 11, 2. 112 Ermolov, Sovremennaia pozharnaia epidemiia v Rossii, 98–104. 113 Strakhovoe delo, 1911, no. 4, 126–7; no. 7, 221; no. 9, 278. 114 Strakhovoe delo, 1913, no. 19. 115 Haimson, “Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia,” 3. 116 rgia f. 1278, op. 2 d. 3612, l. 3. 117 Purishkevich, Natsional’noe bedstvie Rossii. The party affiliation of the members is supplied in Vestnik vzaimnago strakhovaniia: Nauchnopopuliarnyi zhurnal, April 1910, 5. 118 rgia f. 1278, op. 2, d. 3612, l. 58. 119 rgia f. 1278, op. 2, d. 3612. This delo contains the attendance lists. 120 Iordan, “Pozharnoe delo i gosudarstvennaia duma.” 121 Hosking, Russian Constitutional Experiment. 122 Ibid., 245. 123 Kratkaia ob”iasnitel’naia zapiska k proektu pozharnago ustava, 1. 124 Trudy shestogo mezhdunarodnago pozharnago kongressa, ed. D.N. Borodin, Tom I, 75. 125 Ibid., 93–7. 126 Gorodskoe delo, 1912, no. 11–12, 753. 127 Trudy shestogo mezhdunarodnago pozharnago kongressa, ed. D.N. Borodin, Tom II, 44. 128 Ibid., 43. 129 Ibid., 52. 130 On Borodin’s activities, see Shchablov, Pylaiushchaia Rus’, 432–45. 131 Trudy shestogo mezhdunarodnago pozharnago kongressa, ed., D.N. Borodin, Tom II, 70. 132 Ibid., 73. 133 Ibid., 77. 134 Bradley, “Russia’s Parliament of Public Opinion,” 226. 135 Borodin, Znachenie dobrovol’nykh pozharnykh organizatsii, 35. 136 Strakhovoe delo, 1912, no. 8, 237. 137 Ibid., 238. 138 Hosking, Russian Constitutional Experiment, 207. 139 Obrashchenie soveta Imperatorskago Rossiiskago Pozharnago Obshchestva k mvd, 1–5. 140 See Haimson, Politics of Rural Russia, 1–29. 141 Iordan, “Pozharnaia reforma.” 142 “Novye gorizonty v bor’be s pozharnami bedstviiami,” Pozharnoe delo, 1919, no. 1–2. A similar point about professional support for the Soviet

240

Notes to pages 177–83

Regime is made in Frieden, Russian Physicians in an Era of Reform and Revolution, 320–2.

chapter six 1 When in 1902 Edwin S. Porter produced the first narrative film in the United States, it bore the title Life of an American Fireman. See Cook, History of Narrative Film, 20–4. 2 Time Magazine, 20 July 1942. 3 For a general history of photography, see Marien, Photography. 4 Maksim Petrovich Dmitriev became a prominent personality in Nizhnii Novgorod. See Morozov, Fotograf-khudozhnik Maksim Dmitriev. 5 Nikitin, Rasskazy o fotografakh i fotografiiakh, 8–18. 6 Mandrika, Fotografiia v presse, 20. 7 Ibid., 21. 8 Kitaev, “Fotograficheskoe vremia Karla Bully,” 12–13. 9 Russkii fotograficheskii zhurnal 1896, no. 7. 10 Sankt-Peterburg 1903 god v fotografiiakh Karla Bully. 11 Russkii fotograficheskii zhurnal, 1896, no. 7. 12 On the importance of the title page, see Stein, “Mainstream-Differenzen,” 148. 13 Niva 1906, no. 26. 14 A similar point is made in Frierson, All Russia Is Burning, 231–66. 15 Freund, Photography and Society. 16 See Sekula, “Traffic in Photographs,” 15–25. 17 Bate, “Photography and the Colonial Vision.” 18 Morozov, Russkaia khudozhestvennaia fotografiia, 43. 19 Pozharnoe delo, 1910, no. 5. 20 Ibid., 1911, no. 9. 21 Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. 22 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, part 1, §71. He writes: “Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?” 23 See Avtomobilist, 1908. The journal did publish a photograph of the Moscow fire department’s new automobile. Avtomobilist, 1908, no. 4, 10. See also Avtomobil’ for the same year. This journal also published few photographs.



Notes to pages 184–93

241

24 See, for example, Vestnik blagotvoritel’nosti for 1902. Each issue started with one photograph at the front displaying children on the premises of their host institutions. In 1907, Trudovaia pomoshch’ contained no photographs. 25 For a wide range of photographs on charitable societies, see Blagotvoritel’nost’ i miloserdie v Sankt-Peterburge: Rubezh XIX-XX vekov. 26 Sankt-Peterburg 1903 god v fotografiiakh Karla Bully, 3. 27 Pozharnoe delo, 1910, no. 7. 28 Ibid., no. 10, 16.5 x 15.9 cm. 29 Insert in Pozharnoe delo, 1913, no. 10; Borodin, Imperatorskoe rossiiskoe pozharnoe obshchestvo, 125. 30 Pozharnoe delo, 1910. 31 Ermolov, Sovremennaia pozharnaia epidemiia v Rossii. 32 tsgakffd, 182.52, E–10138. 33 On this theme in an American context, see Greenberg, Cause for Alarm. 34 tsgakffd, 182.52, E–10137. 35 “Zhenshchiny v pozharnom dele,” n.a., Pozharnoe delo, 1906, no. 45, 715. 36 Pozharnoe delo, 1909, no. 13, 241. 37 Ibid., 1910, no. 16, 361. 38 Ibid., 1912, no. 16, 521, 530. 39 Ibid., 1910, no. 2, 10.9 c 16.1 cm. 40 Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 4. 41 On the concept of play, in general, see Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 7–8. Huizinga writes that “all play is a voluntary activity” and that play “is rather a stepping out of ‘real’ life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own.” It should be noted that Huizinga’s subsequent analysis drifts from this narrow definition of play. 42 Pozharnoe delo, 1915, no. 8, 17.1 x 16.4 cm. 43 Sankt-Peterburg 1903 god v fotografiiakh Karla Bully, 46. 44 For a photograph of the Christian Temperance Union inside the city duma, see tsgakffd, 643.2, G-8908. The charitable society of Uglich was also photographed inside the St Petersburg city duma. See tsgakffd, 64.1, E–3457. 45 A photograph of the All-Russian Congress of Artists appears in Petrova and Golovina, Sankt-Peterburg v ob”ektive fotografov kontsa xix – nachala xx veka, 168. 46 Pozharnoe delo, 1907, no. 19.

242

Notes to pages 193–208

47 Ibid., 1914, no. 5. 48 gaao, katalozhnaia kartochka fotodokumenta, 2–1239 and 0–8389. 49 Pozharnoe delo, 1906, no. 10. 50 Ibid., no. 43. 51 Ibid., 1913, no. 17. 52 These theatre pictures are available at the Museum of Fire Prevention in Kazan. 53 Pozharnoe delo, 1912, no. 11, 10.7 x 16.9 cm. 54 Ibid., 1909, no. 9. 55 tsgakffd, 182.53, D–16781. 56 tsgakffd, 182.52, G–6175.

conclusion

1 Kazanskii telegraf, 9 October 1910, 3. 2 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 7 October 1910. 3 na rt f. 98, op. 5, d. 98, l. 316. 4 Protokoly zasedanii kazanskoi gorodskoi dumy, 26 October 1910. 5 Robbins, Tsar’s Viceroys. 6 Valkenier, Russian Realist Art. 7 Clark, British Clubs and Societies, 490–1. 8 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2:126. 9 Elke Fein, “Zivilgesellschaftlicher Paradigmenwechsel oder PR-Aktion? Zum ersten allrussischen ‘Bürgerforum’ im Kreml,” Osteuropa-Spezial, April 2002, 19–40. 10 Goudsblom, Fire and Civilization.

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alcohol, consumption of, 102, 107–8, 137 Alexander I, 27–8, 32 Alexander II, 8–9, 20, 22, 24, 38, 88, 92, 111, 146, 150, 154, 179, 199, 208 Alexander III, 20, 122, 140, 145–6, 150, 156, 162, 199, 201 Arkhangel’sk, 70, 193 art, philosophers of: Walter Benjamin, 182–3; Arthur Danto, 189; Ludwig Wittgenstein, 23, 183 associations: automobile clubs, 158, 183; charitable associations, 8, 12, 16, 63, 127, 130, 183–5, 192; and elitism of statutes, 127–9; and exclusion of women, 180; photographers, 179; temperance societies, 17, 174 automobile clubs, 158, 183 Baltic provinces, 124–6, 137, 169; publications of, 124, 137 Benjamin, Walter, 182–3 Bogdanovich, Evgenii Vasil’evich, 43–7, 153–4, 170

Borodin, D.N., 83, 173–6, 185 bowling, as an associational activity, 140 Bradley, Joseph, 11–12, 17, 128, 167, 174; and micro-constitutions, 12, 128 Brower, Daniel R., 63, 71, 83 Bulla, Karl, 179–81, 184, 192, 196 Catherine the Great, 6, 11, 26–7 Champ de Mars, military parade ground, volunteer fire departments photographed at, 195 charitable associations, 8, 12, 16, 63, 127; and elitism of membership, 130; and photography, 183–5, 192 chimneys, as fire hazard, 149, 163, 165, 237n67 chimney sweeps, 32, 84–5, 149, 163–5 cities: city duma as social venue, 137–9, 141, 191; efforts at urban improvement, 94; state presence in city duma, 144–5, 191. See also individual cities

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city duma: as social venue, 137–9, 141, 191; state presence in, 144–5, 191 civic duty: as a civic requirement, 26, 41–2, 71, 90, 138; contrasted with volunteering, 55–7; indifference to, 44 civil disobedience, by city officials, 80, 104–5 civil society: defined, 11–18; relation to duty, 26, 41–2, 56–7, 66, 90; and rationality 99–100; variations of, 12, 52, 56, 207 class. See estates; homeowners conferences on firefighting, 151–176 constitution, objection to, 153 Crimean War, influence on reforms, 6–8, 18, 24, 38, 53, 72 Danto, Arthur, 189 Decembrists, photographed, 179 Department of Fire and Insurance, 156 Dostoevsky, Fedor, 4, 16 duma. See city duma, state duma Durnovo, I.N., 130, 152, 181 England, fire departments, 35, 60, 137 Ermolov, A.S., 171 Ermolova, Maria Alekseevna, 185–7; photographed in front of fire equipment, 186 estates: challenges to, 204; and homeowners, 61, 63; persistence of, 64, 129, 138 Ferguson, Adam, 67 Feuerwehr-Nachrichten, 124, 137

fire: in Irkutsk, 88–9; in Kazan, 31; in literature, 1, 4, 222n109; in Orenburg, 86–8; statistics on, 48–9, 75–6, 85, 98, 146–8, 163–6; at theatres, 29; at the Winter Palace, 29–31 fire departments: Alexander I and creation of professional fire departments, 27–8, 32; budgets of, 69, 80, 140, 164; central inspectorate for, 153–5; children in, 184, 187; creation of public fire departments, 37–55; first professional fire departments, 27–8; Ministry of War and reform of, 7–8, 19, 23–5, 37–8; public versus paid firefighters, 46–7, 61, 83, 98, 131; reform of police fire departments, 35; regional differences and, 36, 71; revolutionary values in, 136–7; statutes of, 48–9, 98; volunteers versus hired hands, 131. See also England; France; Germany; United States volunteer fire departments firefighters: quality of, 36; social differences, 77–8, 131–2; and theft, 120 firefighting and fire prevention, commentators on: D.N. Borodin, 83, 173–6, 185; A.S. Ermolov, 171; K. Iordan, 125, 127–8, 138, 156, 159, 170–2, 176; A.D. Sheremetev, 124, 126, 142–5, 152, 178, 196; chimney sweeps, 32, 84–5, 149, 163–5; newspapers about, 167 France, fire departments, 21, 57, 123

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Freund, Gisele, 182 Frierson, Cathy, 4, 13–15, 123, 215n87 Geertz, Clifford, 96 Geins, A.K., Governor of Kazan, 92–103 Germany, 15, 21, 122, 124, 129 governors: co-operation with city council, 64, 66, 68, 131; interference in fire departments, 52, 91–122; membership in volunteer associations, 130; mistrusting local residents, 44, 70; role in forming volunteer associations, 130, 146; suggest improvements to city, 32, 36 Great Reforms, 7, 18–19, 28, 37, 45, 53, 78, 149–51; and Ministry of Internal Affairs, 19, 39; and Ministry of War, 7–8, 18–19, 25, 37 Habermas, Jürgen, 10, 12–16, 51, 99–100, 207 Hegel, Georg Friedrich, 12, 16, 56, 61, 67, 100, 207 homeowners, 36, 57, 60–6, 70, 84, 88 imagined community, visual, 181 Imperial Russian Society of Firefighters, 22, 151–76, 185, 191, 196, 201; objection to constitution, 153 Imperial Russian Technical Society, 152, 157 insurance, 40–1, 47, 69, 77, 128, 159; funding from insurance companies, 148; insurance publications, 167

261

Internal Guard (vnutrenniaia strazha), 7, 36, 38, 54 Iordan, K., commentator on firefighting and fire prevention, 125, 127–8, 138, 156, 159, 170–2, 176 Irkutsk; fire department photographed, 188; fire reported in New York Times, 88 Iushkov, K.A., member of Kazan city council, 96, 101–19 Ivan III, and firefighting as duty in fifteenth century, 56, 90 Kappeler, Andreas, 125 Kazan: plans for public fire department, 63–70; contesting the public fire department, 91–122, 161–2; urban improvements, 94, 158; volunteer fire department photographed, 194 Keep, John, 7, 53, 189; and definition of militarism, 14–15 Kiev, 50, 75, 168, 170 Land and Freedom, 136 Lanskoi, Sergei, Minister of Internal Affairs, 39, 45, 47 laws on firefighting and fire prevention: ambiguity of, 49, 128; in collection of laws, 48; in legal code (Svod zakonov), 49, 98 libraries, 63, 180, 218n25 Lincoln, W. Bruce, 37 List, Gustav, manufacturer of fire equipment, 159–60 mayors: and acts of civil disobedience, 80, 104–5; and municipal elections, 70–1, 110; and

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r­ elationship with police chief, 70–1, 110 militarism: definition of, 14–15, and the public sphere, 53–4; in volunteer fire departments, 134–7 Miliutin, Dmitrii, 38–9 Ministry of Education, and central inspectorate as model for fire departments, 155 Ministry of Internal Affairs: in the 1860s, 24–54; deciding against Kazan, 117; indifference to local conditions, 43–7, 54; inability to systematize reform, 47, 71, 155, 175; and Ministry of War, 25, 37–8 Ministry of War, 8, 19, 24–5, 37–8, 54–5, 68, 134; and role in urban reform, 7–8, 19, 23–5, 37–8 Moscow, 28; retaining police fire department, 42 Municipal Statute of 1870, 6–7, 9, 18–19, 24, 43–4, 51, 58, 63, 78, 83, 94, 105, 202 nationalities: Baltic Germans, 124–6, 137, 169; different ­political culture, 136; distaste for, 125; Polish volunteer fire departments, 136, 174, 182 newspapers on firefighting, 167 New York Times, reporting on fires in Irkutsk and Orenburg, 86–8 Nicholas I, 24, 29–30, 34, 154, 179 Nicholas II, 21, 135, 140, 145–6, 150, 162, 166, 192, 199, 201, 204, 208

Niva [Field], 87, 179, 181 Nizhnii Novgorod, 14, 28; and conferences of firefighters, 124, 154, 156, 160; request for soldiers, 71; and response to reform, 59 Obshchestvo: definition of obshchestvennaia, 42–3; relation to state, 52, 120 October Manifesto of 1905, 135, 166, 180 Octobrists, 170–1 Odessa, 6, 28, 152, 161, 165 Orenburg: fire in, 86–8; fire reported in New York Times, 87 Orthodoxy, Russian, 123, 140 Ostashkov, Tver province: celebration of anniversary, 138–40; as model for reform of public fire departments, 41–50, 59–62, 125, 145, 149, 206 parades, 133–5, 137, 142, 150, 173 peasants: fire departments, 129; irsf reaches out to, 160; military explanations for emancipation of, 25, 38; mobile exhibition of fire equipment, 160 perm, 6, 8, 85, 116 Peter the Great, 26–7, 143 photographers: Karl Bulla, 179–81, 184, 192, 196; A. Davin’on, 179 photography, 177–197; and blurred image, 183; and bourgeois studio shots, 179, 191; and colonial context, 23; and cover page, 181, 185 Pipes, Richard, 17

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Plehve, V.K., 96, 106, 110 Poland, 136, 174, 182 police chief: conflict with city council, 62, 66, 71, 80, 97; electoral conflicts with mayor in Kazan, 110; membership in volunteer associations, 130; positive relations with city council, 46, 65, 79; reluctance to run fire department, 45; responsibility for fire departments under Peter the Great, 26 Police Department, 73, 106, 110–11; relationship to fire departments, 34–5 political institutions. See city duma; state duma political parties: Octobrists, 170–1; revolutionary, 136; Union of Russian People, 170 Proust, Marcel, and photography, 87 public sphere: and city duma, 137–8; on city streets, 77; and discussion in, 51; dual authority in, 83; militarism of, 53–4; theoretical versions of, 12–13 Purishkevich, V.M., 171, 175 Putnam, Robert, 140, 218n14 Raeff, Marc, 26–7, 35, 49 Rechtsstaat, 49 reforms. See fire departments; Great Reforms; Ministry of War regionalism, 144–6 religious values of volunteer fire departments, 123, 140 Revolution of 1905, 166–75 Riga, 124, 127, 136–7, 142–3, 169–70

263

St Petersburg: absence of public fire department, 8–9, 39, 42; appeal to have public fire department, 167–8; Champ de Mars, 172, 180, 187, 195–6; condition of fire department in, 169; conferences in, 152, 172, 196; fires in, 30–2; lagging behind provincial cities, 168; photography in, 180; political tensions in, 58, 72; town hall photographed, 191–2 Senate: attitude to local selfadministration, 82–3; shifting definition of fire departments, 47, 81 Severnaia pochta [Northern post], 50, 52 Sheremetev, A.D., 124, 126, 142–5, 152, 178, 196 Shostakovich, Dmitrii, on cover of Time magazine, 177 Skariatin, N. Ia., 64, 66–7, 70, 76, 79–80, 90–2, 99–101 Sobornost’, 125 Starr, S. Frederick, 39, 44–5, 72 state duma, 151, 166, 171–2, 175 Taylor, Charles, 52 technology: automobiles, 158, 161, 183, 198; Gustav List, 159–60; steam pumps, 114, 149, 159–61, 165 temperance society, 17, 174 theatres and fire, 7, 29–30, 94, 106–7, 139–40, 194 Timashev, A.E., 71–72 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 12–13, 21, 123, 132, 151; and thoughts on associational life in authoritarian states, 206–7

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tsar’s residence. See Winter Palace tsars. See Alexander I; Alexander II; Alexander III; Catherine the Great; Ivan III; Nicholas I; Nicholas II; Peter the Great Tucholsky, Kurt, 129 Turnerelli, Edward, 31 undergovernment, 32, 39, 45, 67, 74, 81 Union of Russian People, 170 Union of the Archangel Michael, 175 United States of America, 4, 13, 21, 122 urban modernization: population growth, 6, 94; railway, 94, 159–60; water mains, 33, 84, 188–9 Ustav pozharnyi (Fire statutes), 48–9, 98 Valuev, P.A., 72

volunteer fire departments, 42, 122–50; and definition in law, 128; elitism of, 130–1; membership requirements, 128; non coercive element of, 132; political culture of, 136, 145; professional background of members, 129; religious values in, 123, 140; and Table of Ranks, 173 Warsaw, 68, 134, 136, 173 well-ordered police state, 26–7, 34–5, 49, 61 Winter Palace, fire at, 29–31 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 23, 183 women: M.A. Ermolova, 185–7; in photographs, 178–80, 184–5, 187; in volunteer fire departments, 128, 138–9 Wortman, Richard S., 145 Zemstvo, 7–8, 24, 78, 103, 148, 154, 169, 174