The Penguin History of Modern Russia

by Robert John Service

  Must the forecast be pessimistic? Not entirely. The very political passivity that was earlier mentioned as a problem is also an asset. Few Russians have gathered on the streets in support of demagogues of the far right or the far left. Most citizens are tired of turmoil. Even after the disintegration of the USSR, furthermore, Russia was left with a cornucopia of human and natural resources at its disposal. Russia has gas, oil and gold in superabundance. It lacks hardly any essential minerals or metals; it has huge forests and waterways. Its people have an impressive degree of organization, patience and education. Russia has learned from experience about the defects of the alternatives to peaceful, gradual change: it has recent experience of civil war, world war, dictatorship and ideological intolerance.

  Yet the preconditions for even a cautious optimism have yet to be met. Time, imagination and will-power will be required if progress is to be made. Russia in the twentieth century was full of surprises. It gave rise to a wholly new way of ordering political, economic and social affairs. Dozens of states adopted the Soviet compound as their model. Russia was the wonder and the horror of the entire world. That single country produced Lenin, Khrushchëv and Gorbachëv; it also brought forth Shostakovich, Akhmatova, Kapitsa, Sakharov and Pavlov. Its ordinary people, from the piteous inmates of the Gulag to the proud Red Army conscript-victors over Hitler, became symbols of momentous episodes in the history of our times. Russia over the past hundred years has endured extraordinary vicissitudes.

  It became and then ceased to be a superpower. It was once a largely agrarian and illiterate empire and is now literate, industrial and bereft of its borderland dominions. Russia has not stopped changing. There is no reason to assume that its record in astounding itself, its neighbours and the world has come to an end.

  Notes

  Short titles are used in the notes. Full references will be found in the bibliography. The following abbreviations are used in notes and bibliography:

  GARF — Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii

  IA — Istoricheskii arkhiv

  ITsKKPSS — Izvestiya Tsentral’nogo Komiteta Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza

  OA — Osobyi arkhiv

  PSS — V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii

  RTsKhIDNI — Rossiiskii Tsentr dlya Khraneniya i Issledovaniya Dokumentov Noveishei Istorii

  SEER — Slavonic and East European Review

  SVI — Shestoi s’’ezd RSDRP(b). Avgust 1917 goda. Protokoly

  SVIII — Vos’moi s’’ezd RKP(b). Mart 1919 goda. Protokoly

  SX — Desyatyi s’’ezd RKP(b). Mart 1921 g. Stenograficheskii otchët

  SXVII — Semnadtsatyi s’’ezd VKP(b). 26 yanvarya — 10 fevralya 1934 goda. Stenograficheskii otchët

  SXVIII — Vosemnadtsatyi s’’ezd. 10–21 marta 1939 goda. Stenograficheskii otchët

  SXX — Dvadtsatyi s’’ezd Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza. 14–25 fevralya 1956 goda. Stenograficheskii otchët

  SXXII — Dvadtsat’ vtoroi s’’ezd Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza. 17–31 oktyabrya 1961 goda. Stenograficheskii otchët

  SXXIV — Dvadtsat’ chetvërtyi s’’ezd Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza. 30 marta — 9 aprelya 1971 goda. Stenograficheskii otchët

  SXXVII — Dvadtsat’ sed’moi s’’ezd Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza. 25 fevralya — 6 marta 1986 goda. Stenograficheskii otchët

  TP — The Trotsky Papers, 1917–1922

  VIKPSS — Voprosy istorii Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza

  Introduction

  1 The last serious such endeavour was M. S. Gorbachëv, Perestroika. New Thinking for Our Country and the World.

  2 Otto Bauer, Bolschewismus oder Sozialdemokratie? (Vienna, 1920).

  3 K. Kautsky, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat; Yu. Martov, Mirovoi bol’shevizm; B. Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism; T. Dan, The Origins of Bolshevism.

  4 L. D. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed.

  5 I. A. Il’in, O soprotivlenii zlu siloyu; A. I. Solzhenitsyn, Letter to the Soviet Leaders and Kak nam obustroit’ Rossiyu?

  6 N. Berdyaev, The Russian Idea. Ideas of a not dissimilar nature can be found in B. Kerblay, Modern Soviet Society and S. White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics.

  7 R. Fülöp-Miller, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism: An Examination of Cultural Life in Soviet Russia.

  8 N. S. Trubetskoi, K probleme russkogo samosoznaniya: sobranie statei.

  9 N. Ustryalov, Pod znakom revolyutsii. A recent work stressing the imperial and ethnic dimensions of the USSR is H. Carrère d’Encausse, Decline of an Empire.

  10 L. N. Gumilëv, V poiskakh vymyshlennogo tsarstva and Ritmy Evrazii.

  11 E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution; B. Moore Jr, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.

  12 R. Neumann, Behemoth; M. Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled; L. Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Totalitarianism.

  13 M. Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System;M. Voslensky, Nomenklatura: The Anatomy of the Soviet Ruling Class.

  14 D. Bell, The End of Ideology.

  15 See I. Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship, pp. 34–46.

  16 D. Granick, Management of the Industrial Firm in the USSR, A Study in Soviet Economic Planning; J. Berliner, Factory and Manager in the USSR. The journal Soviet Studies regularly carried accounts of political, economic and social life below the level of the Kremlin.

  17 R. Suny, The Baku Commune.

  18 R. Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution.

  19 D. Koenker, Moscow Workers; S. A. Smith, Red Petrograd.

  20 F. Benvenuti, The Bolsheviks and the Red Army; O. Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War; R. Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution.

  21 R. W. Davies, The Soviet Economy in Turmoil; M. Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System.

  22 F. Benvenuti, Fuoco sui Sabotatori!; D. Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization; L. Siegelbaum. Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935–1941.

  23 V. Buldakov, Krasnaya smuta.

  24 S. Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution.

  25 S. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization.

  26 M. Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle; S. F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Russian Revolution; R. W. Davies, The Socialist Offensive.

  27 J. Hough, The Soviet Prefects; J. Hough, The Soviet Union and Social Science Theory; H. G. Skilling and F. Griffiths, Interest Groups in Soviet Politics. See also J. Hough’s 1979 revisions of the original edition of Merle Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled.

  28 M. Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon.

  29 T. H. Rigby, The Changing Soviet System and Political Elites in the USSR: Central Leaders and Local Cadres from Lenin to Gorbachev.

  30 A. Brown, ‘Political Power and the Soviet State’, in N. Harding (ed.), The State in Socialist Society.

  31 M. Malia, Russia Under Western Eyes; R. Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime.

  32 R. Conquest, Power and Policy in the USSR; M. Fainsod, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule.

  33 A. Brown, The Gorbachëv Factor.

  34 G. A. Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union.

  1 And Russia? (1900–1914)

  1 T. von Laue, Serge Witte and the Industrialisation of Russia.

  2 O. Crisp, Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914, p. 154.

  3 Ibid., pp. 34–5.

  4 S. M. Dubrovskii, Sel’skoe khozyaistvo i krest’yanstvo Rossii v period imperializma, p. 225.

  5 T. Shanin, The Awkward Class, ch. 2.

  6 This figure does not include Russian-ruled Poland: A. Gershenkron, ‘Agrarian Policies and Industrialisation’, p. 730.

  7 A. G. Rashin, Naselenie Rossii za 100 let, pp. 297–9.

  8 M. Perrie and R. W. Davies, ‘The Social Context’, p. 40.

  9 A. G. Rashin, Formirovanie rabochego klassa Rossii, p. 171.

  10 R. Kaiser, The
Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the Soviet Union, p. 53.

  11 J. M. Hartley, Alexander I, p. 118.

  12 H. Rogger, National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia, ch. 1.

  13 B. Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools, pp. 243–4.

  14 O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 196.

  15 Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism, table 2:10.

  16 Ibid., table 2:8.

  17 H. Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 1801–1917.

  18 A. Ascher, The Russian Revolution of 1905, p. 163.

  19 S. M. Dubrovskii, Stolypinskaya agrarnaya reforma, pp. 572, 583, 586.

  20 G. A. Hosking, The Russian Constitutional Experiment, ch. 2.

  21 C. Ferenczi, ‘Freedom of the Press, 1905–1914’, pp. 198, 211.

  22 R. Service, Lenin: A Political Life, vol. 1, p. 135.

  23 Figes, A People’s Tragedy, pp. 1–17.

  24 V. S. Dyakin et al., Krizis samoderzhaviya v Rossii, 1895–1917, p. 448.

  25 R. McKean, St Petersburg Between the Revolutions, ch. 10.

  26 P. Waldron, ‘States of Emergency’, p. 4.

  2 The Fall of the Romanovs (1914–1917)

  1 D. Lieven, Russia and the Origins of the First World War, pp. 67–9.

  2 D. Lieven, Nicholas II: Emperor of all the Russias, pp. 200–205.

  3 N. Stone, The Eastern Front, p. 66.

  4 P. V. Volobuev, Ekonomicheskaya politika Vremennogo Pravitel’stva, ch. 1.

  5 R. Pearson, The Russian Moderates and the Crisis of Tsarism, p. 117.

  6 S. G. Wheatcroft, ‘The Balance of Grain Production and Utilisation in Russia before and during the Revolution’, pp. 3–5.

  7 R. W. Davies, ‘Industry’, p. 135.

  8 I. I. Mints, Istoriya Velikogo Oktyabrya, vol. 1, p. 325.

  9 Volobuev, Ekonomicheskaya politika, p. 365.

  10 A. L. Sidorov, Istoricheskie predposylki Velikoi oktyabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi revolyutsii, pp. 31–2.

  11 R. McKean, St Petersburg Between the Revolutions, pp. 380–85.

  12 Stone, The Eastern Front, pp. 240, 247.

  13 Pearson, The Russian Moderates, pp. 125–6.

  14 P. Gatrell, ‘The First World War and War Communism’, p. 218.

  15 Ibid.

  16 A. M. Anfimov, introduction to Krest’anskoe dvizhenie, pp. 14–18.

  17 S. A. Smith, Red Petrograd. Revolution in the Factories, p. 46.

  18 W. G. Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution, p. 57.

  19 Their dominance was such that the first cabinet was not referred to as the First Coalition.

  20 A. H. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, vol. 1, pp. 186–8.

  21 L. Lande, ‘Some Statistics of the Unification Congress’, p. 389; O. H. Radkey, The Agrarian Foes of Communism, p. 236.

  22 Z. Galili, The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution, pp. 269–73.

  23 See M. Perrie, ‘The Peasants’, pp. 22–3.

  24 Rosenberg, Liberals, p. 174.

  25 Smith, Red Petrograd, p. 55.

  26 Ibid., pp. 145–9.

  27 V. I. Kostrikin, ‘Krest’yanskoe dvizhenie nakanune Oktyabrya’, p. 24.

  28 Smith, Red Petrograd, pp. 169–70.

  29 J. Channon, ‘The Landowners’, p. 124.

  30 H. White, ‘The Provisional Government and the Problem of Power in the Provinces’.

  31 J. Reshetar, The Ukrainian Revolution; A. F. Upton, The Finnish Revolution; R. G. Suny, The Baku Commune. Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution.

  32 S. F. Jones, ‘The Non-Russian Nationalities’, pp. 55–6.

  PART ONE

  3 Conflicts and Crises (1917)

  1 It ought to be added that they did not intend to scrap such nationally-based units as already existed. Finland was the prime example.

  2 I. Getzler, ‘Soviets as Agents of Democratisation’, pp. 7–30.

  3 R. Service, Lenin, vol. 2, pp. 154–5.

  4 PSS, vol. 31, pp. 113–16.

  5 Service, Lenin, vol. 2, pp. 156–60.

  6 R. Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution, p. 54.

  7 Ibid., p. 43.

  8 Ibid., pp. 46, 53.

  9 PSS, vol. 31, p. 267.

  10 W. G. Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution, p. 174.

  11 A. Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution, ch. 5.

  12 R. A. Wade, The Russian Search for Peace, p. 111.

  13 P. V. Volobuev, Ekonomicheskaya politika, p. 379.

  14 Ibid., p. 385.

  15 T. Kitanina, Voina, khleb i revolyutsiya, p. 344.

  16 D. Lieven, Nicholas II, p. 238.

  17 J. S. Curtiss, The Russian Church and the Soviet State, p. 38.

  18 A. Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power in Petrograd, p. 126.

  19 H. White, ‘The Urban Middle Classes’, pp. 78–9.

  20 P. V. Volobuev, Proletariat i burzhuaziya, p. 219.

  21 PSS, vol. 34, p. 389.

  22 A. V. Shestakov, Ocherki po sel’skomu khozyaistvu, p. 142.

  23 M. Perrie, ‘The Peasants’, p. 17.

  24 S. A. Smith, ‘Workers’ Control: February–October 1917’, pp. 22–3.

  25 A. H. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, vol. 1, ch. 9.

  26 Z. Galili, The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution, pp. 387–91.

  27 Ibid., pp. 387–9.

  28 ‘Iz rechi tov. Bukharina na vechere vospominanii 1921 g.’, Proletarskaya revolyutsiya, no.10 (1921), p. 319.

  29 Service, Lenin, vol. 2, pp. 251–7.

  30 Ibid., pp. 273–4.

  31 I. Getzler, Martov: A Political Biography of a Russian Social-Democrat, pp. 155–6.

  32 R. G. Suny, The Baku Commune, ch. 3.

  4 The October Revolution (1917–1918)

  1 PSS, vol. 33, pp. 1–120.

  2 R. Service, Lenin, vol. 2, pp. 220–24.

  3 Pravda, 29 October 1917.

  4 I. Getzler, Martov, p. 162; A. Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks, p. 292.

  5 T. H. Rigby, Lenin’s Government, p. 27.

  6 L. Trotsky, My Life. An Attempt at Autobiography, p. 355.

  7 Resheniya partii i pravitel’stva po khozyaistvennym voprosam, vol. 1, pp. 11–12.

  8 Ibid., pp. 12–14.

  9 Ibid., pp. 15–16.

  10 Service, Lenin, vol. 2, pp. 270–71.

  11 PSS, vol. 35, pp. 51–2.

  12 G. Leggett, The Cheka. Lenin’s Secret Police, p. 17.

  13 Service, Lenin, vol. 2, pp. 285–6.

  14 Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, vol. 1, p. 40.

  15 N. Valentinov, Vstrechi s Leninym, pp. 40–41.

  16 Service, Lenin, vol. 2, p. 185.

  17 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 186.

  18 PSS, vol. 49, p. 340.

  19 This figure is based upon the Central Committee full members; it also takes into account the redating of Stalin’s birth.

  20 Service, Lenin, vol. 2, pp. 10–11.

  21 SVI, p. 41: report by I. T. Smilga.

  22 Service, Lenin, vol. 2, pp. 184–5.

  23 Ibid., vol. 3, p. 135.

  24 O. Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War, pp. 63–4.

  25 J. H. L. Keep, The Russian Revolution. A Study in Mass Mobilisation, chs 26, 27.

  26 W. Mosse, ‘Revolution in Saratov’, p. 57.

  27 L. D. Trotskii, O Lenine. Materialy dlya biografii, pp. 91–2.

  28 PSS, vol. 31, pp. 64–5, 197, 250.

  29 O. H. Radkey, Russia Goes to the Polls, pp. 18–19.

  30 Service, Lenin, vol. 2, pp. 295–6.

  31 Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta RSDRP(b), p. 168; PSS, vol. 35, pp. 243–52.

  32 Trotskii, O Lenine, p. 81; Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta, pp. 168–9.

  33 C. Duval, ‘Yakov Sverdlov’, pp. 226–7.

  34 Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta, p. 213.

  35 B. Pearce, How Haig Saved Lenin, pp. 7–8.

  36 S. G. Wheatcroft, ‘The Balance of Grain Production and Utilisation’, pp. 7, 15–17.

&n
bsp; 37 A. Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, ch. 3.

  38 S. Malle, The Economic Organisation of ‘War Communism’, pp. 33, 55.

  39 The word used for ‘Russian’ was Rossiiskaya, which (unlike Russkaya) did not imply a national orientation to ethnic Russians.

  5 New World, Old World

  1 O. H. Radkey, Russia Goes to the Polls, pp. 16, 18–19.

  2 R. Service, ‘The Industrial Workers’, pp. 159–60.

  3 R. Service, Lenin, vol. 2, pp. 245–6.

  4 Ibid., pp. 239–40.

  5 S. F. Jones, ‘The Non-Russian Nationalities’, pp. 46–7.

  6 T. Swietochowski, Russian Azerbaijan, pp. 138–9.

  7 Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti, vol. 1, p. 40.

  8 PSS, vol. 35, pp. 221–3.

  9 This was its name until the 1930s, when the order of the words ‘socialist’ and ‘soviet’ was reversed and the name therefore became Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic.

  10 M. Perrie, ‘The Peasants’, p. 30.

  11 D. Atkinson, The End of the Russian Land Commune, pp. 181–2, 209.

  12 O. Figes, Peasant Russia, pp. 207–8.

  13 M. McAuley, Bread and Justice. State and Society in Petrograd, pp. 270–71.

  14 S. A. Smith, ‘Workers’ Control’, p. 23.

  15 J. Channon, ‘The Landowners’, p. 157.

  16 F. Lorimer, The Population of the Soviet Union. History and Prospects, p. 87.

  17 Izvestiya, 19 July 1918.

  18 Figes, Peasant Russia, pp. 138–44.