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by Slezkine, Yuri


  26. Ia. M. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1957), 1:139.

  2. THE PREACHERS

  1. A. Etkind, Khlyst: Sekty, literatura i revoliutsiia (Moscow: NLO, 1998), esp. 585–674; Christopher Read, Religion, Revolution and the Russian Intelligentsia 1900–1912 (London: Macmillan, 1979), 57–94; Catherine Evtuhov, The Cross and the Sickle: Sergei Bulgakov and the Fate of Russian Religious Philosophy, 1890–1920 (Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1997); S. Bulgakov, Dva grada: Issledovaniia o prirode obshchestvennykh idealov (St. Petersburg: RGKhI, 1997), esp. 207–47; A. V. Lunacharskii, Religiia i sotsializm (St. Petersburg: Shipovnik, 1908–11), vols. 1 and 2; N. A. Berdiaev, “Religioznye osnovy bol’shevizma,” in Nikolai Berdiaev, Sobranie sochinenii (Paris: YMCA Press, 1990), 4:29–37; N. A. Berdiaev, Russkaia ideia: Osnovnye napravleniia russkoi mysli XIX veka i nachala XX veka (Moscow: Svarog, 1997), 168–83; V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, Izbrannye sochineniia (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1959), 1:184; Roland Boer, Lenin, Religion, and Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 59–101; David Graeme Rowley, Millenarian Bolshevism: Empiriomonism, God-Building, Proletarian Culture (New York: Garland, 1987); Vatro Murvar, “Messianism in Russia: Religious and Revolutionary,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 10 (1971): 277–338; A. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi (Moscow: Antikva, 2005), 1:137.

  2. Deiateli SSSR i revoliutsionnogo dvizhenia Rossii (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1989), 688, 372, 569; Nikolai Bukharin, Vremena (Moscow: Progress, 1994), 27–29; RGASPI, f. 124, op. 1, d. 1848 (A. P. Stankevich), l. 6.

  3. Feliks Kon, Za 50 let (Moscow: Vsesoiuznoe obshchestvo politkatorzhan i ssyl’no-poselentsev, 1934), 1:7, 17–18.

  4. Deiateli SSSR, 593, 595. For the non-Russian converts to Bolshevism, see Liliana Riga, The Bolsheviks and the Russian Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

  5. RGASPI, f. 124, op. 1, d. 603 (Dodonova), l. 4 (the “discomfort and shame” quotation); Deiateli SSSR, 701–2. See also Deiateli SSSR, 395 (Ganetskii); RGASPI, f. 124, op. 1, d. 1114 (Lepeshinskaia), l. 4 ob.

  6. Deiateli SSSR, 546, 548.

  7. Bukharin, Vremena, 309–10.

  8. Il’ia Erenburg, Liudi, gody, zhizn’ (Moscow, Sovetskii pisatel’, 1990), 1:73.

  9. K. T. Sverdlova, Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1985), 59–63; S. M. Sverdlova, S. M. Averbakh-Sverdlova, V. M. Sverdlov, “Brat,” in O Iakove Sverdlove: Vospominaniia, ocherki, stat’i sovremennikov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi liteatury, 1985), 25–30. The long quotation is from Ts. Zelikson-Borovskaia, Professional’nyi revoliutsioner: Ocherk zhizni i deiatel’nosti Ia. M. Sverdlova (Moscow: Staryi bol’shevik, 1934), 11–12.

  10. A. Arosev, Kazanskie ocherki o revoliutsii 1905 goda (Kazan: Istpart otdel oblastnogo komiteta RKP(b) Tatarskoi respubliki, 1925), 16.

  11. A. Arosev, “Na boevykh putiakh: Vospominaniia,” Novyi mir 1 (1931): 87–88.

  12. Ibid., 82.

  13. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 1:16–18.

  14. Arosev, “Na boevykh putiakh: Vospominaniia,” 90, 88.

  15. Kon, Za 50 let, 1:18, 19.

  16. Arosev, “Na boevykh putiakh: Vospominaniia,” 91; Aleksandr Arosev, Kak my vstupali v revoliutsionnuiu rabotu (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1926), 66–67; Deiateli SSSR, 569–70.

  17. Deiateli SSSR, 570. For the largest collection of Old Bolshevik memoirs, see RGASPI, f. 124, op. 1 (The Society of Old Bolsheviks). All the memoirs from f. 124 quoted in this chapter are by the residents of the House of Government.

  18. Arosev, Kak my vstupali, 68–71, except the “Those were not letters” and “were met with loud applause” quotations, which are from A. Arosev, “Na boevykh putiakh: Prodolzhenie,” Novyi mir 2 (1931): 85, 87.

  19. The translation of the quotation from Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? is based on V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961), 5:355. For the original, see V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, Politizdat, 1963), izd. 5, vol. 6, pp. 9–10 (http://uaio.ru/vil/06.htm).

  20. Bukharin, Vremena, 316–37.

  21. Deiateli SSSR, 569; A. Voronskii, Rasskazy i povesti (Moscow: Sovetskaia literatura, 1933), 30; Kon, Za 50 let, 1:18. On the culture and mythology of the revolutionary movement, see Marina Mogil’ner, Mifologiia ‘podpol’nogo cheloveka’: Radikal’nyi mikrokosm v Rossii nachala XX veka kak predmet semioticheskogo analiza (Moscow: NLO, 1999); on student radical culture, see Susan K. Morrissey, Heralds of Revolution: Russian Students and the Mythologies of Radicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); on Jewish radicalism, see Inna Shtakser, The Making of Jewish Revolutionaries in the Pale of Settlement (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

  22. V. V. Kuibyshev, Epizody iz moei zhizni (Moscow: Staryi bol’shevik, 1935), 32–55. See also Valerian Vladimirovich Kuibyshev: Biografiia (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988), 33–35.

  23. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:229–30.

  24. Ibid., 2:224–25.

  25. Kanatchikov, Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia, 290; Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 1:115.

  26. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 1:118.

  27. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, izd. 5, vol. 6, p. 79 (http://uaio.ru/vil/06.htm); Kanatchikov, Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia, 290; Bukharin, Vremena, 336.

  28. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:229; Kon, Za 50 let, 49. See also Kanatchikov, Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia, xv–xxx (editor’s introduction); and Reginald E. Zelnik, “Russian Bebels: An Introduction to the Memoirs of the Russian Workers Semën Kanatchikov and Matvei Fisher,” Russian Review 35, no. 3 (July 1976): 288–89.

  29. Deiateli SSSR, 476–79.

  30. Pavel Postyshev: Vospominaniia, vystupleniia, pis’ma (Moscow: Politizdat, 1987), 46; Iu. A. Dmitriev et al., Ulitsy Vladimira (Iaroslavl’: Verkhne–Volzhskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1989), 17–19.

  31. RGASPI, f. 124, op. 1, d. 1919 (R. Ia. Terekhov), ll. 1–2ob.

  32. Ibid., d. 1429 (V. A. Orekhov), ll. 3–4ob.

  33. Kanatchikov, Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia, 27–34.

  34. Ibid., 100.

  35. Ibid., 27; Deiateli SSSR, 477; P. M. Bykov, “Moi vstrechi s Ia. M. Sverdlovym,” in O Iakove Sverdlove, 45; S. M. Sverdlova et al., “Brat,” in O Iakove Sverdlove, 28.

  36. Pavel Postyshev, 52.

  37. Kanatchikov, Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia, 248–49.

  38. S. M. Sverdlova et al., “Brat,” in O Iakove Sverdlove, 25–30 (the quotation is on 29); A. Voronskii, Izbrannaia proza (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1987), 20–21; Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 1:40–41; Kuibyshev, Epizody, 30–32.

  39. Kanatchikov, Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia, 249.

  40. Ibid., 102.

  41. Ibid., 130. For other vivid workers’ autobiographies by future House of Government residents, see RGASPI, f. 124, op. 1, d. 39 (S. Ia. Alliluev); 40 (O. E. Allilueva); 119 (S. M. Balakhnin); 273 (I. L. Bulat); 274 (D. A. Bulatov); 275 (A. S. Bulin); 346 (M. K. Vetoshkin); 411 (A. A. Voronin); 493 (N. K. Goncharov); 518 (L. A. Grebnev); 550 (M. A. Gusev); 596 (K. Ia. Dirik); 745 (B. I. Ivanov); 909 (M. N. Kokovikhin); 953 (V. E. Kosorotov); 1031 (M. M. Kul’kov); 1077 (M. A. Lebedev); 1159 (F. F. Liaksutkin); 1542 (V. I. Polonskii); 1599 (S. F. Redens); 1683 (A. N. Riabov); 1717 (P. F. Sakharova); 1797 (M. I. Smirnov); 1890 (F. F. Syromolotov); 2018 (V. V. Fomin); 2083 (A. A. Chevardin); 2988 (A. A. Cherepanov). On radical workers’ culture, including reading circles, see Reginald E. Zelnik, “Russian Bebels: An Introduction to the Memoirs of Semen Kanatchikov and Matvei Fisher,” part 1, Russian Review 35, no. 3 (July 1976): 249–89, and part 2, Russian Review 35, no. 4 (October 1976): 417–47; Reginald E. Zelnik, ed., Workers and Intelligentsia in Late Imperial Russia: Realities, Representations, Reflections (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Zelnik, “On the Eve: An Inquiry into the Life Histories and Self-Awareness of Some Worker-Revolutionaries,” in Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Making Workers So
viet: Power, Class, and Identity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 17–65; Mark D. Steinberg, Proletarian Imagination: Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia, 1910–1925 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002); Michael Melancon and Alice K. Pate, eds., New Labor History: Worker Identity and Experience in Russia (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2002); and Deborah Pearl, Creating a Culture of Revolution: Workers and the Revolutionary Movement in Late Imperial Russia (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2015), esp. 57–239, on what circle members read. For female revolutionaries, see Anna Hillyar and Jane McDermid, eds., Revolutionary Women in Russia 1870–1917: A Study in Collective Biography (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).

  42. Arosev, “Na boevykh putiakh: Prodolzhenie,” 93–94.

  43. Bykov, “Moi vstrechi s Ia. M. Sverdlovym,” in O Iakove Sverdlove, 50–51.

  44. Arosev, “Na boevykh putiakh: Prodolzhenie,” 94; RGASPI, f. 124, op. 1, d. 1429 (V. A. Orekhov), ll. 3ob., 4; E. Brazhnev (Trifonov), Stuchit rabochaia krov’ (Moscow: Nedra, 1931), 199; Iurii Trifonov, “Otblesk kostra,” in Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1987), 4:9–10, 14, 32.

  45. Arosev, “Na boevykh putiakh: Prodolzhenie,” 94.

  46. Kon, Za 50 let, 2:6; Deiateli SSSR, 571, 439, 582 (for Osinksy, Bukharin, Kerzhentsev, and Petrovsky); O. Piatnitskii, Zapiski bol’shevika (Moscow: Partizdat, 1936), 43 (for Tarshis).

  47. Kanatchikov, Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia, 125–26, 250.

  48. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 1:165, 2:5–6.

  49. S. M. Sverdlova et al., “Brat,” in O Iakove Sverdlove, 28; Ia. M. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1957), 1:172–73, 223, 255, 256, 258–62; K. T. Sverdlova, Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, 19, 93–94.

  50. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 1:167, 175, 182; K. T. Sverdlova, Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, 119–20.

  51. On exile as part of revolutionary mythology, see Mogil’ner, Mifologiia ‘podpol’nogo cheloveka’, 168–76.

  52. Kanatchikov, Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia, 367. For the “Bek”/”Mek” question, see Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:71; and B. I. Ivanov, Vospominaniia rabochego bol’shevika (Moscow: Mysl’, 1972), 92.

  53. Kanatchikov, Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia, 364; Sverdlova, Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, 124, 193–94; V. I. Piatnitskii, Osip Piatnitskii i Komintern na vesakh istorii (Minsk: Kharvest, 2004), 29; Piatnitskii, Zapiski, 244–51; RGASPI, f. 124, op. 1, d. 1308 (O. N. Mitskevich), l. 3; Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:74, 180.

  54. Trifonov, “Otblesk kostra,” 21; Ivanov, Vospominaniia, 101; Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:85–86.

  55. Piatnitskii, Zapiski, 249; Ivanov, Vospominaniia, 95, 153.

  56. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 1:204, 268; Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:177–78; Kanatchikov, Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia, 367; Pavel Postyshev, 51.

  57. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 1:268, 276–77, 298; Dzhugashvili quoted in Iurii Trifonov, “Iz dnevnikov i rabochikh tetradei,” Druzhba narodov 6 (1998): 114.

  58. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 1:278, 298, 301; RGASPI, f. 124, op. 1, d. 484 (F. I. Goloshchekin), ll. 14–14 ob.

  59. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 1:281, 214–15.

  60. Ivanov, Vospominaniia, 151–52, 154.

  61. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:181–82.

  62. Ivanov, Vospominaniia, 95; Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 208.

  63. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 1:215; Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:182; Piatnitskii, Zapiski, 249–50; Ivanov, Vospominaniia, 153.

  64. Pavel Postyshev, 57.

  65. Ibid., 50.

  66. Ivanov, Vospominaniia, 92.

  67. Sverdlova, Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, 194–97. See also Ivanov, Vospominaniia, 96.

  68. Ivanov, Vospominaniia, 107–8.

  69. Sverdlova, Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, 196. On Narym exile, see Ernst Khaziakhmetov, Bol’sheviki v Narymskoi ssylke (Novosibirsk: Zapadno-Sibirskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1967).

  70. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:186, 7, 86.

  71. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:268.

  72. Ibid., 2:5; E. A. Dinershtein, A. K. Voronskii v poiskakh zhivoi vody (Moscow: Rosspen, 2001), 271–72.

  73. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 1:89–90.

  74. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:268, 303.

  75. Ibid., 2:300–301.

  76. Ibid., 2:266–67.

  77. Frederick Engels, “The Movements of 1847,” in Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975–2004), 6:520. The words “The hangman stands at the door” are from Heinrich Heine’s “Ritter Olaf.”

  78. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:305.

  79. Ibid., 2:305, 267, 268, 306, 309.

  80. Ibid., 2:304.

  81. Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 1:284.

  82. Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (New York: Macmillan, 1931), 1:331–43; for a helpful reconsideration, see Bryan Wilson, Religious Sects: A Sociological Study (New York: McGraw Hill, 1970), 26–28. On sects defying states, not churches, see Bryan R. Wilson, Magic and the Millennium: A Sociological Study of Religious Movements of Protest among Tribal and Third-World Peoples (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 14. On the cult/sect distinction, see Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 24–26. On the world-rejection/world-acceptance continuum, see Benton Johnson, “On Church and Sect,” American Sociological Review 28, no. 4 (August 1963): 539–49; for a strong endorsement (and the source of some of my wording), see Stark and Bainbridge, The Future of Religion, 23–24.

  83. Job 6: 11; 9:19, 20.

  84. Bukharin, Vremena, 350–51.

  85. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 1:68–69.

  86. Gen. 3:19, 1:28.

  87. The “mountain” quotation is from Heb. 3:14.

  88. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 1:151.

  89. Cf. Arosev’s “Na boevykh putiakh: Vospominaniia,” esp. 89 (the theme is proclaimed, but not strongly developed).

  90. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 1:151–52.

  91. Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:269–71.

  92. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 1:185.

  93. Ibid., 1:252.

  94. Archpriest Avvakum, The Life Written by Himself, trans. Kenneth N. Brostrom (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Michigan Slavic Publications, 1979), 68; Voronskii, Za zhivoi i mertvoi vodoi, 2:154–55; G. A. Voronskaia, “Esli v serdtse posylaiut puliu,” Istoricheskii arkhiv 1 (1997): 77; Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 1:185.

  95. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 1:329, 339.

  96. Ibid., 1:302.

  97. Ibid., 1:247–48, 273.

  98. Ibid., 1:349.

  99. Sverdlova, Iakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov, 217–18.

  100. K. A. Egon-Besser, “Volia k zhizni, k bor’be,” in O Iakove Sverdlove, 104.

  101. Sverdlov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 1:208, 170, 294.

  102. Biographical information from Svetlana Valerianovna Obolenskaia, interview with author, September 20, 2009.

  103. ARAN, razriad 5, op. 1–0, d. 11, ll. 1–5 ob.

  104. Aleksandr Mikhailov, Zhizn’ Maiakovskogo: Ia svoe zemnoe ne dozhil (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2001), 121; V. V. Kamenskii, Zhizn’ s Maiakovskim (Moscow, 1940; reprint, Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1974), 83–84.

  105. Mikhailov, Zhizn’, 125; Nina Zainullina, “Kto vdokhnovil Maiakovskogo na ‘Oblako v shtanakh’?” Vechernii Khar’kov, January 11, 2008, http://www.vecherniy.kharkov.ua/news/18715.

  106. Kamenskii, Zhizn’, 88–89.

  107. Ibid., 97–99.

  108. Ibid., 25.

  109. Ibid., 20; Vladimir Maiakovskii, “Oblako v shtanakh,” Biblioteka Komarova, http://il
ibrary.ru/text/1241/p.1/index.html.

  3. THE FAITH

  1. Steve Bruce, Religion in the Modern World: From Cathedrals to Cults (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 7. See also Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 3–14. For Marxism and Bolshevism as religion or “secular religion,” see Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, Red Apocalypse: The Religious Evolution of Soviet Communism (New York: University Press of America, 1996); Mikhail Ryklin, Kommunizm kak religiia: Intellektualy i Oktiabr’skaia revoliutsiia (Moscow: NLO, 2009); Mikhail Agursky, “L’aspect millénariste de la révolution bolchevique,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 29 (1988): 487–513; Mary-Barbara Zeldin, “The Religious Nature of Russian Marxism,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 8 (1969): 100–111; Klaus-Georg Riegel, “Marxism-Leninism as a Political Religion,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 6 (2005): 97–126.

  2. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 26–31.

  3. For the history of the concepts of “religion” and “world religions,” see Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 40–42; Leora Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011); Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Timothy Fitzgerald, Ideology of Religious Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); William Herbrechtsmeier, “Buddhism and the Definition of Religion: One More Time,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 32, no. 1 (March 1993): 1–18; Jason Ananda Josephson, The Invention of Religion in Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, or How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Brian K. Pennington, Was Hinduism Invented? Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Wilfried Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).

 

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