Russia's Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914-22: Volume 3: Book 1 Russia's Revolution in Regional Perspective 9780893574291, 0893574295

Table of contents :
Contents......Page 7
Acknowledgments......Page 19
Introduction: A Kaleidoscope of Revolutions......Page 21
The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia: Moscow Province, 1914-22......Page 37
Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo in Southeastern Russia (Spring-Fall 1917)......Page 63
The Collapse and Rebuilding of Grain Procurement Authority in Civil War Russia: The Case of Penza, 1919......Page 85
Zemstvo, State, and Peasants in Arkhangel´sk Province, 1917–20......Page 105
War and Revolution in Ukraine: Kharkiv Province’s Peasants’ Experiences of War, Revolution, and Occupation, 1914–18......Page 127
National and Social Revolution in the Empire’s West: Estonian Independence and the Russian Civil War, 1917–20......Page 159
Smolensk’s Jews in War, Revolution, and Civil War......Page 191
Bashkir Loyalists and the Question of Autonomy: Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev in the Russian Revolution and Civil War......Page 231
The Russian Military in Finland and the Russian Revolution......Page 263
The Unemployed Movement in Odessa in 1917: Social and National Revolutions Between Petrograd and Kiev......Page 283
The Izhevsk Revolt of 1918: The Fateful Clash of Revolutionary Coalitions, Paramilitarism, and Bolshevik Power......Page 313
Voronezh: Revolutionary Violence and the Bolshevik Victory......Page 337
Structures and Practices of Power: 1917 in Nizhegorod and Kazan´ Provinces......Page 369
Echoes of the International across the Historiographies......Page 397
Notes on Contributors......Page 417

Citation preview

Russia’s Great War and Revolution Vol. 1, bk. 1 Murray Frame, Boris Kolonitskii, Steven G. Marks, and Melissa K. Stockdale, eds., Russian Culture in War and Revolution, 1914–22: Popular Culture, the Arts, and Institutions (2014) Vol. 1, bk. 2 Murray Frame, Boris Kolonitskii, Steven G. Marks, and Melissa K. Stockdale, eds., Russian Culture in War and Revolution, 1914–22: Political Culture, Identities, Mentalities, and Memory (2014) Vol. 2 Eric Lohr, Vera Tolz, Alexander Semyonov, and Mark von Hagen, eds., The Empire and Nationalism at War (2014) Vol. 3, bk. 1 Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds., Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–22: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective (2015) Series General Editors: Anthony Heywood, David MacLaren McDonald, and John W. Steinberg

Each contribution © 2015 by its author. All rights reserved. Cover design by Tracey Theriault. Cover: Alex Khvostenko-Khvostov. Set design for Mystery-Bouffe: A Heroic, Epic, and Satirical Depiction of Our Epoch, produced at the Heroic Theater, Kharkov, 1921. Pencil, gouache, collage on cardboard. © Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, Moscow. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Russia’s home front in war and revolution, 1914-22 / edited by Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, Aaron B. Retish. pages cm. -- (Russia’s great war and revolution, 1914-1922 ; vol. 3) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-89357-429-1 1. World War, 1914-1918--Soviet Union. 2. World War, 1914-1918--Russia. 3. Soviet Union--History--Revolution, 1917-1921. 4. Russia--Social conditions--1801-1917. 5. Soviet Union--Social conditions--1917-1945. I. Badcock, Sarah, 1974- editor. II. Novikova, Liudmila G., 1973- editor. III. Retish, Aaron B. DK264.8.R88 2015 947.084’1--dc23 2015025721

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To our children, Eleanor, Fedya, Ira, Marusia, Eliah, and Ava

Contents

From the Series Editors ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xi Acknowledgments ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xix Aaron B. Retish, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Sarah Badcock Introduction: A Kaleidoscope of Revolutions ��������������������������������������������� 1 Map of European Russia, 1914 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 16 Grassroots Politics in Regional Revolutions Matthew Rendle The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia: Moscow Province, 1914–22 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 19 Sergei Liubichankovskii Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo in Southeastern Russia (Spring–Fall 1917) ����������������������������������������������������� 45 Peter Fraunholtz The Collapse and Rebuilding of Grain Procurement Authority in Civil War Russia: The Case of Penza, 1919 ������������������������� 67 Liudmila G. Novikova Zemstvo, State, and Peasants in Arkhangel´sk Province, 1917–20 ���������� 87

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Contents

A Myriad of National Revolutions Mark R. Baker War and Revolution in Ukraine: Kharkiv Province’s Peasants’ Experiences of War, Revolution, and Occupation, 1914–18 �������������������� 111 Karsten Brüggemann National and Social Revolution in the Empire’s West: Estonian Independence and the Russian Civil War, 1917–20 ����������������� 143 Michael C. Hickey Smolensk’s Jews in War, Revolution, and Civil War �������������������������������� 175 Daniel E. Schafer Bashkir Loyalists and the Question of Autonomy: Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev in the Russian Revolution and Civil War ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 215 Elena Dubrovskaia The Russian Military in Finland and the Russian Revolution �������������� 247 Tanja Penter The Unemployed Movement in Odessa in 1917: Social and National Revolutions Between Petrograd and Kiev �������������������������������� 267 Social Revolutions in the Peripheries Aaron B. Retish The Izhevsk Revolt of 1918: The Fateful Clash of Revolutionary Coalitions, Paramilitarism, and Bolshevik Power ���������������������������������� 299 Stefan Karsch Voronezh: Revolutionary Violence and the Bolshevik Victory ������������� 323



Contents

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Sarah Badcock Structures and Practices of Power: 1917 in Nizhegorod and Kazan´ Provinces ����������������������������������������������������������� 355 Donald J. Raleigh Echoes of the International across the Historiographies ������������������������� 383 Notes on Contributors ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 403

From the Series Editors

Origins of the Project Since its inception in 2006 Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914–22 has taken shape through the collaboration of an international community of historians interested in the history of World War I’s understudied eastern theater. Timed to coincide with the centenary of the Great War—and, by extension, the revolu­ tions it helped unleash—this series responds to several developments in the historiography of the Russian Empire, its Soviet successor, and the Great War as a whole. During a century of scholarly and popular discussion about the First World War, the ”Russian” part of the conflict received little sustained attention until after 1991. In the former USSR, the war stood in the shadow of the revolutions of 1917 and the subsequent Civil War that resulted in the formation of the So­ viet Union; most of all, it was eclipsed by the apotheosization after 1945 of the Great War of the Fatherland, the victory over Nazi Germany, as the defining moment in Soviet history. As a result, the First World War appeared as the final folly of an outmoded bourgeois-noble autocracy, doomed to collapse by the laws of history. Non-Soviet scholars, often hampered by restricted access to archival collections, downplayed the Russian war experience for other rea­ sons. Specialists in the history of the late empire or early Soviet order tended to see the war as either the epilogue to the former or the prologue to the latter. Western historians often focused on the war experience of their own states— most often Britain and its imperial possessions, France, or Germany—or on a welter of issues bequeathed by the outbreak of the war in 1914 and the peacemaking in the years following 1918. These issues included most notably the vexed question of Germany’s “war guilt,” encoded in Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty, which has continued to provoke a lively and contentious discussion in the intervening 100 years. The disintegration of the Soviet Union by the end of 1991 cast the history of the Soviet state and the late empire in a different light. Long-closed archives— particularly for military and international history—became relatively accessi­ ble to post-Soviet and Western scholars. As important, opportunities opened quickly for collaboration and dialogue between historians in Russia and their colleagues abroad, fostering new research and interpretations that would have been impossible or inconceivable before the late 1980s. Likewise, the Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, xi–xvii.

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From the Series Editors

dramatic changes of the era led scholars inside and outside the former USSR to re-examine long-held assumptions about the Soviet state and its origins, accompanied by renewed debate over the viability of the Russian Empire as it adapted to the challenges of modernity. As part of this general re-evaluation, Russia’s Great War became a subject of study in its own right. By the early 21st century, the war years came to be seen as what Peter Holquist termed “a continuum of crisis.” Rather than an abrupt rupture between juxtaposed imperial and So­viet orders, the war now appears not just as a powerful force of disruption, but also a period of intense mobilization—as in the other combatant states—that produced the modes and the “gaze” of statecraft, mass culture, and social control often associated with the totalitarian/authoritarian states of the interwar and Cold War years. Such practices include the nationalization of economies, the increasing application of technology to surveillance, reaching farther than before into the “private” sphere, but also such issues as displaced or refugee populations, racialized nationalist ideologies, and the development of such means as mass propaganda in support of building a utopia in our time. All of these contexts have been brought into sharp focus by the centenary of the Great War. This occasion has engendered a great deal of scholarly and popular interest, attested by the gathering stream of books, exhibits, and memorials that will, over the coming years, mark the milestone anniversaries in the conflict’s history: the war’s outbreak in the summer of 1914 and key mo­ ments enshrined in the historical memories of the combatant states. All of the one-time enemies will honor the millions of dead, wounded, incapacitated, and displaced by the first “war to end all wars.” For the first time, Russians will take part in these rites of commemoration. At the end of 2012, the Russian Federation declared 1 August the annual “Day of Remembrance for the Vic­ tims of the First World War” (Den’ pamiati zhertv Pervoi mirovoi voiny), first observed in 2013. Similarly, having long been consigned to the margins of the dominant narratives on the First World War, Russia’s part in and experience of the Great War has become the focus of a substantial body of new scholarship. This series forms part of that new contribution to the international under­ standing of that conflict. If the concept behind Russia’s Great War and Revolution reflects recent trends in the historiography on the war’s meaning for Russian history, its form draws on earlier examples of the sort of international collaboration that have become increasingly possible since the late 1980s. Each of the general editors and many members of the editorial collective had participated in similar partnerships, albeit on a smaller scale. Such projects included two volumes on Russian military history that enlisted the best specialists from the international community. Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe edited The Military and Society in Russia (Brill, 2002), while Reforming the Tsar’s Army (2004), edited by Bruce Menning and David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, appeared with the Woodrow Wilson Inter­national Center and Cambridge University Press in 2004. Other participants in this project had taken part in two other similar



From the Series Editors

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collections. In 2005, Routledge published The Russian Revolution of 1905: Centenary Perspectives, co-edited by Jonathan Smele and Anthony Heywood. That year also saw the publication by Brill of volume 1 of The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero; volume 2 came out two years later. Both were overseen by Menning, Schimmelpenninck, and John W. Steinberg. Each of these collections provided instructive examples of how to organize and produce the broad collaborative effort that has led to the appearance of Russia’s Great War and Revolution. Aims Recognizing both the growing scholarly interest in Russia’s Great War and the occasion presented by the successive centenaries of the First World War and the Russian revolutions, the editors of this collection have sought to assemble the best current international scholarship on the conflict. Ideally, they have oriented this collection toward several audiences. For those in the academy—scholars, undergraduates and graduate students—we offer a series of edited collections, varying in format and approach, that will provide a ”snapshot” of the current state of the field. As a reflection of existing scholarly interests and debate, these materials will by default indicate those topics and issues demanding further attention. Editorial teams agreed on the optimal structure, periodization, and approach taken in their respective volumes. As a consequence, depending on the topic covered, some volumes provide a largely narrative treatment of events—for instance, military operations and engagements—or of developing issues, as occurs in the volume on inter­ national relations. Others, most often dealing with the “home front” or Russia as an empire, will present chapters that examine specific problems, groups, or regions. In addition to addressing our academic communities, the editors seek also to engage non-professional readers in the general public, including secondary school students. To this end, as a supplement to the books in this series, the larger editorial collective have created a dedicated website with such sup­ porting materials as maps, illustrations, sound files, and moving images. Further, the editors plan to house on the web-site special sections devoted to summaries of the published findings and instructional guides to aid teachers in developing school and lesson plans. Finally, alongside its appearance in book form, the series will also be available on the internet through the Project MUSE scholarly database. Readers with access to that platform will be able to conduct searches in and download entire books or individual chapters as they require. In addition to benefiting scholars interested in Russia during the Great War and revolutions, the MUSE edition will provide instructors with a ready trove of materials which can provide specific readings, as well as a valuable research resource for their students.

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From the Series Editors

Conceptualization and Organization The volumes in this collection reflect the current state of scholarship on Russia’s experience of the “long” Great War, spanning the First World War, the revolutions, and the Russian Civil War. Editors have sought to cover all the significant aspects of Russia’s history during 1914–22, so far as current ex­ pertise permits, under a series of thematic rubrics. These cover a wide range of subjects, including the experience of the soldiers involved, as well as of the urban and rural populations on the “home front”; the course of international relations, both formal and non-governmental; the implications of war and revolution for the empire as a polity incorporating a broad variety of national and confessional populations bound to the imperial “center” by distinctive administrative and legal regimes; and the impact of prolonged “total war” on the cultural, religious, and intellectual life of the region. Looking outward beyond the territories of the Russian Empire/USSR themselves, other volumes address the perspectives of the Central Powers during the Great War, the ef­ fects of war and civil war in Siberia and the Far East, the lengthening “arc of revolution” through the peripheries of the former empire and beyond to the global south and New World in the years following 1917, and, finally, the repercussions of total wars and revolution on ideas about and performance of gender, sexuality, and the sphere of intimacy in Russian society. Of course, throughout, the use of the term “Russia” and its inflections connotes, unless otherwise stated, the territory and populations housed within the boundaries of the Russian Empire in 1914. Given the breadth of the subject matter and the renewed interest of historians in Russia’s Great War, this collection does not aspire to offer a comprehensive narrative history of the war, nor is it meant to serve as an encyclopaedia of issues, events, and persons associated with the war and revolutions. Rather, it seeks to provide clear representation of current scholarly interests and debates, while indicating areas in need of more research. Thus, readers will find relatively few articles on the economic history of either the war or the Civil War. Likewise, many areas of international relations remain uncovered, not least the formation of policy-making institutions in the suc­ cessor states to the Russian Empire. Those interested in the revolutionary period will find the “workers’ movement” far less prominent in this collection than would have been the case for much of the late 20th century, while the peasantry and Russia’s regions have begun to receive comparatively greater attention. As noted previously, an underlying aim of this series is to encourage fur­ ther research into areas as yet insufficiently covered in current scholarship. Thus, despite the increasing prevalence of the “imperial turn” in our historiog­ raphy, the impact of the war, revolutions, and Civil War in Russia’s imperial borderlands has only begun recently to command the interest that it warrants. By the same token, like their counterparts for the history of other countries,



From the Series Editors

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specialists on 20th-century Russia have yet to delve deeply into the manifold aspects of religion and religiosity in the wartime Russian Empire, from popu­ lar or folk religion and religious practice, through the high politics of spiritual institutions, to the effects of war and turmoil on currents in theology and religious philosophy that had begun to run so strong during the “Silver Age.” Finally, throughout the long process that led to the appearance of this series, the editorial teams have sought to avoid the imposition of an explicit interpretive agenda, in the interests of conveying a sense of current areas of debate and consensus in our historical literature. Thus, while the periodization of 1914–22—i.e., the years spanning the Russian Empire’s entry into war through two revolutions, civil war, and the formation of the Soviet state— has taken hold with many historians, others continue to maintain that such an approach risks flattening or downplaying the significance of 1917 and its consequences for the area’s subsequent history. In the interest of providing as clear as possible a reflection of the current “state of play,” these volumes house a variety of interpretations and periodizations, inviting readers to draw their own inferences and conclusions from the evidence and arguments on offer. Process From the beginning, editors have viewed Russia’s Great War and Revolution as a truly global project, incorporating perspectives from historians across Europe, North America, Russia, Asia, and Australia. In addition to the subject matter treated in the volumes’ contents, this global approach informed the composition of the editorial teams that oversaw the production of each volume. Each of these groups included members from North America, Russia, and the United Kingdom or continental Europe. Where the contents required it—for instance, in the book dealing with Asia, scholars from elsewhere joined the editorial team. In the interests of reaching the broadest possible international audience, the editors agreed on English as the language for the series, with the intention of publishing a parallel Russian-language edition when feasible. The chapters in these volumes consist both of submissions in response to a widely circulated open call and invited contributions. Papers were selected in a two-stage process involving initial vetting by editorial team-members, then evaluation by the full editorial board. Throughout, editors strove for the greatest possible inclusiveness, with the result that the articles in the series represent a broad variety of scholars, ranging from graduate students through all ranks of the academic cursus honorum. The project and its publication took shape through a series of editorialboard meetings that began at the University of Aberdeen in the summer of 2008. A meeting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison the following sum­ mer resulted in agreement on the thematic areas to be addressed by separate volumes, in addition to provisional topical headings for each volume. At Uppsala University in 2010, board-members refined outlines of desired

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From the Series Editors

contents for each volume, leading to a public call for papers the following autumn. From that point forward, editors pursued submissions, while project representatives participated in the presentation of project overviews and draft articles at the annual conventions of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), the Study Group of the Russian Revolution, the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES), the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, and the 2010 Stockholm meeting of the International Council for Central and East European Studies (ICCEES). The chapters contained in the volumes comprising Russia’s Great War and Revolution have undergone an intensive multi-stage review process, overseen collectively by the 30-odd members of the full editorial board. The publisher also solicited a peer assessment of the project description and design; the resulting review yielded important and helpful sugges­tions, as did consultation with the project’s advisory board. Next, edi­torial teams for individual volumes jointly assessed contributions. To select papers for inclusion in individual volumes and to prepare the latter for publication, the editorial board adopted a two-tier review exercise. Editorial teams were paired according to areas of overlapping interest or approach. Each of the teams would read and critique the contents for the other’s volume, followed by a general discussion involving the entire editorial board. Finally, after the completion of revisions, that volume’s editorial team sent it on to the general editors, who solicited anonymous peer reviews for final review. Once the volume editors addressed any critiques or suggestions from these last reviews, the general editors sub­mitted the volume to the publisher for production. Acknowledgments In the eight years from its origins to the first appearance of its results, this project benefited immeasurably from the support of many people and institutions. The editorial board owes a special debt of gratitude to Alice D. Mortenson from Minneapolis, Minnesota for her unstinting support of and generosity to this undertaking, not least through the Alice D. Mortenson/ Petrovich Chair of Russian History. This resource proved indispensable in making possible several successive editorial meetings. Special thanks are also due to Scott Jacobs of Houston, Texas, who provided significant support to this project for more than five years. His contributions helped ensure the success of the summer editorial meetings at the University of WisconsinMadison in 2012. Both donors also made possible many of the translations in the collection. The editorial board also benefited from the support of several univer­ sities and departments. Significant financial support was provided by the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, through the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, the College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Principal’s Interdisciplinary Fund to facilitate our inaugural board meeting at Aberdeen



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in 2008 and our fifth full meeting in 2014. The Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison hosted the 2009 and 2012 editorial-board meetings; Nicole Hauge played a key role in arrangements for the visitors to Madison on both occasions. In addition, we benefited from the support of the university’s Anonymous Fund and the office of the Dean of the College of Letters and Science. Our colleagues in the Department of History at Uppsala University in Sweden gave us the use of their facilities and meeting-space in the summer of 2010, providing an excellent and hospitable environment for our discussion. Many of the home institutions of the editorial board also con­ tributed travel costs and meeting-space for the compilation of several volumes in this collection; some helped underwrite some translation costs as well. Several other groups and institutions played an important role in the gestation of this series. The Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Inter­ national Center, particularly Associate Director William Pomeranz, has actively supported the project since its outset. Grants to support our edi­torial meetings were provided by the British Academy, BASEES, and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. The German Historical Institute in Moscow very kindly sponsored the translation into English of chapters writ­ten in Ger­ man. The Study Group on the Russian Revolution served as an important venue for the development of many of the chapters, particularly from British and European contributors, that appear in these volumes. George Fowler and Vicki Polansky of Slavica Publishers have proven the ideal partners in this lengthy process, offering sage counsel, clear deadlines, exemplary patience, professionalism, and rigor, all of which have made the production process run with an enviable dispatch and smoothness. Finally, the editorial board expresses its heartfelt thanks to more than 200 contributors, who offered their skills, effort, insight, and scholarship to Russia’s Great War and Revolution. At the risk of tautology, it must be said that this series could not have come to fruition without them. Their efforts—and patience with an extended production schedule—allowed us to present our readers with strong evidence for the enduring importance and complexity of this eight-year span in the history of Central and Eastern Europe and Asia, the consequences of which continue to shape our world in ways that we are still witnessing. Anthony Heywood David MacLaren McDonald John W. Steinberg June 2014

Acknowledgments

The idea for this volume began in a conversation the three of us had in 2005 about the need to study the Russian Revolution by focusing on the provinces. Several institutions have helped to make this idea a reality. Wayne State University, the University of Nottingham, the Higher School of Economics (Moscow), the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the University of Aberdeen all provided valuable research and travel support. The Cartography Laboratory of the University of Wisconsin–Madison drew the map of European Russia. We would also like to thank Michael C. Hickey and Donald J. Raleigh for their valuable comments on the introduction. This book, which we had termed A Kaleidoscope of Revolutions, once stood on its own. We were thrilled to join the “Russia’s Great War and Revolution” collective and its expert leaders Anthony Heywood, David McDonald, and John Steinberg. We thank our fellow editorial team of the Home Front volumes Adele Lindenmeyr, Christopher Read, and Peter Waldron for their collective good will. We are in debt to Vicki Polansky at Slavica Publishers for simply being one of the best editors in the field. She improved our text and put the book into production, all with good cheer. Our contributors have been magnificent, and have patiently stuck with us as this project moved steadily towards publication. We have all learnt a great deal from working with such excellent scholars. This has been a wonderful joint project, which has involved all three of us contributing equally to the realization of our shared goal. The editors would like to thank each other for being such marvelous comrades and for making this book such a pleasure to oversee. Thanks as well to our spouses Jonathan Kwan, Martin Beisswenger, and Sarah Parmelee for their patience and support. Much has changed in our lives since we conceived of this volume. We each, almost simultaneously, had kids, watched them grow, and then had more kids. Eleanor, Fedya, Eliah, Ira, Marusia, and Ava have been wonderful additions to our lives. We hope that even though this book project is now complete, there will be several opportunities in the future for our children to play together and possibly to discuss among themselves the importance of the provinces in understanding the Russian Revolution.

Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, xix–xx.

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Unless otherwise noted, all dates before February 1918 are given in the Old Style (Julian) calendar, which was 13 days behind the New Style (Gregorian) calendar used in the West. The New Style calendar was adopted by the Soviet government in February 1918.

Introduction: A Kaleidoscope of Revolutions Aaron B. Retish, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Sarah Badcock

This volume presents a series of essays that expand our understanding of the Russian Revolution through the detailed study of specific localities. Like the image in a kaleidoscope, Russia’s revolution was complex and multifaceted, an intricate juxtaposition of patterns and relationships that shifted and changed. While recognizing the importance of events in the centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg/Petrograd, we seek to reconceptualize developments in Russia between 1914 and 1922 as a kaleidoscopic process whose dynamic was not solely determined in the capitals.1 This regional perspective helps to illumi­ nate the complexities of relationships between people and politics and to understand the immediate contexts within which the struggles between the military powers, be they Reds, Whites, Socialist Revolutionary armies, peasant partisans, nationalist movements, or local rebels developed.2 To a significant extent, in the time of war and revolutionary crisis, tsarist, Provisional Govern­ ment, and then Soviet or anti-Soviet power were all defined by these local political, economic, and cultural factors. Thus, the Russian Revolution appears not as a single process but as a complex pattern of overlapping revolutions. Re­ viewing the nature of these revolutions is the purpose of the present volume. The power struggles that erupted in 1917 in Petrograd, the cradle and em­ blematic city of the Russian Revolution, reverberated through the complex, multilayered political and social fabric of the Russian Empire. They provoked local conflicts and movements that developed distinctive dynamics of their own. In each region, particular configurations of social, political, and ethnic groups shaped the local revolution, as did discrete regional aspects of gen­ der, generation, and confessional attachment. The meaning of the Russian Revolution was therefore very different for a land-hungry peasant in Saratov, 1

 Christopher Read describes the revolution as kaleidoscopic in From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian People and Their Revolution, 1917–21 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 283. 2

 We use regional and provincial interchangeably in this introduction.

Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 1–15.

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A aron B. Retish, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Sarah Badcock

a handicraft producer in Viatka, or an unemployed worker in Odessa. The course and meanings of the revolution could vary not only from province to province, but from district to district or from village to village. Contributors to this volume reveal how local political, economic, and cultural contexts, as well as the particular interplay between social iden­tities and policies, helped to define the nature of state power throughout the revolutionary period and the Civil War. Furthermore, this volume illumi­nates how the decisions of individual political actors in the countryside and provincial towns facilitated the eventual Bolshevik victory and how they con­tributed to the complexities of the revolution. The 13 essays in this volume incorporate a range of different approaches and perspectives in order to reveal how the local political, social, and cultural environment and the decisions of local political leaders shaped the revolution. Seven of the essays present case studies from European Russian provinces, while six essays focus on the revolution in non-Russian regions of the empire. These essays provide regional snapshots from across Russia that highlight important themes of the revolution in its regional context.3 Some chapters cover the entire temporal frame from the beginning of the First World War to the end of the Civil War in 1921, while others focus on a narrower window of time. Five of the essays discuss the structures of power or general course of revolution in a specific locale, and seven focus on particular social groups within a region. These locally grounded studies, taken together, do not pre­ sent a single narrative line. In this sense, they provide a vivid reflection of the messiness of historical reality that does not fit into any overarching master narrative. While bringing to light the results of empirical research on particu­ lar provinces, these essays also contribute to the larger historiographic debates on the social and political meaning of the Russian Revolution as well as the nature of the Russian state, from a range of different perspectives. The chapters are organized into three sections. The essays in part 1, “Grassroots Politics in Regional Revolutions,” discuss the general course of revolution in a specific locale, or structures of power within a specific space. Part 2, “A Myriad of National Revolutions,” is composed of five essays that highlight how various nationality communities responded to the revolution­ ary crisis and how their collective experiences shaped the course of the revolution in specific locales. The three essays of part 3, “Social Revolutions in the Peripheries,” connect the organization of state power to important pub­lic organizations that were backed by distinct social groups.

3

 We did not include chapters on the Far East, Caucasus, and Central Asia because they will appear in future volumes of the Russia’s Great War and Revolution project.

Introduction: A K aleidoscope of Revolutions

3

The Backdrop For Russia the First World War began in the midst of a dramatic and desta­ bilizing period of political and social modernization, which altered the relationship between state and people and affected the everyday life and dreams of its citizens. Modernization of the Russian state was enabled by the reforms of Alexander II in the 1860s, which emancipated Russia’s serfs, created local administration that attempted to draw the population into the polity, modernized the military, and encouraged industrialization. These reforms increased social mobility in Russia and facilitated the development of both a civic sphere and a nascent working class. The autocratic state did not adapt quickly enough to the challenges of governing a modernizing state. The revolution in 1905–06 forced the autocracy to concede an elected parlia­ mentary body (the State Duma), but this concession was reluctant, and the autocracy consistently resisted challenges to its monopoly on power. Many of the political reforms were half-hearted, and the government tried to curb them soon after they had been introduced. The modernizing economy, with accom­ panying social mobility and societal transformation, contrasted sharply with an ossifying autocratic structure of rule, which ultimately resisted society’s attempts to introduce significant political reform. These political and social tensions undermined Russia’s stability in the prewar years and were exacerbated dramatically soon after the opening of military hostilities of the First World War in August 1914. This conflict placed an unprecedented strain on Russia’s economy and society. The first total war demanded the total mobilization of men, of industry, and of agriculture. Rus­ sia’s military enlisted millions of citizens, many of whom continued to fight throughout the war and even after it was over, in the multiple battles of Russia’s Civil War. Altogether, the First World War displaced around 12 percent of Russia’s population, or 17.5 million people.4 The flow of prisoners of war and refugees from war-stricken regions added to confusion and unrest and placed further pressure on transportation, provisioning, and state infrastructure. On the home front, the loss of male workers to conscription placed pressure on agriculture and on the families who depended on their labor. Military defeats and growing economic dislocations fed rising criticism of the handling of the war by the tsarist government, and the tsar himself.5 4

 Peter Gatrell, Russia’s First World War: A Social and Economic History (London: Rout­ ledge, 2005), 222. Gatrell comes to this figure by estimating numbers of mobilized soldiers, prisoners of war, and refugees.

5

 See Joshua Sanborn’s penetrating analysis of the social impact of war in Russia, “Unsettling the Empire: Violent Migrations and Social Disaster in Russia during World War I,” Journal of Modern History 77, 2 (2005): 290–324.

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A aron B. Retish, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Sarah Badcock

Mounting political and social tensions erupted in the February Revolution in 1917, when workers and soldiers’ wives demonstrations and a mutiny in the garrison in Petrograd pushed the tsarist government to collapse.6 The establishment of the Petrograd Soviet, which to some extent challenged the Provisional Government’s authority in the capital, provided the basis for what came to be known as dual power. While it was quite pronounced in Petrograd, divisions between Soviet and Provisional Government organizations in the provinces were more blurred or even nonexistent through 1917. The revolution had a profound effect on Russia’s economy, which col­ lapsed in 1917. The government covered four-fifths of its expenses with deficit spending by 1915–16, and this proportion actually worsened in 1917.7 As the revolutionary government printed more and more money to cover the deficit, inflation surged out of control. A basket of household goods in the second half of 1917 cost about five times what it had in 1913.8 People in the towns and countryside found it increasingly difficult or even impossible to obtain life’s daily necessities. Material realities contrasted sharply with popular expectations of the revolution. Long-held political dreams and wartime mobilization had politi­ cized ordinary Russians, and the February Revolution empowered and filled them with hope to build a new, just regime. They participated in mass politi­ cal festivals that sacralized the new political freedoms and got involved in multiple grassroots committees and soviets that had sprung up across the country.9 The deteriorating economic climate together with rising popular expec­ tations made it increasingly difficult for the Provisional Government to consoli­date its power. The country’s continuing participation in the First 6

  See Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, The February Revolution: Petrograd 1917 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980); and A. B. Nikolaev, Revoliutsiia i vlast´: IV Gosudarstvennaia duma, 27 fevralia–3 marta 1917 goda (St. Petersburg: Izdatel´stvo Rossiiskogo gosudarst­ vennogo pedagogicheskogo universiteta imeni A. I. Gertsena, 2005). For a discussion of agency in the February Revolution, see Michael Melancon, Rethinking Russia’s February Revolution: Anonymous Spontaneity or Socialist Agency? Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies (Pittsburgh: Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 2000). 7

  Gatrell, Russia’s First World War, 134.

8

  M. P. Kokhn, Russkie indeksy tsen (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1926), 18.

9

  On the spring 1917 political rituals and emotions, see Mark D. Steinberg, ed., Voices of Revolution, 1917 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Rex A. Wade, The Russian Revolution, 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Boris Kolonitskii and Orlando Figes, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

Introduction: A K aleidoscope of Revolutions

5

World War aggravated the situation. The government experienced a series of setbacks that limited its ability to control the situation. A crisis over war aims in April led to the formation of the first coalition government, whereby socialists and Petrograd Soviet members participated in government. Political tensions intensified in June as a result of an abortive offensive on the front and the attempts of Alexander Kerensky (as minister of war and then head of the government) to galvanize the army. This crisis culminated in the July Days, a series of demonstrations and disturbances on the streets of Petrograd between 3 and 5 July that were characterized by their forceful demands for “All power to the Soviet.” The later attempts to restore discipline in the army and stability at the rear ended in the Kornilov affair of August, when the army’s supreme commander was implicated in a plot to take over the government. Kerensky’s own credibility was severely damaged by his own involvement in the affair. The Democratic Conference in September made a final attempt to unite socalled democratic forces, but it in fact only served to illustrate the gulf in ap­ proaches and policies among participants. The progressive disintegration of the political center provided an opportunity to the Bolsheviks, who secured a majority in the Petrograd Soviet and seized power in the name of the soviets on 25 October. They then set out to spread soviet power across the empire. The Bolshevik takeover of power in Petrograd started a wave of attempts to re-form and consolidate centers of power. In many provincial centers, the Bolsheviks’ advance signaled the final collapse of central authority and the drive for regional and local autonomy. Along the perimeters of the empire, numerous national governments emerged, and the larger anti-Bolshevik movement gained momentum in response to Bolshevik central policies. In January 1918 the Bolsheviks forcefully disbanded the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, a democratically elected representative organ, and in March the Soviet Government signed the Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany. Russia’s exit from the war and the premature demise of the Constituent Assembly galvanized anti-Bolshevik forces, which regrouped on the imperial periphery where Bolshevik control was not particularly strong and where they could expect to get external help from Russia’s Allies in the First World War. The forces that arrayed against the Bolsheviks in 1918 were extremely diverse both in their backgrounds and in their visions for Russia’s future. They included not only conservatives and former tsarist elites but also a wide array of socialists and liberals who were appalled by Bolshevik attacks on democratic institutions and by the “treacherous” peace with Germany. The next three years witnessed a brutal civil war accompanied by exten­ sive mobilizations of men and requisition of resources by the Soviet Red

6

A aron B. Retish, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Sarah Badcock

Army, White armies, and local partisan groups.10 The Bolshevik government eventually repelled the White forces, most importantly the Siberian armies of Admiral Alexander Kolchak and General Anton Denikin’s forces in South Russia. It also suppressed massive peasant and worker disturbances and up­ risings that developed as a reaction to brutal grain requisitioning policies. By the end of 1920 the Soviet government was in firm control of most of the former Russian Empire and suppressed the last pockets of resistance to the Soviet state with an iron fist over the next few years. This general narrative of the Russian Revolution and Civil War is well known from history textbooks. Historians still struggle, however, to encap­ sulate the diversity of the Russian population’s experiences, of how specific theaters of conflict developed, and of how these multiple local revolutions and counterrevolutions shaped the larger path of events. When the Red Army and various anti-Bolshevik formations swept across provincial Russia, popu­ lar support for the conflicting parties varied significantly, and depended on grassroots struggles and social tensions. All the pretenders for political power tried to establish local administrations in order to gain manpower and resources for their armies. They had to interact with local populations in this process. Behind the frontlines of the Civil War, deserters, local armed bands and self-defense units fought their own battles that sometimes ran parallel but more often intersected with the bigger conflict between Reds and Whites. These local battles not only fueled violence at the grassroots level but also brought tactical advantages to one side or another at various times. In these ways, regional contexts entered the bigger scene of the revolution and the Civil War, and to a significant degree defined their outcome. The authors of the present volume analyze the war and Civil War both as national movements and as localized experiences. Looking deeper into the local struggles and re­ gional environments, they seek to comprehend how provincial contexts and the actions of local political leaders contributed to and altered the bigger nar­ rative of the Russian Revolution. Historiography: The Regional Turn This book brings together many strands in Russian and Western scholarship on provincial Russia. The two most important are the tradition of Russian and Soviet regional studies, rooted in kraevedenie, local histories that produced regional studies and built local self-awareness, and Western research in Rus­ sian and Soviet social history that developed a particular regional turn. The 10

  For an outline of military campaigns, see Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War. 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000); and N. E. Kakurin, Kak srazhalas´ revoliutsiia, 2 vols. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1990).

Introduction: A K aleidoscope of Revolutions

7

intersection of these two historiographical trends provides a basis for the present volume. In Russia, kraevedenie dated back to the 19th century. From at least the 1830s, local experts, including self-proclaimed scholars and, after 1864, zemstvo em­ ployees, examined regional fauna, languages, peoples, and histories.11 These studies continued into the 1920s with vibrant ethnographic projects. They diminished under Stalin with the attack on neopopulist scholars, but the suc­ cess of later regional studies on the peasantry and nationalities owed a lot to the detailed information they presented on specific locales, including cuisine, regional dialects, local markets and products, fauna, and migratory patterns. Histories of the revolution in the regions began immediately, in 1917, as the infant Soviet state tried to articulate a revolutionary narrative and then create a historical memory of the revolutionary events.12 In the 1920s, indi­ viduals across the regions participated in creating Soviet history through the Commission on the History of the October Revolution and the Russian Communist Party (Istpart). Scores of local Soviet works later focused on specific social groups in the region, such as workers and peasants. Scholars in the provinces might not have enjoyed the popularity of historians in Moscow or Leningrad, but throughout the Soviet period they produced significant, creative works on local revolutions. This was true in particular during “the Thaw” (1956–62) under Nikita Khrushchev that allowed more critical publications of Soviet history, but even in the more restrictive Leonid Brezhnev era (1964–82). While apparently trumpeting Soviet victories with the heroic support of the toiling population, when read more closely many of these studies hint at some of the problems that the early Soviet regime faced, such as local resistance to unpopular Soviet grain policies, even if Soviet au­ thors defined them as led by kulaks or as unconscious acts.13 Work during glasnost´ and the immediate post-Soviet era at first pushed the boundaries 11

  For an analysis of kraevedenie, see Emily Johnson, How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself: The Russian Idea of Kraevedenie (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006); and Susan Smith-Peter, “How to Write a Region: Local and Regional Historiography,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 5, 3 (Summer 2004): 527–42. On the study of Russian provinces, see Catherine Evtuhov on Nizhnii Novgorod, Portrait of a Russian Province: Economy, Society, and Civilization in NineteenthCentury Nizhnii Novgorod (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011); V. A. Berdinskikh, Uezdnye istoriki: Russkaia provintsial´naia istoriografiia (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2003).

12

  Frederick C. Corney, Telling October: Memory and the Making of the Bolshevik Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), especially 1–11. 13

  This is especially true of collections of primary documents, often published to mark anniversaries of the revolution, such as the 50th anniversary in 1967.

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A aron B. Retish, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Sarah Badcock

of the Soviet narrative. Historians championed Viktor P. Danilov’s work, for example, drawing on the early Soviet publications of agrarian economist Aleksandr V. Chaianov and questioning Lenin’s conclusions that peasants were becoming proletarians in the early 20th century.14 Many local historians continued to describe events during the revolution through Soviet categories, while some questioned or went against Soviet motifs around the popularity of the Bolsheviks. Since the mid-1980s, three crucial events have spurred the regional turn in Russian history. The glasnost´ of the mid-1980s allowed Russian and Western scholars alike to undertake a full research agenda on the history of the revo­ lution in the regions. The end of Cold War restrictions opened up access to regional state and party archives, while soon thereafter historians began to ask different questions in their research about the revolution than scholars did at the height of the Cold War. Just as Russia’s regions were opening up in the 1990s, technological changes made the regions more inviting. The Internet brought Western and local Russian scholars and archivists in closer contact, allowing them to share material and work. Many regional archives, even though hard-pressed for funds, also began to publish new guides (putevoditeli), allowing scholars to identify and even see materials previously unavailable to them.15 Finally, new methodological approaches inside and outside of Russia have influenced scholars. In the West, the changing political climate and new paradigms of historical research defined the emergence of regional studies of the Russian Revolution. For many years scholars who focused largely on the ideology, personalities, and state and party politics in the center dominated Soviet studies in the West. As part of the Cold War mission, especially in the 1950s–60s, they tried to understand how the Bolsheviks came to power in October so quickly and established one-party rule. Scholars debated whether or not the Bolshevik seizure of power (and by extension the Soviet Union as a whole) was an illegit­ imate coup d’etat or a popular revolution in support of soviet power.16 With 14

  V. P. Danilov, Sovetskaia dokolkhoznaia derevnia: Naselenie, zemlepol´zovanie, khoziaistvo (Moscow: Nauka, 1977).

15

  Special mention should be given to the Soros Foundation, which financed the publi­ cation of handbooks for many regional former party archive and regional archives alike. Since 2010 or so, many archives have posted updated handbooks online. 16

  The classic examples of the two sides of this debate are, on the one hand, Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1990), who championed the coup interpretation, and on the other, Alexander Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968); Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976); and Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, 1917–1932 (New York: Oxford

Introduction: A K aleidoscope of Revolutions

9

the advance of social history in the 1960s, a pioneering group of scholars of the Russian Revolution started to ask different types of questions. Scholars at­ tempted to understand the social context of the revolution across the empire, asking what groups of peoples such as workers, soldiers, and peasants desired from political change and what were their value systems. But Soviet restric­ tions on travel and access to archives continued to limit the source base for this research.17 Even with these restrictions, Donald J. Raleigh’s early work pioneered the regional approach to the revolution with a detailed study of Saratov province in 1917.18 A major turning point came with the era of glasnost´ when the Soviet government relaxed restrictions on research and travel and scholars began to research deeply across the Soviet Union and to collaborate more closely with Soviet historians. Orlando Figes became the first Western scholar to provide an in-depth picture of rural revolution with his study of the Lower Volga Region, and several other scholars soon followed.19 Figes, University Press, 1980). This is a simplification of a much larger issue of Cold War politics, scholars’ intellectual interests, and visions of mobilizing the social sciences to understand and change the world. See David C. Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) for the backstory of this debate. The early works by William Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 1917–1921, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1935); and E. H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia, 14 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1950–78), do pay attention to the regions and take nuanced positions on the Bolshevik seizure of power and early rule. 17

 For example, Allan K. Wildman, The End of the Imperial Russian Army, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980 and 1987); Diane Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971); S. A. Smith, Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Ronald Grigor Suny, The Baku Commune, 1917–1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972); Graeme J. Gill, Peasants and Government in the Russian Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1979); Rex A. Wade, Red Guards and Workers’ Militias in the Russian Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984); John L. H. Keep, Russian Revolution: A Study in Mass Mobilization (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), etc. On the need for a social history of the revolution, see Ronald Grigor Suny, “Toward a Social History of the October Revolu­ tion,” American Historical Review 88, 1 (February 1983): 31–52. 18

 Donald J. Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer­ sity Press, 1986); A Russian Civil War Diary: Alexis Babine in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988), Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).

19

  Orlando Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). Raleigh and Figes’s works were part of a larger wave of social histories that gave us local histories, even without full access to the archives. See, for example, Esther Kingston-Mann and Timothy Mixtor, eds., Peasant Economy, Culture

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A aron B. Retish, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Sarah Badcock

Raleigh, and other Western scholars who had begun work in the provinces uncovered local political culture in the villages and towns that was guided by events of the center, but which established its own rhythms. Eventually, the two lines of research that developed largely independently in Russia and the West coalesced, and in the last 15 years or so, a new wave of scholarship emerged that is grounded in deep local archival research. This new historiography complicates our understanding of the provinces and the questions that we ask about the revolution. Historians have recently used spe­ cific case studies in the provinces to examine how state practices devised in the center were implemented. Peter Holquist’s work, for example, draws on the Don Region and focuses on how the compressed crises of war, revolution, and civil war shaped overlapping state practices on grain, population, and surveil­ lance.20 At the same time, new research also goes in the opposite direction to demonstrate how the complicated developments in the provinces influenced decisions in the center and the pace of the revolution more generally. They also focus on the role of place and space in understanding local revolutionary events.21 The work on the revolution was part of a larger trend in Russian scholar­ship that focused on the provinces. The new research both on pre- and postrevo­ lutionary Russia underscores the importance of place in creating history and reveals the diversity of histories, mixing the politics of state formation from and Politics of European Russia, 1800–1921 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). 20

  Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914– 1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). Lars Lih asks some of the same questions on grain without access from regional archives: Lih, Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914–1921 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 21

  For example, Michael C. Hickey, “Local Government and State Authority in the Provinces: Smolensk, February–June 1917,” Slavic Review 55, 4 (1996): 863–81; and Hickey, “Paper, Memory, and a Good Story: How Smolensk Got Its ‘October,’” Revolu­ tionary Russia 13, 1 (December 2000): 1–19; Tanja Penter, Odessa 1917: Revolution an der Peripherie (Vienna: Bohlau Verlag, 2000); I. V. Narskii, Zhizn´ v katastrofe: Budni naseleniia Urala v 1917–1922 gg. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2001); Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War; Sarah Badcock, Politics and the People: A Provincial History (Cambridge: Cam­bridge University Press, 2007); Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914–1922 (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 2008); Matthew Rendle, Defenders of the Motherland: The Tsarist Elite in Revolutionary Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); L. G. Novikova Provintsial´naia “kontrrevoliutsiia”: Beloe dvizhenie i Grazhdanskaia voina na Russkom Severe, 1917–1920 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011); Willard Sunderland, The Baron’s Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).

Introduction: A K aleidoscope of Revolutions

11

above and social and political change from below.22 Larger historiographical trends toward deep regional and micro studies that examined how local factors like environment, economics, and kinship shaped the historical experience or everyday life, as well as postcolonial studies that tried to uncover lost voices of colonial subjects and to overturn the dominant narratives, informed these new provincial histories.23 Regional histories of the Russian Revolution have emerged as a field where different national historiographies and broader theo­ retical approaches intersect and inform one another. Recasting the Revolution through the Regional Lens Regional perspectives of the Russian Revolution highlight several important themes of the period that are reflected in the subsequent chapters: a multitu­ dinal state, the fluidity of party politics, the importance of violence as a his­ torical agent, individual experiences, and the importance of economics and social forces. It is in these points where local experiences most closely inter­ sect with the larger political issues and where they help to explicate more general phenomena.24

22

  For just a few more recent examples, see, for example, Paul Werth on the VolgaKama Region, At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia’s Volga-Kama Region, 1827–1905 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); Mary W. Cavender on Tver´, Nests of the Gentry: Family, Estate, and Local Loyalties in Provincial Russia (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007); Robert Geraci on Kazan´, Window on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); Larry Holmes on Kirov, Grand Theater: Regional Governance in Stalin’s Russia, 1931–1941 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009); Tracy McDonald on Riazan´, Face to the Village: The Riazan’ Countryside under Soviet Rule, 1921– 1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011); Rex A. Wade and Scott J. Seregny, eds., on Saratov, Politics and Society in Provincial Russia, Saratov, 1590–1917 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989); Donald J. Raleigh, ed., Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 1917–1953 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001).

23

  For example, Christian Gras and Georges Livet, eds., Régions et régionalisme en France du XVIIIe siècle á nos jours (Vendôme: Presses universitaires de France, 1977); David Sabean, Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 24

 In this way, the editors see this volume as a regional extension of the questions raised in Diane P. Koenker, William G. Rosenberg, and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War: Explorations in Social History, ed. (Blooming­ ton: Indiana University Press, 1989). See especially pp. ix–xiii.

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A aron B. Retish, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Sarah Badcock

Regional studies reveal the grassroot mechanisms of fragmentation and the reestablishment of state power, and allow us to gain a deeper conception of the state as a whole. The transformation of the Russian state was one of the defining events of the revolution. On one hand, the state became weak and fragmented. The centralized imperial state collapsed in 1917 as power drained to the provinces. As Matthew Rendle underscores in his chapter about Mos­ cow province, during the revolutionary period “prioritizing the local was an essential part of building democracy for most ordinary people.” As a result, centrifugal forces in 1917 hit not only distant provinces, but also the center itself when authorities at every level “exerted their independence from those above.” Sarah Badcock, focusing on Nizhegorod and Kazan’ provinces, similarly demonstrates that “localism and economic interests dominated the rural population’s responses to the events of 1917” and as a result, “seats of power were multiple, overlapping and shifting.” On the other hand, protracted military conflict made the state more powerful than it had ever been. The war’s totality engendered new state powers of mass mobilization of people and resources and interventionism into its subjects’ lives. These powers only grew in the Civil War period with both the Bolsheviks’ and the Whites’ larger visions of social transformation. The reconstitution of state authority found support at the grassroots level, particularly in those territories where the local population depended on the state-organized supply of food resources or its mediation in local disputes, as L. G. Novikova demonstrates in her chapter. In another region, however, as S. V. Liubichankovskii reveals for the Southern Volga, provincial society vehemently resisted state intervention and the emergence of new layers of state bureaucracy in the form of the zemstvo. It even regarded these new selfgovernment institutions as an unnecessary burden. Regional studies allow us to contextualize and eventually to understand these seemingly contra­dictory trajectories, including the temporary weakening of the state but simulta­ neously the penetration of state institutions into the localities. Several contributions to this volume reveal the importance of local of­ ficials and local agents of power in shaping revolutionary policies. Recent his­ toriography has demonstrated how the state experimented with revolutionary policies in the provinces, notably surveillance, population politics that grouped, exiled, or even attempted to annihilate whole peoples, and the ex­ panded welfare state. Likewise, forced grain requisition was tried in specific regions and then made into universal policy. Regional studies can give greater insight not only into the grand schemes of modern state visionaries acting as local officials, but also into the challenges and distinctions between policy and practice. Studying how regional officials in the regions received and implemented the policies pronounced by the central government reveals

Introduction: A K aleidoscope of Revolutions

13

that local party members and citizens interpreted them in multiple ways and often resisted them. Peter Fraunholtz illustrates how the initiative of local agents in Penza helped to prevent excessive grain requisitioning. As a re­ sult, the province could avoid the large-scale peasant uprisings that swept neighboring Tambov province in 1920. Thus local political actors could choose among the options available to them, and as a result influenced larger political developments. Political violence performed by local state and non-state actors defined the Civil War experience in the regions. The Soviet and White states did not hesitate to exact violence on all of their enemies, real and imagined. In order to establish their control in the provinces, the Bolsheviks needed to rely on vari­ ous armed groups, including military units, workers’ militias, and the Soviet political police (the Cheka). As Stefan Karsch demonstrates in the example of Voronezh province, the Bolsheviks used their often randomly applied violence to spread terror and to further their political ends. Both the Bolsheviks and their adversaries tried to channel violence from below to fit their political goals. State-sanctioned violence (as well as violent crimes of individuals) destroyed the lives of ordinary people in towns and villages across Russia during the Civil War. Several chapters in this volume cast light on why popular democratic in­ stitutions in 1917 metastasized into an undemocratic authoritarian state during the Civil War. As scholars have spelled out, ideology, modernist ideas of the state’s need to rationalize its citizens, wartime mobilization, the Civil War it­ self, and leading personalities (namely Lenin) were all probably factors in this move. There was not just one path from the democratic decentralized state of 1917 to the one-party state that emerged from the Civil War. The chapters in this volume show that there were several local varieties of the Soviet state. In some locales, Bolsheviks were willing to rule with other parties, while in others they moved quickly toward expelling non-Bolsheviks. In other regions the Soviet state remained quite weak throughout the Civil War and could not assert complete political control. Regional studies reveal the centrality of local social organizations in shaping the political process at a grassroots level. Tanja Penter focuses on the Soviet of the Unemployed in Odessa that for several weeks challenged the power of the local soviet and cast the whole meaning of soviet power in a different light. In his contribution, Aaron Retish discusses the role of soldiers returning to Izhevsk. This huge but so far very little studied social group often played a crucial role in local politics through the revolutionary period. Returning soldiers could join the movement of the unemployed, as was the case in Odessa. In Izhevsk, though, many of them openly turned against the Bolsheviks. The contributors show the importance of local social forces and

14

A aron B. Retish, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Sarah Badcock

non-state powers in contesting both the Bolshevik regime and its adversaries. Clearly the Soviet regime could not control these social forces that held their own visions of politics. The Bolsheviks hastily and violently cracked down on these organizations in several regions, as opponents to their control of politics. Several authors in this volume also combine studies of local politics and economics with national identities. They underscore that national minorities’ experience of revolution paralleled the experiences of other social groups. They refuse to make sweeping generalizations that treat the empire’s national minorities as undifferentiated masses whose aspirations simply echoed na­ tional leaders’ demands for independence from the center. Instead, they note the multiplicity of ideas and languages of nationalist dreams and aspirations. As Daniel Schafer puts it in his study of different visions and languages of Bashkir nationalism, “the political scene among non-Russian peoples of the empire was no less broad or nuanced than among the Russians themselves.” War and revolution opened up internal debates about the nature of national communities and their perspectives in the revolutionary world. Michael Hickey shows that the Smolensk Jewish community, just like other social groups, responded to the war and revolution through new participation in public life and, in 1917, tried to realize their dreams of equality. At the same time, they too had multiple political ideas of revolution and, as Hickey reveals, continued to suffer from antipathy and anti-Jewish violence through the whole period. Mark R. Baker focuses on peasants of Kharkiv province in eastern Ukraine in the period of 1914–18 and their experiences of war, revolution, and German occupation. From his account it becomes clear that Ukrainian peasants, like Russian villagers, reacted to these events “in a decidedly local manner, reflecting their localist understanding of the world.” Their actions undermined the attempts of the Ukrainian national elites to establish a na­ tional government with German support. In contrast, in Estonia, as Karsten Brüggemann demonstrates, German occupation actually contributed to the success of the national movement as it guarded this former imperial province from Bolshevik influence for several months. Estonian independence gained popularity because of the ability of the Estonian elites to implement a nation­ ally specific land reform. Finland’s path to independence, according to E. Iu. Dubrovskaia, was quite different. To a significant degree, it was facilitated by the joint actions of Finnish workers and Russian soldiers and sailors stationed in Finland during World War I. Although their goals in the revolution di­ verged, their mutual radicalization in 1917 weakened the control of the center over this former imperial periphery. Thus the complex patterns of national revolutions included particular local combinations of political and social fac­ tors as well as external forces that influenced the events, be it in the Urals, Smolensk, Eastern Ukraine, Finland, Estonia, or Odessa.

Introduction: A K aleidoscope of Revolutions

15

Provincial histories successfully deconstruct the central narrative of events by revealing a multiplicity of local agencies and interests, and set an agenda for further research that will eventually lead to a new synthesis of Russia’s revolutionary experience. Although it is still too early to see the concrete shape of this new narrative, its most important components are already evident. They include the crucial role of the state and its local agents, the formative role of revolutionary violence, and the complexity of social and national responses to the revolution in their localized contexts. Looking at Russia’s revolutions through the image of a kaleidoscope allows us to see the ever-changing patterns and interconnections of the period. In the end, viewing the revolution through its local and multihued patterns reveals the multifaceted complexity of human experiences.

Map of European Russia, 1914 by University of Wisconsin–Madison Cartography Laboratory

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia: Moscow Province, 1914–22 Matthew Rendle

Several excellent studies of the decentralization of power in Russia at the pro­ vincial level during the revolutionary period have argued that “the periphery determines the center” within a nuanced analysis of the interplay between provincial and national forces.1 This relationship between the local and the center was complex. On the one hand, the powerful centrifugal forces push­ ing provinces apart and permitting localism to flourish during this period were aided by central policies. On the other hand, these forces went far beyond the province, extending into the districts (uezdy), townships (volosti), and urban boroughs (raiony) that made up Russia’s rural and urban spaces. At every level, authorities exerted their independence from those above, while simultaneously struggling to combat the autonomous actions of those below. This chapter explores the extent and impact of localism through a study of Moscow province, with an emphasis on the centrifugal forces operating within the province and across the revolutionary period. Russia’s rulers had been struggling to balance centrifugal and centripetal forces within their vast empire for decades, and the pressures of war and revolution destroyed the uneasy equilibrium that they had achieved.2 This chapter emphasizes how escalating tensions prior to 1914 had expanded during the war, contributing The author is very grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding some of the archival research in this chapter, and to Steven Marks and the editors for their valuable com­ ments on earlier drafts. 1

 Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 15. See also Sarah Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914– 1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

2

 David Saunders, “Regional Diversity in the Later Russian Empire,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, no. 10 (2000): 143–63. Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 19–44.

20 Matthew Rendle

to the collapse of tsarism. Revolution enabled localism to flourish and Moscow province had not only achieved a large degree of autonomy from the govern­ ment in Petrograd by summer 1917, but district authorities had asserted their independence from provincial control, and the same process was underway in townships. Prioritizing the local was an essential part of building democracy for most ordinary people and had a fatal impact on the new Provisional Government’s ability to govern effectively. The Bolsheviks’ weaknesses ex­ acerbated centrifugal tendencies, and the Civil War was as much about re­ storing the authority of central government to recalcitrant localities as it was about military victories over political opponents. It took until 1922 for the equilibrium to be restored. Local Bolsheviks may have challenged the author­ ity of the center, but they shared its beliefs and policies. Their reliance on violence, moreover, led them to realize that unity and centralization would help them to consolidate Bolshevik power locally. While the city of Moscow has been the subject of some excellent studies, its looming presence over the surrounding province has encouraged scholars to look elsewhere for a “typical” provincial experience of the revolution. The first Soviet historians of the period set the scene by focusing overwhelmingly on the city, with only passing mentions of the surrounding province.3 There was some coverage in subsequent collections of documents,4 but detailed studies remained focused on urban events, including prominent district towns and factories.5 Western historians have also focused overwhelmingly 3

 See, for example, “Moskovskii Sovet rabochikh, krest´ianskikh i krasnoarmeiskikh deputatov,” in Krasnaia Moskva 1917–1920 gg. (Moscow: Izdatel´stvo Moskovskogo soveta, 1920); and N. N. Ovsiannikov, ed., Oktiabr´skoe vosstanie v Moskve: Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo, Moskovskoe otdelenie, 1922). 4

 G. D. Kostomarov, ed., Podgotovka i pobeda oktiabr´skoi revoliutsii v Moskve: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1957); G. D. Kostomarov, V. A. Kondrat´ev, and L. I. Iakovlev, eds., Oktiabr´ 1917 v Moskve i Moskovskoi gubernii: Obzor dokumentov Gosudarstvennogo arkhiva Oktiabr´skoi revoliutsii i sotsialisticheskogo stroitel´stva Moskovskoi oblasti (Moscow: TsGAOR, 1957); and Institut istorii partii. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Oktiabr´skoi revoliutsii Moskovskoi oblasti, Uprochenie sovetskoi vlasti v Moskve i Moskovskoi gubernii: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1958). 5

 See Institut istorii (Akademiia nauk SSSR), Istoriia Moskvy, 6 vols. (Moscow: Aka­ demii nauk SSSR, 1952–59). The best histories of the revolutionary period remain A. Ia. Grunt, Moskva 1917-i: Revoliutsiia i kontrrevoliutsiia (Moscow: Nauka, 1976); and V. A. Klimenko, Bor´ba s kontrrevoliutsiei v Moskve, 1917–1920 (Moscow: Nauka, 1978). Moscow also serves as a prominent case study in I. I. Mints, Istoriia velikogo oktiabria, 3 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 1967–72), especially 1: 623–82 and 3: 7–96, 191–306. A rare at­ tempt to cover the province is Iu. S. Aksenov, “Trudiashchiesia Moskovskoi gubernii v boiakh za pobedu oktiabria,” in Ustanovlenie sovetskoi vlasti na mestakh v 1917–1918 godakh, 2 vols. (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1959), 2: 15–110. On a district town, see G. P. Efremtsev, Pobeda sovetov v Kolomne (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1957).

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia

21

on the city,6 although some of the issues covered in this chapter have been examined effectively for other provinces.7 It is true that Moscow province was not an average province. It was rela­ tively small in terms of size compared to others in European Russia, but it was the most densely populated. According to the 1897 census, the province covered roughly 33,271 square kilometers and contained 2,433,356 people, of which 1,042,629 (43 percent) lived in Moscow.8 Moscow was the empire’s second largest city, its ancient capital, and the center of patriotic sentiment.9 The city made a “stunning impression” on S. I. Kanatchikov, a peasant from Volokolamskii district, with its multistoried buildings, brightly lit streets, and numerous shops.10 Even a scion of a prominent noble family and future member of the city’s Duma, M. V. Golitsyn, recalled Moscow as very distinct from provincial towns, with large streets, multistoried buildings, trams, cars, telephones, electricity, and other modern amenities.11 The opportunities for cultural and leisure activities and the consumption of material goods and were matched only by St. Petersburg.12 6

 The best studies are Timothy J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); and Richard Sakwa, Soviet Commu­ nists in Power: A Study of Moscow during the Civil War, 1918–21 (Basingstoke, UK: Mac­ millan, 1988). There are excellent studies of urban life in Moscow by Mauricio Borrero, Diane Koenker, Kevin Murphy, and Simon Pirani, all cited below. See also William J. Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918–1929 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987). 7  In addition to the studies cited in n. 1, see Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Rev­ olution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); N. N. Kabytova, Vlast´ i obshchestvo Rossiiskoi provintsii v revoliutsii 1917 goda (Samara: Samarskii universitet, 2002); and Donald J. Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986). 8

 Kimitaka Matsuzato, “The Concept of ‘Space’ in Russian History: Regionalization from the Late Imperial Period to the Present,” in Empire and Society: Approaches to Russian History, ed. Teruyuki Hara and Matsuzato (Sapporo: Slavic Research Centre, Hokkaido University, 1997), 208–09; Krasnaia Moskva, 51. 9

 See Richard Wortman, “Moscow and Petersburg: The Problem of Political Center in Tsarist Russia, 1881–1914,” in Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual and Politics since the Middle Ages, ed. Sean Wilentz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 244–71. 10

 Reginald E. Zelnik, trans. and ed., A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: The Autobiography of Semen Ivanovich Kanatchikov (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986), 7.

11

 M. V. Golitsyn, Moi vospominaniia, 1873–1917 (Moscow: Russkii mir, 2007), 432.

12

 See Sally West, I Shop in Moscow: Advertising and the Creation of a Consumer Culture in Late Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2011); and Marjorie

22 Matthew Rendle

The size and importance of the city colored the entire province, while the spread of industry to surrounding towns, such as Bogorodsk, Kolomna, Orekhovo-Zuevo, and Serpukhov, provided unusual opportunities, which were magnified by a relatively extensive railway network radiating out from Moscow. As a result, few peasants in the province were totally dependent on agriculture and there were strong urban–rural links. S. T. Semenov, a former peasant, recalled the lure of the bright lights to young and old alike, male and female, as factory labor or domestic service offered a path out of the village.13 Even in Moskovskii district, where the proximity of the city encouraged dairy and market garden industries, 88 percent of families included someone working outside agriculture. In much of the province, the figure was over 95 percent.14 Nevertheless, there was wide diversity between districts. Taking Moscow out of the equation, Moskovskii and Bogorodskii districts accounted for 30 percent of the province’s population, with the three smallest districts— Mozhaiskii, Ruzskii, and Vereiskii—accounting for only 12 percent. In 1899, Moskovskii district accounted for 39 percent of the total value of the property in the province, with the next wealthiest district, Bogorodskii, lagging well behind with 13.3 percent. At the bottom, in the west of the province, Ruzsk, Volokolamskii, and Mozhaiskii districts only made up 1.4–1.6 percent each.15 The district capitals of Ruza and Volokolamsk, along with Bronnitsy and Vereia, were not served by railways and, for all their economic advantages, remained relatively remote and rural. Despite the presence of Moscow, the province was a diverse amalgamation of the industrial and the agricultural, the modern and the remote, all of which helped foster localism within it. Tensions between central and regional government had been growing in Moscow in the early 20th century, particularly after the restrictions placed on organs of local self-government after 1905. Moscow’s state-appointed pre­ fect interfered in various issues, from policing to health care, and blocked numerous resolutions of the city Duma, while the provincial zemstvo board clashed frequently with government ministries. One Duma politician recalled notable anti-government sentiments surrounding the municipal elections of

L. Hilton, Selling to the Masses: Retailing in Russia, 1880–1930 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). 13

 S. T. Semenov, Dvadtsat´ piat´ let v derevne (Petrograd: Zhizn´ i znanie, 1915), 5.

14

 Anita B. Baker, “Deterioration or Development? The Peasant Economy of Moscow Province prior to 1914,” Russian History 5, 1 (1978): 13.

15

 D. N. Shipov, Vospominaniia i dumy o perezhitom (Moscow: Rosspen, 2007), 650.

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia

23

1908,16 while the elections of 1912 saw gains by liberals, who proposed the zemstvo activist, Prince G. E. L´vov, as mayor. The state rejected him and suggested alternative candidates. This was common at the time, but local poli­ ticians saw this intervention as an “affront” to their authority.17 A stalemate ensued; the Duma would not select an acceptable alternative, while ministers felt that enforcing their candidate might prompt social unrest.18 This standoff reflected the growing confidence and ambition of local elective authorities along with the state’s increasing awareness of its limitations and the potential of conflict to lead to political and social instability in the city. Nonetheless, the organs of elective self-government in the province barely represented its inhabitants. In 1912, Moscow’s Duma was elected by 3,407 of the 9,431 people eligible (0.2 percent of the population). Those elected were businessmen (63 percent), professionals and intelligentsia (26 percent), and nobles, officers, and agronomists (11 percent).19 It was hardly surprising that people looked for alternative ways of participating in public life. The pre­ war years, for example, saw a rapid growth in the numbers of unions and associations in Moscow involving all social groups.20 These formed the heart of an expanding and vibrant civil society that provided an outlet for those discontented with tsarist Russia. The zemstvos were more representative; peasants formed 45.7 percent of the provincial board in 1912, up from 37.5 percent in 1906, and figures were better still in district zemstvos, but propertied society was still dispropor­ tionately represented.21 However, there had always been tensions between the provincial zemstvo and the city Duma, with the zemstvo alarmed at the ex­ pansion of the Duma’s influence over areas surrounding Moscow, while the Duma resented the zemstvo’s right to levy taxes on the urban population and the city’s lack of influence in the zemstvo. Moreover, there were longstanding tensions between provincial and district zemstvos. The former had called for greater uniformity among district zemstvos in terms of taxes, wages, and financial transparency since the late 19th century. In addition, unlike other 16  M. M. Novikov, Ot Moskvy do N´iu-iorka (Moscow: Moskovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2009), 107. 17

 Golitsyn, Vospominaniia, 444–46.

18

 Robert W. Thurston, Liberal City, Conservative State: Moscow and Russia’s Urban Crisis, 1906–14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 79–83, 206–08.

19

 Ibid., 61–63.

20

 See I. S. Rozental´, Moskva na pereput´e: Vlast´ i obshchestvo v 1905–1914 gg. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2004). 21

 A. G. Vazhenin and P. V. Galkin, Moskovskoe zemstvo v nachale XX veka: Iz optya regi­ onal´nogo samoupravleniia (Moscow: Izdatel´stvo MGOU, 2004), 17.

24 Matthew Rendle

provinces, taxes from the city went to the provincial zemstvo, not the city’s district zemstvo. This provided the provincial zemstvo with the financial means to broaden its activities and subsidize district zemstvos but alienated local activists who resented the erosion of their independence, which re­ sulted from subsidies. Furthermore, they felt that money was wasted by the provincial zemstvo on unnecessary projects and often thought that it seemed to be a superfluous layer of bureaucracy.22 The First World War The First World War placed huge pressures on the province, exacerbating exist­ ing tensions and creating new ones. Despite the mobilization of 25 percent of its workforce, Moscow’s population rose from 1,617,700 in 1912 to 2,017,173 by February 1917.23 This included 100,000 additional soldiers, thousands of injured military personnel, and 150,000 refugees. The latter alone cost the city 500,000 rubles a month.24 Many of the small-scale firms that dominated the economy struggled to replace conscripted workers, with the authorities pri­ oritizing large-scale industry. By 1916, there were 39 percent more industrial workers in the province, and 90 percent of workers were involved in defenserelated work. The domination of the textile industry was overturned; whereas 37.7 percent of workers had been in textiles in 1913 compared to 15 percent in metallurgy, by 1917, 27.6 percent worked in metallurgy and 24 percent in textiles. The percentage of female and child workers grew, while wage in­ creases failed to match inflation outside of the defense industries. The cost of food doubled between 1914 and 1916, and doubled again by February 1917.25 Unsurprisingly, conflicts intensified over pay, hours, and conditions, while the increased mobility of workers and the growth in unions and soci­ eties fostered improved networks between factories, and between political parties and ordinary people. Socialists, in particular, demonstrated growing levels of organization and influence. The strike movement gathered pace and became more politicized. Statistics vary, but tens of thousands of workers were involved in strikes in 1915 alone.26 In May 1915, Moscow suffered several 22

 Shipov, Vospominaniia, 64–86; N. M. Mel´nikov, “19 let na zemskoi sluzhbe,” Rossiiskii arkhiv, no. 17 (2008): 238.

23 24

 Krasnaia Moskva, 51.

 Colton, Moscow, 73; Thurston, Liberal City, 192.

25

 Diane Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 23–26, 85–87. 26

 Leopold H. Haimson and Eric Brian, “Labor Unrest in Imperial Russia during the First World War: A Quantitative Analysis and Interpretation,” in Strikes, Social Conflict,

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia

25

days of ostensibly anti-German riots, but many attacks were on factory and shop owners, managers, foremen, and technical workers, reflecting elements of class conflict.27 As well as exposing inert and divided authorities, fearful of social disorder, the riots marked a turning point, with the period afterwards seeing a rapid rise in strikes and in public expressions of dissatisfaction with the war effort.28 As much of Moscow’s textile industry was not actually in the city, but in the surrounding towns of Bogorodsk, Kolomna, Orekhovo-Zuevo, and Ser­ pukhov (and many villages engaged in work for textile factories), workingclass concerns and activism spread beyond Moscow. In addition, villages were hit hard as conscription left a shortage of labor, the long-standing absence of agricultural machinery was exacerbated as industry focused on the war, and the availability of manufactured goods declined. Living standards seemed to be falling due to higher taxes, the military requisition of horses, the price and shortage of crucial products (such as sugar), and the impact of inflation on the real value of the state aid (paek) provided to soldiers’ wives, while death loomed large.29 Subsistence riots, strikes, and general unrest became common. Shortages of sugar, for instance, caused several days of rioting in Bogorodsk in October 1915, which prompted strikes involving 80,000 workers from nearby textile factories that continued into November. Similar confrontations were frequent in towns and villages across the province.30 In February 1915, the chairman of the Moscow Stock Exchange reported to the Ministry of Trade and Industry that provincial governors were taking eco­ nomic decisions into their own hands, resulting in every province “turning into a sort of independent state.”31 National economic unity disappeared and the First World War: An International Perspective, ed. Haimson and Giulio Sapelli (Milan: Fetrinelli, 1992), 407. 27

 Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 31–54. 28

 Kevin Murphy, Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory (Oxford: Berghahn, 2005), 27–36. 29

 The term paek is used to mean a monetary food allowance throughout this chapter. It can refer to a food ration or an in-kind food allowance, but local officials only ever discussed it as a monetary allowance during this period in the sources used here.

30

 Barbara Alpern Engel, “Not By Bread Alone: Subsistence Riots in Russia during World War I,” Journal of Modern History, 69, 4 (1997): 696–721. Efremtsev discusses strikes in Kolomna in 1915–16 (Pobeda, 20–21).

31

 Quoted in David Saunders, “The First World War and the End of Tsarism,” in Reinterpreting Revolutionary Russia: Essays in Honour of James D. White, ed. Ian D. Thatcher (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 63.

26 Matthew Rendle

as some areas received priority based on their perceived importance to the war. This was evident in food supply. Official procurement policies devolved responsibility to provincial agents, usually zemstvos, and employed tactics— prioritizing the military, embargoes on selling grain and fixed prices—that operated on a province-by-province basis, encouraging provinces to focus on their own interests in the battle for scarce resources, from food supplies to transport. For agents, the military came first, then their own province, and then other provinces. This had severe implications for Moscow province, which relied on imported food supplies and was forced to search desperately as planned suppliers failed to deliver.32 These economic problems exacerbated tensions in the province. Banning trade between provinces prompted unrest in towns near provincial borders, such as Sergiev Posad,33 and encouraged speculation.34 The desire to defend local interests led Moscow’s mayor to seek to restrict the tax paid by the city to the provincial zemstvo and ensure that what was paid was spent within the city.35 Provincial organs quickly devolved responsibility for food procurement and transport to district zemstvos, which also administered the paek and were at the frontline of popular unrest. This only encouraged districts to prioritize their interests over provincial ones. A meeting of provincial governors in 1916 noted discord between provincial and district zemstvos, and a lack of capable personnel in district zemstvos, although Moscow was apparently better than most.36 The vast majority of social groups and organizations continued to contrib­ ute enthusiastically to the war effort throughout. Muscovites played a leading role in establishing the All-Russian Union of Zemstvos, the All-Russian Union of Towns (and a joint body, Zemgor), the War Industries Committees, and numerous charities. Yet the state viewed all this suspiciously, seeing any organization as posing a political threat; even expressions of national patriotism and unity exacerbated divisions between regional organizations 32

 Kimitaka Matsuzato, “Interregional Conflicts and the Collapse of Tsarism: The Real Reason for the Food Crisis in Russia after the Autumn of 1916,” in Emerging Democracy in Late Imperial Russia: Case Studies on Local Self-Government (the Zemstvos), State Duma Elections, the Tsarist Government, and the State Council before and during World War I, ed. Mary Schaeffer Conroy (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1998), 243–300. See also Lars T. Lih, Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914–1921 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 33

 F. V. Shlippe, “Avtobiograficheskie zapiski,” Rossiiskii arkhiv, no. 17 (2008): 140.

34

 Moskovskie vedomosti, 8 January 1916, 3.

35

 Golitsyn, Vospominaniia, 556–57.

36

 “Soveshchanie gubernatorov v 1916 godu,” Krasnyi arkhiv 33, 2 (1929): 150–51, 163.

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia

27

and central power.37 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that by January 1916, Moscow newspaper columnists were debating whether the province (and Russia) would be better off with greater decentralization.38 Despair at the inadequacies of the tsarist government and its unwillingness to countenance reform became more pronounced in Moscow as the war pro­ gressed. Moscow politicians were influential in the formation of a national progressive bloc in autumn 1915, a coalition of liberals and conservatives in the State Duma and State Council. It called for a “ministry of confidence” that would see the appointment of acceptable ministers, greater accountability in government, and a shift of power to the State Duma. The call to devolve greater responsibilities to public organizations found support in Moscow’s Duma and zemstvos.39 The 1916 city Duma elections took place under numerous “left political slogans,”40 resulting in a liberal majority, sufficient for the state to annul the results and force the old Duma to continue. Yet these were de­ mands that all social groups sympathized with, even the tsar’s traditional supporters. Moscow’s nobles led a campaign within their national body, the United Nobility, which resulted in a resolution of November 1916 echoing the bloc’s demands.41 This all may have been just “words, words and words,” as a Moscow University professor despaired in his diary,42 but these years saw a push towards local autonomy in the hope that it would pave the way for greater democracy. And Moscow province was far from unique in this respect. Some problems, such as industrial concerns and inflation, were greater in Moscow than elsewhere, as were pressures caused by expanding military and refugee populations, which all undoubtedly contributed to high levels of strikes and the unusually virulent anti-German riots in 1915. Yet these problems were present throughout Russia to a greater or lesser extent; the issues raised above

37

 The bitterness of Zemgor activists remained evident in Tikhon Polner, Russian Local Government during the War and the Union of Zemstvos (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930), 84–88.

38

 Moskovskie vedomosti, 8 January 1916, 2–3; 16 January 1916, 2.

39

 Moskovskie vedomosti, 4 July 1915, 4; 19 August 1915, 3.

40

 Novikov, Ot Moskvy do N´iu-iorka, 108.

41

 Tsentral´nyi istoricheskii arkhiv Moskvy (TsIAM) f. 4 (Moscow Noble Assembly), op. 3, d. 83, ll. 1–11 (report by the provincial marshal, P. A. Bazilevskii, 13 January 1917). For more details, see Matthew Rendle, Defenders of the Motherland: The Tsarist Elite in Revolutionary Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 19–29.

42

 M. M. Bogoslovskii, Dnevniki 1913–1919 (Moscow: Vremia, 2011), 75.

28 Matthew Rendle

were ones that all provinces were grappling to overcome and the rise of cen­ trifugal forces across Russia helped to fatally weaken tsarism.43 1917 in Moscow Province The revolution started in Petrograd, but by the time news of Nicholas II’s abdication and the formation of the Provisional Government had reached Moscow, various groups had already seized the initiative, which they proved unwilling to relinquish.44 On 1 March, the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ Deputies was formed, dominated by Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), while a Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies followed on 4 March. Subsequent weeks saw soviets formed in the urban boroughs of Moscow and district towns, representing workers, peasants, or soldiers, or all three. On 27 May, the first provincial soviet was formed.45 The other key organization in Moscow, the Committee of Public Organizations (CPO), was also formed on 1 March, chaired by N. M. Kishkin (Kadet). Within weeks, it expanded to include sev­ eral hundred representatives from the Duma, zemstvos, industry, business, military, education, health, cooperatives, railways, workers, lawyers, women, and clergy.46 The CPO took the Duma’s powers over business, infrastructure, education, and other areas, and it sponsored similar committees in urban bor­ oughs. Comparable committees were established spontaneously in district towns, but were usually more democratic in that they were popularly elected by some means. As in other provinces, the dual power system that dominated national poli­ tics during 1917—the divide between government and soviets, representing a divide between the propertied and lower social groups—was not as obvious in Moscow. The soviet had 20 representatives on the CPO and district soviets were similarly represented on district committees. The CPO also mobilized unions and professional associations to ensure that important groups were represented. Its finance committee, for instance, included representatives from

43

 For example, I. B. Belova, Pervaia mirovaia voina i rossiiskaia provintsiia: 1914–fevral´ 1917 g. (Moscow: AIRO-XXI, 2011), which focuses on Kaluga and Orel provinces; and Retish, Russia’s Peasants, 22–63, on Viatka province. 44

 As was the case in most localities; see, e.g., Kabytova, Vlast´ i obshchestvo, 50–78.

45

 For detailed accounts of the February Revolution in Moscow, see E. N. Burdzhalov, Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia: Moskva. Front. Periferiia (Moscow: Nauka, 1971), 7–89; and Grunt, Moskva 1917-i, 63–105.

46

 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) f. 1788 (Ministry of Internal Affairs), op. 2, d. 114, ll. 77–78 (journal of CPO meeting, 16 March 1917).

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia

29

30 groups, while 36 were represented on its transport committee.47 This, in turn, encouraged more professional and social groups to mobilize in the belief that their views would be heard. Societies, trade unions, factory committees, and soldiers’ committees all took on new authority. Yet dual power retained an underlying presence, particularly in the dif­ ficulties faced by the CPO and the soviet in delineating spheres of activity. Ideally, soviets would deal with issues impinging on ordinary people’s lives, while committees oversaw broader concerns, but key issues such as land and food supply fell into both categories. Moreover, the government’s solution— forming land and food supply committees—only served to create more organs competing for power at provincial, district, and township level. All were often paralyzed by debate. Moscow’s soviet saw heated arguments over contentious issues—the eight-hour working day, war, food supply—and resolutions often served to drive a wedge between workers, soldiers, and peasants, and between socialists and ordinary people.48 These problems were exacerbated by the Provisional Government’s fail­ ure to exert a strong, unifying force over provincial life. Its plans for local government were based on the Duma and zemstvos taking control once they had been re-elected on a democratic franchise.49 Zemstvo chairmen were ap­ pointed as provincial and district commissars to exert government power locally and oversee the activities of committees. However, the emphasis on the Duma and zemstvos clashed with popular preferences for committees and soviets, and the appointment of commissars challenged desires for local autonomy. The CPO removed the government’s preferred candidates, instead electing Kishkin as Moscow’s commissar and A. A. Eiler (Volokolamskii district zemstvo chairman) as provincial commissar. Similarly, district com­ mittees asserted their own authority, and by late March all district commissars had either been elected by committees or approved by them. It was not so much that committees wanted different types of people—commissars remained zemstvo activists at first—but they were determined to assert their author­ ity.50 The government continued to argue that it had the right to appoint 47

 Ibid., ll. 81, 117 (journals of CPO meetings, 16 March and 19 April 1917).

48

 Koenker, Moscow Workers, 106–29.

49

 Daniel Orlovsky, “Reform during Revolution: Governing the Provinces in 1917,” in Reform in Russia and the USSR: Past and Prospects, ed. Robert O. Crummey (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 100–25.

50  TsIAM f. 2340 (Moscow Provincial Commissar), op. 1, d. 2, l. 15 (list of district com­ missars, 7 April 1917); d. 107, ll. 38–39 (report on the activities of district commissars, 10 May 1917). Moscow was not unique. By late April, only 42 percent of provincial commissars initially appointed by the government remained in post and 40 percent

30 Matthew Rendle

those respon­sible for its policies, but at a congress of Moscow provincial rep­ resentatives on 10 May 1917, Eiler’s deputy, E. A. Litkens, recognized the need to find a balance between supporting central authority and ensuring that such authority did not remove local initiative. A delegate from Klinskii district was less conciliatory—all questions should be solved locally; the government did not know the whole of Russia (and, by implication, Moscow did not know Mos­ cow province) and it must consider the voices of the people. As Mark Baker has outlined in his chapter in this volume, a “localist worldview” or “villagism” characterized how people responded to the government’s policies.51 Ultimately, most commissars felt responsible to the district committees that elected them, and not the government, particularly since many also served on other local bodies. The regular meetings of the province’s district commissars saw individual commissars defend the interests of their district, leading to conflicts with each other and official policy. On 9 May, they even agreed not to implement unsuitable government orders without question;52 what was unsuitable depended on how policies impacted on their district. In any case, districts usually enacted their own policies irrespective of the meetings’ resolutions (a similar process occurred in townships, judging by the frequent complaints of unauthorized activities from district commissars). Moreover, most districts suffered frequent, disruptive changes of commissar (one was on its fourth by October), while the Vereiskii district commissar re­ mained out of contact for most of the year and no-one knew about events there beyond rumors of administrative chaos.53 Similarly, a barrier existed between Moscow and its province, as commissars were unable to cover the province’s most important city effectively. Although the commissar of Mos­ cow district was a regular attendee of meetings and covered the city in his reports, the city’s commissar, Kishkin, was not subject to Eiler’s authority as provincial commissar and did not attend any meetings. The chaotic nature of public finances encouraged localism further. Only ten of the province’s fifteen main towns were collecting the full amount of of district commissars; I. A. Tropov, Revoliutsiia i provintsiia: Mestnaia vlast´ v Rossii (fevral´–oktiabr´ 1917 g.). Monografiia (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii Dom, 2011), 102. 51

 TsIAM f. 2340, op. 1, d. 107, ll. 42–44ob. (minutes). The same issues occurred else­ where: for example, see a debate in Smolensk’s provincial council on 25–28 May 1917, reprinted in Competing Voices from the Russian Revolution: Fighting Words, ed. Michael C. Hickey (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011), 279–94. See also Hickey, “Local Government and State Authority in the Provinces: Smolensk, February–June 1917,” Slavic Review 55, 4 (1996): 863–81; and the chapter by Sarah Badcock in this volume.

52

 TsIAM f. 2340, op. 1, d. 106, l. 42 (minutes of a meeting of district commissars [hereafter “Minutes”], 9 May 1917).

53

 Ibid., ll. 38, 116–17 (“Minutes,” 6 May and 9 September 1917).

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia

31

taxes on the eve of 1917, with three only managing 60 percent, and the situa­ tion deteriorated rapidly after the revolution.54 The state struggled to find suf­ ficient funds for local government; people stopped paying taxes, authorities could not enforce compliance, and inflation eroded the sums collected. Eiler appealed for people to pay taxes for the revolution, and sanctioned collections in townships and a “contribution” to fund the wages of local officials.55 Most money, though, came from district initiatives, either utilizing the existing funds and tax-raising powers of the zemstvos or issuing new taxes. From its conception, the Volokolamskii district committee relied on a grant from the district zemstvo and a tax on firewood.56 However, zemstvo funds dried up as it struggled to collect taxes and a range of “revolutionary” taxes emerged, varying in type and severity between and within districts. A tax on factory profits, for example, ranged between 5 percent and 28 percent in Bronnitskii and Zvenigorodskii districts respectively, while in Klinskii district, some land was taxed at four times the rate of other land.57 Nevertheless, the rate of compliance was low in most areas and it was hardly surprising that what funds were collected usually remained within townships and districts despite pressure from above. A similar patchwork of practices can be seen in the key area of food sup­ ply. In March, only 600 wagons of supplies had arrived in the province, not the expected 1,700, fueling shortages and inflation. Four urban boroughs in Moscow were suffering “acute” problems and several had problems, while the Podol´skii district commissar claimed that costs had risen by 480 percent in his district.58 Simmering discontent often erupted, as it did elsewhere (such as Kazan´ and Nizhegorod as Sarah Badcock notes in this volume), particularly where the distribution networks were disorganized or lacked transparency. In Ozery (Kolomenskii district), shortages were compounded when a local mill broke down, but the authorities did not say this when they reduced the level of rations suddenly. Workers descended on the local cooperative, de­ manded that it release its reserves, and broke in when told there were none. The cooperative had just had a delivery that had not yet been distributed and this seemed to confirm workers’ suspicions that grain was being concealed. 54

 A. V. Mamaev, “Krizis munitsipal´nykh finansov v Rossii v 1917 g.,” Voprosy istorii, no. 2 (2010): 73.

55

 TsIAM f. 2340, op. 1, d. 106, ll. 40, 42, 49, 71 (“Minutes,” May and July 1917).

56

 Izvestiia Volokolamskogo uezdnogo komissara, 1 April 1917, 2.

57

 TsIAM f. 2340, op. 1, d. 106, ll. 77–80 (“Minutes,” 29 July 1917).

58

 GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 114, l. 46 (report by the city commissar’s office to Kishkin, 18 March 1917); TsIAM f. 2340, op. 1, d. 106, ll. 21, 32ob. (“Minutes,” 22 and 29 April 1917).

32 Matthew Rendle

Only a concerted effort by various authorities prevented violence.59 Yet most districts relied on these less transparent methods rather than following the example of Volokolamskii, which established a supply committee in each township with a delegate from every village.60 The government’s solution was to establish food supply committees, but these were slow to emerge and their reliance on peasant cooperation struggled in the face of the “self-protection” (localism) practiced to aid daily survival.61 Arguments over the paek also fueled localism. District commissars knew that it was major source of social unrest, as monthly inflation of over 10 percent reduced its real value and key groups were excluded.62 A meeting of district commissars introduced greater transparency by transferring responsibility to township committees (rather than district zemstvos) and vowed to give equal credit to children born out of wedlock, civil marriages, and families of all those involved in the war, even if not at the front. But arguments arose over the relative costs of living within the province as no one wanted their district deemed to require a lower paek than others. Eventually, they agreed that urban costs of living were higher than rural costs within districts, and that major towns were costlier than others. Three tiers emerged: Moscow, Bogorodsk, Pavlovskii Posad, and Podol´sk; Kolomna, Sergiev Posad, and Serpukhov; and everywhere else. The extent of local autonomy, however, makes it doubtful that everyone conformed and revisions were soon proposed.63 Against the backdrop of supply problems, inflation, insufficient state aid, and ineffective policies, it is hardly surprising that social unrest continued to escalate in 1917. Overall, the level of rural unrest in Moscow province was lower than in other areas, such as the Black Earth region or the Volga, and differed between districts, with treble the incidences in Bronnitskii, Klinskii, and Ruzskii districts, for example, than in Moskovskii, Vereiskii, or 59

 GARF f. 1791 (Central Militia Board), op. 2, d. 205, ll. 12–13 (letter from provincial commissar, 14 June 1917). 60

 TsIAM f. 2340, op. 1, d. 106, ll. 20–21 (“Minutes,” 22 April 1917).

61

 Lih, Bread and Authority, 66–81.

62

 Inflation figures are taken from the debates of local officials. A later attempt to quan­ tify what was largely unquantifiable suggested that prices for some products rose by up to 1000 percent in 1916–17 compared to 1915–16, with pressures particularly acute in winter and spring. Rises in wages lagged well behind. See Statisticheskii ezhegodnik g. Moskvy i Moskovskoi gubernii 1914–1923 gg. sostavlen statisticheskim otdelom Moskovskogo soveta. Vypusk I (Sel´skokhoziaistvennyi obzor Moskovskoi gubernii za 1916–1923 gg.) (Mos­ cow: Izdanie statisticheskogo otdela Moskovskogo soveta, 1925), 226–30, 234–38. 63

 TsIAM f. 2340, op. 1, d. 106, ll. 15–16, 32–3 (“Minutes,” 15 and 29 April 1917), 109 (resolution, mid-August 1917).

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia

33

Zvenigorodskii districts prior to July 1917.64 The state’s land committees often assessed peasant actions favorably to maintain influence locally, and were viewed suspiciously by landowners. Moscow’s authorities placed more faith in concil­iatory chambers, which were designed to bring together all parties in the countryside—landowners, peasants, and the state—to resolve disputes. Yet districts reacted differently; some embraced them, while others thought they increased peasant suspicions.65 Either way, it was difficult to enforce their resolutions, while Eiler admitted that he did not know what actions dis­ trict commissars were taking most of the time, as they did not bother to notify him.66 A similar situation existed in urban areas; the authorities fielded comp­ laints from both sides, ranging from workers’ protests about conditions and closures, to owners’ protests about absenteeism and unreasonable demands. Strikes increased steadily and became more politicized. Moscow itself was more strike-prone than Petrograd, but the province was calmer than Petrograd province and, indeed, some other provinces.67 Just as in rural areas, these complaints highlighted the lack of central authority. A complaint con­ cerning the unauthorized seizure of a Moscow metal factory, for example, was first made to the Ministry of Trade and Industry who, lacking the means to enforce order, transferred it to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who passed it to Eiler, who sent it to Kishkin, who gave it to the Committee of Workers of Moscow Industrial Region. The complaint was made on 1 June, took until 26 July to reach the committee, and nothing was heard until mid-August when the militia denied that there had been a seizure.68 The inability to enforce compliance at various levels was a major problem. Plans to create a militia as a revolutionary alternative to the tsarist-era police developed slowly. Some districts forged ahead, but there were financial problems, prompting disputes over whether each district should have the same number of personnel or if some, like Moscow, deserved more on higher wages, and there was a struggle over control. The provincial authorities had to accept the election of militiamen at township level, but tried to reserve the right to confirm these, set guidelines to foster quality, and appoint those 64

 D. V. Kovalev, Podmoskovnoe krest´ianstvo v perelomnoe desiatiletie 1917–1927 (Moscow: Prometei, 2000), 133.

65

 TsIAM f. 2340, op. 1, d. 106, ll. 22–23 (“Minutes,” 22 April 1917).

66

 GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 115, l. 31ob. (letter from Eiler to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 24 July 1917). 67

 Diane Koenker and William G. Rosenberg, Strikes and Revolution in Russia, 1917 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 312–14. 68

 GARF f. 1791, op. 2, d. 205, ll. 28–29, 38, 59 (correspondence, June–August 1917).

34 Matthew Rendle

heading the militia in each district. The initial results were unpromising; by mid-April, the militia in Moskovskii district was uncontrollable, conducting illegal searches and arrests, while most districts lacked any kind of militia. Bogorodskii district was second only to Moscow in the size of its militia, due to its industrial importance, yet wages were half those in Serpukhovskii district. This affected the quality of personnel, with a reliance on injured soldiers or those on leave, leading to frequent turnover and poor training.69 There was a militia in most Moscow urban boroughs by mid-1917, but they lacked staff, arms, and prison cells. Soldiers serving in the militia brought their own weapons, and an independent workers’ militia operated in workers’ districts.70 Public pressure often guided the militia’s actions rather than the law. The inability of authorities at every level to enforce their policies encour­ aged discontent, counterrevolutionary fears, and popular radicalism. Just as district organs never felt that they received sufficient help from provincial authorities, the latter bemoaned the ineffectiveness of the central government. Neither recognized the contradiction between their desire for autonomy and their complaints about the inability of higher authorities to resolve local problems. These problems and contradictions were not unique to Moscow province, and when replicated across Russia, they fatally undermined the Provisional Government’s ability to govern. This was reflected at the ballot box. The June elections to the city Duma saw a majority (58 percent) for the SRs with 646,568 voting (about 190 times the number who voted in 1912 and 60 percent of the electorate). The Bolsheviks, in comparison, gained only 11.6 percent of the vote and the Kadets 16.8 percent. Two months later, though, only 378,962 voted in elections to the Dumas in ur­ ban boroughs. Amid this growing disillusionment with elections, the SR share plummeted to 14 percent, while the Bolsheviks gained over 51 percent and the Kadets 26 percent, demonstrating the increasing radicalism of those who did vote and the broader polarization of politics. The Bolsheviks, unsurprisingly, usually did much better in large urban centers such as Moscow, but these trends, if less pronounced, are visible across Russia. The Bolsheviks’ blunt message of peace, workers’ control, redistribution of land, and power to the soviets 69

 TsIAM f. 2340, op. 1, d. 106, ll. 5–5ob., 10–12, 37 (“Minutes,” 31 March, 15 April, and 6 May), 58–61 (minutes of a meeting of district captains of the militia, 9 June); d. 107, l. 40 (report on the activities of district commissars, 10 May).

70

 GARF f. 1791, op. 2, d. 203, ll. 13–14ob. (reports from sub-raiony in Moscow, undated). These problems were typical; for e.g., see the minutes of a meeting of government and militia officials in Petrograd province on 27 September 1917, reprinted in O. A. Gavrilova, Zemstvo i revoliutsiia: 1917 god v Petrogradskii gubernii (St. Petersburg: SanktPeterburgskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2009), 232–43.

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia

35

struck a chord with disillusioned voters.71 They gained around 20 percent in elections in district towns in the province in late summer, but this masked huge variations, with significant results in larger towns such as Kolomna, Podol´sk, and Orekhovo–Zuevo. Indeed, achieving 76 percent of the vote in OrekhovoZuevo may have been their best result in the country.72 They also targeted the township zemstvo elections, printing articles on the campaign and sending agitators across the province, achieving better than expected results, even if peasants still favored the SRs.73 On 5 September, they had their first resolution supported by Moscow’s soviet, prompting a reorganization that resulted in a Bolshevik chairman and a majority on its executive committee. A similar process occurred in Kolomna and elsewhere by late September into early October.74 Further political change nationally seemed inevitable. Moscow’s October and Civil War As in February, Moscow responded to Petrograd’s lead during the October Revolution, but the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power in the city was more pro­ longed and violent.75 The situation in the province was also discouraging. Larger towns, such as Kolomna, heard about the revolution within days and acted quickly to establish soviet power, but rural towns were slower. Ruza, for example, only heard rumors for weeks. It had no party organization and soviet power was not established until December.76 Again, as in February, the lack of guidance from the center forced localities to rely on their resources and

71

 An election poster is reprinted in Podgotovka i pobeda oktiabr´skoi revoliutsii, 311. The statistics on votes are taken from Grunt, Moskva, 160–62, 232–34. There are slightly different figures in William G. Rosenberg, “The Russian Municipal Duma Elections of 1917: A Preliminary Computation of Returns,” Soviet Studies 21, 2 (1969): 131–63. His analysis of elections in numerous Russian towns suggests that Moscow’s results reflected broader trends in popular opinion, even if more acutely and earlier than in most places.

72

 Aksenov, “Trudiashchiesia Moskovskoi gubernii,” 53–54; Rosenberg, “Russian,” 145.

73

 William G. Rosenberg, “The Zemstvo in 1917 and Its Fate under Bolshevik Rule,” in The Zemstvo in Russia, ed. Terence Emmons and Wayne S. Vucinich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 399–402. 74

 Grunt, Moskva, 225–27; Efremtsev, Pobeda sovetov, 57.

75

 For details, see Grunt, Moskva, 297–349.

76

 V. Agal´tsev, “V Ruze,” and Smolenskii, “V Kolomne,” in Ovsiannikov, Oktiabr´skoe vosstanie, 145–51.

36 Matthew Rendle

make their own revolutions, making it harder to re-establish central control in the long run. The new power structure in the province only increased centrifugal forces. Local authority lay in the soviets, and a provincial congress on 27 January 1918 traced the ideal scenario. Soviets would exist in all districts and townships, headed by newly elected, Bolshevik-dominated executive commit­ tees, taking powers held by zemstvos and committees.77 In reality, existing organs continued for months; even district commissars continued meeting until January 1918 at least, even if the individuals changed.78 In some areas, zemstvos resisted attempts by soviets to take over their activities; in other areas, there were problems with re-elections or it was difficult to create soviets without an existing party infrastructure amidst a peasant population. Some districts were far more organized than others; Podol´skii and Ruzskii, for in­ stance, had seen ten district congresses by November 1918 compared to one in Moskovskii and two in Bronnitskii. Similar differences can be seen between urban boroughs within Moscow,79 and more emerged from the creation of five new districts by 1920. Formed to help control towns with well-established significance (such as Sergiev Posad and Naro-Fominsk) or important industry (Orekhovo-Zuevo, Pavlovskii Posad, and Shchelkovo), in reality it took time to establish administrative organs and allocate resources. Finally, existing divisions between the city and province persisted. In March 1918, Moscow was anointed as the new capital and seat of the government amid fears that Petrograd was vulnerable militarily. To quote one member, this transformed Moscow’s soviet into the “political center” of Russia,80 challenging the su­ premacy of the provincial soviet. Similarly, while the province had more official publications in 1919 than any other province, 51 of the 57 were located in Moscow, a much worse urban–rural ratio than others.81 Moreover, as soviets became increasingly overshadowed by parallel party organizations, Moscow’s party organization was much better established and more influential than its provincial counterpart.

77

 GARF f. R-393 (Commissariat of Internal Affairs), op. 3, d. 216, ll. 1–1ob. (summary of congress).

78

 There are minutes from three of at least four meetings in GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 216, ll. 298–304 (18 January 1918), 343–48 (15 December 1917); and d. 217, ll. 62–65ob. (2–3 January 1918). 79

 Vlast´ sovetov, 13 January 1919, 12; Krasnaia Moskva, 669–70.

80

 B. L. Dvinov, Moskovskii Sovet Rabochikh Deputatov 1917–1922: Vospominaniia (New York: Inter-University Project on the History of the Menshevik Movement, 1961), 60. 81

 Vlast´ sovetov, 30 January 1919, 8.

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia

37

As 1918 progressed and soviets steadily prevailed over other organs, it remained soviet power in the province not Bolshevik power.82 While the Bol­ sheviks dominated at provincial and city level, as well as in district executive committees, often with 80 percent or more of members, it was a different pict­ ure in townships where only 28 percent of executive committees were party or candidate members.83 Most were categorized as non-party, middle-aged, male peasants. In some areas, political diversity was clearer; in a district congress in Kolomna on 21 June 1918, 56 voted for a Bolshevik-sponsored resolution, with 35 and 34 for Menshevik and SR alternatives respectively (and 8 abstained). The arrest of a Menshevik member of the town’s executive committee prompted widespread strikes.84 Within the Bolshevik Party, there was a lack of reliable, experienced party workers throughout the period.85 On the one hand, this exacerbated the inability of officials to impose their will on those below. Moscow’s party committee struggled to impose its will on urban boroughs, who in turn could barely control local cells. District activists were often unwilling to follow provincial orders, arguing that policies must suit local needs, while simulta­ neously complaining that townships ignored their orders. None knew about events beneath them.86 Activists believed in defending their views on major questions and, for all that provincial leaders despaired, they adopted the same approach when dealing with national government. On the other hand, the lack of experienced workers made it difficult to staff the state organs needed to impose conformity. From July to November 1918, for example, the staffing crisis in Moscow’s revolutionary tribunal was so critical that some proposed abolishing it altogether, despite the crucial role that tribunals were supposed

82

 The same was true elsewhere; for example, Holquist, Making War, 141–42, and Retish, Russia’s Peasants, 133. 83

 Vlast´ sovetov, 30 January 1919, 4; GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 216, l. 361 (township statistics). The problem persisted: 70 percent of executive committee members and 96 percent of ordinary soviet members were classed as non-party after township elections in autumn 1922. Rabochaia Moskva, 6 October 1922, 1; 1 December 1922, 9.

84  GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 224, ll. 270–270ob. (report on a visit to Kolomensk district soviet, 2 June 1918). 85  For example, GARF f. R-393, op. 5, d. 836, l. 22 (protocol of the executive committee of Moscow’s city soviet, 23 December 1918, discussing the position in Zvenigorodskii district). 86

 For example, GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 220, ll. 31ob., 40–40ob. (minutes of the executive committee of Moscow district soviet, 30 July and 12–13 November 1918). Raleigh noted the same in Saratov (Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 112–21).

38 Matthew Rendle

to play in targeting the lack of discipline within the state apparatus as well as counterrevolution more broadly.87 All this mirrored the situation before October 1917, and the same factors continued to fuel centrifugal forces. One of the most fundamental was the struggle for finance; as Baker notes in this volume, peasants were simply not willing to fund soviets. A meeting of urban boroughs in Moscow on 8 December 1917 declared that their finances were “catastrophic” and that they needed 30 million rubles for military matters, invalids, refugees, and hospitals, as well as for wages and fuel.88 They appealed to the state, but the chief sources of money remained “revolutionary” taxes and “contributions.” These could now be justified ideologically if they targeted the non-working, exploiting population. As the Bogorodskii district soviet noted in June 1919, as only 28 percent of “normal” taxes were collected, exceptional taxes were the only alternative.89 The provincial authorities accepted that these funded everything from schools and hospitals to the wages of soviet employees.90 Yet it reduced their control; local soviets declared new taxes, taxed produce (and thus all social groups), and retained the bulk of any money raised. And financial problems continued, such as the crisis that struck the Kolomenskii district in 1922, forcing a reduction in soviet activity, including gathering fuel.91 This affected Bolshevik support; one diarist, albeit a liberal professional, noted sarcastically that the authorities demanded “only money, money, money” and only used it to produce decrees ordering further taxes and confiscations.92 Problems also continued in food supply. The Bolsheviks helped redistrib­ ute the land of former landowners, and extended price controls and rationing as part of a broader programme of expanding state control of the economy. Moscow adopted a modified version of a national four-tier ration system, 87

 Tsentral´nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Moskovskoi oblasti (TsGAMO) f. 4998 (Moscow soviet’s Department of Justice), op. 1, d. 13, ll. 5ob., 12ob.–13, 16ob., 28ob., 51 (protocols of meetings of the justice department, 27 July, 7 August, 14 August, 4 September, 29 November 1918). See also GARF f. R-393, op. 5, d. 836, ll. 39, 42 (protocols of the meeting of the soviet, 30 November 1918).

88

 GARF f. R-393, op. 1, d. 30, ll. 15–16ob. (resolutions from meetings of urban borough Dumas, 8 December 1917, and presidium of Moscow city soviet, 9 December 1917).

89

 Ibid., op. 13, d. 206, l. 43ob. (minutes of executive committee of Bogorodskii district soviet, 5 June 1919). 90

 Ibid., op. 3, d. 216, l. 334 (report on the activities of the presidium of Moscow soviet, 2 April 1918). 91

 Rabochaia Moskva, 10 June 1922, 7; 22 August 1922, 6.

92

 N. P. Okunev, Dnevnik Moskvicha (1917–1924) (Paris: YMCA Press, 1990), 169 (16 April 1918).

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia

39

which favored the laboring population, in September 1918.93 But supplies still fell and rations were rarely fulfilled. The state blamed resistance from rich peasants and created committees of poor peasants to harness class allies to aid food requisitioning, but these were unsuccessful and abandoned by late 1918. Instead, food detachments became common, which often seized food at gunpoint. Thousands were involved in these detachments, and joined thousands more Muscovites who were searching for food across the province and beyond, taking advantage of the city’s position as a hub of the railway network. Despite attempts to close markets and clamp down on “bag men”—those bringing supplies from the countryside—the authorities could not stop either, particularly as the situation worsened.94 By late January 1921, 33 wagons of supplies were arriving daily in Moscow when the population needed a minimum of 44.95 In April 1921, the state reverted to a fixed tax to encourage trade as part of the broader New Economic Policy (NEP), which it hoped would reduce economic tensions and social unrest. Yet its impact was not immediate. In autumn 1921, Moscow’s authorities were forced to launch a multifaceted food “campaign,” which included requisitioning and quotas alongside lectures and meetings. There was a name-and-shame policy to combat local resistance. The quotas of products assigned to districts were published in newspapers alongside frequent progress reports showing which districts were on course to fulfill their quotas and which lagged behind. The differences could be sizeable; half a dozen districts had fulfilled their quota of rye when Naro-Fominsk had only reached 25 percent and Dmitrovsk 50 percent. The figures were usually left to speak for themselves, but sometimes districts were condemned directly, such as when Moskovskii district only fulfilled 13 percent of its potato quota.96 It is hard to tell whether this approach worked; districts varied in their success depending on the product, making it difficult to distinguish resistance from

93

 M. I. Davydov, Bor´ba za khleb: Prodovol´stvennaia politika Kommunisticheskoi partii i Sovetskogo gosudarstva v gody grazhdanskoi voiny (1917–1920) (Moscow: Mysl´, 1971), 184–85.

94

 For a contemporary report on inflation and speculation, see Krasnaia Moskva, 303– 28. Also Mauricio Borrero, Hungry Moscow: Scarcity and Urban Society in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1921 (New York: Peter Lang, 2003); and Peter Fraunholtz’s chapter in this volume.

95

 Sakwa, Soviet Communists, 241.

96

 Kommunisticheskii trud, 3 September 1921, 2–3; 21 September, 1; 6 October, 1; 19 October, 1; 26 October, 1; 30 October, 1; 15 November, 1; 15 December, 1.

40 Matthew Rendle

poor harvests. Nevertheless, a similar campaign in 1922 received less media coverage, suggesting that the NEP was finally having an impact.97 The impact of food and fuel shortages, along with inflation, conscription, disease, and repression, led to de-urbanization. The population of Moscow fell from 2,017,173 in February 1917 to 1,028,218 in August 1920 (only Petrograd experienced a sharper fall).98 The numbers of industrial workers fell by 44 percent as over 70 percent of factories closed. Unemployment grew rapidly, although some found jobs in the expanding bureaucracy (a third of workers were in offices by 1920), leading to fluid occupational and social statuses. Wages increased 400 times from 1913 to 1920, but prices increased 25,000 times. Output per worker in 1920 was only 25 percent of that in 1913, and absenteeism ranged between 25 percent and 80 percent across different industries as work­ ers searched for food and fuel.99 There were 40–50,000 unemployed elsewhere in the province by late July 1918, with Podol´sk, Serpukhov, and Kolomna the worst affected.100 The resulting exodus eradicated workers as a significant group in some towns. Zvenigorod reverted back to a market town after its fledgling working classes fled back to the countryside.101 It was not until au­ tumn 1922 that a more positive picture of rising employment started to emerge. As before, economic hardship fed social unrest. In May 1918, for example, six were killed in food riots in Pavlovskii Posad,102 and while strikes did oc­ cur in 1918, there was a rapid increase of strikes in 1919–20, culminating in a powerful movement by 1920–21. Some disturbances turned violent, leading to the deaths of 200–300 soldiers in 1920 as well as many workers.103 The state saw a direct link between food shortages and unemployment, and vio­ lence and opposition. In April 1918, a township in Mozhaiskii district voted in favor of transferring power to the Constituent Assembly, while there was a “counterrevolutionary” mood across the district. A report for the district so­viet in autumn 1918 suggested that 70 percent of people opposed soviet power. While routinely noting the “backwardness” of the population, the author was clear that food shortages, which had left 30,000 people starving, 97

 See Rabochaia Moskva in August–October 1922.

98

 Krasnaia Moskva, 51–54.

99

 Sakwa, Soviet Communists, 38, 40, 80–81.

100

 GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 216, l. 7 (report by Moscow’s commissar of labor to a provin­ cial congress of soviets, 26–27 July 1918).

101

 Rabochaia Moskva, 23 September 1922, 7.

102

 GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 222, ll. 117–18 (report on events by Bogorodsk district soviet, 31 May 1918).

103

 Sakwa, Soviet Communists, 94–95, 241–47.

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia

41

were the main problem.104 “Non-partyism” increased by 1921, as did conflict within the party, leading to a purge of the membership.105 The Bolsheviks struggled to combat this growing unrest. Reports on the militia contain the same complaints as 1917: insufficient personnel, finances, and equipment, alongside poor training, rising levels of crime, and disparities between districts. By October 1921, Moscow had 2,253 militiamen compared to 1,553 in the rest of the province; even across the province, numbers varied from 147 in Moskovskii district and 140 in Bogorodskii district to 31 in the newly-created Pavlovskii-Posadskii district and 57 in Vereiskii district.106 Even the impact of the newly-created secret police or Cheka was initially limited in many places. In June 1918, for instance, the Cheka in Mozhaiskii district was formed from only three people.107 This unrest fed into debates within soviet and party organizations about the structure of power in the province and the rural–urban divide. Nationally, the state had pressed for greater centralization from 1918 onwards. As the offi­ cial publication of the Commissariat of Internal Affairs phrased it, all power to the localities may have helped the Bolsheviks to seize power, but a unified (hierarchical) authority was needed now that the state was in its “construction” period to ensure united policies, tactics, plans, and laws.108 There were mur­ murs of agreement locally. In December 1918, a report on Mozhaiskii district noted that greater centralization might help maintain order and increase the impact of soviet power on people’s lives. So far, the author noted, peasants had not seen any benefits locally, largely due to the ineffectiveness of local soviets.109 At this stage, however, more people disagreed than agreed. On 27 December, the executive committee of the Bronnitskii district soviet argued

104

 GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 219, ll. 186–86ob. (report on the information sub-department of Mozhaiskii district soviet, undated), 244 (letter from Korocharovskaia township soviet to Moscow regional soviet, 27 April 1918), 274 (letter from Mozhaisk’s soviet to the Commissariat of Internal Affairs, 17 July 1918).

105

 In addition to Sawka, Soviet Communists, chap. 5, see Simon Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat: Soviet Workers and the New Communist Elite (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2008), 92–110, 115–37. 106

 GARF f. R-393, op. 28, d. 140, ll. 125–25ob. (protocols of the presidium of Moscow soviet, 20 October 1921). 107

 Ibid., op. 3, d. 219, l. 26 (minutes of executive committee of Mozhaiskii district soviet, 8 June 1918).

108

 Vlast´ sovetov, 7 November 1918, 23.

109

 GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 219, l. 188 (report of the information sub-department of Mozhaiskii district soviet).

42 Matthew Rendle

that centralization was already destroying the rights of ordinary workers and peasants.110 The Bolshevik rhetoric on local autonomy was certainly stronger than its predecessors, classing it as “separatism” and blaming a lack of leadership from above. Authorities at all levels issued numerous decrees to assert control over those below, while the Moscow soviet’s presidium spent 26.5 percent of its time in 1922 on organizational-administrative issues—only the economy took more (31.3 percent)—while the figure was 66.2 percent for its executive committee.111 There was greater scrutiny of reports on district meetings, troubleshooting trips into districts by provincial figures and district figures into townships, and outsiders were appointed to bring impartial leadership to local posts. By 1919–20, stronger links were being made between administrative di­ visions and social unrest, and more began to see centralism as crucial to con­ solidating Bolshevik power in the province. The driving force came from the provincial authorities, soviet and party, who stressed the benefits of greater unity on economic and personnel policies in various proposals made to city au­ thorities in 1919.112 In April 1920, the city’s party committee agreed, prompting a plenary meeting on 11 June 1920 to finalize the proposals.113 Reiterating the benefits of a united policy in areas such as the economy, particularly food supply, several supporters noted that just beyond the city limits there was a lack of “consciousness” among the peasantry, a lack of support for soviet power, and the worrying influence of rich peasants. Speakers highlighted a strong rural–urban divide founded on the belief that soviet power was for the workers, and argued that only a soviet that bridged the province and the city, bringing peasants together with workers, could help them “march” together. Only a Menshevik dissented, repeating that centralization was destroying the democracy that made soviet power meaningful locally. The vast majority, however, supported unity.114 Essentially, the city consumed the province with

110 111

 Ibid., d. 217, l. 135 (protocol of executive committee of Bronnitskii district soviet).

 Rabochaia Moskva, 12 October 1922, 3.

112

 See, for example, GARF f. R-393, op. 5, d. 836, ll. 116–116ob. (a discussion on eco­ nomic unity in the provincial executive committee of the soviet, 14 February 1919). 113 114

 N. M. Aleshchenko, Moskovskii sovet v 1917–1941 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 95.

 Stenograficheskie otchety Moskovskogo Soveta Rabochikh i Krasnoarmeiskikh Deputatov, no. 7 (1920): 109–14 (meeting of the plenum of the soviet, 11 June 1920). A copy is in GARF f. R-393, op. 23, d. 2, ll. 1–3ob.

The Problem of the “Local” in Revolutionary Russia

43

majorities in the presidium and the executive committee of the new united soviet.115 The move towards greater centralization was facilitated by the Bolsheviks’ increasing willingness to enforce local compliance. The regime was far more willing than its predecessors to target its own officials. Moscow’s Cheka arrested 42,878 people from December 1918 to January 1920, 62 percent for speculation and 12 percent for crimes committed while holding an official post. Of those speculators arrested between 1 October 1919 and 1 June 1920, 25 percent were office workers, probably mostly bureaucrats.116 Many crimes were transferred directly to courts, particularly revolutionary tribunals, and the legal system played a key role in helping regulate the state apparatus. A typical case on 11 July 1919 saw the Bogorodskii district soviet criticize a town­ship soviet for failing to fulfill orders and for chaotic work; it resolved to send a commission to resolve the problems and prosecute those responsible.117 Frequent public trials, including of Cheka workers, emphasized that officials “discrediting soviet power” were treated more harshly than most other crimi­ nals.118 In the first half of 1919, 33 percent of cases investigated by Moscow’s tribunal concerned crimes of office; the same percentage was seen in 1920, before rising to almost 50 percent in 1921. Many other crimes also involved party members and officials. By 1920, a military tribunal was also active in the region, which investigated half as many cases again. The majority resulted in a prison sentence, but 5–7 percent of sentences were execution.119 Local offi­ cials often resented these measures, but, as Stefan Karsch has also noted in this volume, they came to rely on the very same organs—the Cheka, tribunals and militia—and the use of violence to enforce their own authority locally, and in doing so, relied on the central authority and mechanisms of the state, strengthening them in the process. 115

 Colton, Moscow, 137; Aleshchenko, Moskovskii sovet, 96.

116

 Krasnaia Moskva, 631–33.

117

 GARF f. R-393, op. 13, d. 206, l. 51 (protocols of the executive committee of the Bogo­ rodskii district soviet).

118

  See, for example, the “show trial” of 13 former Cheka personnel held in Kolomna on 1–11 October 1919; TsGAMO f. 4612 (Moscow’s Provincial Revolutionary Tribunal), op. 1, d. 96, ll. 10–11 (case summary), 96–256 (transcript of trial); and the trial of nine officials in Klin on 23–26 April 1921; TsGAMO f. 4613 (Moscow’s Revolutionary Tribunal), op. 2, d. 114, ll. 1–100ob. (transcript of trial). These fondy contain numerous case files devoted to the crimes of officials. 119

 GARF f. A-353 (Commissariat of Justice), op. 3, d. 156, l. 63ob. (1919); op. 4, d. 111, ll. 180–85 (military tribunal); op. 4, d. 112, ll. 121–27 (1920); op. 5, d. 83, ll. 118–24 (1921) (statistics provided by the tribunal).

44 Matthew Rendle

By early 1921, Moscow’s workers were contributing to nationwide unrest that saw peasant revolts in areas such as Tambov and the sailors’ revolt at Kronstadt. On 23 February 1921, more than 10,000 workers participated in a protest march in the city, and there were strikes in major factories. A month later, the NEP was approved, encouraging commerce and trade, and ending food requisitioning. In Moscow, the NEP marked the effective end of the Civil War. Subsequent years saw shops reappear, living conditions improve, and population levels recover. Rural Russia remained under-governed, and Mos­ cow province was no exception, but the equilibrium between centrifugal and centripetal forces that prevailed prior to 1914 was re-established. The Bolsheviks achieved this because the nature of localism changed af­ ter October 1917. Despite conflict between province and city, province and districts, soviets and party organs, and so on, none offered any alternatives to Bolshevik power.120 The multiparty democracy of 1917 disappeared, as did fundamental disagreements over political and social policies. Instead, united by a belief in Bolshevik power and its main policies, conflict was cen­ tered on localities defending their positions and autonomy, and debating whether localism aided or hindered the establishment of the new state. As local Bolsheviks increasingly had to rely on violence to hold on to power, they depended on the authorities above them at every level to help provide it. In doing so, it became evident to many local Bolsheviks that strengthening the central authority of the new state would help them to consolidate Bolshevik power locally and, despite the turmoil, coercion and centralization did seem to work.

120

 This point is also made by Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 88–89, 105, 411.

Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo in Southeastern Russia (Spring–Fall 1917) Sergei Liubichankovskii

The township (volost´) zemstvo reform of 1917, which resulted in the emer­ gence of grassroots rural self-governance, was one of the most difficult reforms undertaken by the Provisional Government. The introduction of the township zemstvo required tremendous efforts from the authorities, yet the results fell far short of expectations. Scholars both in Russia and abroad have ascribed the difficulties in executing this reform to organizational, person­ nel, and technical problems, as well as political disunity within the society. I propose that the main barrier to the reform was a conflict of outlooks be­ tween peasants who were the bearers of traditional values and proponents of the innovative township zemstvo. All other problems and contradictions including the differing interests of the tsarist bureaucracy and traditional peasant institutions were grounded in this fundamental conflict. In this arti­ cle I reveal the manifestations of this conflict by reviewing major elements of zemstvo elections including their preparation, campaigning process, voting, and election outcomes. We can assume that this conflict varied across the vast territory of Russia. It was in the southeast, due to its sociocultural peculiarities, that this conflict took on an especially irreconcilable quality. The autocratic power likely did not anticipate resistance to the introduction of the township zemstvo as it labored throughout the late imperial period on developing the reforms of local governance and self-governance.1 The authorities’ main concern was rather with controlling the extent of the rights they granted to rural inhabitants. No one doubted the peasants’ own wish for a self-governing township. In the early 20th century, the issue of creating the township zemstvo was no longer limited to intellectual discussions within liberal circles, but became a matter of practical deliberations within the imperial bureaucracy. For example, in 1907–08, Minister of the Interior Petr Stolypin advanced proposals to introduce an all-estate township self1

  S. V. Liubichankovskii, Remontiruemaia vertikal´: Gubernskaia reforma v planakh pravi­ tel´stva Nikolaia I (Orenburg: Izdatel´stvo OGPU, 2009). Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 45–66.

46 Sergei Liubichankovskii

government. But his plans were never implemented due to opposition from the United Nobility and the conservative part of the State Council.2 The authorities returned to discussions of the township zemstvo reform in the difficult years of the First World War. In July of 1916, chairman of the Council of Ministers Boris Vladimirovich Shtiurmer directed a note to Tsar Nicholas II, under the title of “The Regional foundations of internal governance of the Empire” (“Oblastnoe nachalo vnutrennego upravleniia imperii”). In the note he proposed to create 15–18 regions (oblasti), headed by lieutenants (namestniki) of His Majesty. The provincial zemstvo was to be eliminated as “redundant” and replaced with smaller zemstvo units.3 Nicholas II appended the following resolution to the document: “Develop presently a bill on regional governance and introduce the draft to the legislative assemblies by the time of their au­ tumn convocation.”4 For understandable reasons, this belated decision did not have any follow up. But it signified the serious consideration given to the creation of the township zemstvo at the highest levels of government, even under the extraordinary wartime conditions. An opportunity to implement the reform arose later, during the revolutionary events of 1917. Contemporaries and historians have advanced differing appraisals of the attempt at township reform undertaken by the revolutionary Provisional Government. Research dating back to 1917-18, written by proponents of the reform, declared its necessity for the development of “true democracy” and explained its failure by the fact that “common folk were unenlightened” and deceived by “demagogues on the left.”5 Soviet scholarship was dominated by a conviction that the township reform reflected a struggle between bourgeoisliberal and proletarian-revolutionary social forces, which was embodied in the 2

  For more details, see Rossiia. MVD. Zemskii otdel. Po proektam polozhenii: 1) o poselkovom upravlenii; 2) o volost’ nom upravlenii, i 3) o pravitel’stvennykh uchastkovykh komissarakh (St. Petersburg, 1907), 1–14; Gosudarstvennyi sovet. Stenograficheskie otchety. Sessiia 9 (Petrograd, 1914), 2394. On resistance of the United Nobility to P. A. Stolypin’s proposal, see P. S. Kabytov, P. A. Stolypin: Poslednii reformator Rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow: Rosspen, 2008), 164–66; K. I. Mogilevskii, Stolypinskie reformy i mestnaia elita. Sovet po delam mestnogo khoziaistva (1908–1910) (Moscow: Rosspen, 2008), 70–119. 3

  Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) f. 627 (B. V. Shtiurmer), op. 1, d. 109 (note on the regional reform), ll. 3ob.–4. For more details on this, see S. V. Liubichankovskii, “Preobrazovanie, neotlozhnost´ koego bessporna…: Zapiska pred­ sedatelia Soveta ministrov B. V. Shtiurmera o neobkhodimosti prove­deniia oblastnoi reformy,” Otechestvennye arkhivy, no. 1 (2009): 95–104. 4

  GARF f. 627, op. 1, d. 109, l. 1.

5   See, for example, M. D. Zagriatskov, Zemstvo i demokratiia: Zachem zemstvo nuzhno narodu? (Moscow: Nachalo, 1917); B. B. Veselovskii, Zemstvo i demokraticheskaia reforma (Petrograd: T-vo O. N. Popova, 1918); V. V. Rudnev, “Zemskoe i gorodskoe samoupravle­ nie v 1917 g.,” in God russkoi revoliutsii (1917–1918) (Moscow: Nachalo, 1918), 47–66.

Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo

47

conflict between the zemstvos and the soviets.6 Western researchers, in their analysis of the state of the Russian countryside in 1917,7 offer a much more nuanced history of local communities. K. Matsuzato has concluded that shortsighted policies of the Provisional Government (and the preceding policies of the tsarist regime) fostered governmentalization and the blossoming of bureaucracy in the zemstvos. In the setup of zemstvo assemblies and govern­ ing boards, undemocratic principles were ultimately preserved and even strengthened. These circumstances, combined with the propensity of citizens for a radical resolution of social conflicts, in his opinion, explain the failure of the township reform in 1917, as well as the elimination of the zemstvo as an institution on the entire territory of Russia.8 This chapter analyzes the conflicts surrounding the township zemstvo re­ form of 1917 in the southeast of Russia. It follows a regional approach, which emphasizes a multitude of local conditions. It analyzes the emergence of a low-level self-governing unit using an example of three provinces (guber­ niias): Astrakhan´, Orenburg, and Stavropol´. While in central regions of the country and in some provinces of the Urals provincial and district (uezd) zemstvo assemblies and boards appeared as early as the 1860s–70s, the prov­ inces described here (that I collectively call the southeast of Russia) first adopted zemstvo self-governance only in 1913.9 Zemstvo organization in 6   See, for example, V. S. Diakin, Russkaia burzhuaziia i tsarizm v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny: 1914–1917 gg. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1967); N. P. Eroshkin, Istoriia gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdenii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow: Vysshaia shkola, 1973); G. A. Gerasimenko, Zemskoe samoupravlenie v Rossii (Moscow: Nauka, 1990). 7

  Terence Emmons and Wayne S. Vucinich, eds., The Zemstvo in Russia: An Experiment in Local Self-Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Donald J. Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986); Michael Hickey, “Discourses of Public Identity and Liberalism in the February Revolution: Smolensk, Spring 1917,” Russian Review 55, 10 (1996): 615–37; Sarah Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press, 2007). 8

  Kimitaka Matsuzato, V. F. Abramov, and A. A. Iartsev, Zemskii fenomen: Politologicheskii podkhod (Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, 2001), 36–37. 9

  I depart here from the customary view of zemstvos within the framework of tra­ ditional regions such as the Urals, the Volga region, the North, etc. Zemstvos were introduced in different provinces at different times so variations within these macro­ regions were very significant. On zemstvos in the southern regions of Russia in 1917, see I. V. Semenchenko, “Zemskoe samoupravlenie na Iuzhnom Urale v 1917–1918 gg.” (Ph.D. diss., Cheliabinsk, 1995); V. I. Kargalov, “Zemstva Rossii fevralia 1917 g. do zaversheniia ikh deiatel´nosti (fevral´ 1917 g.–iul´ 1918 g.)” (Ph.D. diss., Orenburg, 2000); E. M. Trusova, “Vozniknovenie i evoliutsiia organov upravleniia i samoupravleniia na iuge Rossii v fevrale–oktiabre 1917 g. (Don, Kuban´, Stavropol´e)” (Ph.D. diss., Rostov-

48 Sergei Liubichankovskii

these provinces was regulated by the same legal statutes. These zemstvos had similar organizational structure, and electoral system, and by 1917 had accu­ mulated a comparable cultural, economic, and sociopolitical experience. Southeastern Russia bordered the imperial outskirts of the Caucasus, the Kazakh lands, and Central Asia. The provinces were quite large.10 Astrakhan´ province comprised 100 townships, Orenburg province 131, and Stavropol´ 157. The population density in the region was low,11 but the overall population grew rapidly from migrants and refugees from the battle zones of the war. In contrast to the imperial core, there were rather few aristocrats and landed gentry,12 and the population at large was multiethnic and multiconfessional.13 The region was home to a large number of Cossacks,14 who enjoyed autonomy and were largely separate from the rest of the provincial population. Southeastern Russia was thus a transitional territory, in a social, ethnic, and administrative sense, between the country’s periphery and its largely “Great Russian” core. The objective of this article is to analyze how these regional particularities affected the implementation of the zemstvo reform of 1917 and popular attitudes towards the reform. Preparation for the Township Zemstvo Elections in Southeastern Russia In 1917, the zemstvo organizations, including those in Astrakhan´, Orenburg, and Stavropol´ provinces, sided with the Provisional Government and took an na-Donu, 2000). See also S. V. Liubichankovskii and A. E. Zagrebin, eds., Mestnoe upravlenie v poreformennoi Rossii: Mehanizmy vlasti i ikh effektivnost´. Svodnye materialy zaochnoi diskussii (Ekaterinburg–Izhevsk: UIIIaL UrO RAN, 2010), 484. 10

  Astrakhan´ province occupied 184,536 sq. versts, Orenburg province 101,584 sq. versts, and Stavropol´ 47,716 sq. versts. They were among the largest “zemstvo” prov­ inces in all of Russia. See Statisticheskii spravochnik, vyp. 1: Naselenie i zemlevladenie v Rossii po guberniiam i sravnitel´nye dannye po nekotorym evropeiskim gosudarstvam (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia N. P. Sobko, 1906), 4–7.

11

  Astrakhan´ province averaged 6.6 rural and 1.2 urban inhabitants per sq. versts, Orenburg 14.8 and 3.34 respectively, and Stavropol´ 27.4 and 2.5 (ibid., 10–13).

12

  In the early 20th century, the all-Russian average was 15 landed gentry per thousand inhabitants, while in Astrakhan´ province this number was 0.6, in Orenburg 0.8, and in Stavropol´ 0.9 (ibid., 16–21). 13

  In Astrakhan´ province, Kazakhs, Kalmyks, and other ethnically non-Russian groups comprised 46 percent of population, in Orenburg province Bashkirs, Tatars, and Kazakhs accounted for 27 percent, in Stavropol´ Kalmyks, Nogai, and Turkmen made up about 8 percent. See ibid., 14–15, 26–27. 

14

  The Astrakhan´ Cossack Host numbered around 31,000 people, Orenburg 572,000 (ibid.).

Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo

49

active role in implementing its policies. The Provisional Government viewed the zemstvo system as the foundation for its new administration. It is quite telling that chairpersons of provincial zemstvo boards were often appointed as provincial commissars. Still, the competencies of the zemstvo were limited by the acting Statute (Polozhenie) of 12 June 1890. Also, the law did not allow for the existence of the grassroots zemstvo structure, and without it the entire zemstvo system resembled a building without the foundation. Therefore, as early as May–June 1917, a whole series of legislative acts were issued to institute a township zemstvo, with active involvement of the “Special Council” under B. B. Veselovskii and N. N. Avinov, who were acting under the aegis of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). The acts included the Statute on Township Zemstvo Institutions (Polozhenie o volostnykh zemskikh uchrezhdeniiakh, 21 May); the Instruction on Carrying Out the Elections of Township Zemstvo Deputies (Nakaz o proizvodstve vyborov volostnykh zemskikh glasnykh, 11 June); and the Instruction on the Order of Elections of Township Deputies on the Basis of Proportional System (Instruktsiia o poriadke vyborov volostnykh glasnykh na osnove proportsional´noi sistemy, 26 July).15 The implementation of these acts was assigned to provincial and district zemstvo boards, which were to create special commissions for the purpose.16 A closer look at the process of preparation and organization of the zemstvo elections of 1917 allows us to understand the routine technologies of power and determine the effectiveness of policies of the Provisional Government. In preparations for the township elections, the regional zemstvo encountered a whole range of obstacles. First of all, in order to organize the electoral process zemstvos needed to set up a wide network of local electoral commissions. The commissions were to include a chairperson, who was to be appointed by the district zemstvo board, as well as four to eight members (depending on the number of voters in the district).17 The leadership of the zemstvo board nominated and affirmed half of the members and voters at large 15

 GARF f. 1788 (MVD of Provisional Government), op. 2, d. 25 (resolutions of the Provisional Government on the reform of local governance), ll. 1–255; f. 1800 (Depart­ ment of General Affairs of MVD of Provisional Government), op. 1, d. 166A (materials of Council for Reform of Local Self-Governance, 13 April–15 October 1917), ll. 1–341; Sbornik ukazov i postanovlenii Vremennogo pravitel´stva (Petrograd: Izdatel´stvo MVD, 1917), 140. 16

  GARF f. 1789 (Chief Directorate for Local Affairs at MVD of Provisional Government), op. 1, d. 180 (correspondence with ministerial and local organs on implementation of Statute on Township Zemstvo Governance), ll. 12–38; f. 1800, op. 1, d. 166A, ll. 159–66; Vestnik Vremennogo pravitel´stva, 28 May 1917, 1–3. 

17

 GARF f. 1800, op. 1, d. 166A, ll. 159–65, 310–25. 

50 Sergei Liubichankovskii

elected the other half.18 The population of the region exhibited the utmost indifference toward the elections of the members of township commissions and in a number of cases refused to participate in their formation.19 For ex­ ample, inhabitants of the village of Nadezhda of Stavropol´ district notified representatives of the authorities on 28 July 1917, that they would not allow elections of the township zemstvo deputies until the end of the war, and on these grounds withdrew from determining the membership of the township electoral commission.20 According to documents, residents of no fewer than 40 large villages in the Southeastern provinces followed this pattern.21 As a result, over 20 per cent of village and township electoral commissions in the region only included delegates from zemstvo boards and assemblies, missing any elected representatives of the population. This had a most negative effect on their functioning. Regional zemstvos also faced the need to train a large number of instructors, consultants, organizers, campaigners, and statisticians for the elections. The shortage of qualified specialists in the territories of the “young­ est zemstvo” in Russia was especially acute.22 As a result, zemstvos had to 18

 Ibid.

19

 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Astrakhanskoi oblasti (GAAO) f. 1094 (Chancellary of Astrakhan´ provincial Commissar of the Provisional Government), op. 1, d. 40 (informa­ tion on the functioning of township and zemstvo boards), ll. 42–44; Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Orenburgskoi oblasti (GAOO) f. 14 (Orenburg Provincial Administration), op. 3, d. 6 (On Carrying Out Elections to Town and Zemstvo Boards), l. 10 ob.; Gosudarst­ vennyi arkhiv Stavropol´skogo kraia (GASK) f. 311 (Stavropol´ Provincial Zemstvo Board), op. 1, d. 200 (protocol of Conference of Zemstvo Representatives of Stavropol´ Province and correspondence on Township Zemstvo), l. 97.

20  GASK f. 314 (District Zemstvo Boards of Stavropol´ Province), op. 1, d. 133 (reports on Township Zemstvo Representatives’ Elections), ll. 37–40. 21

  GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 35–37, 43; d. 39 (information on progress of township elections), l. 7; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 299–409; GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 181 (information sheets of Special Office for Local Governance Affairs for April–July 1917 and reference sheets of Conference on Reform of Local Self-Governance and Governance for April– November 1917), l. 80; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, l. 97; GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 143 (report of commissar of Provisional Committee of State Duma and Stavropol´ provincial commissar of the Provisional Government on political and economic situation of the province; correspondence with provincial and district commissars on institution of organs of local governance in Stavropol´ province), ll. 49–50; GAAO f. 285 (Astrakhan´ District Zemstvo Board), op. 3, d. 5 (journal of sessions of the First Extraordinary Kho­ zhetaevsk Township Zemstvo Meeting), ll. 1–41; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 17–28, 45–53; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 95–102. 

22

  GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 32–43; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 62–79; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 101–12.

Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo

51

involve representatives of local educational organizations, members of co­ operatives, and so forth. Some of them were dispatched to Moscow and Petro­ grad to attend special courses organized by zemstvos in the capitals and by Shaniavskii University.23 Upon their return, they received the status of “delegate instructors” and zemstvo boards assigned them to townships and villages to direct the activities of zemstvo commissions.24 Zemstvos faced significant challenges in determining township bounda­ ries.25 In some cases it was necessary to merge small town and village settle­ ments into single electoral districts, while in others the zemstvo had to split large villages into two to three separate districts.26 For example, the total number of townships in Astrakhan´ district increased from 16 to 21.27 All other districts of southeastern Russia were repartitioned and structured in a similar way.28 While trying to strengthen their positions, zemstvos declined peasants’ requests to organize some kind of village self-governance or to exclude their villages from the township zemstvo reform. The intransigence of zemstvo representatives only strengthened peasant opposition to the zemstvo reform.29 Zemstvos paid special attention to determining the number of deputies elected in each township and district. The number of deputies varied between 20 and 50, depending on the total population of the township.30 On average, a township of 5,000 inhabitants was eligible to elect 35 deputies.31 However, electoral commissions often established different norms of representation re­ sponding to particular local conditions. For example, Nikol´sk (population of 650) and Andreevsk (775 people) townships of Sviatokrestovsk district of Stavropol´ province were to elect the minimal possible number of deputies of 23

  GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 64 (information on composition and activities of local govern­ ance organs), ll. 1–24, 65–81; d. 69 (reports of provincial and district commissars on institution of organs of local governance in provinces of Russia), ll. 15–25, 73–94. 24

  GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, l. 34. 

25

  GAAO f. 285, op. 3, d. 5, ll. 47–55; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 17–21; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 49–58. 26

 GARF f. 1800, op. 1, d. 166A, ll. 310–25. 

27

 GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 29–31. 

28

 GAAO f. 285, op. 3, d. 5, ll. 49–56; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 22–27; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 51–55. 29

 Ibid.

30

 GARF f. 1800, op. 1, d. 166A, ll. 96–166, 310–25.

31

 Ibid. 

52 Sergei Liubichankovskii

20 each.32 In Velichaevsk township of the same district, with 5,358 inhabitants, the zemstvo assembly was to be staffed by 22 deputies, while VorontsovoAleksandrovsk township with 23,000 people was to elect 50 deputies.33 In the midst of an economic crisis, zemstvos could only allocate the barest minimum of funds to support the election campaign—from 3,000 to 20,000 rubles per district,34 even though the region’s districts and townships had far greater territory than those in central Russia. At the same time, government funding was limited to a credit of 500 rubles per township (which was less than a clerk’s monthly salary in the provincial administration), which were to be returned afterwards using a township zemstvo excise tax of individuals and businesses.35 The planned timeline of the township zemstvo elections36 concurred with the electoral campaign for the Constituent Assembly, and they were to be held in the second half of August 1917.37 Exceptions were made for large territories of “nomadic aliens” (inorodtsy). Seasonal migration, resistance by hereditary elders and a simple language barrier, forced the postponement of the elections until October 1917, and then they jeopardized them altogether.38 Official campaign materials in the languages of inorodtsy were never produced in the region. Although the campaigners dispatched to these areas typically spoke the local languages, they only had Russian-language printed campaign materials to offer. This also undermined the efficacy of campaigning. Zemstvos of the region determined the voting system for the upcoming elections. While at first the elections were to be organized solely on the major­ ity system, the Provisional Government on 26 July 1917 allowed zemstvos to 32

 GASK f. 314, op. 1, d. 56 (journal of the Eighth Extraordinary Blagodarinsk District Zemstvo Assembly and reports of District Zemstvo Board, 4–6 March 1917), ll. 37–39.  33

 Ibid. 

34

 GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 43–45; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 42–45; GARF f. 1788, op. 1, d. 42 (correspondence with provincial commissars on implementation of the township zemstvo law), ll. 4–9.  35  GARF f. 1800, op. 1, d. 166A, ll. 310–25; Vestnik Vremennogo pravitel´stva, 13 June 1917, 1–2. 36

 GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 38-42; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 28–29; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 56–58. 

37

 “Resheniia uezdnykh zemskikh sobranii o srokakh vyborov v volostnoe zemstvo,” Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, 19 August 1917, 3; ibid., 20 August 1917, 3; GAAO f. 285, op. 3, d. 5, l. 41; f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 38–40; GASK f. 314, op. 1, d. 143 (copies of minutes of extraordinary district zemstvo assemblies), ll. 12–18.

38

 GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 81 (correspondence with provincial commissar, public and military organizations of Astrakhan´ province), ll. 145, 161; d. 143, ll. 40, 52.

Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo

53

use a proportional system as well. Under this system, a voter cast a ballot for one of the lists nominated by public and political organizations and ap­ proved by the MVD.39 Most of the zemstvo electoral commissions did not venture to use a proportional system and based the township elections on a majority or plurality voting system.40 A number of townships in each of the three provinces of southeastern Russia, however, followed a different path.41 Townships could not reach unanimity on the issue. Complications also arose in compiling voter lists for the elections of town­ ship zemstvo deputies. The organizers here faced direct resistance from the population.42 In July of 1917, trying to preserve a communal way of life and wary of tax increases, peasants of Mikhailovskoe village of Stavropol´ province approved a resolution: “Not to organize a township zemstvo for now and not to compile voter lists.”43 At the end of that same month, inhabitants of the vil­ lage of Nadezhinskoe of Stavropol´ district forbade the scribe to compile voter lists. They defended their decision by the need to wait until the end of the war and stabilization of the political situation.44 Overall, inhabitants of over a half of the townships of southeastern Russia in one way or another resisted the compilation of the aforementioned lists.45 One of the members of a township electoral commission, who also happened to be a correspondent of the journal Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, wrote a characteristic sketch of public sentiment: “We are entering an izba (a peasant hut), and the owner grumbles: ‘We have already been registered and we are fed up, but they keep writing.’ Others say: ‘What is this for?’ ‘Let them do elections without us’… Peasants view the township zemstvo elections as an unnecessary burden.”46 Ultimately, the 39

 GARF f. 1800, op. 1, d. 166A, ll. 159–65, 310–25. 

40

  GAAO f. 285, op. 3, d. 5, ll. 42–64; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 84–96; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 91–121.

41

 GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 181, ll. 16–21, 80–83; GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 37, 147, 152; GAOO f. 15 (Orenburg Provincial Office for Zemstvo and Urban Affairs), op. 1, d. 330A (on activities of zemstvo board of Orenburg province in 1917), ll. 295–330; GASK f. 314, op. 1, d. 133, ll. 55–67; resolutions of township assemblies of Orenburg district on the electoral procedures, Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, 14 September 1917, 2. 

42

  It is important to note, that peasants possibly resisted the first round of zemstvo elections and the registration of voter lists for the zemstvo as well as the Constituent Assembly elections because they did not want to participate in another census tied to grain procurements.

43

  GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 97–99. 

44

 Ibid.

45

  GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 69, ll. 59–82; d. 181, ll. 85–97.

46

 N. Ivanov, “Nashi vybory,” Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, 18 July 1917, 6.

54 Sergei Liubichankovskii

regional zemstvo did not manage to publish voter lists for township deputies in the agreed time. The final lists appeared in the local press at the end of July instead of June in Astrakhan´ province, and in August in Orenburg and Stavropol´ provinces.47 Out of the districts with predominantly sedentary popu­lations, Alexandrov district took the longest to compile its lists, not finishing until mid-September, 1917.48 But the most difficult situation occurred on the territories of the “nomadic inorodtsy” of Turkmen and Achikulak pristavstvos (a territorial and administrative unit) of Stavropol´ province. Due to resistance from the local hereditary nobles, compilation of the lists was not completed until October 1917.49 As a result, the government was forced to postpone the township deputy elections. In Astrakhan´, Chernoiar, Orsk, Chelyabinsk, Stavropol´, and Med­ vezhensk districts50 they were scheduled for the end of August 1917,51 in Orenburg, Verhneural´sk-Troitsk, Sviatokrestovsk, Blagodarinsk districts52 for the first half of September,53 in Aleksandrovsk district54 they were postponed until 24 September 1917, and then even further to 1 October 1917.55 On the ter­ ritories of inorodtsy the elections were to be held as late as November 1917.56 Organizers of the township zemstvo elections in southeastern Russia faced two fundamental problems. One of them was characteristic of the entire country—the lack of financing and impossibility of efficiently organ­ ized elections in the conditions of an ongoing world war and deepening 47   GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 32–35; “Spiski izbiratelei volostnykh glasnykh,” Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, 29 July 1917, 1–3; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 177 (reports of dis­ trict zemstvo board on development of a telegraph network, long-term loans, cattle shipments; journals of district zemstvo assembly sessions), ll. 96–120.  48

 GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 98–99. 

49

  GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 81, ll. 145, 161; GASK f. 67 (Stavropol´ Provincial Office for Zemstvo and Urban Affairs), op. 1, d. 352 (information on zemstvo representative elec­ tions in Turkmen territory), l. 11. 

50

  The first two belonged to Astrakhan´ province, the middle two to Orenburg prov­ ince, and the last two to Stavropol´ province.  51

  GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 39, 81, 152; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 73–112; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 91–122; “O srokakh vyborov v volostnoe zemstvo,” Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, 20 August 1917, 3.

52

 Belonged to Stavropol´ province.

53

  GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 91–122. 

54 55

 Belonged to Stavropol´ province. 

  GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 177, ll. 96–120. 

56

  GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 81, ll. 146, 162; GASK f. 67, op. 1, d. 352, ll. 11–14.

Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo

55

revolutionary crisis. The second was particular to national peripheries—the lack of any means of influencing the hereditary nobility when undertaking attempts at introducing new intra-Russian governance standards on these territories. This hereditary nobility held a traditional outlook and opposed a new “zemstvo township” from the preparation for elections. One problem exacerbated the other, which made township elections in southeastern Russia a much more challenging initiative than in many other regions of the country. Campaigning “For” and “Against” Township Elections in the Region Provincial and district zemstvos went to great lengths to impress upon the local population the importance of taking part in the elections. They acted on the basis of the populace’s obviously negative attitude towards the elections, which was noted by just about every political force. On 29 July 1917, the newspaper Astrakhanskii listok published the travel notes of one of the local zemstvo activists, who visited townships on the campaign trail. “On the ground,” he wrote, “a mistrust of the zemstvo emerged from the improper course of zemstvo activities. All of their defects instilled utter revulsion for the very word ‘zemstvo.’ Peasants are saying, call our future governance what you will but don’t use the word zemstvo. We have grown disgusted by this word.”57 The Orenburg provincial commissar, in his report to the minister of internal affairs, evaluated preparations for township deputy elections by saying that “the idea of the zemstvo did not take root in the province, and a majority of the population holds a negative attitude toward it.”58 Describing public sentiment, a correspondent of the newspaper Izvestiia Orenburgskogo gubernskogo komiteta obshchestvennoi bezopasnosti wrote: “A zemstvo person is viewed here as an oppressor, a liar who just collects a wage… He is not trusted and is even feared.”59 The most difficult situation emerged in Stavropol´ province, where a powerful anti-zemstvo movement began even before the revolution. Informing the MVD of the state of affairs in the province in August 1917, Stavropol´ provincial commissar D.D. Starlychanov reported: “I am per­sonally making rounds of the villages and peasants are saying that they would give you all you want, they are ready to forsake everything, just please don’t speak to them about the zemstvo. The word ‘zemstvo’ stirs indignation and anger.”60 57

  Iu. Riabtsev, “Krest´iane i Zemstvo,” Astrakhanskii listok, 29 July 1917, 2–3. 

58

 GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 69, ll. 43–52; d. 181, ll. 80–83.

59

 Ibid. 

60

 GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 143, l. 17.

56 Sergei Liubichankovskii

Why did such a situation emerge in the region prior to the elections? I argue that different mentalités among social groups played the key role in cre­ ating this crisis, and not their political differences. This clearly manifested itself in the electoral campaign. Striving for a particular political result in the township elections became secondary to the effort to have valid elections at all. In preparation for the election, zemstvo boards of the region enlisted not only zemstvo employees (teachers, doctors, agronomists) but also various political and public organi­ zations (executive committees, public safety committees, cooperatives, educa­ tional organizations, party committees of Constitutional Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries).61 Soviets were also involved. Zemstvos and soviets cooperated extensively especially in Orenburg and Stavropol´ provinces. In July 1917, in Stavropol´ the provincial zemstvo decreed to disburse 25,000 rubles to the soviets “to take measures for the explication of the zemstvo idea.” The Orenburg executive committee of the Soviet of Peasant Deputies sent many of its representatives to the districts to prepare township zemstvo deputy elections.62 This example demonstrates that zemstvos and soviets in the region were far from being antagonistic bodies of self-governance divided along class lines, as the Soviet historiography insisted. What was the reason behind the participation of soviets in the institution of the zemstvos? The key reason seems to be that local soviets positioned them­ selves as organs of self-governance, while they viewed township zemstvos as the grassroots democratic organs of state power. Such an appraisal is quite compatible with historians’ conclusions on the unfolding bureaucratization of zemstvos.63 The soviets did not view township elections as an anti-soviet undertaking, and even took an interest in establishing a network of local state institutions that they could collaborate with later on. Even the soviets’ support, however, could not impress upon the local pop­ ulation the need to participate in the zemstvo elections. An important reason was the fact that peasants were so busy with agricultural work that they were physically unable regularly to attend election rallies and other campaign activities.64 Trying to hold the elections as soon as possible, at the height of 61

 GAAO f. 285, op. 3, d. 5, ll. 21–34; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 75–114; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 87–111.

62

 “O sodeistvii vyboram volostnykh zemskikh glastnykh v gubernii,” Izvestiia Oren­ burgskogo gubernskogo komiteta obshchestvennoi bezopasnosti, 10 July 1917, 4.  63

  See, for example, Matsuzato, Abramov, and Iartsev, Zemskii fenomen; and O. O. Bogatyreva, Evoliutsiia sistemy mestnogo upravleniia v Viatskoi i Permskoi guberniiakh (1861–fevral’ 1917) (Ekaterinburg: Izdatel´stvo Ural´skogo universiteta, 2004), 309–51.

64

  GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 69, ll. 29–52; d. 181, ll. 39–41, 80–92. 

Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo

57

the farming season, was a disservice to the zemstvos all over the country, the agrarian southeast included. Zemstvos ultimately failed to include a majority of population in the electoral campaign. The populace was largely unfamiliar with the essence of the township zemstvo self-government, details of the voting process in the election of representatives, the characteristics of proportional and majority voting systems, and with candidates for different zemstvo posts.65 As a last resort, zemstvos could have used the traditional bodies of peasant governance—township and village assemblies (skhody). But it was precisely these entities that happened to be controlled by opponents of the township zemstvo elections. Their leaders, as a rule, campaigned against the zemstvo. Their efforts were so much more effective than the zemstvo campaigns be­ cause they were not delivered sporadically, from visit to visit, but every day, within the routine of governing a village. Anti-zemstvo sentiment was typi­ cal of village and township elders (that is, persons invested with power in the village). It is reasonable to assume that their primary motivation was unwillingness to see that power slip out of their hands. They en masse shunned participation in compiling voter lists and in pre-election events, thus sabotaging election preparations.66 They also engaged in counteragitation di­ rected not only against the upcoming township elections, but also against the very ideas of the zemstvo. Fantastic rumors sometimes circulated across the countryside. For in­ stance, in July-August 1917 in the Third and Fifth Burziansk, Novo-Kiev townships of Orsk district in Orenburg province, local Bashkirs were told that “if you accept the zemstvo, it will close all of your bazaars, take all food adminis­ tration into its own hands and there will be nothing for you to buy. If you accept the zemstvo, it will divide your land among the Russians.”67 Cossacks who successfully engaged in agriculture without zemstvo governance also often participated in campaigning against the zemstvo. For example, in Karachai-Kipchak township of the same province it was the Cossacks who visited villages and insisted: “do not start a zemstvo for it will not give you any bread, and we can feed you. If you accept the zemstvo, then your land will go away. We Cossacks have no zemstvo, and look how well off we are, and we are always ready to come to your aid.”68 65  GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 148–57; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 10–14; GASK f. 314, op. 1, d. 133, ll. 39–65.  66  GAAO f. 285, op. 3, d. 5, ll. 29–44; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 78–92; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 91–111.  67

  “Dikie slukhi,” Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, 29 September 1917, 4.

68

 Ibid.

58 Sergei Liubichankovskii

In national regions, such as the Kyrgyz steppe, Kalmyk orda, Turkmen and Archikulak pristavstvo, Bolshederbetovsk ulus of Astrakhan´ and Stavropol´ provinces, hereditary elites led the campaigns against the zemstvo. They possessed undisputed authority and influence in local society and they viewed the zemstvo as an unceremonious and illegal intruder in the tradi­ tional sphere of tribal governance.69 A correspondent of the newspaper Sever­ okavkazskoe slovo reported to his readers a conversation with one of the leaders of “Trukhmen,” which ended with the following: “our ancestors since the olden times, way before the zemstvo was ever heard of, received from the wise Russian power a confirmation for ruling our kinsmen forever and ever, so why should we give it up now?”70 Finally, the introduction of the township zemstvo was also at times equated with the return of the ancien regime. For example, the elder Ia. Koles­ nikov of Stankovskoe village of Chelyabinsk district noted the similarity be­ tween “land captains and land guards [zemskie strazhniki] (and all of those of the old order) and the new zemstvo.”71 It is often proposed in the historiography that the main opponents of township reform were the radical leftist political forces (the Bolsheviks and Left SRs), which used their party structures and their subordinate soviets to battle the zemstvos and sabotage the elections. Although forces on the left did counter the elections in southeastern Russia,72 the main fault line passed be­ tween the new power (that is, the zemstvo) and the traditional power, namely elders of the peasant assembly and the indigenous nobility. Thus, the primary reasons for the failure of the zemstvo reform lay in differing outlooks, rather than politics or economics. The traditionalist mentalité of the populace rejected the proposed innovations (or, rather, innovations impressed upon and forced from above). This is the reason behind the anti-zemstvo sentiment of the township elders, who were prepared to get along with power, as in the impe­ rial times, but on condition that this power be of a kind understandable to them. This same model explains the pro-zemstvo stance of most local soviets, for they, like zemstvos, were a new entity that stood up against the traditional forms of life.

69

  GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 81, ll. 145, 161; d. 143, ll. 43–57; GASK f. 67, op. 1, d. 352, ll. 19–52. 

70

  N.P., “V trukhmenskom aule,” Severokavkazskaia mysl’, 23 September 1917, 3.

71

  “V derevne,” Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, 4 August 1917, 8.

72

  GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 69, ll. 10–52; d. 181, ll. 41–83; GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 152–64; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 78–112; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 95–112.

Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo

59

Polling Time in Southeastern Russia In the scholarly literature, it is quite common to view voter behavior in the township elections of 1917 through the prism of voter turnout. Only in a few of the villages of southeastern Russia did turnout exceed 50 percent in the elections of zemstvo deputies.73 In most townships of the region, no more than 35 percent of qualified voters went to the polling stations.74 Some polls saw less than 10 percent turnout, or even none at all.75 As a reference point, aver­ age turnout at the Constituent Assembly elections exceeded 60 percent in the region, and that was higher than the country average.76 The local press even cited a case when, in one of the villages of Chelyabinsk district of Orenburg province, the community sanctioned a peasant for not going to the polling station!77 In other words, the population of the region had a negative attitude not towards elections in general, but rather towards the township zemstvo in particular. No generalized statistical representation will, however, provide an ade­ quate impression of the atmosphere of the polling stations on election day. It seems quite appropriate to turn to contemporary journalists’ accounts of the events, which provide a nuanced rendering of the mood. A vivid description of the township zemstvo deputy elections was pro­ vided by a journalist of the newspaper Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, based on his observations of the elections in the village of Novo-Nikolaevskoe of Orsk dis­

73

  GAAO f. 285, op. 3, d. 5, l. 74; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 131–37; “Iavka izbiratelei na vybory glasnykh volostnogo zemstva,” Severokavkazskoe slovo, 10 September 1917, 4; 17 September 1917, 4; 23 September 1917, 4; “O pervykh rezul´tatakh volostnykh vyborov,” Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, 14 September 1917, 4–5; 29 September 1917, 4. 74

  GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 181, ll. 1–93; d. 69, ll. 10–106.

75

  GAAO f. 285, op. 3, d. 5, ll. 41–52; GARF f. R. 393 (NKVD RSFSR), op. 5, d. 645 (question­ naires on the course of township zemstvo assemblies in Astrakhan´ province), ll. 1–65; d. 646 (questionnaires on the course of township zemstvo assemblies in Astrakhan´ province as of 28 December 1917), ll. 1–77; d. 677 (questionnaires on the course of township zemstvo assemblies in Orenburg province), ll. 1–47; d. 708 (questionnaires on the course of township zemstvo assemblies in Stavropol´ province), l. 3; GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 38–43; GAOO f. 15, op. 1, d. 330A, ll. 149–64; GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 181, ll. 80–85; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 177, ll. 223–29; d. 200, l. 130; “O pervykh rezul´tatakh volostnykh vyborov,” Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, 29 September 1917, 4.

76

  L. G. Protasov, Vserossiiskoe Uchreditel´noe sobranie: Istoriia rozhdeniia i gibeli (Moscow: Rosspen, 1997), 199. 77

  D. A. Safonov, Istoriia Orenburgskogo kraia: Eksperimental´noe uchebnoe posobie (Oren­ burg: Izdatel´stvo OGPU, 2006), 207.

60 Sergei Liubichankovskii

trict.78 “The voting, noted the reporter, commenced at eight in the morning. As soon as the doors of the polling station opened, several people came in and voted, but afterwards no one showed up. There was no one for several hours. Members of the electoral commission went door-to-door, persistently inviting peasants to vote. They started to turn up, unwillingly, like captives. They got together and started chattering—what do we need this for? What do they want from us? Do they want to put a yoke on us? They stood around, argued among themselves, and went home. Then the commissioners sent officials after the voters. And only the threat of citing those who did not show up to cast their ballots had any affect on the peasants.” Other newspapers published similar examples.79 All of this highlights that the reason behind low turnout was a conscious unwillingness to vote. The elections did not occur at all in a number of townships of the re­ gion. In August–September of 1917, inhabitants of the following townships outright rejected the project of creating township zemstvos: Zaplavinsk and Kislovsk of Tsarev district;80 Ulansk of Chernoiarsk district;81 NovoNikolaev, Dmitriev, Bulanov, Novo-Mikhailovsk and Spassk of Orenburg;82 Dolgov, Talo, Kostylev, Stanovsk, Ichkinsk, Kurtamyshevsk, Tavolzhansk of Cheliabinsk;83 Kubeliak-Televsk of Verkhneural´sk-Troitsk;84 Medvedkov of Blagodarinsk district;85 Pokrovsk and Takhtinsk of Medvezhensk district;86 Pravokumsk, Levokumsk, Urozhaininsk, Novo-Aleksandrov, Orlovsk, Ni­ kol´sk, Preobrazhensk, Stepnaia of Sviatokrestovsk district;87 Nadezhdinsk, Mikhailovsk, Tatarsk, Kugul´tinsk, Tuguluk, Bezopasninsk, Don, Stepnovsk,

78   K. Petrov, “Vybory v sele Novo-Nikolaevskoe,” Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, 8 October 1917, 4. 79

  “O zhelanii krest´ian golosovat´,” Severokavkazskoe slovo, 17 October 1917, 2–3.

80

  GAAO f. 490 (Tsarev District Zemstvo Board), op. 2, d. 2 (journals of Extraordinary Tsarev District Assembly), ll. 3–5. 81

  GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 646, ll. 56–61.

82

  GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 315–20; GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 677, ll. 1–18.

83

  GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 181, ll. 80–95.

84

  Ibid.

85

  GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 97–110, 135–39.

86

  N. D. Sudavtsov, Zemskoe i gorodskoe samoupravlenie Rossii v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny (Moscow–Stavropol´: Izdatel´stvo Stavropol´skogo universiteta, 2001), 146.

87

  GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 217 (excerpts from minutes of sessions of executive committee of Stavropol´ Provincial Soviet of Peasant Deputies; list of township zemstvos), l. 68.

Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo

61

Pelaiadsk of Stavropol´ district.88 Altogether they comprised about 10 percent of the total number of townships of southeastern Russia. The decision to reject the elections was typically made by the peasant assembly. For instance, on 20 August 1917, inhabitants of the village of Pela­ giada convened an assembly on election day and concluded that they “do not wish to mention or hear the word ‘zemstvo,’ or elect any deputies.” On these grounds, they rejected all demands of the local township elder and resolved: “to hold no elections and no nominations for township deputies.”89 In a whole range of townships, technical problems held up the elections. Many of the voters who turned up at the polling stations on election day were not familiar with the voting process and couldn’t fill out the ballots correctly. In Orenburg province, for example, many voters did not fill in the patronymic of the candidates they selected, as was required by law.90 As previously men­ tioned, the reason behind peasants’ lack of awareness was the expedited preparation for the elections. The elections that called for majority rule delivered an unpleasant sur­ prise for the regional zemstvo. A significant share of candidates did not man­ age to garner enough votes to become deputies.91 A majority of the votes were “diffused” almost equally among multiple candidates. As a result, in an overwhelming majority of those townships where voters did turn up to cast their ballots, deputies were not elected at all, or just a few individuals were elected. That is why zemstvos could not officially commence their work.92 On the entire territory of Astrakhan´ province in August–September of 1917 only 21 township zemstvos were organized (27 percent); in Orenburg province—12 (12.5 percent); in Stavropol´—16 (11 percent). This was an utter failure of the zemstvo idea in the region. In September–October 1917, repeat or by-elections were held in the re­gion. They were preceded by massive campaigning, again held with the help of

88

  GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 177, ll. 223–25; d. 200, ll. 97–98.

89   Nash krai: Dokumenty i materialy 1917–1977 (Stavropol´: Stavropol´skoe knizhnoe iz­ datel´stvo, 1977), 346. 90 91

  GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 315–22.

  GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 69, ll. 15–52.

92

  GAAO f. 285, op. 3, d. 5, l. 74; GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 646, ll. 39–44; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 97–101; d. 217, ll. 68–70; GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 181, ll. 73–89.

62 Sergei Liubichankovskii

Soviets of Peasant Deputies,93 and with assistance of clergy.94 Efforts at rais­ ing awareness of the population occurred more purposefully, with special emphasis on the townships where election outcomes had been unsatisfactory. These measures were more successful, although ultimately townships re­ mained where elections never took place.95 Elections were valid, albeit on the second attempt, mainly in the townships where zemstvo reform was actively supported and campaigned for by the Soviets of Peasant Deputies, as well as those townships where the rural cultural forces of teachers, doctors, agrono­ mists, and others persistently and consistently campaigned for peasants to participate in the elections. As a result, by the end of October 1917 southeastern Russia saw a full set of township zemstvo deputies elected in 67 percent of the region’s townships: 17 out of 21 townships of Astrakhan´ district;96 14 of 17 in Enotaevsk district;97 9 of 10 in Krasnoiarsk district;98 22 of 24 in Tsarev;99 24 of 28 in Chernoiarsk;100

93

  GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 120–41; GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 307–15; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 98–115; f. 314, op. 1, d. 56, ll. 84–102.

94

  For instance, mullah Rospelev was employed to this end in the town of Troitsk. See “Povtornye vybory,” Orenburgskoe zemskoe delo, 5 September 1917, 3.

95

 GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 181, ll. 80–121; d. 143, ll. 1–2; f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 645, ll. 1–67; d. 646, ll. 1–34; GAAO f. 285, op. 3, d. 2 (journals of sessions of township zemstvo assemblies), ll. 1–205; GAOO f. 15, op. 1, d. 330A, ll. 467–70; GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 200, ll. 97–98; d. 177, ll. 223–24. 96

 GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 645, ll. 1–26; d. 646, ll. 1–17; GAAO f. 285, op. 3, d. 5, ll. 1–5; d. 2, ll. 1–205; f. 2102 (Kuchergan township Soviet of Worker, Peasant, Red Army, Cossack, and Trapper Deputies and its executive committee), op. 1, d. 43 (circulars of MVD, copies of journals of Astrakhan´ District Zemstvo Board; congresses of township zemstvo representatives of Astrakhan´ district), ll. 1–14. In addition to this, several representatives were elected in a number of villages of Chetyrekhbugorinsk township (GAAO f. 2102, op. 1, d. 43, ll. 1–14). 97

 GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 645, ll. 30–38; d. 646, ll. 18–28; GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 38–42.

98

  GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 39, l. 7; d. 40, l. 151; GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 645, ll. 47–67.

99

  GAAO f. 490, op. 2, d. 2, l. 3–6; f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 35–37; GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 646, ll. 39–117. 100

 GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 152–54; d. 7 (journal of sessions of Extraordinary Chernoiarsk District Zemstvo Assembly; reports of Krasnoiarsk City Duma and board), ll. 46–47; GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 646, ll. 56–77.

Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo

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35 of 42 in Orenburg;101 8 of 10 in Verkhneural´sk;102 9 of 12 in Troitsk;103 15 of 21 in Orsk;104 34 of 46 in Cheliabinsk;105 13 of 19 in Stavropol´;106 12 of 32 in Aleksandrovsk;107 15 of 40 in Blagodarinsk;108 20 of 39 in Medvezhensk;109 14 of 27 in Sviatokrestovsk.110 Compared to the outcome of the first election, this was a resounding suc­ cess. However, while the township zemstvo elections failed in 25 percent of townships across Russia, the southeastern region had a failure rate of 33 percent of the townships, despite repeating the elections. The situation proved especially complicated in Stavropol´ province, where over half of the townships failed to elect township zemstvo deputies. This was largely determined by the fact that the population was less familiar with zemstvo institutions, as they had been introduced there right before the First World War. The election outcome was also affected by the near-zero voter turnout in the territories inhabited by inorodtsy. In the townships where the elections succeeded, the majority of elected deputies were affluent, and politically they leaned towards Right SRs and Trudoviks.111 Most of the deputies (close to 70 percent) had a primary edu­ cation, and a fraction of them had completed secondary or professional education. Some of the deputies had prior experience working at zemstvo in­

101

  GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 10–11, 255–65; GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 677, ll. 1–47.

102

 GAOO f. 14, op. 3, d. 6, ll. 14, 266; GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 677, ll. 18–22.

103

 Ibid.

104

 GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 677, ll. 1–47.

105

 Ibid., d. 756 (protests related to elections to township zemstvo assemblies of Oren­ burg province), ll. 1–23; d. 677, ll. 1–47. 106

  GASK f. 314, op. 1, d. 133, l. 83; f. 311, d. 177, ll. 223–25; d. 200, ll. 137–38.

107

  Ibid., f. 311, op. 1, d. 177, ll. 96–120; d. 217, ll. 45–48.

108  Ibid., f. 67, op. 1, d. 376 (correspondence on the introduction of township zemstvo), ll. 448–50; GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 99 (information sheets of a local department of NKVD RSFSR), l. 14. 109

  GARF f. 1789, op. 1, d. 134 (summary reporting of the outcomes of township zemstvo representatives’ elections in Medvezhensk district of Stavropol´ province), l. 2; f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 708, ll. 3–4.

110 111

  GASK f. 311, op. 1, d. 217, ll. 68–70.

  GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 49 (protocols of sessions of township zemstvo assemblies of Orenburg province), ll. 12–43; d. 32 (protocols of sessions of township zemstvo as­ semblies of Astrakhan´ province), ll. 1–21; f. 1788, op. 2, d. 181, ll. 80–153.

64 Sergei Liubichankovskii

stitutions.112 Representatives of the poor and adherents of the radical left (Left SRs and Bolsheviks) managed to win only in a few townships of the region.113 This effectively meant that the top of the peasant pyramid, while initially resisting the elections, responded to the persistence of the authorities by de­ ciding to “take the reigns” of the zemstvo elections and use them for their own interests. The local peasant and Cossack elites adapted to the new circum­ stances, but only in the cases where and when they had not been able to sabotage the elections altogether. It is important to note that inorodtsy in their historical areas did not compromise in this fashion. The township zemstvo elections, like other elections attempted in 1917, failed in the Kalmyk steppe, Kyrgyz orda, Bolshederbetovsk ulus, Achikulaksk and Turkmen pristavstvos, and so forth.114 The standoff between the hereditary aristocracy and central bureaucracy continued. Meanwhile, the Cossacks held a middle ground be­ tween peasants and inorodtsy: although the elections did not fail entirely, they did not succeed in 54 percent of the Cossack townships. It is noteworthy that despite support from the soviets, the zemstvos and soviets of the region were not identical in their personal composition and party affiliations. Township zemstvos were more moderate. This was an out­ come of two factors that shed light on the more general issues of the popu­ lar perception of both institutions and the relations between zemstvos and soviets in the region. First, zemstvo elections of 1917 meant in essence staffing the entities of the administrative bureaucracy. Therefore the authorities imposed strict criteria on the process and outcome of these elections. Soviets had no such role in the governmental plans. Not being imposed from above, the soviets were not rejected by peasants to the same degree, and possibly also reminded peasants of the traditional communal institutions. This fact was exploited by political parties, primarily socialists, that came to dominate the soviets. Second, it is important to stress that by the time of the township zemstvo campaign, only provincial and district soviets were formed in the region. The emergence of the township and village soviets in southeastern Russia dates to the period after October 1917, and they were not instituted en masse until January–February 1918. In other words, at the time of the zemstvo elections, the soviets simply were not yet a real alternative to the township zemstvo. It is the temporal misalignment in the creation of the low-level soviets and zemst­ vos that explains why provincial soviets supported the elections, and also 112

­ Ibid.

113

  GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 1–3; GARF f. R. 393, op. 5, d. 645, ll. 65–67; GAAO f. 1094, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 2–5. 114

  GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 143, ll. 50–81; d. 81, ll. 145–61.

Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo

65

explains the more radical composition, compared to zemstvos, of the ensuing rural soviets. It was common in Soviet historiography to state that election results of 1917 did not reflect the “real” (that is, “leftist”) political preferences of the “popular masses.”115 The example of southeastern Russia does not support this proposition. Campaigning along party lines did not play a decisive role in the run-up to the zemstvo elections. It would also be incorrect to interpret political leanings of the “impecunious classes” as mainly Left SR and Bol­ shevik. The failure of the elections in the regions with large non-Russian nationalities, low voter turnout, as well as electoral successes of affluent candi­ dates allow us to conclude that a key role in the electoral campaign of 1917 came from the traditional outlook of the peasant population. Traditionalism of Russian peasantry was further enhanced by examples of special treatment by the authorities of the peasants’ nearest neighbors—the ethnic minorities. It was this traditionalism that prevented transition to the new standard of gov­ ernance, which was alien to the peasant—that of a township zemstvo. Conclusion Township reform in southeastern Russia faced tremendous difficulties, which cannot be reduced to the inevitable organizational, personnel, and technical problems in the midst of the continuing war and a flare-up of sociopolitical tensions. The main problem for the region, which was “adolescent” in its zemstvo development and peripheral in its position within the empire, was the rejection of the township zemstvo by the multiethnic population. Imposed from above and not rooted in local traditions, the zemstvo was perceived as an unjust mechanism of governance—and precisely governance, rather than self-governance. This was similar to the introduction of bureaucratic (in the Weberian sense) methods of governance on the periphery in the late 19th cen­ tury. As Jörg Baberowski described it, “Nowhere did the dilemma of state bureaucracy manifest itself so evidently as on the multiethnic peripheries of the empire. Bureaucratization in these regions was synonymous to margi­ nalization of autochtonous elites that represented power of the center in the periphery in the pre-reform period. Unknown people in an unintelligible language explained and implemented unknown laws—such was the bureau­ cratization of periphery in the eyes of local elites and peasant population.”116 115

  Eroshkin, Istoriia gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdenii, 170; Gerasimenko, Zemskoe samou­ pravlenie v Rossii, 5.

116

  Jörg Baberowski, “Doverie cherez prisutstvie. Domodernye praktiki vlasti v pozdnei Rossiiskoi imperii,” Ab Imperio 3 (2008): 71–95.

66 Sergei Liubichankovskii

Was this fundamental problem specific to the region under consideration, or was it characteristic of the whole country? It seems that some of its traits can be detected across the areas of Russia with a zemstvo. But different territories exhibited varying degrees of this problem. It was most acute in regions like southeastern Russia. The entire prior existence of this “internal periphery” within the Russian state was founded on respect of the center to­ wards traditional power structures and bearers of power. The direct prox­ imity of Russian peasants of the region to special sociocultural groups, namely the Cossacks and inorodtsy, helped to ignite their desire to enjoy the same privileges, including legal recognition of the old forms of communal governance. Consequently, their reaction to the introduction of township zemstvo governance was more pronounced than with inhabitants of other regions, where the zemstvo had been in existence for several decades. The mental split within Russian society allows an explanation for the pro-zemstvo stance of many Soviets of Peasant Deputies and anti-zemstvo sentiment not only of the indigenous aristocracy but also of the majority of township and village elders. The same factors are behind the failure of town­ ship elections of 1917 in southeastern Russia as compared to the core of the country. The experience of the region in 1917 vividly demonstrates that no theoreti­ cally verified governance model could be “planted” in the unprepared soil. Inhabitants of southeastern Russia in 1917 were immediate neighbors to the Cossacks and ethnic areas, which exemplified a successful defense of “tradi­ tional foundations.” They explicitly rejected the township zemstvo as a means of effective system of governance and viewed the election only as a means of relinquishing the governance over themselves to some external forces. They quite probably did not contemplate the possibility of influencing the elected authorities, since the entirety of their prior experience did not allow for such an option. Thus, the part of the population that saw no possibility of affecting the authorities denied the zemstvo reform any support. Another part of the population, viewing the reform as an opportunity to grasp power or to hold on to it, actively participated in the elections. But the latter hardly preoccupied themselves with the need for post-election work for the benefit of the entire community, rather than for their own narrow interests. This core clash of meanings invested in the township reform from “above” and from “below” predetermined the future unfolding of the revolution in southeastern Russia. This Gordian knot was likely impossible to untie and could only be severed. Translated by Evgenii Budnitskii

The Collapse and Rebuilding of Grain Procurement Authority in Civil War Russia: The Case of Penza, 1919 Peter Fraunholtz

Introduction The fate of Soviet Russia was determined to a great extent on the numerous battlefields and in peasant villages in grain-producing provinces during the course of 1919. From March 1919, when White Army offensives began in earn­ est, through their defeat in November 1919, the Bolshevik regime faced not only a military struggle for survival but also the potential loss of the 1919 harvest to enemy forces. For Bolsheviks in Moscow and in the central prov­ inces the main practical question became how to stay in power and feed the hungry population behind the lines during this crisis period. Indeed, the collapse of grain procurement in many grain-producing regions was a result of the collapse of the state.1 The Bolsheviks’ revolutionary violence was, to a considerable degree, met with White and peasant resistance that spawned even greater violence in the cause of survival of the regime on the military and grain fronts. Yet, reintegrating supply lines between grain producers and consumers required a variety of approaches in the context of Civil War crisis and resource scarcity. The twin challenges of grain procurement and military threat from the White armies in 1919 and how they were handled by provincial Soviet officials are essential to understanding the survival and nature of Soviet Rus­ sia.2 From 1918 onwards, the Bolsheviks struggled to build the Red Army and a competent food supply system to feed the hungry cities and provinces of central and northern Russia. In many instances, state agents and armed bri­ gades or occupying Red Army units, desperately seeking grain surpluses, 1

 Orlando Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917– 1921 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 254–59.

2

 Erik Landis, “Between Village and Kremlin: Confronting State Food Procurement in Civil War Tambov, 1919–1920,” Russian Review 63, 1 (2004): 73. Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 67–86.

68 Peter Fraunholtz

wreaked havoc with peasant agriculture and food reserves.3 By 1919, the col­ lapse of grain procurement and state authority meant local institutions and their constituencies were left to survive on their own. The survival strategies of local soviets contributed to further disintegration of the state and grain markets. Desperate procurement efforts by centrally-led forces circumvented local state organs (zemstvos in 1915–16 and soviets in 1918–19) and left even less integration in their wake.4 Some regions are noted for the Bolsheviks’ desperate, some might say near-suicidal, war for grain in which ideology and coercive violence were paramount.5 Others faced the necessity of tactical re­ treat from what is commonly seen as typical procurement operations. Despite implicit assumptions to the contrary, the Soviet regime did not possess unlimited resources in 1919. What is often overlooked in dealing with Soviet grain procurement is that the massive influx of resources into one area entailed the withdrawal of personnel from others. Armed force and capable personnel were often quickly concentrated in one crisis area af­ ter another for military or procurement purposes. Such was the case with Viatka (June 1918), Penza (fall 1918), Orel (fall 1918), Simbirsk (early summer 1919), Saratov (spring–summer 1919), Samara (late summer 1919), and Tambov (November–December 1919).6 The razverstka appears to have worked as it was designed only in a few areas at a time where and when massive force

3

 Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (London: Pen­ guin Books, 1996), 751–72. 4

 Zemstvos were organs of rural self-government that operated in the Russian Empire and Ukraine from 1864 to 1917. 5

 Many thanks to Lars Lih for his insight on the question of the motives driving Soviet procurement.J 6

 On Viatka, see Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizen­ ship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 167; on Penza, see Peter Fraunholtz, “State Intervention and Local Control in Russia, 1917–1921: Grain Procurement Politics in Penza Province” (Ph.D. diss., Boston College, 1999); on Simbirsk, see Lars T. Lih, Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914–1921 (Berkley: University of California Press, 1990), 190–91; on Simbirsk and Samara, see Figes, Peasant Russia, 186–87, 203–05, 262; on Saratov, see Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); on Tambov, see Delano Dugarm, “Local Politics and the Struggle for Grain in Tambov, 1918–1921,” in Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 1917–1953, ed. Donald Raleigh (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002), 59–81; on Narkomzem efforts in Orel province, see Michael Melancon, “Trial Run for Soviet Food Requisitioning: The Expedition to Orel Province, Fall 1918,” in Russian Review 69, 3 (2010): 412–37.

The Collapse and Rebuilding of Grain Procurement Authority

69

could be concentrated.7 Other areas were left devoid of capable personnel and needed to take a different, more pragmatic approach. Between March and November 1919, the Penza Provincial Commissariat of Food Supply (gub­ prodkom) responded pragmatically in various ways to a significant lack of resources and increasingly directed its energies to shaping rural officials into effective intermediaries better able to reintegrate grain producers into state procurement efforts.8 Penza experienced neither White rule nor Red Army occupation in 1918 or 1919. Armed procurement brigades left in November 1918 and were not replaced. Moreover, the 50 percent reduction in the size of the Penza party organization between March and July 1919 made a large increase in Bolshevik representation in rural soviets unlikely.9 My aim here is to investigate Penza as a significant counterpoint to the standard narratives of Soviet state building and Civil War grain procurement. The intent is to explore the impact of both district soviet resistance and personnel depletion on razverstka performance on a provincial level and highlight the pragmatism that guided adjustments in procurement operations (April 1919–November 1919), including the structural reorganization of the procurement apparatus. Penza was in fact a microcosm of Russia as a whole in 1919, where officials were required to make difficult choices to effectively utilize scarce resources in order to patch together broken supply lines between peasants with grain surpluses and con­ sumers in neighboring townships (volosti) and districts. This included the creation of sub-district procurement committees at the regional (raion) level which clearly resemble the domain of the tsarist land captains, the rural offi­ cialdom established in 1891 when districts were deemed too large to be run effectively.10 While the Bolsheviks borrowed from tsarist wartime approaches 7

 Melancon, “Trial Run,“ 428–33. Razverstka was a compulsory levy of grain and goods implemented as national procurement policy in late 1916 and again by the Bolsheviks starting in January 1919. 8  Penza included grain-consuming districts (uezdy) in the north and east (Krasnoslo­ bodsk, Narovchat, Gorodishch, Ruzaevka, Insar) and grain-producing southern dis­ tricts (Penza, Chembar, Nizhnilomov, Mokshan, Saransk, Kerensk). The latter might include several townships that were grain-consuming. For such variation in Viatka, see Retish, Russia’s Peasants, 14–15. 9

 Penzenskaia partiiniia organizatsiia v tsifrakh i faktakh: 1918–1978 gg. (Saratov: Privolzh­ skoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1979), 28. 10

 Thomas Pearson, Russian Officialdom in Crisis: Autocracy and Local Self-Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 196. For a discussion of the 1891 legi­ slation on the land captains, see George T. Yaney, The Urge to Mobilize: Agrarian Reform in Russia, 1861–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982). A raion typically covered a rural area comprising 10–12 townships (volosti).

70 Peter Fraunholtz

to mobilizing the population and resources in the grain-rich periphery, in the Volga region in 1919 older tsarist models appear to have been utilized by pro­ vincial authorities.11 Penza, 1914–18: State Collapse and Disintegration of Grain Supply Lines During the Great War, tensions emerged between local organs of self-govern­ ment and central agents, creating a dynamic that would endure in rural Russia up through 1920. Prior to 1914, Penza was a modest grain-exporting province in the central producing region that was dependent on the Russian grain market to replace fall exports of rye with spring imports of wheat from Western Siberia to ensure adequate food supply for urban and grainconsuming rural areas.12 During the war, a harvest failure in 1914 freed Penza from any requirement to export grain until the 1915 harvest. Subsequently, tsarist grain procurement officially relied on the efforts of the provincial and district zemstvos, however, Ministry of Agriculture agents competed with zemstvos in buying up peasant grain.13 By autumn 1916, Penza suffered from a wet harvest period and the collapse of both the transportation system and the national grain market, especially grain links to Western Siberia.14 When grain shipments from the east ceased, provincial officials curtailed exports, fearing that depleted grain stocks would not be replenished, leaving the swollen urban population vulnerable. This contributed to a chain reaction that resulted in food shortages in the capitals which helped spark the February Revolution. The collapse of the tsarist regime as well as the 1917 harvest failure in the central producing region further accelerated grain market disintegration. 11

 On the continuity of wartime measures from tsarist to Bolshevik eras in the Don Region, see Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

12

 S. G. Wheatcroft indicates that in the years before 1914 the central producing region of which Penza was a part sent its surpluses to northern consumers, supplying 80 percent of their imports despite frequent poor harvests, while the Eastern Producing Region demonstrated an increase in sown area and in “extra-regional” grain transfers. Wheatcroft, “Agriculture,” in From Tsarism to the New Economic Policy: Continuity and Change in the Economy of the USSR, ed. R. W. Davies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 85. 13

 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA) f. 456, op. 1, d. 258. This ac­ counted for 40 percent of the 4.963 million puds (one pud equals 16.38 kg) obtained that year in Penza. As was the case during the Civil War, oats accounted for approximately 69 percent of the grain purchased in 1915–16.

14

 RGIA f.456, op. 1 d. 124, l. 20.

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71

After taking power, the Provisional Government’s state grain monopoly instituted the process of grain registration through established consumption norms in order to find surpluses that could be procured for the benefit of consumers.15 The very poor 1917 rye harvest (55% below average) in Penza accelerated the decline in grain marketing and the erosion of provincial and district authority as local survival strategies took over.16 Noble estates became targets for those seeking food or seed grain as township zemstvos organized harvest and threshing activities.17 Provincial efforts to obtain grain for urban areas increasingly focused on producing districts and the specific townships which had better soil and higher yields.18 Grain registration, how­ ever, inadvertently reinforced local perceptions of grain “need” rather than “surplus” in the manner in which it was conducted by township officials. Where surpluses were found they were redistributed locally. Rural areas reverted to a subsistence economy to deal with the uncertainty in the grain market and state collapse as well. Supply lines to the northern consuming re­ gions of the country and many urban areas collapsed. Township authorities broke away from the control of district and provincial superiors, convinced the latter were incapable of reestablishing grain supply lines. The questions for Soviet officials, having extended the grain monopoly and grain registration, were how to reintegrate producers and consumers and how to build an apparatus that could do so. By March 1918 grain reserves from the poor 1917 harvest had dwindled considerably. District soviets made little attempt to find grain locally, but instead focused on sending agents to the east and south to obtain grain shipments for their locality.19 Numerous parallel efforts to overcome the breakdown in transportation of grain from Siberia to the province resulted. The Soviet Food Supply Dictatorship (May 1918) in Penza prohibited district soviet efforts to purchase grain in distant provinces and eventually provided provincial procurement authorities with considerable personnel resources in the form of armed detachments. When the 15

 Peasant grain stocks were to be surveyed to determine the “surplus” of producers and the need of consumers by way of established consumption norms. 16

 I would add the 12-month long impact of the poor 1917 harvest in central Russia to Melancon’s important discussion of the causes of hunger in 1918–19 (Melancon, “Trial Run,“ 417–20).

17

 Narodnoe prodovol´stvie, no. 5 (1917). This was especially the case in northern consuming districts where peasant yields were even worse than the norm. Vestnik Penzenskogo gubernskogo ispolnitel´nogo komiteta i komissariata, no. 80 (24 August 1917). 18

 Narodnoe prodovol’stvie, no. 21 (1917).

19

 Raleigh notes similar efforts in the districts of Saratov (Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 320).

72 Peter Fraunholtz

1918 grain campaign began in August, Soviet Russia was in its most contracted form. Initially, the resources of central and northern Russia were concentrated in four central grain-producing provinces, including Penza, providing pro­ vincial officials with the means to conduct procurement independent of dis­ trict and township soviets.20 At the height of the Food Supply Dictatorship in Penza in October 1918, procurement brigades in excess of 3,200 members worked to establish Committees of the Rural Poor (kombedy) in 95 percent of the townships and villages and procure over 1.453 million puds of grain in roughly six weeks.21 As was the case in Orel province, the procurement effort was conducted entirely by food brigades from other regions and kombedy.22 As in 1915–16, district organs in Penza were nearly completely circumvented. The means necessary for aggressive grain procurement that bypassed the authority of local soviets prevailed in Penza only from mid-September to early November 1918, when personnel resources were diverted from the central provinces to the expanding Soviet periphery.23 By December, the Penza gubprodkom’s reduced manpower necessitated the active participation of the district soviets in grain collection and, as in many provinces across central Soviet Russia, district officials reacted firmly against the recently ac­ celerated centralization of grain procurement.24 In Penza, district procurement commissars took advantage of the gubprodkom’s weakened position to press for more local grain redistribution and a greater role for themselves in the procurement process.25 Gorodishch district commissar N. I. Sirotkin acknowledged that existing surpluses needed to be exported, but also criticized central decrees which, he maintained, destroyed all district

20

 The provinces targeted by Narkomprod in 1918 were Saratov, Samara, Penza, and Tambov (Figes, Peasant Russia, 249). 21

 Iu. K. Strizhkov, “Priniatie dekreta o prodovol´stvennoi razverstke i ego osushchest­ vlenie v pervoi polovine 1919 g.,” in Oktiabr´ i sovetskoe krest´ianstvo, 1917–1927 gg., ed. I. M. Volkov (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), 159. Note the 1918 rye harvest in Penza was “above average.”

22

 Melancon, “Trial Run,” 428.

23  The revolution in Germany led to Soviet efforts to move into the Baltics and the Ukraine. Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 118–20. 24

 Gubprodkom was the provincial procurement committee which was subordinate to Narkomprod, the National or People’s Commissariat of Procurement.

25  Landis also explores district soviet opposition to centralization in Tambov (“Between Village and Kremlin,” 76). Raleigh notes that district executive committees’ decrees helped to undermine the 1918–19 grain campaign in Saratov (Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 303).

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Commissariat of Food Supply (uprodkom) autonomy.26 In fact, district officials had no confidence that Penza would resume receiving grain shipments from the east as it had before the war. Provincial Commissar Klimenko acknowl­ edged the necessity of grain redistribution within the province, but called for a more efficient process that would permit a significant surplus to be exported.27 In mid-December, a congress of district commissars unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the People’s Commissariat of Food Supply (Narkomprod) to reclassify Penza as a “self-sufficient” province in grain production and to have orders for grain exports transferred to other provinces.28 The Penza gub­ prodkom was confronted by the fact that district officials were a significant obstacle to procurement operations. With urban populations and the army in dire need of constant provisioning from rural areas, the stakes were high when it came to gubprodkom efforts to reintegrate producing localities with consumers throughout the province and nation.29 By the end of 1918, gubprodkom officials believed that they pos­ sessed complete grain registration data, which provided a general indication of where grain surpluses existed. This theoretically allowed them to press district subordinates to increase grain collections. However, even within the gubprodkom itself some concluded that, based on grain registration data, Narkomprod should reclassify Penza as a “self-sufficient” province. This is how Penza had been classified in early 1918 in response to the poor 1917 harvest.30 In Penza, problematic grain registration results provoked disagree­ ments throughout the procurement apparatus over the meaning of the data and its implications for policy, thus further weakening gubprodkom control over district subordinates. 1919: Disintegration, Resource Crises, and Tactical Retreat While procurement officials in Penza were divided on how to balance district interests with the demands facing the province as a whole, Narkomprod offi­ cials sought to reestablish supply lines from the central producing region to northern consumers. When the shift from the Food Supply Dictatorship to 26

 Izvestiia Penzenskoi gubernii, 9 December 1918.

27

 Ibid.

28

 Ibid. “Self-sufficient” here means that Penza could get by on its own resources, not needing grain shipments from other provinces. 29

 In contrast to Penza, which was further behind the front lines, military units at­ tempting to carry out their own food requisitioning complicated the work of Saratov procurement officials (Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 303). 30

 Izvestiia Penzenskoi gubernii, 8 December 1918.

74 Peter Fraunholtz

the razverstka was announced in January 1919, Penza, along with only 11 other provinces, received a significant grain procurement quota.31 Central procure­ ment officials expected district commissars to play a key role by distributing the quota handed down from the gubprodkom to the townships in order to fulfill Moscow’s demands for grain exports.32 Pressed by Moscow to export an additional 2.5 million puds of rye, the Penza gubprodkom broadly used its grain registration data to assign quotas to seven “surplus” districts. To ensure that surplus grain could be located, the gubprodkom announced a 25 percent reduction in consumption norms.33 Despite internal disputes, the gubprodkom accepted that Penza was still a grain-exporting province.34 Nonetheless, on an operational level, the razverstka system required armed brigades to conduct grain registration and local soviet officials to assign grain quotas to peasant households in a timely fashion and work energetically to fulfill them.35 Across central Russian during 1919, how procurement operations were organized in the localities often diverged significantly from the system devised in Moscow.36 Little of the theory of the razverstka system made it into practice in Penza either during the first half of 1919. Rather than assign quotas to the localities, district officials engaged in turf battles with provincial agents sent to run procurement operations and consistently disagreed with provincial

31

 On 11 January 1919, Narkomprod ordered 11.6 million puds of grain to be collected and exported from Penza, including 2.5 million puds of rye and 9 million puds of oats (Strizhkov, “Priniatie dekreta,” 136). 32

 On the origins of the razverstka, see Lih, Bread and Authority, 167–71; Retish, Russia’s Peasants, 174–75; and Melancon, “Trial Run,“ 426–34. 33

 The 25 percent reduction in consumption norms required a new grain registration in the surplus districts, but at this point Commissar Klimenko still expected that Moscow would send brigades that might replace those transferred to the periphery. Izvestiia Penzenskoi gubernii, 30 January 1919. On the necessity of armed force for grain registration, see Melancon, “Trial Run,“ 427–33. 34

 By 22 January 1919, district quotas were to be divided among the townships, based on grain registration, and they in turn were to assign quotas to the villages. Izvestiia Penzenskoi gubernii, 24 January 1919. On the bases for the centrality of consumption norms in the razverstka system, see Melancon, “Trial Run,“ 427–33.

35  Local officials were to face severe consequences from their district superiors if grain quotas were not fulfilled on time (Lih, Bread and Authority, 179). 36

 This was also the case in neighboring Tambov province in 1919 (Dugarm, “Local Politics,” 59). Note that in Penza by this time, Gorodishch district food supply commis­ sar N. I. Sirotkin, a local and former Left Socialist Revolutionary (SR), had become gubprod commissar.

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estimates of local grain reserves and export targets.37 They also regarded registration data as faulty for a variety of reasons, suggesting that a large part of the “surplus” from the ample 1918 rye harvest was either taken away before it was counted or, surreptitiously, after.38 Thus there was less grain in the villages than the data indicated.39 Just as significant, no new armed brigades arrived to facilitate the gubprodkom’s penetration into the townships of “surplus” districts. Consequently, grain collection in Penza continued to fall with each passing month. By March, Penza had fulfilled only 23 percent of the grain quota assigned by the razverstka decree.40 Despite the theory, township soviets faced no ongoing pressure from their superiors or armed brigades to work consistently towards the fulfillment of the grain quotas. While building up the Red Army under crisis conditions, the Soviet regime did not possess unlimited resources for grain procurement in 1919. Armed force and capable personnel were often quickly concentrated in one crisis area after another for military or procurement purposes. When a massive influx of resources was ordered into one area of intensive procurement this always entailed the withdrawal of personnel from other regions, and we see this on numerous occasions in the Volga region in 1919. Maximum grain procurement in certain key areas (Simbirsk, Samara, Saratov, and then Tambov) contributed to marginal performance in Penza and elsewhere. These latter regions generally did not experience peasant violence resulting from massive procurement, but rather resistance to central procurement policy from within the Soviet apparatus as provincial officials struggled, with depleted resources, to fulfill Moscow’s demands for grain.

37

 On the use of grain registration data by local officials to refute Moscow’s notions of available grain surplus, see Lih, Bread and Authority, 179. Landis notes that consumption norms were a concession by the state that producers had rights to a given amount of food that were to be respected in the requisition process (“Between Village and Kremlin,” 72).

38

 Lenin’s decree authorizing representatives from various Moscow institutions “to acquire small amounts of grain for themselves” resulted in a “flood of bagmen” into the region (Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 303). For the factors driving the flow of bagmen, see Mauricio Borrero, Hungry Moscow: Scarcity and Urban Society in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1921 (New York: Peter Lang, 2003).

39

 Grain collections began before the registration was completed (Izvestiia Penzenskoi gubernii, 14 March 1919). Bagmen and speculators bought up grain that had been registered as “surplus” (Izvestiia Penzenskoi gubernii, 15 March 1919).

40

 Izvestiia Narkomproda, no. 1–2 (1919): 36–37.

76 Peter Fraunholtz

War-related mobilizations limited the Penza gubprodkom’s already weakened capacity to reverse the downward trend in grain procurement.41 In response to Kolchak’s push toward the Volga in April 1919, the Penza party committee mobilized 20 percent of its ranks for duties at the front. According to one estimate, 2,000 party members joined the ranks of the Red Army fol­ lowing the 10 April mobilization order.42 In early May, the gubprodkom organized a Communist regiment for assignment to the front comprised of 250 volunteers from among the food brigades working in Penza.43 This exo­ dus of procurement workers reduced by over 40 percent the already depleted armed units working in Penza. Another 10 percent mobilization in response to renewed threats on the southern front hit the major “surplus” districts, where party membership fell by a third in Saransk and Penza, by over half in Mokshan and Nizhnilomov, and by 75 percent in Chembar.44 Overall, mobili­ zations for the Red Army from April to July 1919 contributed to a 50 percent reduction in the provincial party ranks.45 According to Aaron B. Retish, wanting “to maintain an army … friendly to the regime … veterans, party members, and Communist sympathizers were the first to be mobilized into the army, draining the Bolsheviks of natural allies in the countryside.”46 The urgent mobilization for the Red Army counteroffensive significantly reduced the gubprodkom’s ability to overcome district resistance, thus hampering grain procurement operations in Penza. Pragmatism seems to have dictated the gubprodkom response to the de­ pletion of its procurement personnel resulting from the heightened military threat in the region. During the 10 April mobilization, the gubprodkom an­ 41

 During Kolchak’s offensive in April, White forces threatened to occupy the Volga region in time for the 1919 harvest (Mawdsley, Russian Civil War, 134).

42

 Khronika Penzenskoi oblastnoi organizatsii KPSS 1884–1987 gg. (Saratov: Privolzhskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, Penzenskoe otdelenie, 1988), 74. Others argue that many left the party at this time rather than be transferred to the front. See T. H. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R., 1917–1967 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 76–77. On flux in the Tambov party organization in 1918–19, see Dugarm, “Local Politics,” 62.

43

 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Penzenskoi oblasti (GAPO) f. r-136, op. 1, d. 34, l. 86.

44

 Partiinyi arkhiv Penzenskoi oblasti (PAPO) f. 36, op. 1, d. 74, l. 143 as cited in Khronika Penzenskoi oblastnoi, 76.

45

 Penzenskaia partiiniia organizatsiia, 29–32. Throughout Soviet Russia a re-registration of Communist Party members combined with the mobilization for the front to reduce national party membership from 350,000 to 150,000 in 1919 (Rigby, Communist Party, 76–77). 46

 Retish, Russia’s Peasants, 208.

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nounced lower procurement quotas for the five districts (down from seven in January) deemed to have rye surpluses.47 Grain levies were lowered in advance of the depletion of the ranks of procurement workers and the poten­ tial of rural unrest if high procurement demands remained while White forces approached the region. Although gubprodkom data suggested larger surpluses existed in the province, in reality there was not enough armed force available to sustain higher procurement levels. The combination of military threats to the region and a lack of armed procurement brigades led to the decision to lower grain quotas. Rather than use the twin crises of imminent military assault on the region and food shortage to justify desperate and in­ discriminate approaches to grain procurement, Commissar Sirotkin and the Penza gubprodkom took a more measured approach in order to minimize the possibility of rural disturbance behind the front lines. In order to maximize procurement results, provincial officials concentrated their limited personnel resources in the few areas certain to have grain re­ serves. Gubprodkom members were dispatched to oversee operations in four of the five “surplus” districts, and food brigades were reassigned from around the province to the target areas.48 By 1 May 1919, the few remaining brigades were concentrated in the two largest surplus districts, Chembar and Penza. In both cases, brigades were concentrated in grain-producing townships (seven townships in Chembar and four townships in Penza) in order to maximize procurement results.49 By contrast, Narkomprod dispatched additional food brigade detachments numbering 1,500 to Saratov, and they were sent to all the districts to apply coercion for the extraction of grain surpluses.50 Apart from the number and size of the armed units available in Penza, the brigades were not consistently deployed as armed force. Instead, they were also used in what Aaron Retish suggests were Soviet efforts at “appeasement and building the peasant’s trust in the new political world.”51 When Food Brigade no. 417 from Vladimir province was transferred to Chembar in April 1919, unit members were assigned to work one member per township, conducting agitation and

47

 GAPO f. r-136, op. 1, d. 34, l. 79.

48

 GAPO f. r-136, op. 1, d. 34, ll. 80–80ob.

49

 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (RGAE) f. 1943, op. 3, d. 288, l. 15. As of 1 May 1919, there were 22 units totaling 582 members working as requisitioning brigades in Penza; 395 men were stationed in seven townships in Chembar and four townships in Penza district.

50

 Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 305. According to Melancon, this is what the Elets procurement template called for (“Trial Run,“ 433). 51

 Retish, Russia’s Peasants, 191.

78 Peter Fraunholtz

collecting information on grain reserves.52 Moreover, a Worker’s Inspectorate report from Chembar district indicated that township officials used the labor of food brigades to sow common or soldier’s fields, pulling them away from their procurement-related tasks. While the collection of grain stopped almost completely during the spring planting season, as it typically did, the Penza gubprodkom lacked the resources to reverse this trend by force.53 In contrast to conditions in neighboring provinces like Tambov and Saratov, which, ac­ cording to Donald J. Raleigh, was “run like an armed camp,” extremely limited armed brigades in Penza made the use of heavy-handed coercion against peasant grain producers an untenable option in 1919.54 Given its depleted resources, the Penza gubprodkom made other major adjustments in the razverstka system in order to enhance procurement work in rural areas.55 At the beginning of the 1919–20 grain campaign, procurement quotas were assigned to the localities based on the amount of sown cropland in the area.56 Given the conflicts around statistical data that marred the previous campaign and clear indications of a lower 1919 harvest, the gubprodkom abandoned grain registration results as the basis for assigning procurement targets to villages.57 Provincial officials hoped that quotas based on sown area would be less complicated for township soviet executive committees (VIKs) to assign and more difficult for peasants to circumvent than ones based on

52

 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) f. 5556, op. 3, d. 1720, l. 8. On brigades and agitation work, see Lih, Bread and Authority, 191.

53

 RGAE f. 1943, op. 3, d.288, l. 486.

54

 Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 9. On Tambov, see Erik Landis, Bandits and Partisans: The Antonov Movement in the Russian Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), 29.

55

 Despite the below-average rye harvest and reduced sowings, Narkomprod expected Penza to exceed the previous year’s rye procurements by 400,000 puds and to double their overall grain collections. Initially, three million puds of rye and 4.5 million puds of oats were to account for the bulk of Penza’s 7.7 million pud procurement quota.

56

 As a result of the work of district land departments on the redistribution of the winter cropland in June 1918, Soviet authorities had a good indication of how much land each village and township had to plant with rye for the 1919 harvest. A final attempt at grain registration in the middle of August included the task of determining the amount of land sown with each crop in the localities (Fraunholtz, “State Intervention,” 331–37, 566–68).

57

 Officials in Insar, Kerensk, Ruzaevka, and Penza districts reported that wet con­ ditions prevailed in their winter fields in general, while other districts had more localized problems (GAPO f. r-136, op. 1, d. 34, l. 103ob.).

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grain registration results.58 As Michael Melancon notes, in the case of Orel local officials refused to work on grain registration in the villages without the participation of armed brigades.59 In the absence of sufficient armed force required to carry out the laborious and contentious task of determining sur­ pluses for each household, Penza officials sought a more direct and efficient approach for local officials to use in assigning grain quotas. Maintaining sta­ bility in the province might have been a factor as well at this point as the Mamontov raid into neighboring Tambov in mid-August 1919 wreaked havoc with procurement there and had the potential for destabilizing villages across the border in Chembar district, Penza’s largest grain producer.60 In any case, Penza officials appear to have abandoned a key element of the razverstka sys­ tem in the service of facilitating stable procurements with fewer personnel resources at their disposal. In another significant change, provincial authorities adjusted the procure­ ment targets for each of the major grains in response to the anticipated belowaverage grain harvest.61 Narkomprod expected Penza to exceed the 1918–19 rye procurement by 400,000 puds and to double its overall grain collections to 7.7 million puds. Gubprodkom officials concluded that large rye procurements would be difficult to achieve given the smaller rye yield, reduced area sown with rye, and the central place of rye in the peasants’ diet.62 Instead, they expected that millet collections could be increased substantially. Statistical evidence suggests that the area sown with millet increased by 15 percent from 1917 to 1919, indicating that peasants had planted more of a grain viewed as less significant in early soviet procurement campaigns. Given the increased sowings and solid yield of the 1919 millet crop, provincial officials set a new

58

 Narkomprod officials reported that knowing the consumption norms, peasants sold all their extra grain to speculators and home brew (samogon) distillers and left themselves just the bare minimum (RGAE f. 1943, op. 3, d. 288, 1. 430ob.). By early August 1919, a new upsurge of samogon distilling was spreading through Penza prov­ ince (Saranskaia Pravda, 3 August 1919). 59

 Melancon, “Trial Run,“ 428.

60

 Landis, “Between Village and Kremlin,” 73.

61

 Initially, three million puds of rye and 4.5 million puds of oats were to account for the bulk of Penza’s 7.7 million pud procurement quota. Low projected harvest yields led to a reduction of procurement targets to 1.6 million puds for rye and 2.3 million puds for oats.

62

 The amount of cropland sown with rye in Penza decreased from 580,765 desiatinas for the 1918 harvest to 499,528 desiatinas for the 1919 harvest, a 14 percent decline. Obzor sel´skogo khoziaistva v Penzenskoi gubernii (Penza, 1922), 95.

80 Peter Fraunholtz

target for it at 3.8 million puds to make up for the shortfall of rye.63 The absence of coercive armed force, a key piece of the razverstka system, compelled the Penza gubprodkom to make this pragmatic adjustment in its goals in order to streamline the procurement efforts of local soviets in particular and the provincial apparatus as a whole. Back to the Future: Rural Crisis, Tsarist Legacy, and Organizational Change Historically, districts in Penza and in most central provinces were identified as either grain-producing or grain-consuming, and a deliberate combination of the two types was meant to fashion a measure of local self-sufficiency even in lean times. Moreover, grain-producing districts in Penza included villages with lesser soil quality and high population density where peasants typically needed to obtain food from better-off localities. In times of acute crisis, this variety in local production conditions provided an additional justification for district officials to resist their superiors’ calls for grain exports.64 By May 1919, gubprodkom officials lost hope in the district soviets’ ability to play a role in grain procurement efforts.65 On the eve of the 1919 harvest, Penza authorities initiated a major organizational change to better integrate town­ ship officials into soviet procurement efforts. By August, members of the gubprodkom finalized plans to create urban borough committees to monitor the 270 township soviets more closely and improve their grain collections. In creating an extensive middle level in the provincial procurement apparatus, gubprodkom officials sought to facilitate closer and more effective monitoring of the township soviets that were to do much of the work of assigning quotas to households and persuading peasants to deposit their surplus.66 As early as autumn 1918, Narkomprod officials authorized extensive restructuring of the provincial food apparatus in certain troublesome provinces.67 Urban boroughs were configured on the basis of statistical 63

 Cropland sown with millet in Penza increased from 144,910 to 163,140 to 166,499 desiatinas between 1917 and 1919 (Obzor sel´skogo khoziaistva, 95).

64

 Concern over the rye crop and thus the food supply for the 1919–20 agricultural year left peasants increasingly reluctant to part with what rye remained from the 1918 harvest.

65

 Grain collections in May fell to 93,000 puds, down from 143,000 puds in April. Izvestiia Narkomproda, no. 11–12 (1919): 15–16. 66

 On the need to compel local Soviet institutions to serve state interests inherent in the razverstka system, see Lih, Bread and Authority, 179. 67

 In Kaluga, for example, provincial authorities had been locked in a fierce struggle to control the lower-level soviet food supply committees. Izvestiia Narkomproda, no.

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data, geographic conditions and local infrastructure in order to create uni­ form economic units. This restructuring was undertaken to increase the gubprodkom’s ability to procure grain in more productive townships and to redistribute grain to the hungry parts of the province. Once urban borough procurement committees (raiprodkomy) were formed, the township and district food supply committees were disbanded and responsibility for procurement was left to the VIKs.68 These were to facilitate the mobilization of peasant producers in the service of state efforts to rebuild grain supply lines. The latter would be supervised by the raiprodkomy, which in turn would be directly responsible to the gubprodkom. The entire provincial apparatus would thus maintain improved ties to the localities.69 In August, the Penza gubprodkom replaced 11 district committees with 32 raiprodkomy, which would run the 1919–20 procurement campaign. 70 According to Donald J. Raleigh, Bolshevik approaches to establishing its rule in the countryside “had much to do with the tsarist autocratic legacy.”71 The urban boroughs established in 1918–19 for food supply operations very clearly resemble the prerevolutionary sub-district territories (uchastki) that were the domain of the land captains, established in 1891. In the midst of the crisis of state authority in rural Russia in the late 1880s, Interior Minister Dmitrii Tolstoi’s case for the land captains rested in part on the concern that rural districts “contained too many villages” to be adequately administered, thus requiring the deployment of sub-district officials.72 Throughout the Middle Volga region in 1919, rural district soviet leaders ”could barely cope with keeping the towns running in view of the collapse of market relations, chaotic population movements, and financial stress.”73 The formation of three or four urban boroughs in each district moved the essential organs of procurement administration closer to the villages. Mokshan district, for ex­ ample, was divided into three urban boroughs: Mokshan, Tsarevshchinsk, and Lunin. The latter was comprised of eleven townships, all of which were no more than 30 versts (32 kilometers) away from the urban borough center. According to the new urban borough commissar, this created the possibility 20–21 (1918): 55–56. 68

 The raiprodkomy were to be staffed by the personnel of the disbanded district committees and elsewhere (GAPO f. r-136, op. 1, d. 24, 1. 140). 69

 Izvestiia Narkomproda, no. 20–21 (1918): 55–56.

70

 GAPO f. r-136, op. 1, d. 24, 1. 149.

71

 Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 75.

72 73

 Pearson, Russian Officialdom, 196.

 Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 99.

82 Peter Fraunholtz

of monitoring work in the townships a couple of times a week.74 Just as the land captains had been personally responsible to the governor, urban borough commissars reported directly to provincial superiors.75 Provincial authorities sought to minimize opposition to Soviet procurement policies made possible by the districts’ historical identity as a grain producer or grain consumer and build a disciplined apparatus in which village and township officials acted as representatives of state power, rather than of local interests. Construction of an efficient procurement apparatus able to project author­ ity into the Russian countryside was particularly challenging for provinces not directly impacted by Civil War fighting or periods of occupation by military forces. In provinces reconquered by Red Army forces, Soviet authority in general and grain procurement in particular were built upon the presence of overwhelming military force. In some Volga regions, the Soviet elections of 1919 resulted in a more Bolshevized township soviet leadership, more prepared to strengthen state control over the villages and grain supplies. However, this conclusion seems to hold most firmly in areas where the township soviet executive committees (volispolkomy) were established during Red Army occu­ pation.76 Penza was one Middle Volga province that did not experience White rule or Red Army occupation in 1918 and early 1919. Moreover, the 50 percent reduction in the size of the Penza party organization between March and July 1919 would seem to make a large increase in Bolshevik representation in rural soviets unlikely.77 Even in provinces like Saratov, where there emerged a new “concentration of Communists in the volispolkomy, they did not always promote the interests of Soviet power.”78 Instead, the closer proximity of rai­ prodkomy was intended to increase pressure on the township and village soviets to fulfill their procurement quotas.79 From a state-building perspective, integrating township officials into the provincial procurement system meant overcoming deficiencies in manpower and proper state consciousness. Writing about the last years of tsarist Russia, 74

 RGAE f. 1943, op. 3, d. 288, 1. 519.

75

 Yaney, Urge to Mobilize, 52.

76

 Figes’s conclusions on the Soviet elections of 1919 tend to generalize about the en­ tire Volga region (Figes, Peasant Russia, 220–25). 77

 Penzenskaia partiiniia organizatsiia, 28.

78  Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 322. On the mixed election results in Viatka, see Retish, Russia’s Peasants, 201–04. 79

 The uprodkomy in Saratov were abolished in May and replaced by raiprodkomy (Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 307). Figes notes that that raiprodkomy were set up in 1919 to provide closer supervision of the volispolkomy (VIKs) (Figes, Peasant Russia, 261).

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Peter Holquist notes the widespread belief that the Russian state was seen not just as “a tool of repression, but also as the only available instrument for overcoming backwardness.”80 The tasks of the new raiprodkom, concerned as they were with turning township and village peasant officials into respon­ sible intermediaries in a modern state, share much with the intended work of the land captains. As Corrine Gaudin argues, land captains were “to embue rural officials themselves with an awareness of the official nature of their own position.”81 This was part of the ongoing effort “to inculcate in peasant of­ ficials a respect for the formal status and procedures.”82 In their efforts to rein­ tegrate rural grain producers with consumers in other districts, towns, and in the northern regions of Russia, gubprodkom officials no doubt expected the raiprodkomy might replicate the efforts of land captains who, according to one contemporary account, “transformed the volost´ administration from the highest body of peasant self-government into … the ‘last link in the bureaucratic chain.’”83 If the Bolsheviks borrowed heavily from tsarist war­ time approaches to mobilizing the population and resources for the new So­ viet state in colonizing efforts in the grain-rich periphery, such as the Don, in the Volga and central Russia older models appear to have been deemed useful by provincial authorities. Imposing Discipline and Raising Consciousness in the Procurement Apparatus The razverstka system required that local officials, more than the peasants, be pressured by the state into complying with procurement demands.84 This was a major aspect of building a state apparatus that would effectively reintegrate grain producers with consumers locally and nationally. The goal of the new raiprodkom was to insure that township and village soviet officials worked diligently to make sure procurement quotas were assigned quickly and fairly in order to maximize procurement and minimize peasant resistance. Nonetheless, each raiprodkom had to be built from scratch and was typically understaffed or staffed initially with people with little admin­ 80

 Holquist, Making War, 284.

81

 Corinne Gaudin, Ruling Peasants: Village and State in Late Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007), 62. 82

 Ibid., 63. She notes that Interior Ministry efforts met with limited success.

83

 S. I. Matveev, “V volostnykh starshinakh,“ in Russkoe bogatstvo, no. 2 (1912): 86, as cited in S. Tutolmin, “Russian Peasant Views of the Imperial Administration, 1914– Early 1917: Paradigm Shift or Preservation of Tradition?” Russian Studies in History 47, 4 (2009): 57. 84

 Lih, Bread and Authority, 180.

84 Peter Fraunholtz

istrative experience. After several mobilizations in response to military threats, few Communists remained in the Penza countryside.85 As a result, it was mid-October before officials in the Penza urban borough managed to as­sign procurement quotas to the townships and organize agitation aimed at encouraging peasants to make deposits on their own.86 The gubprodkom still sought to discipline local officials to improve grain collections, but in a way that would maintain stability in the countryside given the grave military threat to Soviet Russia. It did so by organizing a Special Commission to investigate local officials and others who violated food supply policy and to subject of­ fenders to short-term arrest and indoctrination.87 While raiprodkomy were being set up, the Special Commission pressured township and village officials to work more energetically on procurement. Penza authorities did not utilize mass arrest and replacement of local offi­ cials during 1919 to instill obedience in the local soviets. There were far too few capable officials in rural areas for this to have led to better results. Instead, much like the tsarist land captains, soviet authorities in Penza employed short-term arrest to mold local officials into obedient representatives of state authority.88 For example, between 20 October and 15 November 1919, 17 of the 18 people arrested by the Special Commission were township executive com­ mittee and village soviet officials negligent in fulfilling the collections quotas. Local soviet officials were kept under armed guard for three to six days and were lectured on the principles of Soviet food supply policy. In order to gain their release they had to promise that their soviet would fulfill 30 percent of the procurement quota by 15 November.89 According to one Soviet report, 85

 The new raiprodkomy were being set up during the critical mid-September to midNovember procurement period. 86

 By 20 November 1919, only 26,924 puds of rye had been collected there (RGAE f. 1943, op. 3, d. 288, 1. 540).

87

 This organ was officially known as the Special Commission for the Struggle with Sackmanism, Grain Hiding, Separate Goods-Exchange, Speculation and Nonfulfill­ ment by local organs of the commands of the food supply organs (Osobaia komissiia po bor´be s meshechnichestvom, ukryvatel´stvom, separatnym tovaroobmenom, spe­ kuliatsiei i neispolneniem mestnymi vlastiami prikazov Prodorganov) (RGAE f. 1943, op. 3, d. 288, 1. 532ob.).

88

 On tsarist land captains’ efforts to discipline peasant officials at the township and village level, see James Mandel, “Paternalistic Authority in the Russian Countryside, 1856–1906” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1978), 272. On Interior Minister Tolstoi’s views on the land captains, see Pearson, Russian Officialdom, 180.

89

 In one instance, a local official was held for 25 days. Only one individual was sent to prison and that was in connection with other crimes (RGAE f. 1943, op. 3, d. 288, 1. 393).

The Collapse and Rebuilding of Grain Procurement Authority

85

in each case of first-time arrest, when the officials returned to the village grain collection immediately increased.90 In contrast, armed brigades at this time were arresting rural soviet officials in neighboring Tambov out of their determination to push aside any form of opposition to forced requisitions.91 The approach taken by the Special Commission suggests that the gubprod­ kom sought to influence the consciousness of peasant officials concerning their obligations to play a major role in the campaign to deposit grain. Arrested officials were reminded that they could be detained again and sent to prison if the quotas were not fulfilled. Defenders of the gubprodkom’s policy of shortterm detainment thought it advantageous for procurement and the status of Soviet power as well. They assumed that the offenses committed by local offi­ cials resulted from the offenders’ low level of political consciousness rather than malicious anti-Soviet attitudes.92 Concerning the intended impact of the land captains, Corinne Gaudin points out that “the rural population had lost the habit of submitting to authority and the situation required lenience for ille­ gal actions that did not arise from evil intentions.”93 Similarly, by instructing Civil War–era officials on the nature of Soviet grain procurement policy and then releasing them, peasants would take this as a sign of the dignity of Soviet power.94 In light of the chronic shortage of capable personnel working in the rural soviets and procurement apparatus, Penza authorities found it prudent to incarcerate unproductive or uncooperative local officials temporarily and subject them to indoctrination in Soviet procurement policies and goals. The gubprodkom intended to apply enough pressure to improve grain collections, but without sowing instability at this time.95 Conclusion The razverstka, as it was designed, was one approach to the centralization of grain procurement and the rebuilding of grain supply lines eroded by war, 90

 RGAE f. 1943, op. 3, d. 288, 1. 393.

91

 Efforts at official oversight of requisitioning brigades in Tambov uncovered a pattern of arrest and incarceration of rural soviet officials (Landis, “Between Village and Kremlin,” 78). 92  Holquist finds a similar level of leniency exercised by roving tribunals of the procurement committee in the Don region in 1920 (Holquist, Making War, 259). 93

 Gaudin, Ruling Peasants, 47.

94

 RGAE f. 1943, op. 3, d. 288, 1. 393.

95

 On 14 October 1919, Denikin’s forces captured Orel province, 240 miles south of Moscow (Mawdsley, Russian Civil War, 195–96).

86 Peter Fraunholtz

state collapse, and then Civil War. Central and Volga provinces pursued the urgent task of grain procurement differently, depending on the resources available to them. Overall scarcity throughout Soviet Russia led to an approach in 1919 that featured the rapid concentration of armed force in some grainproducing regions, specifically along the Volga and in Tambov. This, along with military mobilization, resulted in the depletion of forces elsewhere. Those provinces without sufficient armed force to bypass local soviets and conduct grain registration and requisitioning were forced to adopt a more flexible and pragmatic approach. The case of Penza suggests that this second type of centralization involved the long-term goal of building a stronger, more integrated procurement apparatus by reverting to a late-tsarist model of rural administration. This approach resulted in very modest short-term grain procurement results in 1919.96 Yet, in contrast to Tambov, where according to one gubprodkom official in late 1919 “getting grain was more important than maintaining … Communist government in the countryside,” officials in Penza made incremental progress towards reintegrating producers and consumers as well as rural soviets which had been operating in survival mode for most of their short existence.97 Consequently, Penza remained an island of relative stability in a region engulfed in violent upheaval provoked by the razverstka imposed by force and the destructive impact it had on local food supply, agriculture, and autonomy.

96  Penza’s 50 percent procurement rate for 1919–20 represented 3.858 million puds, or only a marginal increase in the quantity of grain collected over the 1918–19 effort. The 1920–21 campaign ending in December 1920 yielded 3.628 million puds (Fraunholtz, “State Intervention,” 754). 97

 Dugarm, “Local Politics,” 74. On the causes of peasant uprisings in neighboring Volga provinces, see Figes, Peasant Russia, 322–23.

Zemstvo, State, and Peasants in Arkhangel´sk Province, 1917–20 Liudmila G. Novikova

The peasantry in prerevolutionary Russia has often been described as inher­ ently backward, uncivilized, and anti-statist.1 And the Russian Revolution, according to many observers and historians, caused peasants to become even more insulated from society and hostile to the state.2 Indeed, after the collapse of traditional authority in 1917 peasants en masse severed their obligations to the state: they refused to provide recruits, ceased to pay taxes, and partitioned state, church, and private lands according to their own understandings of jus­ tice and equality. During the ensuing Civil War all contenders for state power had to struggle desperately to get the countryside back under their control.3 But in this effort to secure peasant collaboration, according to the general narrative, the White regimes4 were much less successful than the Reds. This Support from the Basic Research Program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics is gratefully acknowledged. 1  See Yanni Kotsonis, Making Peasants Backward: Agricultural Cooperatives and the Agrar­ ian Question in Russia, 1861–1914 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). 2

 See for example M. Gor´kii, O russkom krest´ianstve (Berlin: Izdatel´stvo I. P. Ladyzhni­ kova, 1922); V. P. Buldakov, Krasnaia smuta: Priroda i posledstviia revoliutsionnogo nasiliia (Moscow: Rosspen, 2010); Orlando Figes, A Peoples Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Viking, 1997).

3

 For an overview of the Russian peasantry in the revolutionary period, see T. V. Osipova, Rossiiskoe krest´ianstvo v revoliutsii i grazhdanskoi voine (Moscow: Izdatel´stvo Strelets, 2001). On peasants’ political attitudes under the Provisional Government, see, for example, Sarah Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). On peasant resistance to state policies, see, for example, Erik C. Landis, Bandits and Partisans: The Antonov Movement in the Russian Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008); Martin Krispin, “Für ein freies Rußland…”: Die Bauernaufstände in den Gouvernements Tambov und Tjumen 1920–1922 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2010). 4

 There are conflicting definitions to the terms “Whites” and “White regimes.” Some contemporaries and historians understood them in a narrow sense as a conservative pro-monarchist wing of the anti-Bolshevik movement. Others offered a broader definition to encompass all organized political groups, from moderate socialists Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 87–108.

88 Liudmila G. Novikova

failure is often attributed to the White governments’ conservative policies and ideologies, but also to their attempt to reconstruct at the grassroots level zemstvo self-government institutions that reminded peasants of the intensely hated tsarist regime.5 In this article I argue for a more complex understanding of peasant political attitudes during the Russian Civil War. Focusing on the zemstvo self-government in Arkhangel´sk province in the Russian North between 1917 and early 1920, I tell two interconnected stories: an institutional story of the northern zemstvo during the revolution and Civil War and a story of effective peasant collaboration with changing political regimes. I argue that peasants did support different forms of local government if these served the needs of the village and mediated between rural communes and the state. For example, in Northern Russia zemstvos were quite efficient and popular among peasants, possibly no less popular than local soviets. Although the Northern White government, like the Bolshevik government or Sovnarkom (the Council of People’s Commissars), never fully mastered the territories it claimed to rule, even partial control over a certain area over time produced a significant degree of collaboration by the population. This engagement with whatever political power was available al­lowed peasants to gain protection and to further their social and economic interests. Surprisingly, this collaboration has largely gone unnoticed. Most histories of the zemstvo end with the collapse of these self-government institutions in central Russia in 1917 and early 1918, whereas historians of the Civil War mostly focus on sharp conflicts between zemstvo socialists and the Bolsheviks, on the one hand, and conservative White regimes, on the other.6 To get a clearer and to monarchists, who fought against the Reds in the Civil War. In this article I use “Whites” in the broader sense as synonymous to “anti-Bolsheviks” to reflect broad collaboration among anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia’s Northern Region that is the subject of the current chapter. 5

 On the Whites’ conservatism, see, for example, Peter Kenez, “The Ideology of the White Movement,” Soviet Studies 32, 1 (1980): 58–83. 6

 On the zemstvo in Russia, see Terence Emmons and Wayne S. Vucinich, eds., The Zemstvo in Russia: An Experiment in Local Self-Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); N. G. Koroleva, ed., Zemskoe samoupravlenie v Rossii, 1864– 1918, 2 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 2005). On zemstvos under the Whites in the North, see, for example, V. V. Osipov, “Zemstva Evropeiskogo Severa Rossii v 1917–1920 gg.: Na materialakh Arkhangel´skoi i Vologodskoi gubernii” (Candidate diss., Pomorskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, Arkhangel´sk, 2000); P. V. Fedorov, “Zemstva i sovety Arkhangel´skoi gubernii v 1917–1920 gg.” (Candidate diss., Murmanskii gosudarst­ vennyi pedagogicheskii institut, 2001). See also A. V. Voronin and P. V. Fedorov, Vlast´ i samoupravlenie: Arkhangel´skaia guberniia v period revoliutsii (1917–1920) (Murmansk: n.p., 2002).



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more nuanced perspective on Arkhangel’sk zemstvos during the Civil War, I examine in detail the composition of zemstvo assemblies and boards and the role they played under the White regime. I try to determine the degree to which peasants participated in zemstvo re-elections and what problems they tried to solve through zemstvo mediation. Ultimately, I argue that the zemstvo in the Russian North was not only quite efficient but also played a significant role in connecting peasants to a larger polity. The geographic focus of this article is on Arkhangel´sk province in the Russian North, which for most of the Civil War remained under White rule.7 Zemstvos in the region exercised greater influence than on any other White-controlled territory. This partly resulted from the fact that zemstvo self-government did not exist in the province before 1917 and so was not stigmatized as a remnant of the old regime. Also, zemstvos benefited from political support from the Northern anti-Bolshevik government headed by a moderate socialist, Nikolai Vasil´evich Chaikovskii.8 Finally, in the largely non-agricultural Arkhangel´sk province, zemstvos assumed important eco­ nomic functions assisting the state administration with food distribution. Thus, the example of zemstvo self-government in the Russian North highlights the importance of particular local conditions for shaping political and administrative structures of the Civil War era. It also throws new light on the crucial issue of peasants’ relationship with the state. An examination of zemstvo activities in the northern countryside reveals that during the Civil War, when political authority was increasingly fragmented, northern peas­ ants did not seek to break ties with the state. Instead, they tried to engage with the state power that was currently controlling their territory. They did so because the state, even if unstable, contested, and limited to one province, was still providing services and offering protection that villagers often could not obtain elsewhere. Despite their resistance to some state policies, peasants obviously did not constitute a separate nation within the nation.9 Throughout the revolutionary period they responded deftly to changes in national and 7

 On the history of the White movement in the North, see L. G. Novikova, Provintsial´naia “kontrrevoliutsiia”: Beloe dvizhenie i Grazhdanskaia voina na russkom Severe, 1917–1920 gg. (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011); Leonid I. Strakhovsky, Intervention at Archangel: The Story of Allied Intervention and Russian Counter-Revolution in North Russia, 1918–1920 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1944). 8  Chaikovskii headed the Arkhangel´sk government from August 1918 until January 1919, when he left for Paris. Still, even later he formally chaired the cabinet and exer­ cised some influence on its policies. 9

 On the Russian peasantry as “a nation within a nation,” see Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 58.

90 Liudmila G. Novikova

regional politics and under certain conditions could develop strong connec­ tions with state authorities.10 This article discusses the zemstvo self-government in Arkhangel´sk prov­ ince starting with its introduction in the North in 1917. Then it explores the zemstvo government during the brief span of Bolshevik rule in the first half of 1918. Finally, it analyzes in detail the zemstvo’s role under the anti-Bolshevik government that controlled the province from August 1918 to February 1920. Revolutions of 1917 in Arkhangel´sk and the Establishment of the Zemstvo Throughout the revolutionary period the zemstvo played a unique role in Arkhangel´sk. It was introduced only in 1917, and in the eyes of both local political elites and northern peasants it was associated with revolutionary change rather than with the defunct old regime. Arkhangel´sk province, like Siberia, part of the Urals and some southern and western imperial territories, had been exempt from the self-government reform of the 1860s. In a region that totally lacked noble landownership, an elected zemstvo would have been completely peasant-dominated, and the tsarist autocracy—fearful of its poten­ tial radicalism—did everything possible to slow down its introduction in the North. In the last decades before the revolution the northern intelligentsia, local merchants, and even some Arkhangel´sk governors repeatedly, but unsuc­ cessfully petitioned St. Petersburg to introduce zemstvo self-government in the province. Ultimately, it was not until the February Revolution that, as a result of radical administrative reforms of the new Provisional Government, Arkhangel´sk was finally granted the right to elect its own zemstvo. The decree to introduce the zemstvo in the North was issued in June 1917, and the first elections were held in the late summer and fall of that year.11 The timing defined both the composition and reputation of the newly elected bodies. Whereas in central Russian provinces by 1917 the zemstvo was largely discredited as a gentry-dominated institution and during the revolution was quickly replaced by soviets, in Arkhangel´sk the zemstvo had the reputation 10

 This article develops the argument of some recent studies that discuss peasant engagement with the Soviet state during the revolution and Civil War. See, for example, Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1917–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Joshua A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905–1925 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003). But I argue that peasants also actively collaborated with the White administration if they happened to live in a territory under White control.

 On the introduction of zemstvos, see Voronin and Fedorov, Vlast´ i samoupravlenie, 69–74. 11



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91

as a profoundly democratic body and enjoyed significant support. In the North zemstvos appeared simultaneously with soviets, were often elected at the same peasant gatherings, and often did not even differ in anything but name. It was not uncommon for a township (volost´) assembly to elect both a local zemstvo and soviet at one meeting.12 Responding to conflicting political signals from the imperial and provincial capitals, peasant communes often tried to please all masters and created several elected institutions that could communicate with different contenders for power. The socialist make-up of both zemstvos and soviets, often dominated by members or sympathizers of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, contributed to the uniformity of these institutions. So did their reliance on the rural coopera­ tive movement. A dense network of Arkhangel´sk consumer cooperatives flourished in the North during the World War I years, providing personnel and organizational support as well as expertise in local affairs to both sets of institutions.13 As a result, the whole structure of local power in Arkhangel´sk in 1917 was markedly different from that in the center. In contrast to Petrograd, northern zemstvos and soviets did not constitute two opposing branches of “dual power,” representing grassroots organs of the moderate Provisional Govern­ ment and leftist Petrograd Soviet.14 Rather, together with the committees of public safety and myriad other commissions, committees, and boards they formed an entangled network of revolutionary institutions that did not have clearly defined boundaries and actively cooperated with each other in order to find solutions to the deepening economic and political crisis. Arkhangel´sk zemstvos on all levels were most closely aligned with the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies. Both institutions not only coordinated their policies but often had the same leadership and sometimes merged completely. 12

 See, for example, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Arkhangel´skoi oblasti (GAAO) f. 2703 (Materials of Arkhangel´sk provincial Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies), op. 1, d. 4, l. 49– 50ob. (resolution of the Purnemskaia rural assembly on election of zemstvo and soviet, 31 July 1917); Mikhail Shumilov, Oktiabr´skaia revoliutsiia na Severe Rossii (Petrozavodsk: Izdatel´stvo “Kareliia,” 1973), 56, 64, 88–90.

13

 On the participation of cooperators in zemstvo work, see, for example, the pro­ ceedings of the Arkhangel’sk district zemstvo assembly, GAAO f. 1865 (Arkhangel´sk provincial zemstvo assembly), op. 1, d. 633, ll. 203–07 (Protocol no. 7 of Arkhangel´sk district zemstvo assembly, 14 March 1919).

14

 Several recent studies of the revolution in provincial Russia also underscore that the concept of “dual power” was often inapplicable to the political situation in prov­ inces. See Donald Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 92–93; I. V. Narskii, Zhizn’ v katastrofe: Budni naseleniia Urala v 1917–1922 gg. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2001), 35; and Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia, 14.

92 Liudmila G. Novikova

For example, Aleksei Ivanov, a leading member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party’s Arkhangel´sk branch and the chairman of the provincial Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, also chaired the first and second sessions of the Arkhan­ gel´sk provincial zemstvo assembly. In the same vein, another Socialist Revo­ lutionary, Mikhail Kviatkovskii, who headed the provisional provincial zemstvo board responsible for the organization of zemstvo elections since June 1917, was also on the executive committee of the provincial Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies. They both represented Arkhangel´sk province in the Con­ stituent Assembly.15 Ivanov and Kviatkovskii’s multifunctionality was quite typical for 1917. Soviet delegates often participated in organizing zemstvos throughout the province. Thus, in April 1917 the Arkhangel´sk Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies sent its delegates to the provisional provincial committee to discuss the introduction of the zemstvo.16 In Pechora the local Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies was included as a whole into the district zemstvo congress.17 The Arkhangel´sk Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies got so deeply involved in zemstvo work that in May 1917 it was issuing reminders to different organizations to send their representatives to provisional zemstvo assemblies.18 This institutional confusion lasted until the end of 1917, and by many in­ dications well into 1918. For example, when the executive committee of the Arkhangel´sk provincial Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies asked township selfgovernments for their opinion of the Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd in November 1917, in some localities zemstvo assemblies discussed this question, in others, peasant soviets, and in others the two bodies did so together, some­ times including heads of peasant households. The prevailing opinion on these gatherings was also quite remarkable. The majority of responses collected by the Arkhangel´sk Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies condemned the Bolshevik coup and demanded that all power be delegated to the Constituent Assembly. Most resolutions also declared that local administration should be in the hands of the zemstvo. Still, probably without noticing any contradiction, many re­ 15  On Ivanov and Kviatkovskii, see L. N. Protasov, Liudi Uchreditel´nogo sobraniia: Portret v inter´ere epokhi (Moscow: Rosspen, 2008), 301–02, 309. 16  Arkhangel´skie gubernskie vedomosti, 7 April 1917. See also examples of local zemstvos sending their delegates to congresses of peasant soviets in Voronin and Fedorov, Vlast´ i samoupravlenie, 98–100. 17

 Protocols of Pechora district zemstvo committee, 12–16 June 1917, GAAO f. 2703, op. 1, d. 8. 18

 GAAO f. 50 (Arkhangel´sk city board), op. 1, d. 1596, l. 173 (protocol of Arkhangel´sk city Duma discussing a reminder from Arkhangel´sk soviet to send delegates to a zemstvo assembly, 11 July 1917).



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spondents simultaneously asserted their full confidence in the Arkhangel´sk Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies.19 In one of the most confusing replies, the Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies and the zemstvo assembly of Rostovskaia township in a joint session supported the provincial peasant soviet but also decreed that all power should be in the hands of the zemstvo, while at the same time demand­ ing that the laboring peasantry should make the final decision of whether or not it preferred local administration to be in the hands of zemstvos or soviets of peasant deputies.20 The definitive decision on the future of local as well as central adminis­ tration, however, was to be taken not in the countryside, but in the capitals, where the Bolsheviks took power in October–November 1917. Despite vocif­ erous protests from many local governments, including the Arkhangel´sk zemstvo,21 the Constituent Assembly was disbanded in January 1918. Two months later, the Arkhangel´sk provincial zemstvo assembly shared the same fate, closed down by the new Bolshevik-dominated Arkhangel´sk soviet. In many district centers of the province, zemstvo assemblies and boards conti­ nued to function for another month or two until they dissolved or were force­ fully disbanded by the Red Guards drafted from among the demo­bilizing army and navy units. Throughout the province in the first half of 1918, rural zemstvos were gradually replaced by soviets. Although by no means omni­ present, by summer 1918 the soviets prevailed among elected self-government institutions in the Arkhangel´sk countryside.22 This vanishing of the zemstvo has often been regarded in the historiog­ raphy as a sign of its fading popularity. Peasants, historians argued, did not want to defend the zemstvo from the Bolshevik assault, and were more sympathetic to the soviets that symbolized the rule of the laboring people and better fitted with rural communal tradition.23 The story of the northern zemstvo, however, reveals that peasant political attitudes were much more confusing. First of all, peasant support for soviets was also quite weak. Soviets 19

 Letter of Arkhangel´sk provincial executive committee (Ispolkom) of peasant dep­ uties to rural self-governments, 21 November 1917, and resolutions of rural soviets, zemstvo, and village assemblies, November 1917–January 1918, GAAO f. 2703, op. 1, d. 7, ll. 1, 11–17, 23–36; d. 4, ll. 185, 202–202ob.

20

 GAAO f. 2703, op. 1, d. 7, l. 28–28ob.

21

 For protest resolutions of zemstvos, soviets, food committees, and cooperatives against the disbanding of the Constituent Assembly, see GAAO f. 2703, op. 1, d. 7, ll. 37–39, 44–46, 48.

22

 On the dissolution of zemstvos and establishment of soviets, see Shumilov, Oktiabr´­ skaia revoliutsiia na Severe Rossii, 160–64, 183–87, 215–16.

23

 See, for example, Voronin and Fedorov, Vlast´ i samoupravlenie, 101–18, 184, 187.

94 Liudmila G. Novikova

were often struggling to retain their authority, because they were unable to fulfill the expectations of their constituencies.24 Also, by summer 1918 Arkhangel´sk zemstvos had to curtail their work for very practical reasons, because they were utterly short of financial resources. In the revolution no self-government in the North could fully rely on taxation of the largely impoverished population. Zemstvos depended on revenues from the taxation of state-owned lands and forests and on direct subsidies from the state.25 After the Bolshevik takeover of the Arkhangel´sk executive committee (Ispolkom) and treasury in February 1918, only rural soviets could claim financial support from the provincial center. Additionally, under the patronage of the Bolshevik administration, soviets became much more effec­ tive than zemstvos in channeling peasant grievances to state authorities. It was probably the soviets’ functionality rather than their political appeal that made them a more attractive form of local administration to Arkhangel´sk peasants in early 1918. Numerous popularly elected local zemstvos actually survived the soviet takeover and continued to function under soviet rule. In many localities and even district centers zemstvo boards in spring 1918 openly merged with soviets or were simply renamed as such. For example, in Mezen´ district the congress of district delegates elected the existing zemstvo board in toto (including its chairman, P. Alashev) to a newly organized Mezen´ Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.26 In remarkable acts of political mimicry many rural self-governments throughout the province changed their names to soviets and retained their authority.27 Sometimes peasants openly acknowledged that they did not mind the change, because they did not see any difference 24

 On criticism of soviets, see, for example, GAAO f. 272 (Arkhangel´sk Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies), op. 1, d. 31, l. 144ob. (letter of P. Sumets to committee of 14th Arkhangel´sk squad, 2 October 1917); G. E. Mymrin, ed., Bor´ba za ustanovlenie i uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti na Severe: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (mart 1917–iiul´ 1918 gg.) (Arkhangel´sk: Arkhangel´skoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1959), doc. 34, 38–43, 63–65, 68, 72–74, 79. For similar data on soviets losing popularity since mid-1917, see Diane Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 171–83; Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia, 83, 117; Stefan Karsch, Die bolschewistische Machtergreifung im Gouvernement Voronež (1917–1919) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006), 63, 81; Mark Baker, “Beyond the National: Peasants, Power, and Revolution in Ukraine,” Journal for Ukrainian Studies 24, 1 (1999): 39–67.

25

 On zemstvo budgets, see Voronin and Fedorov, Vlast’ i samoupravlenie, 77.

26

 Shumilov, Oktiabr´skaia revoliutsiia na Severe Rossii, 174–75.

27

 See examples in Voronin and Fedorov, Vlast´ i samoupravlenie, 182–83, 215. Many rural zemstvos were renamed as soviets throughout the country. See, for example, Karsch, Die bolschewistische Machtergreifung im Gouvernement Voronež, 149.



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between zemstvos and soviets. For example, in early August 1918 Aleksandr Dragunov, a delegate at the Onega peasant congress declared, “Our task is to create such an authority that would be based on universal, direct, equal, and secret suffrage, but how this authority will be called—soviet or zemstvo—is not important.”28 In summary, the reconfiguration of rural self-government in Arkhangel´sk province from 1917 to mid-1918 was defined not so much by competition of zemstvos and soviets or by peasants opting for a more democratic or politically appealing form of administration. Rather it was a gradual realignment of rural elected bodies that were trying to fit with the broader political framework. Through much of 1917 when the political situation in the capitals as well as in the provincial center was in flux, rural soviets and zemstvos coexisted and even cooperated in the Arkhangel´sk countryside. The soviets only started to become more prevalent after the Bolsheviks took control of key positions in the provincial administration. The soviets prevailed not because the soviet form of government was more popular with peasants, but because under the bolshevized Arkhangel´sk executive committee, they were much better suited to communicate with the new authorities and could better serve peasant inter­ ests in relation to the state. The new appearance of the local administration in Arkhangel´sk changed completely on 2 August 1918 when, in the wake of hunger disturbances and anti-mobilization riots, the provincial executive committee was overthrown in a military coup. The coup brought to power the anti-Bolshevik Supreme Administration of the Northern Region, which soon started reconstructing zemstvo administration in the province. The Northern Zemstvo and the Whites In reconstructing zemstvos, the new Arkhangel´sk government followed the path taken by almost all Russian anti-Bolshevik regimes. All across the Whitecontrolled periphery organs of soviet power were dismantled and replaced by zemstvo assemblies and boards. To the White governments, socially inclusive zemstvos that were democratized during the revolution appeared as the only readily available alternative to class-based and increasingly Bolshevikdominated workers’ and peasants’ soviets. And in Arkhangel´sk peasants accepted this shift. The Russian countryside in the revolution had learned to live under changing political regimes. And in 1918, unable to foresee the even­ tual failure of the White movement, peasants adjusted to the new political context with remarkable flexibility. Rather than opposing the reintroduction 28

 GAAO f. 1865 (Arkhangel´sk provincial zemstvo assembly), op. 1, d. 148, l. 5 (proto­ col of Sixth Onega Peasant Congress, 11 August 1918).

96 Liudmila G. Novikova

of zemstvos, northern peasants soon accepted the change but also made zemstvos serve their own needs. Within a few months after the anti-Bolshevik coup, a pyramid of zemstvo assemblies and boards was functioning again in the province. In early August 1918, the Supreme Administration with its first decrees proclaimed the dissolution of all provincial, district, and rural soviets and their executive committees as well as ordering the arrest of the most compro­ mised soviet leaders. Zemstvo assemblies and boards elected in 1917 were to step in as the only legitimate organs of local self-government that were officially entrusted with education, social welfare, food supply, land and for­ est management, and local administration of the law.29 Although the cabinet initially discussed whether workers’ soviets should be allowed to represent particular interests of their constituencies, the issue was soon aban­doned. Thus, the zemstvo became the only officially recognized form of local govern­ ment on the territory under White control. Together with provincial and dis­ trict commissars appointed by the government, they became the backbone of the White administration in the North. The governmental decree on zemstvos launched a speedy reorganization of self-government in Arkhangel´sk province. Although initially peasants took the anti-Bolshevik coup as a signal to get rid of some unpopular Bolshe­ vik administrators and did not see the need to disband soviets as such, the insistence of the new government on reconstructing zemstvos prompted peasants to adjust to the new situation. Rural self-government was quickly transformed to fit with the White regime. Already by October–November 1918 most townships replaced soviets with provisional zemstvo assemblies and boards. The transition was quite smooth because the government had no means to prevent simple renaming from taking place. For example, the rural assembly of the fishers’ settlement of Teriberka on the Murman coast, when instructed to establish zemstvo self-government, decreed to “elect to the zemstvo board the [existing] Soviet of Fishers’ Deputies.”30 In the town of Kola the local soviet merely changed its name to provisional zemstvo. Its chairman 29  On the reintroduction of the zemstvo and the scope of its activities in the North, see Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii Verkhovnogo Upravleniia Severnoi Oblasti, no. 1 (1918): 6–7, 9; P. Koptiakoff, “The Zemstvo in North Russia,” in Union of Russian Zemstvos and Towns (London Committee). North-Russian Zemstvos and Municipalities, State­ ments by the Congress of Zemstvo and Municipalities of North Russia and by the NorthRussian Municipal and Zemstvo Delegation to the Peoples of the Allied Countries (London: Union of Russian Zemstvos and Towns, 1919), 15–22. 30

 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Murmanskoi oblasti (GAMO) f. P-102 (Party history com­ mittee at Murmansk regional committee of VKP[b]), op. 1, d. 16, l. 30 (memoirs of Kompilov, 1939).



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insisted in a telegram to Arkhangel´sk that the old zemstvo board of 1917 was now lacking many members and could not be reconvened, whereas the local soviet’s “rights did not go beyond those of the former zemstvo board.”31 The Onega soviet also simply renamed itself as the zemstvo committee. In many rural areas the change was limited to removing the red flag and putting a “zemstvo” plate on a former soviet building. Because the Arkhangel´sk gov­ ernment was struggling for legitimacy and support, it usually extended its recognition to such new zemstvos.32 The reconstructed provisional zemstvo assemblies and boards were re­ placed with permanent elected institutions within a few months. As soon as the Arkhangel´sk government consolidated somewhat its control over the province, new zemstvo elections were held. They continued from October 1918 until spring 1919. Their purpose was to accomplish a more thorough break with the local soviet government and to organize administration on a regular basis. Additionally, by holding popular elections the White government tried to support its claim for establishing a democratic form of governance. The elections followed the electoral procedure of 1917 closely and were based on universal, direct, equal, and secret suffrage.33 The campaign received signifi­ cant administrative support. Provincial zemstvo instructors frequented towns and rural areas to explain the procedure and importance of the elections and distributed informational brochures and political bulletins.34 Although for many rural areas these elections meant the third change in local self-government within half a year, peasants did not offer much resist­ ance. Observers frequently complained of peasants’ inability to follow the correct electoral procedure or their lack of enthusiasm for zemstvo work. For example, in some townships, instead of holding a secret ballot, peasants

31  Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) f. 3695 (Department of Inter­ nal Affairs of the Provisional Government of the Northern Region), op. 1, d. 3, ll. 42–43, 45 (telegraphed correspondence of Loushkin, head of the Kola soviet, and Secretary of the Interior of the Northern Region P. Iu. Zubov, 29–30 August 1918). 32

 See, for example, GARF f. 3811 (Papers of the governor of Arkhangel´sk province), op. 1, d. 2, ll. 23, 29, 42 (protocols of provincial administrative committee, 15 and 22 August, 3 September 1918); GARF f. 3811, op. 1, d. 142, ll. 102–03 (report of Shenkursk District Commissar A. E. Isupov, 5 October 1918). 33  The only significant difference from the electoral rules of 1917 was that soldiers and military officers lost their voting rights, because the White government tried to prevent political agitation in the army. See Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii Verkhov­ nogo Upravleniia Severnoi Oblasti, no. 1 (1918), st. 28, 114. 34

 See, for example, Vestnik Vremennogo Pravitel´stva Severnoi Oblasti (Arkhangel´sk), 18 January 1919.

98 Liudmila G. Novikova

simply voted by raising their hands at a village assembly.35 Also in a few villages candidates for zemstvo positions refused to ballot, and additional elections had to be organized. Peasants did not always nominate the most respected members of the commune for zemstvo positions, because they re­ garded zemstvo service as a burden. For example, according to a report from Chasovenskaia township, peasants elected “those who were wealthier, those who did not carry any other obligations—did not serve in the army, were not an elder or a tenner [desiatskii, or village policeman—L.N.].” Sometimes they voted for somebody simply “out of anger” in order not to serve themselves.36 Still, the majority of peasants took the elections seriously; they overwhelm­ ingly came to ballot boxes and cast their votes for respected members of the communes. Even the vicinity of the frontlines, poor routes of transportation, or labor migration during the continuing fishing and lumber-felling seasons did not prevent the majority of the population from casting votes. Electoral participation varied from 45 percent in the frontline Kholmogory district to 67 percent in interior Arkhangel´sk district.37 These numbers matched peasants’ involvement in the first zemstvo elections in the province in 1917. They also approximated the level of peasant participation in the Constituent Assembly elections the same year when the number of votes cast in the province was around 67 percent.38 These results suggest and that northern peasants be­ lieved in the usefulness of the White zemstvo. They valued it on the same scale as the Constituent Assembly in 1917, and significantly more than the provincial soviet administration in the early 1920s, when, according to secret 35

 See reports of zemstvo elections in Vestnik Vremennogo Pravitel´stva Severnoi Oblasti, 9 April, 6 May 1919.

36

 Vestnik Vremennogo Pravitel’stva Severnoi Oblasti, 18 January 1919. On refusals to hold elections, see the report of the Onega district commissar, 7 December 1918, GARF f. 3811, op. 1, d. 142, l. 158–158ob.; and Severnoe utro, 4 and 9 April 1919. The election of “excess” people into zemstvos was also reported in prerevolutionary Russia. See Jane Burbank, “An Imperial Rights Regime: Law and Citizenship in the Russian Empire,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 7, 3 (2006): 426; and Dorothy Atkin­ son, “The Zemstvo and the Peasantry,” in The Zemstvo in Russia, 111–19.

37  For reports on zemstvo elections, see Vestnik Vremennogo Pravitel’stva Severnoi Oblasti, 11, 14, 18, 22, and 25 January; 1 and 20 February; 5 and 17 March; 4, 5, 9, and 29 April; 3, 6, and 17 May 1919. 38

 On peasant participation in zemstvo elections of 1917 and Constituent Assembly elections in Arkhangel´sk, see Voronin and Fedorov, Vlast´ i samoupravlenie, 73; L. G. Protasov, Vserossiiskoe uchreditel´noe sobranie: Istoriia rozhdeniia i gibeli (Moscow: Rosspen, 1997), 197. The northern peasants’ enthusiasm for zemstvo elections contrasted sharply with the apathy of peasants of Russia’s southeastern region as described by Sergei Liubichankovskii in his chapter “Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo in Southeastern Russia (Spring–Fall 1917)” in the present volume.



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correspondence of the Arkhangel´sk party committee, no more than a quarter to a third of all voters usually exercised their rights.39 The available information on the elected zemstvo members indicates that generally peasants were respectful of local self-government. Reports from the localities underscored that most of the elected candidates were “literate, energetic and practical [khoziaistvennye] people.” They had the necessary knowledge and authority to deal with the problems of the countryside, to mediate in peasant disputes, and to represent rural needs before the White ad­ ministration. The majority of the elected candidates were “middle peasants,” although there were also some “prosperous peasants as well as needy ones.”40 Most local self-governments were all-male in composition. Nevertheless, women—entitled by law to participate in elections—did cast their votes in many rural elections. Peasants were also particularly interested in having their village duly represented in a rural or district zemstvo assembly. Where the advancement of their candidate depended on the number of votes cast, rural communes participated in the elections almost to a man. Socialists influenced the new zemstvo, and in particular the provincial and district zemstvo assemblies. Although this eventually led to occasional squabbles with the White government, peasants did not mean to create an institutional opposition to the regime. According to virtually all observers, in these elections party affiliation did not play any role at all. In rural communes peasants elected candidates for zemstvo positions according to personal reputation and standing in the village.41 It was not uncommon, however, to advance those candidates who had already held some elected positions and had experience in local self-government. As a result, the re-elected zemstvos included a significant number of peasants who at least for some time had served in the zemstvos or in soviets, or not infrequently in both of them. With socialist parties gaining the overwhelming majority in rural elections since 1917, it is no wonder that under the Whites many grassroots political leaders were also affiliated with the socialist milieu. As a member of the provincial 39

 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial´no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI) f. 17 (Central Committee of CPSU), op. 33 (correspondence with local party organizations), d. 413, l. 6 (letter of Tubanov, deputy secretary of Arkhangel’sk provincial party com­ mittee, to TsK RKP[b], 22 March 1925).

40

 Severnoe utro, 4 April 1919; Vestnik Vremennogo Pravitel´stva Severnoi Oblasti, 5 April 1919.

41

 Vestnik Vremennogo Pravitel´stva Severnoi Oblasti, 24 January; 5, 9, and 29 April; 6 and 17 May 1919. See also Otdel dokumentov sotsial´no-politicheskoi istorii Gosudarst­ vennogo arkhiva Arkhangel´skoi oblasti (ODSPI GAAO) f. 1 (Arkhangel´sk provincial committee of RKP[b]), op. 1, d. 26, l. 54 (report of Grigor´ev, delegate from Kholmogory, at the first Arkhangel´sk provincial conference of the RKP[b], 13–14 July 1919).

100 Liudmila G. Novikova

zemstvo assembly revealingly asserted, “there are no other able men, just these very few.”42 As a result, during the Civil War zemstvo delegates in the White-controlled Northern Region often did not differ socially very much from members of the grassroots soviet administration behind the Red front. They were young or middle-aged peasants with some education and political experience who often had also served in the army during World War I. A remarkable example of such a zemstvo activist was Gordei Moseev. Born in 1882 in the village of Perkhachevskaia of Arkhangel´sk district, Moseev was a migrant worker in St. Petersburg before World War I. There he joined a socialist-democratic (united) party and was even banned by the tsarist police from the capital for his political activities. At the time of the February Revolution of 1917, Moseev was a conscript in the army and he was soon propelled to leading positions in the emerging soviet administration. With his impressive background as a soldier, worker, and political activist Moseev became the chairman of the army committee of the 177th infantry regiment and in the fall of 1917 was already serving in the Novgorod provincial Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies as a representative of the front. After demobilization Moseev returned to his native village, where his broad political and life ex­ perience won him the respect of his fellow peasants. It comes as no surprise that during local zemstvo elections organized by the Whites he was not only elected to a rural zemstvo assembly, but in 1919 became the chairman of the Lisestrovskaia township zemstvo board. It is no less remarkable that after the return of the Reds to Arkhangel´sk, Moseev retained a leading position in the rural administration and became the chairman of the local peasant soviet as well as a candidate member of the Bolshevik Party.43 The dramatic turns of Moseev’s career reflected both the impact of the revolution on the village administration and the ways in which peasants ad­ justed to the changing political environment. Although in the North during the Civil War soviets were replaced with zemstvos, the leadership in local administration often remained the same. This suggests that peasants were less interested in preserving the established self-government than in having a functioning administrative institution recognized by the authorities, but also staffed with people whom they respected. Northern peasants’ outward com­ pliance with the reintroduction of the zemstvo was not devoid of rationality. As the following discussion will demonstrate, zemstvos were instrumental 42

 Report of P. V. Koptiakov at the Arkhangel´sk provincial zemstvo assembly, 12 Sep­ tember 1918 (GAAO f. 1865, op. 1, d. 152, l. 17ob.).

43

 On the career of Moseev, see persecution materials of the Arkhangel´sk Cheka: Arkhiv regional´nogo upravleniia Federal´noi sluzhby bezopasnosti po Arkhangel´skoi oblasti (ARU FSB AO) d. P-16049 (investigation file on G. T. Moseev).



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in mediating conflicts among peasants and rural communes and securing material aid and legal concessions from the government. The benefits of col­ laboration with the White government, from the peasants’ perspective, by far outweighed the options of estrangement or resistance, the costs of which were deemed too high. The Northern Zemstvo, Land Disputes, and Food Distribution Throughout the existence of the anti-Bolshevik Northern Region—from August 1918 to February 1920—zemstvos carried out important tasks of local administration. They also tried to alleviate the devastating consequences of the political upheaval and ongoing military conflict in the northern country­ side. Rural land and property disputes, recurring food shortages, failing infra­structure and educational system all constituted key problems that fell to the zemstvo. To be sure, the Civil War conditions were not very favorable for zemstvo work. Local self-governments lacked resources and often struggled to provide even the most basic services. Still at least some of their efforts brought quite palpable results and were appreciated by their constituencies. Northern peasants welcomed zemstvo assistance in dealing with their lo­ cal needs and mediation in rural conflicts. Although the zemstvo system was imposed on them from above, it mattered very little what northern peasants generally thought of the Arkhangel´sk government that had initiated the re­ form. But their immediate concerns had to be addressed and often could not wait until the end of the Civil War. As a result, after the zemstvo became the only available organ of local government, it was to the zemstvo that northern peasants turned in increasing numbers to ask for assistance and to assert their rights. During the Civil War the Arkhangel´sk zemstvo made efforts to improve the local economy, medicine, and culture. For example, zemstvos established several agronomic and cattle breeding stations in the region. Responding to the dearth of agricultural seeds, they organized shipment of seeds from Siberia and America. They also ordered from abroad new agricultural machinery, such as mowing machines, and established a repair shop in Arkhangel´sk to fix or replace broken agricultural tools.44 Responding to recurring epidemics and the absence of medical assistance in the countryside, zemstvos established rural first-aid stations and organized several mobile medical squads. For ex­ ample, Gordei Moseev, as the chairman of a rural zemstvo, supervised the establishment of a medical station in Lisestrovskaia township. Improvised 44

 Vestnik Vremennogo Pravitel´stva Severnoi Oblasti, 12 January 1919, 5 April 1919. On the shipment of machines, see diplomatic correspondence of July 1919 in GARF f. 17 (Department of Foreign Affairs of the Northern Region), op. 1, d. 62, ll. 5, 18.

102 Liudmila G. Novikova

zemstvo medical squads traveled throughout the vast province and tried to assist communities affected by the epidemics of Spanish influenza or typhoid.45 Additionally, zemstvos made an effort to improve public education, to which over a quarter of its budget was directed. Together with peasant cooperative societies, zemstvos repaired school buildings and opened several dozen new primary schools and a few secondary and professional schools to facilitate ”the spiritual and intellectual development of peasants.”46 Although zemstvos suffered from a constant lack of resources and the massive military mobilizations of their personnel, still many delegates at the last provincial zemstvo conference in Arkhangel´sk in February 1920 acknowledged a num­ ber of positive accomplishments.47 Besides their direct responsibilities, zemstvos in the North took up many additional administrative tasks. For example, they were entrusted with the ad­ ministration of the law at the local level. Zemstvo assemblies elected judges of local courts that rendered justice in legal disputes on property or inheritance rights and dealt with small criminal offences with damage not exceeding 300–500 rubles.48 Zemstvos also arbitrated land disputes that erupted in the Arkhangel´sk countryside during the revolution and assumed the central role in dividing additional lands among peasants. They also reacted to imminent threats of famines. Zemstvos, in cooperation with the White government and the Allies, played a vital role in organizing food delivery and distribution that was essential for the physical survival of many northern peasants during the Civil War. As mediators of land disputes and administrators of food resources, northern zemstvos most closely interacted with the rural population, on the one hand, and with the northern government on the other. In a certain sense, 45

 On establishing a first-aid station in Lisestrovskaia township, see Vestnik Vremen­ nogo Pravitel´stva Severnoi Oblasti, 6 February 1919. On zemstvo first-aid stations and medical squads, see Vestnik Vremennogo Pravitel´stva Severnoi Oblasti, 23 January 1919, 6 and 15 March 1919.

46

 Union of Russian Zemstvos and Towns (London Committee). North-Russian Zemstvos and Municipalities, Statements by the Congress of Zemstvo and Municipalities of North Russia, 17. On zemstvo budget and expenses, see Voronin and Fedorov, Vlast´ i samoupravlenie, 153. On public education in the Northern Region, see Novikova, Provintsial´naia ‘kontrrevoliutsiia,’ 168.

47

 See GARF f. 16 (Papers of the Provisional Government of the Northern Region), op. 1, d. 101 (protocols of Arkhangel´sk provincial zemstvo conference, 4–5 February 1919). 48

 See Temporary Rules on Rural Courts in Northern Region, 19 May 1919 (GARF f. 16, op. 1, d. 11, ll. 32–35). Available statistics for Arkhangel´sk district (uezd) reveal that by 5 January 1920 there were already 26 township courts in this district. See GARF f. 18 (Department of Justice of the Provisional Government of the Northern Region), op. 1, d. 60, l. 2 (list of rural courts of Arkhangel´sk district).



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in this capacity they became a transmission belt connecting peasants to the White regime. These particular examples—regulation of land disputes and food distribution—illustrate particularly well the functioning of the zemstvo in the North and its political and administrative role under the White regime, as will be shown below. Land distribution and land use caused most rural conflicts during the Russian Revolution and Civil War. Although in the North noble land ownership was nonexistent and generally agriculture played a secondary role in the peasant economy because of unfavorable climatic conditions,49 the revolution of 1917 greatly exacerbated confrontations over land. Returning migrant la­ borers demanded their share of plough land and pastures, appealing to the revolutionary promise of equality. Holders of larger plots and assarts tried to defend their “labored property” and resisted attempts to level or partition their allotments. Demobilized veterans of World War I wanted more and bet­ ter land to compensate for their wartime sacrifices. Soldiers’ wives and war widows challenged the traditionally dependent role of women in the village and asserted their rights as heads of households. Neighboring communes got involved in heated and sometimes bloody confrontations over contested pastures, fisheries, and woods.50 All those who were unable to assert their rights by persuasion or force, tried to appeal to local and higher authorities— land committees, zemstvos, and soviets. After the anti-Bolshevik government in September 1918 officially delegated the administration of lands cultivated by peasants to zemstvos, it was to them that rural dwellers turned to seek justice in their conflicts with neighbors and local communes. In the Northern region, zemstvos officially replaced land committees created during the revolution as well as the land departments of soviets. They administered the so-called lands of local importance, which included private and communal landholdings and church lands that were cultivated by peasants, as well as an additional fund of state lands allocated by the gov­ ernment for peasant use. The latter—the so-called colonization fund—was created to alleviate shortages of agricultural lands. Zemstvos in the North also had legal functions and were engaged in resolving disputes over distribution

49

 On the rural economy in the North before 1917, see Iu. A. Poliakov, ed., Istoriia Severnogo krest’ianstva, 2: Krest´ianstvo evropeiskogo Severa v period kapitalizma (Arkhan­ gel´sk: Severo-Zapadnoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1985). Before 1917 northern peasants earned their main living by fishing, lumbering, home industries and crafts, and mi­ grant labor to central Russian provinces. 50

 On the agrarian revolution in the North, see A. V. Sablin, Agrarnaia revoliutsiia na Evropeiskom Severe Rossii, 1917–1921 (Sotsial´nye i ekonomicheskie rezul´taty) (Vologda: Legiia, 2002).

104 Liudmila G. Novikova

and use of lands. These disputes were removed from the purview of local and general courts and transferred under zemstvo jurisdiction.51 Zemstvos acted as representatives of the state when they rendered justice in land disputes and divided state lands among peasants. They also repre­ sented rural interests before the White administration. Receiving numerous complaints about land distribution, zemstvos brought them to the attention of the governmental offices. At the same time, they petitioned the government for material and legal assistance to the countryside. In this capacity, northern zemstvos to a certain extent shaped the agrarian policy of the Arkhangel´sk government. Zemstvos began collecting peasant complaints about land distribution and use from September 1918 onwards. Faced with chaos in land legislation, zemstvo officials informed the government about the existing conditions and also increasingly pressured Arkhangel´sk to introduce some general regula­ tions on land tenure. Zemstvo officials and judges argued that many conflicts could not wait until the distant future, when the Constituent Assembly would work out an ultimate resolution of agrarian problems. In their opinion, some provisional land legislation for the region was urgently needed.52 In October 1918, the Northern government, headed by the Popular Socialist Chaikovskii, concurred and established a special Land Council within the Department of Agriculture to work out new land regulations. The council included zemstvo representatives who were working side by side with governmental officials and agronomists. Zemstvo delegates participated in drafting proposals for the new legislation, and defended their position at the Land Council. Their main principle—“The land [should belong] to those who till it”—which reso­ nated with Chaikovskii’s socialist sympathies, became the guiding line of the Northern land decrees that were issued in early 1919.53 The decrees declared all former crown, state, and church lands currently used by peasants to remain in peasants’ hands free of charge. They introduced the land maximum of 11 desiatinas (29.7 acres) of plowable lands or assarts per 51

 See Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii Verkhovnogo Upravleniia Severnoi Oblasti, no. 1 (1918), 6–7, st. 82, 115.

52

 On peasant petitions and the need to introduce land legislation for the region, see “Report of the Secretary of Justice to the Provisional Government,” November 1918 (GARF f. 16, op. 1, d. 49, ll. 15–17ob.).

53

 On Chaikovskii and his ideas, see S. P. Mel´gunov, N. V. Chaikovskii v gody grazh­ danskoi voiny (Materialy dlia istorii russkoi obshchestvennosti 1917–1925 gg.) (Paris: Rodnik, 1929). On the Land Council, see “Minutes of the Council to Discuss Conditions of Land Tenure in the Northern Region,” October–December 1918 (GARF f. 16, op. 1, d. 16, ll. 276–77; d. 17, ll. 360–61); and “Report of the Department of Agriculture to the Provisional Government,” December 1918 (GARF f. 16, op. 1, d. 74, l. 17).



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household, which were to be excluded from communal partitioning, banned all sales of lands, and limited hired labor on land to a few exceptional cases.54 Conforming to a local tradition, the decrees affirmed the right of assart holders to withhold their allotments from partitioning to compensate for the invested labor. They also granted peasants almost unrestricted access to state-owned forest resources.55 In the months following the introduction of the new laws, zemstvos occupied themselves with working out detailed instructions for their implementation, taking into account particular local conditions. The introduction of the decrees did not stop the flow of peasant petitions to zemstvos on land distribution and use. Some scholars have interpreted this as a sign of the unpopularity of the White legislation,56 whereas contempo­ raries provided evidence that peasants generally accepted the new regulations and simply tried to make use of the new legislation to assert their rights.57 Indeed, the northern land decrees were the most radical of the Whites’ land regulations. To a large extent they confirmed the revolutionary redivision of lands, but also took into account local traditions. Thus, by continuously appeal­ ing to the White authorities rather than trying to take the issue into their own hands, peasants indicated that they were willing to solve conflicts with their co-villagers and neighboring communes through zemstvo mediation and within the legal and administrative framework created by the White regime. If they wished to use legal, non-violent means, peasants had to work through the zemstvos and they focused their hopes for just land distribution on the White administration. By doing so, they at the very least recognized, but also indirectly asserted the authority of zemstvos as well as the authority of the White government that had established them. 54

 Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii Vremennogo Pravitel’stva Severnoi Oblasti, no. 6 (1919), st. 279; no. 9 (1919), st. 361; no. 12 (1919), st. 398. On zemstvo participation in drafting decrees and regulating land disputes, see Union of Russian Zemstvos and Towns (London Committee). North-Russian Zemstvos and Municipalities, Statements by the Congress of Zemstvo and Municipalities of North Russia, 18–20.

55

 Arkhangel´sk peasants could use state-owned forests for their needs with the exception of forest districts valuable for timber trade that were designated as lands of national importance and were administered by the Department of State Property. Thus, the Northern government rejected the Soviet decree of May 1918 that centralized the use of forest resources. On Bolshevik legislation on forests, see Brian Bonhomme, Forests, Peasants, and Revolutionaries: Forest Conservation and Organization in Soviet Russia, 1917–1929 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2005).

56

 See, for example, Sablin, Agrarnaia revoliutsiia na Evropeiskom Severe Rossii, 130–31.

57

 On the popularity of the Northern government’s land legislation, see S. Dobrovol´­ skii, “Bor’ba za vozrozhdenie Rossii v Severnoi Oblasti,” in Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, ed. I. V. Gessen (Berlin: Slovo, 1922), 15: 92, 127.

106 Liudmila G. Novikova

The Northern zemstvo’s dual character as a state agent in the countryside and a representative of peasant interests before the state also revealed itself in its engagement with food delivery and distribution. Food crises in the province directly resulted from the economic collapse caused by the war and revolution. Similar shortages affected most of the country, but the situation in Arkhangel’sk was significantly worse than in many other regions. Because of the harsh climate, even in better years provisioning of the province largely depended on grain transports from Southern Russia and Siberia. When the fronts of the Civil War cut off major grain producing areas, no private initiative was sufficient to obtain loans, run the risks and cover the costs of shipping food supplies from abroad through the Arctic seas. The Northern government together with the zemstvos had to take the initiative into its hands. In August 1918 the anti-Bolshevik government placed local food adminis­ tration under the direction of the zemstvos.58 At the same time it was nego­ tiating with Allied representatives in Arkhangel´sk for food shipments from abroad.59 The Northern zemstvos were asked by the government administra­ tion to assist it in assessing the demand, and later in organizing the delivery and distribution of the arriving food shipments to outlying villages through often impassable terrain. Since late summer 1918, the Northern zemstvos, in collaboration with grassroots consumer cooperatives, were meticulously col­ lecting information on the local harvest and demand for food. In the process they became involved in statistical work and for the first time drew up statis­ tics on the economic condition in the territory. After shipments of grain from abroad started to arrive, the zemstvos built up a local food distribution system. They organized transportation of food loads on horse-carts or steamships from Arkhangel´sk’s port. Through the network of consumer co­ operatives they distributed food among the local population according to government-approved rations and local needs. They also collected money from the population to pay for the deliveries. At the same time, zemstvos continued to inform the government about the situation in the countryside. They petitioned for additional deliveries of grain and asked for financial as­ sistance to particularly needy villages that were unable to pay even the low fixed price for the delivered grain.60 58  Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii Vremennogo Pravitel´stva Severnoi Oblasti, no. 1 (1918), st. 6. 59  On the shortage of food and Allied food shipments to Arkhangel’sk, see Kenneth Bourne and D. Cameron Watt, eds., British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, part 2, series A, vol. 1 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1984), 164–69. 60

 On zemstvo involvement in food delivery and administration, see Union of Russian Zemstvos and Towns (London Committee). North-Russian Zemstvos and



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The White government heavily relied on zemstvo assistance when it was formulating its food policy. As it had with land legislation, the government used zemstvos both as a source of information and as its own agent in the countryside. The White administration paid for zemstvo services and sup­ ported its activities with considerable sums of money. The taxation of impov­ erished villages did not bring significant revenues, so governmental subsidies amounted to almost 90 percent of the zemstvo budget.61 The zemstvos’ financial dependence on the state made it resemble even more closely other branches of the White state administration. The only significant difference was that zemstvo officials were democratically elected rather than appointed from above. Conclusion The role of the zemstvo in the Northern region and its connections with both the local population and the White state reveal that the zemstvo was not a failed institution during the Civil War. Democratically elected by northern peasants, zemstvos were widely used by rural dwellers to further their in­ terests and to assert their rights. Zemstvo services in solving rural disputes, providing food assistance, reviving the local economy, spreading education, and offering medical help were in demand and might have mitigated the devastating effects of the Civil War on the northern countryside.62 In return, northern peasants lent legitimacy to the local administration and the White government that had created it. They did this through their participation in elections organized by the Whites, and through using avenues provided by the White regime to alleviate their needs and assert their rights. Furthermore, the example of zemstvo activities in the North reveals that rather than resisting the state, peasants tried to engage it and use its services and protection. During the revolutionary period peasants did not grow Municipalities, Statements by the Congress of Zemstvo and Municipalities of North Russia, 17–18. On zemstvo reports on the scarcity of food resources and the need for additional aid, see GARF f. 3811, op. 1, d. 142, ll. 12–13, 18–18ob., 25–25ob., 158–158ob.; f. 16, op. 1, d. 8, ll. 7–37; d. 3, l. 254ob.; d. 8, ll. 7–31. 61

 On the financing of zemstvos by the Northern government, see “Minutes of the Provisional Government of the Northern Region,” 18 January 1919 (GARF f. 16, op. 1, d. 4, l. 73). The Arkhangel´sk government itself depended financially on the Allied loans and printing press.

62  One indicator could be that the province’s population size remained on the same level through the Civil War, whereas in the neighboring Red-controlled provinces it drastically decreased, sometimes by a half. See Iu. A. Poliakov, ed., Naselenie Rossii v XX veke, 1: 1900–1939 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2000), 104–07.

108 Liudmila G. Novikova

increasingly insulated from the national politics. On the contrary, they deftly responded to political changes and struggles on the regional as well as national levels and tried to use the existing situation to their maximal advantage. Even more important, the Russian Civil War generally was accompanied by a progressive penetration of state institutions in the countryside. The fu­ sion of northern self-governments with the state administration illuminates the particularities of Russia’s state building process at the time. This fusion developed already under the Provisional Government of 1917, when zemstvos became the main agents of its local administration. But it also resembled the processes on the other side of the Civil War frontline, where soviets were built into the state administrative system even more rapidly. With the increasing statization of elected self-government institutions, the Civil War marked a paradoxical juncture: in the period when the state was at its weakest, it managed to penetrate and make its presence evident in the traditionally under-governed northern Russian countryside. This happened not against the will of the local population but rather with its support and collaboration.

War and Revolution in Ukraine: Kharkiv Province’s Peasants’ Experiences of War, Revolution, and Occupation, 1914–18 Mark R. Baker

This chapter will explore the years 1914–18 from the perspective of the peasants of Kharkiv province, an area now located in eastern Ukraine. These villagers’ experiences of war, revolution, and occupation differed considerably from those of workers in the capital cities or leading industrial centers; they even differed from those of the Russian-speaking peasants of rural Russia. In the latter case, though, the main difference did not lie in some sort of primor­ dial national feeling, idea, or culture. National differences, rather, were in themselves unimportant to the mostly Ukrainian-speaking peasants of the province, and there is considerable evidence to suggest that one can extend this conclusion to most peasants of the Ukrainian provinces of the Romanov empire. Most peasants experienced and reacted to these events in a decidedly local manner, reflecting their localist understanding of the world.1 In fact, it was not until the German occupation of 1918 that these peasants’ experiences and sense of identity began to pull away from those of Russian-speaking peasants to the north and east. Indeed, one could argue that only with the signing of the first Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (9 February 1918), splitting off the Ukrainian People’s Republic from Soviet Russia, was the process finally ini­ tiated that led (eventually) to the creation of an independent Ukraine (in December 1991). The treaty drew a new line on the map of the collapsing Russian Empire, roughly following the linguistic divide between Ukrainianand Russian-speaking regions. Ironically, the resulting German occupation did much to create and encourage an anti-Ukrainian and pro-Soviet mood amongst Ukrainian-speaking peasants, but in the long run the border created at Brest held (with a few modifications) until 2014 and, along with the USSR’s 1

 On localism, see Matthew Rendle and Sarah Badcock’s excellent contributions to this volume: Matthew Rendle, “The Problem of the ‘Local’ in Revolutionary Russia: Moscow Province, 1914–1922”; and Sarah Badcock, “Structures and Practices of Power: 1917 in Nizhegorod and Kazan´ Provinces.” Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 111–41.

112 Mark R. Baker

nationalities policy, gradually encouraged an increasing degree of difference between Russia and Ukraine. Because of constraints of space, this chapter will provide only a sketch of the early part of this process, 1914–18, from the world war, through the revolution and occupation.2 The Great War Historians have for several decades been discussing the social impact of the Great War for Western European countries, but the war’s impact was perhaps greatest in the Romanov empire, the only empire that collapsed into revolution without first admitting defeat in the world war. 3 In the Russian Empire, the Great War’s direct and indirect demands disrupted the very fabric of society. This was not only true in those regions close to the front or in the empire’s capitals, but in such distant parts as Kharkiv province, where not even the faint rumbling of artillery could be heard. For most peasants of the stumbling empire, the most pervasive and per­ sonal impact of Nicholas II’s decision to order full mobilization and wade into the emerging conflict was the mobilization itself. Peasant men bore the brunt of the call up. In Kharkiv province, over the course of the war, 339,678 men were mobilized, about 50 percent of all working-age men of the province’s peasant households (in 1917).4 This was proportionally unprecedented: at the local level, for every ten pre-WWI peasant households in Kharkiv province there were on average about fourteen working-age men; by 1917 there were only seven.5 One can imagine in these numbers the dramatic social, economic, 2   For a thorough study, see Mark Baker, “Peasants, Power, and Place: Revolution in the Villages of Kharkiv Province, 1914–1921” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute; forthcoming in 2015). 3

  On Western European countries, see Richard Wall and Jay Winter, eds., The Up­ heaval of War: Family, Work and Welfare in Europe, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); John Horne, ed., State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Frans Coetzee and Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee, eds., Authority, Identity and the Social History of the Great War (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995). The pathbreaking studies are Arthur Mar­ wick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London: Bodley Head, 1965); and Jean Jacques Becker, The Great War and the French People, trans. Arnold Pomerans (Leamington Spa, UK: Berg, 1985). 4  Khar´kovskoe gubernskoe statisticheskoe biuro, Vserossiiskaia sel´sko-khoziaistvennaia i gorodskaia perepis´ 1917 g.: Khar´kovskaia guberniia. Itogi po uezdam, gubernii i gorodam. Predvaritel´nyi podschet (Khar´kov, 1920), 2–3. 5

  Calculations based on Tsentral´noe statisticheskoe upravlenie, Rossiia v mirovoi voine, 1914–1918 goda (v tsifrakh) (Moscow, 1925), 22; and Vserossiiskaia sel´sko-khoziaistvennaia i gorodskaia perepis´ 1917 g.: Khar´kovskaia guberniia, 2–3.

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and emotional change that these men’s departure imposed on the village. A crucial result was that women, young children, and older people now had to do these men’s work, while continuing to do their own. A second important consequence was the rise of the soldatki (soldiers’ wives), not an entirely new category of people in 1914, but a much larger group than during previous conflicts. The rise of the soldatki was not the only social phenomenon of the wartime home front, but I will focus on their rise here, because it was the most wide­ spread and novel manifestation of the war, as revealed in the documents on the province, and because it has been relatively neglected in studies of the empire’s home front. The emergence of the soldatki can be seen most clearly in the numerous riots and violent actions that peasants participated in during the war. The initial underlying cause of these riots was the government’s continuing efforts to implement the Stolypin land reforms; the arrival of a land surveyor was often the spark that set these women off. They feared greatly that with their men away at war, they would be cheated in the redivision of the commune’s land. The most sensational example occurred in the village of Nyzhna Syro­ vatka, Sumy district, on Monday morning, 12 April 1915, a market day, when members of the land reorganization commission and local police offi­ cials arrived at the township administration building hoping to resolve the growing misunderstanding with the husarki (the local name for soldatki),6 who had over the preceding four days repeatedly protested the re-division of their commune’s land into otruba7 while their men were away at the front. Of this large village’s 1,200 households, only 106 had expressed a desire to separate from the commune. Harried by the large and already boisterous crowd (mostly composed of women) quickly growing outside the building, the officials inside decided to lay aside the re-division to an undetermined time in the future8 and asked the delegates from both the otrubshchiki (those who had separated from the commune) and obshchinniki (those who wished to remain in the commune) to inform their respective constituents. Stepping out onto the porch, the representatives attempted to explain that the redivision work had been laid aside, but the crowd (growing to about 3,000) 6

 See B. D. Hrinchenko, Slovar´ ukrainskogo iazyka (Kiev, 1907), 1: 342.

7

  Otruba were the most common form of detached land parcels taken during the Stoly­ pin land reform. In this type, a peasant household was given a consolidated plot, but the owner’s house was detached from the parcel. It usually meant the peasant family continued to live in the village but had more consolidated land holdings somewhere nearby. See Judith Pallot, Land Reform in Russia, 1906–1917: Peasant Responses to Stoly­ pin’s Project of Rural Transformation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 38–39. 8

  Derzhavnyi arkhiv Kharkivskoi oblasti, f[ond] 3, op[is] 287, spr[ava] 5038, ark[ush] 8.

114 Mark R. Baker

refused to listen, muffling them with shouts and noise. Local land captain Petrishchev and commission member Sebriakov then came out to attempt to quiet the crowd. However, the angry villagers (mostly women), paying no attention to the officials’ exhortations and drowning their words in a great din, shoved their way into the building en masse. The village constable and his guards, attempting to block the entrance, were immediately seized and beaten; some peasants even tore off the coat and boots of district police super­ visor Khizhniakov. Police officials do not, however, appear to have been the principal game of this mob’s hunt. Seeking refuge inside the building, two delegates from the otrubshchiki, brothers Kyrylo and Ivan Stakhno and Ihor Ptashnik, had locked themselves in a room on the second floor. Over the previous years, the communal peas­ ants had been cultivating hatred toward these three “kulaki” (in Ukrainian kurkuli). Unfortunately for them, the incensed mob, storming through the building, broke into the room where they were hiding, murdered Kyrylo Stakhno and Ihor Ptashnik, and thrashed Ivan Stakhno. Then, the “completely brutalized crowd” began shouting “Ura” and smashing up all the furniture and windows, while outside other peasants were attempting to destroy the building’s very foundation. The mob then turned on the police, breaking into the tax collector’s room, where the bootless, beaten, and humiliated super­ visor Khizhniakov, his deputy Lavrovskii, and three other police officers were hiding. Only because a few friends spoke up for him was one constable saved from a lynching (samosud) and later taken to the hospital. Khizhniakov managed somehow to escape and to hide in the nearby church, where Petri­ shchev had already taken refuge. Lavrovskii was not so fortunate and was badly beaten by the crowd. For some time the police were unable to contact the district center, Sumy, to call for reinforcements, because the peasants had cut the telephone wire. Eventually, someone managed to send a telegram from the local railroad station, and at about 3 p.m. a police detail arrived and put an end to the disturbance. At eleven in the evening Vice-Governor Masal´skii arrived by emergency train from Kharkiv, also accompanied by a substantial police de­tachment. Having elucidated the alarming events of the day, Masal´skii ordered the immediate arrest of 34 persons he deemed the “instigators.” The next morning he called the village’s entire population to assemble in the vil­ lage square. From amongst those gathering that morning a small group of peasants, probably women, approached the vice-governor and presented him with the traditional greeting of bread and salt. Masal´skii, however, refused to accept these gifts, exclaiming to the crowd that he could not accept bread and salt from people who “in such a difficult year for the motherland [rodina], would riot [buntuiut] to the joy of Russia’s enemies, kill their fellow villagers

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and attack government officials.” Reportedly, in response to Masal´skii’s bold admonishments, the crowd fell on its knees and begged forgiveness. The vice-governor explained to the peasants the illegality of their deeds and the seriousness of the crime they had committed. Apparently, his reprimands had such a decisive impact on the people that they themselves began to point out the instigators of the riot. Masal´skii then supervised their arrest and handed them over to the judicial authorities.9 The peasants’ rapid return to submission following Masal´skii’s reprimand is not very surprising. Once the authorities applied serious force, peasants often retreated into “customary shows of abject repentance.”10 The soldatki led numerous similar actions in 1914 and 1915, until they fizzled out in response to the May 1915 declaration of the minister of agriculture, A. V. Krivoshein, that the land reorganization work would be stopped. In his circular to all governors, Krivoshein remarked that he had received numerous petitions from peasants, most of whom called for the reorganization to be halted while the men were at the front.11 Although Krivoshein suspended the work with the proviso that it would be renewed after the war, it never was, and in 1917 most of the separators’ lands were reincorporated into the village land pool as part of the agrarian revolution, the Great Repartition, of that year. The achievement of their main demand, however, did not lead soldatki to recede into quiet village life, though they surely continued to work very hard to plant, grow, and harvest their food. Rather in later 1915 and 1916 they led and took part in numerous other mass actions, most commonly, over the government’s attempts to control prices of various foodstuffs at market. In these actions, soldatki could end up on either side of the fight, depending on whether they were the sellers or buyers. Indeed, often their main complaint was that manufactured goods (especially sugar and soap) were being sold at high prices, while they were forced to sell their food surplus at governmentset prices. One example of this type of protest occurred in the district center of Valky on 19 June 1916. A certain M. Z. Kristalenko provoked a disturbance when he deliberately squashed Khristina P. Zhmailova’s eggs, because she refused 9

  This account is based on a report by the regional gendarme chief, Captain Mkurnali, to the provincial gendarme chief, Rykovskii: Tsentral´nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrainy u m. Kyivi (TsDIA) f. 336, op. 2, spr. 141, ark. 23zv.; report includes ibid., ark. 22–23. See also Derzhavnyi arkhiv Kharkivskoi Oblasti (DAKhO) f. 3, op. 2, spr. 5038, ark. 8. For a slightly different version of events, which downplays Masal´skii’s role, see Rykovskii’s paraphrase of Mkurnali’s report: TsDIA f. 336, op. 2, spr. 141, ark. 29. 10

 Pallot, Land Reform in Russia, 160.

11

 “Priostanovka vydelov na otruba,” Iuzhnyi Krai, 8 May 1915.

116 Mark R. Baker

to sell them to him at the government-set tariff rate. In response, a crowd of women attempted to seize Kristalenko, but somehow he escaped, further antagonizing the women, who then began to complain about the absence of sugar for sale and the exorbitant prices on various manufactured goods. The women refused to disperse, even when ordered to do so by an arriving police detachment. Instead, they demanded that the police free from arrest two women accused of selling their produce above the tariff rate. The police, apparently, felt compelled to release the women, after which the protesters dispersed.12 Such confrontations were widespread: one of the provincial gendarme’s leading officials declared in June 1916, “the tariffs in general provoke extreme bitterness amongst the peasants absolutely in all districts.” Noting the general absence of price controls on manufactured goods (especially sugar) in local shops, peasants declared, “not just as individuals, but as a mass,” that “the pany [landlords] allow merchants to rob us, and at the same time they force us to sell at the tariff rate.”13 In 1915 and 1916 there were numerous similar disturbances across the province, evidence of which can be found in the reports of various police of­ ficials to the Kharkiv governor. One can obtain some sense of the growing frequency of these events during the war through comparison to earlier years. In the three and a half years before the war there were only eight peasant “disturbances” (vystupleniia in the police’s parlance) for the entire province (1912—3; 1913—3; January–June 1914—2). By contrast, in the first two and a half years of WWI the province’s peasants took part in 53 similarly labeled “disturbances” (July–December 1914—22; 1915—19; 1916—11).14 And then strangely, and in sharp contrast to this dramatic increase, the disturbances faded away, from September 1916 to the February 1917 revolution. It is diffi­ cult to account for this decline. One explanation is that this relatively brief 12

  TsDIA f. 336, op. 2, spr. 193, ark. 72.

13

  A. M. Anfimov, ed., Krest´ianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (iiul´ 1914 g.´—fevral´ 1917 g.): Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow–Leningrad: Nauka, 1965), 404 (doc. 239).

14

  I calculated these numbers from dela of the Kharkiv governor’s “sekretnyi stol” (DAKhO f. 3, op. 287), cross-checked with gendarme and police reports. A. P. Koro­ tenko argued in 1956 that there were more peasant disturbances in Kharkiv province, 1914–17, that they included more participants and were of greater brutality, than in any other Ukrainian province (Korotenko, “Revoliutsionnaia rabota bol´shevikov Khar´­ kovshchiny v period pervoi mirovoi imperialisticheskoi voiny,” Sbornik nauchnykh rabot kafedr obshchestvennykh nauk vuzov g. Khar´kova, vyp. 1 (1956): 99. Unfortunately, there are no other post-Soviet studies of peasants during WWI in a Ukrainian province which with I could compare.

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period coincided with winter 1916–17, a season with generally fewer public gatherings and opportunities for public protest. Moreover, one should not as­ sume that peasants’ views of the approaching revolution were similar to the urban masses; in contrast to rising tensions in the cities, in the period leading up to the first mass demonstrations in Petrograd, peasants appeared to be set­ tling down. Revolutions of 1917 This general attitude in the village was reflected in peasants’ delayed re­ sponses to Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication on 15 (2) March 1917. While workers in Kharkiv’s factories took immediate actions to secure the revolution’s com­ pletion in their city, marching, holding rallies, and electing their own soviet shortly after hearing about the revolution,15 the first indication that peasants were starting to react and organize did not surface before 3 May 1917, when the First Congress of Peasants’ Deputies of Kharkiv province was called. In­ deed, even the initiative to call this congress, which was supposed to elect the province’s Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, originated with the Kharkiv Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, probably inspired by a naive and somewhat paternalistic effort to attract peasants to the revolution and to defend its achievements (as they understood those terms).16 At a certain remove, such congresses provided some evidence about peas­ ants’ revolutionary aspirations, but if we can agree that their actions tell us more than the words issuing from such congresses (words often proposed by outsiders and only voted on by peasant deputies), then peasants’ main desires in 1917 revolved not around the soviets or the political parties of one or another stripe, but rather around the lands and forests in their immediate vicinity, especially properties owned by non-peasants, out of which peasants thought they had been cheated in 1861, which they had therefore for gener­ ations coveted, and which they now sought to acquire. Although the Provi­ sional Government insisted to its very end that only the Constituent Assembly should solve the land problem, peasants strove over the summer and fall of 1917 by both legal and illegal means, but almost invariably with an attempt to legitimize their claims through local committees (which they usually con­ trolled), to acquire much of the land not yet in their hands. Quantifying this agrarian revolution is not easy. The statistical evidence is inconsistent at best. As Orlando Figes has pointed out, Soviet historians’ estimates of the number of peasant disturbances differed greatly, because 15

  Izvestiia Khar´kovskogo soveta rabochikh deputatov, 4 March 1917, 1.

16

  Izvestiia Khar´kovskogo soveta rabochikh deputatov, 15 April 1917, 2.

118 Mark R. Baker

each historian had a different definition of the term “peasant disturbance [vystuplenie or vystup].”17 For example, I. I. Mints listed the total number of peasant disturbances for the period March–October 1917 as 4,285 on one page and 4,246 on another. A. D. Maliavskii came up with a total of 16,298 for almost the same provinces and time period. For Kharkiv province, Mints found 102 cases of peasant vystuplenie, whereas Maliavskii found 563. Mints’s figures rank Kharkiv province 17th among all 84 provinces and oblasts, while Maliavskii’s place the province 11th.18 Petro Reshodko, a Soviet historian who focused on the peasants of Kharkiv province in 1917, uncovered 164 cases of peasants independently seizing landlords’ arable land over the period March–October 1917. More contemporaneously, the 1917 Kharkiv provincial land committee reported that its local committees had during this same period “transferred” to peasants almost 100,000 desiatinas (des.) of land, because those lands were not being cultivated by their owners.19 This appears to be an underestimate: I have calculated that for the period, March–June 1917, there were at least 226 cases in which peasants acted in some illegal manner to acquire lands and forests.20 Hence, the peasants of Kharkiv province, though not the empire’s most active in 1917, were amongst the most active and perhaps the most ener­ getic in Ukraine. Yet one would receive a very incomplete picture of the village in 1917 by focusing solely on peasants’ acquisitions of these lands and forests. Although Soviet and Western historians have concentrated their attention on these seizures, often assuming that this agrarian revolution was a “class struggle,”21 peasants versus landlords, there were, in fact, at least as many conflicts amongst peasants as there were with large landowners. At least in Kharkiv province, the peasant revolution of 1917–18 was not so much a single revolution of the peasants as a “class” with any conscious sense of a collective identity, as 17

 Orlando Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution (1917– 1921) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 47. 18

 I. I. Mints, Istoriia Velikogo Oktiabria (Moscow: Nauka, 1967–72), 2: 838, 1125, 1122– 23; A. D. Maliavskii, Krest´ianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 1917 g., mart–oktiabr´ (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), 378, 376.

19

 Tsentral´nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh orhaniv vlady ta upravlinnia Ukrainy (TsDAVO) f. 1326, op. 1, spr. 11, ark. 100. 20

 My calculations, using data from P. F. Reshod´ko, Selianskyi rukh u Kharkivskii hubernii (berezen´ 1917–sichen´ 1918 r.) (Kharkiv: Vyd-vo Kharkivs´koho universytetu, 1972), 99; 54–57, 68–73. 21

 The characterization of these peasants’ actions as “class struggle” has proved surprisingly persistent. See, for example, I. V. Khmil, Ahrarna revoliutsiia v Ukraini: Berezen´ 1917 r.–kviten´ 1918 rr. (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy NAN Ukrainy, 2000), 45: “The agrarian movement in Ukraine was accompanied by severe class struggle.”

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it was many tiny local revolutions by individual peasant communities, usu­ ally involving the seizure (violent or not) of non-peasants’ land. Moreover, these local revolutions were rapidly transformed into arguments, protests, and sometimes fights between peasant communities over the splitting of the disappointingly paltry spoils.22 First, we must note that peasants seized not only landlords’ lands, but also those belonging to all non-peasants, including the lands of the royal family, the state, and the church.23 This should not be surprising: as reflected in numer­ ous peasant folktales recorded in the 19th century, peasants easily sub­stituted the village priest or the tsar for the landlord.24 To most villagers, these others were basically those who owned land but did not cultivate it themselves. Equally unsurprising, many villages took back the lands belonging to those who had separated from their communes via the Stolypin reforms. Although a large number of these otrubshchiki quite voluntarily re-joined the commune in anticipation of receiving their share of the great Black Repartition, some did resist. Intra-village conflict arose only in those few cases in which there was a sufficient number of otrubshchiki to resist the demands and actions of the obshchinniki (communal peasants). For example, in April 1917 the Kharkiv press reported on a conflict that had arisen between the otrubshchiki and ob­ shchinniki of the village of Udy, Kharkiv district.25 More typical, however, were complaints from individual otrubshchiki, protesting the decision of their former commune (usually under the cover of the township land committee) to take back their land. The peasant Mikhail T. Vasys, for example, complained to the provincial land board about the Bashkins´k village zemstvo’s resolution revoking all otruba detached from the commune. Despite repeated appeals to the current law, Vasys obtained no assistance, basically because the provincial

22

 Thirty years ago and nine years before the archives opened, V. Holubnychy es­ timated that, even if all 42 million des. of arable lands in Ukraine were evenly allo­ cated among all 4,011,000 peasant households, the average household would have gained only 1.49 des. and would have stayed “merely a subsistence farm.” Vsevolod Holubnychy, “The 1917 Agrarian Revolution in Ukraine,” in Soviet Regional Economics: Selected Works of Vsevolod Holubnychy, ed. Iwan S. Koropeskyj (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1982), 4–5.

23

  See, for example, TsDAVO f. 1326, op. 1, spr. 90, ark. 154.

24

 Maureen Perrie, “Folklore as Evidence of Peasant Mentalité: Social Attitudes and Values in Russian Popular Culture,” Russian Review 48, 2 (1989): 124–28.

25

 Izvestiia Khar´kovskogo soveta rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov, 29 March 1917, 3; and 5 April 1917, 5. Also see TsDAVO f. 1326, op. 1, spr. 90, ark. 37–42; and TsDAVO f. 1400, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 90.

120 Mark R. Baker

land committee lacked the means to stop peasants’ actions.26 Although no exact figures are available, it seems clear that by the end of 1917 most otrubshchiki had been reabsorbed into their village communes.27 Considering peasants’ understanding of the Black Repartition this reab­ sorption had a certain logic. Many villagers considered their commune to be the lead actor in the repartition, and forcing the otrubshchiki and their lands back in would reinforce the commune, while bolstering its land reserve. As the country slipped into turmoil and as power dissipated to the localities, peasants’ tendency to identify mainly with their village community greatly increased. Moreover, the many inter-village disputes that then erupted over the “correct” redistribution of all seized lands and forests could only have deepened peasants’ allegiance to their village commune, making it the real locus of power in the revolutionary countryside. Exploring a specific example will help to illustrate the process. On 3 September 1917 the Ternova township land committee (Kup´ians´k district) informed the provincial committee that on 15 July it had “taken into account” the land and meadows of Count Sheremetev’s estate. The committee a little defensively asserted, “by right of the law of the Provisional Government” this property had to be used first of all to satisfy the citizens of Ternova township, because that was where the estate was located. If any land was leftover af­ ter that, it could be given to citizens of other townships. Confident in this “interpretation” of the current law, Ternova’s peasants had already started to cultivate this land for winter sowing. A little later, however, peasants from Iampolsk, Izium district, had started to claim and to rent out plots of this same land without any authorization. Thus, the Ternova land committee asked the provincial committee to intervene on its peasants’ behalf.28 On 16 September the Kharkiv provincial land board informed the Ternova committee that “not any kind of instruction of the Provisional Government about issuing land to rent only to peasants of the same township existed, and thus, the citation of this nonexistent decree is without foundation.” The board asserted that such questions “had to be solved in accordance with the real needs in land,” and

26

˜TsDAVO f. 1326, op. 1, spr. 90, ark. 147–51; for other petitions by otrubshchiki, see ibid., ark. 37–42, 190–96, 374–75, 434–35. 27

 V. Kachinskii, Ocherki agrarnoi revoliutsii na Ukraine: Uravnitel´nyi razdel zemli (Kharkiv: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo Ukrainy, 1922), 54–56. Kachinskii pointed out that because of the German occupation and Civil War, some otruba and khutora existed in Ukraine until 1920, when their “final liquidation was completed” (55). 28

 TsDAVO f. 1326, op. 1, spr. 90, ark. 30.

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thus, ordered the Ternova committee “without fail to enter into an agreement with the Iampolsk committee.”29 Evidently, the peasants of Ternova township did not comply with the pro­ vincial board’s order. On 30 September a commission from the Zakotiansk township land committee arrived at Sheremetev’s estate to investigate the damages that the citizens of Ternova township had caused to the Iampolsk community’s hay harvest. Though the commission claimed it had invited the Ternivtsy ten days earlier, no representatives from the accused community appeared at the investigation. Apparently, the provincial committee had given the Iampolsk peasants permission to cut 20 des. of hay from the estate’s fields, and then 40 des. of aftergrass (hay from a second mowing of a field). The Iampolsk villagers had cut all this hay and loaded it, but when they began to take it home, a large group of Ternivtsy arrived and forcibly seized all of it, presenting no authorization. The commission determined that these peasants had caused about 7,200 rubles’ damage to the Iampolsk community and asked the provincial committee to help bring them to responsibility.30 In response, revealing its incapacity to enforce its own decrees, the provincial land board merely suggested that the Iampolsk community take legal action through the courts to retrieve its losses.31 Such conflicts amongst peasant communities were numerous and in­ creased in the fall of 1917 and into 1918.32 On the All-Russian scale, Figes has stated, “contrary to the old Soviet myth, there were very few conflicts within the village between richer and poorer peasants. But there were a great many conflicts between neighbouring communes, sometimes ending in little village wars, over control of the estates.”33 My findings from Kharkiv province confirm Figes’s observations, and suggest that the widespread agrarian revolution of 1917–18 was not a “class struggle” in Soviet historians’ sense of that term, or in the sense sometimes assumed by some Western scholars. Rather, peasants usually took action as members of a community; they behaved in ways that revealed their local understanding of the world. This localist worldview— one might call it “villagism”—was also reflected in how peasants related to statewide issues, such as the confounding problem of food supply. 29

 Ibid., ark. 31.

30

 Ibid., ark. 124.

31

 Ibid., ark. 125. For more evidence of the land committee’s powerlessness, see Kachinskii, “Krest´ianskoe dvizhenie,” 219; Reshod´ko, Selians´kyi rukh u Kharkivs´kii hubernii, 103; and TsDAVO f. 1326, op. 1, spr. 11, ark. 67. 32

 One can find many more examples of inter-village conflict. See TsDAVO f. 1326, op. 1, spr. 25, ark. 19–26, 61–66, 71, 80, 183–84; spr. 52 and 90 in passim. 33

 Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 364.

122 Mark R. Baker

Soon after the tsarist regime’s collapse, which to a great degree was caused by its inability to bring food to the major cities, especially Petrograd, the Provisional Government took significant steps to address the food supply issue.34 In March 1917 the government imposed a monopoly on all grain sur­ pluses, entrusting local food supply committees to collect the grain and pay set prices, which were then quickly outpaced by accelerating inflation.35 In early May the first Kharkiv Provincial Congress of Peasants’ Deputies endorsed the grain monopoly, though some peasant delegates also clamored for a monopoly on manufactured goods. The Provisional Government declined to implement the latter, exposing itself to socialists’ attacks for being too cau­ tious and to conservatives’ critiques for being too invasive.36 As a result, as across the empire, Kharkiv province’s peasants became ever more reluctant to sell their surplus grain to local food supply agents at such prices, especially without manufactured goods available for purchase.37 Some Soviet historians argued that the only way to solve the food supply problem was to transfer “All Power to the Soviets,” thereby in part validating the Bolsheviks’ takeover. However, the overthrow of the Provisional Government did little to solve the insufficiency of food in the cities, and in Ukraine, where the Ukrainian Central Rada was increasingly claiming authority, the food supply situation continued to worsen as winter came on. In early December 1917, D. Skrypnichenko, the Kharkiv Provincial Com­ missar for food supply matters, penned an alarming “Appeal to citizen-peasants of Kharkiv province,” in which he averred that the food supply situation in the army was becoming “deadly.” Practically each day the provincial food supply committee received anxious telegrams from the front pleading “to save the army” by sending more food. Regrettably, the provincial committee was unable to respond adequately, and had in fact completely stopped sending grain, “because the population of Kharkiv province has almost stopped 34

  V. A. Vakhromeev, “Sovety i prodovol´stvennyi vopros v 1917 g. (mart–oktiabr´),” Istoricheskie zapiski 116 (1988): 5–42.

35

 In Kharkiv province the government-set prices, even after Kerenskii’s government doubled them on 27 August 1917, remained far below the local market price. See N. D. Kondrat´ev, Rynok khlebov i ego regulirovanie vo vremia voiny i revoliutsii (Moscow: Nauka, 1991), 400–07. 36

 Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914– 1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 97. 37

 For the entire empire, grain deliveries to the army and civilians declined steadily from July to October 1917, from 50 to 19 percent of grain orders (Vakhromeev, “Sovety i prodovol´stvennyi vopros v 1917 g.,” 32–33). In late August 1917, Kerenskii assented to doubling the fixed prices on grain, but this did little to increase grain deliveries (Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution, 103–04).

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supplying grain to the food supply committees.” Skrypnichenko warned of impending catastrophe. Soon starving soldiers would desert their trenches en masse and anarchy would ensue: “we free citizens will be made into slaves again and lose all hope of receiving land and freedom.” He urged the Ukrainian people not to be “deaf and dumb” in this crucial moment, but to aid their sons and brothers starving at the front. “Only those who desire the destruction of the people’s freedom, of the young Ukrainian republic and all of Russia, only they would at this time hide their grain, or sell it not to the food supply committees but various interlopers and speculators. Let there not be among us one who would keep any surplus grain to oneself. Everyone as one immediately give your grain to the Food Supply Committees. Save your army, Ukraine, and all of Russia from anarchy and ruin.”38 Skrypnichenko was probably very disappointed with the response to his appeal. Most peasants continued to hold onto any excess grain they had harvested. And perhaps this resistance was not only a result of their economic self-interest, but of their lack of identification with such broader ideas as “Ukraine,” let alone “All of Russia.” Indeed, as the frequent similar appeals and protocols from provincial officials suggest, most peasants of Kharkiv province were quite unwilling to make substantial sacrifices for larger ideas of community, regardless of which government, the General Secretariat in Kyiv or the Sovnarkom in Petrograd, claimed political authority over them. Indeed, the evidence makes clear that many peasants hardly noticed the change of authority in December 1917, which is not surprising, when one considers the only fine distinctions between these two governments’ land policies. To the peasants’ way of thinking, both Sovnarkom’s Decree on the Land and the Central Rada’s Third Universal had abolished private property on the land and transferred it to the control of local land committees, which the peasants themselves dominated. Other facets of either government’s land policies seemed to them only unnecessary details.39 It is important to note that food-growers’ reluctance to give grain was not at all limited to Ukraine or Ukrainian-speaking peasants. Uncovering the great misunderstanding between food supply committee workers (and their superiors) and villagers in Kazan´ and Nizhegorod provinces, Sarah Badcock presents revealing examples of resistance to the grain monopoly, especially in Kazan´ province, sometimes leading to armed conflict with locally garrisoned 38 39

  Nova hromada, 2 (15) December 1917, 1.

 The key difference that the Central Rada supporters emphasized was that their land law was to be implemented in more orderly fashion by the land committees. For a rather unsuccessful attempt to make clear why the Central Rada’s land law was “more well thought out” than the Sovnarkom’s, see Ol. Sokolovs´kyi, “Universal Ukrains´koi Tsentral´noi Rady i zemel´na sprava,” Nova hromada, 12 (25) November 1917, 2.

124 Mark R. Baker

soldiers. She tracks the authorities’ increasingly frequent resort to violence.40 Peter Holquist’s work on the Don region reveals that peasant and Cossack communities alike resisted the removal of grain reserves throughout 1917.41 Similarly, Aaron Retish found considerable evidence that Viatka province’s peasants resisted the grain monopoly, responding to the government’s in­ creasingly forceful efforts with “more overt and violent resistance.”42 More generally, on the eve of its own dissolution, the Provisional Government had become so frustrated with grain producers’ reluctance to give up their grain that it was arranging to pull troops from the front lines to help extract food from the countryside. A related and important aspect of peasants’ local-mindedness in 1917 was their attitude toward the primary new body that claimed to represent them at the provincial level: the Kharkiv Provincial Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies. While historians have often invoked the resolutions of provincial soviets as indicators of popular mood, the attitudes of “the people” toward these insti­ tutions have rarely been examined.43 This is not surprising. The soviets’ leaders claimed to represent and speak in the name of “the people,” whether this meant workers, soldiers, peasants, or some combination thereof. However, at least in the case of the Kharkiv Provincial Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, it is questionable that the political assertions of these institution’s leaders and the resolutions they passed and sent on to Kyiv and Petrograd accurately expressed the desires of their claimed constituents. To an important extent, the soviet’s leaders acquired (and then employed) the language of popular revolution, but not necessarily the support of the people. Of course, this is a question of degree. The provincial soviet’s resolutions may have sometimes reflected some peasants’ views. However, there is sig­ nificant evidence that many villagers were unwilling to support the soviet’s efforts to speak and act for them. First, peasants rarely complied with the provincial soviet’s decrees and admonitions. The soviet often passed on 40

 Sarah Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 312–24. In Kazan´ province, one frus­ trated food supply committee worker noted about villagers’ resistance, “Russia is forgotten: the word rodina [motherland] is understood only as their village” (Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia, 316).

41

 Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution, 105–06.

42

  Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 102.

43

  See, for example, Michael Melancon, “The Syntax of Soviet Power: The Resolutions of Local Soviets and Other Institutions, March–October 1917,” The Russian Review 52, 4 (October 1993): 486–505.

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disputes between villages over land to the provincial land committee and approved the committee’s decisions.44 Hence, the provincial land committee’s incapacity to put into force its decisions at the local level or to resolve disputes amongst peasant communities also defines the limitations of the provincial soviet’s authority. For example, on 15 September 1917, in support of the land committee’s efforts, the provincial soviet sent a telegram to the peasants of Matviivka (Bohodukhiv district), denouncing their illegal plowing of the beet fields of sugar magnate I. P. Kharitonenko as “intolerable” and demanding they stop immediately. Not only did the Matviivtsy ignore the soviet’s tele­ gram; Kharitonenko’s estate manager soon reported that the peasants of neighboring villages had also begun plowing the estate’s plots.45 If villagers truly endorsed the soviet, why did so many ignore or refuse to comply with its appeals (and those of the provincial land committee) to stop seizing land and felling forests and quietly wait for the Constituent Assembly to resolve the land question? An unusual way to assess peasants’ support for their soviets is to look at how they were funded, an issue most historians have ignored.46 Reading through the protocols of the provincial and district-level soviets of peasants’ deputies, I was amazed by how much time their executive committees devoted to financial matters. At its inaugural 7 May 1917 meeting, the provincial soviet’s Executive Committee (EC) resolved to entrust its newly formed Economic Commission to petition the All-Russian Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies about how they were to obtain means to support their work, and to work out a budget for the soviet.47 Ten days later, the EC perused the Economic Commission’s draft budget but decided that it was too vague and the amounts proposed too small.48 On the following day the EC passed a revised draft budget totaling 50,000 rubles monthly, though charging its presidium to adjust this figure “in correspondence with developing activities.”49 The soviet’s executive then 44

 See, for example, TsDAVO f. 1400, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 110.

45

 Ibid., ark. 150zv.; and ibid., f. 1326, op. 1, spr. 90, ark. 60.

46

 Oskar Anweiler, the one Western historian to study the soviets as institutions, only mentions how much the Petrograd soviet received, March–June 1917, but does not discuss from where this money came. Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets: The Russian Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers Councils, 1905–1921, trans. Ruth Hein (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 108.

47

 TsDAVO f. 1400, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 3. Comrade Rubinskii was sent to the provincial zemstvo to request funds for the soviet. 48 49

 Ibid., ark. 11.

 Only in the months of May and July did the EC stay under this budget estimate. In fact, later in 1917 the EC revised this estimate to 141,600 rubles per month, though it

126 Mark R. Baker

appealed for funding to the Union of Cooperatives, the Provincial Land Board, the Union-Bank, and the Public Committee.50 After exhausting all these possibilities, the EC, now composed of a chairman, deputy chairman, secretary, and 26 members, decided on 11 June “to deem obligatory for the Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies the principle of self-taxation [samooblozheniie] to cover the costs for maintaining the soviet.”51 Over the next month the provincial soviet leaders conducted a campaign to collect this “self-tax” from the province’s villagers. They issued an appeal to all township soviets of peasants’ deputies, enlightening them about its deci­ sion to require the peasants to fund “their soviets” at a rate of 10 kopecks per des. per month; households holding less than two des. were to pay 20 kopecks per month. If one includes peasants’ land seizures of 1917, they held about 2.6 million des. of arable land in Kharkiv province. Had they given the self-tax at this rate, this would have provided about 260,000 rubles per month, half of which was supposed to be sent on to the provincial soviet, more than sufficient to cover its approximate costs.52 The EC told township soviets to organize assemblies in each village to explain the self-tax and to take all measures to obtain this money, “since neither the township, district, nor provincial soviets of peasants’ deputies can exist without consistent support from their electors, without the support of the laboring peasantry, who elected the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies for the defense of their rights and interests.”53 The province’s peasants, however, proved unwilling to surrender funds to support “their soviets,” and especially, it seems, the Kharkiv Provincial So­ viet of Peasants’ Deputies. In mid-August, the EC heard a protocol from the Zmiiv District Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, in which that soviet had decided to retain all funds provided by the self-taxation for its own uses, not transferring the obligatory 50 percent to the provincial soviet. A resolution was also heard from the Randavskyi township Public Committee and Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies (Bohodukhiv district), which rejected in toto the self-taxation, stat­ ing that the commune funded local organizations (“iz mirskikh summ”). In response to both resolutions, the EC decided to demand that these local soviets comply with the self-taxation and transfer the much-needed funds to only found sufficient funds to spend on average 68,000 rubles for each of the months, May–November 1917. Most of these funds came from loans from the Union Bank and the provincial zemstvo (TsDAVO f. 1400, op. 1, spr. 4, ark. 36–38). 50

 Ibid., spr. 1, ark. 13zv.

51

 Ibid., ark. 33.

52

  Narodnii komisariiat zemel´nykh sprav, Pidsumky ahrarnoi revoliutsii na Ukraini (Kharkiv, 1923), 6.

53

 TsDAVO f. 1400, op. 1, spr. 4, ark. 33; and spr. 1, ark. 111.

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the provincial soviet.54 Peasants’ resistance persisted throughout the year. In late September at the Fourth Congress of the Provincial Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, the EC again called for financial aid from its peasant constituents. EC member Trebelev noted, “the peasantry are not sympathetic to self-taxation everywhere.” Because of the absence of means, the provincial soviet had not managed to prepare sufficiently for the elections to the district zemstvos and the Constituent Assembly. Insisting that peasants “support their own peasant organizations,” Trebelev provoked a series of speeches from peasant deputies, striving to explain why the self-taxation was not going well. Most commonly, deputies proposed that “the peasantry is insufficiently enlightened about the goals of the gathered money, thinking, for example, that this money will go only to the salaries of members of the Executive Committee.” Some deputies claimed that villagers refused to give money voluntarily because of “the agitation of the village bourgeoisie.” And a few suggested that peasants either did not know where to send the gathered money, giving it entirely to the local public committees, or had not received the proper accounting books to gather the money. The congress decided in the end to call on peasants once again to support the voluntary self-taxation, making clear to villagers the importance and goals of the taxation.55 These appeals had little effect. Neither resolutions and calls from Kharkiv nor the peasant deputies’ efforts back home managed to get peasants to pay this modest tax to support “their soviet.” At an early December meeting the Executive Committee admitted that the soviet’s financial situation was abys­ mal; there were “no means and, apparently, nowhere to obtain them.” Public organizations and credit granting institutions refused to give the soviet funds, supposedly “because they are all composed of defensists.”56 The Exe­ cutive Committee resolved in desperation to ask the city duma for a loan.57 In the end, all these attempts to extract the self-tax from the peasants proved quite ineffective, and consequently the provincial soviet did not overcome its 54

 Ibid., spr. 1, ark. 130. The Randavskyi township case indicates that peasants saw “soviet power” as local power and associated local soviets with other prerevolutionary peasant organizations.

55

 Ibid., ark. 158.

56

­ The label of “defensist” usually denoted those who supported a defensive position in the war effort, as opposed to a separate peace, which the Sovnarkom was at this time negotiating with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk. Here it may have referred more generally to those who opposed the Bolshevik takeover and attempted to remain loyal to the Provisional Government, which had espoused a defensist position toward the war.

57

 TsDAVO f. 1400, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 207.

128 Mark R. Baker

funding problems before invading German troops forced the Executive Com­ mittee’s members to evacuate from the province in late April 1918.58 Why was it so hard for the provincial soviet to extract this tax from its as­ sumed constituents? As some peasant deputies suggested, their co-villagers were probably not sure about the reasons for the self-tax or where to send it, though at that fourth congress of the soviet, the explanations that peasant deputies proffered ring somewhat hollow: they apparently represented their townships and assumed responsibility before the provincial soviet for the tax collection’s poor results. One might propose that peasants simply lacked the means to pay the tax, though this is belied by evidence that by January 1918 the province’s peasants had purchased about 15 million rubles in manu­ factured goods and that this amount had not satisfied their demands.59 It also seems that in some districts peasants were paying the tax, but that dis­ trict and township soviets were not passing on the required 50 per cent to Kharkiv (a further indication of peasants’ localist tendencies). In addition, it is doubtful that the amount imposed on most villagers was burdensome. Even after their seizures of 1917–18, most households would have ended up with no more than about six des. each, making their tax burden about 60 kopecks per month.60 Hence, it is probable that many peasants did not pay this “self-tax,” because they were not willing to support their provincial soviet even to this small amount. Hence, the evidence strongly supports the interpretation that the villagers of Kharkiv province thought, acted, and experienced the 1917 revolutionary year in a profoundly local manner. And in this and in other re­ gards, they really were not different from the peasants of other provinces of the crumbling Romanov empire in general.61 Indeed, the first real break along 58

 Ibid., ark. 289 and 308.

59

 Ibid., ark. 262zv.

60

 According to the 1917 agricultural census, there were 450,644 peasant households in Kharkiv province in 1917 (Vserossiiskaia sel´sko-khoziaistvennaia perepis´ 1917 g.: Kharkovskaia guberniia, 12–13). 61

 Graham Tan also traces the importance of peasants’ village community and identity on Right-Bank Ukraine in 1917. For example, one village assembly decreed, “all power to the people, that is to say the village, immediately. We will not carry out any other decrees except the resolutions of the skhod.” Graham Tan, “Peasant Action and Village Social Organization: The Peasantry of Right-Bank Ukraine during the Revolution, 1917–1923” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1999), 286. Hiroaki Kuromiya notes a similarly strong sense of local-mindedness in the Donbas region of Ukraine, especially amongst colliers. Hiroaki Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas: A UkrainianRussian Borderland, 1870s–1990s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 90. Theodore Friedgut, in his thorough study of the workers of Iuzovka (now Donetsk, Ukraine), suggests that peasants who became workers transferred their “parochial tendencies” from the village to the factory or mine. Theodore Friedgut, Iuzovka and

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what came to define the line between “Russia” and “Ukraine” came only in 1918 as a result of the Treaties of Brest-Litovsk, and the consequent occupation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic by the troops of the Central Powers. German Occupation, 1918 While most historians know about the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on 3 March 1918 between representatives of the Bolshevik government and the Central Powers, few know that an earlier treaty was signed on 9 February 1918 at the same locale between the leaders of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) and the Central Powers. While this treaty appeared perhaps even at the time to have less importance than its more famous successor, its conse­ quences for solidifying the division between Ukraine and Russia proved crucial in the long run. When the UNR’s representatives signed the treaty and subsequently invited the Central Powers’ armies to help it to reassert its authority over Ukraine, the republic’s new citizens were effectively isolated from the revolutionary transformations occurring in the rest of the former tsarist empire. In a sense, the Central Powers’ occupation sheltered the UNR’s inhabitants from the early excesses of Soviet rule—“war communism”—to the north in 1918, while the brutal and arbitrary actions of the occupying German and Austro-Hungarian armies discredited the UNR, its ruling body the Central Rada, and (more so) its usurper—Hetman Pavlo Skoropads´kyi’s Ukrainian State—in the hearts and minds of its citizens, who by the end of 1918 came to see these regimes as the foreign occupation of the “Germans” and the “pany,” and as “counterrevolutionary.” Consequently, the separate treaty at Brest and the Central Powers’ “assistance” discredited the national idea before many peasants in Ukraine and preserved the image of “Soviet Power” as benign, local, self-rule by the people. At the same time, the line drawn proved remarkably resilient.62 The decision of the UNR’s leaders to sign the treaty and invite their putative country’s occupation was in large part a response to the January 1918 advance of pro-Soviet troops (a mix of detachments from the north and local recruits) across Ukraine and the failure of the UNR’s troops to resist them. As Revolution, 2: Politics and Revolution in Russiaś Donbass: 1869–1924 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 464–65; also see 55. 62

 Of course, the Brest-Litovsk Treaty’s borders were not identical to present-day Ukraine, but very close in all but the small region north of Chernihiv and, of course, eastern Galicia, then still a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. See the map in Georgyi Kasianov, “Die Ukraine zwischen Revolution, Selbstständigkeit und Fremdherrschaft,” in Die Ukraine zwischen Selbstbestimmung und Fremdherrschaft 1917– 1922 (Graz: Leykam, 2011), 132.

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Andrea Graziosi has pointed out, the main cause of the pro-Soviet troops’ “easy victory” over the UNR at this juncture was that about 300,000 peasant-soldiers from “Ukrainianized” regiments (formerly of the imperial army) deserted, returning to their native villages and hoping to obtain their “fair share” in the land seizures.63 Forced into a very difficult situation by the aggressive actions of Lenin’s Sovnarkom, the UNR’s leaders felt compelled to sign the treaty in an attempt to retain some control over their fledgling republic. Almost before their signatures were dry, at the German military command’s suggestion, the UNR’s delegates signed an appeal to the Austrian and German peoples, soliciting their assistance in “liberating Ukraine from the Bolsheviks.” The German Supreme Command immediately responded, informing the German kaiser and Foreign Office that “military assistance would be furnished without delay, and that two German detachments had already been ordered to Pinsk and Rovno.”64 In mid-February German forces began pushing into Ukraine and, sweeping rapidly across Right-Bank Ukraine, entered Kyiv on 1 March 1918. Returning to Kyiv with the occupying forces, the leaders of the Central Rada immediately reaffirmed the UNR’s laws, effectively granting all arable lands to the peasants. They also promised to restore the “order” that had ruled in Ukraine before the Bolsheviks’ arrival and attempted to assuage citizens’ fears about the arrival of German and Austro-Hungarian troops, against whom, it is worth noting, many of the republic’s peasant men had been fighting and dying over the past three years. In a February 1918 interview the UNR’s president, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, despite his personal qualms about Germany’s intentions, reassured the Ukrainian people that the German troops then marching into Ukraine had been ordered not to pillage or plunder. “The German government wants to establish broad and friendly relations between Ukraine and Germany … in order that the Ukrainian people will see the Germans as their friends.”65 No doubt, such promises in the name of the Ukrainian People’s Republic—of land and friendly German

63

 Andrea Gratsiozi [Graziosi], Bol´sheviki i krest´iane na Ukraine, 1918–1919 gody: Ocherk o bol´shevizmakh, natsional-sotsializmakh i krest´ianskikh dvizheniiakh (Moscow: Airo-XX, 1997), 43.

64  Oleh S. Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East and the Ukrainian Revolution, 1917– 1918 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971), 89–91. Also see Basil Dmytryshyn, “The German Overthrow of the Central Rada, April, 1918: New Evidence from German Archives,” Nationalities Papers 23, 4 (December 1995): 751–66. 65

 Ia. I. Malyk, Ukrains´ke selianstvo v period avstro-nimets´koi okupatsii 1918 roku (L´viv: LDU, 1996), 4.

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helpmates—only exacerbated peasants’ eventual disappointment with the UNR and even more so the Ukrainian State of Hetman Pavlo Skoropads´kyi.66 The occupation experience in Kharkiv province was somewhat different from Right-Bank Ukraine, mostly because German troops67 did not take the province until mid-April 1918, because they faced much more serious resist­ ance from Red Guards and other pro-Bolshevik forces across Left-Bank Ukraine.68 Thus, in early 1918 the nominal authority in Kharkiv province re­ mained the Kharkiv soviet,69 though it appears to have had very little control or influence in the countryside, where peasants continued to seize land, for­ est, and anything else they thought usable. In a circular to all district and township land departments of soviets of peasants’ deputies, dated 5 March 66

 Historians have paid very little attention to how peasants perceived and reacted to the occupation and the Hetmanate. Boris Malinovskii has pointed out that Soviet historians focused on what was called “the patriotic war of the Ukrainian people against the German occupants,” while Western historians focused on German and Austro-Hungarian policy toward Ukraine. The best of the former is N. I. Suprunenko, Ocherki istorii grazhdanskoi voiny i inostrannoi voennoi interventsii na Ukraine (1918–1920) (Moscow: Nauka, 1966); and of the latter Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East. See Boris Malinovskii, “Vospriiatie deiatel´nosti avstro-vengerskikh i germanskikh voisk v Ukraine (1918 g.) Ukrainskim krest´ianstvom” (paper presented at the conference “Kriegserfahrungen in Osteuropa,” Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen, Germany, October 2000). 67

 On 28 March 1918, Berlin and Vienna divided up Ukraine into two occupation zones: Austria-Hungary was awarded the southwestern part of Volhynia as well as Podoliia, Kherson, and Ekaterinoslav provinces; the rest of the UNR, including Khar­ kiv province, was occupied by German troops. Wolfram Dornik and Peter Lieb, “Die Besatzungverwaltung,” in Die Ukraine zwischen Selbstbestimmung und Fremdherrschaft, 251. 68

 Kharkiv Bolsheviks were some of the most vehement opponents of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaties; this probably strengthened their resistance to the German occupation. I. D. Nazarenko et al. eds., Ocherki istorii Kommunisticheskoi partii Ukrainy (Kiev: Gos. izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury SSSR, 1961), 225. On the stubborn resistance of pro-Bolshevik forces, see Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv (RGVA) f. 1, op. 2, d. 1, l. 73. A recent study based on German and Austrian sources confirms this: in the taking of Kharkiv 60 German soldiers were killed and 39 injured; one report stressed the increasing violence involved in occupying the eastern part of Ukraine (Wolfram Dornik and Peter Lieb, “Die militärischen Operationen,” in Die Ukraine zwischen Selbstbestimmung und Fremdherrschaft, 208–09).

69

 On 16 February 1918 the retreating Soviet government proclaimed the creation of the Donets-Krivoi Rog Soviet Republic, renaming itself the Soviet of the People’s Com­ missariats of that republic. However, this political entity existed mostly on paper and in the party’s newspapers. I have found no traces of its decrees or influence at the local level in the countryside. P. Pavliuk, Kharkivs´ka chervona hvardiia (Liutyi 1917 r.— berezen´ 1918 r.) (Kyiv, 1948), 90–91.

132 Mark R. Baker

1918, the provincial soviet’s land department remarked, “unfortunately, from many places news is arriving that the population is beginning independently [samochinno] to carry out the massive felling of trees in both state and formerly private forests.”70 Noting that “such plundering of the people’s wealth” would inevitably have a very negative impact “not only on the interests of the local population but on the whole state,” the department ordered district land departments to apply the most decisive measures immediately to en­ sure that no trees were felled without their permission. The department stressed, “permission for felling forests can be issued only by the district and provincial land departments of soviets of peasants’ deputies, and hence not [by] township [departments],” revealing that, as with the land committees of 1917, peasants were employing these local institutions to provide some official cover for their actions.71 As their insistent and frustrated tone suggests, these decrees were prob­ ably impossible to enforce at the local level, especially because they attempted to rein in and limit the power of local peasant-dominated bodies. Of course, the great dispersion of power was not confined to Kharkiv province. In a March 1918 report, the German foreign office liaison officer Colin Ross stressed that in Ukraine “complete chaos ruled.” Real central authority did not exist. “The entire country is divided up into a whole series of separate territories, confined to the borders of a district, a city, and sometimes even separate villages and hamlets. Power in these territories belongs to various parties, as well as individual political adventurists, pirates and dictators. One can find villages surrounded by trenches and waging war against each other over the lord’s land.”72 On 5 April the Executive Committee of the Provincial Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies discussed its plan to evacuate Kharkiv and executed the plan shortly thereafter.73 Following a few more days of bloody fighting, the last pro-Soviet detachment abandoned Kharkiv. Most of those workers and peasants, who had fought in the Red Army, evacuated the city with the party organization 70

 TsDAVO f. 1326, op. 1, spr. 7, ark. 19; the provincial land department also received reports on “the massive felling of forest” in Bohodukhiv district and ordered the district’s land department to allow the cutting of trees “only in cases of real necessity” (TsDAVO f. 1326, op. 1, spr. 128, ark. 1).

71

 TsDAVO f. 1326, op. 1, spr. 7, ark. 19.

72

 [Colin Ross], “Doklad nachal´niku operatsionnogo otdeleniia germanskogo vo­ stochnogo fronta o polozhenii del na Ukraine v Marte 1918 goda,” Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, no. 1 (1923): 288.

73

 TsDAVO f. 1400, op. 1, spr. 1, ark. 305. This is the last document in the protocols of the Provincial Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies.

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and joined the Tenth Soviet Army.74 After German troops and some pro-Rada Ukrainian troops occupied the city, a provincial land committee replaced the soviet’s land department. This body soon received an appeal, “From the Ukrainian Central Rada to the Citizens of the Ukrainian People’s Republic,” in which the Rada explained recent events, striving to justify its peace treaty with the Central Powers and the latter’s military assistance. The appeal stressed that all freedoms established in the Rada’s Third and Fourth Universals remained in force. Trade unions and soviets of peasants’ or workers’ deputies were free to continue working “for the protection of their class, [and] professional interests,” but they were not permitted to pretend to power, “because there must be only one authority in Ukraine—the Ukrainian Central Rada and its Ministers.” At the same time the Rada stressed that its authority was only temporary, until the long-promised All-Ukrainian Constituent Assembly was able to meet. Importantly, the Rada assured citizens that the Germans would not interfere in Ukraine’s internal affairs: “They come as our friends and help­ ers for a short time in order to help us in this difficult moment; they have no intention to change our laws or regulations, [or] to limit the independence and sovereignty of our republic.”75 On 27 April the provincial land committee’s executive sent to all district land committees copies of another decree, the Central Rada’s “Land Order,” instructing the committees “immediately to distribute these copies to all town­ ships of the district.”76 Reaffirming the Rada’s temporary land law of 18 January, which had abolished the right of ownership on all lands in the republic, the Land Order emphasized that “in the interests of the whole Ukrainian people and state, all lands must be sown immediately” and promised that “whoever sows, keeps [the land].” Township land committees were obliged to watch assiduously that all land was sown. “One who has not sown the land [already] in his possession does not have the right to additional allotments.” Owners of non-laboring farms had no right to interfere in the redistribution of their land among the rural poor and would be severely punished for any attempts at interference. Only when peasants were unwilling to sign an agreement to sow the land granted to them would former landowners be allowed to sow 74

  DAKhO f. 10, op. 1, spr. 278, ark. 1. Surprisingly, at this time the Red Army was still finding considerable support amongst the local population. A report of 1 April 1918 to the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs noted that in Kharkiv “work for the organization of the Red Army is going successfully.” Locals had recently organ­ ized two detachments. The Papers of the Red Army, reel 2, microfilm of RGVA f. 1 (Administration for matters of the People’s Commissariat of Military Affairs), op. 1, d. 72, l. 99.

75

 TsDAVO f. 1326, op. 1, spr. 7, ark. 84.

76

 Ibid., ark. 100.

134 Mark R. Baker

some portion of their former-estates.77 Clearly, the Rada’s land policy was not very different from that of its predecessor, except that the primary role at the local level was to be played by the land committees and not the local soviets’ land departments. The Rada’s great concern that all reapportioned land be sown, no doubt, reflected its fears of not fulfilling the food supply obligations to the Central Powers, while carrying out (or at least attempting to bring some order to) this massive land redistribution project. It is, however, difficult to determine how widely this document was distributed, or whether peasants were reassured by its content, mainly because the Central Rada’s rule ended just two days later. On the night of 29/30 April 1918 the German military authorities arranged the replacement of the Central Rada and its radical land policies by Hetman Pavlo Skoropads´kyi and his supporters.78 In his memoirs, Skoropads´kyi later claimed that, if he could have, he would have supported and courted above all the “farmer-democrats” (khliboroby-demokraty).79 However, he felt compelled by circumstances to depend instead on the far more powerful Union of Land­ owners and the German troops who placed him in power, neither of whose plans for the countryside corresponded with those of the majority of rural inhabitants. The members of the Union strove to reclaim their estates, seized by peasants in 1917, and Skoropads´kyi supported them as much as possible, declaring the restoration of private property in his ascending “Charter” (Hramota). To be fair, eventually, the Hetman announced a plan to redistribute some of the great estates’ lands to land-poor peasants, but he unequivocally declared that the government would not violate private property rights nor embark on any experiments that could ruin Ukraine’s agricultural production in the process.80 At the same time, the occupying troops who placed him in power, and to whom he had granted as a condition of their support “a free hand in trade and raw materials procurement,”81 sought to extract from the 77

 Ibid., ark. 101.

78

 As other historians have pointed out, few protests were provoked by the Central Rada’s replacement, either amongst intellectuals or the wider masses. Dmytro Doro­ shenko, Istoriia Ukrainy 1917–1923 rr., 2: Ukrains´ka Het´mans´ka Derzhava 1919 roku (Uzhhorod: O. Tsiupky, 1932), 39. I have not uncovered any evidence of objections to the Rada’s removal. 79

 P. P. Skoropads´kyi, “Uryvok zi ‘Spomyniv’ Het´mana P´avla Skoropads´koho,” Khliborobs´ka Ukraina, bk. 5 (1924–25): 71.

80 81

 Malyk, Ukrains´ke selianstvo, 12–13.

 Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East, 184; cites telegram no. 474 from German Ambassador to Ukraine, Baron Mumm, to the German Foreign Office, dated 30 April 1918, found in German Foreign Office Archives, no. 37.

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countryside all they could, plundering where and when they wished and disregarding both the peasants from whom they took and the local Hetmanate authorities who protested the troops’ arbitrary actions. Peasants sent numer­ ous appeals for compensation or relief from the occupiers’ exactions to government officials; these officials pleaded with local German military com­ manders and sent appeals to Kyiv; central Hetman authorities appealed to the German General Staff, but they received no response from the German commanders.82 One finds it difficult to imagine a regime less acceptable to most rural inhabitants. For many peasants of Kharkiv province, their first encounter with the Ukrainian state was the arrival to their village of a detachment of German troops seeking food and fuel, and wielding the weapons to extract them. One can easily imagine that peasants feared the worst had come to pass: the Germans, against whom they had sent many of their best sons, husbands, and fathers to fight over the last three and a half years, had won the world war and were now taking possession of their conquered lands. German troops’ behavior in the Kharkiv countryside probably confirmed those fears. For example, on 25 March a German dragoon regiment passing through the village of Nova Vodolaha (Valky district) demanded from the village’s agronomist, A. G. Storozhev, oats and hay for their horses. Storozhev refused, asserting that this forage was for local peasants’ cattle. Ignoring his protests, the German cavalrymen forced him to surrender about 90 poods of oats and hay, while other soldiers took more oats themselves without permission. The soldiers stayed in the village overnight; Storozhev discovered in the morning that they had taken another 50 poods of various foodstuffs. On their way out of town that morning they also seized the village’s breeding bull (worth about 3,000 rubles at the time). For all this, the regiment paid 150 German marks and promised to send an inventory listing everything else they had taken and for which they would pay later. Neither Storozhev nor any of the villagers of Nova Vodolaha ever received the inventory, let alone the promised money.83 In mid-April soldiers passing through the village of Popivka (Izium district) requisitioned about 1,770 rubles worth of foodstuffs from the village’s cooperative. The German troops gave the peasants no money for the food they seized, though they did issue a promise to pay. Over the next six months, representatives of Popivka’s peasants repeatedly (at least six times) traveled to Izium (the district center) and appealed to the German commandant to pay 82

 In a recent study, Peter Lieb and Wolfram Dornik argue that the German authorities began to integrate Ukrainian demands after Skoropads´ky’s coup, but I found no evidence that such efforts had any effect at the local level, at least not in Kharkiv province. Dornik and Lieb, “Die militärischen Operationen,” 228–32.

83

 TsDAVO f. 1325, op. 1, spr. 33, ark. 129 and 131.

136 Mark R. Baker

them for the requisitioned foodstuffs. Each time, the commandant refused them, providing one excuse or another and promising that they would be paid the next time.84 At times peasants reacted to the German authorities’ unjust and capricious acts with physical resistance for which they were severely punished. On 5 June a horse fair took place in Kolomak, Valky district, attended by many peo­ ple. At the very height of the horse auction, a squadron of German soldiers appeared, commanded by a Lieutenant Safar, who began requisitioning whichever horses he liked from the horse-dealers arriving to sell them. In response, the horse-dealers, most of whom were peasants, snatched back the horses from the soldiers, including from Lt. Safar. The troops then quickly fled the market, but swept back in moments later with an entire detachment, guns blazing. One peasant was killed in the shoot-out.85 Ten days later the district’s German commandant, Captain Weiss, sent a telegram to Kolomak, imposing a contribution of 75,000 rubles on the village’s inhabitants, “because an attack had been carried out on a German officer and his soldiers by peasants from the horse fair in Kolomak.” The contribution had to be paid in foodstuffs (as much as possible) by 24 July and submitted to the German detachment now stationed there.86 There were numerous such cases, as evidenced by the many complaints that the provincial starosta,87 the highest authority in the province under the Hetmanate, received over the next eight months.88 The Germans’ near universal response to such appeals, whether they came from the peasants themselves, local officials, or the minister of internal affairs, was silence and inaction. German occupation policies in Ukraine were, though in some respects quite confused, clear about their main goal: to acquire as much food as possible to alleviate shortages in Germany, which was suffering severely from the Entente’s blockade. The German authorities cared very little about the local inhabitants’ objections to the Germans’ methods of completing this task. As the then de facto commander of the German troops in Ukraine, Field Marshall Hermann von Eichhorn, described German policy in April 1918, “if this leads to frictions with the government or the population, then this is to be sure very regrettable, but the German command authorities 84

 Ibid., ark. 175.

85

 Ibid., spr. 31, ark. 54.

86

 Ibid., ark. 6.

87

 Starosta during the Hetmanate was an official government position referring to the person who was the head of each administrative district.

88

 For more examples, see TsDAVO f. 1325, op. 1, spr. 33, ark. 101–28. Another document in this file lists the property losses from eight peasants in Starobil´sk district, the total damage amounting to 38,621 rubles (ibid., ark. 36).

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are from their side to alter nothing.”89 When German lieutenant Colin Ross (a liason officer with the Foreign Office) presented his report on the chaotic situation in Ukraine in March 1918 to Chief of the Operations Department of the Eastern Front, General Hoffman, listing a series of mistakes made by the German command and its troops, Hoffman simply replied: “Ah, all of Ukraine interests me only to the next harvest. Then you can do with Ukraine whatever you like.”90 However, in the implementation of this task the German authorities were in the end greatly frustrated, mostly by their own troops, who, left to their own devices, sought to fulfil their personal needs first of all, which not only decreased the foodstuffs available to be sent to Germany, but turned peasants further against the regime and against cooperation with the Germans.91 There is voluminous evidence of the emerging conflict between peasants and occupiers, far too much to be presented in this brief discussion.92 In­ stead, I will illustrate with one more revealing document, written by the Kharkiv provincial starosta on 19 September 1918. Significantly, his appeal was addressed not to the Ministry of Agriculture, but to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Citing reports from various district starostas, the province’s top Hetmanate official stressed that “in many districts the population’s gen­ eral dissatisfaction with the German authorities’ actions is progressively increasing.” The causes of peasants’ growing anger included “various kinds of injustices allowed by them [the German authorities] during the requisition of grain, forage, and other things,” and also the imposition of contributions on whole villages for the criminal actions of individuals. Requisitions were being carried out “far too abnormally.” Very frequently, the Germans followed no real plan and “persistently” violated the order of requisitions. Listing all the grievances mentioned by his subordinates, he added a few more: German 89  Politisches Archiv des Auswartigen Amtes Bonn, Ukraine Nr. 1, Bd. 8, cited in Frank M. Grelka, Die ukrainische Nationalbewegung unter deutscher Besatzungsherrschaft 1918 und 1941–42 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005), 311. 90

 [Ross], “Doklad nachal´niku,” 288. Wolfram Dornik and Peter Lieb have recently stressed the great attention Ross’s report received in the German Foreign Office, Eco­ nomics Department and the Supreme Army Command (OHL). Hoffman in fact also agreed with Ross’s report (Dornik and Lieb, “Die militärischen Operationen,” 212 n. 39). 91  Fedyshyn makes passing reference to the deleterious effects of German soldiers—by requisitioning food and other necessities for their own consumption—in disrupting their leaders’ plans (Germany’s Drive to the East, 186). 92

 See TsDAVO f. 1325, op. 1, spr. 31–33, which contain many complaints from peasants, as well as local officials’ failed efforts to persuade the German authorities to address peasants’ grievances.

138 Mark R. Baker

requisition detachments would confiscate peasants’ carts, forcing them to haul the requisitioned grain and even German soldiers; peasants complained that soldiers had mowed down their pastures and crops without even asking permission; sometimes they even mowed down meadows rented by village administrations to help the needy. Overall, “the cases of arbitrary and illegal requisitions … are becoming more and more frequent, taking on in places a universal character.” The starosta emphasized that German soldiers seemed to be acting without German commanders, simply motivated by their basic needs and desires. At the same time, German commanders were very slow to respond to the numerous complaints of those suffering at their troops’ hands; local state officials had great difficulty enlisting local commanders’ assistance. The starosta concluded by stressing that the soldiers’ actions, and their commanders’ unwillingness to discipline them or help local officials, were “bringing to maturity a dark dissatisfaction with the Germans’ conduct and in the localities is being created a troubling situation, which could in the end lead to undesirable forms of separate, hostile conflicts, which would not be without danger for the state order and public quiet.”93 The results of such frequent and arbitrary actions were not difficult to foresee. As the world war ended, and the German troops began to withdraw, large-scale peasant uprisings arose across Ukraine.94 A new, left-leaning Ukrainian government, the Directorate of Ukraine, claimed to lead this gen­ eral uprising and took power in Kyiv, but the evidence from Kharkiv province suggests peasants were not interested in another variation of a Ukrainian state. The Directorate appointed as the military authority in Left-Bank Ukraine commander Petro Bolbochan, who (perhaps too easily) took control of Kharkiv in mid-November 1918. He soon discovered that neither the city’s working population nor the peasants in the countryside supported his efforts. The most convincing evidence of peasants’ attitude toward the renewed Ukrainian People’s Republic was their repeated refusal to react positively to Bolbochan’s efforts to recruit them into the Ukrainian Republican army. These refusals emerge from various sources, but the most striking example 93

 TsDAVO f. 1325, op. 1, spr. 31, ark. 37–38.

94

 See Gratsiozi, Bol´sheviki i krest´iane na Ukraine, 88–89. The only other archival study that investigated peasants’ treatment by and reactions to the Central Powers’ occu­ pying troops found very similar results: “Delay in the introduction of reforms and the widespread use of brutal repression, numerous violations, including robbery, illegal collecting of indemnities, and the unauthorized requisitioning that accompanied the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary in Ukrainian villages provoked the peasants, undermined the authority of the troops and the Ukrainian governments, which relied upon them.” B. V. Malynovsk´yi, “Ahrarna polityka Avstro-Ugorshchyny ta Nimechchyny v Ukraini, 1918,” (Avtoreferat of candidate’s dissertation, Dnipro­ petrovs´kyi national’nyi universytet, Dnipropetrovs´k, 2001).

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occurred on 17 December, when about 4,000 peasant recruits arrived in Kharkiv to report to the UNR’s military commandant. At that moment, they apparently were not aware of “the goals of their mobilization, nor the tasks of the power that had called them up.” But when they discovered that the Directory had mobilized them, they simply refused to serve and walked off, singing revolutionary songs, hoisting red flags, and shouting “All power to the Soviets!” They marched to the building where the recently re-established Soviet of Workers’ Deputies was meeting and appealed to its presidium. When the presidium’s members emerged, these young peasant men demanded that they “stand up and fight for the Power of the Soviets,” putting themselves at the soviet’s command. The presidium then arranged a demonstration under the slogan “All power to the Soviets!” A battalion of Republican troops, ordered to stop the demonstration, instead joined the demonstrators.95 As this incident suggests, peasants’ support for “soviet power” was quite extensive in Kharkiv province and across the Left-Bank. On 11 December 1918 the Belgorod Revolutionary Committee, just northeast of the province, informed the newly proclaimed “Worker-Peasant Government of Ukraine” that its troops were moving toward Kharkiv. Reporting that the formation of new Red Army detachments was going well in the areas now coming under occupation (northern Kharkiv province), the committee called not for more men, but more weapons and ammunition.96 In a report from the chief of the UNR forces’ intelligence department, Lieutenant-Colonel Matvienko stressed that as of 15 January 1919 (at least) his intelligence agents had found no basis to assert that any Russian soldiers numbered among the pro-Bolshevik troops moving into Kharkiv and Chernihiv province. Rather they were “insurgent, Ukrainian detachments,” composed of men from Left-Bank Ukraine.97 In mid-January 1919 one UNR commander, Col. Kapustianskyi, sent an in-depth report on the Soviet offensive advancing across Left-Bank Ukraine. He emphasized that “the Bolsheviks’ offensive is finding decisive help amongst local Bolsheviks and the population.” UNR troops arriving to halt 95

  This description is derived from three independent accounts of the event, the most comprehensive of which appeared in V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, “V bor´be protiv Direktorii (Na Ukraine v kontse 1918 goda),” Litopys Revoliutsii, nos. 38–39 (veresen– hruden 1929): 150. The other two accounts are Nash Golos, 18 November 1918, 4; and Bednota, 24 December 1918, as quoted in: S. M. Korolivskii, N. K. Kolesnik, and I. K. Rybalka, eds., Grazhdanskaia voina na Ukraine, 1918–1920: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1967), vol. 1, book 1, doc. 581, 507. 96

  N. N. Popov, ed., Osvoboditel´naia voina Ukrainskogo naroda protiv nemetskikh okku­ pantov: Dokumenty i materialy (Kiev: Partizdat TsK KP(b)U, 1937), doc. 446, 575. 97

  Popov, Osvoboditel’naia voina Ukrainskogo naroda protiv nemetskikh okkupantov, doc. 479, 611.

140 Mark R. Baker

the Soviet advance in Poltava province had refused to fight and were sent away for reformation. The commander of Republican troops in Chernihiv and Poltava provinces, Col. Palii, also acknowledged the unreliability of his troops, many of whom identified with the Bolsheviks. Describing one case of soldiers refusing to fight against the Bolsheviks, he admitted that this attitude prevailed in other detachments, where soldiers “refuse to move against their brothers, as they say.”98 Confirming repeated reports from Bol­ bochan himself, Kapustians´kyi stressed that his Zaporozhian troops were thoroughly exhausted by two months of near constant battle. Those reinforce­ ments that had been sent proved “highly unreliable [and] in a Bolshevik mood.” Indeed, the main problem for Republican forces on the Left Bank was that “the population in general sympathizes with the Bolsheviks and renders them active assistance, providing whole partisan detachments against Repub­ lican units.” Kapustians´kyi emphasized that “in the villages and in large cities, the population relates hostilely to Republican troops and provides large detachments against them, armed with machine guns… In general, we cannot with [any] hope of success fight with only our own forces against the Bolsheviks.”99 Clearly, many villagers welcomed soviet troops as liberators in early 1919 and enthusiastically joined their forces in order to bring “Soviet power” (as they understood that concept) to their villages. I should point out, however, that for most peasants “Soviet power” meant, above all, local control over their lives and newly acquired lands, not centralized control from Moscow or Kharkiv. A major complaint of Red Army commanders in the 1919–20 Civil War was that peasant-soldiers often refused to fight and de­ serted in large numbers, whenever their regiments were dispatched too far from their home villages. Peasants’ localism persisted. Hence, the first Treaty of Brest-Litovsk triggered significant long-lasting effects for Ukrainian-speaking peasants. The German occupation created very difficult conditions for many villagers, who came to hate the occupiers and to reject the regimes they associated with them: the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the Ukrainian State. For many peasants, these entities were their first experience of Ukrainian political independence, and this experience obstructed their willingness to embrace this idea. At the same time, their isola­ tion from events to the north and east (of kombedy and “war communism”) preserved in them a very positive impression of the “land of soviets” and 98

  Antonov-Ovseenko, “V bor´be protiv Direktorii,” 181.

99

 Popov, Osvoboditel´naia voina Ukrainskogo naroda protiv nemetskikh okkupantov, doc. 480, 612. Hrytsenko summarizes the same document in A. P. Hrytsenko, “Politychni syly u borot´bi za vlady v Ukraini (kinets´ 1917 r.–pochatok 1919 r.),” Istorychni zoshyty (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy AN Ukrainy, 1993), 74–75. She cites TsDAVO f. 1078, op. 2, spr. 24, ark. 115.

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the Bolsheviks, who they credited with giving them the land and (at least in their perception) local control. Even their subsequent experiences of the chaotic 1919 Soviet government, which tried to impose a type of collective agriculture on some of their newly acquired lands, could not dissuade them of this preference for Soviet power as the lesser evil. In a strange further irony, the UNR leaders’ actions, especially the treaty and invited occupation, and the resulting massive peasant uprising spawned in the minds of crucial decisionmakers in Moscow, especially Lenin, the idea that Ukrainian nationalism had significant force and needed to be addressed in the form that the revolutionary state assumed. Lenin, in effect, created the autonomous Ukrainian SSR for the wrong reason, assuming that peasant uprisings there and resistance to various authorities were signs of Ukrainian nationalism’s strength. In fact, as this chapter has shown, most peasants had no serious interest in being part of an independent Ukraine. In effect, then, Lenin’s misinterpretation of peasants’ actions and his resulting decision led to the creation of a relatively autonomous and at least initially nationalizing Ukrainian state (though so­ cialist in content): the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic. Then, as in several other cases, the USSR, as the Affirmative Action Empire, did much to make these peasants into Ukrainians, and much later, their grandchildren, after the 70-year experiment (including much oppression, suffering, sacrifice, and death), opted for complete independence in December 1991.100

100

  “The Bolsheviks expected nationalism in Poland and Finland, but the numerous nationalist movements that sprang up across most of the former Russian Empire were not expected, and the strength of the Ukrainian one was particularly unnerving. It was this direct confrontation with nationalism that compelled the Bolsheviks to formulate a new nationalities policy.” Terry Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest Form of Imperialism,” in A State of Nations: Empire and NationMaking in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny and Martin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 68. Of course, I disagree with Martin’s assertion of the strength of nationalism in Ukraine, but the point here is that the Bolshevik leaders interpreted the widespread disturbances in Ukraine as strong nationalism, and that this interpretation played a crucial role in the way they constructed the Soviet state and its nationalities policy.

National and Social Revolution in the Empire’s West: Estonian Independence and the Russian Civil War, 1917–20 Karsten Brüggemann

Introduction The Estonian-Soviet Peace Treaty of Tartu1 signed on 2 February 1920 sym­ bolizes the revolutionary events that sealed the end of the Russian Empire. On the one hand, the treaty was the first diplomatic breakthrough achieved by the Soviet government, for which the Estonian capital Tallinn2 was conse­ quently to prove a true “window on Europe” in political and economic terms. On the other hand, it constituted the first de jure recognition of the Estonian Republic. From the perspective of the Soviets, whose hopes rested on an im­ pending world revolution, the treaty was merely a temporary concession to a former “borderland,” but at the same time it contributed decisively to the consolidation of the revolution in heartland Russia. General Nikolai Nikolaevich Iudenich’s Northwestern Army, which had stood at the gates of Petrograd as recently as October 1919, had been disbanded shortly before the treaty was signed. For Jaan Poska, the head of the Estonian delegation at the peace nego­tiations, 2 February was the most important day in his country’s history, the day when it was able to take its fate into its own hands for the first time in 700 years.3

1

 In German Dorpat; in Russian, Iur´ev.

2

 In German Reval; in Russian, Revel´.

3

 For a general discussion, see Eduard Laaman, Eesti iseseisvuse sünd, 2nd ed. (Stockholm: Vaba Eesti, 1964), Poska quotation on 706; Richard K. Debo, Survival and Consolidation: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1918–1920 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992); Nikolaus Katzer, Die weiße Bewegung in Russland: Herrschafts­ bildung, praktische Politik und politische Programmatik im Bürgerkrieg (Cologne: Böhlau, 1996); A. V. Smolin, Beloe dvizhenie na severo-zapade Rossii 1918–1920 gg. (St. Petersburg: DB, 1999); Geoffrey Swain, Russia’s Civil War, 2nd ed. (Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2008).

Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 143–74.

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With this treaty, the Bolshevik regime and independent Estonia provided each other with their first diplomatic recognition. When the Council of Peo­ ple’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) had recognized Finland in December 1917, it was still hoping there would be a Finnish civil war, but when it came to the recognition of the Republic of Estonia a good two years later, its main concern was to stabilize the revolution.4 However, 2 February 1920 symbolized above all the end of the “Russia One and Indivisible” within the borders of 1914. Russian elites, including the Bolsheviks, had only been prepared to con­ sider the cases of Finland and Poland as concessions to the principle of a united Russia.5 The 1905 revolution had already shown that the non-Russian periphery was the empire’s Achilles heel. Especially in the Baltic provinces, there was a cycle of violence at that time that was fueled by social and national antagonism between the Baltic German upper class and the Estonian/Latvian lower classes characteristic of the region.6 As a consequence of the First World War and the revolutions of 1918–20, the empire then disintegrated, above all in its western territories. In these areas, the national revolution was a direct consequence of the political and social revolution at the imperial center. This article combines the narrative of the revolutions in 1917 and the Civil War that concentrates on the events in the Russian centers with the traditional Estonian master narrative, in which any connection with “Russia” ceased once the country’s independence had been proclaimed on 24 February 1918. In contrast to this, I argue that the Estonian War of Independence against the German Free Corps and the Red Army was just as much a part of the Russian revolutionary wars as the Russian Civil War. At the same time, the war on the Petrograd Front ought to be viewed to some extent as an interstate war, instead of being reduced to a conflict between revolution and counterrevolution. The limitation of the revolutionary wars to the conflict between the “Whites,” “Reds,” and “Greens” customary in the Soviet narrative is a historiographical construct that also allows the nationalist narratives to distance themselves 4

 On Finland, see Dubrovskaya’s chapter in this volume.

5

 Karsten Brüggemann, Die Gründung der Republik Estland und das Ende des “Einen und Unteilbaren Russland”: Die Petrograder Front des Russischen Bürgerkriegs 1918–1920 (Wies­ baden: Harrassowitz, 2002); Karsten Briuggemann [Karsten Brüggemann], “Estoniia i Petrogradskii front grazhdanskoi voiny v 1918–1920 gg.,” Voprosy istorii, no. 5 (2007): 17–33.

6

 Andres Kasekamp, A History of the Baltic States (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Mac­ millan, 2010), 90–94; Andrejs Plakans, A Concise History of the Baltic States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 268–85; Toomas Karjahärm and Tiit Rosenberg, eds., Eesti ajalugu V: Pärisorjuse kaotamisest Vabadussõjani (Tartu: Ilmamaa, 2010), 348– 65; and Toomas Karjahärm, 1905. aasta Eestis. Massiliikumine ja vägivald maal (Tallinn: Argo, 2013).

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from events in Russia. However, the many national colors of the ethnic groups striving for secession were an essential component of the revolutionary wars, especially in European Russia.7 It was one of the noteworthy local factors on the Baltic periphery that the social revolution of 1917 was rapidly overlaid by the national revolutions there. What was crucial was that, in contrast to the Latvian-speaking areas, mainland Estonia remained free from military occupation up until Moscow withdrew from the peace negotiations with the Central Powers in Brest in February 1918. These specific dynamics of the Estonian nationalist revolution stand just as much at the center of the following analysis as the local conditions for Russian anti-Soviet projects such as the Northwestern Army and the Northwestern Government. Estonian research to date has concerned itself with the military details of the War of Independence, but not with the social history of the years 1917–20.8 This article will conclude with an attempt to summarize the distinctive features of the revolution on Russia’s northwestern periphery: what factors made it possible for the chaos of the revolutionary period to evolve in Estonia into the relatively orderly process of building the nation state? What made Estonia different from Russia? War and the February Revolution on the Baltic Coast In and of itself, the outbreak of the First World War shifted the parameters within which the political hierarchies operated between St. Petersburg and the Baltic provinces. The old local elite of the Baltic German noble corporations, the knighthoods, had continued to be regarded as guarantors of local stability, not least because of their cooperation in suppressing the revolution in 1905–06. During the war, however, their reputation could not have sunk any lower. The court was no longer able to afford its traditional class solidarity after the war broke out, partly because anything German in the empire was now subject to general suspicion. Conversely, the Estonians and Latvians, who had been increasingly viewed as potential separatists after 1905, suddenly appeared to be the true patriots as their representatives in the imperial Duma proclaimed their willingness to fight against the Germans.9 At the same time, though, 7  Swain, Russia’s Civil War, also concentrates on the conflict between the Russian par­ ties, although he does accord the Latvians some attention. 8  Karsten Brüggemann, “Historical Science and the ‘Estonian War of Independence’: Looking for a New Research Agenda,” in Rahvusest riigiks: From Nation to State, ed. Ivar Leimus (Tallinn: Eesti Ajaloomuuseum, 2010), 65–74. 9

 N. S. Andreeva, “Pribaltiiskie nemtsy i Pervaia mirovaia voina,” in Problemy sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi i politicheskoi istorii Rossii XIX–XX vekov: Sbornik statei pamiati V. S. Diakina i Iu. B. Solov´eva, ed. Boris V. Anan´ich (St. Petersburg: Ateleiia, 1999), 461–

146 K arsten Brüggemann

they demanded a number of reforms. First, they sought a resolution of the land question: more than half the land in agricultural use belonged to large landowners who were predominantly German, and more than half the rural population was made up of landless peasants or smallholders.10 Second, they demanded involvement in political decision making for the Estonian majority population (91 percent in 1897). Although Tallinn had been administered by an Estonian-Russian city government since 1904, and Estonians owned just under 70 percent of urban properties there (1912), the provincial administration still remained in German and Russian hands.11 Finally, they sought the restructur­ ing of the three Baltic provinces along ethnic lines (the south of the territory settled by Estonians was part of the Province of Livonia). When a proposal for reforms of this kind was tabled in the Duma in 1916, the government commented that neither the retention of the old class privi­ leges (from which the Germans profited) nor the transfer of the provincial administration to Estonians and Latvians would be desirable in view of the provinces’ strategic significance.12 Yet hundreds of thousands of Estonians and Latvians had been fighting in the tsarist army since 1914. This is an important factor in understanding the trajectory of Estonians and Latvians towards independence. Firstly, since many of these soldiers during the war had the opportunity to graduate from military academies and join the commissioned ranks, they accumulated military know-how without which it would never have been possible to prosecute the wars of liberation successfully.13 Secondly, the history of the Latvian rifle regiments, which were approved in the sum­ mer of 1915 and primarily deployed for the defense of Riga, was not just proof of local patriotism, but also of the Latvians’ growing alienation from the gov­ ernment, since they felt themselves to be no more than cannon fodder. The Red Latvian Riflemen were later recruited from these regiments, including 73; Karjahärm and Rosenberg, Eesti ajalugu V, 398–406; Anders Henriksson, Vassals and Citizens: The Baltic Germans in Constitutional Russia 1905–1914 (Marburg: HerderInstitut, 2009); Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 10

 Karjahärm and Rosenberg, Eesti ajalugu V, 132–33; Georg v. Rauch, Geschichte der baltischen Staaten (Munich: dtv, 1990), 90.

11

 Kasekamp, A History, 87; Plakans, A Concise History, 279.

12

 Foreign Minister Sergei Dmitrievich Sazonov, quoted in Toomas Kar´iakhiarm [Toomas Karjahärm], ed., Imperskaia politika Rossii v Pribaltike v nachale XX veka: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv, 2000), 392–94; N. S. Andreeva, Pribal­ tiiskie nemtsy i rossiiskaia pravitel’stvennaia politika v nachale XX veka (St. Petersburg: Mir, 2008).

13

 Mati Kröönström, Eesti sõjaväe juhtivkoosseis Vabadussõjas 1918–1920 (Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2008).

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Jukums Vācietis, who was also the first commander in chief of the Red Army.14 Whereas the front ran through Latvian Livonia for almost the whole of the war, the areas inhabited by Estonians were spared from military action until February 1918. For its part, Tallinn had been built up into a naval fortress with numerous shipyards, which was why tens of thousands of industrial workers and soldiers had flocked there from the central regions of the empire. This transient, predominantly Russian section of the population was one of the most important local sounding boards for the revolution on the Neva.15 To begin with, however, the fall of the tsar was followed by what may certainly be viewed as a revolutionary alliance between the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) of Prince Georgii Evgen´evich L´vov’s Provisional Govern­ ment and the Estonian National Liberals around Jaan Tõnisson, who had been one of L´vov’s colleagues on the Kadet benches in the Russian Imperial Duma. The government now broke with the tradition of negotiating solely with the Baltic Germans about the concerns of the Baltic provinces. On 6 (19) March 1917, an Estonian took charge of the provincial administration for the first time when Jaan Poska, the mayor of Tallinn, became the Provisional Gov­ ernment’s commissar for the province. Shortly afterwards, the Estonian nationalist movement made its mark on the chronology of the Petrograd revolution with a demonstration on 26 March (8 April). This national mobili­ zation enjoyed success. On 30 March (12 April), L´vov’s cabinet passed legisla­ tion that granted the province of Estonia considerable autonomy. Even though this act was inspired by anti-German motives rooted in the war, it satisfied two essential preconditions for the establishment of a nation state; the establishment of ethnic provincial borders, and a provincial Diet to be elected through a general, but indirect, voting system, the Maapäev (Russian: zemskii sovet; German: Landtag), which was intended to work alongside the provincial commissar. This meant that, in formal terms, a quiet national revolution in Estonia had already been completed by the spring of 1917, for the German knighthoods had been stripped of their power and could only help­ lessly boycott the elections.16 14

 Daina Bleiere et al., Istoriia Latvii: XX vek (Riga: Jumava, 2005), 77–81; Geoffrey Swain, “The Disillusioning of the Revolution’s Praetorian Guard: The Latvian Rifle­ men, Summer–Autumn 1918,” Europe-Asia Studies 51, 4 (1999): 667–86. 15

 Karjahärm and Rosenberg, Eesti ajalugu V, 400–10.

16

 On the legislation adopted, see I. M. Saat, ed., Velikaia Oktiabr´skaia Sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia v Estonii: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Tallinn: Estgosizdat, 1958), 33, 65–67; on the events of this period, cf. Olavi Arens, “The Estonian Maapäev During 1917,” in The Baltic States in Peace and War 1917–1945, ed. Vytas Stanley Vardys and Romuald J. Misiunas (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978), 19–30; Karjahärm and Rosenberg, Eesti ajalugu V, 411–16; Mati Graf, Estoniia i Rossiia

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As in the capital, however, “dual power” developed in Tallinn too. The Workers and Soldiers’ Soviet, which had declared itself the city’s supreme authority in mid-May, was accused by the bourgeois press of not having any mandate to claim this status because it was made up of Russian soldiers and sailors who were only in Estonia temporarily. In fact, it was precisely its in­ fluence over the garrison that constituted the core of the soviet’s power. By contrast, the Maapäev could not become an active legislature because it was only gradually elected, and there was no voting in the cities until September.17 The mood was becoming radicalized in Estonia, just as it was throughout the rest of the empire. In October, once the whole Maapäev had been elected, its 62 members included 5 Bolsheviks, alongside 8 Socialist Revolutionaries, 9 Mensheviks, and 11 representatives of the Labor Party. The democratic camp around Tõnisson won 11 seats, while the conservative Peasants’ League formed the strongest group with 13 seats. At this stage, the Estonian leftists were cooperating with the nationalist democrats against the Bolsheviks, whose motion calling for new elections was rejected with a resolution sponsored by the Social Democrats. In the autumn of 1917, the Bolsheviks were the only party that was demanding land nationalization; at the same time, they were the only party to reject national autonomy, not least out of consideration for their Russian clientele in the garrison.18 Riga was captured by the Germans on 21 August (3 September). In response to this, the question of possible secession from Russia was discussed in the Maapäev for the first time, while factory evacuations, rising unemployment, and inflation prompted strikes and increasing unrest. The demand for the im­ mediate ending of the war was popular, especially among the soldiers, with the result that the soviets, like the city dumas of Tallinn and Narva, came to have Bolshevik majorities. A Military Revolutionary Committee modeled on the one in Petrograd was formed on 23 October (5 November) and gained con­ trol of all the strategic points in the city during the days that followed; on 27 October (9 November), it took away Poska’s powers, which were now held by the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Estonian Soviet, Jaan Anvelt. Finally, shortly before its dissolution was announced on 15 (28) November, the Maapäev declared itself to be the bearer of supreme authority in the country 1917–1991: Anatomiia rasstavaniia (Tallinn: Argo, 2007), 39–64; Bleiere et al., Istoriia Latvii, 81–83. 17  Toivo Raun, Estonia and the Estonians (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 100; Olavi Arens, “Soviets in Estonia 1917/18,” in Die baltischen Provinzen Ruß­ lands zwischen den Revolutionen von 1905 und 1917, ed. Andrew Ezergailis and Gert von Pistohlkors (Cologne: Böhlau, 1982), 295–314, here 297, 301; Arens, “The Estonian Maapäev,” 22. 18

 Brüggemann, Die Gründung, 55–57.

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in order to preserve the continuity of its own claim to power if it were to be suppressed by the new regime.19 Soviet Power and German Ooccupation Like Petrograd, Tallinn was initially overwhelmed by confusion. In Estonia too, the dual power regime that continued for a few weeks longer contained the seeds of civil war. The Bolsheviks certainly did not control the whole country. For instance, it did not prove possible to disband the Estonian national units that had been built up since the spring of 1917 and were stationed in the more peaceful Haapsalu (German: Hapsal)—this did not happen until the Germans forced their break-up in February 1918, when they marched in. Only minor reforms were implemented, such as the introduction of Estonian as an official language, yet there was passive resistance in the civil service, which stayed loyal to the Maapäev. The banning of the non-Bolshevik press and the agriculture policy—in the face of resistance from among his own ranks, Anvelt favored the establishment of collective farms—were unpopular, although the locally organized expropriation of the large, mostly German-owned estates was carried out peacefully for the most part.20 In the elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly in November 1917, the Bolsheviks received over 40 percent of the vote in the Province of Estonia, which corresponded roughly to their results in Moscow and Petro­ grad. However, the Labor Party (Trudoviks), the Social Democrats, and the Democratic Block received more than 46 percent. In contrast to this, 72 percent of the vote went to the Bolsheviks in unoccupied northern Latvia; the area’s proximity to the front and the Bolshevik majorities in the soviets, which had been won earlier there than in Estonia, were crucial. Still, in Estonia too the election gave the Bolsheviks absolute majorities among the soldiers. The Estonian Socialist Revolutionaries, who had only received 6 percent of the vote, clashed with their Bolshevik coalition partners in early 1918 when they wanted to declare an independent Estonian workers’ republic, but this pro­ posal was turned down by the Tallinn soviet. In rejecting the idea, Anvelt

19  Laaman, Eesti iseseisvuse sünd, 153–67; Graf, Estoniia, 63, 73–75; Arens, “The Estonian Maapäev,” 29. The final decision about Estonia’s future was delegated to an Estonian Constituent Assembly. No decision had yet been taken to secede from Russia. 20

 Karjahärm and Rosenberg, Eesti ajalugu V, 420–21; Taavi Minnik, “Der Teufelskreis der Gewalt: Terror und Repressionen in Estland 1917–1919,” Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 6 (2011): 120–40, here 125–27.

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positioned himself ostentatiously in opposition to all the other parties when it came to the national question.21 Before the dissolution of the Russian Constituent Assembly in January 1918 by the Bolsheviks, the Estonian delegates in Petrograd had attempted without success to make the idea of national independence appeal to their Russian colleagues as a means of protection against the impending German occupation. The Estonian and Latvian Bolsheviks also found themselves com­ pelled to issue a statement in which they argued for a soviet republic that would be an autonomous part of Soviet Russia. In the meantime, as in the rest of Russia, their popularity was shrinking. The elections to the Estonian Consti­ tuent Assembly they had demanded in November were held on 21/22 January (3/4 February), but it became clear during the count that they had no chance of beating the 50 percent mark hoped for internally within the party; the Labor Party had already overtaken them in some rural areas. As a consequence, the election was abandoned. As in Petrograd, the Bolsheviks had no intention of permitting an assembly that did not accord with the “interests of the working masses.”22 An alleged anti-Soviet conspiracy hatched by Baltic Germans and bour­ geois Estonians with the German Military High Command provided the Bol­ sheviks with a pretext for the cancellation of the election.23 It also gave Anvelt a pretext to outlaw the German nobility on 27 January (9 February) and have more than 500 individuals arrested, including a number of Estonians. Even if his actions merely reaffirmed what had already been stated two months pre­ viously by the Sovnarkom, that the Kadets were a “party of enemies of the people,” the moment had come for the final decision. Following the violent dissolution of the constituent assemblies in Petrograd and the break-up of elections in Estonia, the forces of the Estonian February Revolution freed them­ selves from their attachment to a possible federal Russia, something the forces behind the October Revolution had ruled out in January 1918. This meant the primacy of the nationalist revolution was asserted for Estonian territory, which inherently implied the promise of a social revolution, since the old 21

 Graf, Estoniia, 64–70, 85–89; Arens, “Soviets,” 312–13; Bleiere, Istoriia Latvii, 82– 84; Oliver Radkey, Russia Goes to the Polls: The Election to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, 1917 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 35–36.

22

 Graf, Estoniia, 81–85, 89–99; Saat, Velikaia Oktiabr´skaia, 299, 406; Genrikh Tido, Agrar­ naia politika bol´shevikov v Estonii (1905–1920 gg.) (Tallin: Eesti raamat, 1978), 117; Raun, Estonia, 104; Debo, Survival, 86–87; Swain, Russia’s Civil War, 29.

23  Arved von Taube, “Die baltisch-deutsche Führungsschicht und die Loslösung Liv­ lands und Estlands von Russland 1916–1918,” in Von den baltischen Provinzen zu den baltischen Staaten, ed. Jürgen von Hehn et al. (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 1971), 97–216, here 173–79.

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ways of life, particularly in the countryside, would have to be overturned if a national executive ever wanted to consolidate its rule. In the power vacuum that arose between the withdrawal of the Bolsheviks and the arrival of the German Army as a consequence of the suspension of negotiations in Brest Litovsk, the “Estonian Salvation Committee” that had been mandated by the Maapäev in November declared Estonia independent on 23/24 February 1918 and formed a Provisional Government under the leadership of Konstantin Päts (Peasants’ League). This was a largely symbolic step, but one that was necessary above all with a view to the increased diplomatic activity that would take place in Europe’s capitals over the ensuing months.24 The German occupation brought about a brief renaissance in the German nobility’s claim to power, even though the German military leadership was firmly in control. The German military wanted nothing to do with “indepen­ dence” for Estonia or Latvia, whatever form it might take. This period of over eight months apparently divided Estonia and Latvia from the Russian context and there was even talk of the possibility of a German “Baltic Duchy” being formed. Its relevance to the revolutionary wars lay in its longer-term consequences. These were firstly that the German advance into both this re­ gion, which was of such strategic and economic importance for the empire, and into Ukraine, sparked a wave of patriotism in Soviet Russia that even the Bolsheviks were unable to resist. Secondly, the historic antagonism felt by the Estonians and Latvians towards the Germans was reinforced even more and boosted the popularity of the idea of national independence. As a re­ sult, the Peace of Brest Litovsk broke up the “truce in the Red-Green civil war” (Swain) ensured by the coalition between the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs, and the Sovnarkom had to prepare itself for a two-front war against the Whites and the Greens, while the German Occupation drove the Bolsheviks out of Estonia and Latvia. Consequently, once the occupation had come to an end the nationalist forces could, on the one hand, claim that civil war was being spread into the country from external forces in the east; and on the other hand, the former Baltic provinces became attractive as a bridgehead for an anti-Soviet military campaign that might be operated by the victorious powers.25 24

 Saat, Velikaia Oktiabr’skaia, 457–59; Institut marksizma-leninizma pri TSK KPSS. Institut istorii SSSR Akademii nauk SSSR, Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, 1: 25 oktiabria 1917 g.–16 marta 1918 g. (Moscow: Gos. izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1957), 162–63; Arens, “The Estonian Maapäev,” 30; Ago Pajur, “Die Geburt des estnischen Unab­ hängigkeitsmanifests 1918,” Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 1 (2006): 136–63; Karjahärm and Rosenberg, Eesti ajalugu V, 427–36.

25

 Swain, Russia’s Civil War, 26–27; Olavi Arens, “The Estonian Question at BrestLitovsk,” Journal of Baltic Studies 25, 4 (1994): 305–30; Karjahärm and Rosenberg, Eesti

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The Outlines of the Petrograd Front The vacuum left by the Germans was occupied by Estonian and Latvian executives, and the Bolsheviks also tried to occupy it. On 13 November, the Sovnarkom annulled the Brest treaties and clearly asserted Soviet Russia’s claim to the Baltic coast, along which it intended to link up with the German revolution.26 At the same time, however, Article XII of the Armistice of Compiègne left German troops on the ground to fend off revolution for the time being, as a consequence of which the eyes of the victorious powers be­ came fixed on the region. This offered London a political excuse to keep both the conduct of the German troops, whose presence was viewed as an “unwelcome necessity,”27 and the development of the new republics under close observation. A Foreign Office memorandum retrospectively set out the goals of British policy towards Russia: “(1) the early establishment of stable conditions and the renewal of trade; (2) to ensure that whatever the future of Russia may be, Bolshevism shall not hurt us.”28 At the end of 1918, Estonia and Latvia therefore came to be thought of not just as a corridor through which the revolution might be carried to Europe, but at the same time as a potential belt of reliable, anti-Bolshevik partners, who would also contribute positively to east-west trade. At the end of 1918, however, the Bolsheviks’ victory was as uncertain as Estonia and Latvia’s political survival. The White movement suddenly be­ came interested in the region as well. On 17 January 1919, former Minister of War Aleksandr Ivanovich Guchkov presented General Anton Ivanovich Deni­ kin with a memorandum on the opening of a Petrograd Front, in which he emphasized that a “swift, deadly blow” could be struck against Bolshevism only at Petrograd and Moscow. He naively expected the governments of Fin­ land, Estonia, and Latvia to make their territory available unconditionally to a Russian army, although no concessions on nationalities policy were to be

ajalugu V, 433–35. 26

 Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, 4: 10 noiabria 1918 g.–31 marta 1919 g. (Moscow: Gosudarst­ vennoe izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1968), 16–18. 27

 According to Edward H. Carr on 17 March 1919, quoted in Merja-Liisa HinkkanenLievonen, British Trade and Enterprise in the Baltic States, 1919–1925 (Helsinki: SHS, 1984), 69.

28  Memorandum by R. H. Hoare (the most senior British diplomat on the Northern Front of the Russian Civil War until July 1919), 22 December 1919, quoted in Documents on British Foreign Policy, First Series, vol. 3 (hereafter DBFP 3) (London: HMSO, 1949), 736.

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expected from him.29 The region’s close geographical proximity to the “cradle of the revolution” encouraged him to underestimate developments in the former periphery. However, the leadership of the White movement, which was now looking to London and Paris, viewed Guchkov’s plan with suspicion, above all because it would require support from the German Empire. In turn, Iudenich, who was still waiting for his chance in Helsinki in January 1919, also suggested to Denikin on 21 January that White troops be built up in the region—although with Western support.30 The Whites’ Achilles heels were the national question and what was called the “orientation question,” i.e. whether they should orient themselves towards the defeated Germans or the victorious Allies. The presence of German troops in Courland provided for by the Armistice coincided with the victorious powers’ effort to influence the nationalist governments in Tallinn and Riga. This constellation finally led to the bizarre situation that it was not only Iudenich’s army, but also the troops of Colonel Pavel Rafailovich BermondtAvalov, which were financed by Berlin and Russian Whites in Germany, that intervened in the course of the war by attacking Riga in October 1919.31 The notorious “contradictions in the camp of the counterrevolution” cited rhetori­ cally by Soviet historiography became particularly evident in the Baltic. Quite characteristically for the Baltic jumble, a unit organized by the Germans constituted the nucleus of the entente-friendly White military on the Baltic. The Russian Northern Corps was formed in Pskov in autumn 1918, and owed its creation to a monarchist network built on the close links that existed between Petrograd, Pskov, and Kiev.32 As late as November 1918, the Corps had been reinforced with units that had deserted from the Red Army, 29

 A. I. Guchkov, “Bor´ba v Rossii s Bol´shevizmom i ee perspektivy,” in Rossiia anti­ bol’shevistskaia: Iz belogvardeiskikh i emigrantskikh arkhivov, ed. G. A. Trukan (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1995), 253–70, here 262; letter from Guchkov to Iudenich, 19 September 1919, quoted in A. S. Senin, Aleksandr Ivanovich Guchkov (Moscow: Skriptorii, 1996), 138. 30

 Letter from Iudenich to Denikin, 21 January 1919, in “Belofinny na sluzhbe anglofrantsuzskikh interventov 1919 g.,” Krasnyi arkhiv 1, 98 (1941): 31–67, here 57.

31

 This episode is not considered in the present text. See N. Berezhanskii, “Bermondt v Pribaltike v 1919 g.: Iz zapisok byvshego redaktora,” Istorik i sovremennik (Berlin), no. 1 (1922): 5–87; Wilhelm Lenz, “Die Bermondt-Affaire 1919,” Journal of Baltic Studies 15, 1 (1984): 17–26. See the documents in Wilhelm Lenz, “Deutsche Machtpolitik in Lettland im Jahre 1919: Ausgewählte Dokumente des von General Rüdiger Graf von der Goltz geführten Generalkommandos des VI. Reservekorps,” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 36, 4 (1987): 523–76. 32

 K. K. Smirnov, “Nachalo Severo-Zapadnoi armii,” in Beloe delo, no. 1 (1926): 109–58; full details are given in Brüggemann, Die Gründung, 88–97.

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including the troops led by the cavalry captain (rotmistr) Stanislav Nikodimo­ vich Bulak-Balakhovich (Polish: Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz), who was later to attain sad fame.33 After the Northern Corps’ thrashing by the Red Army as it advanced towards Riga, the scattered White units sought refuge in Estonia, where the Corps became a major actor in the revolutionary wars on the Baltic. The Beginning of the War for Estonia The Estonian Provisional Government that had been appointed in February took up its official business on 11 November.34 The Maapäev that assembled on 20 November confirmed this executive, and bestowed far-reaching powers upon it in view of the danger of war. This first session was dominated by domestic policy; even the liberal People’s Party demanded a radical transfor­ mation of the conditions in the countryside.35 The revolution took on new momentum in Estonia, with national politicians taking up the social revolu­ tion in order to legitimate the establishment of a democratic state. At the same time, however, the soviet had also been resurrected and grabbed popular attention with numerous calls for strikes. Even the Soviet Estonian historiography recognized, however, that with just under 4,000 participants, the general strike organized on 20 November was not a great success. Never­ theless, the agitation persuaded Prime Minister Päts to tell his ministers on 28 November that it would be better if they did not sleep at home for fear of an attempted putsch. Each side sensed the other’s weakness but never went further than symbolic actions. The Bolsheviks declared the bourgeois govern­ ment “outlawed” and proclaimed the soviet to be the supreme organ of power in Estonia, while the government banned the newspaper Kommunist, but no decisive power struggle took place.36 The Red Army began its attack on Narva, which was defended only by the disintegrating German troops, on 22 November, but was hampered by

33  See, although not free of mistakes, Richard B. Spence, “Useful Brigand: ‘Ataman’ S. B. Bulak-Balakhovich, 1917–21,” Revolutionary Russia 11, 1 (1998): 17–36. 34

 Eesti Riigiarhiiv (ERA) f[ond] 31 (State Chancellery), n[imistu] 1, s[äilik] 8, l. 2 (government statement, 11 November 1918).

35  Maanõukogu protokollid: 1. koosolekust 1. juulil 1917 78: koosolekuni 6 veebruaril 1919 (Tallinn: n.p., 1935), 277–78; government statement by Päts, ibid., 338–41. 36

 On the soviet, see K. Siliivask et al., eds., Revoliutsiia, grazhdanskaia voina i inostrannaia interventsiia v Estonii (1917–1920), trans. from the Estonian E. Lykhmus, I. Israel´ian, and E. Libman (Tallinn: Eesti raamat, 1988), 417–20, 470; ERA f. 31, n. 1, s. 8, l. 41v. (minutes of cabinet meeting, 28 November 1918).

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logistical problems and peasant rebellions in the vicinity of Petrograd.37 Following the capture of Narva, the Estonian Workers’ Commune was founded on 29 November, a puppet government controlled by Moscow whose “independence” the Sovnarkom recognized on 7 December. In fact, the Estonian Bolsheviks were convinced that the Estonian proletariat had already achieved de facto independence with the October Revolution, and a bourgeois state would merely mean complete reliance on the forces of imperialism. The term “commune” placed the Narva construct on the same level as the “Northern Commune” in Petrograd; it was therefore part of revolutionary Russia and would dissolve following the triumph of the world revolution. Sovnarkom’s statement of recognition included the promise of a loan worth ten million rubles, which clarified the power relationships between them.38 Regardless of the semantic games that were being played with the term “independence,” the founding of the “Estonian Soviet Republic” (as it was called in Moscow’s statement of recognition) was tantamount to a declaration of civil war from outside. Both the Soviet and Estonian Bolsheviks had always demanded what Lenin emphasized on 29 November to Commander-in-Chief Vaciētis, that Estonian units should liberate Estonia because a Russian Red Army on Estonian territory would be perceived as an army of occupation. Certainly, the Estonian Bolsheviks held no illusions about the internationalist convictions of their fellow Estonian class comrades. This foreign military intervention may have been understood as an internationalist solidarity act from a revolutionary point of view. The intervention was to be camouflaged as a proletarian revolution, or, following the Finnish model, as an (Estonian) civil war.39

37  Dekrety sovetskoi vlasti, 4: 16–18; S. V. Iarov, Krest’ianin kak politik: Krest´ianstvo SeveroZapada Rossii v 1918–1919 gg.: Politicheskoe myshlenie i massovyi protest (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 1999), 41–70; N. A. Kornatovskii, Bor´ba za krasnyi Petrograd (1919) (Leningrad: Krasnaia Gazeta, 1929), 68–74. 38

 Dokumenty vneshnei politiki SSSR (hereafter DVP), 1: 7 noiabria 1917 g.–31 dekabria 1918 g. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1957), 587–88, 603; Karsten Brüggemann, “‘Foreign Rule’ during the Estonian War of Independence 1918–1920: The Bolshevik Experiment of the ‘Estonian Workers’ Commune,’” Journal of Baltic Studies 37, 2 (2006): 210–26.

39

 V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo politi­ cheskoi litera­t ury, 1963), 37: 234. The number of Estonians in the Red Army was given in Revoliutsiia, 423–24, as 2,300 (out of 6,000) in November 1918. On 1 February 1919, the Estonian Ministry of War stated that the thesis of a “civil war” had been entirely fictional; only 4 of the 35 Red regiments were “Estonian.” ERA f. 2124 (Working Commission of the Committee for the History of the War of Independence), n. 1, s. 735; Mihkel Martna, Estland, die Esten und die estnische Frage (Olten: Trösch, 1919), 197–82.

156 K arsten Brüggemann

At the same time, the Tallinn Provisional Government was also gathering its cohorts. According to the treaty concluded with representatives of those Germans who were ready to cooperate with the Tallinn government concerning the creation of a Baltic regiment (German: Baltenregiment) on 6 December, the Russian Northern Corps also placed itself under Estonian overall command. However, the Estonians evidently did not want to fight any longer. After a call for volunteers had been unsuccessful at the end of November, a general mobilization was announced, in response to which only half of the expected 25,000 men reported for duty. Of the 2,500 men who had been posted to the Narva Front, just 500 remained. The peasantry, as Prime Minister Päts had to admit at the beginning of December, was not prepared to fight for the urban population.40 This was why the (late) government decision of 20 December to promise the soldiers land came to be of such decisive significance. A coherent command structure was created three days later, immediately after the loss of Tartu, with the appointment of 34-year-old Colonel Johan Laidoner as com­ mander in chief.41 A British squadron under the command of Admiral Edwyn AlexanderSinclair had been pinning the Red Fleet down on Estonia’s coast since midDecember. It was only at this stage that the Tallinn Government dared to ban the soviet’s activities. Furthermore, as it was possible for a treaty on the recruitment of Finnish volunteers to be announced at the end of the month, the critical military situation stabilized around the turn of the year. Although the Red Army was just over 30 kilometers from Tallinn in late December, and took Riga at the beginning of January 1919, the 7th Army’s advance on Tallinn “ran out of steam” on account of supply problems, which were partly caused by Sinclair’s destruction of the railway bridge at Narva on 13 December. The destruction of the bridge also prevented the deployment of armored trains. The Estonians exploited this advantage effectively by deploying their own armored trains in the counterattack that was launched on 6 January. This counterattack depended above all on the enthusiasm of a younger generation who had not seen action in the World War, schoolboys and members of sport clubs who served as volunteers in scout and partisan regiments.42 It took until 40

 ERA f. 31, n. 1, s. 124, l. 2; f. 31, n. 1, s. 8, l. 40v. (minutes of cabinet meeting, decision on the Baltic Regiment, 27 November 1918); l. 51 (report by Päts, 3 December 1918); f. 957 (Foreign Ministry), n. 11, s. 118, l. 140 (treaty with the Northern Corps, 6 December 1918); Brüggemann, Die Gründung, 86–88; Revoliutsiia, 470–71.

41

 ERA f. 31, n. 1, s. 8, ll. 76v., 77, 80v. (minutes of cabinet meetings, 19, 20, and 23 December 1918).

42

 On this “miracle of Tallinn,” see Graf, Estoniia, 130–38; on the British squadron in the Baltic Sea, see Geoffrey M. Bennett, Cowan’s War: The Story of British Naval Op­ erations in the Baltic, 1918–1920 (London: Collins, 1964); John Roderick Bullen, “The

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the end of May before Laidoner was able to tell the Constituent Assembly, which had been elected in the meantime, that Estonian territory had been reconquered; Estonian and White Russian troops now stood deep inside Russian territory.43 The Democratic Revolution in Estonia This counterattack created the space within which Estonian democracy took shape and displaced the Bolshevik alternative. The potential for civil war that certainly existed in November/December 1918 could not be exploited to the full by the Bolsheviks for two reasons. Firstly, because of their position as a minority in the Estonian context, they were dependent on help from Moscow, so that the Workers’ Commune, which was not even given command over the Red Army’s Estonian units, could be easily dismissed as a vehicle for foreign rule. In contrast to this, the alternative of a nation state had the advantage that, from a military point of view, its claims were also limited to the areas inhabited by Estonians; Laidoner’s tactics meant having Estonia’s borders defended by non-Estonian armies (the Northern Corps and the Baltic Regiment) on foreign territory.44 The second factor that limited potential for civil war was that the Workers’ Commune brought the “Red Terror” Lenin had proclaimed in September 1918 into the country. Prior to this, there had only been political shootings during the German occupation, but the Workers’ Commune intro­ duced class war that made the Red alternative look even less attractive in the socially quite balanced Estonian context. However, its opponents did not fail to hit back, and the “White Terror” unleashed in response by the Estonian government and army was no less brutal. Recent estimates suggest the “Red” terror claimed up to 700 victims, while nearly 800 fell victim to the “White” terror.45 This state violence, however, had domestic political consequences that were certainly unusual in the context of the Russian revolutionary wars. The Social Democrats left the Provisional Government in February 1919 to protest Royal Navy in the Baltic, 1918–1920” (Ph.D. diss., King’s College London, 1983). On the approximately 3,800 Finnish volunteers, see Laaman, Eesti iseseisvuse sünd, 389–93; and Olavi Hovi and Timo Joutsamo, Suomalaiset heimosoturit Viron vapaussodassa ja ItäKarjalan heimosodissa vuosina 1918–1922 (Turku: Turun yliopisto, 1971); quotation in Kornatovskii, Bor´ba za krasnyi Petrograd, 87. 43

 ERA f. 2124, n. 1, s. 11 (unpaginated) (report by Laidoner to the Estonian Constituent Assembly, 30 May 1919); Asutava Kogu I istungjärk: Protokollid nr. 1–27 (Tallinn: n.p., 1919), 793. 44 45

 Brüggemann, “‘Foreign Rule,’” 221–24.

 Minnik, Der Teufelskreis.

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the court martials tolerated by Laidoner, the bodies that were implementing this campaign of “White” terror, without, however, forcing the army to end this. The Estonian Constituent Assembly was the third national assembly to be democratically elected on the territory of the Russian Empire, after the Finnish and Polish parliaments. In the elections at the beginning of April, the Social Democrats campaigned on the familiar slogans of “peace” and “land,” which dated back to 1917, while distancing themselves programmatically from the idea of collectivized agriculture, and moving closer to Western European social democracy. With turnout at 80 percent, they received more than onethird of the vote and even as much as 40 percent in the army. Including the second-strongest party, the Labor Party (25 percent), and the Estonian SRs (5.5 percent), the left-wing parties that were arguing for land nationalization and immediate peace negotiations received just under three-quarters of the soldiers’ votes. The radical potential that the Bolsheviks had been able to tap into just six months earlier had now been absorbed into the nationalist politi­ cal vision. Prime Minister Päts’ Peasants’ League, which advocated moderate land reform and sought not to dispossess the large landowners, was among the losers in the election: It won merely 6.5 percent of the vote (4 percent among the soldiers).46 It was this left-dominated legislature that laid the statutory foundations for a democratic republic and therefore delivered the promises held out by the Russian February Revolution in the shape of a new nation state. During the opening session of the Constituent Assembly on 23 April, the Social Democrats forcefully articulated clear anti-Soviet sentiments, arguing that Moscow had openly made “imperialist greed for land” into its policy in November 1918. Estonia found itself in a defensive war that had been forced on it from outside, and which needed a rapid solution. At the same time, they made it clear that the country’s fate would stand and fall with the land reform. Alluding to the Russian Army soldiers who had left their trenches in 1917 so they would not arrive too late for the distribution of land, the Social Democrats called for the Estonian soldiers to be secured a right to land, a demand that was received with applause from all the parliamentary groups. The coalition of the Social Democrats, the Labor Party, and the People’s Party took up its work on 12 May, also affirming its commitment to peace, although it argued that no settlement should be concluded “without guarantees.”47 However, the following day saw the beginning of the Northern Corps’ attack on Petrograd, with which democratic Estonia intervened actively in the Russian Civil War. 46

 Raun, Estonia, 109; Graf, Estoniia, 158–56.

47

 Asutava Kogu protokollid I, 5–12, 35–43, 458–62.

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The Whites and Estonia On several occasions, Iudenich had attempted to gain control of the Northern Corps from Finland and make Estonia the base for his army. However, since he only deigned to give the assurance that he would put in “a good word” for Estonia in the future Russian government, his offers were not taken up, even when he reminded Laidoner of their service together in the Caucasus (Laidoner had been the chief of staff of the Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich 13th Erevan Life Guards Regiment when Iudenich was commander in chief of the Cau­casus Front in 1917).48 Only the Estonian-led attack of the Northern Corps offered Iudenich the chance to take over. Once the Russian border had been crossed, Laidoner had good reason to put his supreme command over the Russian troops down. If support was to be gained from the West, it was neces­ sary for Estonia not to appear to be acting as an aggressor.49 Moreover, an Allied military mission led by the British General Hubert Gough had been on the ground since May to coordinate the Petrograd front. This mission had been dispatched on the initiative of the Baltic Commission at the Paris peace conference to oversee the conduct of the German troops in Courland and support the build-up of White Russian units facing Petrograd with Iudenich as the presumptive commander in chief.50 In Courland, however, Kārlis Ulmanis’s Latvian government had been toppled in mid-April by a 48

 ERA f. 31, n. 1, s. 130, ll. 12–13v. (draft treaty, February 1919); f. 495 (Army Staff—Staff of the Commander in Chief), n. 10, s. 11, ll. 24–26 (letter from Iudenich to Laidoner, 20 February 1919). Contrary to the common claim that Iudenich’s first attempted attack on Petrograd had taken place in May 1919, the infantry general had nothing to do with the operation of the Northern Corps with the Estonians. This erroneous claim is found in, for example, Jonathan Smele, Civil War in Siberia: The Anti-Bolshevik Government of Admiral Kolchak, 1918–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 301–07; and Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (London: Pimlico, 1996), 671, which clearly draws on Richard Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime 1919–1924 (London: Fontana, 1995), 93–94. A factually correct account, however, was given already in George Stewart, The White Armies of Russia: A Chronicle of Counter-Revolution and Allied Intervention (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 209–38. On the origins of this legend, see Kornatovskii, Bor´ba za krasnyi Petrograd, 163.

49

 This is evident from a document that was forwarded to the British Military Mission in July: “Short Account of the War of Liberation of Esthonian Republic (Period from November 1918 until August 1919),” 26 July 1919, ERA f. 957, n. 11, s. 83, ll. 35–40.

50

 On the Baltic representations in Paris, cf. Charlotte Aston, Antonius Piip, Zigfrīds Meierovics and Augustinas Voldemaras: The Baltic States (London: Haus Publishing, 2010). On the parallel US mission to Latvia, see Ēriks Jēkabsons, “Die Tätigkeit der amerikanischen Mission in Lettland unter der Leitung von Warwick Greene: Liepāja, April bis Mai 1919,” Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 9 (2014): 152–76.

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Baltic-German volunteer force (Baltische Landeswehr) under the protection of the commander of the German 6th Reserve Corps, General Rüdiger von der Goltz. Actually, Goltz had succeeded in retaking Riga on 22 May, shortly before Gough’s arrival in Tallinn, so the fortunes of war seemed to be shifting towards the anti-Soviet side—with German help.51 This constellation of circumstances led to a short war between the Estonian Army, supported by a Latvian brigade on behalf of the Ulmanis government, and the Baltic Landeswehr, which was defeated on 23 June at Cēsis. This victory convinced Gough of Laidoner’s qualities, which he missed so much among the White generals. In July, he informed his government about the Estonians’ admirable “capability for self-government.”52 After the Finns, the Estonians were the second nationality of the now-defunct Russian Empire to free the territory to which they laid claim of foreign intervention troops. At the same time, the Northern Corps, which had advanced almost as far as Gatchina in mid-June, still stood on Russian soil. The Estonian Government had annulled its treaty with this unit in early June, declaring that it wished their relations to be like those “between two neighbors.” The territory held by the Northern Corps was regarded as a kind of “buffer state” that would pro­ tect Estonia’s borders. Eventually, Laidoner resigned as commander-in-chief of the Northern Corps on 19 June.53 In this situation, Iudenich made his first appearance on the EstonianRussian Front that he was supposed to lead, although he encountered ex­ tremely difficult conditions at the outset because the officers of the Northern Corps accused him of wanting to take all the credit for others’ hard work.54 Nevertheless, he had now been recognized by Admiral Aleksandr Vasil´evich Kolchak, whom the Western powers had committed to support. The Estonians 51

 Mark R. Hatlie, “Voices from Riga: Ethnic Perspectives on a Wartime City, 1914– 1919,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 56, 3 (2007): 318–46; Brüggemann, Die Gründung, 188–93.

52

 ERA f. 959, n. 11, s. 118, ll. 43–47, quotation from Gough’s 25 July 1919 letter to the War Office on l. 44.

53

 ERA f. 31, n. 1, s. 13, l. 178; s. 14, l. 2 (minutes of cabinet meetings, 4 and 10 June 1919); f. 2315 (Ministry of War), n. 1, s. 23, l. 41 (government letter, 17 June 1919); f. 495, n. 10, s. 11, l. 207; f. 957, n. 11, s. 57, l. 27 (letters from Laidoner to Rodzianko, 19 and 22 June 1919).

54

 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) f. 6817, op. 1, d. 14, l. 26 (intel­ ligence report from Helsinki to Kolchak, 18 June 1919); Hilja Kukk, “The Failure of Iudenich’s Northwestern Army in 1919: A Dissenting White Russian View,” Journal of Baltic Studies 12, 4 (1981): 362–83, here 369. On Iudenich’s visit to the Northern Corps, see A. P. Rodzianko, Vospominaniia o Severo-Zapadnoi armii (Berlin: Pressa, 1920), 62–63; on Iudenich’s enthusiasm, cf. The Times, 2 August 1919.

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had meanwhile abandoned the Northern Corps, which would need money and material resources if it were to survive, and only Iudenich appeared to be capable of supplying these things. On 1 July, the Northern Corps was renamed the Northwestern Army.55 It was now the military mission’s task to weld together the anti-Bolshevik Petrograd Front, which was going to have to be done without the Finns: the Finnish regent, Carl Gustav Mannerheim, a former lieutenant general in the Russian Army for whose help Iudenich was hoping above all, had lost the presidential elections at the end of July 1919. Any military offensive would now be dependent on using Estonia as a base. It would only be supported by the Estonians if the Whites issued an affirmative declaration on the issue of independence. Estonian Identities and the Democratization of the Petrograd Front The victory at Cēsis against the German “archenemy” released a surge of previously unsuspected Estonian patriotism, which made the vision of a nation state suddenly seem a real possibility.56 In contrast to this, the war against the Red Army on Russian soil was extremely unpopular. Although the Northwestern Army was fighting there, the arrogance of the White leadership, the willfulness of its policies on Russian territory, and Russian officers who sang “God Save the Tsar” in Tallinn’s old city only increased the Estonian public’s dislike of this “ally.” By contrast, the Landeswehr was viewed as the embodiment of the German Baltic nobility who had ruled over the Estonians since the 13th century, which was why it could be declared the “historic enemy.” Suddenly, it was no longer possible to speak of “Bolshevik subversion” undermining the soldiers’ ability to fight.57 Shortly before the military engagement, soldiers expressed the hope they would be able to “finish off” the Landeswehr. After their victory, they wanted to “go looking 55

 On the brief period for which the army was renamed the “Northern Army,” see Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv (RGVA) f. 40298 (Staff of the Northwestern Army), op. 1, d. 33, l. 90 (RSK-Prikaz no. 123a, 19 June 1919); l. 107 (renaming as North­ western Army, RSK-Prikaz no. 135, 1 July 1919); ERA f. 495, n. 10, s. 11, l. 254 (letter from Rodzianko to Laidoner, 1 July 1919).

56

 Ago Pajur, “Der Ausbruch des Landeswehrkriegs: Die estnische Perspektive,” For­ schungen zur baltischen Geschichte 4 (2009): 145–69; Karsten Brüggemann, “Celebrating Final Victory in Estonia’s ‘Great Battle for Freedom’: The Short Afterlife of 23 June 1919 as National Holiday, 1934–1939,” in Afterlife of Events: Perspectives of Mnemohistory, ed. Marek Tamm (London: Macmillan, 2015), 154–77. 57

 According to the German chargé d’affaires in Tallinn, Vogl, 10 May 1919. Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (PAAA), Gr. Hauptquartier. Estonia und Livland, Bd. 2/R 22177.

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for the barons’ gold teeth.”58 All at once, the ethnic conflict with the Germans and a new identification with “our Estonia” had clear implications. As late as September 1917, Estonian soldiers had written in a letter to a Bolshevik news­ paper that they were ready to defend “our freedom, our homeland,” which they probably still felt to be a democratic Russia.59 At the beginning of June, a censor’s analysis of the letters written by soldiers stated that “700 years of baronial rule” had hamstrung the Estonian soldiers because they believed the Landeswehr was invincible. After 23 June, the country was swept by a wave of relief mingled with intoxication at the triumph. People hoped that the War of Independence had now been won.60 While the results of the elections in April 1919 had signaled the people’s political consent to the elite project of “Estonia” for the first time, the victory over the Landeswehr added a new, emotional dimension. It was at this point that the national ideology of the country’s political elite spread to ordinary people. The Petrograd Front became the potentially decisive theater of the Rus­ sian revolutionary wars against the background of the Estonian national revo­ lution. While the majority of the Estonian population had now confirmed its desire for secession in democratic elections, as well as committing emotionally to the idea, the Petrograd Front depended on their commitment to the antiBolshevik cause. It was here alone that the fate of the empire’s old capital and “cradle of the revolution” would be decided. Yet it was also here that to a certain extent the outcome of the revolution would be negotiated, i.e., the political shape of a future Russia. Although the White movement had agreed on Kolchak as its supreme leader and military dictator in waiting, the success of the counterrevolution in the Northwest depended on its attitude to democracy and the right of self-determination. At the same time, it was Iudenich, a representative of the older generals to whom Kolchak had once been subordinate and the potential “liberator of Petrograd,” who would have the opportunity to achieve the decisive victory. “The idea of the Petrograd front,” Iudenich wrote in May, was “much too tempting.… As long as there is even just one chance, I will not leave.”61 If Iudenich had come to be celebrated 58

 Censors’ reports from Tallinn and Valga, June 1919 (ERA, f. 496, n. 2, s. 17, ll. 136, 150). 59

 Saat, Velikaia Oktiabr’skaia, 223. On soldiers’ letters during World War I, see Liisi Eglit, “Sõja- ja kodurinde vahelised suhted Esimeses maailmasõjas osalenud eesti sõdurite kirjades ja mälestustes,” Eesti sõjaajaloo aastaraamat = Estonian Yearbook of Military History 2 (2012): 57–88. 60 61

 Hannes Walter, “Eesti vabadussõja,” Vikerkaar, no. 8 (1989): 59–66, here 63.

 Quoted in a letter from Pilkin, 25 May 1919; “Kolchak i Finliandiia,” Krasnyi arkhiv 2, 33 (1929): 82–144, here 110.

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as the victor on the Neva, the result would inevitably have been a reshuffling of the cards within the White leadership. Simultaneously, the Northwestern Army’s newspaper Belyi krest was whipping up a full-blown personality cult around Iudenich, who was celebrated, due to his victories in the Great War, as the “conqueror of Arme­ nia,” an undisguised allusion to the fate envisaged for Estonia. The fact that Nikolai Evgen´evich Markov II, the extreme right-wing former head of the Union of the Russian People, was behind this newspaper made Iudenich’s position no easier in his dealings with the Estonians and British.62 Gough tried to foster Iudenich’s authority in Tallinn and among the old Northern Corps leadership in the interests of a united Petrograd Front. However, not everyone in the White camp wanted to admit the possibility that a victory on the Neva supported by the British was only to be had at the price of giving up the ideal of the “One and Indivisible Russia.” At the beginning of August, Tallinn saw what was, in the context of the revolutionary wars, probably a unique attempt to democratize the antiBolshevik front. This was predicated on the impending collapse of the North­ western Army, which lost whole units to the Red Army in July as deserters were lured away with promises of freedom from punishment. There had been no pay for four months, which was why the soldiers were exchanging makhorka tobacco for white bread with the Reds. The Russian soldiers’ mood was at a low point in mid-July. Estonian informers wrote that no one believed their officers or took seriously their promises about the Constituent Assembly for which the army was fighting. They came to the conclusion that the Northwestern Army’s soldiers would have preferred a “Kerenskii-style structure.” The occasionally armed clashes between Estonians and Russians that were becoming more frequent at the same time were encouraged by the Russian officers’ tendency to explain the miserable supply situation to their soldiers by blaming it on Estonian sabotage.63 The Northwestern Army’s rear was, therefore, anything but secure; from an Estonian point of view, by contrast, the possible collapse of the Northwestern Army meant increasing concern about their own country’s borders. The Estonian Army leadership avoided presenting themselves as an occu­ pying power on Russian soil. After Pskov had been taken at the end of May, 62

 Quoted in Belyi krest, 26 (13) June 1919. The epithet “conqueror of Armenia” referred to Iudenich’s military successes on the Caucasus Front during the war. On Markov’s contacts with the Germans, see PAAA, Deutschland, Nr. 131, Bd. 61/R 2025. 63

 ERA f. 495, n. 10, s. 52, ll. 133–34 (Information Section of the 1st Estonian Division to the General Staff, 12 July 1919); Laaman, Eesti iseseisvuse sünd, 581; Smolin, Beloe dvizhenie, 208; A. A. Gershel´man, V riadakh dobrovol´cheskoi Severo-zapadnoi armii (Mos­ cow: Tip. GPIB, 1997), 1: 17; “Short Account,” 39.

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Laidoner placed it under the control of the Northern Corps. On its behalf, Bulak-Balakhovich, now in charge of the units that fought in the direction of Gdov and Pskov, established his own personal rule in the form of a mili­ tary dictatorship that evinced no scruples about producing counterfeit money, carrying out arbitrary executions and fomenting anti-Jewish terror. In response to Estonian pressure, public executions were no longer held in the city center, but this did nothing to halt the “White” terror unleashed in the name of the “uncorrupted population.”64 One German eyewitness recalled that Balakhovich had governed “like an Asian satrap” and was very keen on “loud, fine speeches about freedom and democracy” that must have been “put into his mouth,” because he himself was far too uneducated to understand the phrases.65 The spiritus rector of Balakhovich’s demagogy was Nikolai Niki­ tich Ivanov, the “evil genius” of the Petrograd Front.66 A lawyer and former activist in Petrograd’s anti-Soviet underground, he was influenced by Markov II and had succeeded in gaining the Estonians’ confidence for himself and Balakhovich—not least as a “democratic” counterweight to the Northern Corps Staff at Yamburg (Kingisepp). However, the Estonians wanted to hold Pskov not just as an important railway junction but also as a source of raw materials that would help them fill their empty coffers by selling flax, hemp, and wood. The idea of a “Pskov Republic” as a buffer state was attractive, so Laidoner did not put a stop to Ivanov and Balakhovich’s machinations.67 When Yamburg was lost on 4 August, Pskov was the last White bastion left on Russian territory. The idea of a Russian buffer state was the Estonian motivation for the events that followed. At the end of July, Gough had complained in London about “the lack of liberality in the Russian mind,” and explained that “the

64

 Smolin, Beloe dvizhenie, 210–20; Brüggemann, Die Gründung, 234–38; cf. Vasilii Leopol´dovich Gorn, Grazhdanskaia voina na severo-zapade Rossii (Berlin: Gamaiun, 1923), 5–32, 136–39; K. A. Bashkirov, Pod belym krestom (Chemu ja byl svidetelem) (Riga: Dzintars, 1922), 19–42; for an account by an apologist for Balakhovich, see N. N. Ivanov, O sobytiiakh pod Petrogradom v 1919 godu: Zapiski byvshego chlena severo-zapadnogo pravi­ tel´stva (Berlin: Russkoe tvorchestvo, 1922); James Pollock, “The Hero of Pskoff,” The Times, 20 August 1919.

65

 Wilhelm Wrangell, Geschichte des Baltenregimentes: Das Deutschtum Estlands im Kampfe gegen den Bolschewismus 1918–1920 (Tallinn: Wassermann, 1928), 92; Gershel´man, V riadakh, 27–28; Spence, “Useful Brigand,” 25. 66

 N. A. Kornatovskii, “O literature po istorii grazhdanskoi voiny na severo-zapade Rossii v 1919 g.,” Krasnaia letopis´ 5, 32 (1929): 281–300, here 292. 67

 On the idea of a buffer state, see ERA f. 31, n. 1, s. 130, ll. 86–87 (Estonian government note, 11 November 1919); Reigo Rosenthal, Loodearmee (Tallinn: Argo, 2006), 341–44.

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Russian cause” would be in better hands with Laidoner.68 At the beginning of August, he threatened Iudenich with the prospect of the Allies’ materiel deliveries being diverted to another front and declared that he thought Russia would have a gloomy future if the Whites did not reach understandings with the border states.69 Iudenich reacted angrily. He complained to Gough that the Estonians were withdrawing their troops from the front they shared, and were abandoning the Northwestern Army to the mercies of the Bolsheviks. This unintentional evidence of how important the Estonians had now become for Iudenich’s survival was supplemented by a second letter to Laidoner. In response to the possibility of peace being concluded between Tallinn and Moscow, Iudenich recognized the former province’s independence for the first time—but only subject to the condition that 25,000 Estonian soldiers were immediately placed under his command.70 At that moment, the infantry general was probably less afraid of Kolchak’s anger if he were to unilaterally recognize Estonia’s secession than if the Estonians concentrated on securing their own borders. In response to this, Laidoner wrote a memorandum to the Tallinn govern­ ment that forwarded it with a confirming statement to General Gough. The Estonian commander in chief explained that it could not be the fault of the democratic Estonian government if its soldiers were suspicious of the Russians and refused to attack Petrograd. He also made it clear that his country de­ manded unconditional recognition. Furthermore, recognition by isolated in­ dividuals was “of relatively little importance, especially if such individuals are not backed by any important political organizations, which have received official recognition by the allied Governments.”71 In making this point, he was not only reproaching the White Russians for their democratic deficiencies but also pointing to a way out of the dead end of the “Baltic tangle,” and that was a local Russian government supported by the victorious powers that would recognize Estonia. Laidoner therefore wrote the script for the charade that now ensued—the moves made by the British in high-handed colonial style on 68

 ERA f. 957, n. 11, s. 118, ll. 43v.–47 (letter from Gough, 25 July 1919); letter from Gough to the War Office, 10 August 1919, in DBFP 3, 55–56.

69

 “Pis´mo generala Gofa generalu Iudenichu,” Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii, no. 1 (1922): 306–08, here 308. Cf. PAAA Finland 2, Bd. 4/R 6152 (Brück, Helsinki, to the German Foreign Office, 7 July 1919).

70

 M. S. Margulies, God interventsii, 3 vols. (Berlin: Grzhebin, 1923), 2: 204; Gorn, Grazh­ danskaia voina, 86–87; ERA f. 2124, n. 1, s. 553, l. 99 (letter from Laidoner to Iudenich, 8 August 1919). 71

 ERA f. 495, n. 10, s. 52, ll. 248–50, quote 249; for the government’s statement, see ll. 245–48 (both documents are dated 8 August 1919).

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10/11 August to establish the Northwestern Government under the oil magnate Stepan Georgievich Lianozov, who had belonged to Iudenich’s entourage in Helsinki. In view of the threat to halt support for the Northwestern Army, the politicians from various camps (conservative Kadets and local socialists) who were present found themselves with no other choice than to form a cabinet within 40 minutes.72 This government for the liberated regions of the Petrograd and Pskov Provinces, a territory the Northwestern Army was just about to lose, had no chance of being officially recognized in London and Paris as long as Kolchak rejected the recognition of Estonia that was a precondition for this demand. The military mission, whose policy Gough laconically described in his memoirs as “non-interference,” had clearly overstepped its competences.73 Al­ though Iudenich had given way to the pressure to form a united Petrograd Front and had joined—in absentia—the government as minister of war, he wanted first and foremost to remain informed about the civilians’ plans. To ensure this, he ordered his friend Admiral Vladimir Konstantinovich Pilkin, the marine minister, to represent him.74 Apart from a number of better-known Kadets (the Provisional Government’s minister for religious affairs, Anton Vladimirovich Kartashev, and the St. Petersburg law professor Vladimir Dmi­ trievich Kuz´min-Karavaev) the government included Mensheviks from the Pskov region. Not only was it entirely powerless on the army-led Petrograd Front, it was also isolated within the White movement, which was fixated on

72

 Gorn, Grazhdanskaia voina, 106–35, 375; Margulies, God interventsii, 2: 202–14; Ivanov, O sobytiiakh, 94–97; Obrazovanie Severo-Zapadnogo Pravitel´stva: Ob˝ iasneniia chlenov Politicheskogo Soveshchaniia pri Glavnokomanduiushchem Severo-Zapadnogo fronta: V. D. Kuz´mina-Karavaeva, A. V. Kartasheva, M. N. Suvorova (Helsinki: Aktsionnoe Ob­ shchestvo Evlund i Pettersson, 1919), 3–9; G. L. Kirdetsov, U vorot Petrograda (1919–1920 gg.) (Berlin: Moskva, 1921), 217–29; Smolin, Beloe dvizhenie, 265–73; James Pollock, “To Rescue Petrograd,” The Times, 16 August 1919. 73

 Hubert Gough, Soldiering On (London: Barker, 1954), 190–91. Curzon wrote to Bal­ four on 18 August 1919: “The whole of these officers acted not only without authority but without our knowledge” (DBFP 3, 499–500). 74

 Iudenich regarded the circumstances that surrounded the government’s formation as “disgusting and insulting,” and was utterly outraged by the “unlawful relation­ ship” between the Estonians and the British diplomats who had “fabricated” the Northwestern Government. GARF f. 6817, op. 1, d. 14, l. 102 (letter from Iudenich to Kolchak, 20 August 1919); f. 6385 (Northwestern Government of Russia [Tallinn]), op. 1, d. 17, ll. 9–11ob. (memorandum by Gorn, 21 October 1919). The entries from May to October 1919 are missing from Pilkin’s diary. Admiral V. K. Pilkin, V beloi bor´be na Severo-Zapade: Dnevnik 1918–1920 (Moscow: Russkii put´, 2005), 189.

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a military dictatorship that would preserve Russia within the borders of 1914, though without Poland and, eventually, Finland.75 “[T]he Ruritanian experiment which General Gough and his Merry Men have been making in Estonia” (Curzon)76 was doomed to failure. The new government had nothing with which to counterbalance the primacy of military victory over the Bolsheviks, which was why its activities on Rus­sian soil depended solely on the Northwestern Army. The Northwestern Army would not agree to the solution suggested by Gough that the army be sub­ ordinate to any kind of coalition government. As a result, the government institutionalized the internal White front in Estonia and became a welcome scapegoat for the military.77 The Estonians had to acknowledge that a “buffer state” that lived up to their expectations was not possible without the consent of the Northwestern Army. Nevertheless, the Estonian side was able to offer the dissolution of the Northwestern Government as a bargaining chip in the talks with Moscow that started at the beginning of September. In consequence, the Estonian February Revolution and the Russian October Revolution benefited from the permanent conflict between the Russian military counterrevolution and the representatives of the democratic revolution. Military Showdown Even if the Estonians had delayed their answer to the offer of talks put forward by Soviet Foreign Minister Georgii Vasil´evich Chicherin on 31 August in the forlorn hope of being able to get the neighboring states involved, any agree­ ment between Tallinn and Moscow would involve an open threat to the Northwestern Army. Furthermore, at the end of August the Northwestern Army had lost Pskov, its last toehold on Russian land. Since the Russians were not in a position to hold the city alone and Laidoner withdrew his troops because he realized his soldiers did not want to fight on Russian soil, the Red Army had an easy task on 25/26 August. Fifteen thousand refugees

75

 In September, Iudenich wrote of “newly formed states”: he had finally recognized Estonia; Kolchak’s administration was still using the formulation “newly created, selfgoverning Baltic units” in a statement to the British in October. Letter from Iudenich to Balfour, 12 September 1919, in DBFP 3, 545–48; Smolin, Beloe dvizhenie, 333 n. 416.

76

 Letter from Curzon to Balfour, 20 August 1919, quoted in Richard H. Ullman, AngloSoviet Relations, 1917–1921, 2: Britain and the Russian Civil War: November 1918–February 1920 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 270. 77

 Brüggemann, Die Gründung, 322–30, 338–43.

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now sought protection in Estonia—among them Balakhovich.78 For the Esto­ nians, however, the loss of the city also had positive consequences: the old Northern Corps leadership, who were plotting against Iudenich, had been considering an alliance with the Russian troops on Latvian territory who had been supplied with equipment from German stocks (Bermondt), but this now became impossible.79 Iudenich went onto the offensive just over a month later with a diversionary attack in the direction of Pskov. This should be seen as a deliberate, highstakes gambit on the part of the old general. Although it was possible to re­ group within the very restricted area that the army held in a relatively short period of time, and materiel deliveries from the West were gradually reaching the front as well, it would not survive the winter.80 In a later report on his activities to Kolchak, Iudenich mentioned the hostile mood in the Estonian areas behind the front line as the crucial factor that had militated in favor of the attack. Furthermore, he hoped that the “Green Army” in the forests would join the Northwestern Army.81 However, this hope was to be disappointed, not least on account of the Whites’ occupation policy in the spring, which had promised to give the land back to its previous owners and treated the peasants merely as Bolshevik sympathizers.82 In October, the Northwestern Army, with its approximately 20,000 combat troops, was inferior in manpower terms to the Red Army, which kept approximately 25,000 soldiers stationed along this whole sector of the front. In May, Iudenich had declared he would need 50,000 men to capture Petrograd and warned insistently against “adventurism.”83 In the autumn, however, his only chance lay in such an adventure—and in the 78

 Gorn, Grazhdanskaia voina, 136–42; Smolin, Beloe dvizhenie, 310–14. On the mood in the Estonian Army, see ERA f. 496, n. 2, s. 17, l. 272 (report by Valga censors’ office, 17 August 1919). 79

 Smolin, Beloe dvizhenie, 153–54, 315–16; ERA f. 2124, n. 1, s. 16, l. 499 (General Aleksander Tõnisson to Laidoner, 31 August 1919).

80

 Kirdetsov, U vorot Petrograda, 350; Smolin, Beloe dvizhenie, 234, 304–05.

81

 GARF f. 200 (Omsk Foreign Ministry, Kolchak’s Russian Government), op. 1, d. 325, ll. 120–21 (letter from Iudenich to Kolchak, 29 November 1919); letter from Iudenich to Balfour, 12 September 1919, in DBFP 3, 546.

82

 Gorn, Grazhdanskaia voina, 48.

83

 ERA f. 495, n. 10, s. 11, ll. 96–97 (letter from Iudenich to Laidoner, 22 May 1919); V. Dragilev, “Vtoroe nastuplenie Iudenicha na Petrograd,” in Sbornik trudov Voennonauchnogo obshchestva pri Voennoi akademii (Petrograd: Izdatel´stvo Kommunisticheskoi akademii, 1922), 2: 46–69, here 53–55; Smolin, Beloe dvizhenie, 326–27, 352; Kornatovskii, Bor´ba za krasnyi Petrograd, 254; GARF f. 6385, op. 1, d. 36, l. 1 (letter from General Ianov to Lianozov, 4 October 1919); RGVA f. 190 (Administration of the 7th Army), op. 10, d. 42, ll. 10–15 (report by the General Staff of the 7th Army, 7 October 1919).

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secret hope of an anti-Soviet uprising in Petrograd that was being planned in the underground. This failed to materialize.84 The diversionary thrust towards Pskov at the end of September85 permitted the Northwestern Army to carry out its main attack, which was launched from Narva during the night of 9/10 October, almost without meeting any resistance: after just a week, it stood 30 kilometers from the Winter Palace.86 The Soviet government was showing signs of panic; War Commissar Lev Davidovich Trotskii admitted on 17 October that, on account of the negotiations that had begun with Estonia, no one in Moscow had expected an attack by “Iudenich’s bands” any longer. Furthermore, Denikin was simultaneously advancing on Moscow from the south. Even though Denikin was still at least 300 kilometers away, the country was placed on a war footing on 15 October, and Trotskii was sent to the Neva to save the “cradle of the revolution.”87 The involvement of Manuil Sergeevich Margulies, who had been closely associated with the war economy, and Lianozov, with his oil business, in the Northwestern Government showed that there were massive economic inter­ ests behind the Northwestern Army’s attack as well. When international agencies reported that Petrograd was in White hands, Tallinn and Helsinki briefly became centers of speculation sparked by the chances of making quick money in the old capital. Even ordinary citizens without any kind of commercial experience took part in this “speculative agiotage” (Gorn), buying goods they hoped would sell like hot cakes in White Petrograd as if the city were already in Iudenich’s hands.88 However, the words of the German 84

 Summarized in Brüggemann, Die Gründung, 370–72.

85

 Even a Soviet military historian praised this maneuver (Dragilev, “Vtoroe nastuple­ nie,” 56–57). 86

 Belyi ofitser, Oktiabr´skoe nastuplenie na Petrograd i prichiny neudachi pokhoda: Zapiski belogo ofitsera (Helsinki: Evlund i Petterson, 1920), 19–30; Kornatovskii, Bor´ba za krasnyi Petrograd, 254–77; Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000), 196–201; Smolin, Beloe dvizhenie, 355–58; Dragilev, “Vtoroe nastuplenie.”

87

 Bor´ba za Petrograd: 15 oktiabria–6 noiabria 1919 goda (Moscow–Petrograd: Gosudarst­ vennoe izdatel´stvo, 1923), 171, 173–75, 182; Kornatovskii, Bor´ba za krasnyi Petrograd, 278–408. 88  On 20 October, The Times reported: “Petrograd reached. Whites in the suburbs.” Tsentral´nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga f. 485 (War Council/Defense Committee/Petrograd Fortified District), op. 1, d. 55, l. 1 (Petrograd Defense Committee Press Digest, 23 October 1919); Gorn, Grazhdanskaia voina, 290–91; Kirdetsov, U vorot Petrograda, 314–16; Kukk, “Failure,” 376. On the speculation in Denmark, see Bent Jensen, Danmark og det Russiske spørgsmål 1917–1924: Dansk Ruslandspolitik fra bolsjevikkernes magterobring til anerkendelsen af det bolsjevikkiske regime de jure (Aarhus: Universitetsforl, 1979), 260–67.

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chargé d’affaires in Tallinn proved to be prophetic when he said he expected “Petrograd to be captured in the next few days,” unless “the maximalists” found the strength to threaten Gdov from the south. This was precisely what happened.89 If he was to escape being encircled near Petrograd, Iudenich’s only remaining option was to retreat. With this, the panic about the Whites marching on the “cradle of the revolution” vanished as rapidly as it had ap­ peared: the celebrations for the second anniversary of the revolution could be held on the Neva as planned on 7 November. Secession and Revolution The decision taken by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George at the end of September to leave it to the Baltic governments to conclude agreements that would guarantee their national existence was crucial to the outcome of the revolutionary wars in the Northwest. This note expressly allowed for an arrangement with Moscow. Since Estonia’s de jure recognition was referred to the League of Nations at the same time, the value of a treaty with Soviet Russia rose.90 However, when the representatives of the border states decided at the beginning of October to start peace negotiations with Moscow by 25 October, Estonian diplomacy played its White trump card once more. If Iudenich were to fail, the Estonians could always use their Red trump card. Estonia thus was exploiting Russia’s internal confrontation in its own interests. As long as the Reds and Whites kept each other in check on the Petrograd Front, its own border would be secure.91 In December 1919, Lenin claimed “that the least assistance from Finland or rather more, assistance from Estonia would have been enough to seal Petro­ grad’s fate,” a view that his London antipode Winston Churchill certainly

89

 PAAA, Weltkrieg, 20d, Nr. 1a, Bd. 52/R 21806 (Thomas, Tallinn, report to Berlin, 17 October 1919). 90

 Note by Curzon, 25 September 1919, in DBFP 3, 569–70; ERA f. 31, n. 1, s. 14, ll. 3–4 (note by the Estonian government, 7 October 1919). It is not possible to sustain the claim made by Stanley W. Page in The Formation of the Baltic States: A Study of the Effects of Great Power Policies Upon the Emergence of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 179–80, that Tallinn had viewed participation in the attack on Petrograd as a “last chance” to achieve de jure recognition by the Allies.

91

 Foreign Minister Poska to Chicherin, 4 October 1919, in DVP 2: 1 ianvaria 1919 g.–30 iiunia 1920 g. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1958), 255; Antonius Piip, “Tartu Rahu,” in Mälestused iseseisvuse võitluspäevilt, 2: Vabadussõda 1918–1920 (Tallinn: Eesti Ajakirjanikkude Liit, 1930), 351–420, here 367–69; Margulies, God inter­ventsii, 3: 32; Gorn, Grazhdanskaia voina, 260.

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shared.92 This comment also named the scapegoats from the White point of view; there was criticism of Kolchak’s intransigence over the question of Finnish and Estonian independence, as well as Iudenich’s incompetence. The politicians did not forget that, when he was certain of victory in mid-October, Iudenich had unceremoniously stripped the Northwestern Government of its powers.93 However, it remains questionable whether abandoning the borders of 1914 or resolving the land question in favor of the peasants in Petrograd Province would automatically have delivered Iudenich victory. The fact that the Whites were still blaming each other during these events only made it clear why their failure was predictable.94 Nevertheless, one person did meet with approval among the most inveterate proponents of the “One and Indivi­ sible Russia”: Laidoner. Even the Paris Russians declared that, according to everything they heard from the Petrograd Front, he was “very valuable for us.”95 A Russian Northwestern Army general admitted that, with the sense of solidarity it displayed, the Estonian military command was “a head above” the Russian leadership, while Laidoner accommodated the Whites whenever this was possible and served “as a crying shoulder” for the Russian generals. This praise did not imply any acceptance of Estonian independence, for the author dreamed of having the Estonian commander in chief take charge of a reinstated Russian Baltic military district.96 This anachronism summed up the whole wretchedness of the White movement on the Petrograd Front. While the White dream crumbled away, its protagonists projected their hopes onto the very person who was to destroy the “One and Indivisible Russia.”

92

 V. I. Lenin, “Rech´ pri otkrytii konferentsii 2 dekabria 1919,” in Polnoe sobranie sochi­ nenii (Moscow: Izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1974), 39: 341–65, here 348; Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis (1914–1928), pt. 4: The Aftermath (London: Library of Imperial History, 1974), 258. On Kolchak and Finland, see Smele, Civil War in Siberia, 289–96, 301–07.

93

 GARF f. 200, op. 1, d. 325, ll. 120–21 (letter from Iudenich to Kolchak, 29 November 1919); Margulies, God interventsii, 3: 85, 91, 96, 102, 111; Gorn, Grazhdanskaia voina, 282, 362; Kirdetsov, U vorot Petrograda, 15; Wrangell, Geschichte, 145–45; Kukk, “Failure,” 375–76.

94

 For remarks symptomatic of the distrust in which Iudenich was held, see GARF f. 200, op. 1, d. 280, ll. 136–37 (letter from Sazonov to Kolchak, 17 October 1919).

95

 Ibid., l. 122 (letter from Sazonov to Kolchak, 23 September 1919).

96

 Kukk, “Failure,” 363–64. For Estonian observers, the “civil war of three leaders”— Iudenich, Rodzianko (the former commander of the Northern Corps—K.B.), and Balakhovich—was the main reason for the Northwestern Army’s failure. Aleksander Tõnisson, “Visked vabadussõja mälestustest,” in Mälestused iseseisvuse võitluspäevilt, 21–63, here 48.

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Laidoner was a key figure in the Russian revolutionary wars in the north­ west of the former empire. Although he came from the same world of the Russian officers’ schools as many of the White military, he subjected himself to democratic rules, as for example at the end of April, when he was prepared to lay down his office, referring the inaugural session of the Constituent Assem­ bly to the fact that this was common practice in Switzerland.97 He recognized the value of a democratic mandate even when his position had become almost sacrosanct after the victory over the Landeswehr. With this attitude, he em­ bodied more than anyone else the promise of the democratic nation state, particularly at a time when warlords were claiming power everywhere on Russian soil. In the days following the apparent White triumph on 19 October 1919, the Constituent Assembly adopted a radical land reform that abolished the large estates in favor of small farms, a move that was attacked at the time as “Bolshevist.”98 After the democratic sanctioning of the nation state by the elections in April and the emotional founding act of the victory over the “barons” in June, the land reform was the decisive step that anchored the nation state politically among the populace as well. For the rural population, from which most members of parliament originally came, this reform was a question of historical justice, since they had always regarded the large estates, which were mainly in German hands, as Estonian land. Arnold Schulbach (Süvalep), a member of Parliament for the Labor Party in 1920, recalled that those who attended popular assemblies during 1919 would listen quietly when topics such as the new constitution, taxes, or education were being discussed, but that land reform was the only topic that electrified the audience, who then wanted to know when the surveyors would finally be arriving.99 Immediately after the reform’s parliamentary approval, it was severely criticized for placing greater emphasis on the social rather than the economic aspects of policy. Furthermore, the rural population went through a phase of uncertainty that was reflected in the clear losses suffered by the left-wing parties in the parliamentary elections in November 1920, when a new party representing 97

 ERA f. 2124, n. 1, s. 10, ll. 209–10 (note from Laidoner to the Constituent Assembly, 23 April 1919).

98

 Tiit Rosenberg, “Agrarfrage und Agrarreform in Estland 1919: Ursachen und Folgen,” in The Independence of the Baltic States: Origins, Causes, and Consequences. A Comparison of the Crucial Years 1918–1919 and 1990–1991, ed. Eberhard Demm, Roger Noël, and William Urban (Chicago: Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, 1996), 87–95; Heidi Lepplaan, “‘Mein Haus, mein Land, mein Erb und Eigen’: Deutsche Reak­ tionen auf das estnische Agrargesetz 1919,” Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 7 (2012): 141–67.

99

 Arnold Schulbach, “Maal ja Asutavas Kogus,” Vaba Maa, 25 October 1920, 8.

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173

the peasantry became the second-strongest group, taking 20 percent of the vote.100 Nevertheless, as a consequence of the reform, which gave veterans of the War of Independence preferential treatment and affected more than 400,000 people (two-thirds of the rural population), more than 50,000 new farms were established and the social antagonisms in rural areas mitigated. Overall, there is consensus among researchers that the redistribution of land created a stratum of small owners who were fundamentally loyal to the state, even though economic success was achieved only over the long term.101 While Russia sank into chaos, Estonia undertook a radical change of course within a few years, a transformation based on revolutionary constitutional principles, democracy, and the nation state. It is still largely unclear how it was possible for the vision of an independent state to gain acceptance discursively below the level of the political elite, and how this was influenced by the fact that this elite had been educated under the autocratic empire. Undoubtedly, it had been able to gather its first administrative experience within the empire’s provincial structures. The Russian context of the revolutionary wars was an essential factor in the establishment of the state, if only because it drew the attention of the Western powers. Viewed strategically, the exploitation of the internal Russian power struggles was vital for survival, and Russia’s implo­ sion lent the vision of the Estonian nation state additional legitimacy. At the same time, however, Estonia’s future was uncertain, especially at the end of 1918 and beginning of 1919. The Soviet variant of a federation had still not lost its attractiveness, which was why there were signs during the first few months of the War of Independence that it might become an Estonian civil war. It was the left-wing majority in the Constituent Assembly that translated the slogans “land” and “peace” into practical policies, and the military victory over the Landeswehr that tipped the scales in favor of national democracy. However, this happened above all on account of the deeply rooted, hostile stereotype of the “German barons,” a key part of the developing Estonian identity. It was the Baltic Germans’ defeat at Cēsis that first made the concept of “freedom” a reality. It was not just this clear, hostile, social, and ethnic stereotype that gave the elitist, national, democratic project popularity. In contrast to Russia’s 100

 On the critical reception of the reform, cf. Marju and Olaf Mertelsmann, Landreform in Estland 1919: Die Reaktion von Esten und Deutschbalten (Hamburg: Dr. Kovač, 2012), 69–96. For an overview, see Anu Mai Kõll, Peasants on the World Market: Agricultural Experience of Independent Estonia, 1919–1939 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1994).

101  Rosenberg, “Agrarfrage,” 91–93; Ago Pajur and Tõnu Tannberg, eds., Eesti ajalugu VI: Vabadussõjast taasiseseisvumiseni (Tartu: Ilmamaa, 2005), 59, 79; Rein Taagepera, “Inequality Indices for Baltic Farm Size Distribution, 1929–1940,” Journal of Baltic Studies 3, 1 (1972): 26–34, here 26–28.

174 K arsten Brüggemann

disintegration, to which the secession of the Baltic states ultimately contributed as well, an alternative was established that was capable of integrating diverse groups within a relatively compact area. Furthermore, the territory to which this vision of an Estonian state laid claim was clearly distinguished culturally and linguistically from its neighbors. In addition to this, it benefitted from the fruits the national movement had reaped since the late 19th century. After 1905, Estonians had worked to establish a political presence in local govern­ ment and the media, which was why the concept of self-determination did not come completely out of the blue. The above-average levels of education and almost completely literate adult population meant Estonians were bet­ter placed to take part in democratic discourse than the peoples in many other parts of the former tsarist empire. However, the German occupation, last­ ing almost nine months, had also cut the Baltic off from the revolutionary Russian context, which was why the Bolsheviks had to come in from outside in November 1918, and it was possible for their revolutionary agenda to be regarded as foreign rule. Finally, the democratic elections to the Constituent Assembly and the peaceful change of power that ensued provided evidence of the population’s political culture, something that was especially crucial to the country’s relationship with the Western powers. In the context of the Russian revolutionary wars, it was by no means a matter of course that the military leadership too would submit to this national democratization process. A year after the Peace of Tartu, in 1921, Estonia and Latvia were accepted into the League of Nations. Translated by Martin Pearce

Smolensk’s Jews in War, Revolution, and Civil War Michael C. Hickey

In many regards, the experience of war, revolution, and civil war for Jews in the western Russian province of Smolensk paralleled that of the general population.1 Smolensk’s Jews faced tensions between integrative conceptions of citizenship and class-based politics typical of the revolutionary process in Russia as a whole. Jews publicly identified themselves as citizens of Russia and grasped at the promise of legal and civic equality associated with citizenship, but class identity and class politics undercut and eroded more inclusive con­ ceptions of citizenship among Jews as it did for the general polity. At the same time, issues specific to Jews as an ethno-confessional minority, such as com­ peting conceptions of Jewishness, complicated Jewish public and political life. Matters of culture, language, and faith could draw the Jewish community together, but generally proved deeply divisive.2 Another complicating factor was the grim reality of anti-Jewish violence: neither citizenship nor class could fully overshadow perceptions of Jewish difference, and violence directed against Jews as Jews both reinforced community bonds and drove wedges. This essay examines Jews’ political activism, community organization, and relations with state authorities in Smolensk by focusing on the following issues: the politics of wartime refugee relief, Jewish revolutionary politics, the expansion and contraction of Jewish political space, the creation of So­ viet Jewish agencies, and Civil War–era community activism. Local Jewish activists seized opportunities presented by the Great War to expand the range 1

 On revolutionary politics in Smolensk, see Michael C. Hickey, “The Rise and Fall of Smolensk’s Moderate Socialists: The Politics of Class and the Rhetoric of Crisis in 1917,” in Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 1917–1953, ed. Donald J. Raleigh (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2001), 14–35. 2

 On conceptions of citizenship, see Eric Lohr, Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). On Jewish cultural debates, see Kenneth B. Moss, Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). On Jews in 1914–21 overall, see Oleg Budnitskii, Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917–1920, trans. Timothy J. Portice (Phila­ delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 175–214.

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of Jewish public life. In the new political and legal environment created by the February 1917 revolution, Smolensk’s Jews engaged vigorously in the general political and public spheres as well as in politics “on the Jewish street.” The Bol­ shevik seizure of power then circumscribed Jewish political life and limited Jewish public space. During the Civil War Jews became targets of violence from one side as alleged Bolsheviks and from the other as presumed burzhui (bourgeois exploiters). Still, Smolensk’s Jews found means to maneuver in de­ fense of community interests. These findings fit into the general pattern of what historians have argued regarding Jews in other regions.3 Some aspects of the Jewish experience in Smolensk, however, were rooted in the province’s geographic location. That Smolensk lay outside the former Pale of Settlement influenced the character of its Jewish community. Its distance from Moscow often buffered its Jews from the impact of the center’s policies. Its location in the rear of the war and Civil War meant that while these conflicts loomed over local life, their impact often was indirect, which limited the intensity of antiJewish violence locally. Jews in Prewar Smolensk Smolensk lay just east of the Pale of Settlement to which tsarist law limited Jewish residence.4 The province boasted no large cities or major industrial centers, and its relatively underdeveloped urban economy offered Jews fewer opportunities than Moscow or St. Petersburg. Because Smolensk was in the Russian interior, Jews had to obtain special permission to reside legally there, and tsarist police periodically swept the province for illegal migrants. Still, its proximity and the promise of work and trade attracted Jews hoping to escape poverty in the Pale. At the onset of the Great War, some 18,000 Jews lived in the province legally; of these, almost 7,000 lived in its capital city, Smolensk, 3  See, for example, Henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917–1920 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Mikhail Beizer, “Petrogradskaia evreiskaia obshchina v 1917 godu,” in Istoricheskie sud’by evreev v Rossii i SSSR: Nachalo dialoga. Sbornik statei, ed. I. Krupnik (Moscow: Evreiskoe istoricheskoe obshchestvo, 1992), 1: 165–74; Elissa Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013); Oleg Budnitskii, “The Jews of Rostov-on-Don in 1918–1919,” Jews and Jewish Topics in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe 3 (19): 16–29; Michael C. Hickey, “Revolution on the Jewish Street: Smolensk, 1917,” Journal of Social History 31, 4 (1998): 823–50; and Arkadii Zel´tser, Evrei sovetskoi provintsii: Vitebsk i mestechki, 1917–1941 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2006). 4  The material in this section is drawn from Michael Hickey, “Demographic Aspects of the Jewish Population in Smolensk Province, 1870s–1914,” Acta Slavica Iaponica 19 (2002): 84–116; and “‘People with Pure Souls’: Jewish Youth Radicalism in Smolensk, 1900–1914,” Revolutionary Russia 20, 1 (2007): 51–73.

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where they accounted for nearly 10 percent of city residents. The rest lived in a handful of county seats or clustered in villages along railways transecting the province. Jews in the province’s minority enclaves built lives that differed signifi­ cantly from those of their relatives in the Pale’s predominately Jewish shtetl environment. Restrictive residence laws shaped the occupations available to them: most held residence permits linked to employment in crafts or manufac­ turing, and more than half of all Smolensk Jewish families lived by wages from labor. Whereas in the Pale, 40 percent of Jewish households earned their livelihood through petty commerce, shopkeeping, or moneylending, in Smo­ lensk only a quarter of Jewish families depended on such occupations. As a group, Smolensk’s Jews were more literate in Russian than were Jews in the Pale—a product of living in a Russophone environment; they also were more literate than the general provincial population. Jews were disproportionately represented among the region’s doctors and educated professionals. In addi­ tion, a small cohort of wealthy Jews dominated the lumber, grain, and flax trade and numbered among the region’s bankers and industrialists. This acculturated elite controlled state-chartered Jewish charitable institutions, the state-sanctioned Jewish communal administration (the obshchina), and Smo­ lensk’s Mitnagdic (non-Hasidic Orthodox) synagogues. Circa 1913, there were only four synagogues and two legally chartered Jewish prayer houses in the entire province, fewer than one might find in a small shtetl in the Pale.5 In tsarist Smolensk, Jews could find work, establish businesses, raise fami­ lies, send children to school, and belong to Jewish communal institutions. But in Smolensk, as across the empire, they still suffered from significant legal disabilities (that is, residence and occupational restrictions, prohibitions on the purchase of land, quotas limiting access to postelementary education, and electoral disenfranchisement), even after the revolution of 1905. And although the region never experienced pogroms on the scale of places like Kishinev or Odessa, anti-Jewish violence underscored Jewish difference in Smolensk.6 So did the constant threat of expulsion by state officials who considered the Jewish community a nest of thieves and radicals. Although there is no evi­ dence that local Jewish criminality exceeded that of the general population, Jews did play a leading role in Smolensk’s prewar labor movement and were disproportionately represented in local cells of the major revolutionary par­ ties—the Marxist-oriented Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) 5

 This included two synagogues and a prayer house in Smolensk city. Although many Smolensk Jews migrated from predominantly Hasidic shtetls, the province had no legally chartered Hasidic prayer houses or synagogues prior to 1915. 6

 Three pogroms in Smolensk Province in 1905–06 took only two lives but resulted in dozens of injuries and considerable property damage.

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and the populist-oriented Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (PSR). Like their Russian counterparts, Jewish socialists gravitated towards rival populist and Marxist conceptions of class and of socialism. In addition, they divided over the nature of Jewish nationhood.7 Prewar Smolensk had sections of the Bund, a Jewish Marxist labor party affiliated with the Menshevik wing of the RSDLP, which rejected the Zionist political and territorial notions of Jew­ ish nationhood and called instead for Jewish cultural autonomy within the larger Russian polity. It also had sections of the Jewish Socialist Workers’ Party (SERP), a populist labor party associated with the PSR, which proposed a network of secular democratic communal institutions, capped by a Jewish Seim (national assembly), through which Jews would exercise national politi­ cal autonomy in a federated Russian republic.8 Smolensk also had a small section of the Jewish Social Democratic Labor Party Poalei-Tsion (Workers of Zion), a Marxist-Zionist party that propounded creation of a Jewish national workers’ state in Palestine. All these party groups came under close police surveillance, as did underground non-socialist General Zionist circles.9 So did Smolensk’s legally recognized Jewish voluntary associations, the obshchina, and the region’s state-chartered prayer houses and synagogues. While being subject to surveillance, in itself, did not differentiate Jews from the population at large, Jews faced special scrutiny; in the eyes of tsarist state officials, Jews— even the most acculturated—remained “others.” The Politics of Refugee Relief, 1914–16 Smolensk’s location and its transecting railroads made the region a major staging area for Russia’s Western Front during the Great War. Although the armies of the Central Powers never reached the province, the war’s close 7

 On the complexities of Jewish radical politics in the tsarist period, see Jonathan Frankel’s Prophesy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and Russian Jews, 1862–1917 (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 8

 Autonomism was a common element in much Jewish nationalist thought, and like Zionism took many forms. For example, liberals like Semen Dubnov envisioned au­ tonomous cultural institutions that would regenerate Jewish national culture, but did not endorse Jewish political autonomy. In contrast, the Zionist Socialist Labor Party proposed Jewish political autonomy within a specific territory in a Russian federation, an idea known as territorialism. SERP accepted territorialism on principle, but only in very abstract terms. 9  The tsarist government outlawed the Organization of Russian Zionists (General Zionists) in 1907, a year after the organization adopted a left liberal political platform that endorsed both a Palestinian Jewish state and creation of autonomous Jewish representative bodies in Russia.

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proximity shaped daily life. In many regards, the hardships and opportunities Smolensk’s established Jewish community experienced during the war resem­ bled that of their fellow urban residents. Contrary to widely held suspicions, and despite manifest mistrust from Russian military officers, Jews in Smo­ lensk (and elsewhere in Russia) had to grieve for sons and husbands lost to military service.10 Initially, as least, military contracts meant more work, including work for Jewish artisans, and more profit for Jewish workshop owners. As factories and plants relocated to Smolensk from cities in the war zone, Jews were among the skilled workers who found new opportunities for employment. Growth in the number of military units garrisoned in Smolensk aggravated shortages of housing and goods (the number of soldiers living in the provincial capital during the war often exceeded that of civilians), but it also meant more commerce, including more trade for Jewish shopkeepers.11 By mid-1916, however, shortages had closed nearly half the province’s factories and workshops, throwing Jew and Gentile alike out of work. Workers still employed in war-related production faced longer days under deteriorating conditions. And despite government attempts to freeze rents, housing costs rose and inflated prices for food and other necessities eroded wages.12 Wartime conditions affected Jewish demographic patterns, although exist­ ing statistical data does not allow for comparisons to the general population. Archival records of Smolensk’s State Rabbinate—which contain information on resident Jews, but not on refugees—indicate a decline in marriages and births in 1914–16. Yet infant mortality among resident Jews increased only very slightly during these years, as did general mortality among Jews.13 10  On Jews in the Russian military during the Great War, see Budnitskii, Russian Jews, 127–38. 11

 “Izvlechenie iz doklada chlena soveta skladov V. G. Kornechevskogo po osmotru im polevogo sklada i otdelenii pri armiiakh Zapadnogo fronta,” Vestnik Кrasnogo kresta 8 (October 1916): 2714–15; National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Record Group 242.18.1, Records of the Smolensk Oblast of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1917–1941, National Archives Microfilm Publication T-87 (hereafter, Smolensk Archives), roll 31, file WKP 254 (miscellaneous records), unpaginated “An­ nouncement of the Supreme Commander of the Minsk Military District”; Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Smolenskoi oblasti (GASO) f. 1, d. 8, l. 921; f. 65 (Smolensk City Administration, 1870–1917), op. 2, ed. khr. 1759.

12

 In early 1917, Smolensk city’s medical-sanitary inspector reported that workers had to choose between buying food and paying rent. Smolenskii vestnik, 24 February, 1917, 2.

13

 GASO f. 125 (Smolensk State Rabbi, 1872–1918), dd. 100–07, 118, 133–35, 141–42, 144, 146–47. Tsarist Russia’s legally constituted Jewish communities appointed State Rabbis, whose functions included registration of Jewish marriages, divorces, births, and deaths among Jews.

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While there is no direct evidence of a causal linkage, this probably reflects the expanded activity of Jewish communal agencies, particularly those associated with refugee relief. The politics of refugee relief illustrate complexities in the fraught wartime relationship between the Jewish community and the tsarist state. It also demonstrates community activists’ ability to mobilize and act once public space was open to them, and reveals that cooperation in the de­ fense of the community could not paste over ideological and class divisions among Jews. Smolensk’s location made the region a primary transit point for war ref­ ugees, and nearly a quarter of the empire’s wartime refugees passed through the province.14 Most refugees moved on to Russia’s interior, but thousands had to be resettled locally, if only temporarily. Voluntary associations pro­ vided refugees with food, medical care, and housing, but local resources were overtaxed by wartime needs.15 The Minsk Military District Command (relo­ cated to Smolensk in 1915), which exercised emergency authority over the provincial administration, viewed concentrations of refugees in ramshackle barracks along railroad sidings in the Smolensk region as disruptive to the movement of soldiers and supplies.16 Jewish refugees posed a particularly thorny problem. Russian liberals be­ lieved that Jewish soldiers’ sacrifices and Jewish refugees’ suffering justified ending legal disabilities, abolishing the Pale, and opening the interior. On 19 December 1914 the Smolensk city Duma called on the province’s governor to lift Jewish residence restrictions.17 Governor Boris Andreevich Bulgakov, however, categorically refused all proposals to open the province to Jewish

14

 See I. P. Shcherov, Migratsionnaia politika v Rossii 1914–1922 gg. (Smolensk: Smolenskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii universitet, 2000).

15

 GASO f. 7 (Smolensk Provincial Zemstvo Administration), op. 3, d. 149, ll. 40–41; d. 90, ll. 5–6; GASO f. 722 (Smolensk Resettlement Point, Smolensk Station, Aleksandrovskii Railroad), op. 1, d. 1; GASO f. 1094 (Smolensk Provincial Committee for Refugee Settlement), op. 1, dd. 1–23; “Obshchestvennaia pomosh´,” Novyi voskhod, 16 October 1915, 23; “Lazaret Smolensk­ogo Evreiskogo obshchestva,” Voina i evrei, no. 2 (1915): 8–9; “Khronika,” Evreiskaia nedelia, no. 11 (2 August 1915): 26. 16

 Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloom­ ington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 21, 57, 62; “Russkoe obshchestvo i evrei,” Evreiskaia nedelia, no. 8 (12 July 1915): 35; GASO f. 7, op. 3, d. 149, l. 39.

17

 “Vopros o evreiskom ravnopravii v Smolenskoi gorodskoi dume,” Novyi voskhod, 31 December 1914, 22–24. On similar debates in the Russian State Duma, see Michael F. Hamm, “Liberalism and the Jewish Question: The Progressive Bloc,” Russian Review 31, 2 (April 1972): 163–72; R. Ganelin, “Gosudarstvennaia duma i antisemitskie tsirkuliary 1915–1916 godov,” Vestnik Evreiskogo universiteta v Moskve 3 (10) (1995): 4–37.

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war refugees, even in the case of wounded soldiers’ families.18 Bulgakov’s intransigence reflected tsarist officialdom’s extreme hostility towards Jews in the war zone, whom state and military authorities treated as internal enemies.19 State policy towards Jews reached a nadir in 1915, with mass de­ portations from military front zones. When Jewish refugee concentrations in the Pale’s eastern districts compounded the army’s logistical problems, Russia’s military command pushed the government to open the interior to Jewish refugees. In August 1915 Russia’s Council of Ministers conceded to the wartime emergency and lifted most residence restrictions, bringing a virtual end to the Pale.20 As a result, the trickle of Jewish refugees through Smolensk became a deluge.21 The military and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) demanded that Smolensk’s governor resettle some Jewish refugees locally, but Bulgakov staunchly refused, and even rejected relocation of businesses

18

 “Za nedeliu,” Novyi voskhod, 14 August 1914, 23; and 11 December 1914, 28–29.

19

 On anti-Jewish measures during the war, and on Jewish refugees, see “Iz ‘chernoi knigi’ rossiiskogo evreistva: Materialy dlia istorii voiny 1914–1915 gg.,” Evreiskaia starina, no. 10 (1918): 195–296; “Dokumenty o presledovanii evreev,” Arkhiv russkoi revo­ liutsii 19 (1928): 245–84; Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, The Tsar and the Jews: Reform, Reaction and Anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia, 1772–1917 (Chur, Switzerland, 1993), chap. 11; Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), chap. 5; Joshua A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905– 1925 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 118–22; Peter Holquist, “To Count, To Extract, To Exterminate: Population Statistics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia,” in A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 123–25; and Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 17–25, 145–50.

20

 August 1915 Council of Ministers decrees opened the Russian interior but still banned Jews from settling in villages and restricted their access to Moscow, Petrograd, and several other regions. Full and formal abolition of the Pale came only with a 20 March 1917 Provisional Government decree that ended all legal disabilities against Jews. 21

 “Khronika za nedeliu,” Evreiskaia zhizn´, no. 8 (23 August 1915): 29; and no. 9 (30 August 1915): 29; “Pomosh´ zertvam voiny,” Evreiskaia nedelia, no. 9 (19 July 1915): 19; “Bezhentsy,” Evreiskaia nedelia, no. 12 (9 August 1915): 26, no. 14 (23 August 1915): 34, and no. 15 (30 August 1915): 40.

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employing Jews.22 The MVD transferred Bulgakov to Petrograd, and under his successor, thousands of Jews resettled temporarily in Smolensk.23 Wartime exigencies also pushed a reluctant tsarist state to broaden the sphere of public activism permitted of voluntary associations. In response to the refugee crisis, the central government authorized Jewish voluntary asso­ ciations to conduct relief work. Smolensk’s Jewish relief agencies arranged housing for those resettled locally, provided medical assistance and meals, and even set up a refugee children’s center.24 But the same activists, drawn from the region’s acculturated Jewish elite, also called for relocation of refu­ gees further into the interior, out of fear that an influx of shtetl Jews would aggravate anti-Semitism, and might spark pogroms.25 Wartime conditions, including shortages of goods and the huge expan­ sion of local garrisons, had in fact heightened the danger of violence and crime against Jews. Jewish peddlers and cabbies at Smolensk’s bazaar, easy targets for thieves before the war, now found themselves victimized with greater regularity. Generally, the thieves committed no violence, but Jewish peddlers and small shopkeepers lived in fear of drunken soldiers, and es­ pecially soldiers in transit.26 Regional authorities’ behavior accentuated Jewish 22

 GASO f. 1 (Smolensk Provincial Administration), op. 6 (1915), d. 49, ll. 1–2; d. 73, marginalia on l. 2; “Khronika za nedeliu,” Evreiskaia zhizn´, no. 7 (16 August 1915): 30, and no. 10–11 (6 September 1915): 45; “Bezhentsy,” Evreiskaia nedelia, no. 17 (13 September 1915): 35; “Zakon i praktiki,” Novyi voskhod, 17 April 1915, 26; American Jewish Committee, The Jews in the Eastern War Zone (New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1916), 26. 23  “Khronika za nedeliu,” Evreiskaia zhizn´, no. 9 (30 August 1915): 29; “Bezhentsy i pereselenie,” Evreiskaia zhizn´, no. 20 (15 May 1916): 37; The American Jewish Yearbook 5677 (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1916), 193. 24

 Jewish community activists in Smolensk established local sections of the Society for the Aid of Jewish War Victims (EVOPO), the Society for the Protection of Jewish Health (OZE), and a refugee labor bureau associated with the Society of Jewish Artisans and Agricultural Labors (ORT). These coordinated efforts in conjunction with local agencies under the Union of Towns and Zemstvos. On Jewish war relief efforts generally, see M. Altshuler, “Russia and Her Jews—The Impact of the 1914 War,” The Wiener Library Review 27 (1973/74): 12–16; Steven J. Zipperstein, “The Politics of Relief: The Transformation of Russian Jewish Communal Life during the First World War,” in Jonathan Frankel, ed., Jews and the Eastern European Crisis, 1914–1921 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 22–40.

25

 “Bezhentsy i pereselenie,” Evreiskaia zhizn´, no. 12 (20 September 1915): 26. Solomon Gurevich, “Na granitse ‘cherty’: K bor´be s p´ianstvom,” Novyi voskhod, 8 January 1915, 24–28. 26

 GASO f. 578 (Smolensk Police Investigative Department), op. 1, d. 7, l. 1; d. 4, ll. 15–15ob.

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anxieties. Governor Bulgakov frequently and publically voiced his conviction that Jews were hoarding goods and accused Jewish “profiteers” of under­ mining Russia’s war effort. Local Jewish activists feared that the governor was “feeding old, dark instincts” and encouraging “excesses” against Jews.27 Bulgakov’s transfer did little to change the atmosphere. Prominent figures in the local state administration, particularly in the gendarme administration and the police, made no secret of their hostility towards Jews. At Easter 1916, community leaders complained that the police were demonizing Jews as enemies in a way that raised the threat of violence.28 Under Governor Bulgakov, the local gendarmes had redoubled sur­ veillance of Jewish institutions, including charitable associations. Police encouraged anonymous denunciation of speculators, illegal residents, and revolutionaries, which “patriotic elements” understood as meaning Jews.29 Despite such denunciations, extant local sources provide scant evidence of wartime underground political or labor radicalism, Jewish or otherwise. Like most local socialists, Jewish radicals focused on work in legal cooperative societies. Some young Jews belonged to antiwar student groups, and several were among the militants who disrupted a prowar public lecture in Smolensk in late 1916. Jews also accounted for about a third of those arrested in the subsequent crackdown on local RSDLPs and PSR circles.30 Provincial authorities also targeted Jewish community leaders. In August 1915, gendarmes arrested merchant Isaak Moiseevich Izraelitan for member­ ship in an illegal Zionist organization. That same month they arrested Solo­ mon Grigor´evich Gurevich, editor of the local newspaper Smolenskii vestnik. As a PSR activist, Gurevich was no stranger to the gendarmes. The specific circumstances of his arrest, however, were linked to Jewish refugee relief

27

 GASO f. 1, op. 6 (1914), d. 135, especially ll. 10, 14; op. 8 (1916), d. 935; GASO f. 1289 (Smolensk Provincial Gendarme Administration), op. 1, d. 508; “Khronika za nedeliu,” Evreiskaia zhizn´, no. 10–11 (6 September 1915): 45; “Korrespondentsiia: Roslavl´,” Evrei­ skaia nedelia, no. 18 (20 September 1915): 42.

28

 “Khronika za nedeliu,” Evreiskaia zhizn´, no. 24 (12 June 1916): 31–32.

29

 GASO f. 1, op. 6 (1914), d. 70 and op. 6 (1915), d. 49; GASO f. 884 (Smolensk District Court Prosecutor, 1868–1917), op. 1, d. 135; GASO f. 1411 (Smolensk Provincial Gen­ darme Administration Deputy Director), op. 1, d. 119. On Jews in Russian patriotic culture, see Hubertus F. Jahn, Patriotic Culture in Russia during World War I (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 113. 30

 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii Smolenskoi oblasti (GANISO) f. 7 (Smolensk Communist Party History Section [Istpart]), op. 1, d. 86, l. 37; GASO f. 884, op. 2, d. 146, ll. 12–16, 23.

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work.31 Smolensk’s State Rabbi, Dr. Aleksandr Iudovich Fridman, had initiated local relief efforts, and enlisted business leaders like Naum Vladimirovich Shvarts for the local Jewish refugee relief board.32 The board also included Solomon Gurevich and Bundist zemstvo employee Iakob Izrailevich Popil´­ skii. The politics of relief therefore reflected larger political divisions among Jews. While Fridman sought accommodation with state authorities, Gurevich turned refugee relief work into a platform for attacking tsarist policies. In March 1915, Gurevich penned a biting essay for Novyi voskhod that criticized government treatment of Jewish refugees as “internal enemies” and demanded abolition of the Pale.33 Gurevich’s essay passed wartime press censorship, but his repetition of these points at a local meeting led to his arrest that August, which resulted in a substantial fine.34 Gurevich did not limit his criticisms to tsarist state policies: he also used refugee work as a platform from which to attack the local Jewish “bourgeois” elite. In a series of essays in 1916, Gurevich charged that relief programs rein­ forced capitalist control over the poor, and he proposed that refugee aid be reorganized around Jewish cooperative societies.35 He also demanded elec­ toral democratization of aid agencies, so as to represent the broad strata of Jewish society. And he extended this critique to the local Jewish obshchina.36 By January 1917, ideological disputes had polarized the leadership of Smolensk’s

31

 On Izrailiten, see “Delo sionista v g. Smolenske,” Evreiskaia nedelia, no. 30 (13 December 1915): 31; “Khronika za nedeliu,” Evreiskaia zhizn´, no. 16 (18 October 1915): 36; “Protsess sionista v g. Smolenske,” Evreiskaia zhizn´, no. 16–17 (24 April 1916): 59–60; GASO f. 884, op. 1, d. 135, unnumbered page, “Opredelenie 17 goda marta 10 dnia.” On the circumstances leading to Gurevich’s arrest, see Gurevich, “Na granitse ‘cherty,’” 24–28; American Jewish Yearbook 5677, 164; GASO f. 1, op. 8, d. 839. 32

 For Fridman’s views on resettlement, see “S˝ezd predstavitelei komitetov po­ moshchi,” Evreiskaia nedelia, no. 16 (6 September 1915): 29, and no. 18 (20 September 1915): 22. 33

 “Na granitsakh ‘cherty’: Uzhasy i politikanstvo,” Novyi voskhod, no. 10–11 (13 March 1915): 18–22. 34

 “Smolensk,” Novyi voskhod, no. 12–13 (20 March 1915): 65–66. On Jews and wartime press censorship, see John T. Smith, “Russian Military Censorship during the First World War,” Revolutionary Russia 14, 1 (2001): 71–95; Löwe, The Tsar and the Jews, 323–24; Moss, Jewish Renaissance, 26; and V. P. Sapon, ed., Evrei v obshchestvenno-politicheskoi zhizni Nizhegorodskoi gubernii (1914–1920 gg.): Dokumenty i materialy (Nizhnii Novgorod: Oliver, 2012), 57–58.

35

 Evreiskaia nedelia, no. 36 (4 September 1916): 16–18; no. 38 (18 September 1916): 40–41.

36

 “Samooblozhenie i prinuditel´noe oblozhenie,” Evreiskaia nedelia, no. 1 (1 January 1917): 31–34.

Smolensk’s Jews in War, Revolution, and Civil War

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Jewish relief agencies. Gurevich blamed this breakdown on “big donors” un­ willing to cede authority over Jewish public affairs.37 Revolutionary Politics in 1917 On 21 February 1917, the Smolensk city Duma again debated Jews’ legal status, and in particular whether Jews should be able to vote in municipal elections. Some commission members called it “stupid” and “uncivilized” to deny Jews full citizenship; others warned that Jews would take over local government.38 A week later the Romanov dynasty crumbled. The February Revolution ended overt state discrimination against Russia’s Jews, whose full and equal rights as citizens were assured by the Provisional Government’s 20 March decree abolishing all restrictions based on religion and nationality. Smolensk’s com­ munity leaders sent the new government pledges of support in gratitude for Jews’ new status as equal “citizens of Great Russia.”39 As a local Poalei-Tsion activist put it, the revolution gave Jews “hope of leading a better life.”40 While few held illusions about the disappearance of anti-Semitism, Jews across the political spectrum expected that legal and civic equality would improve their lot. Marriage records reflect this optimism: more Smolensk Jews married in 1917 than in the two previous years combined. An increase in births later that year also speaks to Jewish confidence in the promise of a better future.41 The revolution brought a rapid, dramatic expansion of Jewish participation in public life. Local press articles identify more than five hundred Smolensk residents who either spoke at or belonged to Jewish organizations in 1917. Roughly one in every fourteen Jews in the city was a visible member of an organization. Hundreds more took part but left no records. Jewish women, whose public presence had been muted, entered public life with particular force.42 In addition to participation in specifically Jewish organizations, Jews engaged vigorously in civic life as Russian citizens. They belonged to Russian political party organizations, helped organize new trade unions and local 37

 “V provintsii,” Evreiskaia nedelia, no. 2 (10 January 1917): 36, and no. 7 (12 February 1917): 6–9, 18–22.

38

 Smolenskii vestnik, 24 February 1917, 2.

39

 “Korrespondentsiia,” Smolenskii vestnik, 16 April 1917, 4.

40

 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial´no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI) f. 272 (Poalei-Tsion, 1917–28), op. 1, d. 385, l. 10ob.

41

 GASO f. 125, op. 1, dd. 100–07, 118, 133–35, 141–42, 144, 146–47.

42

 Women entered the leadership circles of all Jewish party groups, with the exception of the Orthodox religious party Agudas Israel.

186 M chael C. H ckey

soviets, joined professional associations, and signed up for clubs and civic groups. And Jewish members of the Russian socialist parties played a leading role in “democratizing” local government.43 Jews’ enthusiasm for the revolution and their status as equal citizens, though, could not sweep away old animosities. In March 1917, local commu­ nity leaders worried about possible Easter pogroms, and the Jewish obshchina found itself denying rumors that Jews were hoarding flour for Passover.44 On 20 March in Rudnia, a nearby shtetl in Mogilev Province, a crowd “requi­ sitioned” Passover flour from a local credit cooperative. When Jewish commu­ nity representatives protested, the local commissar ordered their arrest and threatened “a pogrom against the yids.”45 Expectations were such that Smo­ lensk’s garrison committee pledged to defend citizens against pogroms, and the provincial administration warned that “violence against any citizen will not be tolerated, be he Christian, Jew, Tatar, or other.”46 Smolensk’s provincial commissar, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Tukhachevskii, urged the populace to ignore rumors spread by “dark forces.”47 Nor did revolutionary enthusiasm long overshadow class and ideological differences within the Jewish community. Among Jews, as among the general population, economic and social inequality highlighted the limits of legal and civic equality, and class identity undercut the rhetoric of shared citizenship. In Smolensk city, a new Jewish Workers’ Club immediately enrolled several hundred men and women, mostly wage laborers. Jewish educated professionals and businessmen organized a Society of Jewish Public Figures (in keeping with the anti-bourgeois mood, they avoided class labels). Both groups met at the city’s Jewish Library, which like other communal institutions (the cemetery, 43  See, for example, GASO f. 884, op. 1, d. 135 (unpaginated correspondence regarding the Smolensk District Court Notary Department, dated 15 May 1917); Leivik Hodis, Biografie und Schriften, ed. S. Dubnov-Erlich (New York, 1962), 17; Michael C. Hickey, “Discourses of Public Identity and Liberalism in the February Revolution: Smolensk, Spring 1917,” Russian Review 33, 4 (1996): 615–37; and “Local Government and State Authority in the Provinces: Smolensk, February–June 1917,” Slavic Review 55, 4 (1996): 863–81. 44

 “Mestnaia khronika,” Smolenskii vestnik, 25 March 1917, 2, and 29 March 1917, 2; L. S. Gaponenko, ed., Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Rossii v aprele 1917 g.: Aprel´skii kriziz (Moscow: Izdatel´stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1958), 590.

45

 For details in Smolenskii vestnik, see “Mestnaia khronika” for 21 March 1917, 2; “Korrespondentsiia,” 29 March 1917, 4; and “Malen´kii fel´eton: Iz novykh, da starykh,” 20 May 1917, 3. 46

 “Bulletin of the Provincial City Executive Committee” for 22 March 1917, in Smolen­ skii vestnik, 23 March 1917, 3.

47

 Tukhachevskii’s announcement appeared in Smolenskii vestnik, 29 March 1917, 1.

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medical clinic, schools, and charitable agencies) was administered by the ob­ shchina. In April, the workers’ club called for democratizing the obshchina, to free it from “bourgeois control.” Class and ideological divisions manifested themselves in all spheres of Jewish public life. By April, Smolensk had local chapters of three different Zionist socialist parties, as well as a non-socialist City Zionist Organization.48 The Zionist socialists criticized the City Zionist Organization (the General Zionists) on the basis of ideology and class, and labeled them “bourgeois.” So did Smolensk’s sections of the largest Jewish socialist parties, the SERP and the Bund. The Bundists conceded that they might work with non-socialists on cultural matters, but rejected any political cooperation with the Jewish bourgeoisie. While they differed ideologically and were divided over Jewish nation­ hood, all local Jewish political groups recognized the importance of Jewish cultural identity. In Smolensk and several provincial towns, popular interest in Jewish culture proliferated in 1917. Jewish night school courses and Jewish musical and literary evenings became regular occurrences.49 Among political activists, culture and language carried strong political overtones. The General Zionists championed Hebrew as the Jewish national language, and their local youth groups offered courses on Hebrew language and literature (as did nonZionist Orthodox youth clubs). In contrast, the socialist and Zionist-socialist parties advocated use of Yiddish, hosted Yiddish lectures and courses, and seized on the great local popularity of Yiddish theater among Jewish workers. Divisions among the Jewish socialist parties concerning the nationality question proved a major impediment to all-socialist cooperation. During the general revolutionary process of political realignment in spring 1917, the socialist parties briefly moved towards creation of a broad socialist bloc. When that effort foundered, the socialists split into right, moderate, and left subfactions, largely over disagreements concerning the war.50 Smolensk’s Jewish socialist party groups briefly discussed creating an all-socialist Jewish organization, but divisions over the war as well as disputes regarding Jew­ ish nationalism scuttled these efforts. The Poalei-Tsion party, which took a “left socialist” stance and called for an immediate end to the war, heatedly criticized local SERP and Bund leaders for their “moderate” revolutionary 48

 In Smolensk there were sections of Poalei-Tsion, the Socialist-Zionist Party, and Tserei Tsion. On local Poalei-Tsion cells, see RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 4, 4ob., 10, 10ob.; GASO f. r-13, op. 1, d. 15, l. 19ob.

49

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 385, l. 10ob.; GASO f. r-13, op. 1, d. 15, ll. 12–15ob., 19–19ob.; daily announcements in Smolenskii vestnik.

50

 On political realignment in spring 1917 and the importance of the war in fragment­ ing the socialist bloc, see Rex A. Wade, The Russian Revolution, 1917, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 53, 67–77.

188 M chael C. H ckey

defensism.51 The Bundists for their part held to their strident anti-Zionism, and for that reason withdrew from joint discussions almost immediately. The various Zionist socialist groups, all of which hammered the Bund for its antiZionism, simply could not bridge the gulf between the Palestine-oriented Zionism and territorialism, which prevented creation of a common bloc.52 The Zionist socialists also refused to cooperate with the General Zionists: in their appeals to Jewish workers, Poalei-Tsion activists constantly stressed the General Zionists’ “bourgeois” class orientation. Like their Russian counterparts, Smolensk’s Jewish socialist groups tarred political opponents in class terms, as bourgeois or petty bourgeois. Their most serious political challenge came from Rabbi Fridman, local leader of the antiZionist religious party Agudas-Israel (Unity of Israel). The socialists labeled Fridman’s party “bourgeois,” but the popular rabbi recruited dozens of wage laborers. By comparison, Jewish liberals posed a lesser threat and made an easier target for the socialists’ class epithets. In early May, Jewish socialist activists denounced the Smolensk Jewish Public Assembly—a self-described “inter-party [mezhdupartiinyi] or supra-party [vnepartiinyi] club to unite all strata of the Jewish population around the ideals of nationalism and cultural enlightenment”—as a “closed gathering of the propertied elite.”53 The lived experience of labor conflict reinforced the resonance of such class rhetoric among Jewish workers, who in spring 1917 stood in the vanguard of the local labor movement. In early April, the predominantly Jewish union “Needle Shop” (Igla) led Smolensk’s workers in demanding wage increases and an eight-hour working day. On 15 April, in an echo of Petrograd events, the Smolensk Soviet called for an eight-hour working day. The provincial as­ sociation of factory owners conceded, but small business owners resisted. A labor dispute between pharmacy owners and their unionized employees (both primarily Jews) then triggered a wave of strikes. Again, Needle Shop took the lead, followed by cooks and waiters, cigarette makers, shoemakers, carpenters, postal-telegraph employees, and zemstvo and government employees. All 51

 Defensists held that the war was justified to defend Russia from aggressive German imperialism. Revolutionary Defensists argued that Russia must fight to defend the revolution until a just democratic peace was reached.

52

 Between May and June 1917, Russia’s Socialist-Zionists merged with SERP to form the United Jewish Socialist Workers’ Party (the OESRP, or Farainigte). The OESRP platform echoed SERP’s call for extraterritorial political autonomy exercised through democratic communal councils and a Seim, and left the issue of Jewish territorial autonomy for future consideration.

53

 “Mestnaia khronika,” Smolenskii vestnik, 13 May 1917, 2–3; a letter from S. E. Lur´e in Smolenskii vestnik, 14 May 1917, 4; and a reply (Smolenskii vestnik, 20 May 1917, 4) by club member Ia. Lesitin.

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189

described themselves as workers, unionized, and demanded an eight-hour day. They hardly fit the Bolshevik image of the radical proletariat, and their employers were not industrial capitalists. Yet, like Needle Shop, they framed their demands in the language of class conflict and successfully mobilized working-class solidarity. Deteriorating urban conditions reinforced class ten­ sions and tarnished the glow of legal equality.54 In this context, socialists escalated demands for democratization and secularization of the obshchina, which they described as a bourgeois institution dominated by rabbis and merchants.55 Heated debates over obshchina reform took place at the Jewish Workers’ Club, the Jewish Public Assembly, and the city’s synagogues. But the issue fell by the wayside as July’s city Duma elections approached. The Smolensk city Duma election campaign, held against the backdrop of the June military offensive and July’s national political crisis, highlighted the salience of class divisions among Jews while also revealing powerful tensions between class and national identity. The Jewish socialist parties joined the Mensheviks, SRs, and People’s Socialists in an electoral socialist bloc. The bloc’s platform avoided questions of nationality and instead emphasized working-class unity; socialist control of city government, the bloc promised, would lead to better living and working conditions. In debates among Jewish community activists, however, the nationality question also loomed large. Jewish liberals, General Zionists, and Agudas Israel insisted on forming an all-Jewish Duma electoral slate, with candidates who would focus on issues important to Jews’ “national soul.” Most Jewish socialists criticized this proposal and warned it would invite accusations of “narrow nationalistic chauvinism.” The proposal’s advocates, however, argued that “such issues are extraordinarily significant and sacred to the Jewish masses, [who] … must choose their own representatives.”56 After some minor factional debates, the Jewish socialists set out to shatter “the illusion of all-Jewish unity” by exposing the class nature of the non-party “Freedom and Tradition” Jewish Duma slate.57 54

 See [Moisei Petrovich Izbolinskii], “Vazhnye zadachi,” Smolenskii vestnik, 7 May 1917, 3; and “Gorodskaia sanitariia,” Smolenskii vestnik, 4 June 1917, 3.

55

 All-Jewish parties in 1917 included democratization of obshchiny (in Hebrew, kehillot) in their programs, a fact that the socialists ignored.

56

 “Evreiskoe predvybornoe sobranie,” Smolenskii vestnik, 22 June 1917, 3.

57

 S.G., “Razve eto partiinost´?” Smolenskii vestnik, 22 June 1917, 2; and “Na tu-zhe temu,” Smolenskii vestnik, 24 June 1917, 2; [Iakob Piletskii], “Otvet kritiku,” Smolenskii vestnik, 25 June 1917, 3, followed by Gurevich’s reply, “Neskol´ko slov.” “Freedom and Tradition” also was the name of a Jewish religious political coalition formed in Mos­ cow in summer 1917.

190 M chael C. H ckey

Daily in July 1917, Smolensk’s Jewish socialists told artisans’ and employ­ ees’ meetings that the socialist bloc would defend their interests as workers and as Jews, and attacked the non-party slate as “bourgeois.” Solomon Gurevich used Smolenskii vestnik to denounce Freedom and Tradition as “the mobilized forces of the Jewish propertied class” and a front for “Jewish representatives of Capital who defend their own class and group interests.”58 Freedom and Tradition proved politically adept: it held ward-level meetings, and drew candidates from popular figures in Agudas Israel and the City Zionist Com­ mittee. Inclusion of prominent business leaders like Naum Shvarts, however, reinforced the impression that it was a “bourgeois” slate. Electoral results show that Smolensk’s Jewish workers strongly favored the socialist bloc in the 23 July city Duma election.59 Smolensk’s Jewish workers had been at the heart of collective labor action in Smolensk in March through July 1917, and their activism had contributed to moderate socialist dominance over local government. But the power of unions closely associated with Jewish socialists dissipated in late summer 1917. In August, long strikes by Needle Shop and the Union of Pharmacy Workers failed. Owners of the small workshops, pharmacies, and trade houses who had suffered the same crushing inflation as their workers stubbornly refused to negotiate new wages. At the same time, more militant unions like the Left SR-led Union of Woodworkers and the Anarchist-led Leatherworkers’ Union (both with large Jewish memberships) waged successful strikes that wrested wage increases from recalcitrant plant owners. Moderate socialist leaders like Menshevik-Bundist Solomon Pavlovich Shur, the provincial labor commissar, begged unionists to put the revolutionary state’s interests before their own class interests, and to refrain from strikes and protests.60 But in fall 1917, this made less sense to many workers than did the rhetoric of class warfare. In Smolensk, as across Russia, the moderate socialists’ success had created a paradox: their authority rested on appeals to working-class interests, but administering power required that they temper those interests. From midsummer, as conditions worsened, soldiers and workers increasingly lost 58

 S.G. “Pod prikrytiem,” Smolenskii vestnik, 13 July 1917, 2; S.I.G., “O natsional´nom ob˝edinenii evreev: Pis´mo v redaktsiiu,” and S.G., “Pod prikrytiem (II),” Smolenskii vestnik, 16 July 1917, 3; S.G., “Pod prikrytiem (III),” and letters to the editor, Smolenskii vestnik, 18 July 1917, 2, 3; letters to the editor, Smolenskii vestnik, 21 July 1917, 3. 59  Four thousand six hundred Jews registered to vote in the Smolensk Duma election. Freedom and Tradition won only 550 votes. The socialists polled very strongly in districts with large Jewish populations and won 20,880 of 28,851 votes. “Rezul´taty vy­ borov v Smolenskuiu gorodskuiu dumu,” Smolenskii vestnik, 25 July 1917, 3; “Rezul´taty vyborov: Smolensk,” Golos Bunda, 19 August 1917, 15. 60

 GASO f. 799 (Provisional Government Provincial Commissar), op. 1, d. 1, l. 200.

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faith in the moderate socialists’ statist conciliationism and turned towards more strident left socialist positions.61 The erosion of the Russian moderate socialist parties also seems to have undermined support for the Jewish par­ ties associated with the socialist bloc. Few Jewish socialists retained their seats when the Smolensk Soviet held new elections in late September. Some Smolensk Jews who had become dissatisfied with the moderate socialists gravitated towards the Left SRs and Anarchists. But very few turned toward the Bolsheviks, whose positions on the nationality question alienated Bundists as well as Zionist socialists, and who had made no effort at all to court Jewish workers locally.62 Under these circumstances, it was the General Zionists who most effectively took advantage of the moderate socialists’ declining popular legitimacy. Rising anxiety over crime and violence almost certainly contributed to the moderate socialists’ declining support among Jews in fall 1917. The socialist bloc’s campaign rhetoric had promised improvements in law enforcement and reduction of crime. In late summer and fall 1917, though, crime seemed to be spiraling out of control. In Smolensk city, Jews accounted for 10 percent of the population but 20 percent of crime victims.63 Jews remained particularly vulnerable to crimes by soldiers, and relations between the Smolensk garrison and the Jewish community hit a nadir in fall. On 6 October, soldiers raided the local Jewish refugee relief agency’s warehouse and “requisitioned” its con­ tents. The increasingly panicked tone of crime reports in Smolenskii vestnik doubtless heightened Jews’ sense of insecurity, as did news of peasant attacks on Jewish-owned rural properties.64 The most shocking assault on Smolensk’s Jews, though, took place not in the countryside, but in the province’s second largest town, Roslavl´. 61

 Hickey, “Rise and Fall of Smolensk’s Moderate Socialists,” 26–33; and Hickey, “Big Strike in a Small City: The Smolensk Metalworkers’ Strike and the Dynamics of Labor Conflict in 1917,” in New Labor History: Worker Identity and Experience in Russia, 1840– 1918, ed. Michael Melancon and Alice K. Pate (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2002), 218–27.

62

 For pointed discussions of the Bolshevik position regarding Jews and the nationality question, and on Jews in the Bolshevik Party in 1917, see Zvi Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 1917–1930 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 25; Budnitskii, Russian Jews, 80. 63

 Michael C. Hickey, “Moderate Socialists and the Politics of Crime in Revolutionary Smolensk,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 35, 2–3 (2001): 202, 205.

64

 “Oblastnoe biuro S.R. i S.D.,” Izvestiia Moskovskogo Soveta rabochikh deputatov, 4 July 1917, 4; K. G. Kotel´nikov and V. L. Meller, eds., Krest´ianskoe dvizhenie v 1917 gody (Mos­ cow, 1927), 193–94; N. P. Galitskaia, et. al., eds., Ustanovlenie i uprochenie sovetskoi vlasti v Smolenskoi gubernii: Sbornik dokumentov (Smolensk: Smolenskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1957), 78–79.

192 M chael C. H ckey

On 17 September, the Roslavl´ Soviet’s chairman warned that a pogrom could erupt in town at the slightest provocation.65 Townspeople had been blaming shortages and rising prices on hoarding by Jewish merchants. On 2 October a rumor spread at the bazaar that Jewish merchants were hoarding boots, and hundreds of people—including dozens of soldiers—converged on a Jewish-owned shop. When crates of boots were discovered in a wagon in front of the shop, shouts of “Beat the Yids!” rose from the crowd. Following the soldiers’ lead, the crowd began looting Jewish shops. The mob beat Jewish shopkeepers and clerks, killing two people. It also “arrested” several Jews as alleged speculators and German spies. After the looting subsided, gangs of soldiers forced their way into Jewish merchants’ homes and “confiscated” sil­ verware and other valuables. In the weeks that followed, provincial authorities insisted that this was not an anti-Jewish pogrom, investigators from the Mos­ cow District Court blamed the violence on recidivist criminals, and police blamed “hooligans.” All accounts, though, reveal how easily patriotic and class rhetoric could blend with anti-Semitism: to the rioters, the victims were self-evidently burzhui, speculators, and spies because they were Jews. For Jewish commentators like Solomon Gurevich, Roslavl´’s pogrom seemed proof of rising anarchy. As Jewish moderate socialists’ authority waned, that of the religious party Agudas Israel and the General Zionists waxed. In mid-August, Rabbi Fridman organized a union for teachers at private Jewish schools, which won higher wages at a time when the moderate socialist unions struggled.66 Fridman also initiated new discussions of obshchina reform, in hope of resolving issues before an All-Russian Jewish Congress planned for fall.67 At his urging, all Jewish parties and factions agreed that a new obshchina board would be popularly elected. While socialists joined the obshchina’s reorganization bureau, they nei­ ther shaped the details of reform nor helped draft election rules.68 Only one socialist, Poalei-Tsion’s Moisei Aksel´rod, worked on the local Jewish congress 65

 On the Roslavl´ pogrom, see Michael C. Hickey, ed., Competing Voices from the Russian Revolution: Fighting Words (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011), 294–304. See also Vladimir Buldakov, “Freedom, Shortages, Violence: The Origins of the ‘Revolutionary Anti-Jewish Pogrom’ in Russia, 1917–1918,” in Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Po­ grom in Eastern European History, ed. Jonathan Dekel-Chen et al. (Bloomington: Indi­ana University Press, 2010), 82–83. 66

 “Professional´nyi soiuz evreiskikh uchitelei,” Smolenskii vestnik, 18 August 1917, 3.

67

 The congress figured in the platforms of all Jewish parties, and planning for the meeting had been underway since spring 1917. 68

 “Mestnaia khronika,” Smolenskii vestnik, 10 October 1917, 3; “K vyboram v evreiskuiu obshchinu,” Smolenskii vestnik, 9 November 1917, 3.

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electoral commission.69 The General Zionists and Agudas Israel had begun setting the agenda for local Jewish politics. The Contraction of Jewish Political Space under Bolshevik Rule In the first month after the Bolsheviks took power in Petrograd, two factions vied for political authority in Smolensk: a left alliance of Bolsheviks, Left SRs, and anarchists in the city soviet; and an alliance of moderate socialist and lib­ erals in local Provisional Government institutions. In December 1917 the soviet began cracking down on the opposition, but the situation remained fluid into early 1918. In late February, the Minsk Soviet and Communist Party apparatus retreated to Smolensk ahead of the advancing German Army. For the next year, Smolensk served as center of a Western Region (Oblast´) government dominated by Minsk’s hard-line Bolsheviks.70 During this period, Bolshevik steps to silence their socialist critics greatly constricted Jewish political life, while anti-Jewish violence elevated the urgency of communal self-defense. Like the Mensheviks and SRs, most Jewish socialists rejected Lenin’s gov­ ernment and looked to the Constituent Assembly to restore order. November’s Constituent Assembly elections, however, generated little enthusiasm among Smolensk’s Jews. Because Jews made up a small fraction of the population, no Jewish parties offered candidate slates. Instead, the various Jewish parties and factions aligned themselves with Russian parties.71 Of all Smolensk’s Russian party groups, only the Mensheviks and SRs picked local Jews as candidates.72 The SRs alone appealed directly for Jews’ electoral support. Their campaign literature warned “citizen Jews” that the Bolsheviks would destroy the revo­ 69

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, l. 14l.

70

 See E. A. Sikorskii, God 1917-i: Oktiabr´skii perevorot v Smolenske (Smolensk: SGPU, 1997); Michael C. Hickey, “Paper, Memory, and a Good Story: How Smolensk Got Its ‘October,’” Revolutionary Russia 13, 1 (December 2000): 1–19. See also Bemporad, Be­ coming Soviet Jews, 25.

71

 The General Zionists supported the centrist Peoples’ Socialists (Trudoviks), the Jewish Non-Party Democrats endorsed the liberal Kadets, and the Bund and OESRP backed their Russian affiliates—the Mensheviks and SRs. Poalei-Tsion, with no Russian sister party, initially made unrequited overtures to the Bolsheviks about forming an Internationalist Bloc. They then briefly flirted with a local Nationalist Bloc of Lat­ vian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Polish, and Ukrainian socialists. When the Nationalist Bloc endorsed inclusion of the Kadets in a new coalition government, Poalei-Tsion denounced them as bourgeois nationalists and broke off relations. RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 9–9ob.

72

 These were Mikhail Aleksandrovich Davidovich and Solomon Shur for the Menshe­ viks and Solomon Gurevich for the SRs

194 M chael C. H ckey

lution’s achievements. To preserve rights gained in March, Jews must vote for the SRs. Instead of employing class discourse—which had served them well in the Duma elections—the SRs cast the Constituent Assembly elections as a fight to save Jews’ rights as citizens. In the Constituent Assembly elections in Smolensk Province, the moderate socialist parties suffered a humiliating defeat to the Bolsheviks in rural as well as urban districts.73 Civilian turnout was low in urban districts, where nearly half of registered voters abstained. In Smolensk city, this was especially true in the wards where most Jews lived.74 Jews, who had invested heavily in the promise that full citizenship and participation in Russian civic life would bring a better future, appear to have retreated from politics. What seems like apathy may have been political exhaustion, but it also is likely that many Jewish workers abstained because they had become disillusioned with the moderate socialists yet could not sanction casting ballots for the “bourgeois” parties or for the Bolsheviks. In Jewish community politics, momentum continued to shift from the moderate socialists to the General Zionists.75 Concurrent with the Constituent Assembly elections, Smolensk’s Jews prepared to elect a reorganized obshchina council.76 In early November parties picked candidates, but only the General Zionists could assemble a full slate of 36.77 All parties agreed that Bolshevik 73

 In the province as a whole, the Bolsheviks won 362,062 of 658,234 votes; the SRs 250,140; the Kadets 29,000 votes; and the Mensheviks only 7,901. 74

 Of 37,854 civilian voters in Smolensk city, only 17,544 cast ballots. Turnout was 100 percent in the city’s prosperous First Ward, but under 50 percent in wards 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, where most of the city’s Jews lived. Voting patterns suggest that fewer than 2,500 of the 4,650 Jews registered actually voted. “Vybory v Uchreditel´noe Sobra­nie po gorodu Smolensku,” Smolenskii vestnik, 15 November 1917, 3; “K vyboram v Uchre­ ditel´noe Sobranie,” Smolenskii vestnik, 16 November 1917, 3–4; GASO f. 7 (Smolensk Provincial Zemstvo Administration), op. 3, d. 3, l. 42.

75

 Publication in Russia of the British government’s Balfour Declaration supporting a Jewish homeland in Palestine almost certainly bolstered support for the Zionists, although there is little evidence on its reception in Smolensk.

76

 In late October, the obshchina’s reorganization commission drafted guidelines for reforming Jewish communal structures. Among the proposed reforms was recog­ nizing women’s right to vote for and participate in the obshchina council.

77

 The Non-Party Democrats offered 18 candidates and the Agudas-Israel Party 13. Of the socialist parties, the Bund offered 26 candidates and the OESRP 18; Poalei-Tsion could find only 6 people to stand for election. Smolensk city’s four Jewish congre­ gations also offered candidates. The largest local Jewish congregation, the NizhneRiabatskaia Street Mitnagdic Synagogue, ran 11 candidates; the “elite” Kadetskaia Street Mitnagdic Synagogue and the Revzin Prayer house each ran 3. The Hasidic syn­ agogue “Agudas Israel,” established by refugees, ran 5 candidates. While the Bund,

Smolensk’s Jews in War, Revolution, and Civil War

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rule threatened Jewish liberty, and that this raised this importance of obshchina elections.78 In an appeal “To Citizen Jews and Jewesses,” Solomon Gurevich argued that Bolshevik rule put the entire revolution in danger and with it Jews’ equal rights and authority as citizens. Jews had to form “an authoritative Jewish institution for the defense of their rights.… And that institution,” Gure­ vich declared, “must be the obshchina, with the obshchina council at its center, elected by all Jewish residents of Smolensk.”79 All parties, from the religious party Agudas Israel party to the Bund, pledged to revitalize Jewish charities and social services and provide free Jewish schools. The Agudas Israel, the General Zionists, the non-party liberal slate all stressed the importance of Jewish unity. So did the socialists, although they framed their appeals from a class perspective.80 Still, turnout for the 26 November obshchina elections was low: fewer Jews voted than had in Constituent Assembly elections.81 The socialist parties combined won only 14 of 36 obshchina council seats. The General Zionists won 12 seats, and by forming a bloc with the other nonsocialist groups controlled the council.82 Solomon Gurevich subsequently blasted the obshchina leadership as “reactionaries” and “Bolsheviks with yarmulkes.”83 After the obshchina elections, Jewish activists began campaigning for local elections to the All-Russian Jewish Congress (although these elections never took place locally, and the congress itself never met).84 During this campaign Jewish socialists faced a new obstacle: “firm Soviet power.” Local Soviet au­ thorities initially ignored the General Zionists but harassed their socialist rivals, who therefore focused less on the elections than on anti-Bolshevik pro­ tests. Poalei-Tsion activist Mosei Aksel´rod sensed little enthusiasm for the

OESRP, Poalei-Tsion, and Non-Party Democrats electoral slates all included women, the General Zionist and synagogue slates did not. 78

 See, for example, RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, l. 10.

79

 S. Gurevich, “Grazhdane evrei i evreika!” Smolenskii vestnik, 26 November 1917, 3.

80

 Bund leaflets appealed directly “to workers and soldiers,” and the OESRP stressed its candidates’ “long service to workers.” 81

 Only 2,228 of 4,650 registered Jews voted.

82

 Agudas-Israel and Non-Party Democrats each won three seats and each synagogue slate won a single seat. Smolenskii vestnik, 15 December 1917, 2–3; RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, l. 14.

83

 “V Obshchinom sovete,” Smolenskii vestnik, 28 December 1917, 1.

84

 In provinces where elections were held, like nearby Vitebsk, the Zionists and Orthodox religious parties dominated voting.

196 M chael C. H ckey

elections and considered the socialists’ prospects dim.85 Neither Poalei-Tsion nor the other socialists could re-engage their base—the artisans, clerks, and students who had supported them in July. Disaffection with the moderate socialists’ temporizing likely played a role, as did a general sense that political action had failed to protect Jews’ rights. Anti-Jewish violence fed this mood. On 15 November, peasants near Dorogobuzh murdered lumber mill owner Khaim Efros.86 In Smolensk, ru­ mors spread that “bolshevist” soldiers were planning a pogrom.87 A series of incidents in November and December suggested that Soviet authorities tacitly condoned violence against Jews: in late November soldiers raided the Jewish socialist parties’ offices, beat party workers, and seized caches of weapons; on 6 December, soldiers broke up a socialist meeting and ran demonstrators through a gauntlet of blows from rifle butts while calling them “burzhui” and “yids”; on 10 December soldiers broke up another socialist meeting and beat Jewish party leaders.88 Still, Jewish socialists continued holding antiBolshevik protests.89 In late December, Smolensk’s Revolutionary Tribunal struck back by arresting Solomon Shur for slander. Jewish business leaders too found themselves subject to violent intimidation. Red Guards ransacked Jewish merchants’ homes and threatened Naum Shvarts with arrest if he refused to give them “contributions.”90 On 27 December, armed men claiming to represent the soviet broke into the Jewish Public Assembly, beat its members, and stole 5,000 rubles.91 Despite the Soviet government’s condemnations of anti-Semitism, such intimidation signaled that Jews were fair targets. In response, Jewish socialists began discussing formation of self-defense squads, an idea initially rejected by the obshchina’s General Zionist majority bloc.92 85

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 10–10ob., 13, 17–18ob.; Evreiskaia rabochaia khronika, nos. 1–2/23–24 (January 1918): 61.

86

 “Podrobnosti ubiistva Kh. A. Efrosa,” Smolenskii vestnik, 17 November 1917, 2; “K ubiistvu Kh. A. Efrosa,” Smolenskii vestnik, 19 November 1917, 2.

87

 “Slukhi,” Smolenskii vestnik, 10 November 1917, 2.

88

 Soviet authorities denied complicity in the November raids. RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, l. 13ob. On the December incidents, see “Ot komitetov sots. dem. men´shevikov, sots. rev., i Bunda,” Smolenskii vestnik, 8 December 1917, 1; “Mitingi (pis´mo v redaktsiiu),” Smolenskii vestnik, 8 December 1917, 2; S. Gurevich, “O pis´makh,” Smolenskii vestnik, 13 December 1917, 2; “Mestnaia khronika,” Smolenskii vestnik, 13 December 1917, 1.

89

 See Smolenskii vestnik, 19, 23, 26, 28, 30, and 31 December 1917.

90 91

 A. P. Shneerson, “Pis´mo v redaktsiiu,” Smolenskii vestnik, 17 December 1917, 2.

 The Assembly filed a complaint to the District Court, of which no record survives.

92

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 5–5ob.

Smolensk’s Jews in War, Revolution, and Civil War

197

In January and February 1918, worsening unemployment and food short­ ages heightened the threat of anti-Jewish violence. In early January hunger riots broke out in Smolensk Province, and American diplomats reported that peasants blamed food shortages on the Jews.93 On 5 January soldiers, “provoked by hooligans,” routed a distillery and plundered Jewish-owned businesses and homes in Smolensk city.94 A week later, after the Polish Legion rebelled against Soviet power, Polish soldiers terrorized Jews in nearby El´nia.95 Conditions in Smolensk worsened in February: typhus struck local refugee camps, and retreat of military units and Soviet administrative offices from Minsk exacerbated shortages. Again, Jews became the butt of popular “anti-bourgeois” hostility and, at the same time, the target of anti-Soviet anger.96 In some towns, crowds that attacked the local Soviet administration railed against “the Jews.” In others, soldiers called out to crush “anti-Soviet” elements targeted Jews.97 On 16 February, a food riot nearly escalated into a pogrom in Smolensk city’s Jewish quarter.98 On 23 February, Minsk Bolshevik chief Aleksandr Fedorovich Miasnikov placed Smolensk under martial law, liquidated the last Provisional Government institutions, and shut down local opposition newspapers. For days, Smolensk was awash in rumors of a soldierled anti-Jewish pogrom.99 93

 National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 59, 861.00/1757, Summers to Lansing, 2 May 1918. Summers incorrectly reported that Jews controlled local Communist organizations in January 1918 and attributed anti-Jewish sentiment primarily to anger at the Communist regime.

94

 Izvestiia Sovetov rabochikh, soldatskikh i krest´ianskikh deputatov g. Moskvy i Moskovskoi oblasti, 11 January 1918, 3; 23 January 1918, 4.

95

 NARA, RG 59, 861.00/3319, copy of a memorandum from the Netherlands’ Foreign Office. 96

 For expressions of popular anti-bourgeois and anti-Jewish sentiments, see Rabochii mir, 1 October 1918, 37; Russkie vedomosti, 20 March 1918, 3. 97

 Izvestiia Sovetov rabochikh, soldatskikh i krest´ianskikh deputatov g. Moskvy i Moskovskoi oblasti, 1 March 1918, 6; Novaia zhizn´, 12 March 1918, 4; Nash vek, 21 March 1918, 6; Znamia truda, 8 March 1918, 4; Russkie vedomosti, 23 March 1918, 3.

98

 Pravda (8 March 1918, 3) claimed Smolensk’s bourgeoisie tried to provoke hunger rioters into an anti-Soviet uprising and that Red Guards foiled this plot. In the wake of the riot, the city’s bread ration norm was reduced by 25 percent. Novyi den´, 21 (8) February 1918, 3; Znamia truda, 22 February 1918, 3; Nash vek, 20 June 1918, 3l; Prodovol´stvennoe delo, 10 March 1918, 13; Biulleten´ Moskovskogo gorodskogo prodovol´st­ vennogo komiteta, 7 (20) February 1918, 3.

99

 On 24 February 1918, Izvestiia Smolenskogo Soveta’s front page refuted the “counterrev­ olutionary” rumors circulating through the city.

198 M chael C. H ckey

Miasnikov’s imposition of “firm Soviet rule” did little to calm anti-Jewish hostility. As discontent with Communist rule grew in March–April 1918, Jews again were caught between anti-Soviet insurgents and pro-Soviet troops. Mobs that lynched Bolshevik administrators in several small provincial towns also attacked Jews as alleged Communist allies. When the Red Army restored order by force, it arrested and shot “anti-Soviet elements,” including several Jewish “burzhui.” When the moderate socialists won electoral majorities in the two largest provincial towns, Roslavl´ and Viaz´ma, Red Guards not only disbanded the soviets, but also beat Jewish socialist leaders.100 On 5 March in Smolensk, soldiers fired into a crowd at the city bazaar and prevented a food riot from escalating into a pogrom. Miasnikov blamed the incident on “anti-Soviet agitators” and promised “ruthless struggle against all enemies of the revolutionary people.”101 But clashes between soldiers and hungry crowds continued, and by mid-April rumors spread that soldiers soon would turn against the Jews.102 In response to this violence, the Smolensk obshchina finally endorsed the Jewish socialists’ call for creation of self-defense units. On 16 April the Bundist soldier Leivik Hodis, representing the obshchina, warned city soviet leaders that reactionary “Black Hundreds” were “calling for Jewish blood and threatening Jewish neighborhoods.” Hodis asked that the soviet arm Jewish self-defense units, but was told that self-defense was unnecessary, since the Red Army would protect Jews. In early May Hodis petitioned the soviet for approval of a local section of the Union of Jewish Soldiers, a non-party asso­ ciation to defend “the life, honor, and dignity of the Jewish population.” For weeks, the local soviet administration delayed approval of the union’s charter.103 In mid-May, after five days of hunger riots in which soldiers had clashed with protestors, a pogrom finally erupted in Smolensk. On 13 and 14 May, a crowd in the largely Jewish Zadneprov´e district looted market stalls and shops and beat dozens of petty traders. According to the victims, soldiers did 100

 Vpered!, 19 April 1918, 2; 20 April 1918, 3; 24 April 1918, 4; 28 April 1918, 4; 3 May 1918, 4; Novaia zhizn´, 15 May 1918, 4; Novaia zaria, 22 April 1918, 35; 1 May 1918, 25; 18 June 1918, 69–78; and Vecherniaia zvezda, 3 April 1918, 2. See also Izvestiia Ispolnitel´nogo komiteta Sovetov Zapadnoi oblasti i Smolenskogo Soveta rabochikh, soldatskikh, i krest´ianskikh deputatov, 8 August 1918, 1, 3.

101

 Izvestiia Smolenskogo Soveta, 6 March 1918, 1; Znamia truda, 8 March 1918, 4; Pravda, 8 March 1918, 3.

102

 Novyi den´, 18 April 1918, 3; 21 April 1918, 4; Vpered!, 19 April 1918, 2; 23 April 1918, 3.

103

 Biulleten´ soveta Smolenskoi еvreiskoi оbshchiny, 1 August 1918, 3–4; RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 42–43ob.

Smolensk’s Jews in War, Revolution, and Civil War

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nothing to stop the riot. Rumors spread that Jews would retaliate by burning Orthodox churches, but that soldiers would save the churches by “slaughtering all the Jews.” On 15 May two units of Red Army soldiers marched through the city’s streets demanding expulsion of Jews from local leadership posts.104 Again the obshchina asked the city soviet to arm Jewish self-defense units. “Black Hundreds leaders,” they insisted, would “think twice if they knew … that the Jewish population has armed anti-pogrom units.”105 Instead of considering this request, on 17 May the city soviet arrested former Smolensk mayor Boris Rachinskii for allegedly fomenting the pogrom. Jewish leaders protested that Rachinskii, a long-time Jewish ally, was innocent. Soviet au­ thorities subsequently released Rachinskii, but flatly refused to arm Jewish self-defense units.106 By late spring 1918, the obshchina had little choice but to seek accommoda­ tion with the Soviet government if it intended to protect Jewish schools and social services. The Soviet administration had frozen Jewish charities’ assets, expropriated their property, and imposed special taxes.107 This made the obshchina the only viable vehicle for the provision of aid to the community, which mandated that it cooperate with the regime. For its part the city soviet administration, which blocked the obshchina from taking on most new projects, did recognize the communal administration’s utility in dealing with Jewish refugees.108 The refugee issue had reemerged with the March 1918 BrestLitovsk peace treaty, under which Germany allowed repatriation of evacuees to the Polish, Lithuanian, and Belorussian territories it had claimed from Russia. The Germans initially delayed repatriation of Jews, and thousands of Jewish families who had been evacuated out of the war zone in 1915 and 1916 now waited for “reevacuation” from Russia. In early May 1918, the Smolensk Soviet ceded responsibility for all Jewish reevacuees passing through the province to the Jewish obshchina, which coordinated relief efforts well into 1919.109 104

 According to some sources, a latter investigation determined that anti-Semitic Red Army instructors had planned both the pogrom and the demonstration. I have yet to find local documents that confirm this. See Buldakov, “Freedom, Shortages, Violence,” 77, 85.

105

 Biulleten´ soveta Smolenskoi еvreiskoi оbshchiny, 1 August 1918, 4.

106

 Ibid., 3–4; RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, l. 23.

107

 Izvestiia Оbshchestva okhraneniia zdrov´ia еvreiskogo naseleniia, March 1919, 18–19; Biulleten´ soveta Smolenskoi еvreiskoi оbshchiny, 1 August 1918, 5.

108

 Izvestiia Оbshchestva okhraneniia zdrov´ia еvreiskogo naseleniia, March 1919, 19.

109

 Shcherov, Migratsionnaia politika, 92–93; GASO f. r-19, op. 1, d. 1273, l. 101; GASO f. r-13, op. 1, dd. 41–43, 138; Biulleten´ soveta Smolenskoi еvreiskoi оbshchiny, 1 August

200 M chael C. H ckey

In regard to Jewish communal institutions, as in many other spheres, the Smolensk Soviet often dragged its feet in implementing policies mandated by Moscow. Soviet law prohibited religious instruction in schools, and the central government ordered that local education commissariats assume control over religious schools. In Smolensk, Communist officials vociferously condemned the influence of Jewish religious schools and their teachers, but left obshchinaadministered schools untouched until late summer 1919. They derided “back­ ward” traditions but did nothing to close obshchina-administered ritual baths and kosher slaughterhouses until late 1919. Despite desperate grain shortages, local officials authorized the obshchina to distribute ration cards for Passover matzo in March 1919.110 And although Moscow ordered dissolution of “bour­ geois” Jewish communal institutions in June 1919, in Smolensk the order was not promulgated until 1922.111 Like the obshchina and its institutions, the Jewish socialist parties had not disappeared. The Bund actually enjoyed a political resurgence along with the Russian socialist parties in spring 1918, as workers expressed dissatisfaction with Bolshevik rule. In April elections, Bundists won soviet seats in Smolensk city and in the province’s two largest towns, Roslavl´ and Viaz´ma. PoaleiTsion actually increased its membership in several towns, and the party opened several new Jewish workers’ clubs.112 But like the obshchina, the Jewish socialist parties had to consider whether to seek accommodation with the Soviet state. Initially, most Jewish socialists rejected work in the Soviet administration as collaboration with the Communists. Only the most militant elements among the Bundists and Poalei-Tsionists were willing to split with their parties’ leadership, form new “communist” groups, and seek positions in the new regime.113 Some Jewish socialists, however, sought a compromise posi­ tion: although they opposed the Bolsheviks, they supported Soviet power, 1918, 2–3; GASO f. r-194, op. 1, d. 73; and GASO f. r-13, op. 1, d. 15, ll. 6–11ob.; Izvestiia Оbshchestva okhraneniia zdrov´ia еvreiskogo naseleniia, March 1919, 19 and June–July 1919, 17. 110

 Izvestiia Smolenskogo gubernskogo soveta rabochikh, soldatskikh i krest´ianskikh deputatov, 13 March 1919, 4. 111

 Smolensk sources refer to the obshchina until 1922, when it was replaced by a Communist-dominated Jewish Public Committee (Evobshchestkom).

112

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 23, 33–33ob., 42–43ob.; d. 385, ll. 1, 2, 5, 13–13ob.; d. 387, ll. 1–6ob.; d. 388, ll. 1–3; GASO f. r-13, op. 1, d. 15, ll. 19–19ob.; Evreiskaia rabochaia khronika, nos. 1–2/23–24 (January 1918): 61; nos. 3–4/25–26 (March 1918): 32, 55, 61. 113

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 20–21ob.; Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics, chap. 4.

Smolensk’s Jews in War, Revolution, and Civil War

201

and therefore sought to enter the administration to temper the regime’s policies from within. The majority of Smolensk’s Poalei-Tsion group took this position.114 In spring 1918, Stalin’s Commissariat for Nationality Affairs or­ dered creation of regional Jewish affairs sub-commissariats, but local soviets could find few Jewish Communists willing to serve in these departments. The first generation of Soviet Jewish agencies would have to depend on members of the Jewish socialist parties for staff. In Smolensk, this meant members of the local Poalei-Tsion group. For several months in 1918, Smolensk’s Poalei-Tsion group steered this middle course. At a regional soviet congress in April 1918, the local Poalei-Tsion group succeeded in winning a place on the Western Region Soviet Executive Committee (Obliskomzap).115 The group had only 4 of the 279 congress dele­ gates, but, as Moisei Aksel´rod later observed, the “Bolshevik bosses” were so busy “threatening terror against the [SR and Menshevik] opposition” that they paid little attention to Poalei-Tsion.116 Poalei-Tsion delegates pledged to support Soviet power. “For good or for bad,” delegate Shmuel Ger declared, “but for Soviet power.” But they also excoriated the Communists for acting, as Ger put it, “like a typical police state,” in particular by rejecting the no­tion of Jewish self-defense. “The Communists,” Ger charged, “are fighting against the people’s self-activity and will not permit the Jewish proletariat to arm itself.” He concluded that “the working class will sober up from the Com­ munist poison… For this reason, we will enter the soviet, so that we can work whenever possible to lead workers along a new path.” On the heels of these criticisms, the Communists moved to tighten control over the congress. Still, the congress voted to give Poalei-Tsion a seat on the Obliskomzap. Participation in the local Soviet administration put the Smolensk PoaleiTsion group at odds with the party’s central leadership. Shmuel Ger took up directorship of Smolensk’s Jewish affairs sub-commissariat, with Aksel´rod as his secretary and six other Poalei-Tsion members on staff. But the Poalei-Tsion Main Committee ordered that he resign his state post.117 His refusal led to heated exchanges between the local party cell and the center.118 In May 1918, a Poalei-Tsion regional conference in Vitebsk called on Ger and Aksel´rod to resign from the sub-commissariat. Both complied, but other party members 114

 GANISO f. 3, op. 1, d. 213, l. 18.

115

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 34–34ob.

116  All quotations in this paragraph are from RGASPI 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 24–26. See also 2-i s˝ezd sovetov Zapadnoi оblasti (Smolensk, 1918). 117 118

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 27–27ob., 32, 34–35ob.

 Ibid., ll. 36–36ob., 38; GANISO f. 3, op. 1, d. 213, l. 20.

202 M chael C. H ckey

remained on the agency’s staff.119 Other circumstances made it even more difficult for Jewish socialists to balance service in the Soviet administration with criticism of the Bolsheviks. In mid-June 1918 the Smolensk Cheka arrested several socialist union leaders, including Jewish party leaders, after local trade unionists came out to protest desperate food shortages.120 In July 1918, following Left SR-led uprisings in several cities, Smolensk’s Communists demanded the expulsion of moderate socialists from the soviets.121 Concurrent to this new wave of political repression, anti-Soviet forces in Ukraine began carrying out bloody pogroms. As Zvi Gitelman has pointed out, this left Jewish socialists with “the dilemma of one alternative.”122 The goal of defending Jews became intertwined with defending Soviet power, which required seeking accommodation with the Communists. In many cities, Jews enrolled in the new Communist factions within the Jewish socialist parties.123 Poalei-Tsion was the only Jewish socialist party to formally split over accom­

119

 Biulleten´ soveta Smolenskoi еvreiskoi оbshchiny, 1 August 1918, 4.

120

 On the food crisis in Smolensk, see Biulleten´ Moskovskogo gorodskogo prodovol´stven­ nogo komiteta, 13 June 1918, 2; 11 July 1918, 4; Protokoly 1-go s˝ezda predsedatelei gubernskikh sovetov i zavedyvaiushchikh gubernskimi otdelami upravleniia (Moscow, 1918), 50; Narodnoe khoziaistvo, December 1918, 62–67. On repression of socialist activists, see Delo naroda, 21 June 1918, 4; Novoe delo naroda, 28 June 1918, 4; Iskra, 28 June 1918, 2. 121

 Petrogradskaia Pravda, 10 July 1918, 2, 4. In Smolensk, Left SRs remained in the local soviets until February 1919, by which time most of their leaders had renounced the party and joined the Communists, the Revolutionary Communist Party (a Left SR splinter faction), or the Union of SR-Maximalists. Izvestiia Smolenskogo Gubernskogo Ispolnitel´nogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh, Soldatskikh i Krest´ianskikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 12 February 1919, 3; Izvestiia Smolenskogo Ispolnitel´nogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh i Krasnoarmeiskikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 26 February 1919, 4. 122  Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 64–71; V. G. Tan-Bogoraz, “Evreiskoe mestechko v revoliutsii,” in Evreiskoe mestechko v revoliutsii: Ocherki (Moscow–Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo, 1926), 11; Abramson, A Prayer for the Government, chap. 4; Budnitskii, Russian Jews, chap. 6. 123

 Communist factions were formed within the Bund, OESRP, and Poalei-Tsion in 1918. When the Red Army reoccupied Minsk after Germany’s November 1918 surren­ der, Belorussian Communist-Bund factions joined in a Jewish Communist Party (EKP). Smolensk’s Bund organization debated, then rejected, merger with the EKP. The EKP dissolved in March 1919 and was replaced by the Belorussian Komfarband (the Komunistisher farband fun Veisrusland, Yiddish for the Communist Alliance of Belorussia and Lithuania). In 1920, Russian and Belorussian Communist-OESRP factions merged with the Jewish-Communist Komfarband. Some Belorussian PoaleiTsion groups formed their own Jewish Communist Party (EKOP).

Smolensk’s Jews in War, Revolution, and Civil War

203

modation with the Communists in Smolensk: in Smolensk city more than a third of Poalei-Tsion members joined the party’s new Communist faction.124 The split in Poalei-Tsion came at a point when the party’s Smolensk groups already were facing extreme pressure from the Communists. Locally, PoaleiTsion activists became targets of Red Terror after the attempt on Lenin’s life in August 1918. In September, Smolensk activist R. Khazanov wrote that “there is a sense that we have drawn the attention of the ‘hammer’ and that it will fall on us swiftly.”125 Poalei-Tsion members found themselves facing expulsion from Smolensk’s Commissariat of Nationalities when Stalin called for a purge of all non-Communists from the agency’s provincial administration. The question became moot when the Smolensk Soviet dissolved the Jewish subcommissariat as a “nationalist outfit.” Local Poalei-Tsion activists complained this left Jewish workers with no voice in local government.126 After visiting Smolensk, Communist Party Jewish “expert” Samuil Khaimovich Agurskii insisted the province needed neither a Jewish commissariat nor a Communist Party Jewish Section (Evsektsiia), because “there was no Jewish labor in Smo­ lensk among whom one would have needed to work, and on whom such an agency would have been based.”127 Agurskii’s comment reflects the Communists’ reluctance to see Jewish artisans as workers as well their tendency to see Jews as non-productive, class alien elements. Jewish workers’ responses to economic collapse and mass unemployment during the Civil War probably fed these prejudices. When most of the region’s small factories and workshops closed, many unem­ ployed Jews turned to petty trade to support their families.128 This left them vulnerable to Soviet policies aimed at “petty-bourgeois elements.” Until fall 1918, the Smolensk Soviet had exempted petty traders from special taxes le­ vied against the old Jewish elite (whose homes they also confiscated).129 In fall, though, the soviet also began treating petty traders—including workers124

 A Communist Poalei-Tsion faction also was formed in the Stodilishche shtetl. RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 388, l. 7; d. 384, l. 46. 125

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, l. 46ob.

126

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 388, l. 7ob.

127

 S. Augurskii, Di Oktyabr-Revolutsie in Vaysrusland (Minsk, 1927), 294, as quoted in Solomon Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1951), 109. See also RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 388, ll. 9–9ob.

128

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 385, ll. 10ob.–11; Izvestiia Vysshego Soveta Narodnogo Kho­ ziaistva, 24 October 1918, 4.

129

 The Smolensk Soviet, for example, fined banker Antsel Gil´man 100,000 rubles for resisting expropriation of his house, and the Smolensk Cheka fined leather factory owner Fridson 60,000 rubles on similar grounds. Severnaia kommuna, 21 September

204 M chael C. H ckey

turned-traders—as “exploiters.” Jewish petty traders bore the local brunt of the Soviet government’s 31 October 1918 “extraordinary tax” on bourgeois property.130 In November 1918, local Communist trade union officials de­ manded action against the “speculators and economic parasites” whose tables and stalls lined the city bazaar. When the new regime’s gendarmes—the Cheka—began arresting these “speculators,” it generally targeted Jews. In the first week of September 1918 alone, the Smolensk Cheka arrested eight Jews for speculation.131 Jews arrested as speculators typically paid fines, were deprived of voting rights, and then released; fines on Jews accounted for nearly 75 percent of all “contributions” the Cheka collected from the local “bourgeoisie” in late 1918 and early 1919.132 Jews constituted a minute fraction of people imprisoned or shot by the Smolensk Cheka during the Civil War (.02 percent). Jews convicted for participation in alleged counterrevolutionary plots, however, faced almost certain execution in 1918–21.133 Again in fall 1918, the region’s Jews found themselves caught between persecution as suspected anti-Soviet elements and punishment as alleged sup­ 1918, 3; Zapadnaia kommuna, 15 December 1918, 2; Smolensk Archives, roll 26, file WKP 206 (materials on El´nia in 1919), pp. 36–37. 130

 Izvestiia Zapadnoi kommuny i Smolenskogo Soveta rabochikh, soldatskikh i krest´ianskikh deputatov, 1 November 1918, 2; Zapadnaia kommuna, 14 November 1918, 4; Izvestiia Smolenskogo Gubernskogo Revoliutsionnogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh, Soldatskikh, i Krestian´skikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 15 January 1919, 3, 4; 16 January 1919, 4. See also Vestnik Narodnogo komissariata torgovli i promyshlennosti, November 1919, 58. 131

 For example, shopkeeper Meer Liberman and his wife Tsira, arrested as “big spec­ ulators,” were fined 200,000 rubles; the grocer Ore-Leizar Chernovich, arrested on similar charges, was fined 50,000 rubles. Zapadnaia kommuna, 30 November 1918, 2; Petrogradskaia Pravda, 21 November 1918, 4; Ezhenedel´nik Chrezvychainykh komissii po bor´be s kontr-revoliutsiei i spekuliatsiei, 20 October 1918, 24–26; Izvestiia Ispolnitel´nogo komiteta Sovetov Zapadnoi oblasti i Smolenskogo Soveta rabochikh, soldatskikh i krest´ianskikh deputatov, 8 August 1918, 3.

132

 See Vecher Moskvy, 20 October 1918, 4

133

 Jews accounted for at least 26 of the 1,231 people repressed in Smolensk in 1918–21. Nine were shot: three for speculation, and six for alleged participation in counter­ revolutionary plots. Figures based on Kniga pamiati zhertv politicheskikh repressii: Smolenskii martirolog, 7 vols. (Smolensk: Smolenskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii universitet, 2003–07); Ezhenedel´nik Chrezvychainykh komissii po bor´be s kontr-revoliutsiei i spekuliatsiei, 20 October 1918, 24–26; Severnaia kommuna, 20 September 1918, 3; Izvestiia Zapadnoi kommuny i Smolenskogo Soveta rabochikh, soldatskikh i krest´ianskikh deputatov, 18 September 1918, 2; 1 October 1918, 4; Izvestiia Smolenskogo Gubernskogo Ispolnitel´nogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh, Soldatskikh i Krest´ianskikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 31 January 1919, 4; Izvestiia Smolenskogo Ispolnitel´nogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh i Kras­ noarmeiskikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 24 March 1919, 4; Smolensk Archives, roll 31, file WKP 271 (Smolensk Cheka files, 1921), p. 52ob.

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porters of Soviet power. For example, in October 1918 the Committee of Poor Peasants in the village of Dubrokriansk demanded that local authorities shoot all economic parasites and “keep watch for Jewish peddlers in particular.”134 And when in October and November anti-Communist uprisings erupted in several districts, insurgents meted out special punishment to Jews as symbols of Bolshevik power. In Gzhatsk, rebels mutilated and displayed the bodies of three murdered Jews.135 The wave of anti-Soviet rebellions peaked just after the Great War ground to an end. A few weeks later the Red Army reoccupied Belorussia, with considerable consequences for Smolensk’s Jews. In early 1919, Minsk was declared the capital of a new Belorussian Soviet Republic that briefly included Smolensk Province. Subsequent border revi­ sions reshaped Smolensk’s Jewish population, making it more rural and more traditionally Orthodox. In July 1919, Smolensk absorbed the Mstislavl’ district (previously in Mogilev Province), which included several large shtetls.136 When formation of the Belorussian Soviet Republic led to war with Po­ land, Smolensk again became a staging area for military operations, which exacerbated shortages and further degraded living conditions.137 At the same time, Soviet state nationalization of trade and industrial enterprises meant state requisition of Smolensk’s few remaining Jewish-owned pharmacies, tai­ lor shops, stores, and banks. Those Jewish business owners who had not yet emigrated fell into grinding poverty, unable to feed their families on stateprovided “capitalist rations.”138 134

 Vechernie Izvestiia Moskovskogo Soveta rabochikh i krasnoarmeiskikh deputatov, 16 Octo­ ber 1918, 4.

135  Izvestiia Zapadnoi kommuny i Smolenskogo Soveta rabochikh, soldatskikh i krest´ianskikh deputatov, 20 November 1918, 2; 22 November 1918, 1; 26 November 1918, 2; Derevenskaia kommuna, 26 November 1918, 1; Petrogradskaia Pravda, 23 November 1918, 3; 24 November 1918, 6; Volia truda, 22 November 1918, 3; Znamia trudovoi kommuny, 12 November 1918, 6. 136

 This included Mstislavl´ (removed from Smolensk Province in 1920), and Shumiachi, Khislavichi, Monastyrshchina, Liubovichi, and Rudnia (which subsequently remained in Smolensk province).

137

 Izvestiia Smolenskogo Gubernskogo Ispolnitel´nogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh i Krasno­ armeiskikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 22 June 1919, 3l; 5 July 1919, 3; Smolensk Archives, roll 2, file WKP 6 (records of the Smolensk Provincial Committee of the Communist Party, 1920), p. 11; GASO f. r-13, op. 1, d. 40.

138

 In fall 1918, adults in Smolensk city were assigned to labor-based rations categories that were graduated to provide the most food to manual laborers and the least food to “capitalists.” The 65 percent of the population that fell into the “bottom” two categories (those performing light or no physical labor, and capitalists) included most of the Jew­ ish population. Izvestiia Zapadnoi kommuny i Smolenskogo Soveta rabochikh, soldatskikh i krest´ianskikh deputatov, l7 November 1918, 2; Izvestiia Smolenskogo Gubernskogo

206 M chael C. H ckey

During the Polish War, new waves of pogroms again pushed Jewish social­ ists to seek accommodation with the Communists. In spring 1919, Smolensk’s Poalei-Tsion and Bund reorganized on “a Soviet platform.” Poalei-Tsion, in an echo of Hodis’s campaign the previous spring, petitioned Smolensk’s mili­ tary commissar to form Jewish battalions, but was turned down. In May, the party’s main activists, encouraged by Communist officials, volunteered for Red Army duty.139 Activists like Moisei Aksel´rod considered Red Army service their only means of fighting pogromshchiki (pogromists). At the same time, mobilization weakened the local Poalei-Tsion’s ranks, disrupting its once vigorous youth groups.140 Poalei-Tsion labor organizations also suffered, but for other reasons. Like the Bund, Poalei-Tsion had influence in several unions. In December 1918, it organized a Jewish Workers’ Committee with representatives from sev­ eral unions and cooperatives. Bundists, Mensheviks, and SRs also formed an Independent Union of Workers’ Cooperatives.141 While the Communists still ceded Jewish cultural work to socialists, they would no longer tolerate non-Communist labor organizations. In January 1919, the Smolensk Soviet dissolved Needle Shop’s administrative board, replaced it with a proCommunist leadership, and purged the union of oppositionists. Those refus­ ing to join the reorganized union were banned from the needle trades.142 Similar reorganizations and purges took place among printers, leather Revoliutsionnogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh, Soldatskikh i Krestian´skikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 15 January 1919, 4; Izvestiia Smolenskogo Gubernskogo Ispolnitel´nogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh, Soldatskikh i Krest´ianskikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 5 February 1919, 4; Izvestiia Smolenskogo Ispolnitel´nogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh i Krasnoarmeiskikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 9 April 1919, 1; 10 April 1919, 1. 139

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 53–59; Izvestiia Smolenskogo Gubernskogo Ispolnitel´nogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh i Krasnoarmeiskikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 1 June 1919, 3–4; GANISO f. 3, op. 1., d. 213, ll. 7–11, 18, 21–23.

140

 Izvestiia Smolenskogo Gubernskogo Revoliutsionnogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh, Soldat­ skikh i Krestian´skikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 24 January 1919, 4; 30 January 1919, 3; Izvestiia Smolenskogo Gubernskogo Ispolnitel´nogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh, Soldatskikh i Krest´ianskikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 22 February 1919, 4; Izvestiia Smolenskogo Ispolnitel´nogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh i Krasnoarmeiskikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 17 May 1919, 4; 11 June 1919, 4; 21 June 1919, 4; and 5 July 1919, 3. 141

 Zapadnaia kommuna, 1 December 1918, 2.

142

 Zapadnaia kommuna, 13 December 1918, 2; Izvestiia Smolenskogo Gubernskogo Revoliu­ tsionnogo komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh, Soldatskikh, i Krestian´skikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 5 January 1919, 4; 11 January 1919, 11; 19 January 1919, 3; Izvestiia Smolenskogo Gubernskogo Ispolnitel´nogo Komiteta i Soveta Rabochikh, Soldatskikh i Krest´ianskikh Deputatov goroda Smolenska, 11 February 1919, 2; 13 February 1919, 3; 18 February 1919, 2.

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workers, trade and chancellery clerks, and state employees—all unions with Jewish memberships—as well as in the City Trade Union Council and Union of Independent Workers’ Cooperatives.143 Generally, Smolensk’s Communists showed little positive interest in Jews. In spring 1919, the city party committee formed a small Evsektsiia (Jewish Section). The provincial party committee, however, refused to do so: it ruled that a Evsektsiia was unnecessary because most Jewish workers locally spoke Russian and because doing so would aggravate anti-Semitism.144 Socialist critics seized on the Communists’ ambivalence. When a Communist speaker at an anti-pogrom rally claimed the Jewish toilers could end pogroms by rejecting Zionism and joining the Russian proletariat in the Communist Party, the Bundist Mikhail Davidovich—no Zionist himself—shouted that the Communists cared nothing for Jews. How could Jews invest faith in the Russian masses, he asked, when Russian workers and Red Army soldiers joined in pogroms?145 In early 1919, local Communists left “Jewish work,” their term for work among the Jewish population, to pro-Soviet members of the Jewish socialist parties.146 Bundist Leivik Hodis served in the province’s public education department, Bundist Moisei Aleksandrovich Abezgauz directed its national minorities’ sub-department, and Moisei Aksel´rod of Poalei-Tsion followed Bundist Movshe Keibovich Bezdanskii as head of the sub-department’s Jewish Section.147 In July 1919, though, the Communist Party’s provincial committee began purging socialists—including “pro-Soviet” socialists—from state agencies.148 On 25 August 1919, it reprimanded local party committees for tolerating Poalei-Tsionists, members of a “nationalist Zionist organization,” 143

 GANISO f. 3, op. 1, d. 213, l. 23; Z. Galili and A. Nenarokov, eds., Mensheviki v 1919– 1920 gg. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2000), 418, 501, 505, 547, 823; Z. Galili and A. Nenarokov, eds., Mensheviki v 1921–1922 gg. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2002), 123, 126–30; Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, 1 February 1921, 16; 5 April 1921, 15; 19 June 1921 13; and 1 October 1921, 13–14.

144

 GANISO f. 3, op. 1, d. 213, l. 17; Smolensk Archives WKP 6, pp. 60ob., 67–67ob. On 21 October 1920, the Gubkom finally created an Evsektsiia, which absorbed the Smolensk City Evsektsiia (GANISO f. 3, op. 1, d. 503, l. 1). 145

 Zapadnaia kommuna, 17 December 1918, 2.

146

 Few Jewish Communists locally could speak Yiddish or had any deep knowledge of Jewish literature and culture, a phenomenon well documented in the secondary literature. For a striking example, see Zapadnaia kommuna, 12 December 1918, 2. 147

 Unpaginated protocols of the Collegium of the Sub-Department for National Minorities for mid-1919, in GASO f. r-19, op. 1, d. 474. See also RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 62–62 ob.

148

 RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 384, ll. 74–75ob.

208 M chael C. H ckey

in local posts.149 Despite repression, local Poalei-Tsion and Bund committees urged Jews to support Soviet power “in the name of the shining triumph of socialism.”150 The last open corners of Jewish political space, though, were rapidly disappearing: in September 1919, Smolensk’s newspaper Rabochii put´ stopped announcing Poalei-Tsion meetings. Poalei-Tsion leaders insisted that theirs was a pro-Soviet party that condemned “bourgeois and petty-bourgeois counter-revolutionaries.”151 Their plea fell on deaf ears. In fall 1919, the Smolensk provincial soviet, following the Center’s direc­ tives, announced that state offices would employ only Communists and people with no party affiliations. Most Poalei-Tsion and Bund government employees quit their parties. Many then applied for Communist Party candidacy.152 Local Poalei-Tsion cells functioned into the early 1920s, but were drained of experienced members.153 The Smolensk Bund disbanded in March 1921. Some Bundists remained active Mensheviks, a few continued underground activities, and most eventually abandoned political activism. After the Civil War, the most serious challenge to the Communists on Smolensk’s Jewish Street came from a new generation of activists, the Zionist Socialist Pioneer movement Gekholuts. Local Soviet Jewish Work During the Civil War, Smolensk’s small Communist Party organization faced a perpetual cadre shortage. Its few able administrators found that military tasks overwhelmed their civilian duties, particularly during the Polish War. Annexation of the Mstislavl´ district added to the complexity of Jewish work, but the local Communist leadership considered such work a poor expenditure of scarce resources.154 The local Soviet institution that engaged most extensively in Jewish work was the provincial education department, which in May 1919 established a nationalities sub-department with a Jewish Section staffed 149

 GANISO f. 3, op. 1, d. 213, l. 13.

150

 Ibid., ll. 7, 8.

151

 Ibid., ll. 12, 18–23; Tat´iana S. Lyzlova, “Realizatsiia national´noi politiki Sovetskoi vlasti v otnoshenii evreiskogo naseleniia 1917–1938 gg. (na materialakh Smolenskoi oblasti)” (Candidate’s diss., Smolenskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii universitet, 1994), 104; GASO f. r-13, op. 1, d. 37, l. 5.

152

 Rabochii put´, 11 September 1919, 1–2.

153

 See RGASPI f. 272, op. 1, d. 386, ll. 18–21.

154

 Smolensk Archives, roll 2, file WKP 7 (records of the Smolensk Provincial Commit­ tee of the Communist Party, 1920), pp. 27–28; WKP 6, pp. 57–61, 67, 80, 82, 82ob., and passim.

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mainly by Bundists and Poalei-Tsionists.155 The Jewish Section’s primary con­ cern was the “absence of Jewish educational institutions and instructors in the city and shtetls.”156 Smolensk, of course, had several Jewish schools. But they were not under control of Soviet officials, who considered the teachers purveyors of a hostile, class-alien culture. In spring 1919, two Jewish school conferences convened in Smolensk without state supervision: one represented teachers and parents from religious schools, the other from secular schools. The soviet education department denounced the religious school conference as a front for “bourgeois Zionists” and “counterrevolutionary” Hasidic clerics. It heaped scorn on the secular conference for endorsing study in Hebrew, the language favored by clerics and burzhui, instead of Yiddish, the language of the Jewish proletariat. Building proletarian cultural hegemony required stamping out such bourgeois schools.157 In July 1919, the education department’s Jewish Section claimed authority over all Jewish schools, playgrounds, workers’ clubs, and adult education courses.158 It dispatched inspectors and instructors to report on conditions and guide work at such institutions. Schools made up its largest domain: in 1919, two school inspectors oversaw 16 Jewish schools, located in 12 towns and serving some 2300 students.159 Their reports highlight persistent short­ ages of space, trained personnel, and basic supplies. Schools in several large shtetls had no books or pencils and no heat in the winter. Teachers were in short supply, poorly trained, and led by incompetent administrators.160 Schools were overcrowded: Mstislavl, with 10,000 Jews, had only one Jewish school. Smolensk city, with 15,000 Jews, had two schools, one of which was so overcrowded that children had to attend in shifts. Jewish children in the Zadneprov´e district had to walk across the city for lack of a neighborhood facility.161 155  GASO f. r-19, op. 1, d. 474, unpaginated protocol of the 20 May 1919 conference of representatives of national minorities. 156

 Ibid., d. 477, l. 77.

157

 Ibid., ll. 77ob., 82.

158

 Ibid., d. 474, un-paginated protocols for 12 July 1919 and 2 September 1919.

159

 Ibid., d. 477, l. 102ob.

160

 Ibid., ll. 22–27; Vladislav Kononov, “Politizatsiia obrazovaniia v Sovetskoi shkole v nachale 20-x gg.,” Smolenskii krai, no. 7–8 (2000): 10–18; O. V. Kozlov, “Politicheskoe prosveshchenie: Likbez i kul´turno-massovaia rabota,” in Ot revoliutsii k revoliutsii: Liudi. Sobytiia. Mneniia (Smolensk: Smolenskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii uni­ versitet, 2000), 84–172.

161

 GASO f. r-19, op. 1, d. 477, Ibid., l. 80ob.

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The education department’s Jewish Section considered most Jewish schoolteachers politically unreliable. An August 1919 report complained that Hasidic clerics and “bourgeois” Zionists worked in several Smolensk city schools, and that “in the province matters are even worse.”162 In September 1919, the local Cheka stepped up repression of Jewish religious schools. The Jewish Section made efforts to attract new teachers, but with limited results.163 Making matters worse, in late 1919 it lost key cadres to the Red Army and to “more pressing” Party work.164 In 1920, the education department’s Jewish Section was hamstrung not only by shortages of school supplies and politically-sound teachers, but also by fierce institutional competition for resources—in particular from the Western Front military staff, which seized buildings of several Jewish institutions.165 In several towns, the army seized school buildings: a military unit claimed Rudnia’s Jewish school and kindergarten building in March 1920; in Mstislavl´, soldiers trashed the Jewish school, then occupied the building.166 If the state of Jewish schools was bad, that of preschools was even worse.167 Besides shortages, preschools and kindergartens faced bureaucratic indifference. At Smolensk’s Nikol´skaia Street Jewish Kindergarten, in the Zadneprov´e district, three staff members cared for forty refugee children in a filthy, unfurnished room without supplies. The children suffered from malnutrition, so the staff started a breakfast program. The city’s emergency housing commission, however, cut off funds to the kindergarten because it had not obtained necessary permits to serve food. Throughout summer 1919, the housing commission ignored requests to move the kindergarten to a larger facility. Then, on 2 September, the commission suddenly transferred the kindergarten to a smaller, filthier room. In December the Jewish Section finally moved the kindergarten to a better site in the city center.168 Jewish refugee children in Smolensk posed a special problem for the Jewish Section. In spring 1919, parents in the Zadneprov´e district lobbied for creation of a refugee kindergarten and orphanage, but the city soviet 162

 Ibid., 77ob., 82ob.

163

 Ibid., ll. 74, 162–162ob.

164

 Ibid., d. 474, protocol of 11 December 1919; d. 1273, ll. 59, 61.

165  Ibid., d. 477, l. 111ob.; d. 1247, l. 20. In early 1920 there were nearly 100,000 Red Army soldiers barracked in Smolensk Province. 166

 Ibid., ll. 102, 114.

167

 Ibid., l. 78.

168

 Ibid., d. 474, ll. 68, 80, 85–85ob., and unpaginated protocol dated 10 December 1919; d. 1273, l. 102.

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rejected the idea. When the provincial soviet intervened and ordered that the city housing commission provide necessary facilities, the commission did nothing.169 In summer the Jewish Section reminded the commission that the refugees were workers’ children, and that calls for their aid came from Jewish proletarians.170 The commission remained unmoved. When the Jewish obshchina offered a house on Nemetskaia Street for an orphanage and kindergarten, the commission refused to authorize the arrangement.171 In November 1919, the problem became more complex. Nearly 200 more Jewish children, mostly orphans, were evacuated to Smolensk after a pogrom in Tambov and placed in a dilapidated barrack in Zadneprov´e. The city so­ cial welfare department described their situation as “catastrophic” and de­ manded that the education department find them safe housing.172 The Jewish Section obtained temporary housing for some, but over a hundred children remained in the barracks. When typhus spread through the barracks in Janu­ ary 1920, Smolensk’s health department ordered the children’s immediate relocation. The Jewish Section, though, could find temporary shelter for only 60 orphans.173 Winter dragged on with no solution. In March, rooms opened at two temporary orphanages, but both refused to take the children.174 In May 1920, the Jewish Section opened a temporary orphanage in the village of Molokhovka, to which it sent 17 children.175 In July the Jewish Section con­ tracted with the Readovka soviet farm to open a Jewish children’s colony just outside Smolensk city. Inspectors soon reported that the sovkhoz was neglecting the children. The sovkhoz dismissed these complaints as irrelevant. One staff member added, “in my opinion, this nationality [Jews] is of no use to the Soviet Republic.”176 In 1919–20, local Jewish workers’ clubs and adult education courses faced obstacles similar to those faced by the schools and childcare facilities, 169

 Ibid., d. 477, ll. 78, 80.

170

 Ibid., d. 1273, l. 94.

171

 Ibid., ll. 95, 101.

172

 Ibid., l. 81. Terrible conditions were by no means exclusive to homes for Jewish children. See Alan M. Ball, And Now My Soul is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 248–49.

173  Ibid., d. 474, unpaginated protocol of the session of the interdepartmental con­ ference on the redemption of buildings in the Plenbezh Barracks; d. 1273, l.46. 174  Ibid., d. 477, ll. 112ob., 113; d. 1273, unpaginated 20 April 1920 memo from the SmolGubOtdel of the Worker-Peasant Inspection. 175

 On the plight of Jewish refugee children in early 1920, see ibid., d. 477, ll. 120, 127.

176

 Ibid., d. 1273, l. 29.

212 M chael C. H ckey

including long institutional struggles with locally-stationed Red Army units over access to buildings.177 In October 1920 the provincial Communist Party leadership finally turned its attention to Jewish affairs, created a provincial Evsektsiia, and tightened party oversight of Soviet Jewish work.178 But this brought no additional resources: the education department’s Jewish Section, the schools it supervised, and the cultural activities it promoted continued laboring under the same limits into the early NEP period.179 Community Self-Organization during the Civil War Although the provincial education department’s Jewish Section claimed au­ thority over all Jewish cultural institutions in Smolensk, most of the region’s Jewish schools, kindergartens, clubs, night courses, and libraries were established directly by community activists or as result of grassroots petitions to the Jewish Section. Parents’ efforts in the shtetl of Liubovichi provide a typical example. Prewar Liubovichi, a thriving market shtetl in Mogilev Province, was home of the Schneerson Hasidic rabbinical dynasty and boasted several Jewish religious schools. The war hit Liubovichi hard. In 1915, Rabbi Shalom Dov Ber Schneerson evacuated to Moscow; by 1917 all but one of the shtetl’s religious schools had closed. When in early 1919 Liubovichi was annexed to Smolensk province, the shtetl had no secular schools. A group of local parents then organized a secular primary school and a kindergarten. Parents in Liubovichi were intensely interested in school affairs and wanted the Soviet regime to help solve their schools’ structural, staffing, and supply problems, but also wanted local control over the curriculum.180 In fall 1919, they petitioned the education department to build a second Jewish secular school. Work on the new Liubovichi school project began in September, when parents and teachers elected a construction commission, made up of skilled tradesmen. The commission decided to repair and occupy an existing building. It drafted plans with detailed cost estimates and submitted these to the local soviet and the education department’s Jewish Section.181 In October, parents elected a new school council and teachers proposed curricula and teaching 177

 Ibid., d. 477, ll. 44, 45, 47, 56–56ob., 102, 120–120ob.; d. 1281, ll. 5–5ob., 9–10, 16–18ob., 21, 23–24, 31–33, 63, 77, 78, 92, 104; d. 1273, ll. 1–5ob., 53, 83, 91. 178

 GANISO f. 3, op. 1, d. 503, ll. 1–10.

179

 GASO f. r-19, op. 1, d. 1247, ll. 6–7ob., 9, 10, 20, 20ob., 46, 49.

180

 Ibid., d. 477, ll. 132–37.

181

 Ibid., d. 478, ll. 4–4ob., 5.

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assignments.182 The school council’s weekly meetings handled issues ranging from teaching assignments to social welfare projects to negotiations with the Soviet bureaucracy. When the local soviet failed to aid the new school by providing heating fuel, the council appealed directly, and successfully, to the Smolensk Soviet for support.183 Parents’ meetings illustrate issues that divided the Jewish community. In August 1921, parents gathered to discuss opening a new Jewish school in the shtetl of Tatarsk. A Jewish Section inspector lectured to the assembly on schools’ role in “productivizing” Jews—teaching children trades so that they would reject the “petty-bourgeois habit of speculation.” Parents listened po­ litely. When the inspector finished, a father named Kagan insisted that all instruction be in Yiddish, so that the “Jewish nation might be preserved.” Poles and Ukrainians are taught in their national languages, Kagan said, and so should be Jews. The parent Gerchakov disagreed: instruction must be in Russian, so that children could function in work and life beyond their own shtetl; or it should be in Hebrew, the language of “traditional” Jewish schol­ arship. Several parents argued in favor of Hebrew instruction. The majority, though, insisted that the school use Russian only.184 In doing so, they cast a wager on acculturation and education as a means to social mobility, a way of escaping the shtetl and perhaps the anti-Semitism so widespread in Smolensk at the dawn of NEP.185 Conclusion In 1914–21, all-Russian events shaped the fate of Smolensk’s Jewish commu­ nity. During the Great War’s first years, these included the tsarist state’s treatment of Jews as internal enemies, its delegation of refugee relief work to Jewish agencies, and its decision to abolish the Pale. When in 1917 the February Revolution provided Jews with full citizenship and stimulated an efflorescence of Jewish public life, the framework of national political trends and developments strongly influenced the course of local Jewish politics. From fall 1917, local Jewish life was shaped by the Bolshevik Revolution, the BrestLitovsk Peace, the onset and deepening of civil war, the Polish War, and Soviet regime policies. Still, revolution on Smolensk’s Jewish street was more than an echo of national developments. Entirely local factors played an important 182

 Ibid., ll. 10–10ob., 14.

183

 Ibid., ll. 11–13, 54–54ob.

184 185

 Ibid., d. 1247, ll. 4–4ob.

 For examples of popular anti-Jewish agitation in 1921, see Smolensk Archives, WKP 273, ll. 130, 154, 189–91.

214 M chael C. H ckey

role. The region’s geographic location outside the Pale and its effect on the de­velopment of the prewar Jewish community, the anti-Semitism of key local tsarist officials, the centrality of Jews to local socialist and union activism, the relocation of Minsk’s Bolsheviks to the city, and the annexation of Belorussian territories all molded the character of local Jewish public life. For Jews in Smolensk, the February Revolution imparted a sense of hope that they might live as equal citizens of Russia and as Jews. But the reali­ ties of the war and the state’s fragility circumscribed real possibilities for change. Jewish socialists dominated local Jewish politics by articulating a politics of class that reflected workers’ very real frustration with the daily conditions of work and life. As the war dragged on, shortages worsened and inflation ate up workers’ wages and intensified labor unrest. Deteriorating social conditions heightened anti-Jewish sentiments and raised the danger of pogroms. Socialist leaders preached patience to Jewish artisans and clerks who daily saw their own lives grow more difficult and dangerous. Having helped raise expectations of a better life, the socialists could neither meet those expectations nor circumscribe the logic of their own rhetoric. As local society polarized, so did politics. This marginalized the Jewish socialist parties while working to the advantage of General Zionists and other groups that stressed Jewish communal solidarity. The Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War then changed the national contexts of Jewish politics and radically constrained Jewish public space. Many historians have depicted 1917 as a fleeting, golden moment of Jewish freedom, in contrast to 1914–16 and the Civil War—periods in which Jews are seen primarily as victims ravaged by pogroms and assaulted by regimes that considered them an alien element. Certainly, Smolensk’s Jews not only suffered devastation and pain along with the region’s other inhabit­ ants, but also suffered indifference, hostility, and violence directed against them specifically as Jews. Their story, however, is more than tears shed over suffering. It is about disappointment with the revolution, but also about vigorous debates over the nature of the community and its leadership. It is about institutions that served community needs despite being abolished by official decrees, activists tirelessly working to pursue their visions of a better future, and ordinary people mobilized and divided by the same sweeping issues and events that moved politics on a larger scale. And it is about a com­ munity that, like Russian society as a whole, sought and found ways to cope with hardships and uncertainties during this continuum of crisis.

Bashkir Loyalists and the Question of Autonomy: Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev in the Russian Revolution and Civil War Daniel E. Schafer

Studies of non-Russian peoples during the Russian Revolution and Civil War often focus on nationalist movements and leaders who sought autonomy or independence for their people. This focus is understandable given the cen­ trality of the “national question” to the unfolding and outcome of the Civil War and the occasional success of nationalist and separatist activists in achieving either independent statehood or the enshrinement of their peo­ ple’s homeland within the ethnic-territorial framework of the Soviet Union.1 When looking at the Muslim regions of the empire, a favorite topic of study is the Jadid intelligentsia, products of a 19th- and early 20th-century Islamic reform movement that sought to integrate Islam into the modern world and pioneered the teaching of more secular subjects in usul ul-jadid or “new method” madrasas. These schools produced a new class of educated young Muslims more willing than their predecessors to challenge traditional politi­ cal practices and to experiment with the new ideologies of nationalism and socialism.2 In the case of Bashkortostan, a region in the eastern reaches of European Russia beyond the Volga and straddling the Ural Mountains, the Bashkir socialist and autonomist leader Akhmed-Zaki Validov (1890–1970) has received pride of place in Soviet, post-Soviet, and foreign historiography. Even while acknowledging the complexity of the political situation on the ground during the Civil War, scholars tend to portray the Bashkir nationalist movement as more-or-less unified under Validov’s leadership.3 Hence the pic­ 1

 The classic study of this process is Richard E. Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957). 2

 Serge A. Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960); Edward J. Lazzerini, “Ğadidism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: A View from Within,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 16, 2 (1975): 245–77. 3

 S. Atnagulov, Bashkiriia (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo, 1925); Richard E. Pipes, “The First Experiment in Soviet Nationality Policy: The Bashkir Republic, 1917– Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 215–45.

216 Daniel E. Schafer

ture of the region’s Civil War that emerges often harmonizes with the Bashkir nationalist narrative of a small but unified nation struggling against the Russian Soviet state and its local allies. In this framework the only Bashkirs who mattered for one’s political analysis were Validov’s group and the small number of “communist” Bashkirs. A similar sociological simplification has at times affected the study of nearly every Russian borderland, and it bedevils our efforts to establish what really happened and why things turned out as they did. Recent research suggests, on the other hand, that the political scene among non-Russian peoples of the empire was no less broad or nuanced than among the Russians themselves. Several works have explored the rich and complex tapestries of political and social identity that characterized Muslim peoples of the empire both before and after the revolution and suggest that an exclusive focus on self-proclaimed modernists and autonomists distorts our understanding of events and social processes in the late imperial and early Soviet period.4 This chapter argues that alongside Validov’s revolutionary nationalist movement, a parallel form of Bashkir nationalism emerged—conservative, antisocialist, perhaps protofascist, and rooted among traditionalist members

1920,” Russian Review 9, 4 (1950): 303–19; Serge A. Zenkovsky, “The Tataro-Bashkir Feud of 1917–1920,” Indiana Slavic Studies 2 (1958): 37–61; Stephen Blank, “The Struggle for Soviet Bashkiria, 1917–1923,” Nationalities Papers 10, 1 (1983): 1–26; Michael Ryw­ kin, “The Autonomy of Bashkirs,” Central Asian Survey 12, 1 (1993): 47–57; M. M. Kul´­ sharipov, Bashkirskoe natsional´noe dvizhenie, 1917–1921 (Ufa: Kitap, 2000). Validov’s name is spelled in a variety of ways, depending on author, language, or script used. Additionally, he adopted a new surname in Turkish emigration, where he authored books as A. Zaki Validi Togan. Here I use a transliteration of the most common Russian form of his name in use during the Civil War; I adopt a similar practice for other Turkic names. The land of the Bashkirs is spelled here as Bashkortostan, although the variant Bashkurdistan appears in some quoted sources as well as the Russian version, Bashkiria. 4

 For a picture of the breadth of Russian educated opinion about the revolution, see Jane Burbank, Intelligentsia and Revolution: Russian Views of Bolshevism, 1917–1922 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). On the Muslim borderlands, see Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini, eds., Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Allen J. Frank, Islamic Historiography and ‘Bulghar’ Identity among the Tatars and Bashkirs of Russia (Leiden: Brill, 1998); Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). The best recent survey of the diversity of Volga-Ural Muslim intellectual life in the late tsarist period is Danielle M. Ross, “From the Minbar to the Barricades: The Transformation of the Volga-Ural ‘Ulama into a Revolutionary Intelligentsia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 2011).



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of the Muslim ulama.5 This movement’s leader was Mukhammad-Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev (1889–1972), a village imam, madrasa teacher, and Sufi shaykh (master) or ishan (guide, master) who participated in Validov’s autonomy movement during 1917 but split with him the following year, eventually coming to identify with Kolchak’s efforts to reconstitute a unified Russian state with only limited cultural autonomy for the Bashkirs.6 Kurbangaliev’s intellectual development went through three overlapping phases. Initially, his political perspectives and methods resemble those of the prerevolutionary traditionalist ulama, characterized by hostility to Jadidism, modernism, so­ cialism, and radicalism; rejection of the Tatar nationalist project; deference to the Russian authorities; and political action primarily through denunciation to the authorities and mobilization of traditional ulama networks. However, al­ ready in the revolutionary period, we see Kurbangaliev adopt the rhetoric and style of modern (Bashkir) nationalism, justifying his actions as service to the Bashkir people, speaking the language of national autonomy, and engaging directly in the Civil War with armed force. Finally, during his long years of political exile after 1920, Kurbangaliev moved beyond these two modes, con­ ceptualizing his struggle against Bolshevism as part of a vast anticolonial struggle waged by the Uralic-Altaic peoples as a whole. This chapter focuses on the first two phases in Kurbangaliev’s intellectual voyage.7 5

 I use “traditionalist” in the sense deployed by Danielle Ross, referring to a loose ulama faction emerging after 1905 and associated with the journal Din vä Mäghishät (Religion and Living). See Ross, “From the Minbar to the Barricades,” 298–326. 6

 I give his name in transliteration from Russian. His name is given in Bashkir (Cyril­ lic) sources as Mökhämmät-Ghäbdelkhäi Qorbanghäliev. See Bashqortostan qythqasa entsiklopediia (Öfö: Bashkort Entsiklopediiahy, 1997), 372. 7  Before the 1990s Kurbangaliev’s movement was little known outside scholarly cir­ cles in Bashkortostan. Western, Turkish, and Soviet scholarly literature focused on Validov’s movement and contained only a handful of scattered references to Kurban­ galiev and his activities. Since the 1990s attention by Bashkir scholars and foreign researchers has resulted in the publication of significant primary source material relating to his life, as well as a number of scholarly treatments. Scholarly studies in­ clude A. B. Iunusova, Islam v Bashkortostane (Ufa: Ufimskii poligrafkombinat, 1999); Kantsunori Nisiyama, “Musul´mane v Iaponii,” Vatandash (Ufa), no. 10 (1999): 188–94; Räüef Nasirov, “Qorbanghälievtarthyng asy iathmyshy,” Vatandash (Ufa), no. 4 (1998): 159–66; and A. G. Salikhov, “Bashkiry v emigratsii,” Iadkiar (Ufa), no. 2 (2002): 25–35. Published primary sources include Galim’ian Tagan’s memoirs of 1920, “Bashkiry v Zaibaikal´e,” published in three parts in Vatandash (Ufa), no. 8 (1997): 113–29, no. 9 (1997): 147–56, no. 10 (1997): 155–68; and several documents included in the collection edited by the late Bilal Iuldashbaev: B. Kh. Iuldashbaev, Natsional’no-gosudarstvennoe ustroistvo Bashkortostana (1917–1925 gg.): Dokumenty i materialy v 4-x tomakh (Ufa: Kitap, 2002–09).

218 Daniel E. Schafer

Since Kurbangaliev and his group emerged from the traditionalist op­ position to Jadidism and adhered closely to the White movement, they have been viewed unfavorably from nearly every side. Since the turn of the cen­ tury, Islamic modernists and radicals had campaigned against the evils of “ishanism,” portraying traditionalist ulama in the crudest possible light as ignorant, superstitious, gluttonous, lustful, power-hungry, and corrupt— stereotypes that were applied to Kurbangaliev and his family as well.8 During the war his enemies judged Kurbangaliev as an opportunist who was only out “for his own personal gain.”9 Validov, writing years later in exile, as well as most Soviet authors, characterized Kurbangaliev as a counterrevolutionary, a monarchist, and an agent of “black reaction.”10 Striving for greater neutrality and without trying to pigeonhole Kurbangaliev and his movement with false precision, I refer to them here sometimes as conservatives or traditionalists, to place them towards the right of the political spectrum during the Civil War, or as loyalists, to distinguish their professed allegiance to a united Russian state from the autonomist position of Validov and others. This chapter will describe the intellectual and religious situation in Bashkortostan before the revolution, including the emergence of Bashkirism; trace the political devel­ opments in the region during the revolution and Civil War, highlighting the rivalry between Kurbangaliev and Validov; outline Kurbangaliev’s Civil War– era ideology; describe Kurbangaliev’s defeat and life in exile; and conclude with reflections on where Kurbangaliev fits in the spectrum of 20th-century nationalist thought. Sufism, Reform, and Bashkirism among the Volga-Ural Muslims A central role in Volga-Ural Muslim religious and social life in the late impe­ rial period was played by Sufi religiosity, particularly of the Naqshbandi variety dominant in the region since the 1780s.11 In a given locality a Sufi 8

 Ross, “From the Minbar to the Barricades,” 295–98.

9

 In the words of one pro-Bolshevik Bashkir group in early 1918. See B. Kh. Iuldashbaev, ed., Obrazovanie Bashkirskoi Avtonomnoi Sovetskoi Sotsialisticheskoi Respubliki: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Ufa: Bashkirskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1959), 100. 10

 Zaki Validi Togan, Vospominaniia: Bor´ba narodov Turkestana i drugikh vostochnykh musul´man-tiurkov za natsional´noe bytie i sokhranenie kul´tury, trans. G. Shafikov and A. Iuldashbaev (Ufa: Kitap, 1994), 1: 197, 213, 218; Atnagulov, Bashkiriia, 68–69; B. Kh. Iul­ dashbaev, Natsional´nyi vopros v Bashkirii nakanune i v period Oktiabr´skoi revoliutsii (Ufa: Izdatel´stvo Bashkirskogo universiteta, 1984), 33.

11

 On Volga-Ural Sufism, see Ross, ”From the Minbar to the Barricades,” 39–51; Iunu­ sova, Islam v Bashkortostane, 71–74; Salavat Iskhakov, Rossiiskie musul´mane i revoliutsiia (vesna 1917 g.–leto 1918 g.) (Moscow: Sotsial´no-politicheskaia MYSL´, 2004), 422. On



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ishan or shaykh might also serve as imam in the area mosques or mudarris (teacher) in the closest madrasa. Each of these positions was frequently hereditary within a prominent family. There were several prominent ishan dynasties in Bashkortostan, among them the Tukaevs, the Galikeevs, and the Kurbangalievs, each with their own collections of murids (students, followers). Before the 1860s, the most prominent madrasas were located in small towns or villages, and each mudarris might maintain long-term relationships with his shakirds (students). The ishan–murid and mudarris–shakird relationships might align with clan identification, but they also cut across clan lines, creating new nexuses of loyalty and identification. Through these relationships, prominent families came to be bound up in complex ulama networks of fealty and obli­ gation, linked by education, Sufism, and intermarriage, as well as patron– client relationships between ulama and wealthy merchants. Ulama networks served various functions—charitable and social work, founding mosques and madrasas, providing medical care, maintaining orphanages, vetting candidates for clerical positions, and assisting madrasa students in finding employment. Some recent scholarly attention has been focused on the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly, a body created in Ufa by decree of Catherine II in 1788 to mediate the relationship between the Russian state and the ulama networks of the Russian Empire. Headed by a chief mufti and several assistants, this board vetted and supervised Muslim religious leaders, authorized new parishes and mosques, and registered births and deaths in the Muslim community, but never replaced or usurped the power of the ulama networks and the rural madrasas.12 The Kurbangaliev family sat at the center of one of these ulama networks.13 They first arrived in Cheliabinsk district of Orenburg province, east of the Ural Mountains, in the late 18th century.14 They soon established a dynasty of village imams and Sufi ishans who were also wealthy landowners and welltraveled merchants, and they or their murids held the majority of imamates Sufism in the Volga-Ural region, see Alexandre A. Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Mystics and Commissars: Sufism in the Soviet Union (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Ravil Bukharaev, “Sufism in Russia: Nostalgia for Revelation,” in Sufism in Europe and North America, ed. David Westerlund (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 64–94; and Agnès Kefeli, “Constructing an Islamic Identity: The Case of Elyshevo Vil­ lage in the Nineteenth Century,” in Brower and Lazzerini, Russia’s Orient, 271–91. 12

 On the activities of the Orenburg Assembly in the 18th and 19th centuries, see Crews, For Prophet and Tsar, especially 31–191.

13

 Iunusova, Islam v Bashkortostane, 74–75; Ross, “From the Minbar to the Barricades,” 53.´

14

 Throughout I will use the English word “township” for volost´, “district” for uezd, and “province” for guberniia.

220 Daniel E. Schafer

in the region down to the 1917 revolution. Abdul-Khakim Kurbangaliev (1809–72) served as imam of the village mosque in Mediak and mudarris at the maktab he had established at his own expense in 1860; he and his five brothers were all imams in various local villages. Abdul-Khakim’s son Gabi­ dulla (189–1919) upgraded the Mediak maktab to a madrasa in 1885.15 Born in 1889, Mukhammad-Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev was thus the eldest son of a prominent family leader who served as imam, madrasa teacher, and Sufi master. The Great Reform era of the 1860s initiated a gradual evolution of this system. At risk of oversimplification we can indicate three elements of this transformation.16 First, a number of Volga-Ural Muslim clerics became ener­ gized by the notion that cultivation of the individual through a more structured educational system could enable the Muslim population to overcome their “backwardness” and participate more fully in the social and political life of the empire. By the 1880s and 1890s, “new method” madrasas were trimming religion and Arabic classes in favor of history, geography, science, and Rus­ sian language. From these schools emerged new generations of students who connected more directly with Russian and European intellectual and polit­ ical life, adopted European dress, and perceived themselves as “modern” and “progressive.” Like the Russians, Muslim elites began to fragment among liberals, socialists, and radicals. In a second and parallel process, Volga-Ural Muslim thinkers began a quest to define the identity and scope of their community. Pre-1860 generations might have been content to define themselves as Muslims of a particular village or family, but by the end of the century debates raged in Kazan and other intellectual centers over whether “we” were Turks, Tatars, Bulghars, Turko-Tatars, or part of a worldwide Mus­ lim community. These debates remained unresolved as Russia entered the revolutionary era. Thirdly, these processes shook up the ulama and madrasa networks. Some existing madrasas shifted partly or entirely to the new methods, while others followed traditional curricula. New reformed madrasas competed with older ones for students and patron funding, and newcomers in larger cities like Kazan, Ufa, and Orenburg eclipsed many familiar and influential schools in rural villages. Ulama and Sufi networks responded variously to these challenges. One sort of response is suggested by the career of Zainulla Rasulev (1833–1917), 15

 Short biographical sketches of Kurbangaliev, his father, and grandfather may be found in “Qorbanghälievtär,” in Bashqortostan qythqasa entsiklopediia, 372; and Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii: Entsiklopedicheskii slovar´ (Moscow: Vostochnaia lit­ eratura, 1998), 1: 62–63. 16

 I draw liberally here on Ross, “From the Minbar to the Barricades.”



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a prominent Sufi ishan and founder of the Resuliya madrasa in Troitsk.17 Rasulev first encountered Naqshbandi Sufism in 1859 as a murid of AbdulKhakim Kurbangaliev. A decade later he studied a more rigorous variety of the same Naqshbandi tradition in Istanbul, a form that featured intense fasting and prayer, hadith study, chanting aloud (rather than silently), and ritual dancing. Upon returning home in 1870 Rasulev began propagating this new variety of Sufism, attracting murids, and competing with his former ishan. Before long he was in a very public feud with Abdul-Khakim and his sons, disturbed both by the new form of Sufism and the competition for murids that Rasulev represented. Their denunciations of Rasulev led to his arrest and exile from the region during 1873–81. In the 1880s he returned and established the Resuliya madrasa, introducing Jadid methods of instruction there in 1893. By the end of his life, Rasulev was the most influential Sufi ishan in the region, a popular teacher with hundreds of shakirds and murids, and an open supporter of liberal-democratic reform movements. A powerful rivalry fes­ tered for decades between Rasulev and the Kurbangaliev clan and between their associated shakirds and murids. As it happens, Akhmet-Zaki Validov was born in Sterlitamak district, west of the Urals, to a father who was one of Rasulev’s murids. Validov himself met the ishan many times, held him in high regard, and ultimately married his granddaughter.18 This connection is one small part of the puzzle explaining the later rivalry between Validov and Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev. In contrast to Rasulev, the Kurbangalievs were generally hostile to the new trends in religious education represented by the Jadid movement and were widely known as prominent traditionalists and opponents of liberalism, and it seems that most of the murids and former shakirds in their network joined them.19 In the traditionalist narrative, new method schools had led young people away from Islam into liberalism, atheism, socialism, and radicalism. Since the new language of Tatar nationalism, popularized by radical novelist Gaiaz Iskhaqi after 1902, was infused with radical and socialist overtones, the traditionalists viewed the Tatar nationalist project, both its rhetoric and its supporters, with suspicion.20 17

 Hamid Algar, “Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev: The Last Great Naqshbandi Shaykh of the Volga-Ural Region,” in Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change, ed. Jo-Ann Gross (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992), 112–33; Iunusova, Islam v Bashkortostane, 79–82; Ross, “From the Minbar to the Barricades,” 141–49. 18

 Algar, “Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev,” 127–28.

19

 Iunusova, Islam v Bashkortostane, 71–79; Ross, “From the Minbar to the Barricades,” 325; Iuldashbaev, Natsional´nyi vopros v Bashkirii, 17, 20; Togan, Vospominaniia, 1: 197. 20

 Ross, “From the Minbar to the Barricades,” 326.

222 Daniel E. Schafer

Since the 1880s, Abdul-Khakim’s son Gabidulla was the linchpin in the family network, serving as imam, mudarris in the Mediak madrasa, and a locally influential Sufi shaykh. This changed in 1912, when Orenburg province authorities removed Gabidulla as imam and mudarris because of his “enthusi­ asm for Sufism” and briefly exiled him from the region. Residents of Mediak immediately asked his son Gabdulkhai to serve as the new village imam and mudarris, placing him at the top of the Kurbangaliev family network.21 Gabi­ dulla tried several times to regain official approval as imam and mudarris, achieving success only in the midst of the Civil War in mid-1919.22 But down to his death at the end of 1919, Gabidulla retained his prestige as a Sufi shaykh and was generally referred to locally as “the ishan Kurbangaliev.” The ability of the Kurbangalievs to rally significant popular support throughout their home region in 1918 and 1919 rested on the prestige and interlocking personal con­ tacts that they enjoyed as respected teachers, religious scholars, Sufi masters, men of significant wealth, and longstanding residents of the region. One last prerevolutionary factor to consider is the emergence of Bashkir nationalism, or Bashkirism, in the early 20th century. Like many indigenous peoples in the Russian Empire, nomadic Bashkirs belonged to an estate cate­ gory with specific privileges and responsibilities. Bashkirs held rights to their grazing and hunting grounds as hereditary owners and after 1798 constituted a military unit, the Bashkir-Mishar Host, modeled on the Cossacks. Male Bashkirs were required to serve in units apportioned among 12 self-governing cantons.23 This corporate existence was threatened by military reforms that eliminated the Bashkir-Mishar Host in the 1860s, by the purchase and seizure of Bashkir lands and forests in the second half of the 19th century, and by the ever-intensifying Russian peasant settlement of Bashkir lands.24 Despite this unique history and powerful set of grievances, Bashkir nationalism as such was a latecomer to the region. A smattering of 19th-century publications ad­ dressed Bashkir folklore and the spoken Bashkir dialect, while the Bashkir 21

 Iunusova, Islam v Bashkortostane, 75–76.

22

 Ibid., 76.

23  Cantons served as administrative units among Cossacks, Bashkirs, Mishars, and others before the revolution; the name was chosen in 1917 to describe local autono­ mous Bashkir territories. 24

 Charles Steinwedel, “How Bashkiria Became Part of European Russia, 1762–1881,” in Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, ed. Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen, and Anatolyi Remnev (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 94–124; Robert F. Baumann, “Subject Nationalities in the Military Service of Imperial Russia: The Case of the Bashkirs,” Slavic Review 46, 3–4 (1987): 489–502; Kh. F. Usmanov, Razvitie kapitalizma v sel´skom khoziaistve Bashkirii v poreformennyi period: 60–90-e gody XIX v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), 35–103.



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writer Mokhammatsalim Ömetbaev (1841–1907) tried to define the Bashkirs as a separate ethnic and linguistic group characterized by loyal service to the imperial project. It was only in the years after 1908 that Bashkir journalists and historians like Mönir Hadiev and Gabdurashid Gomari began to formu­ late a coherent Bashkir historical narrative with political bite. In this vision, the Bashkirs were a unique people distinguished by their nomadic heritage, primordial ties to the land, and unique culture, and who were now threatened by the encroachment of farmer settlement on their pasturelands. The problem of lost Bashkir land and Russian settlement proved to be the central political question of 1917, inspiring calls throughout Bashkortostan for recovery of Bashkir land and the expulsion of immigrants. By 1915 or so the young his­ torian Akhmet-Zaki Validov had recognized this Bashkir uniqueness and realized that future Bashkir political activity would need to diverge from the approaches of Tatar intellectuals based in Kazan.25 In Validov’s case, this political activity would be in the service of radical land reform and Bashkir territorial autonomy. His contemporary, the young imam Gabdulkhai Kur­ bangaliev, also recognized the political value of the new Bashkirism, but de­ ployed it quite differently, in opposition to “Tatar” socialist experiments and in favor of a territorially-united Russia. The 1917 Revolution and the Political Deployment of Bashkirism In the wake of the February Revolution, Russian Muslim politics in the spring of 1917 was dominated by preparations for an All-Russian Muslim congress, convened to coordinate the activity of the various Muslim political move­ ments and ethnic groups.26 At the congress, held in Moscow in May, a split emerged on the issue of Russia’s state structure. An influential bloc of Tatar leaders, among them former Duma member Sadri Maksudov, espoused a plan for extraterritorial cultural-national autonomy for all Muslims within a unified Russian state with centralized organs to handle education, religious, and other cultural matters for Muslims throughout the country. Given the wide dispersion of Tatars throughout the former empire, this made sense to many Tatars. However, most non-Tatar Muslims, including the Kazakh and Bashkir delegates, preferred dividing the former empire into a federal state with territories designated for each Muslim nationality. In their eyes, a uni­ 25

 Ross, “From the Minbar to the Barricades,” 136–38, 408–18.

26

 This section is based on Ross, “From the Minbar to the Barricades,” 454–78; Daniel E. Schafer, “Building Nations and Building States: The Tatar-Bashkir Question in Revolutionary Russia, 1917–1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1995), 72–88; and Nadir Däülät, 1917 Oktiabr´ Inkyilaby vä Törk-Tatar Millät Mäjlese (Kazan: Jyen, Milli kitap, 2008).

224 Daniel E. Schafer

tary state with centralized Muslim institutions was a gambit to establish Tatar hegemony over all Russia’s Muslims. Moreover, they were irked that the Tatar leadership of the congress refused to consider land reform and relief for refugees from the 1916 anti-conscription rebellion in Kazakhstan, issues of great concern to the Bashkirs and Kazakhs. In the end the congress approved the principle of federalism yet permitted the Tatars to organize their own ex­ traterritorial autonomy as they wished. In July Tatar activists met in Kazan to promulgate this autonomy, creating a National Administration (Milli Idare) to levy taxes, organize schools, and administer religious affairs for all “Muslim Turko-Tatars” throughout central Russia and Siberia, including the Bashkirs. By December 1917, a federalist group among the Tatars had gained significant support in the Tatars’ National Assembly in Ufa for another project, the forma­ tion of a vast Volga-Ural State that would incorporate all Tatar and Bashkir lands in a single autonomous entity within a democratic Russian federation. Thus by the end of 1917, Tatar activists were pursuing two plans for autonomy, a plan for Russia-wide Muslim extraterritorial cultural autonomy, and a re­ gional plan for territorial autonomy—but both were predicated on the basic unity of Bashkirs with the other “Muslim Turko-Tatars” of the region. After the May congress, Bashkir activists conducted their political busi­ ness independently of the Tatars, convening their first Bashkir congress (kurultai) in July 1917 and subsequent ones in August and December. At these meetings there was general agreement with Validov’s argument that Bashkir land should be recovered from recent Russian settlers and that conduct of such a controversial land reform would only be possible by forming a separate Bashkir republic empowered to protect Bashkir corporate rights. Bashkir leaders were suspicious of both Tatar autonomy projects—the Milli Idare and the Volga-Ural State—because neither would give Bashkirs the power and authority they needed to regain their lost lands. Validov in particular envi­ sioned a historical destiny for the Bashkirs as the true leaders of the Mus­ lim anticolonial struggle, a role that the Tatars could not fulfill because of their close integration with the Russian population. In December 1917, the final Bashkir congress convened in Orenburg under Validov’s leadership. In reaction to the recent Bolshevik seizure of power, the assembly proclaimed an autonomous Bashkir republic and formed a Bashkir governing council and a legislature.27 Gabidulla Kurgangaliev and his sons, including Gabdulkhai, were early participants in this movement. We know that Gabdulkhai attended the Bashkir congresses of July and December as a representative of the Bashkirs from Argayash canton. The Kurbangalievs were ambivalent about proclaiming 27

 Schafer, “Building Nations and Building States,” 103–35.



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Bashkir territorial separation from Russia, but went along with this program initially. The elder Kurbangaliev was among the activists sent out to organize local organs of the Bashkir republic in late 1917 and early 1918. Utilizing his position as leader of a prominent ulama network, he popularized the new republic in his home district and encouraged local Bashkirs to join. Inspired by his promises that Russian settlers would be expelled from land they had seized before the revolution, Bashkirs in several rural townships voted to join autonomous Bashkortostan, merging their lands into the new republic’s Argayash canton. They henceforth ignored orders from local Russian zemstvo authorities, with whom relations rapidly deteriorated.28 Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev was himself more interested in Bashkir reli­ gious autonomy within a united Russia, calling for the secession of the Bashkir ulama from the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly. In Kurbangaliev’s view, Tatars had dominated the Orenburg Assembly for over a century, resulting in “Tatar violence against the Bashkir.” In July 1917 Tatar nationalists had incorporated the Assembly into their Milli Idare as its religious department, making it in Kurbangaliev’s eyes a strong instrument of Tatarization.29 Kurbangaliev played a critical role in the establishment of a separate Bashkir Spiritual Assembly, promulgated by the Bashkir congress of December 1917.30 This in­ stitution actually functioned after June 1918 and survived as an institution of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) until the late 1930s.31 It was not autonomy per se that sparked Kurbangaliev’s break with Va­ lidov but the ever-present land question. The land reform published by the December congress above Validov’s signature included several provisions widely popular among the delegates, including the Kurbangalievs. One called for confiscation of all lands taken from the Bashkirs “without payment or for a paltry sum” in the tsarist period and their redistribution among the Bashkirs. 28

 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 18– 19, report of the Shadrinsk district zemstvo to the Minister of Native Affairs of the Provisional Siberian Government, 9 October 1918, reprinted in Iuldashbaev, Natsi­ onal’no-gosudarstvennoe ustroistvo Bashkortostana, 2: 1, 365–66 and 387–89. The source is ambiguous about which Kurbangaliev this was, but other sources suggest this was most probably Gabidulla (Natsional’no-gosudarstvennoe ustroistvo Bashkortostana, 2: 1, 354–57). The zemstvos were elected governing boards for rural regions introduced in most Russian provinces and districts in the 1860s. 29

 Kurbangaliev et al. to Minister of Internal Affairs, 31 October 1918, GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 57, ll. 42ob.–43; and Kazimuratov and Kurbangaliev to Commander of the Western Army (Khanzin), May 1919, ibid., ll. 98–98ob. 30

 Iunusova, Islam v Bashkortostane, 106–09.

31

 Ibid., 96–197.

226 Daniel E. Schafer

Another popular item was the regulation requiring the most recent Russian migrants to leave the republic, exchanging their land with Bashkirs or other Muslims who were encouraged to move into Bashkortostan. However as large landowners in Cheliabinsk district, the Kurbangalievs were deeply disturbed by Article 1 of the proposal, which abolished private property and placed many categories of land at the disposal of the Bashkir government, raising the prospect that larger Bashkir landholdings might be divided among the poor.32 Soon after this meeting, the Kurbangalievs began their campaign against Validov and the Bashkir republic—their hostility to the socialist elements in Validov’s nationalism had soured him on the entire project of Bashkir terri­ torial autonomy.33 The Civil War in Bashkortostan The activities of the Bashkir autonomy movement between October 1917 and January 1918 were sheltered by the Orenburg Cossack domination of the southern Urals, but the new Bolshevik government and its local allies were soon in a position to assert themselves. In January, Orenburg fell to Bolshevik forces; Validov was arrested for collaboration with counterrevolutionary ele­ ments and several of his colleagues were executed. Meanwhile, in a series of dramatic events in Kazan in February and March 1918, Bolsheviks abolished the Tatars’ Milli Idare and replaced the planned Volga-Ural State with a TatarBashkir Soviet Republic designed to be under close Bolshevik supervision. Plans for a separate Bashkir republic fell apart as local soviets banned the new Bashkir cantons.34 However, Bolshevik domination of the Volga-Ural region proved short lived. In a rapid turn of events, Validov escaped from prison in April and the Czech Legion rose in revolt in Cheliabinsk in May, sparking the collapse of Soviet power throughout the region and opening up new opportunities for both Bashkir autonomists and the emerging opposition led by the Kurbangaliev clan. By mid-summer Validov’s group had joined the White cause, recruiting an independent Bashkir army and recreating the Bashkir canton councils throughout the territory of autonomous Bashkorto­ stan. Validov’s group was sympathetic to the moderate socialists among the White movement, particularly the Socialist Revolutionaries and Komuch, the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, and received sig­ 32

 “Resolution taken by the Kurultai (Congress) on the land question,” 20 December 1917, Tsentral´nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv Respubliki Bashkortostana (TsGIA RB) f. 395r, op. 1, d. 7, ll. 1–2. 33

 Togan, Vospominaniia, 197; Iuldashbaev, Natsional´nyi vopros v Bashkirii, 17.

34

 Schafer, “Building Nations and Building States,” 173–225.



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nificant military support from that quarter. Through June and July 1918, Validov and the Bashkir government were headquartered in Cheliabinsk, near the Kurbangaliev home region, and seem to have cooperated with the Kurbangalievs in forming Bashkir military units to clear the region of Bol­ shevik forces.35 Even so, the latent hostility between Validov and the Kurbangalievs blos­ somed into a full-fledged schism in the summer and fall of 1918, beginning soon after Validov’s government relocated to Orenburg in early August. That month, a group of Bashkir soldiers from Argayash canton attempted to assassinate Validov during a military parade in Orenburg. Validov asserts in his memoirs that the Kurbangalievs were behind the attack.36 Soon there­ after, a secession movement broke out among Bashkirs in Cheliabinsk dis­ trict, who now claimed to reject participation in Validov’s “half-Bolshevik” Bashkir republic. Jurisdictional conflicts between the Bashkir and White Russian governments served as catalyst for the secession. When the Bashkir autonomists partitioned Bashkortostan into cantons in 1917 and early 1918, several townships of Cheliabinsk district were allotted to the Argayash can­ ton, including the Kurbangalievs’ own Davletbaevskaia township.37 This canton formed a Bashkir ethnic enclave territorially separate from the rest of the republic and surrounded by a largely Russian population. The Argayash canton council and the central Bashkir government ordered these townships to sever all ties with Russian governmental institutions, including local zemstvos, and to forward all tax revenue to the canton council. In response, a frustrated Cheliabinsk zemstvo met in emergency session in late September and threatened to close schools and hospitals in the Bashkir townships and block shipment of items of first necessity from district supply organs un­ less each township returned to zemstvo jurisdiction.38 This ultimatum prompted meetings of township and village leaders to consider breaking with autonomous Bashkortostan, meetings in which the Kurbangalievs and their extended ulama network played a critical role. Perhaps intimidated by the presence of armed soldiers under the command of ishan Gabidulla 35

 Iuldashbaev, Natsional’no-gosudarstvennoe ustroistvo Bashkortostana, 2: 1, 250–52.

36

 Togan, Vospominaniia, 257. This incident was preceded by disturbances in Argayash canton which Mukhamed´iarov was sent to put down in July 1918 (Tsentral´nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv obshchestvennykh ob˝edinenii Respubliki Bashkortostan [TsGAOORB] f. 1832, op. 4, d. 394, l. 104a, telegram of Validov to the Cheliabinsk military commander, not before 16 July 1918).

37

 This township was also known as Mukhamedkuluevskaia township.

38

 The actual ultimatum has not been found, but it is referred to in the resolutions from Davletbaevskaia township, 15 October 1918, GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, l. 44.

228 Daniel E. Schafer

Kurbangaliev, the townships capitulated, recognizing the legitimacy of the Provisional All-Russian Government in Omsk, severing ties with the Bashkir government and Argayash canton, and promising to send future tax revenue to zemstvo authorities.39 In early October the conflict escalated as Cossack forces arrived in support of the Kurbangalievs, disarmed Bashkir soldiers loyal to the autonomous republic, and arrested the entire Argayash canton board.40 The Bashkir government and its commissioner for the Cheliabinsk region, Ibragim Asiakaev, considered this an illegal secession, charging the townships with improper arrests, false denunciations, and appealing to “other governments.” He threatened that “for propaganda against the Gov­ ernment, for division of Bashkirs into different parties, for sowing discord among mullahs and teachers, for arrests of innocent people due to personal animosity, and for all harmful actions in such troubled times, I will punish the guilty using Bashkir military institutions.”41 The Bashkir military council drew up lists of people who had agitated against the Bashkir government and instructed local officers to arrest them all and execute selected ringleaders.42 Russian zemstvo officials visiting Bashkir villages a little farther east in Shadrinsk district of Perm’ province around the same time found that Bashkirs there also were sharply divided between autonomists and their op­ ponents. Several villages were solidly for autonomy and a few were just as strongly against, but most communities were divided. Attempting to sort out the social basis of the division, the zemstvo agents believed the autonomists comprised the Muslim clergy and the well-to-do class, while their opponents included poorer Bashkirs and soldiers who feared losing their pension from the Russian government. In any case conflict had become violent, as an au­ tonomist cavalry unit “completely terrorized the opponents of autonomy, sub­ jecting them to beatings and even, according to the rumors, executions.” The

39

 See the resolutions from Davletbaevskaia township of 19 September 1918 (GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 51) and 15 October 1918 (ll. 44–45), Sultaevskaia township of 23 October 1918 (l. 48), Metelevskaia township of 24 October 1918 (l. 49), and Mavliu­ tovskaia township of 13 October 1918 (l. 50). Reports of armed intimidation come from Bashkir government agents (Iuldashbaev, Natsional’no-gosudarstvennoe ustroistvo Bashkortostana, 2: 1, 354–57, 359). 40

 Iuldashbaev, Natsional’no-gosudarstvennoe ustroistvo Bashkortostana, 2: 1, 358–61.

41

 “Ot Upolnomochennogo Pravitel´stva Bashkirii v okrestnostiakh Cheliabinska: Ob˝iavlenie,” 3 October 1918, GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, l. 66.

42

 “Nakaz Bashkirskogo Voennogo Soveta praporshchiku Garifu Mukhamed´iarovu,” undated, ibid., l. 65.



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terrorized opponents of autonomy were subjected to arbitrary and excessive taxes to support this force.43 The coup d’état by Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in Omsk and the fall of the moderate socialist Komuch government in Samara in November 1918 changed the political balance in the Kurbangaliev-Validov conflict. First of all, Validov’s group promptly began considering defection to the Bolshevik side. Anticipating trouble with its Bashkir allies, the Omsk government tried to arrest the Bashkir government and place Bashkir military units under the command of the loyal Orenberg Cossack leader General Dutov. In December 1918 Validov’s group attempted to overthrow Dutov, even as they opened negotiations with the Soviets. Finally, in February 1919, Validov defected to the Bolsheviks along with about six thousand Bashkir troops; in return the Soviet government promised to create a Bashkir republic. Throughout the re­ mainder of 1919 and the first half of 1920, Validov tried to realize his plans for an autonomous Bashkortostan within the framework of Soviet Russia, but became increasingly frustrated with Soviet limitations on the prerogatives of the Bashkir government. In the end he and a remnant of loyal comrades joined the Basmachi movement in Turkestan in late 1920 and eventually fled abroad.44 Meanwhile the fortunes of the Kurbangaliev clan star rose rapidly after Kolchak’s coup. As Validov’s group fell under greater suspicion, the Omsk government paid more attention to the Bashkir loyalists and their demands. The secession movement soon enveloped two entire cantons of autonomous Bashkortostan, while the Kurbangalievs encouraged Omsk to finally destroy Validov’s government, which survived in the countryside near Orenburg through early 1919, despite efforts of the Russian government to eliminate it.45 Validov’s defection in February 1919 cemented the younger Kurbangaliev’s position as the effective leader of his clan and the most prominent Bashkir in the White camp, in charge of the mobilization and leadership of the Bashkir

43

 Class differences may well have contributed to the conflict over autonomy, though the data are incomplete and sometimes contradictory. The characterization of the autonomists as well represented among Muslim clerics is consistent with what we know about the social origins of many of the top Bashkir autonomist leaders (Schafer, “Building Nations and Building States,” 94–98). 44

 On Validov’s collaboration with the Soviet regime, see Daniel E. Schafer, “Local Autonomy and the Birth of the Republic of Bashkortostan, 1919–1920,” in A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Building in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 165–90.

45

 Iuldashbaev, Obrazovanie, 211; GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, l. 37.

230 Daniel E. Schafer

infantry and cavalry regiments that remained with the Whites.46 The events of February 1919 helped Kurbangaliev in another way: the institutions of Bashkir self-government in the White territories, which he had helped create but came to despise, now collapsed entirely. Members of canton administrative boards fled and their institutions evaporated.47 Kurbangaliev’s secession movement gained strength as Kolchak’s armies marched westward in the spring of 1919. Abandoned by the autonomists and finding themselves now deep within White territory, more and more township officials in the eastern reaches of Bashkortostan hurried to declare their loyalty to Kolchak and the all-Russian government. Local Bashkir leaders censured the former canton boards for the critical conditions of local hospitals and schools, the perennial food shortages, and administrative disorder.48 These events marked the definitive break in the Bashkir national movement and the emergence of two well-defined factions that found themselves on opposite sides of the Civil War. The violence of war reached directly into the Kurbangaliev family: Gabdulkhai’s 60-year-old father Gabidulla and younger brother Abdul-Aval were arrested by agents of the Soviet Bashkir republic and executed in December 1919. Harun, another of his brothers, died in Siberia the following April fighting against Red forces.49 The blood that flowed between the two factions divided them beyond hope of reconciliation. During the long years that Validov and Kurbangaliev were both to spend in exile after the war, there is no evidence that either ever tried to establish contact with the other. Kurbangaliev’s Ideology Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev’s rivalry with Validov was not just personal, nor did it revolve solely around the socialist elements of Validov’s program. 46

 Gazim Shafikov, I sovest´, i zhertvy epokhi (Ufa: Bashkirskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1991), 157–58; Iuldashbaev, Obrazovanie, 881. The only other Bashkir leader of any prom­ inence among the Whites was the cavalry officer Musa Murtazin, who would defect to the Reds later that year and was in any case not closely associated with Kurbangaliev’s brand of activism. As Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev and his brothers engaged in military operations against the Bolsheviks, it seems their father tried to evacuate eastward with the rest of the family (Iuldashbaev, Natsional’no-gosudarstvennoe ustroistvo Bashkorto­ stana, 2: 2, 100).

47

 Telegram from administrator (upravliaiushchii) of Verkhneural´sk district of Oren­ burg province to Minister of Internal Affairs, 10 March 1919, GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, l. 72.

48

 See, for example, the minutes of the Kataiskaia township zemstvo board, 2 March 1919, ibid., ll. 74–74ob.).

49

 Iunusova, Islam v Bashkortostane, 114–15; Tagan, “Bashkiry v Zabaikal´e,” no. 8, 123.



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Kurbangaliev and the other secessionists in Argayash canton in the fall of 1918 articulated clear ideological and political differences with the Bashkir government in Orenburg. Kurbangaliev was the movement’s inspiration and premier ideologist, authoring and signing numerous petitions and letters to the Russian government in Omsk.50 In these documents he developed an ap­ proach that stands out as an alternative to Validov’s vision of the historical role and destiny of the Bashkirs. The pillars of Kurbangaliev’s position were social conservatism, loyalty to a unitary Russian state, and opposition to the triple evils of Bolshevism, territorial autonomy, and Tatar domination of the Bashkirs. These characteristics are already evident in the resolutions of the townships that seceded from the Bashkir republic in the fall of 1918, all of which were either written or directly inspired by Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev.51 Aware that their audience consisted of Russian officials and bureaucrats skeptical of territorial autonomy for local peoples, Kurbangaliev and his associates had to explain away their previous association with Validov and autonomous Bashkortostan. On one hand they claimed that their townships had joined the Bashkir territorial state involuntarily, compelled by a duplici­ tous Validov who had promised at the December 1917 congress that territories would join Bashkortostan only after a referendum, which was never held. Yet they admitted that in late 1917 and early 1918 many Bashkirs had ac­ cepted Bashkir autonomy, but explained this as simply a strategy to protect themselves from Bolshevism and the widespread “Soviet contagion,” a choice made by neighboring Cossacks and other nationalities as well.52 They argued, however, that the advance of the White armies and removal of the Bolshevik threat meant that Bashkir autonomy had outlived its purpose. Indeed, they now represented the Bashkir government itself as a threat, its institutions rid­ dled with Bolsheviks. The petitioners’ townships, by contrast, were loyal to the all-Russian Provisional Government and had abolished all institutions set

50  I have found some 16 major letters, petitions, telegrams, and meeting protocols produced by the Bashkir loyalist movement between September 1918 and October 1919. Of these, 10 bear the name of Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev. 51

 The key documents were the resolution of a meeting held on 15 October 1918 in Davletbaevskaia township, where Kurbangaliev was vice chair of the presidium (GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 44–45), and a letter submitted by Kurbangaliev and three other representatives of the seceding townships to the Provisional All-Russian Gov­ ernment’s Ministry of Internal Affairs in Omsk on 31 October 1918 (ibid., ll. 42–43).

52

 Ibid., l. 44ob. In another justification of Bashkir actions written three months later, Kurbangaliev also cited fear of the socialization of Bashkir land and the possibility of a “Tatar yoke” in the form of an “All-Muslim Government” (letter to Nikolai Iakovlevich [Novombergskii], 9 January 1919, ibid., l. 37).

232 Daniel E. Schafer

up by “the Bashkir government and the Bolsheviks.”53 Now a greater task was at hand: “Every citizen of regenerating Russia should strive to establish a single and strong motherland on the principle of peaceful cohabitation of all nationalities. We Bashkirs have not forgotten our historical duty to the fatherland and do not seek to break it up into pieces and organize each segment on narrow national-chauvinist grounds, which would only serve to harm the interests of the Bashkir people itself.”54 To further demonstrate their loyalty, the leaders of three seceding townships met at the end of November 1918 to endorse Admiral Kolchak’s coup d’état. Their resolution reflects disillusion­ ment with the centrifugal forces represented by Validov and other advocates of autonomy as well as their pretense of speaking for the entire Bashkir people: On the issue of the Council of Ministers’ actions, on its seizing full power and transferring it to the Supreme Ruler Admiral Kolchak, we have found this act in full accord with the present situation, since the creation of firm, nonparty authority and its transfer to the Supreme Ruler in the current moment of disintegration is the only salvation of the Motherland from both external and internal foes. The Bashkir people of our land, accustomed to a normal life, quiet, order, and un­ conditional subordination to the authorities, and having suffered from both Bolshevik arbitrariness and various partisan efforts of rank-holders and members of different kinds of governments who put their own narrow party interests above general state ones, greets the naming of a single Supreme Ruler with complete tranquility and joy as the guarantee of the improvement of Russia and is ready to render him its full support.55 As a token of this support, the delegates forwarded to Omsk a list of some 29 “Bolsheviks,” many of them former members of local soviets who they hoped would be subject to arrest by Russian authorities. Most were already in Russian prisons, but nine were at large or serving in the institutions of

53

 Ibid., ll. 42–42ob. In January 1919 Kurbangaliev claimed that everyone who had served in autonomous Bashkir institutions in his region had been a Bolshevik (ibid., l. 37).

54 55

 Ibid., ll. 44ob.–45.

 Resolution of delegates from Davletbaevskaia, Mavliutovskaia, and Metelevskaia townships, 25 November 1918, ibid., l. 47.



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autonomous Bashkortostan. Heading the list was Nuriagzam Tagirov, an as­ sociate of Validov and a member of the Bashkir legislature.56 Beyond loyalty to the all-Russian cause, this movement’s most striking characteristic was a visceral fear and resentment of the influence of the Tatars, whom it condemned not only for assimilating the Bashkirs, but for dominating the Bashkir government itself. One resolution noted that “the aspiration to create Bashkiria arose also in part as a counterweight to the aspiration of the Tatars to seize Bashkir lands and wealth by using nationalization to assimilate the Bashkir people, and now the same Tatars are receiving responsible po­ sitions in the institutions of Bashkurdistan.”57 The dissidents asked the Rus­ sian government to “defend the territory of the Bashkirs from seizure and influence on the part of Tatar organizations, namely from the National TurkoTatar Administration [i.e., the Milli Idare], since the Bashkirs are a quiet and little-cultured people, who wish to live under the protection of Russia and could easily be suppressed and absorbed by the more cultured and power­ ful Tatars.”58 These attitudes proved attractive among the conservative lead­ ing circles in Omsk and help explain the successes of the Bashkir loyalist movement, but they also demonstrate how Bashkirism had taken hold among traditionalist and conservative elements. Bashkir nationalism was not a mono­ poly of the Validov group. Over the next few months the Bashkir loyalists achieved a degree of recognition and support in Omsk never accorded to Validov or to the various Tatar leaders in the anti-Bolshevik camp. On 15 February 1919, Admiral Kolchak himself met with Kurbangaliev and other Bashkir representatives and promised to help them create some form of self-administration for the Bashkirs along the lines of a Cossack host.59 In May 1919, when Kolchak’s troops had reoccupied most of Bashkortostan, the loyalists addressed two more petitions to White leaders that were carefully and approvingly read in Omsk.60 In response to these petitions and other repeated requests, Minister of 56

 List of Bolsheviks subject to arrest by the Plenipotentiary for Security, 20 November 1918, ibid., l. 46.

57

 Ibid., l. 45. This is not the last time that Validov’s opponents would charge that his government was insufficiently Bashkir. Shortly before Validov’s defection to the Soviets in 1919, one of the handful of Bashkir Communists emphasized that Validov was not a Bashkir at all, but a Teptiar (Iuldashbaev, Obrazovanie , 207). 58

 GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, l. 42ob.

59

 Kurbangaliev et al. to Minister of Internal Affairs, 28 May 1919, ibid., l. 91ob.); Tagan, “Bashkiry v Zabaikal´e,” no. 8, 116. 60

 Kazimuratov and Kurbangaliev to Commander of the Western Army, May 1919, GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 98–99; and Kazimuratov and Kurbangaliev et al. to

234 Daniel E. Schafer

Internal Affairs Pepeliaev authorized Kurbangaliev to convoke an all-Bashkir congress in July 1919 to discuss plans for cultural and religious autonomy. Some 85 Bashkir representatives from seven districts met in late June to lay the groundwork for this congress.61 Kurbangaliev and Turko-Tatar Autonomy Kurbangaliev had earned favor in Omsk by declaring his outrage at three things that neither he nor the Omsk government could abide: Bolshevism, national-territorial autonomy, and Tatar nationalism. His vehement declara­ tion of complete loyalty demonstrated that he was a Bashkir the Russian bureaucrats could trust, unlike the traitorous Validov. Yet the Bashkir loyalists did propose a positive program, reducing the maximalist national demands of Validov’s group to several smaller requests that they believed the Russian government would not refuse. These demands cast light on the particular form of nationalism espoused by the Bashkir loyalists, which differs in significant ways from Validov’s version. The first demand concerned the Tatars, for whom Kurbangaliev harbored a hatred and suspicion that nearly outshone all other aspects of his program. In the eastern reaches of Bashkortostan, where support for Kurbangaliev was strongest, Tatars were relatively few but tended to dominate the merchantry and commercial professions. In Kurbangaliev’s home district of Cheliabinsk, Tatars made up less than 1 percent of the population in 1897 yet accounted for nearly 15 percent of all persons involved in trade and commerce.62 They served Kurbangaliev as the functional equivalent of the Jews, a small minority whose economic influence outweighed their numbers and could easily be made a scapegoat and focus for popular animosity. Most importantly, Kurbangaliev was using Bashkirism as a way of defining his traditionalism—the Tatars were modern, liberal, socialist, radical, and dangerous to the Russian state, while Minister of Internal Affairs, 28 May 1919, ibid., ll. 91–92. See also the comments on the second petition prepared by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in June (ibid., ll. 108–09). 61

 Resolutions of the Bashkir conference in Cheliabinsk, 22–23 June 1919, ibid., ll. 93– 95; telegram from the conference to Ministry of Internal Affairs, 2 July 1919, ibid., l. 111; and agenda of the upcoming Bashkir congress, ibid., l. 104. The seven dis­tricts represented were Cheliabinsk, Troitsk, Verkhneural´sk (Orenburg province), Krasno­ ufimsk, Ekaterin­burg, Shadrinsk (Perm province), and Sterlitamak (Ufa province).

62

 Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis´ naseleniia Rossiiskoi imperii, 1897 g., 89 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tsentral´nyi statisticheskii komitet Ministerstva vnutrennikh del, 1897–1905), 28: 111, 147, 149. This is true of Orenburg province as a whole as well, where Tatars comprised 5.8 percent of the population yet 23.8 percent of those involved in trade (28: 108, 116). All these figures include family members.



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the Bashkirs stayed closer to the old ways and hence were natural allies of the anti-Bolshevik White movement. His anti-Tatar antagonism was exacerbated by the sense that the Tatars, a much larger group overall than the Bashkirs, were ultimately capable of assimilating and extinguishing the Bashkir people. Kurbangaliev returned to this theme repeatedly in late 1918 and early 1919, as in petition after petition he condemned the National Administration of Muslim Turko-Tatars (Milli Idare). Tatar intellectuals and politicians had established this body in July 1917 as the primary organ of self-government for Muslim Turkic peoples of Russia. Banned in Soviet territory in April 1918, the Milli Idare continued to function in White-held Siberia. Kurbangaliev raised every conceivable anti-Tatar prejudice among the Russian bureaucrats, beginning with the insinuation that the Milli Idare was a revolutionary organization formed during the “revolutionary time” of 1917 with a membership chosen “in the time of the Bolsheviks.” Since the overthrow of Bolshevism it had called no more congresses and continued to function without asking anyone for permission or recognition.63 He further described this organization as a pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic threat to both the Russian state and numerically small peoples like the Bashkirs. The goal of the [National] Administration is the unification of all peo­ ples of the Turko-Tatar tribe in Russia and the management of all their national-cultural and spiritual affairs. For the unification of all these peoples it strives to create a single Turko-Tatar language and a single culture, with the help of which it expects to devour and Tatarize the little cultured peoples of that tribe, that is, the Bashkirs, Meshcheriaks, and Kirgiz.64 Tatarization was furthered by the Milli Idare’s education department, which had “nationalized” primary schools and staffed them with teachers who taught in the Turko-Tatar language, used Turko-Tatar books, and were thereby Tatarizing the Bashkirs. In religious and tax affairs as well, Tatar domination was the rule. Once this “new Tatar yoke” had been laid upon the smaller peoples, the Turko-Tatarists planned to forge the Muslims of Russia into a single “anti-state Turko-Tatar opposition.”65 To prevent such an unfortunate occurrence, Kurbangaliev requested that the Russian government abolish the Milli Idare.

63

 GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 91–92, 98, 98ob.

64 65

 Ibid., l. 98ob.

 Ibid., ll. 98 ob.–99.

236 Daniel E. Schafer

These arrows were exceptionally well aimed. The Omsk government, staffed by tsarist functionaries, military officers, and conservative Kadets— members of the old governing elite—was subject to many of the same attitudes that characterized the old regime. Among these prejudices was a deep suspi­ cion of Tatars (or indeed Muslims of any stripe), increasingly perceived since the mid-19th century as ancient foes of the Russians. This suspicion was ac­ companied by the fear that if Tatars were given the slightest advantage, they would Tatarize and Islamicize other small non-Russian peoples, thus creating a large alien body within Mother Russia.66 This was exactly the attitude that Kurbangaliev exploited in his letters to Omsk. Incidentally, their fears may have been reinforced by the rhetoric of petitions from Tatar leaders, who used “Turko-Tatar,” “Tatar,” and “Muslim” interchangeably and stressed the evolving unity of this ethnic-religious community. One Tatar petition began with these words, which encapsulate the Turko-Tatarist view of their community: The Turko-Tatars, who possess their own language, religion, and a historically formed national culture that set them apart among the backward peoples of Russia, have always felt themselves a separate cultural-national entity and have striven to manifest self-activity in their cultural-national affairs. Thanks to this national self-conscious­ ness the Turko-Tatars have succeeded, over the centuries and right up to the February Revolution, in preserving their independence in cultural-educational affairs and a share of self-activity in religious administration. They have constantly yearned for full freedom in the administration of their religious affairs and in satisfying their culturalnational requirements.67 Sadri Maksudov, president of the Milli Idare and a former member of the Duma, was at this time in Paris hoping to represent Turko-Tatar interests at the peace conference. There he drew upon his acquaintance with Russian liberal leaders and arranged a meeting with Prince L´vov. Maksudov suggested to L´vov that the Russian government publish a decree recognizing the Muslim cultural-national institutions, naming members of the National Assembly and Milli Idare in Ufa upon whom the government could call to write the decree. L´vov, or perhaps Russian ambassador Maklakov, who forwarded 66

 Robert Geraci, “Russian Orientalism at an Impasse: Tsarist Education Policy and the 1910 Conference on Islam,” in Brower and Lazzerini, Russia’s Orient, 138–61. 67

 I. A. Akhtiamov and S. M. Urmanov to Minister of Internal Affairs, 21 March 1919, GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 57, l. 2.



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L´vov’s communication to Omsk, added: “We expect that the impression of the Government’s cooperation with loyal natives [inorodtsy] could have positive consequences in solving the general problem [obshche-narodnago voprosa].”68 In June 1919 Viktor Pepeliaev, head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kolchak’s Omsk government, finally responded to Tatar requests for legaliza­ tion of the Milli Idare. His response reveals the depth of mistrust between the Kolchak government and the Tatars and shows that Kurbangaliev’s various petitions had been carefully read in Omsk. Turning to the petition of the former member of the State Duma Mak­ sudov to coopt members of the National Assembly and Administration of the Muslims in Ufa into governmental legislative activity on this question, I have the duty to note that, according to information in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, these religious-national organizations, having without permission appropriated to themselves the functions of governmental institutions and having named themselves the Na­ tional Assembly and Administration of Turko-Tatars of Inner Russia and Siberia, are permeated with pan-Islamic tendencies and act largely in the narrow national interests of the Tatar nationality alone and defi­ nitely strive not towards the preservation of other tribes professing Mohammedism, but quite the contrary, toward their Tatarization. This tendency provoked strong resentment and condemnation on the part of the latter, and has prompted them to take certain measures of self-defense. Thus, under the catchword of protest against the Tatars’ predatory aspirations, the Bashkirs are convoking with my permission on June 15 of this year an independent congress in Cheliabinsk to determine their national-cultural tasks and the means to realize them without any dependence on or link to the Ufa Turko-Tatar assembly.… In such circumstances I declare myself most decisively against coop­ eration of the Government with the Ufa National Assembly and Ad­ ministration, whose tasks too sharply diverge from our current policy on the national question.69 This statement immediately became official policy and marked the end of the “legal” existence of the Milli Idare in White territory, a major triumph for Kurbangaliev’s movement. After Ufa fell to the Red Army in June 1919, the organization ceased any meaningful existence, except for its religious depart­

68

 Telegram from Maklakov to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 23 May 1919, ibid., l. 48.

69

 V. N. Pepeliaev to I. I. Sukin, 12 June 1919, ibid., ll. 49–50.

238 Daniel E. Schafer

ment, the old Orenburg Spiritual Assembly, which eventually resumed its work in Ufa. Despite Kurbangaliev’s hostility to territorial autonomy, a fundamental Bashkir loyalist request was that Omsk recognize the religious autonomy of the Bashkirs. Kurbangaliev had been instrumental in the formation of a Bashkir religious administration, separate from the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly and the Milli Idare, back in December 1917. However, this act of the Bashkir congress, taken in the presence of Akhmed-Zaki Validov and his group, could not serve as an appropriate precedent for either Kurbangaliev or Kolchak’s government. Thus in his many petitions and letters to the Russian government Kurbangaliev sought an appropriate document from Omsk that would legalize such a body. In the spring of 1919, Kurbangaliev’s group sub­ mitted a draft of a regulation on the Spiritual Assembly of Bashkiria.70 As the year of 1919 passed, Bashkir loyalist petitions remained as obse­ quious as ever, yet Kurbangaliev and his followers clearly felt they had the ear of the ruler and grew more confident in their requests. The Bashkirs’ Chelia­ binsk conference in June not only condemned the Milli Idare and called for Bashkir religious autonomy, but also proposed a “union” of Bashkirs with the Orenburg Cossack Host.71 The creation of a separate Bashkir Cossack Host with its own Ataman along the lines of the pre-1863 Bashkir-Mishar Host was the main subject of Kurbangaliev’s petition of October 1919.72 In the late summer and fall Kurbangaliev petitioned for a council of Bashkir representatives within the central government to participation in decisions involving Bashkirs; reservation of 22 seats in the State Zemstvo Conference for Bashkir representatives; consolidation of all Bashkir military units in sep­ arate divisions; a loan of 25 million rubles to restore the Bashkir economy; and five million rubles in aid to Bashkir refugees. If there were to be regional constituent congresses at some point in the future, Bashkortostan should have one of its own.73

70

 Ibid., d. 22, ll. 93ob., 98ob.–99; and Kurbangaliev et al. to the Supreme Ruler, October 1919, GARF f. 1700, op. 1, d. 3, l. 203 ob.

71

 GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, l. 93ob. This proposal was endorsed by the Orenburg Cossack leadership, ibid., l. 105.

72

 Kurbangaliev et al. to the Supreme Ruler, October 1919, GARF f. 1700, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 202–03.

73

 Kurbangaliev to Chairman of the Council of Ministers, 24 August 1919, GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, ll. 113–113ob., and GARF f. 1700, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 203–203ob.



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Kurbangaliev and Land Reform So far we have said little about that great issue that was ultimately at the center of the Bashkir question—land reform. This subject requires special at­ tention, for the land question was a difficult issue for Kurbangaliev. Central tenets of Validov’s approach struck him as either socialistic (nationalization and redistribution of land) or destructive of the good relations with Russian authorities on which he relied (expulsion of Russian settlers, return of all formerly Bashkir land). Yet even Kurbangaliev could not ignore the serious problem of land shortage, which impoverished so many Bashkirs. He was particularly attentive to this issue in the early days when his anti-Validov campaign was still a local affair involving a handful of rural Bashkir town­ ships. The October 1918 petition from Kurbangaliev’s home township explained that the Bashkirs, already poor, had been “ravaged” by both the Bolsheviks and the authorities of Bashkortostan and had difficulty fulfilling their obligations to the Russian state. The petitioners asked for the temporary transfer to township zemstvo boards of two local forests then under the control of Bashkortostan authorities, certain reserve lands, and all lands and resources that historically had belonged to Bashkir individuals and settlements but had been taken from them. Granting this request would permit the Bashkirs to more energetically stand up for their “older brother, Russia.”74 Kurbangaliev soon realized that demanding the return of all land that had once belonged to Bashkirs was a recipe for protracted conflict with local Russians and was in any case not likely to be granted by Russian authorities. The proposal was dropped in later petitions. Instead, the loyalist petitions of May and August 1919 asked only that two specific and limited types of land be turned over for Bashkir use. The June 1919 Cheliabinsk conference placed the land question on the agenda of the all-Bashkir congress, but recommended no particular solution, while Kurbangaliev’s last petition (October) opines only in passing that the Bashkirs’ “historic right to land” be confirmed.75 It is possible that Kurbangaliev saw little or no use for land reform; hence it was simply a con­ venient promise designed to gain the support of the Bashkir peasantry in Cheliabinsk district for his secessionist activities in late 1918. More charitably we might infer that as Kurbangaliev’s activities drew him deeper into military and bureaucratic affairs during 1919 and as the battle over Bashkortostan wore on, more immediate and urgent concerns crowded out the complex issues of land reform. Indeed, by the late summer of 1919, Bashkir land was entirely in Red hands and out of reach for a White land reform of any sort. We must 74

 GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, l. 43.

75

 Ibid., ll. 92, 93ob., 113; GARF f. 1700, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 202ob.–203.

240 Daniel E. Schafer

also bear in mind the tendency of Kolchak’s government to postpone major decisions on social policy until final victory was achieved. Kurbangaliev must have recognized the hopelessness of convincing the government to act on the land question quickly. Unlike Validov, Kurbangaliev was unwilling to tackle such a problem independently. Defeat and Exile During the summer of 1919 the tide of the Civil War in the Urals changed once again. Between May and August the Red Army pushed the Whites across the Ural Mountains into Siberia and occupied Bashkortostan for the third time and final time. Cheliabinsk fell on 24 July, just two days before Kurbangaliev’s all-Bashkir congress was scheduled to convene. During August, the Bashkir officer Musa Murtazin defected to the Reds and brought his Bashkir Cavalry Brigade with him. This blow severely weakened the White front and along with other desertions and defections in the region facilitated the Red capture of Orsk at the end of the month.76 Kurbangaliev reported to the Russian Council of Ministers: “The Bashkir people is suffering unprecedented horrors. The Bolsheviks are burning down entire Bashkir vil­ lages. They are exterminating the entire population, society and townships. Public figures are being expelled.” Bashkirs fled their homes, leaving behind property, grain, livestock, and sometimes members of their families; perhaps as many as ten thousand fled into the Kirgiz steppe.77 Kurbangaliev’s October 1919 petition to Kolchak was desperate in tone, for his nemesis Validov had returned to Bashkortostan with the Red Army. Now Bolshevik repression was supplemented by “criminal enticements” to buy Bashkir support: declaration of a Bashkir Soviet republic, expenditure of one billion rubles to aid economic reconstruction in Bashkortostan, formation of a Soviet Bashkir army and cavalry. Kurbangaliev noted that neither the Bashkir-Cossack Host nor the Bashkir religious administration had yet been created. Bashkirs fought just as hard for the White cause as the Cossacks, yet the latter were much better rewarded for their efforts. Since August the Orenburg Cossacks had received 34 million rubles for grain collection and refugee relief, while only 100,000 rubles had been allocated for Bashkir refugees in the Kirgiz steppe. Even these funds rarely reached the Bashkirs themselves, who had fled their villages too quickly to acquire the evacuation cards without which funds would not be disbursed. Many Bashkirs were returning to Bolshevik territory, disgusted 76

 G. Akulinin, Orenburgskoe kazach´e voisko v bor´be s bol´shevikami, 1917–1920 (Shang­ hai: Slovo, 1937), 135; Togan, Vospominaniia, 307–09. 77

 GARF f. 1701, op. 1, d. 22, l. 113; Tagan, “Bashkiry v Zabaikal’e,” no. 8, 117.



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and disappointed with the White government. All this further demoralized Bashkir soldiers at the front concerned about their families. Kurbangaliev implied that the Whites’ Bashkir policy fared poorly when compared with the Bolshevik promises to the Bashkirs, however duplicitous they might be.78 Threat of imminent military defeat and the fear that Validov’s version of Bashkir nationalism might win out encouraged Kurbangaliev to raise the stakes and press for more economic aid and a greater Bashkir voice in decision making. We will never know how a victorious Kolchak government might have dealt with these demands, for time soon ran out for both the Russian Whites and their Bashkir allies. After Omsk fell to the Red Army in November 1919, the White Army disintegrated in a disorderly retreat across Siberia. Kurban­ galiev’s patrons, Admiral Kolchak and Prime Minister Viktor Pepeliaev, were captured by socialists in Irkutsk, turned over to the Bolsheviks, and executed in early 1920. The winter of 1919–20 was an exceptionally difficult time for Kurbangaliev and his fellow White Bashkirs. Hundreds or even thousands of Bashkir soldiers in White ranks starved or froze to death during their wintry “Ice March” across Siberia, and countless numbers dispersed or deserted. Kurbangaliev himself lost his father and two brothers that terrible winter and spring. In March 1920 Kurbangaliev reached Chita, a town in eastern Siberia under the thumb of the warlord Ataman Grigorii Semenov. He immediately set about courting Semenov as his new patron. Alone among the warlords of Siberia, Semenov had a reputation as a protector of non-Russian peoples. He had a Buryat mother, spoke Buryat and Mongol fluently, his entourage included Russians, Buryats, Chinese, and Koreans, and he was thought to be pro-Muslim.79 For most of 1920 Kurbangaliev was swept up in the intrigue and truly Byzantine politics of Russia’s Far East. He tried to play off the various forces against each other—Ataman Semenov, the regional warlords, officers of rival Russian army corps, and Japanese military officers and diplomatic representatives—while they all tried to use the Bashkirs in intrigues of their own.80 Kurbangaliev obtained Semenov’s approval for a conference of Bashkir representatives in Chita in June 1920, which then approved a plan to create a Cossack Bashkir Host with a Military-National Administration headed by Kur­ bangaliev. This new body was to collect Bashkir soldiers now scattered among 78

 GARF f. 1700, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 202–03.

79

 N. G. O. Pereira, White Siberia: The Politics of Civil War (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 55–56, 190; Tagan, “Bashkiry v Zabaikal’e,” no. 8, 118.

80

 This story is told in great detail in the memoirs of Galim´ian Tagan, “Bashkiry v Zaibaikal´e.”

242 Daniel E. Schafer

various Russian army units into a cohesive military force which could help the Whites push the Bolsheviks back to Bashkortostan and beyond. Semenov promulgated the formation of the Bashkir Host on 17 June 1920, to a great deal of fanfare and ceremony. Nevertheless, Russian officers were unwilling to relinquish control over their Bashkir soldiers and Semenov lacked either the power or the will to overrule them. Kurbangaliev’s communications to Semenov and the other Russian officers became increasingly pathetic and despairing, pleading for any concession that might justify the Bashkir soldiers’ abandonment of their homeland the year before. By November 1920, Semenov was in retreat from Chita and Kurbangaliev had finally given up on his collaboration with the White Russian movement. He closed down the meaningless Bashkir Military-National Administration and headed across the border into Manchuria, along with some two thousand Bashkir soldiers, who were then disarmed by Chinese troops. He was then 30 years old. For the next quarter century he lived either in Manchuria or Tokyo, where he became a prominent member of the Muslim expatriate community and remained actively involved in the Bashkir national struggle.81 In Japan he organized and led a Muslim association, opened a mosque and madrasa, published an edition of the Qur’an, and wrote frequently for émigré newspapers. Bolshevik victory in the Civil War led Kurbangaliev to fundamentally rethink the methods and goals of his struggle against Bolshevism. Freed from the obligation to tie his political fortunes to Russian conservative or reactionary elements, Kurbangaliev increasingly saw himself as part of a titanic struggle of the Uralic-Altaic peoples against Russian dominance of half the Asian continent. In line with a strand of Muslim Japanophilia stretching back to the Russo-Japanese war, Kurbangaliev perceived the Japanese Empire as the agent that would bring about the destruction of the Soviet and Chinese Empires and the liberation of Muslims in a territory stretching from his native Ural Mountains and Soviet Central Asia to Xinjiang in western China.82 Kurbangaliev’s troublesome and public meddling in Japanese foreign affairs eventually led to his deportation in 1938. Landing in Manchuria, he continued 81

 This section is based mostly on the research of Aislu Iunusova, “Velikii imam dal´nego vostoka: Mukhammed-Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev,” Vestnik Evrazii, no. 4 (2001), available online at http://bashkorttar.ru/?p=135; and Nisiyama, “Musul´mane v Iaponii,” 190–94. See also Togan, Vospominaniia, 258. Kurbangaliev’s activities in Japan have been described in the context of interactions between Japanese Pan-Asianism and early 20th-century Pan-Islamism; see Selçuk Esenbel, “Japan’s Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900–1945,” American Historical Review 109, 4 (October 2004): 1140–70. 82

 On admiration for Japan among Volga-Ural Muslims in the prewar period, see Ross, “From the Minbar to the Barricades,” 329–38.



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his agitation for an independent Xinjiang until the end of the Second World War. In 1945 he was captured by Soviet forces and returned to the Soviet Union. After serving a ten-year sentence in Vladimir prison he was released in 1956. Forbidden to leave the country or visit his family in Tokyo, he lived with his younger sister in Cheliabinsk and served as imam to a local mosque in the province of his birth until his death in 1972. Conclusion The First World War and the revolution it unleashed cast a long shadow over the Bashkir lands. Half a century later, old men like Validov and Kurbangaliev were still living with the consequences of decisions they had made in those years of war and revolution. War and revolution shattered social patterns and networks, political practices and habits, and the fundamentals of economic life, requiring the reconstruction of society and forcing individuals to choose how they would shape and participate in whatever emerged. Validov and Kurbangaliev came from broadly similar backgrounds but chose separate paths. Validov conceived a project to resolve Bashkir social grievances through Bashkir territorial autonomy—a combination of social and national issues that places him in the mainstream among nationalist movements during the Russian Civil War and helps explain his success.83 Adapting quickly to revolutionary politics, he was willing to exercise authority, take action, and execute acts of violence in the service of his ideals, all on his own initiative and without authorization from above. He displayed tremendous tactical flexibility, switching sides at least twice in the war, though his basic program changed little. The Bashkir republic that he helped create endures today as a constituent member of the Russian Federation and his greatest po­ litical accomplishment. Yet his forceful personality, commitment to genuine autonomy, and radical anticolonialist vision alienated many Russians and Tatars, leaving him with few sympathizers in the governments on either side of the front. Reliance on self-action and mobilization of the small Bashkir population proved inadequate to overcome the many forces arrayed against him and his ultimate project—expulsion of Russians from Bashkir lands and transformation of autonomous Bashkortostan into the vanguard of an anti­ colonial Muslim movement. Abandonment of this project and life in exile re­ mained his only option for survival. 83

 Ronald Grigor Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), chap. 2; Ronald Grigor Suny, “Nationalism and Class in the Russian Revolution: A Comparative Discussion,” in Russia in Revolution: Reassessments of 1917, ed. Edith Rogovin Frankel, Jonathan Frankel, and Baruch Knei-Paz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 219–46.

244 Daniel E. Schafer

Gadulkhai Kurbangaliev’s pathway was different. The same age as Validov and from a broadly similar background (both men were sons of rural imams), he was the scion of an ulama and Sufi network that rejected Jadidism, socialism, and radicalism in all its forms. His family had a strong memory of Zainulla Rasulev’s betrayal and was jealous of his later success. Their methods were very much those of the traditionalist Volga-Ural ulama—denunciation of rivals to the authorities, reliance on the armed force of conservative elements in the Russian state, and reluctance to take action without prior approval from above. As socially conservative Islamic notables in a traditional society undergoing rapid change, both Gabidulla and his sons were uncomfortable with Validov’s independent activism. Thrust into the world of revolutionary politics, Gabdulkhai in particular chose the familiar path of patronage, at­ taching himself to powerful figures who might sponsor his projects. His ap­ proach to his Russian and Japanese patrons was generally deferential and obsequious, playing to their interests and prejudices. Even his exploitation of the anti-Tatar prejudices of his Russian audience and their fears of radicalism, pan-Turkism, and pan-Islamism had been pioneered by traditionalist ulama before the war. His requests—too polite to be termed demands—for religious autonomy and the formation of separate Bashkir military units along Cossack lines were rooted in Catherinian precedents more than two centuries old. At the same time, the younger Kurbangaliev adopted the rhetoric and style of modern nationalism, drawing upon the new narratives of Bashkir uniqueness and Bashkir grievance to present himself not so much as a religious leader of a Muslim population than as a national leader of the Bashkir people. To be sure, this was nationalism in the service of social conservatism, presented as compatible with loyalty to a larger Russian state, yet it was a nationalist stance nevertheless. His campaign for a separate Bashkir Spiritual Assembly might appear to be only a slight modification of Catherine II’s Oren­ burg Spiritual Assembly, but it relied on the assumed existence of a unique Bashkir nation with a right to self-governance. Indeed, both Kurbangaliev generations had supported territorial Bashkir autonomy before it veered in a socialist direction at the end of 1917. The two distinct brands of Bashkir nationalism—Validov’s and Kurbangaliev’s—reflected real political, religious, and sociological divisions among the Bashkir elite at the time of the revolu­ tion, even as their specific formulations depended heavily on these two charismatic individuals. Recognizing this rift among the Bashkirs helps us understand not only the fragmentation of the anti-Bolshevik movement in the borderlands, but also some of the large processes afoot—the empire’s socio­ political splintering during 1917 and the numerous projects over the following years, many of them locally generated, to reconstitute the social and political order on a new basis.



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If one were to predict the future trajectory of the Kurbangaliev brand of Bashkir nationalism as expressed in the years of revolution and civil war, it seemed to be trending towards fascism—traditionalist in tone, militant in style, suspicious of modernism, hostile towards socialism, and ready to play upon ethnic hatred and resentment. As it happened, the final phase of Kur­ bangaliev’s intellectual evolution found him abroad, where, like previous Muslim exiles from Russia, he became enamored of pan-Turkism, pan-Islam­ ism, and the global anticolonial struggle, adopting some of the same forms of geopolitical and strategic thinking that he had condemned among Tatar thinkers during the Civil War. Such were the ironies and paradoxes generated by the spinning kaleidoscope of Russia’s revolution and Civil War.

The Russian Military in Finland and the Russian Revolution Elena Dubrovskaia

The relationship between the Russian central government and the autono­ mous Grand Duchy of Finland underwent a dramatic transformation during the First World War and the Russian Revolution. The outbreak of war ampli­ fied the existing conflict over competing interests between central and local powers in Finland, while total mobilization resulted in increased state in­ tervention in local matters and an expanded role of army and military admin­ istration in government. The subsequent Russian Revolution, involving the army and garrisons and accompanied by a wave of national revolutions, further aggravated the existing conflict. This study follows the evolution of the “soldiers’ revolution” in Finland from March to October 1917 and investigates its influence on the development of the Finnish national revolution. Policies towards Finland of the Russian imperial and Provisional govern­ ments, and the events unfolding in Finland in 1917, have already attracted the attention of historians. But the interconnection between revolution in the Russian army and navy and the Finnish national movement has not yet been fully explored.1 In contrast to Soviet scholars, who emphasized the “friend­ ship” between the Finnish proletariat and Russian soldiers and sailors, con­ temporary researchers note the disparities of their aims and the differ­ences in development of the soldiers’ revolution and the Finnish national movement. Historians underscore the fact that despite existing commercial relations be­ tween inhabitants of the garrisons and the population of the Grand Duchy, Russian soldiers stationed in Finland were disconnected from local society. Their isolation is attributed to religious, linguistic, and cultural dif­ferences, as well as to the Finns’ inimical attitudes toward representatives of the Russian state and army that manifested themselves before and during the

1

 Elena Dubrovskaja and Ilja Solomeshch, “Russia and Finland during World War I in Russian Historiography,” in Norden och Krigen i Finland och Baltikum 1918–19, ed. Lars Westerlund (Helsingfors: Statsrådets kansli, 2004), 185–93. Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 247–66.

248 Elena Dubrovskaia

Revolution.2 Scholars have shown that in the course of 1917, revolution in the Finland-based Russian army and the Finnish national revolution developed largely independently of each other. The revolutionary movement in Finland’s garrisons was closely connected to the soldiers’ revolution in Russia proper and was even more radical than that in the Petrograd garrison, for example.3 At the same time, according to recent research, the national revolution in Finland was a direct result of the disintegration of Russia’s central power in 1917 rather than a response to the uprisings in the Russian military units. Many scholars believe that the evolution of the Finnish national movement was largely determined by the contradictory policies of the Provisional Government in Petrograd and by the Bolshevik takeover of power, which facilitated Finland’s independence.4 Therefore, although the Finnish revolution and the revolution in the garrisons have both been studied extensively, scholars have not yet attempted to bring to light the interconnection and reciprocal influences of these two developments. 2  See Pertti Luntinen, The Imperial Russian Army and Navy in Finland, 1808–1918 (Hel­ sinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1997), 407–08; Outi Karemaa, Vihollisia, vainoojia, syöpäläisiä: Venäläisviha Suomessa 1917–1923 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1998), Karemaa, “Moraalisesta närkästyksestä kansalliseksi ohjelmaksi,” in Venäjan kahdet kasvot: Venäjä kuva suomalaisen identiteetin rakennuskivena, ed. Timo Vihavainen (Helsinki: Edita, 2004), 226–54; Eino Ketola, Kansalliseen kansanvaltaan: Suomen itse­ näisyys, ssiaali-demokraatit ja Venäjän vallankumous 1917 (Helsinki: Tammi, 1987); and Ketola, “Suomen sotilaskapina—lokakuun vallankumouksen strateginen edellytys,” Historiallinen Arkisto 91 (1987): 45. 3

 B. I. Kolonitskii, Simvoly vlasti i bor´ba za vlast´: K izucheniiu politicheskoi kul´tury rossii­ skoi revoliutsii 1917 goda (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2001), 276–81. See also works that examine the everyday life of soldiers and sailors and the peculiarities of political culture of Finland’s Russian garrisons: V. P. Buldakov, Krasnaia smuta: Priroda i posledstviia revoliutsionnogo nasiliia (Moscow: Rosspen, 1997), 119–39, 145; B. I. Kolonitskii, Pogony i bor´ba za vlast´ v 1917 godu (St. Petersburg: Ostrova, 2001), 26–33; A. N. Chistikov, “Finliandiia: Nezavisimost´, grazhdanskaia voina, otnosheniia s Sovetskoi Rossiei,” in Interventsiia na Severo-zapade Rossii: 1917–1920, ed. V. A. Shishkin (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1995), 159–74; Tuomas Hoppu, Joki ja sen väki II. Kokemäen historia 1870–2010 (Tallinn: Tallinna Raamatutrukikoda. Kokemäenkaupunki, Kokemäenseurakunta, 2011), 135–48; Ohto Manninen “Kapina, kansalaissota, vapaussota,” in Itsenäistymisen vuodet: 1917–1920, ed. Ohto Manninen (Helsinki: Valtionarkisto, 1993), 2: 8–21; Aatos Tanskanen, Venäläiset Suomen sisällissodassa vuonna 1918 (Tampere: Tamperen yliopisto, 1978); and Lars Westerlund, ed., Venäläissurmat Suomessa 1914–22, 2 vols. (Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kanslian julkaisusarja, 2004). 4  See V. Iu. Cherniaev, “Revoliutsiia 1917 g. i obretenie Finliandiei nezavisimosti,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 6 (1994): 27–45; Timo Vikhavainen, Natsional´noe osvobozhdenie ili sotsial´noe vosstanie? Grazhdanskaia voina 1918 g. v Finliandii i natsional´noe samosoznanie (Petrozavodsk: Izdatel´stvo Petrozavodskogo universiteta, 2009), 11–12, 23.

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This article demonstrates that the Finnish revolution and the revolution in Finland’s Russian garrisons were closely intertwined. The 1917 events in Fin­ land can be explained as a process of “dual radicalization.” Despite the lack of contact between the Russian military and the Finnish civilian population, there was a clear process of mutual radicalization during the revolutionary period that exacerbated the political tensions existing in the region. From the spring of 1917 until the autumn of the same year, the Finnish elites campaigned to broaden the autonomy of the former Grand Duchy, and their actions con­ tributed to the radicalization of Russian soldiers and sailors stationed in Finland. The revolutionary movement in garrisons and naval units in turn prompted the Finnish elites to advance more radical social and national de­ mands. Even though many soldiers and sailors believed that assisting the Russian revolution was their primary objective, they often participated in Finnish political campaigns and proclaimed their support for Finnish national demands. In doing so, they unwittingly aided the Finnish national movement, which culminated in Finland’s declaration of independence in December 1917. This article relies on letters written by Russian soldiers based in Finland, military censorship records, and multiple protocols and resolutions of soldiers’ and sailors’ and military units’ meetings, both published and unpublished. These materials demonstrate the complexity of attitudes that Russian soldiers held towards the Russian government, Finnish national politics, and the local population during the years of war. They also illuminate the degree to which Finland-based Russian soldiers were complicit in the Finnish national revo­ lution and in turn came under the radicalizing influence of Finnish politicians, specifically the social democrats, who attempted to influence the activists of Russian military organizations. Russian Garrisons in Finland during the First World War Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire in the early 19th century and from then onward enjoyed the unique status of an autonomous Grand Duchy. Until the outbreak of the First World War it maintained multiple at­ tributes of statehood, such as a national administration (the Senate) and a single-chamber parliament (the Sejm), its own laws, and a monetary system, postal service, and system of governing agencies. At the same time, in his capacity as the grand duke of Finland, the Russian emperor held the right to initiate legislation, could call the Sejm into session, and possessed the ex­ clusive right to deal with matters concerning Finland’s defense and foreign policies. The governor general represented the supreme power in Finland and

250 Elena Dubrovskaia

simultaneously chaired the Finnish Senate.5 In the late 19th and early 20th century, Finland became more apprehensive of imperial power. This develop­ ment is partially related to the strengthening of national self-consciousness, to the growth of the Grand Duchy’s economy, as well as to the sweeping sup­ pression of the Duchy’s political freedoms and economic privileges that the imperial center initiated in 1909.6 The dissolution of Finnish national military units influenced Finnish atti­ tudes toward Russian power and shaped the course of revolutionary events in the region. In an attempt to unify military service across the empire, in 1901 Emperor Nicholas II ordered the abolition of Finnish military units; Finnish citi­ zens were to serve in Russian military units instead. Finnish youths protested and refused to report for enlistment, which led to the declaration in 1905 of a complete military service exemption for the citizens of the Grand Duchy. In exchange, Finland was compelled to contribute “war millions”—a monetary compensation to the Russian budget that subsidized the empire’s defense.7 Starting in 1905, the Russian army and navy held exclusive responsibility for the Grand Duchy’s defense, and Russian troops from the Petrograd military district were stationed on Finnish territory.8 At the outbreak of World War I, the Russian military presence in Finland increased substantially. The Russian government was expecting a German as­ sault on Finland and feared an upswing of separatist sentiments. A marked increase of germanophilia in Finland during the years of war culminated in the development of a movement whose proponents called for aligning with 5

 Khendrik Meinander, Istoriia Finliandii (Moscow: Ves´ mir, 2008), 126–31; L. V. Suni, Velikoe kniazhestvo Finliandskoe: Pervye shagi avtonomii (Petrozavodsk: Izdatel´stvo Petro­ zavodskogo universiteta, 2006), 67; V. Iu. Cherniaev, “Petrograd i obretenie Finliandiei gosudarstvennoi nezavisimosti,” in Sankt-Peterburg–Helsinki, Helsinki–Sankt-Peterburg: 1809 – 2004, ed. A. V. Prokhorenko (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii dom, 2005), 89–95. 6

 I. M. Bobovich and T. M. Kitanina, “Finliandiia: Sozdanie osnov ekonomicheskoi nezavisimosti,” in Rossiia i Finliandiia v XX veke, ed. S. B. Koreneva and A. V. Prokhor­ enko (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii dom, 1997), 232–38; Matti Klinge, Imperskaia Finliandiia (St. Petersburg: Kolo, 2005), 318; I. N. Novikova, “Velikoe kniazhestvo Finliandskoe v imperskoi politike Rossii,” in Imperskii stroi Rossii v regional´nom izmerenii: XIX– nachalo XX vv. Sbornik nauchnykh statei, ed. A. S. Remnev (Moscow: Moskovskii ob­ shchestvennyi nauchnyi fond, 1997), 7; Vil´o Rasila, Istoriia Finliandii (Petrozavodsk: Izdatel´stvo Petrozavodskogo universiteta, 1996), 118–34. 7  Rasila, Istoriia Finliandii, 105; Luntinen, Sotilasmiljoonat (Helsinki: Suomen Historial­ linen Seura, 1984), 176–80. 8  E. B. Osherov and L. V. Suni, Finliandskaia politika tsarizma na rubezhe XIX–XX vv. (Petrozavodsk: Izdatel´stvo Petrozavodskogo universiteta, 1986), 63; Rasila, Istoriia Finliandii, 136; I. M. Solomeshch, Finliandskaia politika tsarizma v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (1914–fevral´ 1917) (Petrozavodsk: Izdatel´stvo Petrozavodskogo universiteta, 1986), 20.

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Germany in its war against Russia.9 For the purpose of securing Petrograd from the north in the case that Finland joined sides with Germany, the Russian General Staff sent reinforcements to the Grand Duchy, consisting primarily of militia units. By the spring of 1915, troops were stationed in all of Finland’s coastal areas. In the summer of the same year, several units from the 10th Corps of the State Militia were organized into the 42nd Army Corps, which made up the core of Russian troops in Finland.10 Military units of the Baltic Fleet were also stationed in the Grand Duchy, in particular the Sveaborg fortress (today Suomenlinna) garrison, which protected Helsingfors (today Helsinki) from the south, as well as garrisons of several other fortresses.11 By early 1917, the 42nd Army Corps incorporated various air, auto, bicycle, and radio subdivisions and numbered 40,000 troops.12 More than 20,698 ground troops were housed in barracks and schools in Helsingfors and the Sveaborg fortress alone.13 The number of Russian troops in Finland reached its peak in late August–September 1917, when additional forces were deployed in Sveaborg and Helsingfors to counter the threat of a German invasion. The 9

 I. N. Novikova, “Finskaia karta” v nemetskom pas´ianse: Germaniia i problema neza­ visimosti Finliandii v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (St. Petersburg: Izdatel´stvo SanktPeterburgskogo universiteta, 2002), 45–46. 10

 Solomeshch, Finliandskaia politika, 20; Lars Westerlund, “Mannerheim toimi liitossa venäläisten upseerien kanssa,” Carelia, no. 2 (2003): 116–22; National Archives of Finland (Kansallisarkisto [KА]), “Russian Military Papers” Collection, d. 7682; Sakari Heikkinen, “Den ryska soldatsken och österbotningarna,” in Blod på drivan: Händel­ serna 1917–1918 ur ett österbottniskt perspektiv, ed. Marianne Koskimies-Envall (Vaasa: Österbottens museum, 1999), 25.

11

 A. E. Ioffe, “Morskoi garnizon Gel´singforsa v Fevral´skoi revoliutsii,” in Padenie imperii i novaia organizatsiia Evropy posle Pervoi mirovoi voiny, ed. A. N. Tsamutali (St. Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburgskii nauchnyi tsentr Rossiiskoi Akademii nauk, 1993), 26; V. V. Petrash, Moriaki Baltiiskogo flota v bor´be za pobedu Oktiabria (Moscow–Leningrad: Nauka, 1966), 12–16; S. S. Khesin, Oktiabr´skaia revoliutsiia i flot (Moscow: Nauka, 1971), 21; Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Revolution and the Baltic Fleet: War and Politics, February 1917–April 1918 (London: Macmillan, 1978).

12

 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA) f. 8260, State militia, 92nd brigade. Description [poiasnitel´naia spravka] of opisi 1 and 2; Uljas Rauan­ heimo, “Venäläiset joukot Suomessa maailmansodan 1914–1918 aikana: Niiden yleis­ ryhmitykset ja toimintasuunnitelmat,” Tiede ja ase 9 (1950): 157, 160. See also Solo­ meshch, Finliandskaia politika, 20.

13

 Jari Eerola, “Siunattu olkoon turvamme tuoja…”: Upseereihin kohdistunut väkivalta Helsingin venäläisessä varuskunnassa helmikuun vallankumouksen 1917 aikana (Helsinki: Pro-gradu, 1995), 7; Grigorii Zvonarev, Nashi pekhotnye chasti v Gel’singforse (Iz lichnykh vpechatlenii unter-ofitsera Sveaborgskogo pekhotnogo polka, vydelennogo iz 428-go Lodeino­ pol´skogo) (Helsingfors: Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta deputatov armii, flota i rabochikh, 1917), 23.

252 Elena Dubrovskaia

total number of Russian ground troops stationed in Finland rose to 100,000, and together with the military staff of the Baltic fleet companies it reached 125,000.14 Garrison soldiers stationed in Finland reflected the multiple nationalities of the Russian Empire. At the end of 1917, among the 3,205 soldiers of the Tsar­ skoe Selo 421st infantry regiment, which guarded the Gulf of Bothnia coast between Pori and Rauma, there were 250 Ukrainians, 65 Poles, 65 Estonians, 33 Latvians, 28 Jews, and 23 Tatars. The majority of the soldiers (2,721, or 84.9 percent), however, were Russian.15 It therefore comes as no surprise that Fin­ nish popular opinion regarded the strengthening of the Russian military presence in Finland as a renewed attempt at russification.16 At the same time, Finland-based Russian soldiers interpreted the deploy­ ment of additional troops in Finland as a measure entailed by the Finns’ unwillingness to protect their homeland themselves. Despite the fact that Finland was deeply involved in Russia’s defense efforts (Finnish citizens participated in fulfilling military orders and were mobilized to construct for­ tifications), soldiers believed that Finns did not wish to take the trouble of securing the empire’s defenses and were not even willing to “dig trenches for the Russians.”17 Exempt from the draft, the Finns were often blamed by the 14

 Klinge, Imperskaia Finliandiia, 586; Luntinen, The Imperial Russian Army, 274–75; Matti Nähri, “Venäläiset juokot Suomessa autonomian aikana,” in Venäläiset Suomessa: 1809– 1917, ed. Pauli Kurkinen (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1984), 161–80; Oiva Turpeinen, “Venäjankielisten määrä Suomessa vuonna 1900,” in Kurkinen, Venäläiset Suomessa, 21–28; Ketola, “Suomen solitaskapina,” 44; Natalia Baschmakoff and Marja Leinonen, Iz istorii i byta russkikh v Finliandii, 1917–1939 (Helsinki: Neuvostolitto­ instituutti, 1990), 100. 15

  Based on KА, “Russian Military Papers” Collection, 342: 1, d. 6107 (militaryrevolutionary department of the 106th infantry division, information on the national composition of the units).

16

 Seppo Zetterberg, ed., Suomen historian pikkujättiläinen (Porvoo—Helsinki—Juva: WSOY, 1987), 545–83.

17

 E. A. Pravilova, Finansy imperii: Den´gi i vlast´ v politike Rossii na natsional´nykh okrainakh, 1801–1917 (Moscow: Novoe izdatel´stvo, 2006), 233–44; I. M. Solomeshch, “Osobye organy gosudarstvennogo upravleniia Rossiiskoi imperii i Finliandiia v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny,” in Voprosy istorii Evropeiiskogo severa, ed. A. M. Pashkov (Petrozavodsk: Izdatel´stvo Petrozavodskogo universiteta, 2007), 161; Pertti Lunti­ nen, “Razluka bez pechali: Kak na karte Evropy poiavilos´ nezavisimoe finskoe gosudarstvo,” Rodina 12 (1995): 28; Z. A. Novoselova, “Vyborg na perelome istorii,” in Stranitsy Vyborgskoi istorii: Kraevedcheskie zapiski, ed. S. A. Abdullina (Vyborg: Evro­ peiskii dom, 2000), 257–58; Nähri, “Venäläiset juokot,” 170; Erkki Korkama and Stig Roudasmaa, Tapparasta Tankkeihin: Hämeenlinnan varuskunnan historia (Joensuu: KantaHämeen sotaveteraanipiiri, 1988), 257.

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troops for attempting to survive at others’ expense. Widespread spy hysteria and fear of a treacherous stab in the back from the “separatists” worsened this distrust.18 The Royal Prussian 27th Jäger battalion of Finnish volunteers formed in Germany added more fuel to the fire: Russian commanders of the Northern front went so far as to ban Finnish males aged 19 to 35 from leaving the country in order to prevent their enlistment in the battalion.19 Russian soldiers’ attitudes toward the Finns were not however unequivo­ cal. Because the Grand Duchy preserved a certain degree of autonomy from imperial administrative agencies, the activists of socialist parties were not subject to political repression to the same extent as in Russia, and there­ fore could propagate their views more freely. Russian socialists carried out agitation in the military units, advocating, among other issues, for the expan­ sion of Finland’s autonomy and arguing against the use of the military as a mechanism of oppression. For example, a proclamation to the Russian soldiers published by a local Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party committee early in 1917 noted: “You are told that Finns are spiteful and quarrelsome insurgents, and that if they stir, your responsibility is to pacify them with your bayonet, bullets, and saber… The duty of your consciousness to your Fatherland (Otechestvo) is to protect your nation (rodina) from foreign invasion, not to do any harm to foreign people, and to maintain the purity of the Russian title.”20 Overall, during the First World War the attitudes that the rank and file of Russian garrisons held toward the question of Finnish independence remained contradictory. On the one hand, many soldiers and sailors accused Finns of dodging military service and even suspected them of sympathizing with the enemy. On the other hand, many of them, in particular those who shared left-wing ideas, empathized with Finnish national demands. This empathy explains why the 1917 Revolution did not result in an outbreak of violence between Russian soldiers and the Finnish civilian population. And yet, the relationship between the garrisons and the Finnish population remained complex and contradictory throughout 1917.

18

 V. P. Buldakov, “Voina imperii i krizis imperstva: K sotsiokul´turnomu pereosmysle­ niiu,” in Rossiia i Pervaia mirovaia voina, ed. N. N. Smirnov (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 1999), 406–18; Klinge, Imperskaia Finliandiia, 550–64; Rasila, Istoriia Finliandii, 138–41.

19

 Novikova, “Finskaia karta,” 124–34; Matti Lackman, Jääkarimuistelmia (Helsinki: Otava, 1994); Solomeshch, Finliandskaia politika, 34–35.

20

  K soldatam voisk, raspolozhennykh v Finliandii (Gel´singfors, 1917), 1–4.

254 Elena Dubrovskaia

February 1917 in the Russian Garrisons in Finland The outbreak of the 1917 Revolution was marked by bloody skirmishes be­ tween soldiers and officers on the Baltic Fleet bases.21 Another effect of the Revolution was that Finnish citizens felt new hope about the restoration of Finland’s autonomous rights.22 Assisted by Finland’s Governor General Frants-Al´bert Zein, commanding officers of the army and navy at first attempted to conceal the news of revolu­ tionary events in Petrograd from the soldiers and sailors. Soldiers were locked up in their barracks and were not allowed to communicate with anyone outside the bases.23 Commander of the Baltic Fleet Vice-Admiral Adrian Nepenin prohibited the soldiers from joining any demonstrations, justifying his decision by the “non-Russianness” of Finland’s population, which could be “tempted” by military protests.24 It is telling that during the first days of March 1917, Russian officers viewed Russian soldiers, not Finnish citizens, as the main threat to order. When it became clear that the revolution could not be suppressed, Nepenin chose not to oppose the arrest of Finland’s unpopular Governor General Zein, ordered by the Provisional Committee of the State Duma.25 He also agreed with those commanders of other fronts who demanded Nicholas II’s abdica­ tion. In a naval order on 3 (16) March he announced his support for the Provisional Government, thus hoping to prevent unrest among the troops.26 21

 D. A. Bazhanov, Shchit Petrograda: Sluzhebnye budni rossiiskikh drednoutov v 1914–1917 gg. (St. Petersburg: Izdatel´stvo Rossiiskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo uni­ versiteta im. A. I. Gertsena, 2007), 223; Kristiina Kalleinen, “Helsingin upseerisurmat maaliskuussa 1917,” in Westerlund, Venäläissurmat Suomessa, 1: 149–83; David A. Long­ ley, “Officers and Men: A Study of the Development of Political Attitudes among the Sailors of the Baltic Fleet in 1917,” Soviet Studies 25 (1973): 28–50; Norman E. Saul, Sailors in Revolt: The Russian Baltic Fleet in 1917 (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978).

22  V. I. Startsev, “Vremennoe pravitel´stvo i Finliandiia v 1917 godu,” in Rossiia i Finliandiia v XX veke, ed. S. B. Koreneva and A. V. Prokhorenko (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii dom, 1997), 6–32; V. Iu. Cherniaev, “Rossiiskoe dvoevlastie i protsess samoopredeleniia Finliandii,” in Anatomiia revoliutsii: 1917 god v Rossii. Massy, partii, vlast´, ed. Cherniaev (St. Petersburg: Glagol, 1994), 308–23. 23

 RGVIA f. 3049, op. 1, d. 17, ll. 156ob.–57; E. N. Burdzhalov, Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia: Vosstanie v Petrograde (Moscow: Nauka, 1967), 121. 24

  Baltiiskie moriaki v podgotovke i provedenii Velikoi Oktiabr´skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii: Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow–Leningrad: Nauka, 1957), 29.

25

 Burdzhalov, Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia, 122.

26

 Unless noted otherwise, all dates are given in accordance with the Julian calendar, followed by the corresponding date in Gregorian calendar. Although a part of the

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However, an uprising that began on the battleship Andrei Pervozvannyi on the night of 4 (17) March thwarted his plans. Nepenin himself became one of the victims of subsequent mass reprisals against officers.27 In early March 1917, the Finnish population primarily stood by and ob­ served the uprisings in garrisons and naval companies, regarding them as a Russian soldiers’ revolution. Finnish parliamentary deputy Tekla Hultin described the events in Helsingfors in a diary entry from 4 (17) March: “The ships whose masts and bows were decorated with red lights looked strange in the night… In the morning red banners replaced the lights. Inhabitants of the houses located down the road from the naval barracks say that they couldn’t sleep late into the night because of passing military vehicles, rampaging sol­ diers, and firing.”28 But gradually Finns began to appreciate that the collapse of the monarchy had significant consequences for Finland itself. Already on 7 (20) March 1917, the Petrograd Provisional Government canceled decrees that limited Finland’s autonomy.29 And while on a trip to Helsingfors on 16 (29) March, the Provisional Government’s minister of justice, Aleksandr Kerenskii, declared a “total amnesty for all Finnish citizens persecuted by the tsarist regime for political crimes.”30 Locally, the power shift was at first most noticeable in the formation of elective revolutionary administrative bodies. The spheres of power of military and civil institutions as well as Finnish and Russian organizations often over­ lapped. Just like the situation across Russia, elective military organizations began to emerge among the Finland-based Russian troops as early as March. They were usually called “committees,” although the title of “soviets” was also sometimes used. It is telling that initially no clear division of powers existed between Finnish authorities and Russian military organizations.31 For this reason, army and navy soviets not only ruled in military affairs, but also Russian Empire, Finland followed the Gregorian calendar (Longley, “Officers and Men,” 35). 27

 A. V. Smolin, “Vosstanie v Gel´singforse 3–4 marta 1917 g. i ubiistvo vitse-admirala A. I. Nepenina,” in Sankt-Peterburg i strany Severnoi Evropy: Materialy Vos´moi ezhegodnoi Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, ed. V. N. Baryshnikov (St. Petersburg: Izdatel´stvo Russkoi Khristianskoi gumanitarnoi akademii, 2007), 22–33; Kristiina Kalleinen, “Helsingin upseerisurmat,” 149–83.

28  Tekla Hultin, Päiväkirjani kertoo: 1914–1918 (Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Sanatar, 1938), 2: 177–78. 29   Zhurnal zasedanii Vremennogo pravitel´stva: Mart–oktiabr´ 1917 goda (Moscow: Rosspen, 2001), 1: 49. 30

  Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 19 and 21 March (1 and 3 April) 1917.

31

 Ketola, Kansalliseen kansanvaltaan, 66.

256 Elena Dubrovskaia

became involved in issues related to Finland’s ethnic Russian population, and even took upon themselves the maintenance of order among Finns. The Soviet of Soldiers, Sailors, and Workers of the Sveaborg Docks, formed as early as 4 (17) March and subsequently renamed the Helsingfors Soviet of Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Workers’ Deputies, was a typical example. This soviet was the most influential of all Russian soviets organized in Finland, and numbered more than 500 deputies from military and naval units, as well as workers from Helsingfors defense companies. Already on 7 (20) March, the soviet ordered Russian sailors to patrol government and public institutions, factories, and banks. Russian soldiers, specifically the Smolensk 32nd infantry militia corps, also took up the responsibility of protecting the railroad and bridges from Helsingfors to Vyborg.32 The soviet attempted to cooperate with representatives of the Social Demo­ cratic Party of Finland (Suomen Sosialidemokraattinen Puolue, SDP) and with labor organizations during the first weeks of revolution. SDP delegate Kustaa Rovio joined the soviet’s Executive Committee.33 The soviet agreed to assist in establishing a city police force, manned mostly by Finnish workers and managed by a Committee of Order Maintenance.34 Along with representatives of the Helsingfors Sejm of Workers’ Organizations and the Town Council, this committee was to include two deputies each from Russian revolutionary organizations and the Helsingfors Soviet Executive Committee.35 Elected committees also appeared in other Finnish cities that housed garri­ sons and naval companies. They interacted with local workers’ organizations and sometimes took up the responsibility of maintaining order on their own initiative. The Soviet of Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Workers’ Deputies of the ÅboÅland Fortifications, founded on 8 (21) March, delegated three representatives to the Helsingfors Soviet.36 During the days of revolution in Åbo (today Turku), Russian sailors joined Finnish workers in freeing political prisoners from jail.37 A garrison executive committee, created in Nikolaistad (today Vaasa) no later than 5 (18) March, sent a patrol force and cavalry into the city and 32

  Baltiiskie moriaki, 42; Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 21 March 1917.

33

 Russian State Archive of the Navy (RGAVMF) f. P-92, op. 1, d. 19, l. 5.

34

 RGAVMF f. R-2063 (Helsingfors Soviet of Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Workers’ Deputies), op. 1, d. 2, l. 4ob.

35

 Iosif Siukiiainen, “Gel´singforsskii Seim rabochikh organizatsii v 1917–1918 gg.,” Skandinavskii sbornik 5 (1962): 58. 36

 RGAVMF f. R-92, op. 1, d. 19, l. 5.

37

 M. Kh. Kiuru, Boevoi rezerv revoliutsionnogo Petrograda v 1917 g.: Iz istorii russkikh bol´shevistskikh organizatsii v Finliandii (Petrozavodsk: Karel´skoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1965), 9.

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suggested that Finnish police surrender their weapons and ammunition.38 The committee warned the soldiers not to infringe upon the “immunity of your Finnish fellow-citizens and their property” or to attack them “with rude words and actions,” and also banned them from confiscating alcohol “at the risk of being shot” and from taking goods and provisions from shops without payment.39 The impressive demonstration held in Helsingfors on 17 (30) March to mark Freedom Fighters’ Remembrance Day became the most notable joint action of the Russian military and Finnish workers. Following the example of the Petrograd Soviet, which declared 23 March (5 April) to be the Day of Burial of the Victims of Revolution, a funeral of two sailors who died during the revolutionary upheaval was organized in Helsingfors. So many people at­ tended the ceremony that the city tram service had to be canceled. According to the newspaper of Finnish social democrats, Finnish civilians and Russian soldiers marched together along the route that had been planned by the Helsingfors Soviet Executive Committee. Red banners and Finnish national flags waved over the procession and a guard of honor stood at the grave.40 According to Admiral Andrei Maksimov, more than 120,000 people attended the ceremony. Maksimov interpreted this high attendance as a manifestation of “complete unity of the entire local population and military units.”41 Another joint procession took place in Helsingfors on May Day (18 April in the Julian calendar).42 During the spring months, Russian soldiers and Finnish workers took over the streets of the Finnish capital. Russian soldiers and sailors often expressed solidarity with Finnish workers’ demands during rallies and demonstrations. For example, on 5 (18) April, twenty thousand people rallied on the Senate Square in support of the Finnish metal workers’ union and their demand for an immediate introduction of the eight-hour workday. According to a Bolshe­ vik leader, Vladimir Zalezhskii, Russian sailors were prevalent among the rally’s participants and “fraternization between Russians and Finns” began

38

 KA, “Russian Military Papers” Collection, 342: 3. Nikolaistad Garrison Orders 1917–1918 (Nikolaistad Garrison Order no. 18, 9 March 1917).

39

  Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 22 March 1917.

40

 “Vallankumous uhrien juhlallisten hautajaisten johdosta,” Työmies, 29 and 31 March, 1 April 1917.

41

  Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 23 and 24 March 1917.

42

  E. Iu. Dubrovskaia, “Russkii Gel´singfors vesnoi–letom 1917 goda (politicheskaia topografiia goroda),” in Kul´tury gorodov Rossiiskoi imperii na rubezhe XIX–XX vekov, ed. B. I. Kolonitskii and M. Steinberg (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii dom, 2009), 245–58.

258 Elena Dubrovskaia

immediately after the speeches.43 The Finnish social democratic newspaper Työmies [The Worker] maintained that support shown for the Finnish workers’ cause by Russian soldiers and sailors was of very considerable importance.44 A workers’ delegation elected during the rally was able to achieve concessions from industrialists.45 Then the Central Organization of Finnish Trade Unions (Suomen Ammattiliittojen Keskusjärjestö, SAK), led by Finnish social demo­ crats, proposed legislation that would limit the workday to eight hours for all categories of workers and submitted it for consideration to the Sejm. This question was to be resolved through parliamentary procedure under the guidance of SAK and the Helsingfors Soviet Executive Committee.46 The examples explored here demonstrate that after the February Revolu­ tion, Finland-based Russian soldiers no longer considered themselves obligated to secure Finnish subordination to the central government. Repre­ sentatives of military organizations declared their respect for local laws and demands.47 Moreover, Russian soldiers’ and sailor’s committees interfered in the relations between Finnish employers and workers, for example, by pro­ viding support for the latter’s demand for an eight-hour workday. The SDP in turn established contact with military organizations and representatives of Russian leftist parties. Therefore, it was not only that Russian garrisons exerted a revolutionizing influence on Finnish politics, but also that Finnish workers and social democrats involved many formerly apolitical Russian soldiers in their own revolutionary activities. This development became even clearer in the summer of 1917 due to an escalation of conflict between the Russian Provisional Government and Finland’s Sejm over the status of Finland. Russian Garrisons, the Provisional Government and Finland’s Independence Throughout 1917, amidst the collapse of imperial government institutions and the increasingly complicated military and political situation, Finnish political elites actively began to demand that Finland’s autonomous rights be secured 43

 V. N. Zalezhskii, “Gel´singfors vesnoi i letom 1917 g.,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 5 (1923): 126–27. 44

  Hannu Soikkanen, Kansalaissota dokumentteina: Valkoista ja punaista sanankäyttöä v. 1917–1918 (Helsinki: Tammi, 1967), 1: 19.

45

  Tuomo Polvinen, Venäjän vallankumous ja Suomi 1917–1920 (Helsinki: WSOY, 1967), 1: 47–48.

46

  Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 7 April 1917.

47

 See, for example, V. Liubimov, “Finny i zakon,” Izvestiia Soveta deputatov AOUP, 2 May 1917.

The Russian Military in Finland and the Russian Revolution

259

through international guarantees, and eventually called for full independence from Russia.48 Soldiers’ committees and Russian soviets in Finland, originally supportive of the Petrograd Provisional Government, eventually sided with the Finnish Sejm in its struggle against the imperial center. The relationship between Finnish political elites and the government in Petrograd became strained by the end of spring 1917. On 31 March (13 April), the Finnish Senate established the Constitutional Committee, which pre­ pared a draft of a Russo-Finnish agreement. According to this agreement, the Finnish government would gain significant rights that formerly belonged to the Russian emperor, including that of calling and dismissing the Sejm. The Provisional Government would maintain only the right to appoint public servants to the highest posts in the Finnish government and would remain in charge of foreign and defense policy.49 However, the Provisional Government did not agree to make these concessions and attempted to preserve its right to call and dismiss the Sejm. Aleksandr Kerenskii, this time in the capacity of war minister, expressed the central government’s concern with the situation in Finland in a speech given in Helsingfors on 9 (22) May. Addressing soldiers and sailors in the Paasitorni, the Workers’ House, Kerenskii noted that “here in Finland we need to be especially careful, because not only the Germans could interpret our magnanimity and love as weakness… Revolution is power, and don’t let anyone think that the Russian revolutionary regime is weaker than the old tsarist rule and that it doesn’t have to be reckoned with. No, we will make them reckon with us!”50 Upon returning to Petrograd, Kerenskii clari­ fied his position, emphasizing that “until the Constituent Assembly is called, Finland cannot be granted independence.”51 Moderate socialists and liberals in the Provisional Government attempted to postpone the decision on Finland’s status until the convocation of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. Meanwhile, Finnish social democrats, who now headed the Finnish na­ tional movement, demanded immediate independence.52 After the 1916 elec­ tions, the SDP held 103 out of 200 seats in the Sejm, and could command parliamentary support for its demands.53 SDP members viewed Finland’s 48

 Luntinen, “Razluka bez pechali,” 27–31; Novikova, “Finskaia karta,” 157.

49

  I. N. Novikova, “Voina i obshchestvo nakanune i v period Pervoi mirovoi voiny,” in Voina i obshchestvo v XX veke, ed. S. V. Listikov (Moscow: Nauka, 2008), 1: 210. 50

 Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 11 May 1917; Cherniaev, Rossiiskoe dvoevlastie, 313.

51

  Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 25 May 1917.

52

 Ronal´d Suni [Ronald Suny], “Natsionalizm i demokratizatsiia v russkoi revoliutsii 1917 g.,” in Cherniaev, Anatomiia revoliutsii, 288.

53

 Klinge, Imperskaia Finliandiia, 565.

260 Elena Dubrovskaia

independence as a necessary prerequisite for social change, which was, according to them, inhibited by the central Russian government.54 Already during an extraordinary party congress in early June they passed a resolution reaffirming Finland’s self-government and condemning the presence of Rus­ sian troops on Finnish soil.55 An SDP delegation to the First All-Russian Con­ gress of Soviets in Petrograd was also able to ensure partial support from Russian soviets. The Congress, held in June, supported the call for Finland’s independence, but left the final decision on the former Grand Duchy’s status to the All-Russian Constitutional Assembly.56 In June the Sejm passed a bill that was based on a resolution of the Petro­ grad Congress of Soviets. According to this bill, the Finnish parliament now enjoyed the supreme powers of the Grand Duke of Finland; the Russian government could preserve its right to determine questions of defense and foreign policies, as well as its right to call and dissolve the Sejm.57 But al­ ready upon receiving news of the June uprising of the Petrograd garrison and the armed clashes in the city on 5 (18) July 1917, the Sejm deemed the Provisional Government deposed and passed the so-called law on supreme power. According to this law, the Finnish Parliament now held all the power, including that formerly within the jurisdiction of the Senate.58 As soon as the Provisional Government was able to control the situation in Petrograd, it responded in kind, passing a manifesto that dismissed the Finnish Parliament on 18 (31) July.59 At the same time, Kerenskii, by then head of the Russian government, gave orders to hold new elections to the Sejm. He directed the General Governor of Finland Mikhail Stakhovich to rely on Russian military and naval units if necessary and sent a reinforcement of Cossack units to Helsingfors.60 As a result, in the summer of 1917 Russian garrisons and 54

 Novikova, “Finskaia karta,” 151.

55

 Representative of the Bolshevik Central Committee Aleksandra Kollontai was present at the congress and supported the demand for Finland’s independence. See P. N. Miliukov, Istoriia vtoroi russkoi revoliutsii (Moscow: Rosspen, 2001), 118. Eino Ketola, “Russkaia revoliutsiia i nezavisimost´ Finliandii,” in Cherniaev, Anatomiia revoliutsii, 296; Cherniaev, “Rossiiskoe dvoevlastie,” 314.

56

 Startsev, “Vremennoe pravitel´stvo,” 13–14.

57

  Osmo Iussila, Velikoe kniazhestvo Finliandskoe: 1809–1917 (Helsinki: Ruslania, 2009), 749; Cherniaev, “Rossiiskoe dvoevlastie,” 316; Zhurnaly zasedanii Vremennogo pravi­ tel´stva, 3: 89; Novikova, “Voina i obshchestvo,” 210. 58  Novikova, “Voina i obshchestvo,” 210; Iussila, Velikoe kniazhestvo, 750–51; Klinge, Imperskaia Finliandiia, 568–70. 59

 Polvinen, Venäjän vallankumous, 93.

60

 Startsev, “Vremennoe pravitel´stvo,” 18.

The Russian Military in Finland and the Russian Revolution

261

naval companies found themselves directly involved in the growing conflict between the Provisional Government and the Sejm. The events of late summer and autumn clearly demonstrate that the Finland-based Russian garrisons were hesitant in their backing of central policies, which culminated in the eventual withdrawal of their support. An important factor in this development was the Provisional Government’s loss of popularity at a time when Finnish social democrats were able to present themselves not only as promoters of Finland’s independence, but also as con­ sistent supporters of the Revolution and continued social reforms. In early August, Russian garrisons were faced with the choice of support­ ing either Petrograd or the Finnish political forces and at first they reacted by passing several contradictory resolutions. During its 6 (19) August session, the Helsingfors Soviet confirmed its obligation to follow orders of the Provi­ sional Government. The Soviet did not take into account protests from Fin­ nish social democrats and their representative in the Soviet’s Executive Com­ mittee Aleksanteri Vasten, and passed a resolution expressing support for the Provisional Government with 59 votes in favor, 9 votes against, and 14 abstentions.61 However, already in early August several soldiers’ and sailor’s committees spoke out against providing support to the Provisional Govern­ ment. For example, on 7 (20) August the crew of the battleship Sevastopol´ expressed their discontent with Petrograd’s order to dissolve the Sejm.62 In turn, Finnish social democrats attempted to use Russian soldiers’ hesitation and secure the support of Russian elective bodies in Finland through campaigns in military and naval units. They tried to convince the rank and file that by infringing upon the rights of the Sejm, the Provisional Government was pursuing a “reactionary” policy. Inside the garrisons, SDP members widely distributed the resolution of the First All-Russian Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies that supported Finland’s independence, as well as the text of the law on supreme power in Finland and the 12 (25) June address of the Sejm to the Provisional Government, translated into Russian. This address made clear that the law on supreme power was first and foremost intended to ensure freedoms within Finland, and that it was passed in the context of the power crisis in Petrograd.63 Finally, on 11 (24) August the social democratic fraction of the Sejm addressed Russian social democratic parties 61

 RGAVMF f. P-2063, op. 1, d. 3, l. 89.

62

 A. K. Drezen, “Iz dnevnika I. I. Rengartena,” Krasnyi arkhiv 4 (1929): 11.

63

 Cherniaev, “Rossiiskoe dvoevlastie,” 318; E. Iu. Dubrovskaia and B. I. Kolonitskii, “Russkaia politicheskaia kniga v Finliandii v 1917 godu,” in Knizhnoe delo v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX–nachale XX veka, ed. I. I. Frolova (St. Petersburg: RNB, 2000), 141; Rossiia i Finliandiia (Helsingfors, 1917), 1–8.

262 Elena Dubrovskaia

in an open letter. “If the Russian reaction could convince at least some of you to support its policy of oppression in Finland, it would be its greatest victory,” proclaimed the letter. Finnish social democrats were appealing directly to Russian soldiers and sailors: “We do not ask you to take any measures to protect our rights… We only ask of you, Russian comrades, to express your disapproval of the threat of violence issued against our Sejm …, so that no one could say that your silence is an endorsement of this violence.”64 The claim that the Provisional Government’s actions in Finland were coun­ terrevolutionary and that the call for the state’s independence was a popular and legitimate democratic demand proved effective. On 16 (29) August, during a session of the Sejm that was officially banned by Petrograd, most garrisons refused to use force against the Finnish parliament. On 15 (28) August, the eve of the Sejm’s convocation, a rally on the Senate Square numbering twenty thousand participants protested against the General Governor’s order to station troops around the building that housed the Sejm. The rally con­ demned the Russian government’s actions as a “counterrevolutionary act” and demanded that the Sejm be allowed to convene.65 A general assembly of the Helsingfors Soviet that took place on the same day spoke out in support of the Sejm, in essence revoking its earlier decision. The resolution passed by the Soviet stated that “the dissolution of the Finnish Sejm does not correspond with democratic principles …, the involvement in the dissolution of the Sejm by the soldiers represented in the local soviet of deputies is unacceptable.… All Russian citizens in agreement with the local soviet should not interfere in Finnish affairs in connection with the opening of the session of the Sejm.”66 This resolution was accepted by a significant majority of 150 votes in favor with 90 against and 22 abstentions.67 On the next day, the Regional Committee of the Army, Navy and Workers of Finland also declared that the dissolution of the Sejm contradicted democratic principles and condemned Russian mili­ tary units’ participation in the Sejm’s dispersal.68 In order to prevent Russian garrisons from participating in the dispersal of the Sejm, the Helsingfors Soviet created a special executive commission. The commission called back all soldiers and sailors on leave, stationed patrols throughout the city and prohibited troops from leaving the barracks without 64

  Sotsial-demokraticheskaia fraktsiia finliandskogo seima: Otkrytoe pis´mo k russkim sotsiali­ sticheskim partiiam (Helsingfors, 1917), 5–7.

65

 Startsev, “Vremennoe pravitel´stvo,” 21.

66   Revoliutsionnoe dvizheniie v Rossii v avguste 1917 g.: Razgrom kornilovskogo miatezha. Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Izdatel´stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1959), 347. 67

  Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 24 August 1917.

68

  Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, 615.

The Russian Military in Finland and the Russian Revolution

263

its permission.69 When the Sveaborg 2nd Artillery Regiment was ordered to send a detachment to the building that housed the Sejm, the Regiment Com­ mittee headed by the deputy of the Helsingfors Soviet lieutenant-colonel N. Bal´zam refused to follow the order.70 As a result, not a single military unit represented in the Soviet participated in the dispersal of the Sejm. The units cordoning off the Sejm building were made up of Cossacks, who had only recently arrived in the city.71 This was the last time the Russian army de­ fended imperial interest on Finnish territory. On the following day, 17 (30) August, in a general meeting the Helsingfors Soviet condemned the actions of Governor General Stakhovich, who did not obey the orders of the Soviet’s executive commission. This resolution shows that by then the Soviet had de­ finitively taken Finland’s side in its struggle with central Russian power and the governor general.72 The conflict over the convocation of the Sejm became a turning point in the development of the Revolution in the garrisons and accelerated the radi­ calization of the Russian military and naval companies which were under the increasing influence of Finnish social democrats. When deputies of the Sehm again attempted to convene in September, Russian garrisons wholly supported the Finns. On 9 (22) September, the SDP Central Committee ad­ dressed the representatives of Russian socialist parties, informing them of the forthcoming attempt to convoke the Sejm anew and requesting their support.73 On 13 (26) September, a united session of the Helsingfors Soviet, the Regional Committee of the Army, Navy, and Workers of Finland, and representatives from naval and military company committees spoke out in support of the Sejm; 336 of those present (with 91 opposing) supported the resolution proposed by the Helsingfors Soviet deputy, Bolshevik Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko. This resolution acknowledged the right of national selfdetermination, condemned the Provisional Government’s Finland policy, and on behalf of Russian revolutionary organizations expressed the willingness of the Soviet to “support Finnish democracy by all means necessary,” if it

69

  Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 24 August 1917.

70

  Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 18 August 1917.

71

 E. Iu. Dubrovskaia, Gel´singforsskii Sovet deputatov armii, flota i rabochikh (mart–oktiabr´ 1917 g.) (Petrozavodsk: Karel´skii nauchnyi tsentr RAN, 1992), 116–25. 72 73

 Luntinen, “Razluka bez pechali,” 29.

 Kullervo Manner and Matti Turkiia, Finliandskaia sotsial-demokraticheskaia partiia: Tsentral´nyi komitet. Predstaviteliam russkikh sotsialisticheskikh partii (Helsingfors, 1917).

264 Elena Dubrovskaia

decided to reconvene the Sejm.74 In mid-September, a general meeting of the Helsingfors Soviet also confirmed that “not only troops represented in the local soviet, but no revolutionary forces at all should take part in dissolving the Sejm or preventing its sessions.”75 The conflict reached its climax on 15 (28) September 15, when the deputies of the Sejm again attempted to call a parliamentary session to order. On this day all military units, including Cossack troops, refused to follow the order of the Provisional Government and governor general that had prohibited the convocation of parliament. Supported by a twenty thousand–strong rally in the Senate Square, the Sejm resumed work. The protesters declared that the Provisional Government’s prohibition of the Sejm’s convocation is “an unlaw­ ful and clearly counterrevolutionary action.”76 Support from the garrisons facilitated Finland’s progress toward indepen­ dence. The role played by soldiers and sailors in the development of Finnish national revolution was so visible, that several Finnish publications expressed their dissatisfaction with the fact that Finns had to fight for their independence to the strains of Russian military marches. Turun Sanomat (The Turku Times), the Young Finn Party newspaper published in Åbo, described a Finnish socialist rally held in Helsingfors on the eve of the upcoming elections to the Sejm in an article entitled “People on Their Way to the Polls with Soldiers at their Helm.” According to the article, “a Russian sailors’ band” led the 19 September (2 October) procession. The article’s author was outraged by the fact that the masses marched “on the heels of the troops of conquerors and oppressors of the state,” and that Finns “are going to vote in the elections to the Sejm hand in hand with those from whom we would like to secede.”77 By September 1917, Russian troops in Finland had ceased to obey orders from Petrograd and no longer represented imperial power. On 19 Septem­ ber (2 October), the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet declared that it no longer recognized the Provisional Government’s decrees.78 On the following day a joint session of the Baltic Fleet Central Committee and the Helsingfors 74

 G. L. Sobolev, “Oktiabr´skaia revoliutsiia i nezavisimost´ Finliandii,” in Rossiia i Finliandiia 1700–1917, ed. Iu. S. Kukushkin and I. P. Shaskol´skii (Leningrad: Nauka, 1980), 27; Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 24 September 1917.

75

  Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 23 September 1917.

76

  Priboi, 18 September 1917. However, this session of the Sejm did not have legislative power because it was boycotted by deputies from non-socialist parties. See Ketola, Russkaia revoliutsiia, 297. 77

 KA, “Russian military papers,” 342: 6, d. 3943, l. 11 (a survey of the Finnish periodi­ cal press, 20 September 1917).

78

  Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 24 September 1917.

The Russian Military in Finland and the Russian Revolution

265

Soviet resolved that supreme power in Finland be transferred to the Regional Committee of the Army, Navy, and Workers of Finland, without whose ap­ proval no order of the Provisional Government was to be followed. Leading military organizations took Russian government institutions in Finland under their control.79 Garrison meetings one after another decreed that all power be handed over to the soviets. Such decrees were passed in the garrisons of Uleåborg (today Oulu), Gamlakarleby (Kokkola), Björneborg (Pori), and the Sveaborg fortress.80 Russian garrisons in Finland effectively proclaimed the power of the soviets even before Bolsheviks established their power in Petro­ grad on 25 October (7 November) 1917. Despite the fact that the Bolsheviks enjoyed significant influence in Finland’s garrisons, they were by no means able to determine the policy of garrison committees and naval companies. A number of garrison resolutions emphasized that under the power of the soviets multiple political parties should have been able to participate in policy making. “Power should belong to the soviets, but not to any one single party,” declared the resolution of a general meeting of officers and soldiers of the Sveaborg artillery, calling for the creation of a uniform socialist government.81 But after the Bolsheviks and Left SRs established their government in Petrograd, politics in Helsingfors were no longer democratic or multiparty. Power was transferred from the Helsingfors Soviet, the Baltic Fleet Central Committee, and the Regional Committee of Finland first to the presidiums of these organizations, and then to a “revolutionary troika” of their representatives. The soviets included rep­ resentatives of a range of socialist parties, but an overwhelming majority of their members was nonpartisan. The soviets could thus not form the basis of the new power, which came to rely increasingly on extraordinary administrative bodies that were beyond the soviets’ control. Finnish social democrats did not recognize the Bolshevik government in Petrograd, and on 23 November (6 December) 1917, the Finnish parliament declared the state’s independence. The Finnish national revolution now pur­ sued an independent course of development. Conclusion Russian troops remained in Finland until mid-March 1918, when Soviet Russia was obligated to withdraw its military units and the Baltic fleet under 79

  Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 7 October 1917.

80

 Sotsialist-revoliutsioner, 31 October and 3 November 1917; Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 2 November 1917. 81

  Izvestiia Gel´singforsskogo soveta, 9 November 1917.

266 Elena Dubrovskaia

the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. During their last months in Finland, Russian garrisons witnessed an escalation of the Finnish Civil War, to which tens of thousands of Finns fell victim. Images of Finnish Red Guards pre­ served in Civil War-era photographs demonstrate the cultural influence of revolutionary Russian garrisons as reflected in the Guards’ paramilitary dress, Russian unfiltered cigarettes hanging from their lips, and ammunition belts slung across their shoulders.82 The majority of soldiers in Russian garrisons did not participate in this phase of the Finnish civil conflict. However, the role that the Russian mil­ itary played in the events preceding the Finnish national revolution of 1917 is significantly more important than contemporary historiography acknowl­ edges. Military and naval units stationed in Finland participated in Finnish political campaigns. They supported Finnish workers’ demands, specifically an eight-hour work day, and enabled the reconvention of the Sejm. Support from the garrisons led to a radicalization of the social and national demands put forward by Finnish social democrats and political elites. In the course of 1917, Finnish political quarters shifted away from attempt­ ing to preserve their loyalty to the new Russian government in the hopes of resolving the question of Finland’s status by legislative means. Instead, they moved toward a clear course of confrontation with the imperial center and demanded Finland’s full independence. Interestingly, the SDP, a leftist parliamentary party, often found itself on common ground not with the leaders of local Russian parliamentary political parties but with the Helsingfors Bolsheviks and Left SRs who enjoyed increasing influence in Finland-based Russian soviets and committees and supported Finnish independence. By backing the more radical political forces within the garrisons, moderate Finnish political figures also supported the Russian soldiers’ revolution. The growing conflict between Finland-based military and naval committees and soviets and the Provisional Government in turn brought about the weakening of central power in the region and in many ways paved the way toward Finland’s independence. As a result, despite having different goals and paths of development, the soldiers’ revolution and national revolution in Finland reinforced each other.

82

 Ohto Manninen “Kapina, kansalaissota, vapaussota,” 65; Pertti Haapala et al., eds., Tampere 1918: A Town in the Civil War (Tampere: Tampere Museums Publication, 2010), 63, 66, 73, 87–88.

The Unemployed Movement in Odessa in 1917: Social and National Revolutions Between Petrograd and Kiev Tanja Penter

This chapter seeks to highlight the significance of local factors on the periph­ eries using the example of Odessa, far away from the revolutionary centers of Petrograd and Kiev. Odessa, a Black Sea port and commercial metropolis that is today located in Ukraine, was the fourth-largest city in the Russian Empire after Petrograd, Moscow, and Kiev at the beginning of the 20th century. To date, the image of the revolution in Ukraine has been shaped, above all, by two opposing perspectives. For the most part, Ukrainian historians in the North American diaspora have understood the events that took place in Ukraine in 1917 primarily as a specifically Ukrainian revolution that was principally directed toward the achievement of national independence. Their work therefore centers on the political history of national institutions and the founding of the new state. Most of these studies have concentrated on events in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and there has been a lack of regional and local studies to date. Frequently, this nationalist point of view also involves the as­ sumption that territories are worthy of investigation only for as long as they were under the rule of a Ukrainian national government. As soon as other forces conquered an area, it ceased to be of interest as a subject for study.1 Such an approach would not encourage research into events in the city of Odessa for two reasons: first, the urban population overwhelmingly consisted of nonUkrainians; second, it was still a moot point in 1917 whether Odessa and the province of Kherson really belonged to Ukraine at all. 1

 The standard works written from this nationalist perspective include those by J. S. Reshetar, The Ukrainian Revolution, 1917–1920: A Study in Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952); Oleh S. Pidhainy, The Formation of the Ukrainian Republic (Toronto: New Review Books, 1966); Jurij Borys, The Sovietization of Ukraine, 1917–1923: The Communist Doctrine and Practice of National Self-Determination (Edmon­ ton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1980); Taras Hunczak, ed., The Ukraine, 1917–1921: A Study in Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977). For further literature, see the survey of sources and relevant literature in R. A. Mark, “Die Ukrainische Revolution 1917–1921: Ein Quellen- und Literaturbericht,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 3 (1986): 403–19. Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 267–96.

268 Tanja Penter

A quite different perspective on the period was put forward in the Soviet historiography, which understood the revolution in Ukraine exclusively as a struggle between social classes and therefore as part of the “Great Socialist October Revolution” that swept the whole of Russia.2 In the modern Ukrainian state that gained its independence in 1991, the study of the history of the revolutionary year 1917 and the Civil War period gained a new and central significance because it was associated with the failure of the attempt to found a state, an experience that was highly traumatic for the Ukrainians. At the same time, the political transformations in Ukraine have also led to a fundamental change of course in academic history that has become clear, in particular, in the study of the 1917 revolution. In order to fill in the “blank spots” left behind by the Soviet historiography, previously forbidden memoirs and works of the leading activists of the Ukrainian nationalist movement have been reprinted and a number of editions of source material on the Central Rada published.3 Numerous new works have been written, many characterized by a simple shift from the Soviet paradigm to the nationalist paradigm, especially in the first few years after Ukrainian independence. Since the mid-1990s, however, some studies have also appeared that have evaluated new archive material and attempted to factor the Ukrainian regions into their analyses.4 Apart from this, there are a few Western historians who have studied other facets of the Ukrainian revolution, such as the policies towards Ukraine 2

 The more significant Soviet works include A. V. Likholat, Razgrom natsionalisticheskoi kontrrevoliutsii na Ukraine (1917–1922 gg.) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo poli­ ticheskoi literatury, 1954); M. A. Rubach, Ocherki po istorii revoliutsionnogo preobrazovaniia agrarnykh otnoshenii na Ukraine v period provedeniia Oktiabr´skoi revoliutsii (Kiev: Izda­ tel´stvo AN USSR, 1957); N. I. Suprunenko, Ukraïns´ka RSR v period hromadians´koïi viïny 1917–1920 rr., 3 vols. (Kiev: Vyd-vo Akademiï nauk Ukraïns´koï RSR, 1967–70); Velikaia Oktiabr´skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia i pobeda sovetskoi vlasti na Ukraine: Khronika vazhneishikh istoriko-partiinykh i revoliutsionnykh sobytii, 2 vols. (Kiev: Politizdat Ukrainy, 1977–82). For further references, see Mark, “Die Ukrainische Revolution,” 415–18; and John-Paul Himka, “The National and the Social in the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917– 20: The Historiographical Agenda,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 34 (1994): 95–110, here 99–102. On the development of Soviet Ukrainian historiography, see Ernst Lüdemann, “Zur ‘Lösung der Nationalen Frage’ in der sowjetukrainischen Geschichtsschreibung nach 1956,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 40 (1988): 229–395. 3

 Particularly deserving of mention is a comprehensive collection of source materials with Central Rada documents that appeared in 1996–97: Ukraïns´ka Tsentral´na Rada: Dokumenty i materialy u dvokh tomakh, 2 vols. (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1996–97). 4  See, on this topic, the numerous articles published since 1991 in the periodical Ukraïns´kyi istorychnyi zhurnal. For a more detailed analysis of the studies that have been published in Ukraine, see Tanja Penter, Odessa 1917: Revolution an der Peripherie (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2000).

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pursued by the Central Powers and the Entente,5 or Ukrainian–Polish and Ukrainian–Jewish relations.6 In this chapter, I would like to offer an integrative perspective that analyzes national and social factors and developments during the year of the revolution, showing how they were interlinked and influenced each other. Odessa 1917: Local Factors in the Revolution Events in Odessa during 1917 display some specific features that distinguish the city from the two capitals and shed light on the complex interaction of social, national, and local factors. A deeper look at the provinces reveals that “dual power,” the “October Revolution,” and even “Soviet power” had meanings in the local environment, such as Odessa, which were quite different from those in the capital cities, and demonstrates that the same “Great Socialist October Revolution” certainly did not take place throughout Russia. The most important factors that shaped the events of 1917 in Odessa included 5

 See, for example, Oleh S. Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East and the Ukrainian Revolution 1917–1918 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971); Fritz Fischer, “Deutsche Kriegsziele, Revolutionierung und Separatfrieden im Osten 1914– 1918,” in Der Erste Weltkrieg und das deutsche Geschichtsbild: Beiträge zur Bewältigung eines historischen Tabus. Aufsätze und Vorträge aus drei Jahrzehnten (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1977), 151ff.; Fritz T. Epstein, “The Ukrainian Question in 1917–1918,” Russian Review 31, 3 (July 1972): 286–93; David Saunders, “Britain and the Ukrainian Question (1912–1920),” The English Historical Review 103, 406 (1988): 40–68; Wolfdieter Bihl, Österreich-Ungarn und die Friedensschlüsse von Brest-Litovsk (Vienna: Böhlau, 1970); Peter Borowsky, Deutsche Ukrainepolitik 1918 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Wirtschaftsfragen (Lübeck: Matthiesen, 1970); Matvii Stachiv et al., Ukraine and the European Turmoil, 1917–1919, 2 vols. (New York: Shevchenko Scientific Society, 1973); Wolfram Dornik et al., eds., Die Ukraine zwischen Selbstbestimmung und Fremdherrschaft 1917–1922 (Graz: Leykam, 2011). On the atamanshchina during the Civil War, see Felix Schnell: Räume des Schreckens: Gewalt und Gruppenmilitanz in der Ukraine 1905–1933 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2012). 6  See, on Ukrainian–Jewish relations, Henry Abramson, “Jewish Representation in the Independent Ukrainian Governments of 1917–1920,” Slavic Review 50, 3 (1991): 542– 49; Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Jews and Ukrainians in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1999); and Peter J. Potichnyj and Howard Aster, eds., Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1988), in particular, the chapters by Y. Boshyk, M. Minc, and J. Frankel. For further references, see Henry Abramson, “Historiography on the Jews and the Ukrainian Revolution,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies 15, 2 (1990): 33– 45. On Polish–Ukrainian relations, see Oleh S. Pidhainy, The Ukrainian-Polish Problem in the Dissolution of the Russian Empire 1914–1917 (Toronto: New Review Books, 1962). On the pogroms during the Civil War, see Oleg V. Budnitskii: Rossiiskie evrei mezhdu krasnymi i belymi 1917–1920 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2006).

270 Tanja Penter

both specific external factors that affected the city’s situation, subject as it was to competing pressures from Petrograd and Kiev, and internal factors such as the particular social and ethnic-religious make-up of the urban population, and certain traditions of economic autonomy. The city of Odessa was founded in 1794 by Catherine II, and had experi­ enced impressive economic and population growth in the 19th century. By the middle of the century, it was the fourth-largest city in the Russian Em­ pire. Odessa owed its economic boom primarily to the grain trade, which made it the empire’s most important port after St. Petersburg for the export of Russian grain to southern, central, and western Europe, as well as other overseas destinations. However, the city’s industrial development remained far behind the sophistication of its commercial activities before the outbreak of the First World War. By 1914, Odessa had grown into a metropolis with a population of approximately 670,000. The extraordinary population growth the city went through can be attributed above all to migrant workers from all parts of the empire and other countries that flocked to this “boomtown” to seek their fortunes.7 In 1917, the city’s population was socially and ethnically heterogeneous. According to the 1897 census, which divided the population in the cities into social estates,8 Odessa differed from the capital cities above all due to its comparatively large urban petit bourgeoisie (meshchanstvo), which 7

 On the city’s development in the 19th century, see above all Patricia Herlihy, Odessa: A History 1794–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986); and Guido Hausmann, Universität und städtische Gesellschaft in Odessa, 1885–1917 (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1998). 8

 Today, statements about the city’s social composition can only be made on the basis of official statistics on the populations of the different social estates, which the tsar­ ist government had introduced partly for fiscal reasons. However, in view of the enormous social and economic transformations that Russia went through at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the estate categories no longer reflected social reality during the late tsarist period. Instead, new social groups whose ways of life were no longer represented adequately under the antiquated estate regulations took shape in the cities among both the upper and lower classes of the population. For instance, the estate system still had no category for the growing number of urban industrial workers, who were usually assigned to the social estate of the peasants. However, in the absence of other sources, the estate statistics can at least convey a rough overview of the structure of the urban population. On the social estate system and the problem of social identities in the late tsarist empire, see Christoph Schmidt, Ständerecht und Standeswechsel in Rußland 1851–1897 (Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz, 1994); Leopold H. Haimson, “The Problem of Social Identities in Early Twentieth Century Russia,” Slavic Review 47, 1 (Spring 1988): 1–20; William G. Rosenberg, “Identities, Power and Social Interactions in Revolutionary Russia,” Slavic Review 47, 1 (Spring 1988): 21–28; and Gregory L. Freeze, “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History,” American Historical Review 91, 1 (Spring 1986): 11–36.

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was calculated at 58 percent. This social estate, which was introduced in 1785, encompassed a large swathe of the personally free, urban population that kept shops and ran artisanal businesses. By contrast, in 1897 the peasant estate was the largest social group in the capitals even though the majority of them were workers and day laborers in the urban centers.9 The smaller number of “city peasants”10 in Odessa in 1897 (27 percent) is evidence of a lesser degree of industrialization than in Petrograd and Moscow. The social estate of the meshchane, to which almost the whole of the city’s Jewish population belonged, earned their living for the most part with retail and artisan craft businesses. Many members of the meschchanstvo tended to stand at the lower end of the social scale and, with the exception of their higher legal status, hardly differed from the urban lower classes.11 Furthermore, as a maritime trading center, Odessa also offered a home to many social outsiders such as peddlers, street artists, smugglers, prostitutes, and criminals.12 Soviet historians suggested that this group, the “lumpenproletariat,” represented more than 10 percent of the urban population in Odessa.13 At the beginning of the 20th century, waged employees formed a highly differentiated stratum in the Black Sea port, just as they did throughout the rest of Russia, which extended from trained, well paid, skilled workers to day laborers, from small craftsmen to domestic servants or white-collar employees in commercial organizations, city institutions, and enterprises. Among the wage earners of Odessa, white-collar employees in the industrial and service sectors and craftsmen represented the largest groups. One of the most impor­ tant employers before the First World War was the port, which provided work for more than 15,000 people. They earned their living by loading and unloading ships, as porters, warehouse packers, or in other unskilled roles.14 9  The peasants constituted 67.2 percent of the urban population in Moscow in 1902, and almost 69 percent in St. Petersburg in 1910. See Frederick W. Skinner, “Odessa and the Problem of Urban Modernization,” in The City in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Michael Hamm (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 209–13. 10

 Schmidt, Ständerecht, 87, distinguishes between “city peasants” and the actual rural population, the “village peasants.”

11

 See Skinner, “Odessa,” 211–13.

12

 See ibid., 209–13; and Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis´ naseleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii 1897 g., 47: G. Odessa (St. Petersburg, 1904), VIII. 13

 See N. Mezhberg and S. Kogan, “Ekonomika Odesshchiny i raboche-krest´ianskoe dvizhenie v 1914–1918 g.,” in Oktiabr´ na Odesshchine: Sbornik statei i vospominanii k 10-letiiu Oktiabria (Odessa: Odesskaia okruzhnaia oktiabr´skaia komissiia i Istpart­ otdel Okrkoma KPbU, 1927), 53–54.

14

 See I. Avdenko, Putevoditel´ po Odesse i ee okrestnostiam (Odessa, 1914), 37.

272 Tanja Penter

According to the statistics of the factory inspectorate, only 14 percent of wage earners were regarded as industrial workers.15 While the industrial proletariat formed the largest group among the employees in Petrograd and Moscow in 1917, it continued to remain a small minority in Odessa.16 Furthermore, Odessa was characterized by the exceptionally great eth­ nic and religious diversity of its inhabitants. The colorful ethnic mix of the population around the turn of the century led to the city being called the “modern Babylon.” According to the 1897 census, which divided the popula­ tion into ethnic groups by the criterion of native language, Russians made up approximately half of the urban population, another third were Jews and nearly 10 percent were Ukrainians, alongside over 50 other ethnic minor­ ities.17 Like most prerevolutionary Ukrainian cities and towns, Odessa was a “tiny island in the sea of Ukrainian peasants,” as the head of the Ukrainian government, Vynnychenko, put it in 1917.18 Not only was the degree of ur­ banization comparatively low in Ukraine, but the Ukrainians were the least urbanized ethnic group. In 1917, the majority of the urban population in Ukraine consisted of Russians and Jews, in contrast to the Ukrainians, who made up 80 percent of the rural population but only one-third of the total urban population. Life in Ukraine was dominated by strong opposition be­ tween the cities and the countryside, an opposition that had interethnic as well as cultural dimensions on account of the different ethnic composition of the urban and rural populations. The majority of the Ukrainian rural population looked with mistrust and hostility to the cities, which appeared 15

 Since 1901, the distinction between industry and craft trades had been drawn ac­ cording to the number of employees and not the degree of mechanization or how the production process was organized. Accordingly, a baker in a city bakery with 20 employees was a factory worker, but if he worked in a business run along the same lines with 15 employees, he was a craftsman. See Bernd Bonwetsch, Die Russische Revolution 1917: Eine Sozialgeschichte von der Bauernbefreiung 1861 bis zum Oktoberumsturz (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991), 59. 16

 In 1917, industrial workers (not including their families) made up approximately 19 percent of the total population in Petrograd and approximately 12 percent in Mos­ cow, but in Odessa they amounted to less than 6 percent of the urban population. Calculated after Diane Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 26ff.; and Statisticheskii Vestnik 1–3 (1920): 45–49. The figures for the total populations of the capitals and Odessa are derived from data gathered prior to the outbreak of the First World War, in A. M. Vaindrakh, Osnovnye cherty ekonomiki Odessy i Odesskogo okruga (Odessa: Izdatel´stvo Odesskoi okruzhnoi planovoi komissii, 1927), 8.

17

 See Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis´ naseleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii 1897 g., vol. 47, parts 6–7, 36–37.

18

 See Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii f. 1503, op. 1, d. 38, l. 26.

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“foreign” to them in many ways.19 These patterns were to influence the course of the 1917 revolution in Ukraine. Odessa between Petrograd and Kiev After the October Revolution in Petrograd and the proclamation of the Ukrain­ ian People’s Republic by the Ukrainian Government in Kiev in November 1917, Odessa was increasingly caught up in the tensions created by the growing Ukrainian–Russian conflict between the Petrograd-based Soviet government and the Ukrainian Central Rada in Kiev. The Rada made territorial claims to Odessa and Kherson Province. Complex interrelationships developed between events in Petrograd, Kiev, and Odessa. Odessa’s proximity to the Ro­ manian Front and the influence of various military organizations there had significant impact on the course of events. The following account from the organ of the Odessa Mensheviks, Iuzhnyi rabochii, provides a reflection of the sentiments harbored by many urban residents during this turbulent period: It is now as if we were clamped in a vise between the social maximalism of the Bolsheviks and the nationalist maximalism of the Ukrainians. But we do not want to be frogs or kittens for the laboratory experiments of the Leninist social revolution, because these experiments will lead to the failure of the revolution and make economic life grind to a halt. We have just as little desire for violent Ukrainianization and rash moves towards autonomy imposed from above, for this autonomy would signify the disintegration of the Russian Republic, the disintegration of the unity of the proletarian class struggle, and, under the current conditions, the exacerbation of the Civil War as well.20 The urban population, which was firmly integrated into Russian majority society both culturally and linguistically, rejected the Central Rada’s claims to Kherson province and Odessa. The Ukrainian nationalist movement held a very weak influence even among the small Ukrainian minority. The major­ ity of Odessa’s residents did not identify with an autonomous Ukrainian Re­ public within a Russian Federation, and certainly did not identify with an independent Ukrainian state. At the same time, however, Lenin’s Bolshevik Party, which embodied the power of the state in Russia after the Petrograd 19

 See Andreas Kappeler, Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine (Munich: Beck, 1994), 148–56; and Bohdan Krawchenko, Social Change and National Consciousness in Twentieth-Century Ukraine (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 20ff.

20

 Iuzhnyi rabochii, 21 (3) January 1918, 1.

274 Tanja Penter

October Revolution, did not enjoy the same popularity in Odessa as in the capital cities. This was evident, for example, during the elections to the Con­ stituent Assembly in November 1917, when the Odessa Bolsheviks gained only 19 percent of the votes in the city.21 Neither Petrograd nor Kiev promised a path that met with approval among the majority of the urban population. Odessa’s residents were left with the choice of the lesser evil. Odessa is a wonderful case study on account of its socially and ethnically heterogeneous population, which enables an examination of the complex in­ terpenetration of the social and nationalist revolutions of 1917 in Ukraine, and the social mobilization of the urban population along the dividing lines of “class” and “nation.” For all the specific peculiarities of Odessa’s population structure, the city serves as a case study for Ukraine’s larger conurbations, which were inhabited overwhelmingly by non-Ukrainians, and offers insights into urban attitudes towards Ukrainian autonomy and the Ukrainian state. The lack of backing for the Central Rada in the major cities, in which industrial resources and strategically important communication and transport facilities were concentrated, contributed significantly to the failure of the efforts to found a Ukrainian state. In the confused historical situation of the revolution, and in view of the unresolved power struggle between the Ukrainian Central Rada and the Soviet government in Petrograd, a power vacuum developed in Odessa that provided particular opportunities for the evolution of social and nationalist movements. At the same time, traditional aspirations to local autonomy were also revived during this period. They found expression in two competing concepts, the liberal, bourgeois “free city” and the proletarian “Soviet Republic of Odessa.”22 The Soviet of the Unemployed Odessa had an influential unemployed movement in 1917, which created its own revolutionary organization, the “Soviet of the Unemployed,” which stormed onto the city’s political stage for the first time with radical demands. By the end of 1917, war, revolution and economic decline had left their traces in Odessa. A very large new underclass had developed in the city, made up of a diverse array of people. The thing they had in common was that they did not engage in any regular work.23 Unemployment had become a major societal 21

 See Odesskii listok, 16 November 1917, 2; Odesskie novosti, 16 November 1917, 3; and 17 November 1917, 3.

22 23

 See, on this issue, the detailed account in Penter, Odessa 1917.

 See, on the unemployed, Tanja Penter, “Der Sowjet der Arbeitslosen in Odessa: Soziale Polarisierung in der Revolution von 1917,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas

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problem and the unemployed started to make their mark as a significant new social force in Odessa politics by the end of 1917.24 According to the trade unions, approximately 6,000 qualified workers and 5,000 unskilled work­ ers were affected by unemployment in October 1917. In addition to this, there were approximately 10,000 unemployed soldiers and a large number of unemployed people from graduate professions, whose precise number was difficult to determine.25 Unemployment increasingly became a matter of public interest in Odessa, and was investigated by both the elected City Duma and the various workers’ organizations. Unemployment had been made even worse by the end of the war for, according to some estimates, demobilization released 7 to 10 million people, of whom 1.5 million came from urban areas. Apart from this, demobilization led to the mass closure of former armament factories, which found it difficult to convert back to civilian production again. Due to the city’s proximity to the theater of war, the consequences of the war were particularly tangible in Odessa at the end of 1917 because, as in most Ukrainian cities, great waves of refugees who were looking for work concentrated there.26 The unemployed Jewish teacher Khaim Ryt recognized the revolutionary potential of this new underclass and convened the constituent assembly of 46, 3 (1998): 351–75. 24

 In the first five months after the February Revolution, 568 factories and businesses had been closed across the whole of Russia (including 91 metallurgical businesses, 49 cotton mills, and 196 food processing plants). In the process, 104,372 people lost their jobs. These were the official figures from the Provisional Government’s Ministry of Trade and Industry, which tended to be underestimates rather than overestimates. The main reasons for the closures were shortages of raw materials and fuel. In May 1918, the number of unemployed people who had registered with the labor exchanges all over Russia was 328,000, according to figures from the Petrograd Soviet govern­ ment’s Commissariat for Labor. This number too was presumably far below the ac­ tual level of unemployment. According to another study by the Commissariat for Labor, of roughly 400,000 workers who were employed in Petrograd factories and businesses in January 1917, approximately 60 percent had lost their jobs by April 1918. The strongest falls in employment, by up to 75 percent, were to be found in the metalworking and chemicals industries. See, on this issue, D. Kleinbort, Istoriia bezrabotitsy v Rossii 1857–1919 (Moscow: VTSSPS, 1925), 262–98; and K. Samoilova, Sovremennaia bezrabotitsa i bor´ba s nei (Petrograd: Izdatel´stvo Petrogradskogo soveta rabochikh i krasnoarmeiskikh deputatov, 1918), 8–10, 17–23.

25

 See Molot, 23 December 1917, 22–23.

26

 On average, prisoners of war and refugees represented 29–31 percent of all the unemployed people in Ukrainian towns and cities. On the development of the labor market in Ukraine, see. B. Chernyi, “Rynok truda na Ukraine v 1917 godu,” in Materialy po izucheniiu istorii professional´nogo dvizheniia na Ukraine: Sbornik I (Khar´kov, 1928), 114–23. On Odessa, see GARF f. 1788, op. 2, d. 118, l. 39.

276 Tanja Penter

the unemployed at the City Duma in December 1917. With the slogan “The concerns of the unemployed are their own business!” Ryt not only mobilized a large number of unemployed people, but other social outsiders as well. However, it was not until the second assembly of the unemployed in the Dra­ matic Theater on 11 January 1918 that the group made headlines in the local press, when Ryt launched a spectacular campaign that was to go down in the city’s history. The assembly adopted the following resolution, which was printed on posters and distributed all over the city: At 12:30 p.m. on 11 January, the general assembly of the unemployed in the Dramatic Theater adopted the urgent decision that the whole bourgeoisie should gather today, 11 January, no later than 15:00 p.m., in the City Duma in order to immediately provide the unemployed with ten million rubles.27 If they failed to meet this demand, “the blood that may be shed will fall back on the bourgeoisie, to whom money is more valuable than life.”28 Although it was presumably not clear to many of the city’s residents at that time who exactly was meant by the “whole bourgeoisie,” the chairman of the stock ex­ change and well known industrialist Anatra announced “with a shaking voice the complete agreement of the bourgeoisie to satisfy our demands” the next day at another assembly of the unemployed, as Ryt recalled.29 Representatives of the banks and industrial and commercial companies issued a statement in which they gave guarantees for the provision of the ten million rubles. At the same time, however, they laid down the condition that the total obtained by taxing profits and property should be distributed across all the prosperous strata of the local population.30 This contractual obligation bore the signatures of several dozen representatives of major companies and banks. The money was to be paid out in weekly installments of 250,000 rubles. Ryt received half a million rubles that were handed over directly to him. The cash was kept in a safe at the Russian-Asian Bank. The rapid, positive outcome of the talks presumably came as just as much of a surprise to the unemployed as it does to the modern observer. It was equally symptomatic of the weakness of the bourgeois forces and the ineffectuality of the local organs of power. At the same time, the ultimatum set by the unemployed also represented the first attempt in Odessa to push through 27

 Malen´kie Odesskie novosti, 12 January 1918, 4.

28

 Ibid.

29

 Derzhavnyi arkhiv Odes´koi oblasti (DAOO) f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1005, l. 5.

30

 See Vestnik Odesskogo zemstva 50 (1918): 2.

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financial demands against property-owning circles of the urban population with threats of violence. Following their successful negotiations with the “bourgeoisie,” some of the unemployed, elated by their newfound sense of power, set off on a demonstration march along Odessa’s most fashionable boulevard, Deribasovskaia: “The unemployed paraded through the city, shouting threats addressed to the bourgeoisie, barging into restaurants and shops, and getting food free of charge.”31 The achievement of having obtained their demands collectively provided a basis on which the unemployed were gradually able to form a collective consciousness. For the Odessa Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, the Soviet of the Unemployed represented an unwelcome competitor organization. The Workers’ Soviet had been established in Odessa in March 1917 and was based on the Petrograd model. It was composed of elected workers’ deputies from businesses based in Odessa and had 1,015 members in June 1917. This made it one of the largest soviets in Russia. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries controlled the Soviet, while the Bolsheviks merely held an insignificant minority of the seats. What was important for the real power of the Workers’ Soviet in the city was the fact that in the spring of 1917 it formed its own armed force, the “Red Guard.”32 Since the summer of 1917, the Workers’ Soviet had become ever more the city’s real political decision-making center, while the elected City Duma declined into a mere administrative organ. However, in contrast to Petrograd and Moscow, where the Bolsheviks had been setting the tone in the soviets since September 1917, the Odessa soviet continued to be dominated by the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. The Workers’ Soviet had attempted to integrate the unemployed movement into the labor movement several times, for example by driving ahead the cre­ ation of a joint organ of all the workers’ organizations to fight against unem­ ployment. Furthermore, it argued that the resources newly obtained for the unemployed should only be distributed under its supervision.33 In reality, however, there continued to be divisions between the workers and the unem­ ployed, and the gulf got deeper as time passed. This was partly due to the fact that, just like the trade unions, the Workers’ Soviet had failed in the struggle against unemployment.

31

 Kievskaia mysl´, 14 January 1918, 4.

32

 The Red Guardsmen, who subsequently developed ever more into an autonomous armed force, later assumed an important role in the establishment of Soviet control over Odessa. 33

 See DAOO f. R-3829, op. 1, d. 84, ll. 81–84; and “Protokoly Odes´koï rady robitnykh deputativ,” Litopys´ revoliutsiï 3 (1931): 141–80, here 169–71.

278 Tanja Penter

Unemployment, “the most terrible and most dangerous enemy of the proletariat,”34 as the newspaper Malen´kie Odesskie novosti wrote in January 1918, was a social problem that was equally devastating for all groups of wage earners. Anyone who became unemployed usually lost his or her livelihood, for there was still no statutory social insurance. Although the Provisional Government was working on the introduction of unemployment insurance for some industrial sectors in 1917, legislation on this matter was not adopted until the first Soviet government took power. The Provisional Government con­ centrated its activities in the struggle against unemployment on the creation of labor exchanges and the planning of large-scale work-creation projects that were, however, only rarely implemented.35 On the ground, it was left to the city administration and the various workers’ organizations to organize their own aid schemes for the newly unemployed masses, but implementation of these schemes often failed due to a lack of resources. For the most part, the trade unions distributed aid only to unemployed people who had been union members for a long time and had paid their contributions regularly. The financial and organizational weakness of the trade unions ensured that their measures too only achieved modest results.36 Although the alarming signs of the times were recognized in the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies at the end of 1917, it was unable to act because of the unclear power relations in the city, particularly as the workers’ representatives shied away from “taxing the capitalists” to accumulate financial resources.37 In the revolutionary year of 1905, the then Odessa Workers’ Soviet had been signfiicantly more successful in looking after the unemployed, who had represented a social problem at that time as well. As a result, no separate unemployed movement had been set up in the city during the earlier revolution.38 From the perspective of the unemployed, all the measures taken to miti­ gate their situation by the workers’ organizations and the City Duma in 1917 remained merely “miserable attempts to patch up the gaping wound of unem­ ployment and anaesthetize it for a short time.”39 The inability of the city 34

 Malen´kie Odesskie novosti, 1 January 1918, 5.

35

 See Kleinbort, Istoriia bezrabotitsy, 291ff.

36

 See Obzor deiatel´nosti Odesskogo Soveta Professional´nykh Soiuzov za pervyi god sushchestvovaniia 1917–mai 1918 g. (Odessa, 1918), 3–46; Vestnik profdvizheniia Ukrainy 18 (1927): 77–79.

37

 See DAOO f. R-3829, op. 1, d. 86, ll. 27–29.

38

 See Robert Weinberg, The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa: Blood on the Steps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 210ff.

39

 See the declaration of the Association of the Unemployed of December 1917 in Proiug, 10 January 1918, 3.

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administration to give the unemployed effective aid, and the failure of the workers’ organizations to integrate the unemployed into the labor movement in a spirit of solidarity helped to ensure that the gulf between the workers and the unemployed, and that between their organizations, became ever greater at the end of 1917. The Soviet of the Unemployed understood itself as an autonomous umbrella organization with the task of representing the interests of all Odessa’s unemployed, and refused to cooperate with the numerous other committees that were set up to combat unemployment. The Soviet of the Unemployed also categorically rejected any involvement of the city administration in the distribution of money and the organization of work-creation schemes.40 With its millions of extorted rubles, the Soviet of the Unemployed had now become the best financed of all the city’s revolutionary organizations, including the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. The activities of its new organizational bureau, which was staffed by 25 representatives, were concentrated in three different areas: the provision of food for the unemployed in canteens around the city; granting loans to businesses that had closed down so they would be able to start operating once again; and the organization of small workers’ cooperatives for work-creation projects. As Ryt himself admitted, though, the successes in the latter two areas were not very impressive. The work of the organizational bureau primarily revolved round the provision of food supplies, as he recalled later: “Observers from outside, both counterrevolutionary elements and Bolsheviks, ironically called our organization … a feeding trough for all the city’s déclassé elements, and not without reason.”41 Apart from the organi­ zation of aid, the Soviet of the Unemployed began to publish its own organ, Izvestiia Odesskogo soveta bezrabotnykh (Odessa Soviet of the Unemployed News).42 When fighting for power in Odessa broke out a few days after the success­ ful extortion of the ten million rubles by the unemployed, many jobless men also joined the ranks of the Red Guard and took part in battles against the Ukrainian Central Rada’s troops. In return, however, they wanted a stake in “Soviet power,” and made massive demands that went as far as participation in local government with the same number of representatives as the workers and soldiers’ soviets. In January 1918, after the fighting ended with victory over the Central Rada, a Soviet Republic of Odessa was founded under the 40

 See DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1005, ll. 9ff; Proiug, 31 January 1918; and Izvestiia Odesskogo soveta bezrabotnykh, 27 January 1918.

41

  DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1005, l. 8.

42

 However, its first edition appeared only after the establishment of the first Soviet government in Odessa on 27 January 1918.

280 Tanja Penter

leadership of a Soviet of People’s Commissars (modeled on the Petrograd So­ viet) that was dominated by the Bolsheviks. Just a few weeks later, in March 1918, this first phase of Soviet power in Odessa was brought to an end by the arrival of German and Austrian troops. On their flight from the city, the representatives of the first Soviet government had to concede that they had lost the support of the city’s underclasses—above all because they had not succeeded in resolving the urgent supply problems. The great influence of the Soviet of the Unemployed on the first Soviet government is testified to by the memoirs of Iudovskii, the Bolshevik chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars in Odessa: Khaim Ryt stirred up the unemployed against us, and if he did not agree with us, then he operated with these unemployed people. He in­ disputably held a special kind of power in his hands. I remember when we talked about the fact that we wanted to make use of his financial resources. Ryt told us categorically: “If you do that, then I will put up a declaration in our association’s building that it is the fault of the Soviet of People’s Commissars we are no longer able to give our unemployed people support any more.”43 The unemployed were a real social force with the potential to become danger­ ous for the recently installed Soviet government in Odessa. This was also evident when the slogan “All power to the Soviet of the Unemployed!” was heard at mass demonstrations of unemployed people.44 The unemployed di­ rected massive demands not just at the bourgeoisie, but also at the workers, whom they called “aristocrats.” Many of the soldiers who came home from the war called for the workers in enterprises to be replaced with veterans.45 Furthermore, the split between the workers and the unemployed continued to divide the whole trade union movement. For instance, the unemployed formed competing trade union organizations for some occupations, which aroused the indignation of the local trade union federation.46 Under Odessa’s first Soviet government, the conflicts between the workers and the unemployed escalated to such an extent that the people’s commissar for labor, Starostin, openly criticized the unemployed at a meeting of the Soviet: 43  V. Iudovskii, “Deiatel´nost´ Odesskogo Sovnarkoma,” in Oktiabr´ na Odesshchine: Sbornik statei i vospominanii k 10-letiiu Oktiabria (Odessa: Odesskaia okruzhnaia Oktiabr´skaia komissiia i Istpartotdel Okrkoma KPbU, 1927), 138–45, here 143–44. 44

 See DAOO f. R-3829, op. 1, d. 126b, l. 36.

45

  See DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1005, ll. 2ff.

46

  See DAOO f. R-1147, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 84–85.

The Unemployed Movement in Odessa in 1917

281

How are we supposed to understand this, then? Real workers who have labored in the factories since they were young live in Moldavanka and eat black bread, and the so-called unemployed live in first-class hotels and lunch at Fankoni.47

­ The satirical magazine Burzhui commented caustically with a parody advert: “Unemployed man offers his services. Will come to your home daily for breakfast, lunch, and supper—free of charge!”48 The young Soviet government wanted to resolve the problem by “cleans­ ing the city” of the unemployed. Above all, the numerous unemployed people who had moved to the city were to be sent back to their home regions. However, the Soviet government did not succeed in implementing this plan.49 On 19 February 1918, the presidiums of the different soviets in the city jointly declared the Soviet of the Unemployed to be an “anti-Soviet” organization.50 A few days earlier, Ryt had stated at a meeting of the Soviet’s Executive Com­ mittee, “Indeed, there are two powers in the city, two social forces—they are the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies and the Soviet of the Unemployed. The power apparatus will soon fall, but the flag of anarchism will remain.”51 Ryt believed that the Workers’ Soviet only united the skilled workers and therefore no longer represented the quintessence of the revolution, but had outlived its time and needed to be replaced by the Soviet of the Unemployed.52 With his Soviet of the Unemployed, Ryt posited a concept that was intended to integrate all the representatives of the underclasses, including traditionally stigmatized groups, and as such was opposed to the Soviet and trade union functionaries’ attachment to “elitist” ideas about the superiority of certain occupations and the characteristics of different classes. Unemployment posed a serious threat to the Petrograd Soviet government as well. After all, it was afraid that the workers’ organized class struggle might be transformed into a spontaneous movement of the unemployed. The Petrograd party functionary K. Samoilova wrote in 1918 in her study of the widespread unemployment:

47

 Quotation in Proiug, 13 March 1918, 4.

48 49

 Burzhui 1 (1918): 13.

 See DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 143, ll. 41–42.

50

 See DAOO f. R-3829, op. 1, d. 31a, ll. 9–10.

51

 Proiug, 7 (20) February 1918, 3.

52

 See ibid., l. 15.

282 Tanja Penter

The mental condition of such an unemployed man is extremely difficult, and it is not surprising that in a phase of severe unemployment even conscious workers sometimes descend to the depths of life and join the ranks of “yesterday’s people,” the lumpenproletarians as they are known.53 The Soviet authorities called for class solidarity, since “all the class enemies of the proletariat were hanging on to unemployment like a sheet-anchor and exploiting this popular misery in order to incite the unemployed against the workers’ organizations.”54 The Soviet government had to defend itself reso­ lutely against the accusation that it had helped to make the unemployment even worse by demobilizing the army and demilitarizing industry. After an assembly of the unemployed was held in Petrograd on 2 April 1918, the Petrograd Party Committee declared its opposition to the establishment of an independent organization for the unemployed on 17 April. In spite of this, small unemployed organizations and “associations of unemployed soldiers” were formed all over Russia in 1918, but there was nowhere else where they constituted a societal force as strong as the Soviet of the Unemployed in Odessa.55 The Composition of the Soviet of the Unemployed There were two major groups within the unemployed movement: the civilian unemployed and the soldiers who had come home from the war. As Ryt remembered, it took him a great deal of effort to prevent these two groups from breaking away because the returning veterans (the larger group) demanded that the money in the fund of the unemployed be distributed proportionally. 53

 See Samoilova, Sovremennaia bezrabotitsa, 57. When the Council of People’s Commissars took power in Petrograd, it placed the labor exchanges under the workers’ organizations, and adopted a decree on social insurance that introduced unemployment insurance for all employees and was to be financed solely through employers’ contributions. Apart from this, the new Soviet government set up canteens for the unemployed, taxed the property-owning classes to build up a special fund for the unemployed, and adopted a decree on the quartering of unemployed people in the homes of the bourgeoisie. Attempts were made to recruit large numbers of un­ employed men for the Red Army. On this topic, see Kleinbort, Istoriia bezrabotitsy, 291ff.; and Samoilova, Sovremennaia bezrabotitsa, 31ff.

54 55

 Samoilova, Sovremennaia bezrabotitsa, 52.

 Only about 2,000 of the more than 200,000 unemployed people in Petrograd gathered at the beginning of April 1918 to found their central committee. See Kleinbort, Istoriia bezrabotitsy, 291ff.; and Samoilova, Sovremennaia bezrabotitsa, 31ff.

The Unemployed Movement in Odessa in 1917

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The soldiers already had an organization before the Soviet of the Unemployed was established, the Returning Soldiers Association, which had demanded in October 1917 that prisoners of war and workers in the factories be replaced with demobilized soldiers.56 Furthermore, the members of the Soviet of the Unemployed came from very diverse social backgrounds, as unemployment could affect all groups of wage earners during this period. Ryt himself remembered: We understood the term “unemployed” very broadly: we included in it all those who did not, and could not, find any labor for their workers’ hands at that point in time. As proved to be the case in retrospect, all the destitute turned up there, from the professional beggar to the factory worker or craftsman who had been thrown onto the street by war or revolution.57 The leadership of the Soviet of the Unemployed consisted for the most part of skilled workers who came above all from the metalworking industry and had made common cause with the teacher Ryt in taking the initiative to organize the unemployed.58 Unfortunately, the sources give no clues about either the precise composition of the Soviet of the Unemployed or its organ­ izational principles. It remains unclear how the leadership of the Soviet of the Unemployed was elected or appointed and how its decision-making proc­ ess was generally organized. In view of the short period for which it was in existence—fewer than three months—it is to be presumed that the Soviet of the Unemployed was only able to form organizational structures to a very modest extent. From Ryt’s memoirs, it is evident that the unemployed were called together spontaneously using posters, and the composition of these assemblies was therefore very much a matter of chance. The unemployed movement was joined not just by former members of the working population, but also by other stigmatized marginal groups in urban society. For instance, some Bolsheviks later recalled that numerous criminals were active in the Soviet of the Unemployed as well.59 During the revolution, the city’s professional criminals developed new forms of organizations, gained a new confidence, and also joined the ranks 56

 Sh. B., “Professional´noe dvizhenie v Odesse v 1917 g.: III. Bor´ba s bezrabotitsei,” Vestnik profdvizheniia Ukrainy 18 (1927): 77–79.

57

 DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1005, l. 1.

58 59

 See ibid., ll. 1, 23ff., 45ff.

 See ibid., l. 11; and Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial´no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI) f. 70, op. 3, d. 59, l. 262.

284 Tanja Penter

of the Red Guards during the struggles for Soviet power. As a port, Odessa had always attracted all sorts of people who earned their money in dishonest ways, and practically ideal working conditions for professional criminals pre­ vailed in the general confusion of the last months of the World War and the revolution. In the course of the justice reforms initiated by the Provisional Government after the February Revolution, the old tsarist police had been replaced with a people’s militia and there was an amnesty for all political prisoners. Apart from political prisoners, numerous criminals were also freed from the prisons under this amnesty. Moreover, the Provisional Government reformed the prison system, banned the death penalty and deportations to Siberia, and dissolved the special courts for political crimes and treason. A new court, the justice of the peace (mirovoi sud), was created that was supposed to be appointed by city and town dumas.60 According to official figures from the Odessa militia, there were more than 40,000 crimes in the city in 1917. Odessa’s daily newspapers testify to the enormous number of robberies, thefts, and shootings that took place in the city. It was common for 40 to 50 big robberies to be committed every day. Passersby were stripped down to their shirts on the street in broad daylight. The new militia that had been formed after the dissolution of the old tsarist police at the initiative of the city administration proved helpless in the face of this wave of crime and anarchy on the streets, and the bandits consequently posed a threat that had to be taken seriously not just by the civilian population but also by the rep­resentatives of power. The invalidity of the old laws and the absence of new laws frequently made it more difficult to bring criminals to justice. It was not uncommon for offenders who had been arrested to be released from detention “on parole” just a few days later. The terrorized urban population resorted to self-defense to scare off the bandits. In some cases, arrested offenders were even lynched by crowds at the scene of a crime.61 The Odessa bandits were not only very well armed, they also possessed a well functioning organization that worked out plans for all their robberies. At that time, the militia regarded Meer Sukonik and Mishka Iaponchik (real name Mikhail Vinnitskii) as two of the biggest bandit leaders. The bandits owned cars and numerous other means of transport, which they used to carry out raids on homes, shops, and offices in the middle of the day. Following the establishment of the Soviet government in Odessa, robberies frequently happened according to the following favored pattern, as Torchinskii recalled: 60

 See Helmut Altrichter, Staat und Revolution in Sowjetrussland 1917–1922/23 (Darm­ stadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996), 141. 61

 On crime in Odessa, see the memoirs of A. P. Torchinskii on the history of the Odessa militia: DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1370, ll. 1–11, here l. 4.

The Unemployed Movement in Odessa in 1917

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In broad daylight the robbers drove to some shop. Pretending to be representatives of the Soviet authorities, they requisitioned the goods, took possession of them, and transported the goods from the shop to their hideout. Previously they had had the foresight to cut the tele­ phone lines.62 The stolen goods were later sold to traders who offered them on the black market. The criminals did not lack confidence, and they offered the urban population a demonstration of their strength almost every evening when they drove through the city in cars, shouting wildly, brandishing their weapons, and terrorizing passersby. The bandits engaged in open firefights with the militia, kidnapped militiamen, and not infrequently executed their hostages.63 Professional criminals had exceptionally good organizational structures. They possessed their own coordinating office, which decided who would take part in which jobs and how the spoils were to be distributed. Apart from this, they set up a special fund that was intended to support the families of deceased or arrested criminals if they got into trouble. The criminals even formed various trade union–like groupings, such as the Pickpockets’ Association.64 Crime reached its highpoint under the first Soviet government, which was due partly to the fact that numerous “déclassé and criminal elements” were involved in the struggles for power in the city as members of the Red Guard. Red Guardsmen recalled that, when it came to the decisive battles, anyone who was willing to fight on the Red Guards’ side had a rifle thrust into their hands, and they included more than a few “criminal elements.”65 The new Soviet authorities, who had taken power in Odessa in 1918 thanks in part to the assistance of these forces, had to cope with the consequences of this afterwards in the form of a wave of looting and crime on the streets. In their attempts to establish a new order, however, the Soviet government also faced fundamental problems of definition: the boundaries between polit­ ical and criminal offences, between political anarchism and what was called “anarcho-banditism” were often badly blurred. This meant it was not at all easy to distinguish criminals from counterrevolutionaries and vice versa

62

 See ibid., l. 9.

63

 See ibid., ll. 1–11; and the reports in the daily newspaper Malen´kie Odesskie novosti, 28 December 1917, 4; 29 December 1917, 5; and 30 December 1917, 5. 64

 See Torchinskii, DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1370, ll. 9–10; V. Konovalov, Podvig “Almaza” (Odessa: Majak, 1963), 207.

65

 See Kovbasiuk, “Ocherki istorii Odesskoi krasnoi gvardii,” in Oktiabr´ na Odes­ shchine, 192–248.

286 Tanja Penter

during this period.66 For example, the Bolshevik Party had accepted former criminals into its ranks with the justification that crime was a product of the prevailing social system and offences that had been committed under the laws of capitalist society would no longer necessarily be punished as such under Soviet power.67 Nonetheless, on 21 February 1918, in view of the fact that the recently installed Soviet authorities were being prevented from building up orderly structures by a wave of criminal banditry, looting, and street crime, Lenin issued a decree that included enemy agents, counterrevolutionary agitators, and German spies in the same list as “speculators, burglars, and hooligans,” who were all “to be shot at the scene of the crime.”68 At a time when they claimed to be pursuing quite different aims, the unemployed, Red Guardsmen, anarchist groups, and bandits were all demanding money from the property-owning classes. The boundaries between legality and illegality and political and purely criminal activities were fluid. “The fact that, in addi­ tion to all this, the professional thieves and burglars came into their own was all the more understandable when a single person could be a Bolshevik, an anarchist, and a private entrepreneur all at the same time,”69 as the Swiss eye­ witness Hans Limbach remembered. Odessa’s Bolsheviks continued to be characterized by cooperation with allies whom the party’s ideological guidelines branded “dubious elements.” Mishka Iaponchik, the famous bandit of the Civil War years 1918–19, supplied the Odessa Bolsheviks with weapons and later even formed his own Red Army unit with his gang.70 The Cheka executed Mishka Iaponchik and a large number of his associates at the end of 1919, after they had attempted to desert from the front.71 As the contemporary witness Saul Borovoi remembered, the city’s Jewish population also had this bandit to thank for the fact that, despite 66  L. N. Maimeskulov, A. I. Rogozhin, and V. V. Stashis, Vseukrainskaia chrezvychainaia komissiia (1918–1922), 2nd ed. (Khar´kov: Izdatel´stvo “Osnova” pri Khar´kovskom gosudarstvennom universitete, 1990), 302–09. 67

 See I. N. Shkliaev, “Mishka Iaponchik,” Ukraïns´kyi istorychnyi zhurnal 2 (1991): 112– 15. 68

 A. K. Goncharov et al., comps., Lenin o sotsialisticheskoi zakonnosti (1917–1922 gg.) (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1958), 109–10.

69

 Hans Limbach, Ukrainische Schreckenstage: Erinnerungen eines Schweizers (Bern: Francke, 1919), 76.

70

 The well-known writer Isaak Babel´, who came from Odessa, used the case of Mishka Iaponchik as material for one of his stories from Odessa about Benya Krik, the “King of the Bandits.”

71

 Shkliaev, “Mishka Iaponchik,” 112–15; A. S. Kravets, ed., Kto takoi Mishka Iaponchik? Sbornik publikatsii (Moscow: TOO “Vneshsigma,” 1994).

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the frequent changes of regime, no pogroms occurred in Odessa. At moments of danger, Mishka Iaponchik, who was himself Jewish, and his men patrolled the streets where many Jews lived and shot potential ringleaders in order to prevent pogroms.72 Another social group marked out by its particularly radical demands and spontaneous forms of protest in Odessa in 1917 was soldiers’ wives, some of whom also joined the unemployed movement. Although women were generally represented to a very limited extent in the city’s new organs of power after the February Revolution, the soldiers’ wives had founded an independent soviet to represent their interests as early as May 1917. Soldiers’ families numbered more than 100,000 people in Odessa.73 During the war years, the soldiers’ wives had drawn the attention of the city’s population with their particularly radical collective activities. When the City Duma fell into arrears with the disbursement of pensions that the tsarist government had promised some months after the beginning of the war, about 3,000 soldiers’ wives stormed a meeting of the City Duma in January 1915. The police dis­ persed the outraged women with truncheons, on the orders of the Duma’s members.74 The Swiss citizen Hans Limbach remembered similar incidents caused by soldiers’ wives in Kherson Province in 1917: With time, the awareness that they were owed money by the state went to the heads of the soldatki to such an extent that riots took place. Not only did they flout laws and intimidate the authorities wherever they possibly could, there were also direct acts of violence. The state flour trader who did not want to offer them his goods at discounted prices was beaten by a band of soldiers’ wives, and the pristav, the local police chief, who wanted to hurry to his help, escaped the same fate by a hair’s breadth. The women were also the first who sought to carry out what were called requisitions or, in plain language, robbery and theft: i.e., they simply forced their way into people’s homes, had the cupboards and trunks opened and kept anything they felt smacked of luxury for themselves.75 In May 1917, the Soviet of Soldiers’ Wives in Odessa attempted to raise urgently needed money to maintain its organization and set up a special fund for the soldiers’ families. Since neither the Provisional Government nor the 72 73

 Saul Borovoi, Vospominaniia (Moscow: Evreiskii universitet v Moskve, 1993), 64.

 See DAOO f. R-3829, op. 1, d. 6, ll. 7–8.

74

 See Mezhberg and Kogan, “Ekonomika Odesshchiny,” 82.

75

 Limbach, Ukrainische Schreckenstage, 20.

288 Tanja Penter

city administration granted the women any funds, they drew up their own detailed catalogue of measures that could be used to collect the money. In it, the soldiers’ wives called on the city administration to levy a 10-percent charge, payable to their fund, on entrance tickets to the city’s theaters and clubs, sales of luxury goods and valuables, and all meals and drinks consumed in the city’s most expensive cafes and restaurants. Furthermore, all the capital assets of private individuals, companies, and cooperatives, and all income from the ownership of real estate should be taxed at a rate of 1 percent for the benefit of the soldiers’ wives’ fund. Workers and white-collar employees with annual incomes above 300 rubles were called upon to donate 1 percent of their earnings to the soldiers’ families on a voluntary basis.76 Even though these demands were not fulfilled, they were evidence of very radical ideas about how the new order should be shaped after the February Revolution and went far beyond what was being articulated in the Odessa Workers’ Soviet, for example, during the same period. The Soviet of Soldiers’ Wives suffered great material difficulties in 1917 and did not even have a permanent base in Odessa until the end of November 1917. Seeking support from the garrison, the soldiers’ wives frequently dispatched representatives to meetings of the Soldiers’ Soviet. On 23 November, a soldier’s wife complained at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Soldiers’ So­ viet that the soldiers’ families lacked firewood and shoes. She declared, “If we are not satisfied, we say quite openly that we will wait two days more for your decision, but then we will go onto the streets and destroy everything and everyone.”77 In response, the Executive Committee decided to aid the soldiers’ wives materially with all the resources at its disposal and assist the Soviet of Soldiers’ Wives in its search for a suitable base.78 The assertion of their own interests with threats of spontaneous rioting was evidently part of the sol­ diers’ wives’ general strategy. In this respect, their organization showed clear parallels to the Soviet of the Unemployed, which some of the women joined in December 1917. In 1917, the soldiers’ wives were one of the strongest and most significant mass movements of women in Ukraine.79 The sudden loss of their livelihoods blurred the differences and antagon­ isms between different underclass groups that had come to light within the labor movement. The Soviet of the Unemployed united skilled and unskilled 76

 See DAOO f. R-3829, op. 1, d. 6, ll. 7–8.

77

 Tsentral´nyi gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (TsGVIA) f. 1837, op. 9, d. 15, l. 41.

78

 See ibid., l. 41.

79

 See M. Levkovich, Zhenshchina v revoliutsii i grazhdanskoi voine na Ukraine (Khar´kov, 1928), 49.

The Unemployed Movement in Odessa in 1917

289

workers, representatives of the intelligentsia and the lowest social strata of the urban population, such as beggars, prostitutes, and professional criminals. Now, irrespective of their education and social backgrounds, they all shared the common experience of being social outsiders. It appears the encounters between the most various social groups particularly contributed to the strength of the unemployed movement. This “combination of experience and spontaneity” is regarded as an important factor in the success of the revolu­ tion all over Russia.80 The Political Allegiances of the Soviet of the Unemployed It was not only the social composition of the Soviet of the Unemployed that was highly heterogeneous. Its members were also difficult to categorize when it came to their political allegiances. One of the most important political goals of the unemployed was the introduction of workers’ control over production in line with the anarchist interpretation of the idea. At their constituent assembly in December 1917, the unemployed had called on the Workers’ Soviet, the trade unions, and the committees in the individual businesses to courageously take the organization of production into their hands because “only the complete dismissal of the saboteurs (owners) and the takeover of the factories, businesses, and tramways by the workers with the aim of planning the organization and distribution of work on a socialist basis will put an end to misery and unemployment.”81 Khaim Ryt had also formulated this demand previously at a meeting of the Workers’ Soviet. In contrast to this, many functionaries in the workers’ organizations were of the view that the city’s businesses were not yet capable of functioning completely without their owners at that point in time.82 Ryt, who was a member of the Bolsheviks in the 1920s, had regarded him­ self “purely intuitively as an anarchist” in 1917.83 Yet, according to his own statements, he had still not even read Kropotkin’s standard work on anarchism or studied any other aspects of anarchist theory. It was more a romantic concept of anarchism with a unique, local character that Ryt pursued: “It was my ideal to create the ‘Odessa Commune’ for all working hands as something that would unite the workers of all professions and qualifications. I dreamed

80

 See Altrichter, Staat und Revolution in Sowjetrussland, 279.

81

 Proiug, 10 January 1918, 3.

82

 See DAOO f. R-3829, op. 1, d. 126b, ll. 25ff.

83

  DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1005, l. 53.

290 Tanja Penter

of a new form of ur-communism.”84 In January 1918, he wrote in the first edi­ tion of the Soviet of the Unemployed newspaper: In view of the multifaceted character of the current unemployment and the humiliated classes who have joined the unemployed movement, it becomes clear that the whole chaos of modern life, the struggle of all against all, will not cease for as long as there is still just one person unemployed, just one person who goes hungry. And that is only possible through the proclamation of the Commune—equality and prosperity for all!85 On the way to this Odessa Commune, Ryt wanted to nationalize and socialize all the city’s banks and enterprises.86 Furthermore, the most radical forces in the Soviet of the Unemployed demanded a general expropriation not just of the means of production, but also of tools, household utensils, and flats and houses so that they could be redistributed in a just manner.87 Ryt believed the housing crisis faced by the unemployed should be resolved by having all the residential properties in Odessa declared communal property and replacing the rents tenants had been paying with a general rent tax, which should be used to pay for the maintenance of the buildings, the caretakers’ wages, and small pensions for landlords who were financially reliant on their rental in­ comes. Unemployed people should be exempted from this rent tax.88 Anarchist ideas and slogans enjoyed great popularity among the unem­ ployed and, as has already been mentioned, Ryt too regarded himself as an anarchist. However, this did not mean the Soviet of the Unemployed was regarded with limitless sympathy among the city’s other anarchist groups. Just as throughout the rest of Russia, the anarchist movement in Odessa was fragmented into various streams and groupings. Like all the other organized parties, the so-called “ideological anarchists,” who had their representatives in the Soviet and supported the establishment of “Soviet power,” observed Ryt with great mistrust for, “from a political point of view, Ryt was extremely inconsistent,”89 as the former anarchist Arenskii remembered. The head of the “ideological anarchists,” Sasha Fel´dman, even argued for the immediate 84

 Ibid., l. 52.

85

 Izvestiia Odesskogo soveta bezrabotnykh, 27 January 1918, 1.

86 87

 See Malen´kie Odesskie novosti, 31 January 1918, 4.

 See DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 143, l. 40.

88

 See Malen´kie Odesskie novosti, 14 (1) February 1918, 4.

89

 DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1005, l. 43.

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dissolution of the Soviet of the Unemployed.90 As far as the functionaries of the parties and the workers’ organizations were concerned, the Soviet of the Unemployed was an unpredictable bugbear, and even the Bolsheviks, who in Ryt’s view “remained true to their old social democratic traditions and their disdain for the lumpenproletariat,” 91 were not the least interested in the un­ employed at first. The unemployed movement was more likely to find favor among those known as the “anarcho-bandits,” who made Odessa’s streets unsafe, robbed passersby, and occupied the homes of the bourgeoisie. This group, which was joined by numerous criminals, concentrated its activities primarily on robberies and looting.92 What the Soviet of the Unemployed and these anarcho-bandits had in common was that they organized their activities on the principle of spontaneity and had no respect for the dominant powers in the city. One former anarchist and representative of the Soviet Presidium, Arenskii, even advanced the opinion that the anarchist movement in Odessa had its roots in the unemployed movement to a great extent.93 In 1917, Odessa was the most important anarchist center in Ukraine along­ side Ekaterinoslav. The anarchists were able to look back on a long tradition in Odessa, for the movement there had already played an important role in the history of Russian anarchism during the years 1904–08. At that time, Odessa had been one of the few places in the empire where the anarchist movement had taken on a mass character.94 In 1917, however, Odessa’s anarchists were anything but unified, and consisted of the most varied groupings.95 The spec­ trum of the various groups who claimed to advocate fundamentally anarchist ideas was very wide in the city, and they did not always have purely political motives. The anarchist representatives in the Workers’ Soviet, who described themselves as “ideological anarchists” and supported the creation of Soviet structures, represented above all a form of political anarchism. Ten anarchists had seats in the Odessa Workers’ Soviet and one of them was even on its Executive Committee.96 Under Soviet rule, five anarchists sat on the Executive 90 91

 See RGASPI f. 70, op. 3, d. 59, l. 262.

 See DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1005, l. 8.

92 93

 See ibid., d. 1039, l. 11; d. 840, ll. 24ff.

 Ibid., d. 1005, ll. 39ff.

94

 See, on this topic, D. Novomirskii, “Anarkhicheskoe dvizhenie v Odesse,” in Mikhailu Bakuninu 1876–1926: Ocherki istorii anarkhicheskogo dvizheniia v Rossii, ed. A. Borovoi (Moscow, 1926), 246–78.

95

 L. Dekterev, “Rumcherod i organizatsiia Krasnoi Armii,” in Grazhdanskaia voina: Materialy (Moscow: Voenno-istoricheskaia komissiia, 1923), 2: 7–79, here 72. 96

 DAOO f. R-3829, op. 1, d. 28, l. 13.

292 Tanja Penter

Committee and one on the Presidium of the Soviet.97 In 1917, the Odessa Fed­ eration of Anarcho-Communists set up the organ Biulleten´, although it was published only twice.98 At the other end of the scale from these “ideological anarchists” were the “anarcho-bandits,” as their opponents called them. Some of them had occu­ pied a villa at no. 21 Peter the Great Street and defended their base against intruders by posting machine guns on the roofs of the surrounding buildings. It was as secure as “Fort Chabrol,” and “in front of the gate, proud and fearless, a female anarchist strolled with a rifle in her hand,”99 as the newspaper Malen´kie Odesskie novosti wrote in December 1917. The ranks of the anarchists at no. 21 supposedly included many criminals as well because the group lived from robberies and looting.100 While there was no danger to the anarchists at no. 21 from either the helpless city militia or the Red Guardsmen, with whom they cultivated close contacts,101 they came up against opponents who had to be taken seriously in the Ukrainian Haidamaka troops who increasingly claimed to keep order in the city. For their part, the anarchists responded to the Haidamakas’ declaration of war with bombs and firefights.102 It is certainly significant to any understanding of this antagonism between the anarchist groups and Ukrainian soldiers that prior to 1917, the anarchist movement in Ukraine had been concentrated in the cities and towns and was culturally dominated by Russian influences. While a not insignificant num­ ber of Jews were involved in the various anarchist groups, practically no Ukrainians took part in the anarchist movement at all, and the “Ukrainian question” was not raised in the anarchists’ publications either.103 To this extent, the clashes between anarchists and Haidamakas were also consequences of the opposition between the traditionally Russian Jewish urban population and the Ukrainian rural population. The anarchists were acceptable allies for 97

 Ibid., d. 86, l. 2

98

 S. L. Rubinshtein, Odes´ka periodychna presa rokiv revoljucii ta hromadjans´koi vijny (1917–1921): Bibliohrafichna rozvidka (Odessa, 1929), 11–12. 99

 Malen´kie Odesskie novosti, 5 December 1917, 2.

100

 DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1039, l. 11; d. 840, l. 24.

101

 One of the leading anarchists, Andrei Lavrushin, was simultaneously a lieutenant in the Red Guard, which included yet other anarchists. See DAOO f. R-3829, op. 1, d. 7, ll. 9, 40. 102

 See Malen´kie Odesskie novosti, 5 December 1917, 2; 28 December 1917, 4; Malen´kii Odesskii listok, 5 December 1917, 1.

103

 See Frank Sysyn, “Nestor Makhno and the Ukrainian Revolution,” in Hunczak, The Ukraine, 1917–1921, 271–304, here 279–81.

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the Soviet authorities. In January 1918, for instance, anarchist groups fought side by side with the Red Guardsmen in Odessa against the Ukrainian Haida­ maka troops.104 What was important, in addition to this, was that anarchism in Odessa was able to look back on a long tradition and influenced certain groups in the urban population in 1917 when they were choosing the forms their protest would take and deciding how to articulate their opinions politi­ cally in the city’s public life. Khaim Ryt: The Revolutionary At the end of 1917, three important factors came together in Odessa that gave the unemployed movement such strength: the existence of a very large, im­ miserated underclass; a general power vacuum in the city, caused by the confrontation between the young Soviet government in Petrograd and the Ukrainian Central Rada in Kiev; and the emergence of Khaim Ryt, a tal­ ented orator who was capable of uniting the underclasses under the flag of unemployment. Inevitably, the question therefore arises of whether there would have been a Soviet of the Unemployed at all had it not been for the un­ employed teacher Khaim Ryt. The Jewish historian and contemporary witness Saul Borovoi described Khaim Ryt as follows: Emaciated, poorly dressed, with a shabby exterior, he conveyed the impression of someone who was not entirely normal. But he possessed organizational skills and, as a demagogue and fanatic, his ability to inspire others was rousing and made him the leader of the Odessa Anarchists for some time.105 As a Jew, Ryt had experienced the tsarist government’s repression to a particular extent and appreciated the new freedom the revolution brought for the non-Russian minorities. The “passionate, honest leader of the collective that he led,”106 as the Bolshevik Rutser called him, evidently resembled in many ways the ideal type of the revolutionary intelligentsia. Even those critical of the Soviet of the Unemployed recognized Ryt’s achievement in having brought some degree of organization to the unorganized masses. People were aware that, without someone like Khaim Ryt, this social group would possibly have been even less controlled, even more spontaneous and therefore even more dangerous. Ryt was the mouthpiece and ideologist of 104

 DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1039, l. 11.

105

 Borovoi, Vospominaniia, 64.

106

 DAOO f. P-2, op. 1, d. 1005, l. 37.

294 Tanja Penter

the unemployed organization, while also acting as a mediator between the “organized” and “unorganized masses.” For all the complaints about the So­ viet of the Unemployed, Ryt’s opponents never questioned his probity and credibility. Ryt accounted meticulously for how money from the Soviet of the Unemployed fund was spent, and his personal integrity was evidently be­ yond doubt.107 After Ryt, the unemployed movement in Odessa lost its momentum and no comparable movements emerged in other Russian cities. These points are indicative of Ryt’s great significance as an individual in the organization of the unemployed. At the same time, it should not be underestimated that the revolutionary turmoil prompted the most diverse social and ethnic groups to organize themselves without the participation of members of the “intel­ ligentsia” in leading roles. The level of self-organization in Odessa was ex­ traordinarily high, which was reflected not least in the large number of groupings and associations that were founded in 1917, as well as their numer­ ous publications.108 Furthermore, social groups from which this was not expected, such as the professional criminals, now learned to represent their collective interests. The Soviet of the Unemployed was also attractive to groups within the urban, Jewish population. As far as is apparent from the sources, interethnic conflicts were of no significance within the Soviet of the Unemployed. By con­ trast to other parts of Russia, where the records show that the unemployed movement occasionally became involved in anti-Semitic pogroms, this was not the case in Odessa.109 Unlike in 1905, no pogroms against the Jewish population took place in Odessa in 1917. Two explanations can be offered for this. First, a broad public was mobilized to oppose anti-Semitic slogans and disturbances, which was reflected in the fact that the City Duma, the Workers’ Soviet, and the Red Guards made it their task to prevent pogroms and neutralize potential ringleaders. Second, the Jewish community itself also took preventive measures, such as the formation of Jewish self-defense organ­ izations.110 Elsewhere in Ukraine, more than 1,500 anti-Jewish pogroms took place in nearly 1,300 towns and villages during the Civil War years 1918–20.111 107

 See ibid., ll. 12–13, 31ff.

108

 See Rubinshtein, Odes´ka periodychna presa, 38–39.

109

 See Kleinbort, Istoriia bezrabotitsy v Rossii, 288ff.; B. Kolesnikov, Professional´noe dvi­ zhenie i kontrrevoliutsiia: Ocherki professional´nogo dvizheniia na Ukraine (Khar´kov, 1923), 37ff.

110 111

 See the detailed account in Penter, Odessa 1917, 298–320.

 See Oleg V. Budnitskii, Rossiiskie evrei mezhdu krasnymi i belymi 1917–1920 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2006), 275.

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The unemployed movement collapsed in Odessa with the arrival of Ger­ man and Austrian troops in March 1918, as did the first phase of Soviet power in the city. With regard to Khaim Ryt’s further fate, it is known that he was li­ving in Moscow in the 1920s and worked as an English teacher at a college.112 After Ryt, the unemployed movement in Odessa faded away and, as far as is known, comparable movements did not make their presence felt in other cities of the former Russian Empire. Conclusion The growing polarization between the workers and the unemployed, which si­ multaneously reflected the fragmentation of the lower classes and the increased significance of previously stigmatized groups, was one specific feature of local developments in Odessa. This example also shows that new identities such as that of the “unemployed” could emerge as a consequence of social upheavals. Nevertheless, it was not just the real economic situation that shaped the identity of the unemployed and their community, for the word itself became a catchall for all kinds of formerly stigmatized lower strata in the population. This was reflected, for example, in the fact that the movement was not just joined by people who were actually unemployed, but also by members of other marginal social groups. The loss of their work and, with it, their livelihoods reduced workers who had previously held skilled jobs, university graduates, and veterans who had returned home from the war to the lowest level in the social hierarchy, degrading them to “lumpenproletarians.” At the same time, by organizing themselves, the strata traditionally denigrated as “rabble” (German: Lumpen), such as beggars, prostitutes, and criminals suddenly gained tremendous social significance. The success of their collective action and their political weight in the city endowed the formerly stigmatized un­ derclasses with a new confidence. In contrast to the semantics of the word lumpenproletarian, the term unemployed did not have negative connotations in 1917. Unlike Marxist ideology, which socially stigmatized all those who were not proletarians, “unemployment” gave a new, non-proletarian underclass an identity of its own. In turn, this group identified not just the “bourgeoisie,” but also the organized avant-garde of the labor movement, whom it called “aristocrats,” as its class enemies. The unemployed opposed the organized labor movement with more spontaneous forms of protest and, in some cases, more radical demands as well.113 112 113

 See Borovoi, Vospominaniia, 65.

 The Marxist concept of the lumpenproletariat showed great similarities with older, conservative fears of the underclasses. In German, the term Proletarier, which was also

296 Tanja Penter

When writers looked back on the history of the Bolshevik Party in the 1920s, the existence of an organization of the underclasses that operated in parallel to the labor movement and even competed with it threw up a number of ideological problems for the official Soviet interpretation of the revolution, which led to the Soviet of the Unemployed being dismissed as an “anti-Soviet, lumpenproletarian organization.” By taking this line, the Party historians attempted to integrate the unemployed movement into the Marxist class model and fit it into the “official version” of the Soviet interpretation of the revolution.

coined by the bourgeoisie, replaced the older Pöbel (mob) from 1830 on. It denoted the underclasses who were living on the bread line and, apart from the element of impoverishment, had implications of moralizing disapproval. In distinction from this, Marx attempted to establish a positive concept of the proletarian and did this by creating the separate concept of the lumpenproletarian, with which he could be said to have passed on the bourgeois prejudices against the mob further down the social ladder. Overall, however, the lumpenproletariat remained a fundamentally undevel­ oped facet of Marx’s class ideology. On the evolution of the term lumpenproletariat, see Robert L. Bussard, “The ‘Dangerous Class’ of Marx and Engels: The Rise of the Idea of the Lumpenproletariat,” History of European Ideas 8, 6 (1987): 675–92. On the attitude of the socialist labor movement to the lumpenproletariat, see Michael Schwartz, “‘Prole­ tarier’ und ‘Lumpen’: Sozialistische Ursprünge eugenischen Denkens,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 42, 4 (1994): 537–70.

The Izhevsk Revolt of 1918: The Fateful Clash of Revolutionary Coalitions, Paramilitarism, and Bolshevik Power Aaron B. Retish

This is a tale of how workers and soldiers in the industrial city of Izhevsk fought for soviet power in the fall of 1917 only to revolt against Bolshevism a year later in what would become the largest and most significant uprising of its kind to date against the Soviet regime. At its height, in September 1918, the Izhevsk revolt established its own government—the Prikomuch regime— and controlled thirteen to fourteen thousand square kilometers and close to a million people.1 On the surface, it is also an often-repeated tale of the failure of an anti-Bolshevik rebellion and the reassertion of power by the Soviet regime. If placed in the context of local politics, society, and economics, Izhevsk’s political developments reveal the complexity of popular politics and what constituted power in the first year of Bolshevik rule.2 The events of 1917 to the end of 1918 also reveal how local politics evolved during revolution. In Izhevsk, 1918 witnessed a tense move to one-party authoritarian rule, and violent reaction against the stifling of democratic governance. However, a study of the larger environment in which this swing in city politics happened reveals a much more complicated story. Many non-Bolshevik actors influenced the direction of the Soviet state, including political figures from the Socialist

1

 Izhevsk is now the capital of the Udmurt Republic. For the rural perspective on the Izhevsk Revolt, see Aaron Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), especially chap. 6. 2

 In this way, this chapter is in discussion with recent studies of Soviet power in local urban areas by Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); and Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), as well as the chapters in this volume by Penter and Karsch. Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 299–322.

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Revolutionaries (SRs), SR-Maximalists, Mensheviks, and Bolsheviks who con­ tinuously fought to make new alliances with each other.3 Social forces at key moments in 1918 also helped to direct city and party politics. A changing labor force and returning soldiers forced political change both within the Soviet state model and then against it. The returning soldiers formed the Union of Frontoviki and Wounded Soldiers (Soiuz frontovikov i uvechennykh voinov), a large group of frontline veterans and officers that resisted heavy-handed Bolshevik policies elsewhere in Russia and controlled an independent Red Guard. Workers and veterans, which were overlapping social groups, followed Bolshevik power but then at a crucial moment in autumn 1918, turned against it. What emerges is much more than an “SR and Menshevik” mutiny, or even a workers’ uprising against a despotic Bol­ shevik state. Complex local economic concerns and politics met up with the approaching frontline to bring Izhevsk and its neighboring industrial city of Votkinsk to rebellion. The struggle over politics was only part of the story. There was also a fight over power on the streets. The frontoviki and workers created armed brigades— paramilitary forces—that wielded power and challenged state control. Para­ militarism as a concept helps to explain the dissemination of power and violence in revolutionary Russia in general and Izhevsk more specifically. Analyzing the Union of Frontoviki as a group of paramilitary units also allows us to understand the direct links between the First World War and Russia’s Civil War, even in the hinterland. Soldiers returned from war and continued to understand the world through their wartime experiences in discussions with fellow veterans at their clubs. It was here that they fell in with the Soviet cause or took arms up against it. As Robert Gerwarth and John Horne have recently discussed, paramilitarism was a pan-European movement between 1917 and 1923 of “military or quasi-military organizations and practices that either expanded or replaced conventional military formations.”4 In Russia, various unofficial military units like the brigades of the hetmen, Greens, and Black Hundreds as well as the Red Guards and Union of Frontoviki that guided the histories of Izhevsk would also fit into this broad rubric.5

3

 I take the environmental metaphor from Katerina Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). 4

 Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, “Paramilitarism in Europe after the Great War: An Introduction,” in War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, ed. Gerwath and Horne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1. 5

 William Rosenberg complicates the utility of paramilitary violence in Russia in “Paramilitary Violence in Russia’s Civil Wars, 1918–1920,” in War in Peace, 21–39.

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The Izhevsk revolt as a whole has had a contested place in the scholarly literature that, like most political movements of the revolutionary era, has either been vilified or romanticized depending on the writer’s political views. Through the Brezhnev era, Soviet historians argued that the Izhevsk workers’ high standard of living gave them a petty-bourgeois sensibility and a natural inclination toward supporting an SR and Menshevik mutiny. Gorbachev-era scholars finally admitted the importance of economic problems in the city in 1918 that turned workers against the Bolsheviks and demonstrated that “the strike” had a complex political platform. Post-Soviet local scholars have embraced the Izhevsk uprising as a heroic struggle by workers and leftist SRMaximalists against a despotic regime and as a national symbol of the Ud­ murt Republic, implicitly attacking Moscow’s current impositions upon local control.6 These trends have become even more pronounced in recent years with an avalanche of local histories and websites. Restricted access to regional archives kept Western scholars from studying the Izhevsk revolt, with the ex­ ception of Stephen Berk in his 1975 article who saw the uprising as a unique case of organized working-class opposition to Bolshevism in 1918. Recent scholarship by Scott Smith has placed the Izhevsk uprising as an integral part of the popular trajectory of the SR party that helped to shape civil war and Soviet power.7 I argue that Izhevsk’s political and social environment created a unique opportunity for non-Bolshevik parties to thrive and for veterans espe­ 6  For the classic Soviet perspective, see L. M. Spirin, Klassy i partii v grazhdanskoi voine v Rossii (Moscow: Mysl´, 1968), 262. P. N. Dmitriev and K. I. Kulikov produced a series of famous books in the early 1990s on the revolt that highlight the contradictions of the period. They play up the heroics of the Izhevtsy as rebels against the Bolsheviks but study the revolt through Soviet constructs of economic development and class order. See Miatezh v Izhevsko-Votkinskom raione (Izhevsk: “Udmurtiia,” 1992). For recent accounts of the revolt as a reaction to political despotism, see D. O. Churakov, “‘Tret´ia sila’ u vlasti: Izhesk, 1918 god,” Voprosy istorii, no. 5 (May 2003): 30–45; and the several books by A. V. Korobeinikov focusing on military history, including Volzhskaia flotiliia protiv Prikamskoi Narodnoi Armii (osen´ 1918) (Izhevsk: Idnakar, 2012); and Votkinskaia narodnaia armiia v 1918 g., 1: Liudskoi sostav (Izhevsk: Idnakar, 2013), in which he writes that the rebels’ conflict was not with the Bolsheviks but with the center (6). Local histories create a fascinating detailed story that mixes heroic anti-Bolshevism with religious and masculine overtones. There are now active discussion boards on minute points of the revolt. For a good overview of the Russian historiography, see A. S. Vere­ shchagin, “Paradoksy istoriografii Izhevsko-Votkinskogo vosstaniia,” in Akademik P. V. Volobuev: Neopublikovannye raboty, vospominaniia, stat´i, ed. V. P. Buldakov et al. (Moscow: Nauka, 2000), 389–96. 7  Stephen M. Berk, “The ‘Class-Tragedy’ of Izhevsk: Working-Class Opposition to Bolshevism in 1918,” Russian History 2, 2 (1975): 176–90; and Scott Smith, Captives of Revolution: The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolshevik Dictatorship, 1918–1923 (Pitts­ burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011).

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cially to stake their claim against the Bolshevik regime. However, Izhevsk’s rebellion also reveals common trends in social and state power that occurred throughout revolutionary Russia. Building the Citadel of Socialism: Izhevsk before October The geography and social composition of Izhevsk helped to shape its political destiny. Izhevsk was built around armaments production using minerals from the nearby Ural Mountains. Izhevsk’s factory workers had enjoyed a privileged position compared to other workers since the founding of the city’s munitions factories in 1807 by the entrepreneur A. F. Deriabin. By the begin­ ning of the 20th century, the Izhevsk munitions plants employed 9,500 mostly skilled workers, who were some of the highest paid factory laborers in Russia. They earned almost as much as workers in Moscow, without the large city’s high costs of living. Many also owned houses and land, and kept livestock within the city.8 In contrast to workers in other Russian factories, Izhevsk’s labor force was stable and often lived in the city for the whole year. Izhevk’s administrative district (uezd) of Sarapul´, in Viatka province, was a multiethnic mosaic of Russians and Udmurts, along with Tatars and Mari, but Izhevsk’s skilled workers were predominantly Russian. Izhevsk’s workers maintained relationships with families in their native villages, but they did not maintain close ties with peoples of different ethnic groups where language could be a barrier. Udmurts living around Izhevsk played a peripheral role in the factory economy. They sold their produce in the city markets and transported wood and other forest materials for the factories, but were rarely seen on the shop floor. The First World War radically altered Izhevsk’s labor environment. Its fac­ tories manufactured almost a quarter of Russia’s infantry rifles and were the sole producers of rifle and revolver barrels during the war. To meet demand, the factory’s ranks swelled to over 30,000 workers, many from other cities, which changed the composition of the labor force. Working conditions also deteriorated. Workers were required to labor nine-and-a-half–hour days in addition to a mandatory four hours of overtime. Labor injuries increased and real wages declined.9 What had been an exceptionally stable, relatively pros­ perous labor force struggled because of the war with debilitating inflation, 8  S. L. Bekhterev, Esero-maksimalistskoe dvizhenie v Udmurtii (Izhevsk: Udmurtskii in­ stitut istorii, iazyka i literatury UrO RAN, 1997), 23–24; Berk, “The ‘Class-Tragedy’ of Izhevsk,” 176. 9

 Bekhterev, Esero-maksimalistskoe dvizhenie, 25–26. Izhevsk continues to be the site of major armaments production in Russia, most famously the Kalashnikov machine gun, designed by its native son Mikhail Kalashnikov. Visitors to the city can now enjoy a

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and were frustrated by declining production in the factories that many workers suspected to be from treason or German sabotage. In February 1917, they were disenchanted by the mismanagement of the war and by the dire economic conditions and strikes that rocked the city on the eve of revolution in Petrograd.10 1917: Soviet Ascendant Izhevsk’s workers were politically active and acted quickly once they got wind of the political changes occurring in Petrograd in March 1917. Shop stewards formed what would become the most powerful soviet of workers’ deputies in the province on 7 March, and quickly dominated politics of the city. Most delegates to this early soviet did not hold loyalty to a political party at first, but would later become active SRs. The handful of Bolsheviks played an insignificant role in city politics at this point. At the beginning of May 1917, the Bolshevik Party claimed a paltry 36 members. Like Bolshevik groups elsewhere in Russia in spring 1917, the Izhevsk Bolsheviks were open to working within the system and cooperating with other socialist groups, and so formed a short-lived union with the much larger Menshevik group. The Bolsheviks and more popular Mensheviks were eclipsed by the SR organiza­ tions that far outnumbered the Social Democrats in the soviet and in party membership. Delegates to the Izhevsk soviet emphasized cooperation over party identity in the honeymoon days of spring 1917 but, as in other city so­ viets, by summer fissures emerged and it became more radical. Izhevsk’s city soviet and factory committees took a unique path at this point with the devel­ opment of the SR-Maximalists as the dominant political force.11

visit to the Museum Complex of Small Arms of M. T. Kalashnikov where pictures of children and women in peasant dress holding AK-47s adorn the walls. 10

 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) f. 102, op. 3, d. 1030, l. 1337.

11

 In other regions SRs, especially Left SRs, and Bolsheviks cooperated before and during 1917. This happened in Sormovo, Nizhegorod province. See Sarah Badcock, Poli­ tics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 56–86. On the diversity and depth of SR support, see Michael S. Melancon, The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Russian Anti-War Movement (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990); Oliver Radkey, The Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism: Promise and Default of the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries, February to October 1917 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958); Maureen Perrie, “The Social Composition and Structure of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party before 1917,” Europe-Asia Studies 24 (1972): 223–50, who briefly discusses SR-Maximalists. The most complete account of SR-Maximalists is Bekhterev, Esero-maksimalistskoe dvizhenie.

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The emergence of the SR-Maximalists in Izhevsk reflected the slippery political identities of 1917. The Union of Socialist Revolutionary Maximalists (Soiuz sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov maksimalistov) was founded during the 1905 revolution and fought for the immediate transition to a “maximum” level of socialism, that is, the nationalization of land and factories along with the dictatorship of the working class. The Maximalists worked within the SR Party after its re-emergence in the city in April 1917. They were certainly on the left edge of the SR Party in its platform of supporting the seizure of land­ lords’ land without compensation and distribution among the toiling poor, the expropriation of bourgeois capital, immediate end to the war, and its early support for all power to the soviets. Its members in the fall of 1917 could not even determine if it was a separate party or a union of radical leftist parties. Even G. G. Krasil´nikov, a Maximalist representative on the All-Factory Council said that “the Maximalist party is the same as the Bolsheviks, only more to the left.”12 By 1 July, the Maximalists began to function independently from the SR Party for what it vaguely claimed as both tactical and ideological differences, but it clearly reflected the growing radicalization of popular politics. The close relationship in Izhevsk between Maximalists and Bolsheviks reflected not just political symmetry, but local politics. In the city of Viatka, the Maximalists accepted Bolshevik rule but worked closely with anarchists on organizational matters and even cooperated in opening a canteen (stolovaia), emphasizing that local political ecosystems were decided as much on individual relationships and alliances as on ideologies.13 In September the increasingly popular Bolsheviks and SR-Maximalists formed a working coalition to fight for all power to the soviets, in part because their party platforms overlapped on so many issues. They could already claim a majority in the soviet and the executive committee, and together they formed one of the best-armed Red Guards in all of the Urals.14 Frontoviki and members of the Maximalist Party dominated the Red Guard and swamped Bolshevik influence over the militia, causing simmering tension that exploded in 1918. Immediately following the Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd in November 1917, the Bolshevik-Maximalist coalition in the Izhevsk soviet won a vote by 92 to 58 to take power in the name of the soviet. While armed force from the Red Guard implicitly backed it, popular demonstrations of thousands of workers and garrison soldiers buoyed the transfer to soviet power. This 12

 Quote in Bekhterev, Esero-maksimalistskoe dvizhenie, 43.

13 14

 Viatskaia Pravda, 30 January 1918, 1; 25 March 1918, 1.

 Churakov, “‘Tret´ia sila’ u vlasti,” 31; K. I. Kulikov, “Triumf i tragediia Izhevskikh Maksimalistov,” in Politika i ekonomika Udmurtii sovetskogo perioda, ed. O. I. Vasil´eva et al. (Izhevsk: Udmurtskii institut istorii, iazyka i literatury UrO RAN, 1995), 63.

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was the only town in Viatka province where the Bolsheviks (representing soviet power) rode a wave of popular support into governance; in all other towns they seized control of the state with Red Guards and armed bands.15 The two parties began to rule in coalition in the Izhevsk soviet and executive committee, with Mensheviks continuing to play an active role. The Bolsheviks followed this victory up by garnering the most votes of any party in the city’s Constituent Assembly elections in December, with the Izhevsk organization of the SR-Maximalists strongly running its own list of candidates.16 It was no wonder that at the end of 1917 the Bolsheviks in Petrograd hailed Izhevsk as a citadel of socialism. 1918: The Decline of Political Alliances The alliance of Bolsheviks and Maximalists in Izhevsk followed the same downward spiral as coalition governments across European Russia in 1918. There was good reason for hope of a working alliance in the first months of rule. The two parties agreed on major policy issues, including the closure of the Constituent Assembly and workers’ control over factories. Elections in both city and factory soviets in early 1918 produced coalitions made up equally of Bolsheviks, Maximalists, and nonparty representatives, showing true support for multiparty socialist rule.17 Tensions over governance grew during the winter. The SR-Maximalists bristled when local Bolsheviks tried early on to carry out the Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars) decree to close the bourgeois press. The Maximalists and other non-party workers were most upset by the Bolsheviks’ failure to act decisively against rising un­ employment in the city within the larger collapse of the economy. The best that the new government did was have the People’s Commissariat of Labor (Narkomtrud) and the People’s Commissariat of Food Supply (Narkomprod) extend unemployment benefits and raise salaries by a slim 6 percent that did not offset runaway inflation and black market grain prices. These did little to stop the declining material life in the city.18 Laborers and veterans needed work, and their long-term unemployment after the war ended became a seri­ 15

 GARF f. 1810, op. 1, d. 178, l. 32a. For more on the Bolshevik takeover of power in Viatka’s urban centers, see Iu. N. Timkin, Smutnoe vremia na Viatke: Obshchestvennopoliticheskoe razvitie Viatskoi gubernii vesnoi 1917–osen´iu 1918 gg. (Kirov: Viatskii gosu­ darstvennyi pedagogicheskii universitet, 1998), 29–49. 16

 GARF f. 1810, op. 1, d. 178, l. 21.

17

 Bekhterev, Esero-maksimalistskoe dvizhenie, 54.

18

 Tsentral´nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Udmurtskoi Respubliki (TsGAUR) f. R-543, op. 13, d. 15, l. 5.

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ous issue in city politics. In February, they elected an SR-Maximalist and Menshevik majority to the soviet. The Menshevik A. I. Sosolin briefly held the chair of the executive committee before being assassinated in a string of deadly attacks on leading local non-Bolshevik figures.19 As happened with the Left SRs in Moscow, it was the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in March, though, that fissured any semblance of an alliance in the Izhevsk soviet. Maximalist leaders in Izhevsk decried Brest-Litovsk as a “Bolshevik but not a proletarian” peace and went into open opposition in the soviet.20 Political debates threatened stability within the city, but it was the politics of the street that brought the city to outright rebellion. Returning soldiers drove politics both on the street and in the soviet. The divisive issue was con­ trol over the Red Guard. The Maximalist-dominated frontovik-led Red Guard acted well ahead of Bolshevik wishes and attacked and confiscated remnants of capitalism, such as private businesses. While Bolsheviks had the upper hand in official politics, they were troubled that these paramilitary units controlled armed force in the city. The fact that the Red Guard was destabilizing the econ­ omy and carrying out searches and arrests of individuals became intolerable for Bolshevik leaders. In a striking clash between organized force and semi-organized paramili­ tary power, in February the Bolsheviks tried to fold the frontovik-led Red Guard into the state-run Red Army, but the Guard responded by attacking Bol­ sheviks and members of other political groups and confiscating goods.21 Once the Maximalists were in opposition, the Bolsheviks determined that a heavily armed and aggressive Red Guard roaming the streets was impermissible. In April, the Bolsheviks formed their own military brigade to counter the Red Guard and, with military support from the Red Army unit in Kazan´, finally arrested up to two hundred Maximalists and frontoviki in the Guard and reor­ ganized it. The Maximalists quit the soviet, leaving the Bolsheviks in sole power. The forced removal of non-Bolsheviks from the soviet could have led to the end of contested politics in the city, but returning soldiers and officers as­ serted their political influence at this point, revealing the power of social and economic forces to alter the larger political environment. Soldiers and officers formed the union of frontoviki in early 1918 “to defend the economic interests

19

 Smith, Captives of Revolution, 72.

20

 Quoted in Bekhterev, Esero-maksimalistskoe dvizhenie, 58.

21

 Bekhterev, Esero-maksimalistskoe dvizhenie, 6, 60–61; Berk, “The ‘Class-Tragedy’ of Izhevsk,” 180.

The Izhevsk Revolt of 1918

307

of former factory workers who have returned from the front.”22 The union helped veterans find jobs and housing, but its hall, located on a main street of the city, quickly became a social and cultural gathering spot for veterans. It put on plays and concerts and had a dining hall for its members. Reportedly, the union had 3,500 members in Izhevsk.23 The Union of Frontoviki, as an organization of soldiers tied up in the war and revolution, quickly became politicized. The union hall became a place of refuge for unemployed soldiers who sought out camaraderie with those who had shared formative experiences on the frontlines, and it naturally bred political discussion. Returning soldiers who were unemployed or receiving unviable wages shared their frustrations. For the Union’s leadership (many of whom were former officers in the tsarist army), defending economic interests turned into a struggle against what they saw as oppressive and ineffective economic policies such as the introduction of rationing and the grain monopoly.24 The officers particularly bristled at Bolshevik policies that were perceived to be against the spirit of 1917. When the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, members of the frontoviki union were, as one observer put it, “enraged at the Brest-Litovsk peace and objected to the betrayal of the country by Lenin under the honorable name of ‘the soliders, peasants, and workers’ which Lenin has assumed.”25 By the summer of 1918, the Union of Frontoviki had grown to 4,000 members and had swung the po­ litical mood on the streets away from radical Bolshevik policies. In August the soldiers started to hoard arms for future use. The collapse of the city’s economy, the antics of the aggressive Red Guard, and heavy-handed Bolshevik governance combined to destroy popular sup­ port for both the Maximalists and Bolsheviks. The political crisis in 1918 was therefore not solely one at the top of city governance. A mixture of social and economic pressures caused a political crisis in Izhevsk. Within the factory during the summer, workers and foremen who were to lead the rebellion grew frustrated with the inefficiency of the factory and disillusioned with Bolshevik circumscription of workers’ control. As the worker Menshekov later wrote, “Although it was at first very flattering to one’s vanity [sic] for a simple workman to be made a commissar as I was … still one soon realized the 22

 A. G. Efimov, Izhevtsy i Votkintsy: Bor´ba s bol´shevikami 1918–20 gg. (San Francisco: n.p., 1975), 5. Efimov was one of the leaders of the Union of Frontoviki and a general in the rebel army. 23  A. V. Korobeinikov, Votkinskoe sudostroenie i grazhdanskaia voina (Izhevsk: Direktmedia, 2012), 96. 24

 Efimov, Izhevtsy i Votkintsy, 6.

25

 Bernard Pares Collection, University College of London, PAR/6/9/4.

308

A aron B. Retish

falseness of such a position. We had no authority over the other workers and we did not have the technical training.”26 Many workers were ready to strike against unfair practices and depressing economic conditions by summer of 1918. The factories also laid off many of the new workers from other cities. Thousands of unemployed laborers searched for food and demanded benefits. The May elections to the soviet reveal popular discontent with party politics as they stood in mid-1918. Not more than 20 percent of the workers voted, and they elected a majority of non-party representatives to the soviet. The more moderate SRs and Mensheviks also saw their support grow. Only 22 Bolsheviks were elected to the 170-seat soviet.27 The new soviet passed a resolution condemning Bolshevik rule and called for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, an issue that remained important to Izhevsk SRs. In the factory soviet, SR representatives pushed through a proclamation con­ demning the closure of the Constituent Assembly and called on residents to defend the assembly, a point repeated by the SR newspaper just before the Bolsheviks shut it down. Right SRs and Mensheviks also heckled Bolshevik public speakers and called for restoration of political freedom and the Consti­ tuent Assembly.28 With the Izhevsk Bolsheviks sidelined by elections to the soviet and hold­ ing onto governance of the executive committee by force, its leaders asked for help from Moscow. The center was worried about control over the city’s muni­ tions and the disruption of grain procurements, and pressured the Izhevsk Bolsheviks to call new elections in order to change the composition of the soviet in their favor.29 However, the Bolsheviks were again shunned in June elections, with an SR and Menshevik majority voted in.30 It was probably no coincidence that on 4 July, the day the ill-fated Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened, Moscow ordered the Viatka provincial soviet to act immedi­ ately to rectify the political situation in Izhevsk and deal with the SRs and Mensheviks. Viatka had such little military force at its disposal that the Izhevsk Bolsheviks once again turned to Kazan´ for military aid, and together they disbanded the soviet. The Bolsheviks ended the experiment of collective 26

 Bernard Pares Collection, University College of London, PAR/6/9/4.

27

 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (RGAE) f. 1943, op. 3, d. 160, l. 50; Bekhterev, Esero-maksimalistskoe dvizhenie, 78. Left SRs and Maximalists continued to sit on the Viatka gubispolkom until 7 July, when they resigned as part of the national breakdown of the socialist coalition government.

28

 Put´ (Votkinsk), 26 May 1918, 4; 7 July 1918, 2–3; Iskra (Votkinsk), 14 January 1918, 2.

29

 See the hasty telegrams between the Izhevsk and Viatka soviets and Moscow-based NKVD and Narkomprod (RGAE f. 1943, op. 3, d. 160, ll. 49–50). 30

 On fears about compromising elections, see TsGAUR f. R-543, op. 13, d. 15, l. 12.

The Izhevsk Revolt of 1918

309

rule and free elections.31 Any Bolshevik restraint had been used up. Locally, perilous economic and political conditions drove Bolsheviks to act decisively to crush political opposition. External political forces also reshaped the polarized world in Izhevsk. In the summer of 1918, Soviet Russia felt itself encircled by enemy forces. AntiBolshevik troops concentrated in southern Russia; the Czech regiment easily defeated disorganized Soviet divisions in Siberia; and the remnants of the Constituent Assembly and the SR Party overthrew Soviet power in Samara province and formed Komuch (Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly). The Izhevsk Bolsheviks had good reason to worry that outside forces were about to take over their city. In the north, British forces landed in Mur­ mansk and Arkhangel´sk and on 2 August supported the overthrow of its soviet and the establishment of the anti-Bolshevik Supreme Administration of the Northern Region. In the neighboring district of Urzhum, a Soviet grain requisitions brigade led by the Red Army officer Stepanov turned against Soviet power and took over several key towns. The poorly armed Soviet troops were pushed out of most of southern Viatka province. Viatka province’s Soviet leaders felt encircled and panicked, establishing martial law for the whole of the province on 2 August. Czech forces threatened from the east, and on 7 August took Kazan´ in the south. This heightened the sense in Izhevsk that Bolshevik power was about to be overthrown. Rumors swirled around Izhevsk that the Czech forces were about to take the city. The rumbling storm clouds of the approaching front of the Civil War and forced Bolshevik conscription were moving closer to Izhevsk. In this potential vacuum, the frontoviki once again asserted their power When they heard that the Whites had seized Kazan´ on 7 August, the Bol­ sheviks unwisely attempted to conscript Izhevsk’s workers into the Red Army. At a large meeting in the main factory, the soviet leadership announced its de­ cree calling up all 18- to 30-year-olds. They were shouted down by workers and members of the frontoviki who refused to join the ranks of the army and yelled, “Down with the soviets” (Doloi sovety). The Bolsheviks tried to break up the meeting, but the chair of the Union of Frontoviki rallied the workers to march to the frontoviki headquarters and demonstrate. The frontoviki head­ quarters became a geographical focal point for the rebellion. That day and into the next, the frontoviki paramilitary units led rallies and organized workers against the mobilization, standard of living, and Bolshevik power as a whole. Soviet officials tried to order the arrest of frontoviki, but the frontoviki and other protesters were better armed. The government was soon overrun. For 31

 GARF f. R-393, op. 6, d. 36, l. 10.

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the next three days, frontoviki and workers violently destroyed the vestiges of Bolshevik rule. The rebel workers hunted down, arrested and shot Bolshevik leaders, paraded around the city, and gave anti-Bolshevik speeches. All of the reports recognized that frontoviki forces led the rebellion.32 Izhevsk initially represented a real opportunity for coalition governance, with initial popular support for radical change by Bolsheviks and Maximalists. The heavy-handed attempts to assert control by local Bolsheviks contributed to breaking the coalition apart. Social forces also moved politics rightward. Finally, national concerns pushed the Bolsheviks to end coalition rule and ex­ ert political force. The center especially pushed the Izhevsk Bolsheviks to act, because it did not want to disrupt an area where it was experimenting with forced grain requisitions and because of the growing importance of Izhevsk’s factories with the closure of major armaments factories in Sestroretsk and Tula.33 The Iaroslavl´ revolt in July made the center realize that it needed to stop worker resistance to Bolshevik control, either in or out of the soviet. For the Bolsheviks in Izhevsk, this new environment led to disaster. Izhevsk rebels were to offer alternative politics to Bolshevik rule. The Rise and Fall of the Izhevsk Revolt The frontoviki units led the rebellion and established their gains with a gov­ ernment to rule over their territory on 10 August, but this proved to be one of the central problems for the longevity of the uprising. Almost the only point that the rebels agreed on was their opposition to sole Bolshevik rule. Some of the frontovik officers pushed through the idea of establishing a government parallel to the Komuch regime of the Lower Volga region and adopted the moniker “Prikomuch” (Kama Region Committee of Members of the Constitu­ ent Assembly). Prikomuch leaders stated that they recognized only the Consti­ tuent Assembly as represented within the Komuch government as Russia’s true ruling body. The two centers of Komuch corresponded and shared polit­ ical ideals, but there is no evidence that they linked military forces or political 32  Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial´no-politicheskoi istorii Kirovskoi oblasti (GASPI KO) f. 45, op. 1, d. 158, l. 56; Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv (RGVA) f. 169, op. 1, d. 830, l. 26; Efimov, Izhevtsy i Votkintsy, 7–11; D. I. Fedchikov’s recollection in Ural i Prikam´e, noiabr´ 1917–ianvar´ 1919: Dokumenty i materialy, ed. M. S. Bernshtam (Paris: YMCA Press, 1982), 337–38; A. Kuchkin, “K istorii Izhevskogo vosstaniia,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, no. 6 (1929): 153–54; S. P. Zubarev, Prikam´e v ogne (Izhevsk: Udmurtiia, 1967), 64–65; and Spirin, Klassy i partii v grazhdanskoi voine v Rossii, 264. Raleigh describes an uprising led by the frontoviki in May 1918 in Saratov (Experiencing Russia’s Civil War, 48–49). 33

  Dmitriev and Kulikov, Miatezh, 7–8.

The Izhevsk Revolt of 1918

311

administrations. Prikomuch aided the failing Komuch regime with monetary donations but otherwise maintained autonomy.34 A few of Viatka’s SR repre­ sentatives to the Constituent Assembly returned and helped to organize the Prikomuch regime in Izhevsk. The Committee of Representatives of the Con­ stituent Assembly occupied the second floor of the main factory building, while its newspaper, Izhevskii zashchitnik occupied the first floor and spread the ideas of the Prikomuch vision. Some of the leadership held fast to the dreams and ideals of the Constituent Assembly and the abolition of soviet power, but many workers, soldiers, and peasants did not back this vision of moderate politics of 1917. Even Avenir Gennadievich Efimov, a commander in the People’s Army, rejected the whole notion of continuing the dream of the Constituent Assembly as SR propaganda and refused to call his government Prikomuch.35 He and many other frontoviki saw themselves as fighting only against the excesses of Bolshevism, not for an articulated political program. Workers and peasants—the foot soldiers of the Prikomuch regime—still seemed to believe in the idea of soviet power but one with shared governance among socialist parties, what I would call “trench sovietism.”36 Soldiers rallied themselves behind the idea of Prikomuch, but their diffuse vision of anti-Bolshevik access was more amorphous and quite different from the moderate socialist platform of the leadership. These political disagreements were overlooked while Prikomuch won military victories, but they led to deep fissures in the rebellion when the leadership demanded sacrifice. The amorphous anti-Bolshevik hatred expressed by supporters of Prikomuch was an example of the weakness of many anti-Bolshevik rebellions that were held together by loose negative emotions against the new state that soon frayed under stress. The rebellion was not just on the streets. Within the factories, workers over­ threw their administrators, and foremen reemerged as the main force on the shop floor. On 11 August, the Izhevsk Committee of Factories was established to oversee factory production. They immediately brought back workers on leave and went into full production, one of the key demands of the frontoviki. But signs of tension among the workers on the shop floor arose in the very first days of the rebellion. Foremen asserted their power in the committees over the 34

 RGVA f. 39562, op. 1, d. 3, l. 39.

35

 Efimov, Izhevtsy i Votkintsy, especially 50–54.

36

 The term “trench sovietism” is mine and is drawn from Allan Wildman’s phrase “trench Bolshevism,” describing soldiers who supported Bolshevism as a platform against the leadership and for radical social revolution rather than as doctrine. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, 2: The Road to Soviet Peace and Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), especially 36–72.

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average workers. They regained control over workers’ lives. Foremen created lists of replaceable workers who could enter the army.37 They also were the ones who determined the political allegiance of their workers to Prikomuch. For example, Bolshevik and anarchist workers could only enter the army after obtaining the written permission of their foreman and a general gathering of foremen.38 The Prikomuch army initially enjoyed great military success. It immedi­ ately established a volunteer People’s Army (Narodnaia armiia), in contrast to the recently reformed conscription-based Red Army. Battle-hardened fronto­ viki dominated the People’s Army at first, and annihilated the few troops that the Red Army sent against them. On 9 August, the Red Army sent a detach­ ment by train to Izhevsk. The new head of the People’s Army, D. I. Fedichkin (who had been an officer of the Turkestan brigade during the war), gathered 300 frontoviki and met the Red Army outside town. They stopped the train and picked off the surprised Red Army troops as they tried to escape the train, killing all 360 men. On 14 August, the People’s Army again stopped a Red Army advance.39 The Red Army was already engaged both in Kazan´ and in fighting the Stepanov rebellion in southern Viatka province, and did not have reserves, organization, or resources to offer significant resistance to Prikomuch’s forces. There were few Red Guards and Communist Party mem­ bers who would fight for the Bolsheviks with such uncertain results. The Izhevsk revolt was emboldened when workers of the neighboring industrial town of Votkinsk (whose population also rejected Bolshevik rule in favor of the SR-Maximalists, with support from a strong Union of Frontoviki) joined the revolt on 17 August and pushed the rebellion to expand westward into neighboring Malmyzh district and southward, where on 31 August it took the district town of Sarapul.40 The Prikomuch forces easily rolled through eastern Viatka. In the beginning of September Prikomuch was at its height of power and controlled all of eastern Viatka and western Perm province, home to around a million people.41 On 20 August, the People’s Army already num­ bered 12,000 men, and as it spread out over the countryside and mobilized

37

 TsGAUR f. R-543, op. 13, d. 13, ll. 7, 14.

38

 Ibid., l. 19.

39

 Efimov, Izhevtsy i Votkintsy, 10–11.

40

 See GARF f. R-393, op. 3, d. 112, l. 307/ HIASCPSS, reel 41. For more on Votkinsk, see Korobeinikov, Votkinskoe sudostroenie i grazhdanskaia voina.

41

 Dmitriev and Kulikov, Miatezh, 90; Berk, “The ‘Class-Tragedy’ of Izhevsk,” 187.

The Izhevsk Revolt of 1918

313

• Izhevsk Kazan Province

Map of Viatka Province

Perm Province

Votkinsk •

314

A aron B. Retish

its urban and rural population to fight the Red Army, it swelled its ranks to 35,000 troops.42 The Izhevsk revolt reverberated across the countryside because its loose anti-Bolshevik message resonated with the region’s peasants, who were enraged by newly implemented grain requisitions and dire economic conditions. In the first days of the uprising, peasants captured and killed Red Army soldiers. In one case they slaughtered fleeing soldiers and dragged the bodies back to Izhevsk.43 Inhabitants of Porez village in Ukhtimskaia township (volost´), Glazov district threw out Soviet personnel and re-elected the old township elder (starshina) and scribe.44 Prikomuch agitators went to the countryside, called township gatherings, rallied the peasants against Soviet food brigades, and began mobilizations.45 Many local peasants, displeased with Soviet grain policies and tied to Izhevsk and Votkinsk by family members working in their factories or other economic ties, volunteered for the army. The most ardent peasant support came from the villages of eastern Perm province. Peasants of Agryza and Babkin villages even gave 33,000 rubles to Prikomuch along with military volunteers. Villagers killed the head of the Babkinskaia township executive committee in Perm province after he tried to conscript them to fight against Prikomuch.46 Strong-arm grain procurements by the Soviet military on the frontline pushed even more peasants toward Prikomuch. This region’s peasantry had recently suffered from overzealous and corrupt grain requisitioning brigades raiding their paltry stores of grain. Soviet military leaders ordered the People’s Commissariat of Food Supply (Narkomprod) to take one million puds of grain from the peasants of Urzhum district, which neighbored Izhevsk, in mid-September. Grand grain levies were to be compensated at a meager 14 rubles a pud, and villagers were threatened with force for non-compliance.47 Many of the peasants under Prikomuch’s rule were Udmurts and Tatars, and they supported the rebellion with volunteers and grain, although to a lesser extent than Russian peasants, who had a long-standing link to work in the 42 43

  RGVA f. 176, op. 3, d. 89, l. 102.

  RGVA f. 169, op. 1, d. 830, l. 26.

44

 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kirovskoi oblasti (GAKO) f. R-1322, op. 1, d. 9.

45

 RGVA f. 176, op. 3, d. 159, l. 163 (report on the socio-political life in Malmyzh district, 28 August 28–8 September); I. P. Emel´ianov, ed., Udmurtiia v period inostrannoi voennoi interventsii i grazhdanskoi voiny: Sbornik dokumentov (Izhevsk: Udmurtskoe knizhskoe izdatel´stvo, 1960 and 1963), 103.

46

 RGVA f. 176, op. 3, d. 89, ll. 108–09.

47

 RGAE f. 1943, op. 3, d. 160, ll. 545, 617a.

The Izhevsk Revolt of 1918

315

city’s factories. Udmurt peasants remained more apathetic than active in their support for the new Prikomuch rulers. Upon seizing power, the Izhevsk rebels sent detachments and emissaries throughout the region’s countryside to drum up support, foment unrest, and garner volunteers. The rebels spent most of their propaganda efforts defining themselves simply as anti-Bolsheviks. They depicted Bolsheviks as robbers who stole grain from the peasantry to line their own pockets and as enemies of the people.48 As one announcement read, There is no place among us for the Bolsheviks and provocative ele­ ments. You must destroy them immediately. They sold you to the Ger­ mans, they bring ruin to your villages, and they kill your women and children. Is it possible that you do not have enough sense to deal with the scoundrels comrades Lenin, Trotsky, and their like? Those fronting the “Worker-Peasant Government” mercilessly annihilate workers and peasants.49 In the late summer this message resonated because the Bolsheviks were al­ ready unpopular among peasants in southern Viatka, many of whom were victims of the food brigades. Fed up with the heavy-handed nature of Soviet rule, a number of villages in Sarapul district threw their support behind Pri­ komuch. Peasants in Debesskaia township proclaimed, We are ruled by former convicts who depend on bayonets.… Comrades, they promised us peace, bread, and freedom. Did we get this? No! Not freedom, grain, or peace. So let the sackmen perish! Down with Soviet power! Death to them! Long live the Constituent Assembly! All power to the Constituent Assembly! Down with the Bolsheviks!50 Prikomuch messages emphasized popular themes dominant a year before, such as the Constituent Assembly. They stressed that they were the natural heirs to the Constituent Assembly in order to ground their legitimacy. The Constituent Assembly had symbolic weight among enemies of the Bolsheviks as the binary opposite to Soviet rule and the chaos of Civil War.51 At the same time, Prikomuch appropriated and negated Bolshevik linguistic tools from 48 49

 Izhevskii zashchitnik, 23 August 1918, 4; 10 September 1918, 1.

 RGVA f. 39562, op. 1. d. 2, ll. 37ob.–38.

50

 GAKO f. R-876, op. 1, d. 92, l. 100.

51

 Erik Landis, “Waiting for Makhno: Legitimacy and Context in a Russian Peasant War,” Past and Present 183 (2004): 218–20.

316

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1917 such as the slogans of peace, bread, and freedom and the contradictions of the worker-peasant government. Messages played on the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Germany and repeated common rumors of Bolshevik ties to Germany. They also linked Bolsheviks to hooliganism, thievery, and chaos—common themes in the SR press in 1917. Another message from the newly resurrected township zemstvo in Perm welcomed the People’s Army as emancipators from “enshackling work,” presumably a play on the Marxist promise of the liberation of workers in a socialist society, and recognized the Constituent Assembly as the only power, denying the legitimacy of Soviet power.52 The rebels terrorized supporters of the Bolshevik regime in towns and villages just as they had done in Izhevsk. In Votkinsk, rebels arrested Bol­ shevik leaders and placed them in the historic home of the composer Petr Chaikovskii. When that became too small, they moved the prisoners to a barge in the middle of the River Votka. They soon began to kill prisoners and throw them either in the Kama River, 16 versts away, or in the Votka River.53 In Kel´chinskaia township, Sarapul district, an armed detachment from Izhevsk arrived to break up the township soviet but first executed three brothers who villagers told them sympathized with the Communists.54 The rebellion al­ lowed villagers outcast by the Soviet revolution to turn the tables, and these attacks were often graphically violent. For example, in Sviatogorskoe village (selo), Glazov district, “kulaks” and priests led attacks against Communist sup­ porters and even killed one of the supporter’s daughters. In another village in neighboring Perm province, peasants and Prikomuch soldiers whipped and dismembered Soviet sympathizers.55 Prikomuch forces often abetted locals in exacting violence against their fellow villagers. In Grakhovskaia township, Elabuga district, part of the village gathered and decided to root out Red Army soldiers and their families from the village. They began to arm themselves and called on the Prikomuch army to help them. A detachment of 60 soldiers arrived and together with these peasants searched each home, arrested eight people, and killed five others (four soldiers and one father of a soldier). The detachment planned to take one of the captured back to the city, but locals requested that they execute him there, and the Prikomuch forces complied.56

52

 RGVA f. 39562, op. 1, d. 3, l. 46.

53

 TsGAUR f. R-1061, op. 1, d. 37. This comes from the recollections of the son of Commissar of Justice I. G. Iurasov, who was killed during the rebellion.

54 55

 RGVA f. 176, op. 3, d. 159, ll. 45–49.

 Dmitriev and Kulikov, Miatezh, 88–89.

56

 GASPIKO f. 45, op. 1, d. 158, ll. 14–15.

The Izhevsk Revolt of 1918

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Prikomuch leaders also understood that their fate rested on persuading peasants to give up grain, something that the Soviet government had been unable to do. They distributed a leaflet among peasants in the local bazaar evoking unity among workers and peasants, and played on the peasants’ hatred of Soviet grain policies. “Citizen peasants, in this trying moment for workers give them grain … so that they can make short work of the op­ pressors.… Support your brothers, don’t delay with supplies.” The leaflet also announced fixed prices on grain of 20 rubles for a pud of rye and 25 rubles for a pud of flour, much higher than the Bolsheviks had set.57 This price was still lower than peasants could get through sackmen or the black market, and peasants did not feel such binding ties with the new regime or its workers to sacrifice precious grain. Market prices of grain rose beyond the reach of workers. For example, on 1 October rye flour cost 40 to 45 rubles a pud, while most workers were paid between 40 and 60 rubles.58 Prikomuch’s central government became so desperate in mid-October that it reverted to confiscation of all surplus grain, a Bolshevik policy it had rejected.59 When persuasion failed, Prikomuch, like all other governments in Russia’s Civil War, resorted to force. Any lingering peasant support for the rebellion quickly evaporated. The tide turned when the Red Army recaptured Kazan´ on 10 September. Izhevsk then became the center of the Eastern Front when the Soviet’s Second Army concentrated its forces in an all-out effort to take the city. By mid-Sep­ tember the Prikomuch forces were worn down. Its army ran short on weapons when the Red Army cut off the Izhevsk armament factory’s supply of metal. As Prikomuch’s fortunes dimmed, the government expanded those subject to mobilization until 3 November, when all able-bodied males were liable to be called up. To secure and maintain recruits Prikomuch turned to strict disci­ pline, including capital punishment. Just as important, Prikomuch faced the same problem as its Bolshevik opponents—getting local peasants to provide enough grain to feed the army and urban centers. The Red Army advanced on Izhevsk. On 5 October, it captured the nearby town of Sarapul, and on 20 October began to encircle the region. The Reds battled Prikomuch forces in surrounding villages, hurling artillery against their entrenched opponents. In

57

 GASPIKO f. 1, op. 1, d. 142, ll. 112a–13ob.; V. Maksimov, “Kulatskaia kontrrevoliutsiia i Izhevskoe vosstanie (1918 g.),” Istorik-marksist, no. 4–5 (1932): 148. 58 59

 Maksimov, “Kulatskaia kontrrevoliutsiia,” 153.

 RGVA f. 176, op. 3, d. 89, l. 16. Komuch and the Northern Region rebellion centered in Arkhangel´sk went through the same policies and also resorted to forced grain requisitioning.

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the first week of November Red Army forces killed up to 1,500 people.60 On the first anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, 7 November, the Red Army captured Izhevsk and on the night of 13 November defeated Prikomuch forces that had fled to Votkinsk. Remaining Prikomuch soldiers returned to their places in the factories and their fields, or fled to Siberia to continue their fight against the Bolsheviks.61 There are a number of reasons why the Izhevsk rebellion failed to survive in the form of the Prikomuch regime. Rebels did not agree on a unified political model beyond standing against the Bolsheviks. But even what constituted Bolshevism could be contested in the fall of 1918. This loose coalition of Maximalists and workers who supported soviet power, some soldiers and intellectuals who believed that they were fighting for the Constituent Assem­ bly, and military officers against even the Constituent Assembly resembled the inherent problems of Komuch and other anti-Bolshevik movements. It could not establish a viable alternative polity within the city. Like its paral­ lel Komuch government, Prikomuch did not offer land reform or other propeasant policies. The government press defended private property and demanded that land reform wait to be decided by a future Constituent As­ sembly.62 While it reached out to local Russian peasants with propaganda and traveling speakers, it never tried to build relations with the non-Russian peasant population before the waning days of the rebellion. When the Reds advanced, non-Russian peasants quickly switched sides and volunteered for the Red Army.63 Finally, military leaders of Izhevsk, like Bolsheviks, acted in an era of total wartime mobilization and even if their ideological outlooks dif­ fered, their understandings at solving the need for food and men did not. Both turned naturally to coercion.

60

 See the report on the 2nd Army advance on Izhevsk in 2 armiia v boiakh za osvobozh­ denie Prikam´ia i Priural´ia: 1918–1919. Dokumenty, ed. N. N. Azovtsev et al. (Ustinov: Udmurtiia, 1987), 99–101. 61

 Efimov, Izhevtsy i Votkintsy, 56–297. The Izhevtsy fought with Kolchak’s forces but were pushed eastward and made a long last stand at Kharbin. Several survivors, such as Efimov, fled to China, and many ended up in exile in San Francisco.

62

 Dmitriev and Kulikov, Miatezh, 100–01, 120–21.

63

 Ibid., 121, 144–45. A Soviet official noted that Muslims welcomed the Red Army and “defied” all White propaganda (GAKO f. R-876 op. 1, d. 92, ll. 16–16ob).

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Rebuilding Soviet Power The Red Army took Izhevsk and established what amounted to an occupying government.64 D. Zorin, a Red Army officer, chaired the re-established soviet and soldiers temporarily filled its seats, as most Bolsheviks in Izhevsk had fled or been killed. The Bolsheviks controlled the soviet on their own. No longer would they experiment with coalition government. The Soviet state banned the Union of Frontoviki and tried several of its members in the Revolutionary Tribunal. Prisoners were shot or sent to prison camps, and newspapers publi­ cized the terror by listing names of those shot as agitators or supporters of the Whites in near daily stories.65 The expatriate anti-Bolshevik Russian Press Bureau reported an often-repeated rumor that the Red Army shot over 8,000 of the Izhevsk workers following the suppression of the rebellion. Other stor­ ies that the Cheka killed 50 people and threw them into the Kama River seem quite plausible.66 Many former soldiers, though, joined the Red Army either because of threats to their family or lives, because they faced the plight of long-term unemployment with semi-idled factories, or because they now saw the Whites as the greater evil. The Bolsheviks also understood that they needed to rebuild support. The Revolutionary Citizens’ Soviet that controlled the city managed to find ten million rubles to pay salaries of factory workers and a hundred thousand puds of grain to feed the city’s residents. The government also offered free hot meals for the unemployed.67 Most noticeably, though, the Bolsheviks were willing to explore shared governance with the SR-Maximalists. In November, the Maximalists rebuilt their city organization in the hope of offering a list of candidates to the December soviet elections. After proclaiming themselves Communists and supporters of Soviet power, they got their wish. On 13 December they won 23 seats to the Bolshevik Party’s 27 in the election to the soviet, with much greater support among workers than the Bolsheviks had expected. It still seemed that the Bolsheviks were willing to allow the election to stand. However, when the chair of the Izhevsk soviet informed Moscow of the result, the center ordered

64

 As it did in the Russian North. See L. G. Novikova, Provintsial´naia “kontrrevoliutsiia”: Beloe dvizhenie i grazhdanskaia voina na russkom Severe 1917–1920 (Moscow: Novoe litera­ turnoe obozrenie, 2011), 236–62.

65

 See, for example, Izhevskaia Pravda, 22 January 1919, 6; 1 February 1919, 4.

66 67

 Bernard Pares Collection, University College of London, PAR/6/6/2, 9.0, 9.F.

 Dmitriev and Kulikov, Miatezh, 270–74.

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the election results annulled because the Maximalists could potentially have too much influence over governance.68 It was a slow death for the Maximalist organization. The Bolsheviks first attacked the SR-Maximalists in the press. It printed letters from Maximalists like N. Trushkov, who wrote in to say that he was leaving the party. “It has a good platform,” he wrote, “but there are many bad people in it.”69 Newspapers also listed Maximalists who joined the Communist Party.70 The Bolsheviks then banned Left SRs and Maximalists from sitting on soviets and broke up their organizations.71 As in Samara and other locales with SR revolts, the Red Army quickly crushed local SR organizations, but their demise was still to come.72 Even though Maximalists were no longer supposed to serve on soviets, ar­ chival records show that Maximalists continued to be elected to factory com­ mittees. The reconstituted All-Factory Committee accepted Maximalists in its election in December 1918, and Maximalists won five places in the fifteen-seat committee. Ten seats were reserved for Bolsheviks. Minutes of the meetings are spotty, but in the spring of 1919, SR-Maximalists still appeared, although they were left with only three seats in an expanded seventeen-member committee. Even after the Red Army retook the city following Kolchak’s brief invasion of Izhevsk and eastern Viatka province in early summer 1919, SR-Maximalists remained active in Izhevsk, but their days were numbered. In August 1919, the three remaining SR-Maximalists remained active members of the AllFactory Committee.73 This was a far cry from the previous year’s coalition rule. For the Maximalist workers, this provided the only opportunity for legal political participation without undercutting their own beliefs. It is unclear how much the workers and former soldiers in Izhevsk supported Bolshevik power after the fall of the rebellion, but if their support of the Maximalists in the December 1918 elections is any clue we can see that there still was a large percentage of workers who supported soviet, and even Communist, power, 68

 Bekhterov, Esero-maksimalistskoe dvizhenie v Udmurtii, 101–05.

69

 Quote from “Iz soiuza Maksimalistov vykhodiat,” Krasnaia mysl’ (Votkinsk), 24 December 1918, 3.

70

 Ivan Upovalov typescript “How We Lost Our Liberty,” 1922–23, Hoover Archive for War and Revolution; “Soiuz maksimalistov razlagaetsia,” Izhevsksaia Pravda, 12 Jan­ uary 1919, 3, lists names of Maximalists who joined the Communist Party.

71

 See “Perevybory tsekhovykh komitetov,” Krasnaia mysl´ (Votkinsk), 24 December 1918, 3.

72 73

 Smith, Captives of Revolution, 181–238.

 Tsentr Dokumentatsii Noveishei Istorii Udmurtskoi Respubliki (TsDNIUR) f. 4, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 1–4ob., 50–63.

The Izhevsk Revolt of 1918

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but not necessarily with a Bolshevik monopoly.74 As the SR-Maximalists be­ came an even smaller and underground group, they become increasingly difficult to trace in the records. It is clear that the group made one final act. On 13–14 September 1919 a small group of SR-Maximalists staged an ill-fated revolt including, supposedly, trying to incite peasants surrounding Izhevsk to cease grain deliveries to the city. The organization no longer had the strength to mobilize workers or peasants. The Izhevsk soviet quickly put down the revolt and destroyed the SR Maximalists. It arrested 100 suspected members and sent 47 of them to stand trial in Kazan´ before the Revolutionary Tribunal. The SR-Maximalists did not return as organized opposition to Soviet rule.75 Conclusion This chapter complicates our understanding of politics in the first year of Bolshevik rule. It shows how in Izhevsk local conditions intermeshed with national crises to affect politics. Izhevsk’s unique political ecosystem created complex power dynamics. Radical workers catapulted SR-Maximalists and Bolsheviks to power, only to turn on both. While Left SRs and other nonBolshevik parties gained prominence in other cities in the summer of 1918, the star had already faded on Izhevsk’s SR-Maximalists, in part because they were too radical. Social forces also inserted themselves into city and street politics. Returning soldiers who found themselves unemployed joined forces in the extra-governmental Union of Frontoviki that, through paramilitary forces, redirected and overthrew Soviet power. Veterans and workers in Izhevsk did not act as Soviet, or many Western, scholars have described else­ where in Russia. They did not naturally support the Bolsheviks, and armed themselves to fight for their own economic and political well-being as needed. Izhevsk’s workers and veterans both struggled to defend their jobs and their voices overlapped in the political arena. But veterans also came together with experiences drawn from the war that led them to form armed guards and then don uniforms to found a new volunteer army in August 1918. Izhevsk suffered the same economic deprivations as other cities, with inflation, un­ employment, and the decline of material life. Its unique role as the main armaments producer and its location within the breadbasket of the Urals and a militarily contested land also shaped the political environment at the 74

 On continued worker opposition to the Bolsheviks, see Vladimir Brovkin, “Workers’ Unrest and the Bolsheviks’ Response in 1919,” Slavic Review 49, 3 (Autumn 1990): 350– 73.

75

 “K likvidatsii kontr-revoliutsionnogo zagovora v Izhevske,” Izhevskaia Pravda, 21 September 1919, 2–3; “K likvidatsii kontr-revoliutsionnogo zagovora,” Izhevskaia Pravda, 23 September 1919, 2.

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key point in the fall of 1918. Izhevsk was unique only to a degree—coalition governments, each with their own local perspective, populated Soviet Russia in 1918. Workers and especially unions of frontoviki continued to drive politics in these cities and threatened Bolshevik power with the possibility of popular revolt by their constituency, many of whom had their identities reshaped by military experience from the First World War. It is also important to ask whether the Izhevsk revolt reveals larger, uni­ versal truths about Bolshevik power in the first year of its rule. The Bolsheviks certainly ruled in a heavy-handed manner when they could. There were also real possibilities for coalition rule among socialist parties, and local Bolshe­ viks accepted it—to the point where free elections threatened to remove them from power. Indeed, what we see in Izhevsk, at least, is that even after the Bolsheviks had to retake power with force, and after imprisoning and executing political opponents, they still flirted with sharing power. What pre­ vented them both in the summer of 1918 and winter of 1919 was the center, which had no problems ordering authoritarian measures to maintain control of the revolution. Bolshevik rule across Russia’s regions was heterogeneous and in places quite flexible. It was clear, though, that when Bolsheviks accepted multiparty rule, it had to come with the condition that they controlled politics. This was a manifestation of Bolshevik ideology but it also reflected the politi­ cal realities of a politically complex, polarized world. The meteoric rise and fall of the Izhevsk Revolt reflects this complexity. While there was great resistance to radical Bolshevik policies and the nature of their rule, opposition was fractured and unable to construct a popular alternative political vision. By December 1919, the Bolsheviks finally controlled Soviet power and made certain that no other party could limit their rule.

Voronezh: Revolutionary Violence and the Bolshevik Victory Stefan Karsch

Researchers have been well aware for some time how and why the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) with whom they were allied were able to take power in Russia’s two most important cities in 1917. In Petrograd, they succeeded in seizing political power without a great deal of effort because it was no longer being seriously defended. In Moscow, by contrast, much bloodier and more protracted fighting took place. The struggle for power did not unfold in the same way even in the two capitals, although both cities had a number of common factors that suggested seizing power ought to have been a relatively simple matter. The rebels’ most important leading personalities were on the ground, and the Bolsheviks had already been disseminating propaganda for two decades in St. Petersburg and Moscow in their efforts to recruit supporters as part of the Social Democratic movement and on their own behalf. None of this applies for many Russian cities. Nevertheless, at the end of 1917 various areas in central Russia proclaimed “Soviet power,” which in practical terms meant for the most part that Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries had successfully declared a soviet or a revolutionary committee to be the supreme organ of power. After breaking with the Left So­ cialist Revolutionaries in mid-1918, the Bolsheviks had to secure their power alone in a number of regions. This article will seek to examine the urban centers of Voronezh province, one of these regions in which the Bolsheviks’ victory was by no means inevi­ table from the outset. It will establish the process of the Bolsheviks’ victory in the province’s towns by the middle of 1918 by exploring the strength of Bolshevik representation on the ground, their levels of support and, above all, the resources they used to bring about the change of power. The urban centers of Voronezh province, which included the provincial capital, the 12 district (uezd) towns and a few other small towns, are particularly suitable for the investigation of these questions. On the one hand, their location in a largely agricultural area is quite typical of Russia; on the other hand, they represent the Black Earth Region, a distinct region with specific conditions. Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 323–54.

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In 1917, 3.3 million people lived in the province, of whom only 217,000 resided in urban areas, that is below 7 percent of the entire population. 95,500 residents lived in the provincial capital, Voronezh.1 In many respects, 450 km away from Moscow and more than 1,000 km from Petrograd, it was an average, moderately developed, provincial city. The 12 district towns located in Voronezh province were also moderately developed at best and rather small, even by Russian standards at the time. Almost half of them had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, and only two had more than 15,000 inhabitants. The provincial capital had at least been linked to Moscow by a railway line since 1865. But even in 1917 the railway network was not very dense; only half of the district towns were directly connected to it. The time span covered by this article encompasses the whole revolutionary year of 1917 and most of 1918, including the period that immediately preceded the Civil War in Voronezh. Events in Voronezh during 1917 were similar to those in the rest of the country. On 6 March, the Provisional Government dismissed the governor and appointed a commissar. On 30 October, after an armed uprising, the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries declared a Revolutionary Committee made up of their representatives to be the su­ preme power in the province. Five weeks later, a manipulated soviet took over the committee’s responsibilities. From the very beginning, the Civil War influenced the province as soldiers were recruited there. However, combat operations did not reach Voronezh until August 1918. This marks the cut-off point for the present article. Only Soviet researchers have examined Voronezh’s local problems in any systematic fashion. However, they felt no real need to address the questions raised above given that, in their view, the Bolsheviks’ victory conformed with the laws of history. The Bolsheviks, in this story, had strong roots in the region and enjoyed broad support among the population.2 To date, Western research

1

 L. G. Protasov, “Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v garnizonakh Voronezhskoi gubernii v 1917 g.,” Uchenye zapiski Moskovskogo pedagogicheskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta im. Lenina, no. 250 (1967): 5. 2

 The last Soviet publications about Voronezh are G. V. Berdnikov et al., Voronezhskie Bol´sheviki v trekh revoliutsiiakh (Voronezh: Izdatel´stvo Voronezhskogo gosudarstven­ nogo universiteta, 1985); A. V. Losev, ed., Ocherki istorii Voronezhskoi organizatsii KPSS (Voronezh: Tsentral´no-Chernozemnoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1979); A. Ia. Pereverzev, Sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia v derevne chernozemnogo tsentra Rossii (oktiabr´ 1917–1918) (Voronezh: Izdatel´stvo Voronezhskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 1976); Pere­ verzev, Velikii oktiabr´ i preobrazovanie derevni: Opyt revoliutsionno-preobrazuiushchei deiatel’nosti RIP(b) v derevne chernozemnogo tsentra Rossii 1917–1921 (Voronezh: Izda­ tel´stvo Voronezhskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 1987).

326 Stefan K arsch

has produced nothing on the transfer of power in Voronezh,3 but has more generally supplied fundamental insights into the role of the army and the establishment of the Red Guards that are important for the issues dealt with in this article.4 It has mainly answered the question of the causes of the Bolshevik victory in two different ways. Some researchers emphasize that favorable circumstances, tactical skill, disciplined organization and audacity made it possible for the Bolsheviks to build up a successful system of suppression.5 Others counter this by arguing that participatory and emancipatory impulses led the underclasses, or at least sufficient sections of them, onto the side of the revolutionaries.6 Frequently, the two positions are combined, with a spontaneous, early phase of the revolution being distinguished from a centralist, dictatorial, late phase.7 However, both arguments leave certain problems unresolved. The first position begs the question of what resources the Bolsheviks drew on to supply their terror regime when the vast majority of the population was opposed to them. The second position has difficulty 3

 With the exception of Stefan Karsch, Die bolschewistische Machtergreifung im Gouverne­ ment Voronež (1917–1919) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006). Many of the theses presented in this article derive from this publication. 4

 M. S. Frenkin, Russkaia armiia i revoliutsiia 1917–1918 (Munich: Logos, 1978); Frenkin, Zakhvat vlasti bol´shevikami v Rossii i rol´ tylovykh garnizonov armii: Podgotovka i provedenie oktiabr´skogo miatezha 1917–1918 gg. (Jerusalem: Stav, 1982); Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v russkoi armii v 1917 g. (Moscow: Nauka, 1981); V. I. Startsev, Formirovanie i sostav rabochei Krasnoi gvardii Petrograda (Leningrad: n.p., 1963); Startsev, Ocherki po istorii Petrogradskoi Krasnoi Gvardii i rabochei militsii (Leningrad: Nauka, 1965); Rex Wade, Red Guards and Workers’ Militias in the Russian Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984); Allan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, 1: The Old Army and the Soldiers’ Revolt (March–April 1917); 2: The Road to Soviet Power and Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980–87). 5

 Vladimir N. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia 1918–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1991); Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). 6

  For example, David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers and the Seizure of Soviet Power: From the July Days 1917 to July 1918 (London: Macmillan, 1984); S. A. Smith, Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Marc Ferro, October 1917: A Social History of the Russian Revolution (London: Routledge, 1980). 7   Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996); Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd (London: NLB, 1979); Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).

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explaining why committed workers, soldiers, and peasants found no means of holding up the growing dictatorship of the party center over the long term. This article will show that the Bolsheviks in Voronezh were a small group with little backing among the population. By contrast, the Socialist Revolu­ tionaries were numerically strong in Voronezh and, despite some fluctuations, possessed broad support among the populace. In 1917, bourgeois forces found themselves on the defensive, but clearly had more supporters in the towns at the end of the year than the Bolsheviks. The mood among the soldiers os­ cillated dramatically. In the second half of 1917, the Bolsheviks gained some backing in this group, which made it possible for them to carry out the up­ rising in October together with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. However, this factor was negated when the regiments disbanded in November. The new power structure was now threatened by collapse for several reasons: it lacked military backing, it found itself confronted with a hostile urban population, it had few personnel at its disposal, and it possessed almost no material resources. Apart from this, lawlessness and violence were eroding the foundations of society. Against this background, this article argues that Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who had hardly any resources of their own after the uprising, cooperated with self-appointed guardians of law and order, mostly militias, who may have been effective but were largely unreliable. Their cooperation was not based on complex shared ideological principles. What bound the militias to the new power structure of the radical left was merely that it allowed them to carry out violent activities almost totally free of external control. These armed troops kept a certain order, but rapidly began to commit criminal acts of unrestrained violence. The Bolsheviks tolerated these activities, backed them up with propaganda and merely directed them at arm’s length. This directed violence enabled the party to limit the levels of general criminality, successfully intimidate their opponents to prevent them from putting up resistance, and accumulate sufficient material resources to retain power. The left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries, who cultivated strong con­ tacts with armed groups and were an important partner for the Bolsheviks, engaged in similar activities. However, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries were removed from positions of responsibility as soon as the Bolsheviks were strong enough. Likewise, once they had built up their own armed structures, the Bolsheviks replaced the unreliable militias, which were often associated with the Socialist Revolutionaries. The remaining Socialist Revolutionaries and other political forces did not succeed in gaining the loyalty of noteworthy armed groups in Voronezh. It was this that decided the struggle for power. These arguments contradict the Soviet position. In addition to this, I intend

328 Stefan K arsch

to show that in Voronezh the processes that led to the formation of the armed groups which ultimately brought about the Bolsheviks’ victory, and the buildup of the Bolshevik-controlled military units were more chaotic and con­ tradictory than researchers have assumed. I draw on membership figures, election results, and reports on the mood of the population to examine the significance, size, and backing of the Bol­ sheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries in the province’s towns. I also analyze the manifestations of, inherent dynamics of, and reasons for the violence in Voronezh. I then set out how political forces, above all the Bolsheviks, dealt with this violence. It is then possible to explain how the Bolsheviks were able to secure power thanks to their adroit handling of violence. Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries in Voronezh The Socialist Revolutionaries had strong membership and organization in the largely rural province of Voronezh. There were more Socialist Revolutionary members in Voronezh (100,000) than in any other province in Russia.8 From April 1917 on, party organizations existed in the district towns and there were numerous districts where the party had more than 10,000 members.9 By mid-May, there were almost 1,000 active members in the city of Voronezh alone.10 The leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Matvei L´vovich KoganBernshtein and Konstantin Stepanovich Burevoi, were energetic and experi­ enced revolutionaries, and were important figures in their party as members of its All-Russian Central Committee.11 Kogan-Bernshtein had been exiled to Voronezh in 1914. Burevoi originally came from Voronezh province and left Enisseisk, where he had been exiled, to return to his home region in April 1917.12 The party’s left wing under A. M. Abramov split from its right wing during a party congress on 6–9 September 1917, and also started publishing

8

  Oliver H. Radkey, The Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism: Promise and Default of the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries, February to October 1917 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 119. 9

  Sotsialist-revoliutsioner, 23 July 1917, 3.

10

  Voronezhskii Telegraf, 21 May 1917, 4.

11

  Tsentr dokumentatsii noveishei istorii Voronezhskoi oblasti (TsDNIVO) f. 5 (Historical Commission of the Provincial Committee), op. 1, d. 349, l. 3.

12

  D. D. Lappo, V krasno-belom otsvete tragedii: Voronezhskaia guberniia 1917–1920 (Voronezh: Tsentral´no-Chernozemnoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1993), 150.

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its own newspaper (Internatsionalist) on 28 October.13 In the provincial capital, the breakaway group remained a minority, to which only one-quarter of the party’s members belonged.14 In the district towns and the countryside, they possessed neither good contacts nor charismatic leaders. As a result of the October uprising, the moderate section of the Socialist Revolutionaries lost its influence on the institutions in the provincial capital. Some SRs subsequently got involved in politics in district towns, but they were swept away by radical soviets in the spring of 1918.15 Others worked in apolitical workers’ self-help organizations. Kogan-Bernshtein went to Samara, which was dominated by the Socialist Revolutionaries and was killed there in the turmoil of the Civil War.16 Burevoi moved to Petrograd and founded an unsuccessful Socialist Revolutionary splinter group. The Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who had been the Bolsheviks’ junior partners and were also represented on the Revolutionary Committee and in the new Soviet, gradually lost responsibility for many areas of policy from spring 1918 on. On several occasions, they resigned in protest at the requisi­ tions policy and they were removed from their last positions with real politi­ cal power in the provincial capital after the alleged insurrection of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries in Petrograd in early July 1918, which had no parallel in Voronezh.17 They were only able to hold out in the soviets of the district towns until autumn 1918.18 While the Socialist Revolutionaries could rely on their organizational structures and enjoyed general broad support, the Bolsheviks had neither grassroots activists nor tradition in Voronezh until 1917. There was not even a citywide organization of Social Democrats in February 1917. The party’s presence was limited to isolated individual members and just two small Bolshevik organizations—one in a factory and a second among school­ children. This can be accounted for less by recurrent arrests than by the party’s general level of organization. The school pupils’ association and in­ dividual Social Democrats called a meeting on 5 March 1917 to organize a 13

  Among the various contradictory sources of information, the memoirs of the Left SR leader A. M. Abramov seem the most reliable (TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 520, ll. 5, 9).

14

  Lutz Häfner, Die Partei der linken Sozialrevolutionäre von 1917 bis 1918 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1994), 660.

15

  TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 540, ll. 23–24, 27.

16

  Lappo, V krasno-belom otsvete tragedii, 157–63.

17

  A. Komarov and P. Krasitskii, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, khronika 1918 g., 1: Gubernii Voronezhskaia i Tambovskaia (Voronezh, 1930), 90–102. 18

  TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 511, l. 6.

330 Stefan K arsch

Social Democratic group in Voronezh,19 which was attended by 60 people, both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.20 The Bolsheviks remained markedly less effective than the Socialist Revolutionaries for much of 1917. This was due both to their leaders’ lack of charisma and their initially smaller membership. Eighty-nine people attended the first full general assembly in the provincial capital on 24 March 1917. After this, membership grew rapidly: it reached 500 by the end of April.21 The party reported 1,000 members in October,22 but these figures were probably exaggerated,23 for in December the Voronezh Bol­ sheviks consisted of just 200 people.24 In June 1918, the party still counted merely 400 members in the provincial capital. The number went up to 618 thanks to people who had moved in from the Donbas,25 and in December 1918 there were certainly 1,100.26 One year after the assumption of power, with a population of approximately 100,000 to recruit from, these data do not seem very impressive considering that during the whole year of 1918 many Bol­ sheviks came to Voronezh from other regions. The Bolsheviks were far weaker in the district towns. The Bolshevik organ­ ization only existed in three of the 12 towns before October 1917.27 The sole district town in which the Bolsheviks played a role from the very beginning was Ostrogozhsk. A Bolshevik organization was founded there in the middle of April 1917, initially with 40 members. Its membership rose to 100 by the end of June and reached 150 in October.28 Measured against the total number of 19

  Bor´ba za sovetskuiu vlast´ v Voronezhskoi gubernii 1917–1918: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Voronezh: Knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1957), document 7, 20–21.

20

  B. M. Lavygin, 1917 g. v Voronezhskoi gubernii: Khronika (Voronezh: n.p., 1928), 12.

21

 Lappo, V krasno-belom otsvete tragedii, 15.

22

  Bor´ba za sovetskuiu vlast´, 176.

23

 However, when the party found time to revise its membership lists after the turmoil of the uprising in December 1917, just 200 loyal followers were left (TsDNIVO f. 1, op. 1, d. 4, l. 7). It must remain open to debate whether or not the membership numbers for October were exaggerated, how many of the party members had already moved south as Red Army soldiers, or whether many soldiers who claimed to be Bolsheviks before the uprising had now simply gone home like most of their comrades.

24

  TsDNIVO f. 1 (Bolshevik Provincial Committee), op. 1, d. 4, l. 7.

25

 M. G. Roshal´, Zapiski iz proshlogo (Moscow: Nauka, 1960), 130; TsDNIVO f. 1, op. 1, d. 4, l. 7.

26

  TsDNIVO f. 1, op. 1, d. 6, l. 30.

27

  Karsch, Die bolschewistische Machtergreifung, 41–42.

28

  V. M. Fefelov, “K istorii ustanovleniia sovetskoi vlasti v g. Ostrogozhske Voronezh­ skoi gubernii,” Izvestiia Voronezhskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo instituta, no. 26

Voronezh: Revolutionary Violence and the Bolshevik Victory

331

inhabitants and soldiers (43,000), this also does not suggest any broad backing across the various strata of the population. The first chairman of the Bolsheviks in Voronezh was a rather refined estate manager, Aleksandr Tatarchukov. He was replaced in spring 1917 by a white-collar worker, Nikolai N. Kardashev, who had been exiled to Voronezh from Moscow for revolutionary activities. The most important Bolshevik with local roots, Nikita P. Pavlunovskii, was also an office worker. In July 1917, the Voronezh Bolsheviks were reinforced with a number of experienced party members from Petrograd who had sought refuge from the persecution that followed the failed July putsch by moving to the calm of Voronezh where they introduced a new degree of radicalism to the city. The most important and most active figure in this group was Aleksei S. Moiseev. Of the 11 members of the party’s provincial committee who were active in 1917, two had been exiled to Voronezh before 1917, and two fled there after the July crisis. Most of the others had relocated to the area for various personal reasons, and just three had been born in the province. Six were about 30 years old, three were under 20, two were over 40.29 Three worked as civil servants, four were soldiers, one—Moiseev, the most important activist—was a professional revolutionary, and the others’ occupations are unknown. The energetic, but poorly educated, soldier Nikolai K. Shalaev joined the Voronezh Bolsheviks when he arrived with a Siberian machine gun regiment in August, and went on to take command of the regiment during the uprising. When the leading Socialist Revolutionaries left Voronezh, the Bolsheviks were sent reinforcements in their place. From spring 1918 on, a few party workers were dispatched from the centers as support, and in March 1918 the Baltic German Otto Petrovich Hintsenberg joined the Voronezh revolutionaries. Like Moiseev, he too belonged to the small group of educated professional revolutionaries in Voronezh who had spent long periods in exile before 1917.30 Finally, cadres came from occupied Ukraine in the summer of 1918. This marked the beginning of continuous and growing influx of Bolsheviks from other areas to Voronezh. There was a whole series of elections in Voronezh during the two years under examination and they represent a good yardstick for the support enjoyed by the Bolsheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries among the population, at least in 1917. The soviets were elected exclusively by workers and soldiers. In the various elections to the Voronezh city soviet from March to July 1917, the Bolsheviks always received between 10 percent and 14 percent of the vote. From (1958): 13–22, here 14. 29

  Analysis in Voronezhskie Bol´sheviki 1917–1920 (internal TsDNIVO publication).

30

  TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 538, l. 4.

332 Stefan K arsch

the day of its establishment to the October uprising, the majority in the Soviet always lay with the non-Bolshevik socialists: the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks. The Socialist Revolutionaries held at least two-thirds of the seats, and the Bolsheviks about one-tenth.31 As the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries had only a quarter of all the body’s members behind it, its breakaway in September 1917 certainly did not change the majority in the Soviet, which clearly lay with the moderate socialists. The next elections to the Soviet took place in December 1917, and were boycotted by most Right Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, after the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries dissolved the old Soviet. The precise circumstances of the election are not known. It is doubtful that they were free and fair. The composition of the new Soviet therefore cannot be explained by a change of mood among the workers and soldiers: 61 Bolsheviks, 25 Left Socialist Revolutionaries, 14 independents, and 5 Right Socialist Revolutionaries.32 The elections to the Voronezh city soviet in June 1918 are of particular interest. Since the army had largely disbanded, its share of the electorate was small at this point. Consequently, the election results should be interpreted as reflecting the mood of the city’s workers. No records of the precise figures for the whole city have survived. The Bolshevik press (no other publications were permitted any more) did not publish any details of the election results. The reason for this is easily identifiable. One article admitted that the moder­ ate socialists had achieved enormous successes in the elections to the soviet: “The Voronezh workers proved not to be very proletarian, but petit bourgeois and far removed from any political maturity, so that a relatively large propor­ tion of them entrusted the defense of their class interests to the typical agents and lackeys of the bourgeoisie—the Mensheviks and Right Socialist Revolu­ tionaries…. This is a profoundly unnatural and tragic situation.”33 It may therefore be assumed that the Bolsheviks suffered a painful electoral defeat in June 1918. The whole city population was called upon to cast their votes twice. First of all, elections to the City Duma were held in Voronezh on 16 July 1917. Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, who had stood jointly as the Socialist Bloc, held more than half the 83 seats in the Duma. The Kadets still held a weak 20 percent of the Duma’s members, while the Bolsheviks remained insignificant

31   TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 458, l. 45 (March); Bor´ba za sovetskuiu vlast´, document 26, 42 (April); TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 459, l. 23 (July). 32

  Lavygin, 1917, 156.

33

  Izvestiia Voronezhskogo Gubispolkoma Soveta RKD, no. 124, 30 June 1918, 2.

Voronezh: Revolutionary Violence and the Bolshevik Victory

333

with just 4 percent—even the League of Houseowners gained twice as many votes.34 The elections to the Constituent Assembly were held very soon after the uprising, from 12 to 14 November 1917. In the provincial capital, the Bolsheviks clearly improved on their showing in the Duma elections, but nevertheless only 12 percent of the city’s population voted for them in November 1917. The Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks received almost twice as many votes, while the bourgeois Kadets were the big winners, attracting five times as many votes as before and therefore over half the turnout.35 The Socialist Revolutionaries, who had received the overwhelming majority of the votes in the elections to the City Duma as recently as 16 July, lost ground dramatically. The revolutionary euphoria and, with it, the desire to support the Socialist Revolutionaries, had evidently dissipated among the city’s inhabitants. However, the Bolsheviks could point to their triumph among the approxi­ mately 3,500 soldiers who voted at the barracks in the city of Voronezh. They received 56 percent of the vote there, while the Socialist Revolutionaries gained just 24 percent and, in spite of everything, the bourgeois Kadets won 10 percent.36 The soldiers quite evidently associated their hope for a rapid or immediate peace with the Bolsheviks first and foremost. Hardly any electoral results have survived for individual district towns. However, the largest of them, Ostrogozhsk, can certainly serve as an example. The Bolsheviks had no noteworthy influence there until October 1917, either in the zemstvo (where the Bolsheviks had two delegates) or in the Town Duma (where they were represented with six delegates).37 The situation was different in the soviet, which was controlled by soldiers stationed at the town and was dominated by Bolsheviks just a few weeks after its founding in April 1917.38 The results of the elections to the Constituent Assembly for the whole province only serve as a rough guide to sentiment in the towns, because the number of peasants who voted in the elections far outweighed the number 34

 Distribution of seats: Socialist Block (Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks) 47, Kadets 17, League of House Owners 7, various “Democratic Organizations” 6, Bol­ sheviks 3 (Voronezhskii Telegraf, 18 July 1917, 4; 3 August 1917, 2).

35

  Voronezhskii Telegraf, 16 November 1917, 3; 17 November 1917, 3.

36

  The number of votes cast at the garrison was small. Just 3,542 soldiers voted. Cf. Voronezhskii Telegraf, 16 November 1917, 3; 17 November 1917, 3. This probably means that most of the soldiers had already been ordered to the front, and the 2,000 Siberian soldiers came to be particularly influential. However, it is possible that the collapse of the garrison was already well under way.

37

  Bor´ba za sovetskuiu vlast´, document 163, 187–190, here 187.

38

  Ibid.

Voronezh: Revolutionary Violence and the Bolshevik Victory

335

quoted above reported further, “At the works, my resolution was only passed because someone said if the Bolshevik resolution was rejected they would close the factory. These words should give you some idea of the mood among the workers.”43 Manifestations of Violence The main source of violence was the First World War. There were almost 60,000 soldiers and recruits in Voronezh in April 1917 (see table 2). Barracks across the province housed rear garrisons of an empire on a war footing. Their task was to assemble recruits, large numbers of whom were sent to the front at short notice. This led not just to large fluctuations in the population, but also to enormous troop contingents. At times, there were almost as many soldiers stationed at the barracks as inhabitants of the towns where they were located. Table 2. Soldiers and inhabitants in the garrison towns (figures for April 1917)44 Soldiers

Inhabitants

Voronezh

City/town

24,000

95,000

Ostrogozhsk

18,300

25,000

Novochopersk

6,000

4,000

Korotoiak

4,400

9,000

Bobrov

4,300

12,000

Liski

2,000

N.a.

Total

59,000

These soldiers behaved rebelliously and sometimes violently. As early as 1916, there were enormous disciplinary issues among the soldiers in the Voronezh garrisons and more than 1,000 soldiers of the 8th Brigade, which covered an area larger than the province itself, had been sentenced for deser­ tion or insubordination. Another 6,000 soldiers had been punished without being sentenced by a court.45 New recruits, by contrast, tended to get into trouble for looting.46 Soldiers and recruits continued to pose disciplinary problems after the changes in February 1917. Neither the reasons for nor 43

  GARF f. 393, op. 2, d. 33, l33–133ob.

44

  Cf. Protasov, Dvizhenie v garnizonakh, 6. Other figures suggest a total of 40,000 soldiers. Cf. Bor´ba za sovetskuiu vlast´, document 26, 42.

45

  Lavygin, 1917, 1–3.

46

  Ibid., 3–5.

336 Stefan K arsch

the internal dynamics of soldier violence were consigned to the past by the events of February. On 11 March, 7,000 recruits rioted on the way to Voro­ nezh. They stormed wagons loaded with sugar, looted shops, destroyed rail­ way equipment, and refused to acknowledge either their commanders or any other authorities. What distinguished them from the recruits who had been acting rebelliously in February was that they simply went home.47 Violence and lawlessness therefore tended to increase in March. Incidents of insubordi­ nation had occurred before, but now became a mass phenomenon. They were accompanied ever more frequently by violence. The same could be observed in the uezd town of Ostrogozhsk. Unrest had already been reported in the town’s garrison before February.48 News of the revolution in Petrograd on 5 March triggered dangerous mutinies. Soldiers stormed the military jail and the town prison, released the prisoners, and burned the buildings down. Officers who tried to call them to order were killed or suffered life-threatening injuries. The rioters set a large food shop on fire in the market.49 At the end of July, this massive unrest was repeated in Ostrogozhsk, and cavalry had to be deployed to calm the situation.50 In contrast to the army, Voronezh’s urban society was not shaken by vio­ lence until February 1917. However, the soldiers also brought lawlessness into the city. Once it had taken root there, it intensified rapidly and had the potential to slip from criminal provocation into spiraling violence at any time. The most striking manifestation of this disorder was the looting of the alcohol store at Ostrogozhsk in mid-September 1917, an incident that lasted three days and ended in a huge conflagration. During the three days, 22 people died of heart failure, 26 burned to death, 9 were killed in fights, and 60 were wounded, some of them severely. Only a military unit from Voronezh was able to end the nightmare.51 As in the other situations, it was impossible to distinguish between soldiers and criminals who had just put on uniforms in the general chaos. However, it is evident that it was not just soldiers who committed crimes. Newspapers reported “criminals in uniform,”52 who first appeared on the streets in Voronezh, then robbed flats and houses.53 In April, self47

  Ibid., 23.

48

  Fefelov, “K istorii ustanovleniia sovetskoi vlasti,” 15.

49

  Arkhiv Ostrogozhskogo kraevedcheskogo muzeia, “1917 Memoirs,” Chekmezov, l. 17.

50

  Ibid., l. 19.

51

  GAVO f. 2393, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 70–75.

52

  Voronezhskii Telegraf, 2 May 1917, 2.

53

  Voronezhskii Telegraf, 25 October 1917, 2.

Voronezh: Revolutionary Violence and the Bolshevik Victory

337

appointed “guardians of law and order” started searching private individuals’ homes in Ostrogozhsk, looking for food stocks. Although efforts to build up a new political system began after the October uprising in Voronezh, the forms of violence did not change. There were still robberies (50 are documented just in the night of the uprising54), and pharmacies also continued to be looted by people who were looking for alcohol.55 It is significant that soldiers from the machine gun regiment, which had supported the uprising on 30 October, carried on acting lawlessly after October. Even during the uprising, soldiers threatened to storm the headquarters of the rebellion because a rumor had spread that bottles of excellent wine from the cellar of the city’s best hotel were being stored there.56 After the uprising, there were repeated demands for the Military Revolutionary Committee and the new soviet to hand out alcohol free of charge from the city’s store. The soldiers got what they wanted on two occasions. The third time, the chairman of the soviet refused their request. In response, they declared the soviet dismissed and set about storming the store. The soviet attempted to destroy the stocks, but this was not possible because so much alcohol was held in the warehouse. The situation came to a head. According to one report, hand grenades were even thrown. The soldiers only withdrew when the soviet succeeded in placing a machine gun on the roof of the storehouse.57 Even after October, an­ other alcohol store was looted—as had happened earlier at Ostrogozhsk—this time in the small town of Davydovka, where the consequences were just as terrible as in Ostrogozhsk.58 Dynamics of Violence of 1917 From the very beginning, the motives for the soldiers’ unrest were diverse. Undoubtedly, the soldiers were protesting against the continuation of the war, but at the same time also simply carrying out criminal looting for personal gain. The destruction could be directed rationally against the military infra­ structure, but sometimes become an end in itself. However, some of the roots of the violence were older than the First World War and stemmed from the Russian peasant mentality and culture. It was evident that the traditional 54 55

  Voronezhskii Telegraf, 3 November 1917, 3.

  GAVO f. 2393, op. 1, d. 11, l. 52.

56

  Mikhail D. Chernyshev, “Kak vo nashei, vo druzhine,” Bereg, 22 August 1917, 12; Bereg, 29 August 1997, 12.

57

  TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 536, l. 42; d. 511, l. 2.

58

  Voronezhskii Telegraf, 12 November 1917, 4.

338 Stefan K arsch

“fool’s freedom” that recruits enjoyed in the last days before they were called up59 was no longer confined to their home villages and the usual, relatively short, period of time. Now, combined with pseudorevolutionary slogans, it was effectively an invitation to indulge in looting. At the same time, it was possible to see in it the traditional reaction of Russian peasants who backed up the demands they made to state authorities in certain situations by resorting to unrest rather than rational argument.60 Another driving force was certainly the desire for social recognition. From February 1917 on, groups who had felt underprivileged before 1917 took a greater part in social life. Soldiers were one of these underprivileged groups. Until 1917, they had not been able to smoke in public places, or go to either res­ taurants or the theater, they had not been allowed to travel first or second class in trains and had not been permitted to enter public parks.61 They now did all these things in such an ostentatious fashion that as early as 5 March 1917, Voronezh’s newly founded Security Committee approved an order issued by the garrison commander that forbade soldiers from taking part in the city’s “social life” and classified this as a disciplinary offense.62 Established Rus­sian society had been concerned about the invasion of urban public spaces by the lower classes for a considerable time and had started to describe this phenom­ enon using the English word “hooliganism” around 1900.63 Hitherto, the city and town centers had been the territory of the upper classes, but now they were increasingly being “conquered” by the lower classes. At the beginning of September, the overstretched commander of the Voronezh garrison described the soldiers who were roaming through the city as “physically and morally corrupt individuals who have lost any sense of order and the law.”64 In subsequent orders, the commander restricted, for obvious reasons, issuing surgical spirits for supposedly medical purposes at

59

  What was known as the rekrutskii razgul. On this topic, see Vladimir P. Buldakov, Krasnaia smuta: Priroda i posledstviia revoliutsionnogo nasiliia (Moscow: Rosspen, 1997), 125–31. 60   John Bushnell, Mutiny amid Repression: Russian Soldiers in the Revolution of 1905–1906 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 112–43. 61

  Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 74–75.

62

  Lappo, V krasno-belom otsvete tragedii, 11.

63

  Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism: Crime, Culture and Power in St. Petersburg, 1900–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 8–22.

64

  Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Voronezhskoi oblasti (GAVO) f. 2393 (Voronezh Provincial Soviet), op. 1, d. 5, l. 33.

Voronezh: Revolutionary Violence and the Bolshevik Victory

339

pharmacies65 and, on 21 October, just a few days before the uprising, called on the soldiers not to form lengthy queues in front of the city’s brothels.66 This new situation was interpreted by many citizens and soldiers as the collapse of established society. However, this collapse also manifested itself in the failure of institutions. Throughout 1917, neither the traditional or newly established institutions were very effective because they were struggling with a lack of financial resources and were themselves marginalized by their self-inflicted passivity. Some of them disappeared long before October, while others, such as the soviet, found themselves under enormous pressure on account of the high expectations that were placed on them. Consequently, the soviet only enjoyed authority as long as it fulfilled the soldiers’ wishes. At the beginning of July, soldiers forced their way into the soviet’s building, beating and insulting its members because it had not given them leave to work in the fields.67 A volunteer unit forced the authorities to give it leave by arresting its commander.68 The general decay of political authority and the dysfunction of previous political routines reduced the state’s resilience. This made those who had been underprivileged until that point feel that they could achieve their aims by ratcheting up the violence rather than in legal political activities. As soldiers radicalized, they moved away from institutions through which compromises could be negotiated, and inevitably moved toward a reliance on violence.69 The soviet lost its ability to organize food supplies, which led to violent unrest as well. In September 1917, soldiers and women tried to take control of two wagons of grain at the railway station, sparking severe clashes with a military unit controlled by the soviet.70 The cohesion of society was crumbling and its values eroded as well, cre­ ating a feeling that everything was allowed. At certain times, the apocalyptic atmosphere encouraged an almost desperate desire for pleasure and intoxica­ tion. In this situation, radical revolutionaries like the Bolsheviks who had little patience with political rules enjoyed an advantage over those who still wanted 65

  Ibid., l. 102.

66

  Ibid., l. 123.

67

  Ibid., l. 9. In response, the soviet called an extraordinary assembly, largely agreed to the demands that had been made, and sent a delegation to the minister of war. 68

  Voronezhskii Telegraf, 5 August 1917, 2.

69

  For a general discussion of the performance of institutions and the willingness to resort to violence, see Thomas Meyer, “Politische Kultur und Gewalt,” Internationales Handbuch der Gewaltforschung, ed. Wilhelm Heitmeyr and John Hagan (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2002), 1198.

70

  Voronezhskii Telegraf, 13 September 1917, 3.

340 Stefan K arsch

to uphold such rules. Of course, the looting of the alcohol store at Ostrogozhsk in mid-September 1917 was, first and foremost, irrational violence, which developed a strong dynamic of its own. Nevertheless, ideological elements were also observable. A young peasant grabbed his father, who was trying to stop him from taking part in the looting, and shouted at him, “I’ll kill you, bourgeois.” An employee of the telegraph office who had to make his way through the drunken mass was also abused as a “bourgeois” and beaten for his pains.71 It evidently appeared very easy for people to mix their own dif­ fuse feelings of aggression and violence with revolutionary terminology. 1917–18: Revolutionary Violence and the Change of Power For the uprising to succeed at the end of October, it was enough for the Bolshe­ viks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries to work with these diffuse aggressions. Aggressive behavior intensified at the end of the year among some sections of the workers and, above all, the soldiers. Certainly, almost all the violence before October 1917 occurred without the influence of the two parties. It was not they who introduced violence into Russian society. However, they knew more than any of the other political forces how they could combine their propaganda with diffuse, but radical, aversions to established society and the associated readiness for violence, even if they often did this by the use of language in superficial ways. Their charismatic leaders who professed violence also enabled them to plug in to societal violence. Admittedly, the Voronezh Bolsheviks did not constitute a homogenous group, and not all of them were equally well suited to communicating with workers and soldiers who were prepared to act violently. Yet, as the Bolsheviks in Voronezh had no precise plans for their approach, the cautious figures inevitably lagged behind the hotheads. Those who were successful in appealing to people ready to use violence were generally less educated soldiers such as Ivan Vrachev, head of thes Bolsheviks’ military office, who was later excluded from the party as a left deviationist during the NEP period, Igor Grachev, who publicly called on the soldiers to kill their officers, and Ivan Chuev, a soldier who had been doing propaganda work for the Bolsheviks since the beginning of the year. Nevertheless, success was also enjoyed by a number of the more reckless intellectuals, including fanatical students like Boris Kel´ner, whose speech at one gathering was followed by an incident in which soldiers almost beat one of their officers to death. There were also trained professional revolutionaries in this group. The most important of them was the audacious Aleksei Moiseev, who combined more than anyone else decisiveness, daring, a willingness to 71

  GAVO f. 2393, op. 1, d. 5, l. 73.

Voronezh: Revolutionary Violence and the Bolshevik Victory

341

use violence and a craving for pleasure. It was his initiative that triggered the uprising in October, in contrast to which Kardashev, who was formally the Bolsheviks’ leader in the city and province. Kardashev noticeably remained in the background, especially during the uprising, when the party was seeking to mobilize radical groups’ potential for violence. His predecessor, Aleksandr Tatarchukov, had even resigned from his leading functions, although not from the party, in the middle of 1917 on account of the Bolsheviks’ radicalization. By contrast, probably not entirely unfounded rumors were circulating about Moiseev and the new Bolshevik garrison commander Popov, who allegedly exploited their positions after the uprising to obtain vodka from the city al­ cohol store and drive dubious female companions around the city in a car (an extremely rare means of transport that would, of course, have been requisi­ tioned).72 The leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, A. Abramov, dis­ played similar characterists. Both had considerable influence over Mikhail D. Chernyshev, the distinctly unintellectual leader of the Workers’ Militia, espe­ cially in the early days of the revolution. The Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries were therefore well positioned to influence groups who were prepared to use violence. They had propaganda that reflected diffuse aggressions, leading figures who were attractive to violent groups, contempt for institutional rules with the unconditional promise to make peace immediately. The moderate socialists completely lacked all of these advantages because their leaders behaved pru­ dently, continued to advocate institutional solutions and warned against the consequences of declaring peace unilaterally. The October uprising in the provincial capital was therefore neither com­ plicated nor dangerous for the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolution­aries. Moiseev, who was the driving force behind it, and Vrachev consulted Nikolai Shalaev and Mikhail Chernyshev. Shalaev’s men, 2,000 Siberian sol­diers with 50 machine guns, took the initiative in the night, and were joined early in the morning by Chernyshev’s militiamen. The majority of the garrison remained neutral and did nothing. The same was true of most workers. There was there­ fore no military force in the city that was capable of resisting the uprising. It was enough for a successful uprising to toy ambiguously with the ag­ gressions felt toward a decaying society and its crumbling institutions and hold out the promise of peace, but more was needed in the subsequent period. Once the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries had formally seized power, they had to set quite different priorities if they wished to retain their supremacy over the long term. In particular, the way that criminal violence was spiraling out of control threatened any legal order. Institutions continued 72

 On Popov, cf. GAVO f. 2393, op. 1, d. 217, l. 29; on Moiseev, see Voronezhskii Telegraf, 21 April 1918, 2.

342 Stefan K arsch

to collapse in the immediate aftermath of the uprising and it is likely that the uprising actually accelerated this process. The city police was frightened and held back because it was very difficult to resist spontaneous violence or punish violent criminals in the initial period after the uprising. Large numbers of armed men wandered through the towns without the least control. The state’s monopoly on the use of force was undermined. In this situation, three tasks were particularly important, of the many that had to be dealt with to hold on to power over the long term and establish a new order. First, crime had to be contained, and violence and lawlessness controlled and mastered by the new rulers, the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Otherwise, the decay of society would also be accompanied by the decay of the institutions that were necessary for a stable new system of power. Second, they had to find resources for their new administration. It was, above all, the lack of sources of finance that had brought down the institutions of 1917. If their new institutions were to avoid a similar fate, the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries had to accumulate material resources at any price. Although the enthusiastic Pavlunovskii had placed his private savings at their disposal, this money did not last long of course. The third task was the most difficult: they had not only to force the existing administration, which took a hostile attitude, to cooperate but also prevent a whole society, the overwhelming majority of whom had very little sympathy for the change of power, from organizing resistance in the form of, for instance, strikes and rebellions. The revolutionaries had no plan for how to handle this awkward situation. It was soon no longer possible to carry on relying on the soldiers’ support. The regiments that had protected the October uprising were not available any more. This should not come as a surprise. As early as June 1917, an officer from Voronezh had reported: “Since they all have just one thing in mind: that—in whatever way—the war is coming to an end, the influence of Lenin’s ideas, or as people here say ‘Bolshevism,’ is taking on threatening dimensions, while Bolshevism is understood as having just one meaning: letting everything drop and going home.”73 Despite the Decree on Peace, no direct order was received to demobilize the soldiers in the weeks after the uprising, so they went home without waiting for orders.74 Most of the garrison at Voronezh dispersed. Due to their limited forces, the Bolsheviks were not in a position to cope with these three tasks on their own, even together with the Left 73 74

  Ibid., d. 8, l. 314.

 I. G. Voronkov and T. M. Sevastianova, eds., Za vlast´ sovetov: Sbornik vospominanii uchastnikov revoliutsionnykh sobytii v Voronezhskoi gubernii (Voronezh: Knizhnoe izda­ tel´stvo, 1957), 85.

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Socialist Revolutionaries. In the provincial capital, they received help from the Workers’ Militia. In response to the rise in crime, autonomous security units had formed in many places after February 1917. For instance, almost all the factories organized a workers’ militia. The biggest of them guarded the railway workshops at Voronezh. It had been founded in mid-1917 and was intended to guard the workshops during strikes and protect them against looting. After the strikes, however, the workers who had been assigned to the militia no longer returned to their workplaces but demanded a regular salary from the owners of the workshops so they could continue acting as a security detail. At first, they did this only in their own factories, but later they operated throughout the whole city.75 The militia represented diffuse, radical positions and supported the uprising, but played a subordinate role in it. Unlike the soldiers, who were strangers to Voronezh and left their units to go home or were sent off to the first battles of the Civil War that soon broke out, the members of the Workers’ Militia stayed in the city that was their home. After October, they amounted to approximately 600 men.76 Their integration into the new power system was a necessary step in order to fill the military power vacuum that threatened to spread after the disintegration of the city’s garrison. The members of this militia had only loose links with a single political party, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Ideological common ground was not the reason for their alliance. The leader of the Workers’ Militia, Chernyshev, subsequently explained why he had joined the Left Socialist Revolutionaries in September 1917 at the age of 21: “I was a young man who was not particularly educated politically, I could hardly read and write. What attracted me was the opportunity to show courage and take revenge with the means of ter­ ror.”77 He could also have used these words to describe his activities in the militia, whose leader he became five weeks after joining the party. The head of a similar unit in the small town of Buturlinovka, who called himself an anarchist, was described in similar terms.78 Applicants who wanted to join the Workers’ Militia in Voronezh had to be unmarried and belong to the lower classes. They generally had little education, because otherwise they would have been too close to the hated intelligentsia.79

75

  TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 536, ll. 1–3; d. 501, l. 5.

76

 Chernyshev, “Kak vo nashei, vo druzhine,” Bereg, 22 August 1997, 12.

77 78

  Ibid., no. 32, 8 August 1997, 12.

  TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 435, ll. 1–1ob.

79

  Chernyshev, “Kak vo nashei, vo druzhine,” Bereg, 8 August 1997, 12.

344 Stefan K arsch

The intellectual leaders of the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist Revolution­ aries had to win these men’s loyalty with means other than ideological argu­ ments. To begin with, they did this simply by allowing them to use violence. Moiseev, as a member of the Revolutionary Committee that held power, and Abramov, as the leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, had personal contacts with the Workers’ Militia in the early days, above all with its leader, Chernyshev. In November 1917, the militia was officially under the command of Ivan Chuev, the soviet’s first Police Commissar who became the official police chief shortly afterwards. Strictly speaking, the militia’s task was to guard enterprises and main­ tain security, but it rapidly began to move proactively against looters and criminals, some of whom were shot directly on the spot. It had no orders to do this, but the Military Revolutionary Committee, which quite evidently assessed the militia’s activities not by judicial standards but merely by their usefulness, condoned its actions retrospectively. Although the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries in the power structure extremely rarely gave orders for killings (Chernyshev reports that he only killed people acting on an order once, but then it was a whole family),80 the general tenor of their propaganda nevertheless made it easy for the poorly educated fighters to kill. The units consisted of young men who, as is common at this age, were seeking new friendships and peer groups, young men who wanted to prove themselves and draw a clear dividing line between their peer group and the rest of society. This enabled them to generate new and stronger identities. The best way of helping a group to build an identity and achieve unity is a common enemy. In this case, the enemy was supplied by revolutionary prop­ aganda, which allowed the militia members to look on certain people not as individuals, but as representatives of a hostile group or class, so dehumanizing the militia’s victims. The most important thing suggested by the propaganda was that the divisions between the social groups were also divisions between different kinds of social obligation. When they encountered individuals from the wrong side of these dividing lines, their sense of justice and injustice, already undeveloped, tended to fragment even further. It is very dangerous in any society to permit violence to poorly controlled groups of young men as an official function. But this was precisely what the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries did. Consequently, the militia developed its own system of justice. The men decided who was to be killed and why. They remembered unsympathetic superiors, and used the criminal police’s card files to identify recidivists and pick out the individuals who were to be killed (even though their guilt was not always proven). They also 80

  TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 536, l. 43.

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had good contacts with the prison administration and would kill released prisoners if they felt their punishment had been too mild.81 Only occasionally was Chernyshev asked by those responsible for the militia when he was going to stop shooting people. However, as he explains, “at first they criticized, but then they justified.”82 After unrest had broken out in connection with a religious procession in January 1918 and the militia reacted with numerous killings, even the members of the new soviet who dealt with Chernyshev’s men were shocked, although one of them had given the militia permission to shoot dead the “leaders of the uprising, clergymen, and intellectuals.”83 According to unconfirmed reports, the militia carried out more than 30 death sentences.84 It is not surprising that the militia itself began to rob and murder. Before long, some of their activities no longer maintained security, even in the broadest revolutionary sense, but were obviously intrinsically criminal. The Moscow party worker quoted above reported to the center that “alcoholism, robbery and murder are the order of the day” in the militia and that, “All Voronezh’s criminals are members of the Workers’ Militia or the Red Army and are terrorizing the whole population.”85 When the militia’s activities were investigated in 1919, long after its disbandment, 39 murders were documented in six months.86 Thanks to the robbery and bribery in which they had engaged, all the leading members of the Workers’ Militia left it as rich men.87 None of their crimes were ever punished, either while the militia was in existence or at a later date. On the contrary, its members’ integration into the new power system continued over the long term. When witnesses were interviewed during investigations two years after the militia had been dis­ banded, they begged for their names not to be mentioned because former militiamen now held senior posts in the new power structure.88 Immediately after its disbandment, former members of the Workers’ Militia were merely offered lower-ranking positions. For instance, their leader, Chernyshev, be­ 81

  Chernyshev, “Kak vo nashei, vo druzhine,” Bereg, 5 September 1997, 12; TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 536, l. 43. 82

  TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 536, l. 43.

83

  Ibid., l. 18.

84

  M. Komlev, “Krasnyi terror,” Bereg, 5 December 1997, 12.

85

  GARF f. 393, op. 2, d. 33, ll. 133–133ob.

86 87

  TsDNIVO f. 1, op. 1, d. 75, ll. 1–1ob., 11–12, 17, 18ob.

  Ibid., ll. 5, 23–25; TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 536, l. 35.

88

  TsDNIVO f. 1, op. 1, d. 75, ll. 1, 8ob., 12–13.

346 Stefan K arsch

came a member of the Central Revolutionary Railway Tribunal a month after the Workers’ Militia was dissolved, head of the Cheka unit responsible for the railways in October 1918, and, after internal squabbles, subsequently led the Cheka group at the Grafskaia railway station,89 where he had a large number of “spies” arrested or shot.90 What has been described here for the provincial capital Voronezh was re­ peated in many district towns, with local variations. All the newly established, radical-left military revolutionary committees possessed their own military units, which were about 100 strong, some of them markedly larger.91 Their members were mostly soldiers who had either stayed with the disintegrating garrisons of the district towns, had come from the front, or had moved from other rear garrisons—some of them because they were returning to their homes, some because they already had friends or relatives who lived in the fertile Black Earth region, and some because they moved there to make a living. In addition to this, they now achieved a new and better social status in the militias, while the fertility of the region promised stable supplies of food. Use of Functional Violence to Secure Bolshevik Rule The activities of the Workers’ Militia delivered results in the weeks after the uprising in the provincial capital. The number of crimes reported there fell in December. Of course, criminality did not disappear completely. This was not possible given the scale of crimes and the fact that the Workers’ Militia itself had long since started committing crimes. Nevertheless, with the aid of the militia, the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries were able to master their first challenge, the containment of unrestrained criminality. The second problem was the procurement of material goods for the new administration. It viewed violence against the upper classes and rich, or at least prosperous, citizens as a suitable way of pursuing this goal. Theft or looting could be ways of protesting against traditional discrimination, but just as much acts of social revenge or plain robbery. After October, this form of violence was not only tolerated by the Revolutionary Committee at first, then by the new soviet, but was also justified ideologically. It was not until the beginning of December that the new Commissar for Security decided criminals

89

 TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 501, l. 14; d. 522, l. 26.

90 91

  Ibid., d. 536, l. 45.

 Karsch, Die bolschewistische Machtergreifung, 234.

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should be punished without consideration of their social backgrounds, which had allowed certain strata to claim other classes’ property until then.92 The Bolsheviks recognized to a greater extent than the Left Socialist Revo­ lutionaries that they had to contain spontaneous violence against the rich. However, they certainly did not put an end to the violence. Since they not only allowed the “expropriation” of the rich, but instrumentalized it for their own purposes, they had the ability to obtain money, premises, or even just foodstuffs for their new administration on the ground. Throughout the province, soviets and revolutionary committees confiscated shops, warehouses, theaters, and cinemas so they could raise the funds they needed in order to function.93 When a shortage of money threatened the new administration in the provincial capital, Pavlunovskii, who had taken over responsibility for financial affairs among his other duties, forced the city bank to pay out 150,000 rubles with the aid of the Workers’ Militia.94 In the district town of Pavlovsk, the new rulers occupied the bank outright straight away and confiscated all its money.95 This enabled them, for example, to pay the employees of the supply administration, while threatening the sus­ pension of payments if there were any failure to cooperate. In this way, they achieved control over the district’s supply infrastructure in December.96 In February 1918, when the central soviet in Voronezh was not able to support the soviets financially in the districts and townships, it ordered special taxes to be raised on the ground.97 In the small district towns and the centers of the townships, requisitioned private property was frequently the only source of income. For instance, in view of the limited funds at its disposal, the Zemliansk District Committee gave all its townships instructions to obtain finances in their areas by levying taxes on the “bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie.”98 No rates were set for these taxes, and they were purely arbitrary. In Pavlovsk, the local soviet demanded 1.5 million rubles from the local “bourgeoisie,” whereas in Buturlinovka special taxes and requisitioned bank deposits were 92

  GAVO f. 2393, op. 1, d. 8, ll. 125–26.

93

  V. M. Fefelov, “Ustanovlenie sovetskoi vlasti v uezdnykh tsentrakh Voronezhskoi gubernii,” Izvestiia Voronezhskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo instituta, no. 21 (1960): 36; Za vlast´ sovetov, 119; GARF f. 393, op. 3, d. 98, l. 7; Komarov, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, 34.

94

  Voronezhskii Telegraf, 16 December 1917, 4.

95

  GARF f. 393, op. 3, d. 99, l. 7

96 97

  Komarov, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, 13.

  Ibid., 34.

98

  GAVO f. 36 (Zemliansk District Soviet), op. 1, d. 7, l. 55.

348 Stefan K arsch

used to pay salaries and implement welfare measures.99 If the individuals taxed in this way refused to pay, they might, as for example at Nizhnedevitsk, find themselves thrown into prison and refused contact with their relatives.100 In autumn 1918, the Bolsheviks expelled the whole “non-working population” from Voronezh city center, so gaining possession of a considerable amount of housing stock. It had to be reallocated on the basis of class membership: “first communists, then Red Army soldiers.”101 All the seizures and special taxes were not just opportunities to acquire resources, but also effective instruments of terror. They were supplemented with direct political violence. It cannot be determined beyond doubt at what point the Workers’ Militia began to kill and terrorize people for political motives. In any event, the militiamen understood very quickly that when they were acting against criminals the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries responsible for these matters were interested not in legal procedures, but in the suppression of undesirable behavior, regardless whether this was of a criminal or political nature. Decades later, Chernyshev reported proudly, “We, the Workers’ Militia, were often forced to carry out the workers’ just and rapid judgment on counterrevolutionary elements.”102 Reports and rumors about the activities of the Workers’ Militia spread around the city. When two students were severely beaten by the militia in January 1918, they asked the regular police, who wanted to investigate the matter, not to pursue the case any further because they were afraid of being beaten up again or even killed.103 This is precisely how terror functions: the reports about violence that had been committed in the past and the fear of future violence were intended to cripple any resistance. Only well organized and very determined resistance would have had any prospect of success after the uprising. This was not a feasible option for the Right Socialist Revolutionaries. They lacked the aggressive attitude towards violence that would have made them attractive to violent groups. They neither produced the kind of propaganda that would have been required nor possessed the personnel needed to gain the loyalty of soldiers or militias. It would have been extremely difficult to organize targeted resistance against small, but violent, groups solely within the amorphous mass of the old elites, white-collar workers, and urban citizens. The will of the majority was of no 99

  TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 435, ll. 1ob., 3ob.

100

  GARF f. 393, op. 3, d. 98, ll. 4–5.

101

  Krasnyi listok (Voronezh), 3 November 1918, 3.

102

  Chernyshev, “Kak vo nashei, vo druzhine,” Bereg, 5 September 1997, 12.

103

  TsDNIVO f. 1, op. 1, d. 75, ll. 1, 8ob., 12–13.

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account in this case. Most urban residents had a lot to lose. At a time of general collapse and lawlessness, the loss of property, accommodation, or even just food could easily be someone’s downfall. This is why systematic, collective action is more the exception than the rule at times of instability. In most cases, people simply try to survive—as individuals or in small groups such as families. In the first half of November, many institutions in Voronezh issued protests against the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries, including all the city’s 14 trade unions, the railway workers, the staff of the Provincial Zemstvo, the City Council and, of course, some newly founded alliances such as the Voronezh Intelligentsia and the Soci­ety for the Protection of the Constituent Assembly.104 Many groups also threat­ ened to strike immediately after the uprising, including the postal workers, the teachers, and the criminal police.105 In fact, a strike began at the beginning of December and was supported by bank employees, various factories, the provincial supply department, the Provincial Zemstvo, and white-collar work­ ers.106 The Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries responded swiftly with the assistance of their armed groups. Strikers were sacked, arrested, thrown into prison, or excluded from the distribution of food rations.107 In Ostrogozhsk, they had to sweep the streets.108 After ten days, the strike col­ lapsed in the towns of the province. With help from their armed, violent allies, the Bolsheviks and Left Social­ ist Revolutionaries were therefore able to contain crime, grab resources, and successfully terrorize their opponents. However, the fact that their links to these allies were not based on solid foundations also held risks for the new power structure. The lack of discipline exhibited by the groups with which they were allied could easily run out of control, and spontaneous violence could also be directed against the new power structures, as later happened fre­ quently in the towns of the province. There was another danger in Voronezh too, as the Moscow party worker quoted above saw clearly in April 1918: “The 104

 Voronezhskii Telegraf, 8 November 1917, 3; Petr N. Sobolev, Podgotovka sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii i ustanovlenie sovetskoi vlasti v Voronezhskoi gubernii (Voronezh: Knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1955), 100; Voronezhskii Telegraf, 21 November 1917, 4.

105

  Voronezhskii Telegraf, 16 December 1917, 4; Komarov, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, 16.

106

  Voronezhskii Telegraf, 5 December 1917, 4; I. P. Taradin, Oktiabrskaia revoliutsiia i grazhdanskaia voina v Voronezhskoi gubernii (Voronezh: Kommuna, 1927), 65. 107

  Komarov, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, 5; Sobolev, Podgotovka sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii, 102; Komarov, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, 3; Ivan Chuev, “V bor´be s kontrrevoliutsiei,” Letopis´ velikogo oktiabria (1958): 301–03.

108

  Fefelov, “K istorii ustanovleniia sovetskoi vlasti,” 19.

350 Stefan K arsch

most important thing is that the soviet has no real power. We have a Workers’ Militia and the Red Army here, but the soviet cannot give them orders. If the soviet did decide to attack them, they would not hesitate to shoot its members dead.”109 There was also no way of ruling out the possibility that violence and arbitrary decision-making would drive a desperate population to rebel, as was later to happen in the province’s villages. In turn, the Bolsheviks, who were ruling practically alone by now, found themselves confronted with their first main task yet again: that of fighting crime and arbitrary decision making. Now, however, the source of these prob­ lems was not an amorphous, collapsing society, but their own, armed groups. Initially, it had been necessary for the Bolsheviks to integrate these violent groups into their system of power. Soon, though, it was just as important for them to restrict the activities of these groups and replace them with more reliable units. The first regular units were formed in Voronezh during the spring of 1918, stabilizing the extant structures within the police with the out­ come that the Workers’ Militia lost most of its responsibilities, was reduced to 200 men and could be disbanded in June 1918—precisely at the moment when the coalition between the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries finally disintegrated. The leaders of the Workers’ Militia were sent away on business under pretexts at short notice and were subsequently offered good careers. The ordinary militiamen who remained in the city were surrounded with artillery and given an ultimatum to decide within ten minutes whether they wanted to either disband and receive a demobilization bonus or fight against the artillery. They surrendered, and were given sacks of flour and sugar. Many of them were integrated into various Red Army units.110 The Bolsheviks hoped for greater reliability from the Extraordinary Com­ mission to Combat Counterrevolution, Speculation, and Sabotage (Cheka) for the city and province that was established on 5 June 1918 by a decision of the soviet and assumed many of the functions that had been carried out by the Workers’ Militia. It also took charge of suppressing rural unrest and “observed the counterrevolution.”111 Instructions to this effect had evidently come from Petrograd, for similar bodies were being set up throughout the country. The first members of its Executive Committee included not just three Bolsheviks, with Pavlunovskii as chairman, but two Left Socialist Revolutionaries as well.112 A few weeks later, Hintsenberg took charge of the Cheka, but without unleashing the unconditional terror demanded by the center. 109

  GARF f. 393, op. 2, d. 33, ll. 133–133ob.

110 111

  TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 522, ll. 1–2; f. 1, op. 1, d. 75, l. 9ob.; f. 5, op. 1, d. 536, l. 40.

  TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 536, l. 29.

112

  Komarov, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie, 83.

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Under the sole leadership of the Bolsheviks after July 1918, Cheka units were a powerful force made up of German and Austrian prisoners of war assembled by Hintsenberg,113 parts of the Red Army, the police, and the grain procurement detachments (increasing numbers of which arrived in the Black Earth region as starvation tightened its grip on the cities of the north). They replaced the unreliable units that had supported the new Soviet structure up to this point. Individually, the men of these new units were no more reliable or disciplined than those of the earlier ones (particularly as militiamen such as Chernyshev served in Cheka units). There was also competition between the procurement units, as very few of them took orders from the provincial supply commission, and most had been dispatched by central bodies in the supply apparatus, cities, or individual enterprises. Nevertheless, in contrast to earlier months, they now acted within increasingly stable institutional param­ eters. Of course, the spontaneous violence did not end at the moment when the new units were formed. For instance, the Moscow party worker quoted above always mentioned the Workers’ Militia and the Red Army in the same breath. Later, most of the district Chekas proved to be so unreliable that they too had to be disbanded in June 1919.114 Conclusions The main revolutionary events in Voronezh were not inevitable consequences of local conditions, but occurred immediately as a result of impulses from the centers of the Russian Empire. Petrograd’s February and October Revolutions were emulated in Voronezh a few days later. However, whereas in February the news from Petrograd was sufficient on its own to make the old system collapse, the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries needed soldiers’ support in October. External influences not only determined the chronological sequence of events but also brought new actors to Voronezh. During the war, large rear garrisons had been set up in the region, which had an influence on the lives of the residents and drove ahead the course of events at certain moments—particularly in October. At this point in time, the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries had an unassailable military superiority on account of the soldiers in these garrisons. However, this superiority was eroded in November because some of these soldiers went off to fight in new battles, while the rest simply left their barracks to go home. The Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries were thrown back on their own resources in Voronezh after the successful uprising. 113 114

  TsDNIVO f. 5, op. 1, d. 538, ll. 3–5.

  GAVO f. 10 (Provincial Soviet Executive Committee), op. 1, d. 111, l. 13.

352 Stefan K arsch

They received hardly any assistance from the still weak center during this period. After a local quarrel with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, the Bol­ sheviks held power alone in Voronezh from July 1918. Although military units from other regions that were supposed to be procuring foodstuffs slowly altered the balance of power in favor of the Bolsheviks in the second six months of 1918, the situation only changed fundamentally in the towns of the province in August 1918, when the Civil War and, with it, first the White Army and then the Red Army reached Voronezh. Until then, local actors and regional conditions had dominated the power struggle for the province’s towns. These circumstances were highly problematic for the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries. There were hardly any army units left, the urban population did not support them, and they were not very popular, even among the workers who are depicted by Soviet historiography as the pillars of the revolution. The Bolsheviks’ ability to secure their power over the long term in spite of these difficulties was due to their strategically motivated dealings with para­ military groups and their unscrupulous deployment of violence. Violence had already been spreading in the garrisons and towns of Voronezh for a long time, but particularly during 1917. Disadvantaged groups rebelled against everything they associated with established society. One of the factors was the war that had been going on for several years and the coarsening effects it had had on the soldiers who fought in it. Furthermore, the collapse of society and its institutions, what was perceived to be a degrading, archaic social hierarchy, and the tense supply situation all played their part. Anyone who was prepared to employ violence soon noticed the success of such activities. At the same time, however, violence and the collapse of order developed a dynamic of their own that could not be explained by rational motives. All this led not just to assaults on officers and urban residents, but also to attacks on political institutions, robbery, and looting, which culminated in mass orgies of alcohol, fighting, and arson that left many victims. The uprising in October had not essentially changed the reasons for the violence, or its sources, motives, and manifestations. What was new was its ideological justification. The Bolsheviks’ propaganda was directed against class enemies, was full of hatred, and encouraged anyone who wanted to take property away from the well off to use any means to do so. The objectives and motives of the violence, which had been spontaneous up until this point, were only redirected to a minor extent and fundamentally remained the same. These acts of violence were committed by small, armed groups of young men. It was not the doctrines of Marx or other theoreticians to which the revolution’s armed supporters were drawn. Quite the contrary, what was attractive to some young men was the de facto condoning of violence and the

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evident impunity of criminal activities. The young men had created these paramilitary organizations without the Bolsheviks. In the provincial capital, they were more likely to have links with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. However, they very soon noticed that cooperation with the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries was advantageous for them. They were able to continue many aspects of their spontaneous violence as long as they were prepared to take action against other violent, criminal actors. In these forms, their violence was tolerated and instrumentalized by the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries. In consequence, the parties were able to transform the widespread, spontaneous, destructive violence into functional, political violence and so resolve their most urgent political problems. They contained the upsurge in criminality with savage counterviolence. They re­ solved the financial difficulties that had reduced so many institutions to the most desperate straits in 1917 with harsh compulsory loans, forced levies, and expropriations. These measures fitted into a larger system of violence and threatened violence that practically paralyzed the largely anti-Bolshevik population and their elected representatives. Cautious, non-violent attempts to protest were suppressed with financial threats or even violence. In this atmosphere, the Bolsheviks succeeded in first stabilizing institutions and then reforming them for their own ends. The old civil servants did not put up any effective resistance over the long term and ultimately allowed themselves to be incorporated into the new system of power. The majority of the Socialist Revolutionaries, who were not skillful in the manipulation of violence, had nothing with which to counter the Bolsheviks’ methods. Although their left wing, which was no less aggressive than the Bolsheviks and had cooperated with them at the outset, cultivated close contacts with armed groups, as well as helping to gain their loyalty for the Revolutionary Committee and, subsequently, the manipulated Soviet, the Left SRs soon frittered away their energies in disputes with the Bolsheviks and gradually lost all their decisive functions in the new system of power—partly on account of political pressure, partly due to their futile attempts to force policy changes by resigning from positions of responsibility. Their contacts with the armed groups became weaker. Unlike the SRs, the Bolsheviks con­ solidated their own institutions and military units ever further. This allowed them to finally remove the Left Socialist Revolutionaries from power and dis­ band the armed groups associated with them in mid-1918. The more the Bolsheviks were able to rely on other units such as the Red Guards, requisitioning troops, or parts of the Cheka, the more groups of un­ reliable supporters they could disband. However, the complete transforma­ tion of what had been spontaneous violence into controlled, political violence was still a very long and contradictory process in the towns of Voronezh,

354 Stefan K arsch

involving many errors and setbacks. In the early days, their own units proved hardly less criminal than the old paramilitary groups that had formed earlier without the Bolsheviks’ involvement. At least as far as the province of Voronezh is concerned, it is therefore certainly possible to explain why the Bolsheviks were able to mobilize suffi­ cient resources to uphold the new system and rule over the majority of the population that rejected them, even though they remained a minority. Given that similar processes also took place in other regions of Russia, this explains how the Bolsheviks’ control of local structures developed directly into a brutal dictatorship.

Structures and Practices of Power: 1917 in Nizhegorod and Kazan´ Provinces Sarah Badcock

The February Revolution initiated a profound reshaping of power structures at national, regional, and local levels. This chapter explores the structures of power that developed in the provinces of Nizhegorod and Kazan´ during 1917, and explores the relationships that evolved between them. Formal or institu­ tionalized power was held in urban centers and was dominated by educated elites, workers, and soldiers. Practical political power, that is, the ability to enact policy decisions and to influence people’s behavior, did not necessarily follow from formal or institutional power. Dual power, the often-used concept used to describe parallel Provisional Government and Soviet structures that emerged in Petrograd, does not reflect the structures of power that developed at a regional level. This study of Nizhegorod and Kazan´ indicates that away from the urban centers, power devolved to local leaders and communities, and connections with formal power were increasingly frayed. Structures of power in 1917 were defined both by the Provisional Govern­ ment’s commitment to democratization of local government and by locally defined factors. While the first of these is easy to explain and articulate, the second offered kaleidoscopic alternatives. Like Donald Raleigh, I argue that the February Revolution initiated a transfer of governmental power from cen­ ter to localities, as power ceded to those willing and able to wield it locally, and these local forms of power very much reflected local particularities and personnel.1 If local elites retained positions of authority, they did so by being responsive to local needs. This article presents an overview of the structures of power that developed in these cities. It will then consider the locations of power in rural communities by looking at two case studies: the implementation of land control in Kazan´ province and community responses to provisions questions. I argue that seats of power were multiple, overlapping, and shifting. Localism and economic interests dominated the rural population’s responses 1

 Donald J. Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer­ sity Press, 1986), 92–116.

Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 355–81.

356 Sarah Badcock

to the events of 1917, but the rural population was intimately connected to and engaged with national politics. The model of dual power articulated for Petrograd has dominated scholarly understandings of revolutionary power structures. Dual power described the relationship that developed between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet, whereby the soviet was seen to challenge the authority of the Provisional Government and they worked uneasily alongside one an­ other. This dual power structure is generally seen to have undermined the legitimacy and authority of the Provisional Government and contributed to the Provisional Government’s inability to govern effectively.2 This piece builds on the analysis of political power that was developed in my book.3 Evidence from Nizhegorod and Kazan´ supports evidence from other studies of Russia’s regions, indicating that this dual power model was not replicated straightforwardly away from the capital.4 The location of power in the provinces did not conform to any clear model, but was responsive to local conditions and personnel. Nizhnii Novgorod and Kazan´ Nizhegorod and Kazan´ provinces as they were in 1917 shared some boundaries and were situated in the central eastern belt of European Russia, and both were bisected by the Volga River, Russia’s main artery. Both provinces occupied key geographical locations for transport and trade, and were served by the Trans-Siberian Railway and water transportation on the Volga and the Kama Rivers. Both provinces were part of Russia’s fertile “Black Earth” belt and had correspondingly high levels of agricultural production, though Kazan´ was a net exporter of grain, whereas Nizhegorod imported grain. The population 2

 For recent treatments of dual power in Petrograd, see Christopher Read, From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian People and Their Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 47; Rex A. Wade, The Russian Revolution, 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 56–57. 3

 Sarah Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 4

 Donald Raleigh’s study of Saratov found that despite the formation of a local organ of the Provisional Government and a soviet in Saratov, the soviets not only cooperated with but actually participated in the new executive committees that were formed to govern the region (Revolution on the Volga, 92–116). Michael Hickey’s work on Smolensk’s local government explored the relationship between local government and the center, and presented a picture of administration forming as hybrid institutions, under pres­ sure from local popular organizations. Michael C. Hickey, “Local Government and State Authority in the Provinces: Smolensk, February–June 1917,” Slavic Review 55, 4 (1996): 863–81.

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of Nizhegorod province in 1917 was around 2 million, of which only 361,000 lived in the 13 towns of the province.5 Kazan´ province had a slightly larger population of nearer 3 million. Nizhegorod province was predominantly Great Russian in makeup, though with significant pockets of Mari and Old Believer populations. Kazan´ was included in the mid-Volga region, which was home to large non-Russian communities. Kazan´ had the highest proportion of nonRussians of all the mid-Volga provinces. Only around 40 percent (887,000) of Kazan´’s population was Great Russian. Tatars made up 32 percent of the population (721,000), Chuvash 22 percent (507,000), and Cheremis 5 percent (124,000). These different ethnic groups had diverse cultural and linguistic traditions, and make any generalizations about popular feeling in Kazan´ difficult. The ethnic composition of town and country and of various districts (uezdy) differed significantly around Kazan´. Non-Russian groups were often scattered rather than concentrated in one particular region, and some villages were ethnically mixed.6 Non-Russians were not proportionately represented in the region’s towns.7 Non-Russian communities’ disconnect from urban cul­ ture was to have important implications for them in 1917, when formal power structures crystallized around towns, leaving non-Russian groups somewhat isolated from the urban political elites. Isolation from political elites meant that non-Russian groups had limited voice in the formal power structures that developed in 1917. As we will see in the discussion of community responses to provisions questions however, though they lacked much formal involvement in regional administration, the non-Russian communities exercised political power through their withholding of information and resources from regional and national authorities. This highlights the difficulty of pinpointing sources of power—practical political power lay in the ability to enact policy decisions, and this power devolved to local communities in 1917, regardless of their level of engagement with national and regional administration. 5

 Catherine Evtuhov, Portrait of a Russian Province: Economy, Society, and Civilization in Nineteenth-Century Nizhnii Novgorod (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), 102, cites 1,278,361 in the middle of the 19th century. P. A. Golub et al., Velik­aia Oktiabr´skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia: Entsiklopediia (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklo­ pediia, 1987), 334, cites 2,081,200 population in 1917; N. P. Oganovskii, ed., Sel´skoe khoziaistvo Rossii v XX veke: Sbornik statistiko-ekonomicheskikh svedenii za 1901–1922 g. (Moscow: Novaia derevnia, 1923), 20–21, cites 2,051,700 in 1916. 6

 Robert Geraci, Window on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 33. 7

 In Kozmodem´iansk district, for example, though Great Russians made up only 8 percent of the district population, they made up 95 percent of the population in the town of Kozmodem´iansk, which meant that Great Russians dominated the adminis­ tration of the district. This pattern is replicated in other districts around Kazan´ province.

358 Sarah Badcock

The Mantra of Democracy in the Regional Capitals The process of democratization, whereby the Provisional Government de­ volved power and authority to newly elected local government bodies, was a central facet of 1917’s political evolution. Multiple and overlapping seats of power developed in the regions. Democratization described the attempts of local and central government bodies to draw ordinary people, who had pre­ viously had little or no popular representation, into local government. This process of democratization, and more particularly the process of selecting rep­ resentatives to a series of formal and informal representative structures, drew the population into conscious engagement with the state and constructed chains of political authority and responsibility from the grassroots to the elite. Individuals selected their representatives to speak for them at regional and national levels, through multiple different organizations. The individual and the state communicated through these representative structures, whatever they were called (committees, soviets, individual delegations). Political power at the local level was difficult to define and difficult to shape. It flowed through a range of conduits, some built and approved by the state, and some developing organically at local level. This fluidity of power reflected the extraordinary political uncertainties of 1917 and the brief window of popular agency that 1917 represented. The exact shape of the new networks of democratization varied from province to province. This is exemplified in Nizhegorod and Kazan´. The structures put in place by the Provisional Government, of provincial and district committees and food and land committees, sat alongside alternative structures of power, in particular soviets, which developed in accordance with local personnel and demands. Power did not move fluidly from center to periphery through the new administrative networks. The center was unable, on the whole, to dictate policy to the grassroots, and the desires and directions of the grassroots did not often make substantive impact on the direction of policy making. Instead, the initiatives on policy were seized at regional, local, or individual level. This picture confirms Michael Hickey’s insight that “democratization broke down the illusory wall between state and society, and weakened government authority.”8 This picture is not, however, indicative of anarchy—ordinary people sought to be involved in the polity and to engage in their communities’ political decision making, but in so doing they drew power away from the center. The structures that developed for governance in the towns of Kazan´ and Nizhnii Novgorod provided forums for coordinated administration between 8

 Hickey, “Local Government and State Authority,” 864.

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soviet and Provisional Government structures, but varied in form according to local peculiarities. As Novikova discusses for Arkhangel´sk province in this volume,9 the peculiarities of regional administration become more marked when we look at administration at district and township (volost´) levels. At these lower levels, forms of administration were extremely diverse and strongly reflected local conditions and personalities. In many dis­tricts and townships, soviets were not formed. Where soviets did exist, it often reflected the presence of significant numbers of workers or soldiers in the community, or the influence of a particularly dynamic local leader. Individual leaders were important in defining the shape of local power structures, though unfortunately the sources tend to be very limited about local leaders; frequent changes in personnel and the dramatic shift in the social background of such administrators from the prerevolutionary intelligentsia and nobles to the working peasant, which dominated 1917, makes individuals within lowerlevel administration hard to find. Cheboksary, a town in Kazan´, provides a vivid example of the potential for an individual to shape power relations in a particular locality.10 Karl Ianovich Grasis, a student administratively exiled to Cheboksary by the tsarist regime in August 1916, was the dominant force in town politics: Grasis is not representative of any well-known world outlook, but his convictions, and his alone, as an individual, are the center of local life, and everything turns around them.11 Grasis joined the Bolsheviks in May 1917, but it was his personality and ora­ torical skills rather than his political affiliations that secured him significant influence in Cheboksary. Grasis was extraordinarily hostile to former zemstvo workers, and intelligentsia figures generally. His slogan from the outset was “Down with all officials!” The Cheboksary soviet’s refusal to allow cooperative representatives to participate in the district’s provisional administration is an indication of such hostility, as well as the independent and authoritative line taken by Grasis.12 The provincial commissar reprimanded the soviet,

9

 See “Zemstvo, State, and Peasants in Arkhangel´sk Province, 1917–20,” 87–108.

10

 See Sarah Badcock, “From Saviour to Pariah: A Study of the Role of Karl Ianovich Grasis in Cheboksary during 1917,” Revolutionary Russia 15, 1 (2002): 69–96, for a detailed evaluation of Cheboksary in 1917.

11

 Golos Truda, 1 June 1917, 4.

12

 Letter from the Cheboksary Committee of Public Safety to the Cheboksary Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, 30 April 1917, Natsional´nyi arkhiv Respubliki Tatar­

360 Sarah Badcock

and warned that such matters were not within its jurisdiction.13 This is an interesting early reminder of the difficulties surrounding power and authority; Grasis felt under no obligation to conform to the power structures established by the Provisional Government, and his independent actions actively undermined their representatives. The political situation in Cheboksary polarized into two clearly opposing organizations, the town and district executive committees, pitted against the town soviet. An investigative committee instigated by the Kazan´ soviet re­ ported that the conflict between the two organizations stemmed from Grasis’s hostility to his removal as captain of the militia.14 Other sources indicate deeper-seated grounds for hostility. From the outset, Grasis positioned himself against all former administrators in the most unconciliatory terms. He held frequent meetings in Cheboksary town, at which he agitated against all the members of the executive and provisions committees.15 The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies was formed at Grasis’s initiative in April.16 It had 46 members, an executive committee of 8 men, and published a newspaper, Cheboksarskaia Pravda.17 The Cheboksary soviet opposed the Provisional Government from its inception, an unusual stance so early in

stan (NART) f. 1246 (Chancery of the Provisional Government’s Commissar, Kazan´ province), op. 1, d. 52, l. 303. 13

 Letter from the provincial commissar to the Cheboksary Committee of Public Safety, 26 May 1917, ibid., l. 304.

14

 Report from Ensign Nikitin, member of the executive committee of the Kazan´ province Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, to the executive committee of the Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies on events in Cheboksary, 24 June 1917, ibid., l. 413ob.

15

 Report from Ensign Nikitin, member of the executive committee of the Kazan´ province Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, to the executive committee of the Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies on events in Cheboksary, 24 June 1917, ibid., l. 414. 16

 This organization at its inception was known as the Soviet of Citizens’ Deputies, but reformed under the more usual name in mid-April (Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 25 April 1917, 3). 17

 Report from Ensign Nikitin, member of the executive committee of the Kazan´ province Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, to the executive committee of the Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies on events in Cheboksary, 24 June 1917, NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 52, l. 414. I have been unable to locate any extant copies of Cheboksarskaia Pravda; all ex­ cerpts from it are taken from secondary sources. Kuz´min notes that the records of the Cheboksary soviet were all destroyed in June and again in December 1917. V. L. Kuz´min, Krest´ianskoe dvizhenie v Chuvashii v period podgotovki Oktiabr´skoi revoliutsii, mart–oktiabr´ 1917 (Cheboksary: Chuvashskoe gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo, 1957), 129.

Structures and Practices of Power

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1917.18 Grasis reportedly dominated the soviet imperiously. A delegate from the Kazan´ soviet attended one of the Cheboksary soviet’s meetings in June, and stated that: Grasis actively managed all soviet (activity). There was no one objecting to him for this, but almost all the members of the soviet collaborated (in this domination by Grasis).19 Karl Grasis’s domination of power structures in Cheboksary demonstrates the extent to which local peculiarities and personalities defined the shape of politics in the localities. Party politics was often either low key or entirely absent in regional life. The Socialist Revolutionary Party had the greatest influence in rural areas, but even this was often confined to rather general statements of support for the party’s slogan “land and freedom.” The exceptions to this were the re­ gional capitals, where there was a concentration of intelligentsia, and areas with large worker populations (in particular, the large factory complex of Sormovo in Nizhegorod province). In reports submitted to the Nizhegorod provincial soviet from soviets in the region, political apathy and low party membership featured strongly. In a number of regions, there were no party political groups, while in others, such as Vyksunskii, of 7,000 workers only 350 were members of a political party. In Lukoianovskii district, fewer than 100 of over 1,000 workers had joined the small Socialist Revolutionary and Social Democrat groups, and there was no formal worker organization. Despite the dominance of party political discourse in the press and among the political elite, party politics was not a major force among the population at large. Central administration was located in the capitals in both provinces, and was formed around the town administrative bodies. The town Duma played a role in both towns, though it proved to be far more influential in Nizhnii Novgorod than in Kazan´. In both Nizhnii Novgorod and Kazan´ there were close links in structure, policy, and personnel between Provisional Government and soviet bodies. These links were not formalized in Nizhnii Novgorod as clearly as they were in Kazan´. In Nizhnii, the senior executive body in town was the provincial executive committee, headed by the provin­ cial commissar, and formed from representatives of all the large public or­ 18

 Kirillov, Karl Ianovich Grasis (Cheboksary: Chuvashskoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1969), 28.

19

 Report from Ensign Nikitin, member of the executive committee of the Kazan´ province Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, to the executive committee of the Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies on events in Cheboksary, 24 June 1917, NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 52, l. 414ob.

362 Sarah Badcock

ganizations in the province. It was also the executive organ of power for the province, with representatives from all the districts.20 It addressed the prob­ lem of “democratization” of its parts specifically at its meeting on 8 May. This rather late date gives us a good idea of how slow the process of democratization was in practice, as representatives had to be sought from Nizhegorod’s farflung districts: The provisional revolutionary assembly represents the organized public opinion of Nizhegorod province in questions of public political life, and exercises control over assemblies and representatives of gov­ ernment power, and also over zemstvo, town and peasant and other estate assemblies, if they are not reorganized on the basis of universal, equal, secret, direct voting.21 This unelected body aspired to coordinate the democratized parts of regional administration. Where democratization had not taken place, it was to “exercise control,” even though it had no clear popular legitimacy itself. Not least because of its lack of close connection with its constituency, the provincial executive committee was rather toothless. Though in principle it had no clear links with the soviets, in practice it worked closely with them. The different branches of government in Nizhnii Novgorod responded to crises harmoniously. In July, for example, when there was a soldiers’ rising in Nizhnii Novgorod town, the soviets worked with representatives from the political parties and the professional unions to control the situation and avert violent disturbances.22 Despite the lack of formal links between soviet and executive bodies, the close­ ness of their membership and of their aspirations ensured that dual power did not exist in practice. The pragmatic need to administer the region won over any dogmatic considerations that soviet and Provisional Government administration should be kept separate. The peasants’ soviet complained that the work of the provincial executive committee was so insignificant that it wasted the time and energies of its two delegates.23 Though the relationship between the provincial executive committee and the soviets was symbiotic, with two of the provincial commissar’s closest advisors also members of the 20

 Meeting of the Nizhegorod provincial executive committee, 25 July 1917, Gosudarst­ vennyi arkhiv Nizhegorodskoi oblasti (GANO) f. 1887, op. 1, d. 11, ll. 58–59. 21

 Meeting of the Nizhnii Novgorod town executive committee, 8 May 1917, GANO f. 1887 (Nizhegorodskaia province Executive Committee of the Provisional Government), op. 1, d. 1, l. 5.

22 23

 See my discussion of the soldiers’ rising in Badcock, Politics and the People, 154–57.

 Narod, 3 September 1917, 4.

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peasants’ soviet, the connections between the two were much less clearly and closely delineated than in Kazan´. In Kazan´, the dual power model was irreparably breached at the outset by the close cooperation that developed between the provisional government– sponsored commissar organization and the autonomously formed Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. These bodies worked in close cooperation in an enlarged Committee of Public Safety, which throughout 1917 provided an administrative hub for the province. The Kazan´ Committee of Public Safety formed the highest administrative organ of the province, and was formed at the end of March. The primary role of the Committee of Public Safety was to coordinate regional power structures. From the outset, the executive power of Kazan´ was broader and more inclusive than that of its comparable institution in Nizhnii Novgorod, and was more active in addressing the problem of its inadequate “democratization.” Though the committee was initially composed of former zemstvo mem­ bers, it was quickly supplemented with representatives from a diverse range of other organizations, including district commissars, all the main political parties, the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the Latvian Commit­ tee of Refugees, various professional and cooperative unions, and national groups.24 The Committee of Public Safety was clearly regarded by the Provi­ sional Government’s appointed representatives as a legitimate holder of pop­ ular support and regional power. The Provisional Government appointed V. N. Chernyshev as provincial commissar in May, replacing the incumbent com­ missar A. N. Plotnikov, who resigned on grounds of ill health.25 Chernyshev refused to take up the post until the Committee of Public Safety ratified it.26 The central question for its first meeting on 10 April was that, in its current incarnation, the Kazan´ Committee of Public Safety could not utilize full au­ thority among the population, and it needed therefore to be “democratized.” There was an extensive discussion over what this democratization should entail, and how it was to represent the majority of the population, who were peasants, but who had not yet formed into recognizable unions or affiliations.27 Iu. P. Denike, a well-known Menshevik activist, came up with a compromise 24

 Protocol of the meeting of the provincial Committee of Public Safety, 10 April 1917, NART f. 1353 (Kazan´ province Committee of Public Safety, Kazan´ town), op. 1, d. 1, l. 3.

25

 Telegram from provincial commissar A.N. Plotnikov to the minister of internal affairs, 19 May 1917, NART f. 1353, op. 1, d. 1, l. 73. 26

 Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 30 May 1917, 3.

27

 Protocol of the meeting of the provincial Committee of Public Safety, 10 April 1917, NART f. 1353, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 3–8.

364 Sarah Badcock

whereby representatives from the districts and peasants’ union would be added at a later stage. He stressed the need to keep the committee compact and workmanlike, as he was clearly aware of the dangerous impasses faced by excessively large committees.28 Although the committee’s executive body was trimmed down from 30 members to 15, he was unable to control the burgeoning size of the committee. The committee aimed to “embrace all sectors of public and political life in the town,” and quickly became unwieldy as an administrative organization. By the end of April it had 260 members, including such notables as representa­ tives of the beekeeping society. The committee’s president, Denike, was forced to address the problem of non-attendance at the committee by some of these disparate groups, which made quorum difficult to reach. Its executive com­ mittee decided to reduce the quorum of the meeting by a third in order to keep the committee functioning.29 This gives an indication of the clash between democratization and efficient administration. It is not possible to assess the political makeup of the Committee of Public Safety with any accuracy over the course of 1917, not least because political affiliations were not often attributed to members. Based on its leadership and its policies on key issues, however, we can be confident that it pursued moderate socialist politics in the course of 1917, keeping itself roughly in step with Provisional Government declarations. Denike, its first president, declared boldly that “the Committee of Public Safety works in total harmony with the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Depu­ ties. There can be no question of dual power in Kazan´.”30 Though Denike’s statement might be discounted as wishful thinking, Kazan´’s administration in fact bore out his claim. Joint meetings of the various branches of municipal and provincial power were common in Kazan´ and contributed to a more “joined up” feeling in government.31 The positions held by the Town Dumas in 1917 are a good indication of the extent to which local factors defined the devel­opment of local government. In Kazan´, as in Saratov, the Town Duma was a largely irrelevant body that contributed little to the governance of the town and was explicitly associated with the old regime.32 In Nizhnii Novgorod, on the other hand, the Duma became a rallying point for the moderate social­ 28  From the protocol of the meeting of the provincial Committee of Public Safety, 10 April 1917, NART f. 1353, op. 1, d. 1, l. 4ob. 29

 Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 29 April 1917, 3.

30

 Ibid.

31

 For example, the organization of Iron Day in Kazan´ at the end of July, a process in which all branches of power in Kazan´ participated. Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 7 July 1917, 3. 32

 For Saratov, see Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga, 96–97.

Structures and Practices of Power

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ists that dominated the town’s administration, and played a pivotal role in governing the town. The chief difference between the two was that Nizhnii Novgorod’s Duma was successful in disassociating itself with its past and identifying with the new forces of democratization, whereas in Kazan´ the Duma was out of step with democratization and therefore quickly lost legiti­ macy. Re-elections offered the Dumas an opportunity to align themselves fully with democratization. The date of re-elections was important; in Kazan´ they were not held till October, whereas in Nizhnii they were carried out in July. The Town Dumas were explicitly associated in popular consciousness with wealthy, old-regime Russia. In a piece encouraging people to vote, V. B. Libin, a Socialist Revolutionary Party member, declared, “Up until now, citizens, the majority of us only knew this about the Town Duma, that it was located on such and such a street, and that the town mayor was so and so.”33 The challenge for the Town Duma in the wake of the February Revolution was how to popularize and democratize itself. In Nizhnii Novgorod, as Libin proposed, ordinary people quickly “reclaimed” the Duma by voting in their own constituents. In Kazan´, on the other hand, from the very outset the Duma was out of step with the “democratization” sweeping Kazan´’s administration and failed to make an impact on governing the town. The Kazan´ Duma ini­ tially proposed that its membership should be supplemented by a further 45 representatives from “democratic society,” including ten from the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ deputies, 30 from the non-propertied elements (netsen­ zoviki), and five from national minorities. Initially, re-elections were scheduled for 5 May, but this was opposed by the soviet and Committee of Public Safety because it was considered insufficient time to prepare for the elections.34 The elections were not held until October. These late elections meant that the Duma never established itself as part of the “democratic” town administration, and was consequently marginalized. A problem for the Duma’s effectiveness in Kazan´ was that its supplemen­ tary, “democratic” membership was at absolute loggerheads with the old Duma members. At its very first meeting with new members on 26 April, the Duma’s membership was split right down the middle by a vote on sending greetings to the Provisional Government. The new faction, headed by the ubiquitous Denike, opposed the sending of greetings on the basis of current disagreements with the government, and was narrowly outvoted 59–46 by the old members. The current of hostility between old and new members was

33

 Narod, 17 May 1917, 2.

34

 Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 7 April 1917, 2.

366 Sarah Badcock

a discrete theme in the local press.35 Unsurprisingly, given its limited impact and the draw of numerous other administrative organizations, the Duma’s sessions were poorly attended on the whole, a factor that was apparently uti­ lized by the Duma’s non-democratic minority. There was a scandal in the Duma meeting of 5 July, when an extraordinary meeting was called towards the end of the day with only 36 deputies present (all the soviet deputies had left) to discuss the important question of whether the neighboring hamlet of Pokhorovo should be incorporated into Kazan´ town. This issue was politically sensitive because Pokhorovo was a predominantly heavy industrial area with a large worker population, which meant it was a potentially radicalizing force in town politics. The Duma meeting, taking advantage of sparse attendance, decreed that it should not be included in the town, despite Denike’s heated speech to the contrary.36 Such polarized views and obvious political maneu­ vering in the Duma continued to be apparent throughout 1917: strikes and searches carried out by the soviets were condemned in October by old Duma deputies, but the soviet deputies, “spelling out the facts,” clarified their position.37 In Nizhnii Novgorod, the Town Duma played an integral role in town governance. While the Kazan´ Duma was regarded as a hangover from the old regime, in Nizhnii Novgorod the Duma effectively bridged the gulf between old and new. It acted as the town’s administrator for much of 1917, but the most significant manifestation of this uniting role was its part in resisting the Bolshevik seizure of power.38 From the very outset of the revolution, Nizhnii Novgorod’s Duma sought to embrace the new “democratic” organizations, and to offer them representation. This ensured that there was no clear distinction between the local state apparatus and the new “revolutionary democracy.” The Town Public Committee was established by the Duma to “promulgate the aims and orders of the State Duma,” and included representatives from a range of public organizations, including soviets, unions, and zemstvos.39 On 10 April representatives of other public organizations were incorporated into the constitution of the Town Duma, including delegates from the soviet 35

 See, for example, Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 13 May 1917, 3.

36

 Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 7 July 1917, 3.

37

 Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 7 October 1917, 3.

38

 This role of coordinating resistance to the Bolshevik takeover was taken by city Dumas across the country. See Vladimir N. Brovkin, The Mensheviks after October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer­ sity Press, 1987), 19–21.

39

 From Town Duma records, 1 March 1917, GANO f. 27 (Nizhnii Novgorod Town Duma), op. 1, d. 1, l. 59.

Structures and Practices of Power

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of workers’ deputies.40 By the end of April, representatives from the Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies were included.41 This ensured that the Duma maintained some level of credence and authority despite its restricted franchise. New elections were held in good time on 16 July. These elections were conducted on the principles of direct, equal, secret, and universal suffrage, so ensuring that the newly selected Duma rightfully represented the town pop­ ulation. Though this date was later than some provincial towns managed, it was a good deal earlier than the October elections held in Kazan´. The Duma became a genuine democratic authority in the town, and seemed to have some degree of popular support and authority. Results of the July elections dem­ onstrated the authority enjoyed by the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR). Of the 105 seats, they won 40. In contrast to many other provincial cities, the PSR stood independently, rather than participating in a socialist bloc with Mensheviks and Popular Socialists (NS).42 When compared with national re­ sults, we can see that in Nizhnii Novgorod the PSR vote took the place of the socialist bloc in other areas. This provides a good indication of the strength and depth of the party’s organization and support in Nizhnii Novgorod. The situation was very different in Kazan´, where elections were not held until 8 October. The turnout was lamentable, with only 34,092 people casting a vote, which was less than 30 percent of those eligible. This compared unfavorably with the national average of voting in municipal elections, which was 46 per­ cent.43 The low turnout meant that a seat could be won with only 310 votes. The Kadets were the largest single group, winning 29 of the 105 seats available, but they were overwhelmed by the socialist blocs and parties, and by ethnic and religious groups. The results are interesting, particularly in the very strong showing made by the Kadet Party. Given the low turnout, one can speculate that the Duma’s status as a survivor institution caused it to draw support from the town’s moderate and conservative forces. On the other hand, the elections 40

 From Town Duma records, 10 April 1917, GANO f. 27, op. 1, d. 1, l. 191.

41

 From Town Duma records, 29 April 1917, ibid., l. 287.

42

 From Duma records, 28 July 1917, ibid., d. 2, ll. 69–70. The PSR victory in Nizhnii Novgorod was exceeded in Moscow, where the PSR won some 50 percent of the vote in the June elections to the Moscow town Duma. For an analysis of these results, see Diane P. Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 196–208. An analysis of results of Duma elections of 1917 in other towns can be found in William G. Rosenberg, “The Russian Municipal Duma Elections of 1917: A Preliminary Computation of Returns,” Soviet Studies 21, 2 (1969): 131–63.

43

 Information about the course of elections to the Town Duma, 4 August 1917, GANO f. 1887, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 8–11.

368 Sarah Badcock

also exposed the radicalism of Kazan´’s voting population by October. The “Young SRs,” led by Aleksandr Kolegaev, stood their own list, and were to the left of the SRs who remained allied to the Menshevik and soviet bloc. It was Kolegaev’s “Young SRs” who were to form the nucleus of Kazan´’s Left SR organization after the party’s formal split in November. The Bolsheviks per­ formed very strongly, and the Left SRs equaled the socialist bloc. It is difficult to make any comparisons between the party political climate of Kazan´’s and Nizhnii Novgorod’s Dumas, because the national political climate had swung hard to the left by October as compared with July. By October the political climate was transformed, and moderate socialists were increasingly being squeezed out of power. Some aspects of these voting pat­ terns, in particular the strong showing of the Bolshevik Party, can be explained by the lateness of the election. Others, however, offer some insight into more unique aspects of Kazan´’s political climate. The strong showing for national groups (of which fifteen were for Muslim groups, and three were for Jewish groups) indicates the importance of national questions in this ethnically di­ verse province. Secondly, the weak showing of both the socialist bloc and the SRs is apparent. The splintering of the SR group may well have actually weakened both causes.44 This survey of executive power in Kazan´ and Nizhegorod shows that though the power structures that developed in Nizhegorod and Kazan´ were essentially similar in form, their interrelations and operations differed signifi­ cantly according to local conditions. The Town Duma in Nizhnii Novgorod succeeded in meeting the need to democratize, and as a result formed a coherent part of the town’s administration, whereas the Kazan´ Town Duma was dismissed as an irrelevancy. In both towns, there was close coordination and cooperation between soviet and Provisional Government bodies, though this coordination was more firmly structurally embedded in Kazan´ than in Nizhnii Novgorod. The welter of challenges facing local government, along with the domination of moderate socialist personnel, masked to some extent the division of administrative branches between the “democratic” soviets and the “bourgeois” Provisional Government–sponsored associations. The distinctions between different types of political structure were sometimes opaque. Individuals, as well as the contours of the local political and social landscape, played important roles in determining the shape and allegiances of local administrative structures. These administrative structures provided the skeleton for political power in the localities. It was, however, the actions and motivations of local communities that empowered and fleshed out these structures. 44

 Ibid. See also Rosenberg, “The Russian Municipal Duma Elections.”

Structures and Practices of Power

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The Mantra of Democracy in the Countryside The examples explored below illustrate that the rural population was connected to and engaged with national politics, but that localism and eco­ nomic interests determined their responses to the challenges of 1917. The administrative structures that developed in the districts largely followed the blueprint, offered by the center, of provisional committees, food and provisions committees, zemstvos, and soviets. This network of committees spread a web of multiple and overlapping locations for political power across the regions. They operated in ways that reflected local peculiarities, and did not replicate the dual power model often used to describe the situation in Petrograd. This responsiveness of administrative structures to local conditions was even more marked away from the regional capitals. Administration in many cases took the form and title required of it by central edicts, but if it was to operate with the support of the local population, it had to reflect local needs and interests, not national needs and interests. Local populations demanded responsiveness from their administrators, and acted resolutely and sometimes violently if popular mood deemed the administrations incompetent or unresponsive. As we look at the structures and practices of political power further away from the regional capitals, we see that the Provisional Government’s enduring faith in democratization as a solution to peasant disorder was misplaced. Local direct democracy enabled local populations to wield massive influence over the shape of local administration.45 The local population’s influence on local administration empowered them in local politics. Political elites represented the actions of the rural population as “disorder” and “misunderstandings.” The political elites refused to recognize the rural population as rational and empowered actors, or that the nexus of power had slipped away from its traditional home, the capitals and established political forums, and towards those who were able to enact policy decisions. Control of land and provisions questions was determined by local communities and not by political elites, in the course of 1917. In the first months of revolution, the political elite faithfully repeated the mantra that representative local government was fundamental to the establishment of rural order, and that “peasant disorders” could be resolved through transforming the system of local government on democratic bases. The statement issued by the Kazan´ Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies in April, for example, declared that “it was necessary to liquidate peasant lawlessness by means of changing the 45

 Retish comes to similar conclusions for Viatka: “District committees went beyond their jurisdiction to seek economic relief for peasants.” Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peas­ ants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 97.

370 Sarah Badcock

system of local self-government and zemstvos on a democratic basis.”46 This belief was supplemented by the idea that peasant actions against state decrees were founded on misunderstanding and ignorance, and could therefore be resolved through education. In March and April in Nizhegorod province, the political elite frequently noted peasant incomprehension at the meanings and limitations of their newfound revolutionary freedom: Vasil´skii district commissar T. M. Burushkin reported that in the dis­ trict in general it was peaceful, but that the population, owing to their ignorance, are badly oriented in questions of their rights and laws and resort to excesses which are not reduced by the newly renovated state structures… (10–11 June 1917).47 This belief was to be fundamentally undermined in the course of 1917, as peasants flexed their newfound political muscle and increasingly directed their affairs in willful transgression of central policy.48 Peasant “disorder” was often based on well-informed interpretations of the new order. Land rela­ tions provide excellent illustrations of this point. I argue that land relations illustrate the ways in which the rural population sought both to engage with the state and to form a nexus of power in their own localities. The patterns of peasant action both in Nizhegorod and Kazan´ provinces share characteristics shown in other regional and national studies of peasant direct action, which included seizure of land and wood, attacks on peasant separators, and enthu­ siasm to “validate” peasant actions and infractions. These general trends, when explored more closely, reflected local conditions, and varied from dis­ trict to district within each province. Local responses to land questions in Kazan´ illustrate the disjoint between national, regional, and local priorities, and the impotence of the center in implementing decisions. Kazan´ had an exceptionally radical and proactive Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies. The Kazan´ Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies was influential in shaping and legitimizing land relations in the region. The land law issued in May 1917 by the Kazan´ Soviet of 46

 Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 14 April 1917, 3.

47

 Protocol of the meeting of district commissars in Nizhegorod province, 10–11 April 1917, GANO f. 1882 (Nizhegorod province Provisional Government commissar), op. 1, d. 13, ll. 155–59.

48

 There were a series of national peasant congresses in the summer of 1917 that offered peasants opportunities to engage with the polity and to articulate their demands. Orlando Figes argued that peasants did not understand the lexicon of revolution at all, a notion I, among others, contested. See Orlando Figes, “The Russian Revolution of 1917 and Its Language in the Villages,” Russian Review 56, 3 (1997): 324–25; Badcock, Politics and the People, chap. 5.

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Peasants’ Deputies was used as a basis for land seizure across the province.49 The soviet issued a decree on 13 May that pre-empted the Provisional Gov­ ernment’s prognostications and transferred all land, privately held and other­ wise, into the hands of the local township committees prior to the decision on land by the Constituent Assembly. 50 The Kazan´ provincial land committee supported this decree. In many respects the May land decree validated and confirmed statements already made by local land committees that sought to regulate land seizure through regional control.51 The move enraged local landowners and drove a rift between the soviet and the infuriated Provisional Government authorities, but also had the effect of ameliorating the violence and irregularity of land seizure. All local reports from Kazan´ province point to diminished rural unrest as a result of orderly transfer of land to peasant hands. This contradicts statistics for peasant unrest in 1917, which indicate that Kazan´ saw among the highest levels of agrarian unrest in the country, topped only by Saratov and Astrakhan on the lower Volga.52 This contradiction highlights the difficulties of quantifying rural unrest, something commented on by Baker in chapter 10. In Kazan´, the high levels of reported unrest in fact reflected the number of complaints from disgruntled landowners, rather than levels of “disorder” in terms of land use and public unrest. The extent to which land seizures constituted “anarchy” is very much a matter of perspective. For the victims of the seizures, the loss of their private property constituted anarchy. The Kazan´ regional administration, on the other hand, argued that the law enabled controlled and systematic utilization of land stocks, and regulated land seizures, reducing the risk of violence. An undated report from the provincial commissar to the minister for land de­clared that the soviet decree had spread across the province very rapidly, and there had been a swell of land seizures, woodcutting, and violence against land­ lords as a result.53 A meeting of the Kazan´ provincial land committee on 15 49

 For example, in Marasinskaia township, Spasskii district (Izvestiia Kazanskogo gubernskogo soveta krest´ianskikh deputatov, 7 October 1917, 2–3).

50  Kazan´ Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies decree on land, 13 May 1917, NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 51, ll. 275–77. 51

 Telegram from Tri Ozera village, 15 April, declaring that all land was to be trans­ ferred to land committees prior to the decision of the Constituent Assembly, ibid., d. 41, l. 52.

52

 A. D. Maliavskii, Krest´ianskoe dvizhenie Rossii v 1917 g. (mart–oktiabr´) (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), 374–80. Maliavskii produced his figures on peasant disorder from a wide range of sources.

53

 Telegram from Kazan´ Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies to the minister of land, undated, NART f. 983 (Kazan´ province Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies), op. 1, d. 23, l. 209.

372 Sarah Badcock

June noted that there was no anarchy in the province, and that this vindicated their decision to go along with the peasant soviet’s land decree.54 The main land committee wrote to protest about events in Kazan´ on 16 October, but the Kazan´ land committee stood by its actions, again pointing to the much im­ proved land relations in the region.55 The Kazan´ Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies sent a telegram to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Land, and the All-Russian Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies in an attempt to justify their actions to central authority. The telegram reiterated that the land law had produced calm in land relations, and had averted rural anarchy.56 In some townships there had been “misunderstandings” between commune peas­ants and separators, but these had been resolved.57 These positive reports do not of course reflect the experiences of landowners, who were no doubt forced to relinquish their property. Overall, the picture was one of controlled and economical land use, and total transgression of the norms of private land ownership.58 This example of land use in Kazan´ demonstrates that practical political power lay in the ability to enact policy decisions, and the Provisional Government lacked this power. It also shows that where local administration was responsive to popular needs, it retained support and authority. Grain supply was, along with land control, the dominant issue in many rural areas. The examples developed below explore the ways in which power relations developed between local populations and regional and national au­ thorities in relation to grain supply. We see clearly that localism and economic interests dominated the responses of the rural population. The Provisional Government relied on state power to resolve Russia’s escalating provisions crisis by extending the grain monopoly established by the tsarist regime. State power failed to implement its objectives because its objectives did not reflect 54

 Journal of the meeting of the Kazan´ provincial land committee, 23–24 September 1917, NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 183, ll. 34–46. See also meeting of Kazan´ provincial land committee, 22 June 1917, NART f. 174 (Kazan´ province land administration), op. 1, d. 9, l. 9. For an example of exceptionally orderly and equitable decisions about land use, see report of Chistopolsk district Committee of Public Safety, 15 June 1917, NART f. 1351 (Chistopolsk district Committee of Public Safety), op. 1, d. 10, l. 38. 55

 Journal of the meeting of Kazan´ provincial land committee, 16 October 1917, NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 183, ll. 47–50.

56

 Telegram from Kolegaev, president of Kazan´ Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, to the All-Russian Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, Chernov, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, undated, NART f. 983, op. 1, d. 21, ll. 121–22.

57

 Journal of the general meeting of members of Cheboksary district land committee, 1 August 1917, NART f. 174, op. 1, d. 55, ll. 50–52.

58

 Journal of the meeting of the Kazan’ province land committee, 22–23 July 1917, NART f. 174, op. 1, d. 9, ll. 23–28.

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local needs, and because local power structures responded to local needs and not to national policy. There were no incentives for peasants to release grain because there was no monopoly on other goods that peasants might want to purchase, and the fixed prices set for grain did not reflect market prices. Nizhegorod needed to import grain to feed its population, while Kazan´ was a significant exporter of grain. The Provisional Government set up provisions committees at the regional, district, and township level. These committees were intended to administer national food policy by coordinating censuses and overseeing the grain monopoly. Popular hostility towards provisions commit­tees was commonplace in both Nizhegorod and Kazan´, though the grounds for this hostility varied from place to place. Generally speaking, in areas with a grain surplus, local peasants resisted the very establishment of provisions committees, whereas in areas that were grain hungry, the population remained hostile to the provisions committees for their perceived failings. Provisions committees were set up in most townships around Nizhegorod province, many of which were grain hungry. Provisions committees in grain hungry townships articulated the needs and anxieties of the local population. Provisions com­mittees were not widespread or successful in Kazan´, in principle an exporting region. This failure of provisions committees to be established in grain export­ing regions exposed the Provisional Government’s inability to enact its own policies. If regional administrations did not meet popular needs and demands, they were directly challenged by the population with responses ranging from disobedience, through open hostility, to outright violence. Allegations of incompetence and corruption followed district and township provisions com­ mittees, especially in the areas most seriously threatened with hunger. The prob­lem was not widespread incompetence on the part of these committees, but rather a complex interaction between the population’s high expectations of their new administration to deliver, and the newly elected representatives’ accountability. The peasants of Sotnurskaia township, Tsarevokokshaiskii district, told their village provisions commissar, “We elected you, you must listen to us.”59 Minutes from Lukoianovskii district provisions committee meeting in May exposed the extreme mistrust and hostility the district provisions committee provoked.60 Peasants accused them of inactivity and corruption, and threatened them with violence. The provisions committee denied the charges against them, blaming the provisioning problems in the 59

 Note to Tsarevokokshaiskii district provisions committee from Sotnurskaia township provisions administration, 1 September 1917, NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 73, l. 146. 60

 General meeting of Lukoianovskii district executive committee, 27 May 1917, GANO f. 1887, op. 1, d. 18, ll. 27–33.

374 Sarah Badcock

area on the national situation and the policies of the provincial provisions committee. The committee struggled to obtain grain, even though they had funds available, and waited for deliveries from neighboring regions. Reports came in from all over Nizhegorod province of attacks on the pro­ visions administration. In Gorbatovskii district, provisions provoked open public disorder by July 1917,61 which persisted through August and September. The geographical location of the district meant that after the river navigation season closed at the onset of autumn, there were no effective means of getting grain into the district.62 Orchestrated demonstrations against the provisions administration in the town of Gorbatov went on for four days in August, and culminated in the crowd demanding the resignation of the provisions administration.63 Individuals came from different townships in the district to participate in the protest, and the crowd met at ten o’clock in the morning for four consecutive mornings. The demands of the crowd were “Give us grain. You will make us starve.” The crowd would not accept explanations from members of the administration. A voice was heard from the crowd, cursing foully, and threatening members of the administration with murder. At that moment several members of the administration ran away. The crowd seized the president of the administration, intending to lynch him, but the commissar and armed soldiers persuaded the crowd to leave him untouched. He was then arrested by the militia, together with another administration member, Sokolov, who, on the way to the guardhouse, had his beard pulled by the crowd, and the key of the provisions ware­ house taken.64 Popular resistance to census taking and the grain monopoly was fearsome in Kazan´ province. Of all Russia’s surplus provinces, Kazan´ was one of the worst providers of grain for the front in 1917. For February and March 1917, Kazan´ provided 12 percent of its grain quota to the army. Only the Don re­ gion performed worse.65 Kazan´ province offered virulent and often violent resistance to the grain monopoly. Surplus areas with non-Russian populations 61

 Izvestiia soveta rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov, 16 July 1917, 4.

62  “Resolution of the Seven Soviets of Gorbatovskii District,” Izvestiia soveta rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov, 27 August 1917, 4. 63

 Narod, 3 September 1917, 4.

64 65

 Ibid.

 N. D. Kondrat´ev, Rynok khlebov i ego regulirovanie vo vremia voiny i revoliutsii (Moscow: Nauka, 1991), 419–21. Ukraine also did poorly. Mark Baker’s study of Kharkiv peasants

Structures and Practices of Power

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were more likely to come into conflict with the provisions administration, and were more likely to be violent.66 A meeting of Kazan´ province’s provisions committee on 5 July offered detailed reports on the provisions situation in eight of Kazan´’s twelve districts. In many areas provisions committees had not been organized at all, and all accounts reported fierce resistance to the grain monopoly. Some townships in Kozmodem´ianskii district destroyed the whole provisions administration.67 Cheboksarskii, Kozmodem´ianskii, and Tsarevokokshaiskii districts in the northwest of the province were the most unruly of all, and “there was in practice no grain monopoly.”68 These three districts had a significantly lower sown area than the rest of the province.69 The Provisional Government did not have the wherewithal or the practical authority to administer the grain monopoly. The Provisional Government’s decision to claim all grain above subsistence norms as state property relied on local food supply organs to take successful inventories and establish sound links with producers. Like Fraunholtz’s study of Penza in chapter 10, my research finds that data collection problems were central to the subsequent crises in food collection. A survey from the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ deputies revealed that only two of thirty-eight provinces had completed a census.70 There is strong evidence that the rural population openly resisted the collection of data. In Kazan´, census taking, sometimes undertaken alongside the updating of electoral registers, met with fierce resistance. A township provisions committee in Tsarevokokshaiskii uezd noted that the population refused to abide by its decrees, and was unwilling to give any information about the number of residents and quantity of grain. The report noted the refusal of villagers there to consider national interests: “Russia is forgotten: the word rodina (motherland) is understood only as their

in chapter 6 of this volume indicates that, as in Kazan´, peasants refused to cooperate with food supply organs. 66

 This correlates with Retish’s findings for Viatka (Retish, Russia’s Peasants, 103).

67

 Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 13 July 1917, 3.

68

 Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 15 July 1917, 3. Extreme hostility to the grain monopoly was also manifested in Kharkiv. Mark Baker, “Beyond the National: Peasants, Power and Revolution in Ukraine,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies 24, 1 (1999): 51.

69

 For details, see Badcock, Politics and the People, 185, table 7.ii.

70

 K. I. Zaitsev and N. V. Dolinskii, “Organization and Policy,” in Food Supply in Russia during the War, ed. Petr Struve (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930), 105.

376 Sarah Badcock

village.”71 The evidence presented here suggests that Russia was not forgotten, but was denied; peasants chose to refuse national government requests. In Mamadyshskii uezd, the explanation for refusals of census taking in a number of townships was that the population, many of whom were soldatki, lived solely on black bread and were being asked to give more than they had.72 The uezd committee responded by increasing the allowance of retained grain.73 Some peasant resistance shown to census-takers demonstrated their consciousness and awareness. Paperwork was targeted in attacks on administration, which reflected a neat awareness of the importance of being counted. In Sandyrskaia township, the provisions administration had its paperwork, with details of the census, particularly targeted by crowds of rioters who broke into buildings and destroyed all books, papers, and docu­ mentation on 18 September.74 Destruction of paperwork was a common fea­ ture of peasant attacks on provisions administration in surplus areas. The captain of the soldiers sent to carry out the census in Tsarevokokshaiskii dis­ trict reported that in one township, Abranskii, not a single resident would give any information, even their names. They threw stones at soldiers, burnt all the paperwork of the township provisions administration, and threatened to murder those who defended the grain monopoly.75 In the Chuvash village of Bol´shoi Sundir, Kozmodem´ianskii district, Zapolskii, the president of the provisions administration, was murdered on 14 August. Peasants had gathered outside the administration building and demanded the destruction of land and pro­visions census listings. When Zapolskii refused, the crowd dragged him out onto the street and beat him to death with sticks and stakes.76 In Toraevskaia township, Iadrinskii district, Kazan´, soldiers were sent in September to protect the beleaguered provisions administration and carry out censuses. Despite soldier presence, however, on 28 September

71

 Note from township provisions committee to Tsarevokokshaiskii district provisions administration, September 1917, NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 73, l. 145.

72

 Report of outside agitator brought to Mamadyshskii district to resolve conflict in Kabyk-Kuperskaia township, 16 July 1917, ibid., d. 43, l. 77.

73

 Letter from Mamadyshskii district commissar to provincial commissar, 18 July 1917, ibid., l. 30. 74

 Letter from Sandyrskaia township provisions administration to province provisions ad­ministration, 18 September 1917, ibid., d. 73, l. 148.

75

 From captain of command in Tsarevokokshaisk town to Tsarevokokshaiskii district provisions administration, 28 September 1917, ibid., l. 176. 76

 Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 19 September 1917, 4.

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crowds dispersed the provisions committee, and destroyed all its paperwork. A further 80 soldiers were sent to quell the disorder.77 Contemporaries’ explanations for this heated resistance tended to emphasize that peasants “misunderstood” or were “ignorant” of the grain monopoly, or were led astray by “dark” forces operating in the villages, or wealthy peasants.78 The non-Russians were singled out in the regional press as being particularly “dark” and especially hostile to the imposition of the grain monopoly. Complaints were also made of excessive demands for grain being made on villagers, who were not left enough to feed themselves and their livestock.79 The political elite claimed that the solution to these problems was education and understanding, just as Peter Fraunholtz finds, the Soviet government blaming ignorance rather than willful resistance for failure to meet provisions targets.80 As 1917 progressed, attempts at educating villagers on provisions matters were repeatedly rebuffed by peasant communities, and peasants made increasingly “conscious” statements of resistance to the grain monopoly. From summer onwards, we correspondingly see explanations for provisions disorder being given as the evils of market forces and of dark counterrevolutionary force in the villages, and the solution was seen increasingly to be the use of armed force. The peasants’ titular leaders became increasingly disillusioned with the people they had looked towards to help the country out of the provisions crisis. In Tsarevokokshaiskii district, reports initially talked of “misunderstandings.” These so-called misunderstandings escalated into “open risings against the provisions and land committees and against the militia captain” by mid-September. The only solution open to the provincial commissar was to send in more soldiers.81 77

 NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 44: l. 167 (telefonogram from captain of militia to Iadrinskii district commissar, 19 September); l. 167 (telegram from provincial commissar to dis­ trict commissar, 20 September); l. 171 (telegram from provincial commissar to district commissar, 21 September); l. 188 (telefonogram from provincial commissar to district commissar, 28 September); l. 211 (telegram to provincial commissar from captain of militia, 7 October 1917). 78

 Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 13 July 1917, 3; see also Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 19 September 1917, 4, for accusations that peasants were led astray by “kulaks.”

79

 See, for example, Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 2 June 1917, 4, letter from Spasskii district; Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 27 July 1917, 4, letter from Chistopolskii district; NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 43, l. 77 (report of outside agitator brought to Mamadyshskii district to resolve conflict in Kabyk-Kuperskaia township, 16 July 1917).

80

 See Peter Fraunholtz, “The Collapse and Rebuilding of Grain Procurement Author­ ity in Civil War Russia: The Case of Penza, 1919, pp. 67–86 in this volume. 81

 Note to Tsarevokokshaiskii district PC from Sotnurskaia township provisions admin­istration, 1 September 1917, NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 73, l. 146; letter from Tsarevo­

378 Sarah Badcock

The provisions’ committees’ attempts to win villagers’ cooperation with education programmes routinely failed. The Kazan´ district provisions ad­ ministration reported to the provincial provisions committee on 12 July that the population categorically refused to implement the grain monopoly, and that only strong military force would enable the grain monopoly to be enacted. In a number of townships, provisions educators had been beaten and terrorized. Most communities refused to organize provisions committees, and where they did exist, as in Baltasynskaia township, they were re-elected and themselves opposed the grain monopoly.82 When a provisions instructor came to Baltasynskaia in August, he was told to address “requests” for fixed prices to the commune council, and the Tatar villagers said, “we will submit to the law, but we won’t submit to norms of consumption and fixed prices.”83 This situation did not improve in the district. Kazan´’s district commissar wrote to the provincial commissar at the start of September that he had met extreme hostility when trying to defend the grain monopoly in Kliuchei village, Kudmorskaia township, and had been forced to run away.84 The villagers demonstrated their ability to organize very effectively if they felt it necessary. In Karmyshkaia township, land and provisions committees had been organized, but while the land committees operated effectively and energetically, the pro­ visions committee was completely inactive, as the population would not allow a census of grain to be taken. The organizer concluded that “where there is no grain, the population organizes committees; where there is grain, the popu­ lation resists.” 85 Where provisions committees were formed in surplus areas, if they were to survive, they too opposed the grain monopoly. In Bol´she-Iuginskaia township, Kozmodem´ianskii district, members of the township provisions

kokshaiskii district commissar to provincial commissar, 16 September 1917, NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 73, l. 137. 82

 Letter from Kazanskii district provisions administration to Kazan´ province provi­ sions committee, 12 July 1917, NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 75, l. 53; telegram from district commissar to provincial commissar, 19 July 1917, ibid., l. 60; Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 26 July 1917, 4.

83

 Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 12 August 1917, 4.

84  Report from Kazan´ district commissar to provincial commissar, September 1917, NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 75, l. 295. 85  Kazanskaia rabochaia gazeta, 26 July 1917, 4. Note that Sergei Liubichankovskii also discusses popular resistance in the Lower Volga region, though he does not relate it to provisions questions. See “Revolution and the Creation of the Volost´ Zemstvo in Southeastern Russia (Spring–Fall 1917),” pp. 45–66 in this volume.

Structures and Practices of Power

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committee themselves incited crowds against the grain monopoly.86 Resistance shown to the grain monopoly was in no way uniformly “elemental” or arising from ignorance, as reporters implied. The township provisions administration in Koshklovskaia township, Tsarevokokshaiskii district, resigned en masse in August, as they faced total noncooperation from the local population. A gathering of peas­ants from the township that met on 11 August refused to acknowledge that the township provisions committee had any jurisdiction over them, and categorically refused to participate in the grain monopoly or in the census.87 Faced with such conscious and open hostility, the provincial commissar sent troops to seize cattle forcibly.88 The authorities resorted to soldiers with increasing fre­quency as the summer wore on, but were unable to enforce their will on the localities. Provisions questions exposed the fulcrum of power relationships—local administrations had to respond to local needs or be removed, and the Provisional Government was unable to enforce its policy decisions on local communities, even when they resorted to force. Conclusions This piece demonstrates that the model of dual power does not encapsulate the multilayered and complex power relationships that developed in Russia’s regions through 1917. The structural differences between administrative structures in Nizhnii Novgorod and Kazan´ demonstrate, as Raleigh pointed out in his seminal work on Saratov, that local conditions were critical to the evolution of power.89 The distinction between different types of political struc­ ture was not necessarily clear cut. As Novikova has shown in this volume for Civil War Arkhangel´sk, it was individuals and actions, rather than the names of administrative structures, which determined the authority and success of local government. Where the town Duma was quickly re-elected, and responsive to democratic concerns, as in Nizhnii Novgorod, it enjoyed a measure of support and authority in the town. Where it was not quickly re-elected, and its actions did not reflect popular sympathies, as in Kazan´, it became obsolete. In the rural context, if the soviet, or zemstvo, or grain or land committee, reflected the needs and desires of the local community in 86

 Note from Bol´she-Iuginskaia township PC to Kozmodem´ianskii district provisions administration, 20 June 1917, NART f. 1246, op. 1, d. 48, l. 204.

87

 Letter from Koshklovskaia township provisions administration to Tsarevokok­ shaiskii district provisions administration, 15 August 1917, ibid., d. 73, ll. 88–90.

88

 Telegrams between provincial commissar and provincial provisions administration, 2 September 1917, ibid., ll. 89–90).

89

 Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga, 92ff.

380 Sarah Badcock

its actions, it would be supported. If it did not, it was ignored or removed, sometimes violently. The administrative structures that developed in 1917 had to be elastic and responsive to their constituencies if they were to remain relevant. The Provisional Government lacked meaningful force to impose its policy decisions on the regions, and regional administrations were unable to impose their decisions on local communities. These multiple locations of power were in part determined by the Provisional Government’s commitment to democracy, and to the devolution of power. Democracy did not provide a panacea to the problems facing national government in 1917. Democracy did, however, allow for the evolution of variously routed arteries of power, and these arteries of power were utilized by rural and urban populations to connect with the state. Peasants engaged with the center in 1917, even if their engagement was a negative one—refusing to adhere to imprecations from the center and developing their own answers to the issues of the moment. Rural people were willing to conform to national legal norms, but they rejected those policies that were regarded as improper or unjust. A selective model of citizenship developed in 1917—the complex balance of rights and duties that had developed in late imperial Russia was blown away by the revolution, and replaced with a model of citizenship that was heavy on rights and very light on duties. Jane Burbank proposed a model of differential rights and obligations as the characteristic of citizenship in the late imperial Russian state.90 This state-citizen nexus was to undergo a huge shift in 1917, as rural people clamored to secure the rights and freedoms that they perceived had been offered to them, but challenged the obligations required of them by the state. The faith in democracy that the Provisional Government and its regional administrators evinced left them badly exposed by the population’s challenging of obligations. This grassroots study allows us to speculate that the model of citizenship introduced by the February Revolu­ tion was unworkable without the imposition of coercion to extract obligations from citizens, as we see in the Civil War period. The responses of Nizhegorod’s and Kazan´’s rural population to state policies on grain and land offer concrete examples of how the ordinary citi­ zen utilized these chains, and interacted with the state. The connections be­ tween central and regional power frayed as regional administrations made autonomous decisions. The inability of central authorities to control these independent initiatives accentuated the devolution of power and authority in Nizhegorod and Kazan´, away from the center and the provincial administra­ tion, and towards lower level organizations. We see too that divisions emerged not only between central government and ordinary people, but also 90

 Jane Burbank, “An Imperial Rights Regime: Law and Citizenship in the Russian Empire,” Kritika 7, 3 (2006): 397–431.

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between central government and local government. Both central government and local leaders struggled to recognize peasants’ political autonomy and agency, preferring to mask their alarm at peasant action with explanations of ignorance and “misunderstanding” in the first months of revolution. As Hickey showed in his study of Smolensk, and as Retish showed in his work on Viatka, the rural population sought to work creatively in constructing new structures and legitimizing their actions, and were not only forces of destruction.91 Formal institutionalized power was held in urban centers and dominated by educated elites, workers, and soldiers. Practical political power, however, lay in the ability to enact policy decisions, and this power devolved down to local communities in 1917.

91

 Michael C. Hickey, “Urban Zemliachestva and Rural Revolution: Petrograd and the Smolensk Countryside in 1917,” Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 23, 2 (1996): 143–59; Retish, Russia’s Peasants, chap. 2.

Echoes of the International across the Historiographies Donald J. Raleigh

Impressively researched and varied in the questions their authors raise, the essays composing this anniversary volume deepen our understanding of the diverse iterations of the Russian Revolution and Civil War in the em­ pire’s provinces and borderlands. Equally important, the collection also reveals, even symbolizes, the reintegration of our Russian colleagues into a broader historiographical community as well as how historians’ views on and approaches to studying the revolution have evolved in the past quarter century. Until the dissolution of the USSR, two largely separate historiographies existed—a Soviet one, and an underdeveloped non-Soviet historiography for which the Russian provinces remained largely invisible. In the USSR, the establishment at the start of the 1920s of Istpart (Komissiia po istorii Oktiabr´skoi revoliutsii i R.K.P. [bol´shevikov] or Commission on the History of the October Revolution and the Russian Communist Party), contributed greatly to documenting local revolutions.1 But this changed by 1938, with the imposition of an official Stalinist historical text, History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [Bolsheviks]: Short Course Istoriia Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (Bol’shevikov): Kratkii kurs (History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [Bolsheviks]: Short Course), which established a canonical interpretation of the Russian Revolution that allowed no inde­ pendent story lines for how the events of 1917 played out in the provinces. After Josef Stalin’s death in 1953, the premier Soviet historical journal Voprosy istorii (Problems of History) edited by A. M. Pankratova and E. N. Burdzhalov challenged this orthodoxy, breathing new life into study of the revolution when, in 1956, Burdzhalov published two revisionist articles on the role of the Bolsheviks in the February Revolution that exposed the shortcomings of the patently falsified Short Course. Such ferment even impacted preparations under way throughout the country to issue local document collections and 1

 Historian Frederick C. Corney refers to the search for an acceptable history of the October Revolution as “the group dynamic of memory articulation.” See his Telling October: Memory and the Making of the Bolshevik Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer­ sity Press, 2004). Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 383–402.

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historical accounts on the 40th anniversary of the revolution in 1957. The year 1956, however, witnessed not only N. S. Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and his cult, but also the ruthless Soviet invasion of Hungary and a temporary retreat from the thaw. Under fire, Burdzhalov lost his associate editorship— and his appointment at Moscow University—yet over a decade later managed to publish his two-volume account of the February Revolution, volume 2 of which chronicles the revolution in provincial Russia. His works are among the last few groundbreaking historical publications on 1917 from the thaw period.2 Moreover, a group of so-called New Direction historians in the 1960s raised fresh questions about revolutionary Russia and other topics, only to find themselves beleaguered and then in retreat by the start of the 1970s.3 Outside the Soviet Union, the first local accounts of the Russian Revolution did not appear until the 1970s, and for good reason. Despite the importance of local history in forcing major reevaluations of the national histories of Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, as well as elsewhere, research in local history remained at a formative stage in the field of Russian studies, largely because the closed nature of Soviet society had rendered the country’s heartland invisible. Publication in 1958 of political scientist Merle Fainsod’s Smolensk under Soviet Rule, based on the Smolensk Archive, which was captured by German armies in 1941 and later fell into American hands, inaugurated serious study of Soviet local history in the United States. The appearance of Fainsod’s study, however, may have discouraged further explorations of this sort, since his book cast Smolensk as a “typical” Soviet city and claimed to have made exhaustive use of the archive, the only one of its kind available in the West. Moreover, the dominant intellectual paradigm in postwar Western scholarship on the Soviet Union before the 1970s, totalitarianism, may also have discouraged study of the Soviet periphery since it placed so much em­ phasis on Moscow’s ability to discipline and manipulate the population. In this regard, Western views of a monochromatic Soviet political and social landscape ironically had an uneasy correspondence with Soviet narratives 2

 E. N. Burdzhalov, O taktike bol´shevikov v marte–aprele 1917 goda,” Voprosy istorii, no. 4 (1956): 470–88; and “Eshche o taktike bol´shevikov v marte–aprele 1917 goda,” Voprosy istorii, no. 8 (1956): 104–14. The monographs in question are Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia: Vosstanie v Petrograde (Moscow: Nauka, 1967); and Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia: Moskva, front, periferiia (Moscow: Nauka, 1971). I translated volume 1 as Russia’s Second Revolution: The February 1917 Uprising in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). A partial translation of the section of volume 2 dealing with Moscow and edited by Diane P. Koenker appeared in Soviet Studies in History 26, 1 (Summer 1987): 10–100. 3

 See Roger D. Markwick, Rewriting History in Soviet Russia: The Politics of Revisionist Historiography, 1956–1974, with a foreword by Donald J. Raleigh (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave, 2001).

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of the country’s history, which were equally wooden and one-dimensional, although for different reasons. Owing to the closed nature of the Soviet Union and its archives, the first local studies in the Russian field to examine the revolution and Civil War outside Petrograd appearing in the 1970s and 1980s drew largely on published sources.4 They were published during the rise of revisionist currents—our own New Direction—in historical scholarship on Russia, and in part contributed to it. When it became possible to conduct serious research in local Soviet archives during the M. S. Gorbachev revolution at the close of the 1980s and afterward, many graduate students and seasoned researchers, far too many to list here, launched local history projects, or else added a “local” dimension to their broader studies. Yet most of these researchers investigated topics dealing with the postrevolutionary period, especially with the dark years of Stalinism and, a decade later, with post–World War II Soviet history: study of the revolution, seemingly discredited, had temporarily fallen out of favor.5 That said, recently the two historiographies—Russian and nonRussian—have produced an exciting historiographical synergy.6 To place this development in perspective, it is essential to note that, in the Soviet Union, the same shortcomings that had shackled the historical profession as a whole constrained the practice of local history, which often remained a second-rate genre practiced by (second-rate) party historians in the provinces. Reducing the historical drama to the unfolding of abstract, predictable teleologies shaped by a crude and even vulgar Marxist historicism stripped history of 4

 Some examples are Ronald Grigor Suny, The Baku Commune, 1917–1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972); Andrew Ezergailis, The 1917 Revolution in Latvia (Boulder, CO: East European Quar­ terly, 1974); Russell E. Snow, The Bolsheviks in Siberia, 1917–1918 (Rutherford, OH: Fair­ leigh Dickinson University Press, 1977); Diane P. Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); Rex A. Wade, Red Guards and Workers’ Militias in the Russian Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983); and Donald J. Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov (Ithaca, NY: Cor­ nell University Press, 1986). Several general accounts of the revolution also include a provincial dimension, such as John L. H. Keep’s, The Russian Revolution: A Study in Mass Mobilization (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976). 5

 The important exceptions are Tanja Penter, Odessa 1917: Revolution an der Peripherie (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2000); Sarah Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Crea­ tion of the Soviet State, 1914–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 6

 A noteworthy example of this trend is the coauthored study by Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

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its mission to help readers understand themselves among others. History be­ came largely ahistorical. It failed to explain the complexity and richness of the human experience, and instead neatly compartmentalized it into political and economic categories. This approach discredited the very concept of “class” and ultimately the methodology it claimed as its inspiration. Ignoring many mainstream trends in Marxist scholarship outside the country, that brand of historical writing as practiced in the USSR had little in common with Marxist academic scholarship in the West. Its practitioners often invoked the word zakonomernost´ (conformity with the laws of history) to hide a poverty of ideas. In becoming sanitized, history as written in the USSR lost its social value of teaching the last Soviet generations to think historically. The impact of this development found reflection in the cultural landscape of the 1990s, particularly in the understandable, but nonetheless naïve and uncritical, embracing of the prerevolutionary Russian past and all that was denied, distorted, or destroyed before. In 1991 the distinguished medievalist Aaron Iakovlevich Gurevich pointed out that Soviet Marxist scholarship had shut off access to the most interesting and productive methodological innovations in 20th-century historical scholarship, precisely when the West experienced the most dynamic and creative period in the entire history of the historical profession.7 Fortunately, all that has changed. The opening of Russian archives, col­ lapse of the confining paradigms of Soviet Marxist historiography, and interest among Russian historians in topics long considered taboo or otherwise un­ worthy of study nourished a heightened regard for the local. Moreover, the visible sociopolitical and cultural role Russia’s provinces began to play in the 1990s contributed to a growing awareness of regional or local studies, which paralleled a burgeoning curiosity among historians and other scholars in daily life and in ordinary people in everyday circumstances. Across Russia, new popular and professional journals dealing with local concerns flooded the market. Many of them published primary documents, including diaries, memoirs, and letters. At the same time, Russian historians, especially from the younger generation who knew other languages, availed themselves of foreign grant programs to produce high quality studies that took foreign his­ toriography into account. Not surprisingly, the changes identified above likewise produced a fundamental interpretive shift. Back in 1990, British Marxist historian E. J. Hobsbawm reminded us that those who wrote about the French Revolution in the 19th century believed it had changed their lives dramatically and for 7

 A. Ia. Gurevich, “O krizise sovremennoi istoricheskoi nauki,” Voprosy istorii, no. 2–3 (1991): 22, 24. See also Lawrence Stone, The Past and the Present Revisited (London, 1997), xi, xii, 30.

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the better. Casting the revolution as a prototype of the Marxian paradigm’s bourgeois revolution, some historians assumed proletarian revolutions would inevitably follow. This especially became the case as a result of the Russian Revolution of 1917. By the time the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution approached, however, many historians now maintained that the French Revolution had yielded only modest results that might not have been worth their human costs. As Hobsbawm showed, this historiographical turn reflected the personal politics of those contemporary historians for whom Marxist approaches had fallen out of favor.8 I use the example of scholarship on the French Revolution as a foil to re­ flect what vantage points and subjectivities constrain and enable the authors of Kaleidoscopes of Revolution. The “archival revolution,” the discrediting of aspects of the Soviet project, the reincorporation of our Russian colleagues into the larger world historical community, the popularity of new intellectual currents, the rise of a younger generation of historians, and the impact of recent studies of the Russian Civil War9—the revolution’s most decisive and heretofore most understudied and distorted chapter—have provided the post­ revisionist context in which this volume has been published. In this climate, the Bolsheviks no longer “came to power” in 1917, as Alexander Rabinowitch put it so felicitously in his groundbreaking revisionist studies, but “seized power.”10 This implicit understanding seems to inform most of the essays in this volume, but without the weighty ideological baggage that accompanied the approach’s earlier articulation while the Cold War still raged, since the “legitimacy” of the Soviet experiment is not in question. Further, a postcultural-turn approach privileging political and social history informs the 8

 See his Echoes of the Marseillaise: Two Centuries Look Back on the French Revolution (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990). 9

 I have in mind I. V. Narskii, Zhizn´ v katastrofe: Budni naseleniia Urala v 1917–1922 gg. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2001); Donald J. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia’s Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni­ versity Press, 2002); Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Stefan Karsch, Die bolschewistische Machtergreifung im Gouvernement Voronež (1917–1919) (Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag, 2006); Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War; O. M. Morozova, Dva akta dramy: Boevoe proshloe i poslevoennaia povsednevnost´ veteranov Grazh­ danskoi voiny (Rostov-na-Donu: Izdatel´stvo IUNTS RAN, 2010); and L. G. Novikova, Provintsial´naia “kontrrevoliutsiia”: Beloe dvizhenie i Grazhdanskaia voina na russkom Severe, 1917–1920 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obo­zrenie, 2011). 10

 See his Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967); The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revo­ lution of 1917 in Petrograd (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976); and The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).

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essays. Whatever one’s personal perspective or methodology, however, the historiographical shift has not invalidated two crucial points: the Russian Revolution arguably remains the most defining historical event of the 20th century,11 and, the ideals of failed revolutions, if we may call the Russian Rev­ olution that, remain vital even today. 



The developments traced above find reflection in the publication of three landmark volumes on local history in the Russian field. Politics and Society in Provincial Russia,12 edited by Rex A. Wade and the late Scott J. Seregny and published in 1989, marks the first effort by historians outside the Soviet Union to explore the most critical issues in late imperial Russian history up through the revolution of 1917 from the perspective of a single Russian prov­ ince, Saratov. Only American historians participated in the venture, with the exception of Grigorii Alekseevich Gerasimenko (who spent much of his career at Saratov University), enlisted to join the project in order to fill a gap in its coverage. The authors drew on wide-ranging research in printed sources. Several of them working on the pre–World War I period and at the end of the Soviet era also tapped central Soviet archives. In examining what historical forces shaped Saratov’s unique evolution, the authors emphasized how local developments reflected larger national ones. More than a study of a single province, the book, in demonstrating how all of the political conflicts of tsarist Russia swirled through Saratov, traces the dynamic and complex relationship that existed between Saratov and the center. In his essay that concludes the volume, historian Allan K. Wildman aptly wrote: “a regional focus lends an element of concreteness to important interrelationships that cannot be easily ascertained on a national scale; it is like switching from the tenth to the fiftieth power on a microscope, and injects into historical study some of the excitement that Galileo must have felt when he first observed the rings of Saturn and the mountains on the moon.”13 A product of the archival revolution, the second volume to mainstream the writing of local history on Russia, Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions 11

 Remarkably few efforts have been made to survey the revolution’s impact on world history in a comprehensive way. It is long overdue for someone to replace Paul Dukes’s October and the World: Perspectives on the Russian Revolution (New York: St. Martin’s, 1979).

12

 Rex A. Wade and Scott J. Seregny, eds., Politics and Society in Provincial Russia: Saratov, 1590–1917 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989).

13

 Allan K. Wildman, “Retrospect,” in Wade and Seregny, Politics and Society in Provin­ cial Russia, 326.

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of Soviet Power, 1917–53,14 provided a forum for scholars from Russia, Ukraine, and the United States who study Soviet local history. This collection of essays published in 2002 seeks to decenter standard narratives of the Soviet historical experience. The chapters address how political events and social engineering played themselves out at the local level; the construction of Bolshevik identi­ ties, especially the identities of class, gender, ethnicity, and place; the Soviet cultural project and hybridization of Soviet cultural forms; and centerperiphery relations. The contributions complicate or force us to reconsider our understanding of major events and turning points in Soviet history, including the Russian Revolution and Civil War. Several of the contributions reformulate center-periphery relations as dynamic and contested by suggesting how local identities could serve as a form of cultural and political capital. Some of the authors employ interdisciplinary approaches to consider the connection be­ tween language and power. All but one essay, whose methodology is that of oral history, tap local archives. The contributors conceptualize the local as the product of diverse social relations that cut across specific locations in a multiplicity of ways. They seek to show that, while the particular accounts presented in the chapters are unique, they have condensed within them more general experiences that are larger than the local. As geographer Allan R. Pred argued, “it is through their intersection with the locally peculiar, the locally sedimented and contingent, the locally configured context, that more global structuring processes are given their forms and become perpetuated or transformed.”15 In sum, the volume illustrates how local history can enrich our knowledge of the Soviet project and force some rethinking of the country’s past. In seeking to determine the inner mechanisms and perceptions of a locale, the authors focus on center-periphery contradictions and oppositions that often become the objects of research. They see the center-periphery dialectic as a way of understanding the world. This volume marks another major turning point in the development of local history as practiced in the Russian field and in the histor­iography on the Russian Revolution and Civil War. Truly international in its editorship and in its cast of authors who participated in it, the book represents the full integration of our colleagues from Russia and the former Soviet space into the world historical community. Although connected thematically, the chapters are as diverse in conceptualization, approach, and emphasis as the 14

 Donald J. Raleigh, ed., Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power (Pitts­ burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002).

15

 Allan R. Pred, Making Histories and Constructing Human Geographies: The Local Trans­ formation of Practice, Power Relations, and Consciousness (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), 15.

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many provinces and regions of the former Russian Empire that constitute the subjects of individual chapters. Yet they collectively reveal appreciation for the “new” political history that privileges practices and they acknowledge the failings of a heavily ideologized Soviet historiography. Except for the chapter by coeditor Sarah Badcock, the authors are not consciously in dialogue with one another. This decision enables them to determine their own agendas and emphases, but leaves it to the reader to draw overarching conclusions. The authors also vary considerably in the amount of attention they devote to evoking a sense of place. In some instances, the socioeconomic and cultural distinctiveness of the locale under scrutiny comes alive, even serves as a his­ torical actor; in others, it remains a historical stage upon which events play out. Similarly, some essays draw attention to the crucial roles played by promi­ nent local political activists, whereas in other chapters broad historical forces, rather than individuals, constitute the major historical characters. The authors deftly blend description with analysis, as they narrate events and evaluate their importance. They account for the various manifestations of localism witnessed during 1917 and especially during the Civil War. They all show that, despite the peculiarities and uniqueness of each province or region, a common political culture prevailed and that a core of problems bedeviled Russia as a result both of systemic fault lines and their rupturing during war and revolution. The volume makes a singular contribution to one of the most under­ developed aspects of the historiography on the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the role played in these events by the empire’s peasants and by the countryside. Distorted by Soviet historians, this topic remained largely out­ side the range of vision of non-Soviet historians before the opening of the archives and before Orlando Figes and Aaron Retish published their books.16 Collectively, the authors of this volume make clear that peasants engaged the state in its various incarnations if it served their needs, and also that the authorities, Red, White, and other, often took peasant grievances into account in formulating policy. Challenging Soviet historiography’s boilerplate frame of class struggle in the countryside, several authors stress the absence of class antagonisms in the villages, instead emphasizing other types of conflict, espe­ cially friction between communities. Sergei Liubichankovskii, for instance, shows that village soviets and township (volost´) zemstvos did not represent antagonistic class-based institutions. Village elders in the southeast tended to carry out anti-zemstvo propaganda, but the village collective voted on whether or not to participate in elections. Their world views under assault by 16

 Orlando Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917– 1921 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); and Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War.

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extraordinary circumstances, peasants, as Mark Baker reminds us, “usually took action as members of a community,” thereby behaving “in ways that re­ vealed their local understanding of the world.” The contributions to this volume also underline the central role soldiers played in the Russian Revolution and Civil War. For instance, Liudmila Novikova points out that, upon coming home to Arkhangel´sk province, demobilized soldiers wanted more and better land to compensate for their wartime sacrifices. Elena Dubrovskaia shows how soldiers garrisoned in Fin­ land contributed to Finnish independence in unexpected ways. Tanja Penter suggests how soldiers returning to Odessa contributed to destabilizing the city. In dissecting the Izhevsk revolt of 1918, Aaron Retish stresses the role of armed brigades formed by frontoviki and workers. The essay captures how volatile popular moods were at the time. A Bolshevik stronghold in late 1917, Izhevsk rose up in revolt the next year after the local union of frontoviki turned the mood in the streets against Bolshevik policies. Stefan Karsch, too, finds that the mood among soldiers oscillated considerably. Whereas the Bolsheviks gained support among them in the second half of 1917, making it possible for the Left SRs and Bolsheviks to take power in Voronezh, things changed dra­ matically when the regiments disbanded. A number of the essays likewise discuss the role played by soldiers’ wives, soldatki, a topic that got its first real hearing in Western scholarship thanks to Sarah Badcock’s monograph published in 2007. In her essay, Liudmila Novi­ kova acknowledges the role that soldiers’ wives and war widows played in challenging gender roles by asserting their rights as heads of households. Mark Baker’s essay on Kharkiv province likewise illuminates the role of sol­ datki, characterizing the phenomenon as “the most widespread and novel manifestation of the war, as revealed in the documents on the province.” The phenomenon expressed itself in riots and other violent outbursts, trig­ gered by the government’s ongoing attempts to implement the Stolypin land reforms. As he shows, the arrival of a government land surveyor was often enough to spark outbursts of angry protest, as the women feared that, in their men’s absence, their families would be cheated during the redivision of communal holdings. These angry flair ups continued until mid-1915, when Minister of Agriculture A. V. Krivoshein, bowing to pressure from peasants, announced that the implementation of the reforms would be stopped. Tanja Penter documents how soldiers’ wives made radical demands and took part in spontaneous protests in Odessa in 1917; some of them likewise joined the unemployed movement that she investigates in her essay. Despite the fresh perspectives on the peasantry that the authors offer, some critical questions remain in need of further consideration. How did the “Stolypin peasants” respond to the revolutionary events of 1917? What

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impact did the revolution have on the village commune? How did different generations of male peasants who served in the army respond to the dangers and opportunities unleashed by 1917? Yet another theme that emerges in the volume is that of programmatic, even ideological, pragmatism at the local level. Peter Fraunholtz underscores this point in his close examination of food supply policies, while Michael Hickey shows in his essay on Smolensk’s Jews that participation in the local Soviet administration put the Smolensk Poalei-Tsion group at odds with the party’s central leadership. Did pragmatic deviations from the party line on the part of Penza and other Bolsheviks represent local authorities’ inability to muster the coercive power of the state to implement decrees? Did reaching accommodation with the Bolsheviks in Smolensk represent the only hope to effect political change? These essays suggest that circumstances trumped ideology, especially when political groups were stuck in circumstances not of their own making. A number of the authors also engage the question of dual power in 1917, a topic that I spotlighted in my Revolution on the Volga, in which I argued that dual power in Saratov evolved differently than the situation in Petrograd. Liudmila Novikova found a similar scenario in Arkhangel´sk. Although Matthew Rendle maintains that dual power existed, he acknowledges that it “was not as obvious in Moscow … [where] it was difficult to delineate spheres of activity.” Sarah Badcock concludes that dual power in the provinces may well be a misnomer. “This study of Nizhegorod and Kazan,” she writes, “indi­ cates that away from the urban centers power devolved to local leaders and communities, and connections with formal power were increasingly frayed.” Badcock quotes the president of the Kazan Committee of Public Safety, Denike, who stated that “the committee of public safety works in total harmony with the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. There can be no question of dual power in Kazan.” The contributors to the collection appreciate historical irony and paradox. For instance, Liudmila Novikova reveals how the Civil War marked a para­ doxical juncture in that the state managed to use its coercive power to penetrate the traditionally undergoverned northern Russian countryside through growing statization of elected self-government institutions when the state was arguably at its weakest. Moreover, it did so with the support and collaboration of the local population. In tracing the impact of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on Ukrainian-speaking peasants, Mark Baker underscores the ironic consequence of the German occupation, which made the peasants hate the occupiers. Spared the most despised consequences of the Bolsheviks’ efforts to introduce class warfare into the villages and of War Communism, the peasants preserved a misguided positive impression of Bolshevik land

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policies. As Baker shows, this was not the only irony: developments in Kharkiv province convinced Lenin and other Bolsheviks that Ukrainian na­ tionalism represented a far greater force than it actually was, and therefore later created the autonomous Ukrainian SSR for the wrong reason. Similarly, Daniel Schafer’s rich contribution on the extraordinary life and role during the Civil War of Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev traces the final phase of his intel­ lectual journey, which found him abroad, where he became enamored of pan-Turkism, pan-Islamism, and the global anticolonial movement, thereby adopting some of the same ideas and thinking that he had reviled among Tatar thinkers during the Civil War. “Such were the ironies and paradoxes,” remarks Schafer, “generated by the spinning kaleidoscope of Russia’s Revolu­ tion and Civil War.” The high quality of the essays on Russia’s borderlands also distinguishes the volume. In examining Kharkiv province, Mark Baker concludes that “most peasants had no serious interest in being part of an independent Ukraine.” Karsten Brüggemann argues that the Estonian fight for independence against the German Free Corps and the Red Army should be considered as much a part of the Russian revolutionary wars as the Russian Civil War. The Soviet historical narrative that privileged conflict between the “Whites,” “Reds,” and “Greens” made it possible for nationalist narratives, he maintains, “to distance themselves from events in Russia.” Instead, he avers, the efforts of the ethnic groups fighting for secession should be seen as an essential part of the wars unleashed by revolution. Sometimes support for these efforts came from unexpected places. Highlighting the extent to which the Finnish revolution and the revolution in the Russian garrisons in Helsingfors— despite their different aims—were interconnected, Elena Dubrovskaia con­ tends that the events of 1917 in Finland can be understood as a process of dual radicalizations. Dubrovskaia claims that Russian military units in Fin­ land had a far more crucial part than heretofore believed. Russian naval and army units supported the demands of Finnish workers and guaranteed the restoration of the work of the Finnish Sejm, thereby contributing to the radicalization of Finnish Social Democrats and nationalists. In his essay on the question of Bashkir autonomy, Daniel Schafer shifts focus away from the Jadid intelligentsia and from Akhmed-Zaki Validov (1890–1970), the Bashkir socialist and autonomist leader who dominates the historiography, to focus on a parallel form of conservative, antisocialist Bashkir nationalism led by Mukhammad-Gabdulkhai Kurbangaliev, largely neglected in the literature. Schafer’s chapter reminds us that charismatic and otherwise consequential personalities often made a difference, a point Tanja Penter confirms in her colorful portrait of Khaim Ryt, an inflammatory speaker able to unite Odessa’s underclass via the unemployed movement. She maintains that the

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existence of a large group of unemployed and a power vacuum in Odessa were not enough to turn this into the powerful force the unemployed became. “Inevitably,” she writes, “the question therefore arises of whether there would have been a Soviet of the Unemployed at all had it not been for the unem­ ployed teacher Khaim Ryt.” Sarah Badcock also demonstrates the power of the individual to shape circumstances, or, rather, to take advantage of them to effect revolutionary change. She offers the vivid example of Karl Ianovich Grasis, a student the tsarist government exiled to Cheboksary in 1916, who became the dominant force in local affairs. 



I now turn to a discussion of the individual essays. Opening part 1 of the volume dealing with grassroots politics, Matthew Rendle’s exploration of localism through a case study of a typical Moscow province centers on how war and revolution shattered the troubled equilibrium that had been achieved there between centrifugal and centripetal forces. He appropriately observes that as authorities at each level of administration asserted their independence and prioritized the local, they took steps essential to building democracy yet ones that had a “fatal impact” on the Provisional Government. A kind of twisted logic thus determined outcomes during the Civil War, as authorities at various levels lacked the ability to enforce their policies. This phenomenon generated “discontent, counterrevolutionary fears and popular radicalism.” Township organs bemoaned the lack of help from district (uezd) administrations. They, in turn, underscored the lack of support from provincial authorities, who de­ cried the ineffectiveness of the central government. As a result, more people “began to see centralism as crucial to consolidating Bolshevik power in the province.” Of course, the Bolsheviks’ willingness to marshal the coercive power of the state to enforce compliance facilitated centralization. So did Russian political culture, I would argue. Remarkably, the scenario Rendle charts did not deviate from what occurred across much of Russia, despite the particular features of Moscow province. Sergei Liubichankovskii’s smart chapter on the Provisional Government’s efforts to introduce township zemstvos in southeastern Russia reveals how expectations can serve as premeditated resentments. Whereas Stephan Karsch deemphasizes the importance of local conditions in Voronezh, Liubichankovskii argues that a conflict in mentalities between innovators introducing the reform and the traditional mindset of local peasants most affected by them represented the main obstacle to introducing the admin­ istrative changes. In analyzing the elections, he not only demonstrates the sharp nature of the conflict surrounding them, but also how the sociocultural

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peculiarities of the southeast shaped the implementation of the reform. Local conditions, experiences, and specificities mattered, especially since the center lacked leverage in securing the backing of local elites to support the elections. Rumor served as a political actor in its own right, while the rhythm of the agrarian calendar constrained and enabled peasant participation in public life. That so many local villages pressed for having the elections postponed until after the war might well have been part of the same village mindset that elsewhere prompted peasants to call for a halt in introducing the Stolypin reforms as long as the war was in progress. Is this a matter of distrust? Of suspicion? After all, in the case of the township zemstvos, some antizemstvo agitation equated the institutions with the return of the tsarist order; peasants saw the organs as organs of governance and not of self-governance. (Liudmila Novikova documents the success of the zemstvos in White-controlled Arkhangel´sk, which she attributes, in part, to the fact that this form of local self-government did not exist in the province before 1917 and “so was not stigmatized as a remnant of the old regime.”) Liubichankovskii observes that the Bolsheviks and Left SRs agitated against the zemstvos. The parties’ roles in this ethnically and socially diverse region, however, require further consideration. Zooming in on grain procurement in Penza province in 1919, Peter Fraunholtz interrogates the relationship between acquiring grain and the military threat from the White armies in 1919, in circumstances in which local institutions had to survive on their own. Again and again during the Civil War, agents and forces sent to the locales from the center in desperate need of resources often clashed with local organs, whose leaders had a greater stake in taking into account local popular opinion than did outsiders. Calling attention to the (usually disruptive) consequences of pouring cadres into one area and withdrawing them from another, he adds a needed corrective to the scholarly literature by explaining how the Penza food supply committee “responded pragmatically” to the lack of local resources by enlisting the support of rural officials. As a result, local practices deviated considerably from Moscow’s in­ tentions. Yet Fraunholtz admits—and I think this is the real issue here—that “in reality, there was not enough armed force available to sustain higher procurement levels.” That is, lack of the coercive power of the state compelled local leaders to be pragmatic, but might this have been their choice, too? How did local authorities represent grain procurements to the local population and their own behavior to the center? What is the prehistory of the events in Penza in 1919? After all, in 1917 Penza became known as the “Kronstadt of the countryside” when a provincial peasant congress in May placed all but allotment land at the disposal of the township committees and abolished the

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right to rent out land. The All-Russian Congress of Peasant Deputies failed to persuade the Penza peasant deputies to abrogate their decisions. Also breaking new ground, Liudmila Novikova challenges the widely held view that the Whites ultimately proved less successful than the Reds in securing the collaboration of the countryside. She disagrees with the notion that the Whites failed owing to their conservative policies and ideology and to their efforts to restore zemstvo self-government seen by the peasants as an institution of the old regime. Her careful investigation of the zemstvos in Arkhangel´sk province underscores “effective peasant collaboration with changing political regimes,” demonstrating how peasants accepted polit­ ical realities and supported different political forces if they met village needs. Local conditions and circumstances governed outcomes. Novikova acknowledges that zemstvos in Arkhangel´sk became more influential than in any other region under White control. Like Fraunholtz, she avers that, as political authority became increasingly fragmented, local peasants did not re­ treat from the state but tried to engage it to serve their own self-interests. One reason for this is that the leadership of the zemstvos was often not unlike that of grassroots soviets under the Reds, comprised of young or middle-aged peasants, usually with some education and political and military experience. As elsewhere, disputes over land redistribution represented the cause of most rural squabbles at the time; yet peasants turned to zemstvo mediation and the legal framework the Whites created to resolve disputes. Part 2, “A Myriad of National Revolutions,” opens with Mark Baker’s compelling contribution on Kharkiv. He provocatively argues that national differences through 1918 were “unimportant to the mostly Ukrainian-speaking peasants of the province.” Maintaining that this conclusion could be extended to most peasants in Ukrainian provinces, he charts how peasants responded to revolutionary events in a distinctly local way. I have already mentioned the remarkable irony he reconstructs, involving the point that German occupation stemming from the Brest-Litovsk Peace contributed singularly to creating an anti-Ukrainian and pro-Soviet mood among Ukrainian-speaking peasants. He likewise retrieves from the dustbin of history the treaty signed on 9 Febru­ ary 1918 between the leaders of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) and the Central Powers. The outcome, as Baker demonstrates so well, was that many peasants of Kharkiv province came to associate the Ukrainian state that signed the treaty with the arrival of German troops, against whom they had fought since 1914. Support for “Soviet power” thus was “quite extensive in Kharkiv province.” Baker also interrogates the attitude of ordinary peasants to provincial peasant soviets and congresses that claimed to represent them, questioning the extent to which the decrees and resolutions issued by these bodies “accurately expressed the desires of their claimed constituents.”

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Karsten Brüggemann skillfully integrates developments in Estonia and the story of the country’s successful bid for independence with the larger narrative of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, arguing that the Estonians’ war for independence might be viewed as an interstate war, “at least on the Petrograd Front.” Brüggemann likewise explains how the Estonian-Soviet Peace Treaty of Tartu signed on 2 February 1920 “symbolizes the revolutionary events that sealed the end of the Russian Empire.” Although the fledgling Soviet state saw the treaty as a temporary concession, it nonetheless amounted to the first de jure recognition of the Estonian Republic. Moreover, signing the treaty resulted in the disbanding of General N. N. Iudenich’s Northwestern Army, thereby strengthening the Red cause in Russia. The author clarifies how the chaos released by war and revolution evolved locally into an “orderly process” of building a national state, how an alliance with Prince L´vov’s government and the Estonian National Liberals resulted in considerable autonomy for Estonia and the election of a provincial diet, the Maapäev. Brüggemann con­ cludes that “a quiet national revolution had already been completed by the spring of 1917, for the German knighthoods had been stripped of their power and were unable to do any more than helplessly boycott the elections.” In acknowledging that the social history of the Estonian revolution remains to be written, he elucidates how the Russian context of the revolutionary wars represented a central factor in establishing an independent Estonia. As he puts it, “Viewed strategically, the exploitation of the internal Russian power struggles was vital for survival, and Russia’s implosion lent the vision of the Estonian nation state additional legitimacy.” In his essay, Michael C. Hickey adds to the rich corpus of informative articles and book chapters he has authored on Smolensk in war, revolution, and civil war. Stressing the defining character of local factors and social polarization, he here focuses on Jews’ political activism, shedding light on both opportunities and difficulties created by the vicissitudes of the era. I found particularly worthy of note the various strategies local (and newly ar­ rived) Jews relied on in dealing with the anti-Semitism of the governor, B. A. Bulgakov, with popular anti-Semitism, and with the violence engendered by civil war. Hickey stresses the extent to which outside forces associated with the war impacted local life in Smolensk, such as the arrival of hardline Bolsheviks from Minsk or of determined Polish soldiers. Circumstances—a nasty pogrom hard on the heels of hunger riots in May 1918—forced the local Jewish community to enlist Bolshevik support. As elsewhere, civil war con­ ditions and the need to carry out work in the underground resulted in spotty documentation of non-Bolshevik political life, and, more importantly, of an all-too-familiar co-optation of other socialist parties. Once the Smolensk Soviet made clear in late 1919 that the state appa­ratus would employ only

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Communists and nonparty people—a term in need of deconstruction—most Poalei-Tsion and Bund government employees quit their parties. The Zionists thus benefited from the marginalization of Jewish socialist parties and con­ straining of Jewish public space. Daniel Schafer’s revisionist essay on Bashkortostan during the Civil War reminds us that the Bolsheviks often managed to cling to the borderlands be­ cause the nationalist movements could be highly fractured. Schafer spotlights a form of Bashkir nationalism that he characterizes as “conservative, antisocialist, perhaps proto-fascist, and rooted among traditionalist members of the Muslim ulama” and led and inspired by a village imam, MukhammadGabdulkhai Kurbangaliev (1889–1972). Although in 1917 he joined Validov’s autonomy movement, Kurbangaliev broke with him in 1918 to embrace Ad­ miral Kolchak’s vision of a unified Russia in which the Bashkirs would have only limited autonomy. Schafer contextualizes the phases in the evolution of Kurbangaliev’s ideas on statehood, highlighting Kurbangaliev’s opposition to socialist elements in Validov’s nationalism, particularly in regard to land re­ form, which soon compelled Kurbangaliev to reject the promise of Bashkir territorial autonomy. By early 1919, the Bashkir loyalists under Kurbangaliev, owing to their “social conservatism, loyalty to a unitary Russian state, and opposition to the triple evils of Bolshevism, territorial autonomy, and Tatar domination of the Bashkirs,” had won considerable support and recognition among the Whites. Apart from the centrality of the “land question” in account­ ing for Kurbangaliev’s split with Validov, the former’s intellectual journey after fleeing abroad demonstrates the unresolved tension of relations with the Russians, too. Kurbangaliev, by then a Japanophile, identified with the struggle of the Uralic-Altaic peoples against Russian dominance. Captured by Soviet forces in 1945 and repatriated to the USSR, he remarkably survived ten years in jail and died in 1972 as imam of a mosque in his home province. Given the landed wealth of the Kurbangalievs and their opposition to land reform, it is easy to see why Soviet-era scholarship assessed him from a “class” position. It is less clear why Kurbangaliev, a class enemy, lived to tell about it. Validov asserts in his memoirs that the Kurbangalievs were behind the attempted assassination attack of 1918. Were they? Elena Dubrovskaia traces how the soldiers’ revolution in Finland impacted the local revolutionary (and nationalist) movement and how it, in turn, influ­ enced revolutionary developments among troops stationed in Helsingfors. The “dual radicalizations” she documents so well not only amounted at times to joint actions and to the soldiers’ and sailors’ support of Finnish nationalist demands, but also to something more ironic: the radicalization of the military units and resulting growth in crime and lawlessness as 1917 unfolded pushed many Finns to strive for independence as a way to stabilize the situation and

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to put an end to chaos and anarchy. Dubrovskaia places her story within the larger context of developments in nearby Petrograd and of the radicalization of public life and rise of a left-socialist bloc. The formation of a Bolshevik-Left SR government in October resulted in a power change in Helsingfors, too, as a revolutionary troika of representatives from the Helsingfors soviet, the Central Committee of the Baltic Float, and the Oblast Committee of the Army, Navy, and Workers of Finland came to power, relying less and less on soviets and more on emergency organs not under the control of soviets. Finnish Social Democrats, who had recognized the authority of the Provisional Government, did not acknowledge the Bolshevik government. “The Finnish national revo­ lution took on its own dynamic, developing now under the influence of altogether different factors,” she concludes. The author has introduced a much needed corrective to the historiography, which has heretofore downplayed the impact of the dual radicalizations? Emphasizing the defining importance of local factors, Tanja Penter views the revolutionary developments of 1917 and 1918 in Odessa through the lens of the problem of unemployment. Penter adeptly deconstructs the term, showing that the classification comprised not only members of the working class who had lost their jobs, but also demobilized soldiers, war refugees, and groups on the margins of society such as beggars, prostitutes, and even professional criminals. A Jew and former teacher, Khaim Ryt, led the “Soviet of the Unem­ ployed,” which positioned itself in opposition to the bourgeoisie and at times the working class. Local Bolsheviks took advantage of the movement to estab­ lish power and offered concessions to it, but then clashed with it. Despite her emphasis on local factors, Penter acknowledges that tensions between the Soviet government in Petrograd and the Ukrainian Central Rada in Kiev and Odessa’s proximity to the Romanian front shaped developments in the city by creating a power vacuum. Although Penter makes a case for the significance of the phenomenon in shaping the local revolution, she admits that the sources tell us little about the composition of the Soviet of the Unemployed, which existed for only three months, and about how it functioned. Khaim Ryt and apparently many others who belonged to the movement regarded themselves as anarchists of some stripe. Penter believes that the existence of a sizable and impoverished underclass, the power vacuum, and the energy of Khaim Ryt converged to give the movement such strength in Odessa. Yet a comparable phenomenon emerged in Saratov and in other towns along the Volga (involving “anarchists” from Odessa and from other places in Ukraine), suggesting that at heart the issue might be anarchism and not unemployment. Penter rejects Soviet 1920s representations of the unemployed as “lumpenproletarians,” but her own evidence indicates that many “unemployed” fit the admittedly loaded description.

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Aaron Retish throws bright light on the Izhevsk Revolt of 1918, empha­ sizing the role of army units, especially of the frontoviki, in contributing to revolutionary violence in Izhevsk. Casting the phenomenon as a paramilitary one, he links it to developments across war-torn Europe. Writes Retish: “Understanding the union of frontoviki as a group of paramilitary units also allows us to understand the direct links between the First World War and Russia’s Civil War, even in the hinterland.” His survey of the historiography of the revolt likewise reminds us how much historical truth is itself historical: post-Soviet local scholars’ depiction of the uprising as a heroic struggle against a tyrannical regime also serves as an implicit criticism of Moscow’s impositions of control over the Udmurt Republic today, a trend fortified by “an avalanche of local histories and websites.” In showing how the local socio­ economic and political environment allowed veterans to challenge Bolshevik policies and non-Bolshevik parties to gain influence, Retish nonetheless makes clear that the rebellion likewise “reveals common trends in social and state power that occurred throughout revolutionary Russia.” Was there any coordination between the Izhevsk Rebellion and explosions of discontent elsewhere? Retish’s case study of Izhevsk highlights a key dynamic of the Civil War: despite resistance to Bolshevik practices, the opposition itself re­ mained fractured and ultimately unable to present a popular alternative. These limitations contributed to both the further breakdown of law and order and to strong-handed measures to end the anarchy and to centralize the state. Herein lies the tragic logic of the Civil War. Drawing on his monograph on Voronezh during the Russian Civil War, Stefan Karsch seeks to account for how the Bolsheviks, who lacked the backing of a majority of the local population, consolidated their power by the middle of 1918. As elsewhere in Russia, the Bolsheviks in Voronezh rode to power when they gained some backing among soldiers and when a left-socialist bloc appeared in the fall of 1917. His contribution to the historiographical discussion centers on how circumstances forced the Bolshevik–Left SR bloc to cooperate with self-appointed militias, “who may have been effective but were highly unreliable,” because the alliance was not based on “shared ideological principles.” As in Saratov, these circumstances included a growing wave of crime and violence, lack of financial resources, and the threat of organized resistance. Karsch notes that the new power structure made it possible for the militias both to keep order and to carry out criminal acts themselves without fear of reprisals.17 But the Bolsheviks removed the Left SRs from power once the former wielded enough power to do so, by which point they also replaced 17

 See Donald J. Raleigh, ed., A Russian Civil War Diary: Alexis Babine in Saratov, 1917– 1922 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988). Babine belonged to a similar militia in Saratov.

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the unreliable militias. Despite his downplaying of local conditions and insist­ ence that what transpired in Voronezh was a result of “impulses from the center,” the author seems to make a case for both dynamics in accounting for the Bolsheviks’ ability to secure their power through their dealings with paramilitary groups “and their unscrupulous deployment of violence.” How did dual power in Voronezh evolve in 1917? What role did Russian political culture play in determining events in Voronezh and how did war and revolu­ tion impact it? Sarah Badcock’s confident investigation of the structures of power in Nizhegorod and Kazan´ provinces confirms the inadequacy of the term dual power in regard to 1917. After surveying the overlapping power structures that emerged in these cities, she offers two case studies, one on the implementation of land control, and the other on popular responses to the provisions question. In showing that the “seats of power were multiple, overlapping and shifting,” and that “localism and economic interests dominated the rural population’s responses to the events of 1917,” Badcock explores the local population’s en­ gagement with national politics, the unfolding of local revolutions within a larger, national one. Concluding that a “selective model” of citizenship emerged in 1917, she argues that the revolution displaced the complex balance of rights and duties that had been negotiated in late tsarist Russia, with one that was “heavy on rights and very light on duties.” This provocative point is an issue worth further investigation. In capturing a historical moment—the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution—and by reflecting the historical sensibilities that predominate or are in vogue today, this volume represents a new starting point for all future writing on the revolution at the local level. Collectively, these essays document the breakdown of a highly centralized state structure during a sustained period of crisis. Both pragmatic and flexible, and at times desperate, the resulting manifestations of localism that emerged during 1917 and the Civil War proved unable to ward off chaos and anarchy because they themselves were a consequence of dissolution. In these articulate essays the reader encounters historical contingencies, the often defining weight of circumstances, the role of ideology in shaping policies, explosive popular attitudes, the impact of decisive personalities, and ironic and paradoxical twists of fate, yet also a certain logic to the era. In this regard, localism did not feed the democratic valence in Russian political culture but, ironically, starved it and facilitated the Bolsheviks’ consolidation of power by making the perceived need for it— or for some alternative—the order of the day. The breakdown of state power had given rise to multiple centers and peripheries, some geographic, others political, social, economic, even cultural, thereby highlighting the dialectical relationship between center and periphery, but also suggesting how each

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helped to define the other in what ultimately amounted to a symbiotic relationship. The authors show that the configurations of knowledge, always ineluctably local, are culturally coded, and, like our own thoughts, historically constructed.

Notes on Contributors

Sarah Badcock is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Nottingham. Mark R. Baker is an Assistant Professor of History at Koç University, Turkey. Karsten Brüggemann is Professor of Estonian and General History at Tallinn University. Elena Dubrovskaia is an Associate Professor of History at Petrozavodsk State University. Peter Fraunholtz is a Lecturer in History and International Affairs at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Anthony Heywood is a Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen. Michael C. Hickey is a Professor of History at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. Stefan Karsch is a Coordinator of International Scholarly Exchange with Central and Eastern Europe at Humboldt University in Berlin. Sergei Liubichankovskii is a Professor of History at Orenburg State Pedagogical University David MacLaren McDonald is the Alice D. Mortenson/Petrovich Professor of Russian History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Liudmila G. Novikova is a Researcher and Associate Director at the International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences, National Research University-Higher School of Economics, Moscow.

Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution 1914–22, Book 1: Russia’s Revolution in Regional Perspective. Sarah Badcock, Liudmila G. Novikova, and Aaron B. Retish, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2015, 403–04.

404 Notes on Contributors

Tanja Penter is a Professor of East European History at Heidelberg University. Donald J. Raleigh is the Jay Richard Judson Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Matthew Rendle is a Senior Lecturer of History at the University of Exeter. Aaron B. Retish is an Associate Professor of History at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Daniel E. Schafer is a Professor of History at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. John W. Steinberg is a Professor of History at Austin Peay State University, Tennessee.