A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

by Orlando Figes

  A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

  Orlando Figes

  A PEOPLE'S TRAGEDY

  A History of the Russian Revolution

  Orlando Figes

  Copyright © Orlando Figes, 1996

  ISBN: 0670859168

  FOR STEPHANIE

  Contents

  Illustrations x

  Preface xv

  Glossary xix

  Notes on Dates xxi

  Maps xxiii

  PART ONE RUSSIA UNDER THE OLD REGIME

  1 The Dynasty 3

  i The Tsar and His People 3

  ii The Miniaturist IS

  iii The Heir 24

  2 Unstable Pillars 35

  i Bureaucrats and Dressing-Gowns 35

  ii The Thin Veneer of Civilization 42

  iii Remnants of a Feudal Army 55

  iv Not-So-Holy Russia 61

  v Prison of Peoples 69

  3 Icons and Cockroaches 84

  i A World Apart 84

  ii The Quest to Banish the Past 102

  4 Red Ink 122

  i Inside the Fortress 122

  ii Marx Comes to Russia 139

  PART TWO THE CRISIS OF AUTHORITY (1891-1917)

  5 First Blood 157

  i Patriots and Liberators 157

  ii 'There is no Tsar' 173

  iii A Parting of Ways 192

  6 Last Hopes 213

  i Parliaments and Peasants 213

  ii The Statesman 221

  iii The Wager on the Strong 232

  iv For God, Tsar and Fatherland 241

  7 A War on Three Fronts 253

  i Metal Against Men 253

  ii The Mad Chauffeur 270

  iii From the Trenches to the Barricades 291

  PART THREE RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION (FEBRUARY I9I7-MARCH 1918)

  8 Glorious February 307

  i The Power of the Streets 307

  ii Reluctant Revolutionaries 323

  iii Nicholas the Last 339

  9 The Freest Country in the World 354

  i A Distant Liberal State 354

  ii Expectations 361

  iii Lenin's Rage 384

  iv Gorky's Despair 398

  10 The Agony of the Provisional Government 406

  i The Illusion of a Nation 406

  ii A Darker Shade of Red 421

  iii The Man on a White Horse 438

  iv Hamlets of Democratic Socialism 455

  11 Lenin's Revolution 474

  i The Art of Insurrection 474

  ii The Smolny Autocrats 500

  iii Looting the Looters 520

  iv Socialism in One Country 536

  PART FOUR THE CIVIL WAR AND THE MAKING OF THE SOVIET SYSTEM (1918-24)

  12 Last Dreams of the Old World 555

  i St Petersburg on the Steppe 555

  ii The Ghost of the Constituent Assembly 575

  13 The Revolution Goes to War 589

  i Arming the Revolution 589

  ii 'Kulaks', Bagmen and Cigarette Lighters 603

  iii The Colour of Blood 627

  14 The New Regime Triumphant 650

  i Three Decisive Battles 650

  ii Comrades and Commissars 682

  iii A Socialist Fatherland 696

  15 Defeat in Victory 721

  i Short-Cuts to Communism 721

  ii Engineers of die Human Soul 732

  iii Bolshevism in Retreat 751

  16 Deaths and Departures 773

  i Orphans of the Revolution 773

  ii The Unconquered Country 786

  iii Lenin's Last Struggle 793

  Conclusion 808

  Notes 825

  Bibliography 862

  Index 895

  Illustrations

  Images of Autocracy: between pages 98 and 99

  1 St Petersburg illuminated for the Romanov tercentenary in 1913

  2 The procession of the imperial family during the tercentenary

  3 Nicholas II rides in public view during the tercentenary

  4 Nevsky Prospekt decorated for the tercentenary

  5 Guards officers greet the imperial family during the tercentenary

  6 Townspeople and peasants in Kostroma during the tercentenary

  7 The court ball of 1903

  8 The Temple of Christ s Resurrection

  9 Trubetskoi s equestrian statue of Alexander III

  10 Statue of Alexander III outside the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

  11 The imperial family

  12 Rasputin with his admirers

  13 The Tsarevich Alexis with Derevenko

  Everyday Life Under the Tsars: between pages 194 and 195

  14 The city mayors of Russia

  15 A group of volost elders

  16 A newspaper kiosk in St Petersburg

  17 A grocery store in St Petersburg

  18 Dinner at a ball given by Countess Shuvalov

  19 A soup kitchen for the unemployed in St Petersburg

  20 Peasants of a northern Russian village

  21 Peasant women threshing wheat

  22 Peasant women hauling a barge

  23 Twin brothers, former serfs, from Chernigov province

  24 A typical Russian peasant household

  25 A meeting of village elders

  26 A religious procession in Smolensk province

  27 The living space of four Moscow factory workers

  28 Inside a Moscow engineering works

  Dramatis Personae: between pages 290 and 291

  29 General Brusilov

  30 Maxim Gorky

  31 Prince G. E. Lvov

  32 Sergei Semenov

  33 Dmitry Os'kin

  34 Alexander Kerensky

  35 Lenin

  36 Trotsky

  37 Alexandra Kollontai

  Between Revolutions: between pages 386 and 387

  38 Soldiers fire at the demonstrating workers on 'Bloody Sunday', 1905

  39 Demonstrators confront mounted Cossacks during 1905

  40 The opening of the State Duma in April 1906

  41 The Tauride Palace

  42 Petr Stolypin

  43 Wartime volunteers pack parcels for the Front

  44 A smart dinner party sees in the New Year of 1917

  45 Troops pump out a trench on the Northern Front

  46 Cossacks patrol the streets of Petrograd in February 1917

  47 The arrest of a policeman during the February Days

  48 Moscow workers playing with the stone head of Alexander II

  49 A crowd burns tsarist emblems during the February Days

  50 The crowd outside the Tauride Palace during the February Days

  51 Soldiers receive news of the Tsar's abdication

  Images of 1917: between pages 482 and 483

  52 The First Provisional Government in the Marinsky Palace

  53 The burial of victims of the February Revolution

  54 A meeting of the Soviet of Soldiers' Deputies

  55 Waiters and waitresses of Petrograd on strike

  56 The AU-Russian Congress of Peasant Deputies

  57 Fedor Linde leads an anti-war demonstration by the Finland Regiment during the April Crisis

  58 Kerensky makes a speech to soldiers at the Front

  59 Metropolitan Nikon blesses the Women's Battalion of Death

  60 General Kornilov's triumphant arrival in Moscow during the State Conference

  61 Members of the Women's Battalion of Death in the Winter Palace on 25 October

  62 Some of Kerensky's last defenders in the Winter Palace on 25 October

  63 The Smolny Institute
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br />   64 The Red Guard of the Vulkan Factory

  The Civil War: between pages 578 and 579

  65 General Alexeev

  66 General Denikin

  67 Admiral Kolchak

  68 Baron Wrangel

  69 Members of the Czech Legion in Vladivostok

  70 A group of White officers during a military parade in Omsk

  71 A strategic meeting of Red partisans

  72 An armoured train

  73 The Latvian Division passing through a village

  74 Two Red Army soldiers take a break

  75 Red Army soldiers reading propaganda leaflets

  76 A Red Army mobile library in the village

  77 Nestor Makhno

  78 The execution of a peasant by the Whites

  79 Jewish victims of a pogrom

  80 Red Army soldiers torture a Polish officer

  Everyday Life Under the Bolsheviks: between pages 674 and 675

  81 Muscovites dismantle a house for firewood

  82 A priest helps transport timber

  83 Women of the 'former classes' sell their last possessions

  84 A soldier buys a pair of shoes from a group of burzhoois

  85 Haggling over a fur scarf at the Smolensk market in Moscow

  86 Traders at the Smolensk market

  87 Two ex-tsarist officers are made to clear the streets

  88 Cheka soldiers close down traders' stalls in Moscow

  89 Requisitioning the peasants' grain

  90 'Bagmen' on the railways

  91 The I May subbotnik on Red Square in Moscow, 1920

  92 An open-air cafeteria at the Kiev Station in Moscow

  93 Delegates of the Ninth All-Russian Party Congress

  94 The Agitation and Propaganda Department of the Commissariat for Supply and Distribution in the Northern Region

  95 The Smolny Institute on the anniversary of the October coup

  The Revolutionary Inheritance: between pages 770 and 771

  96 Red Army troops assault the mutinous Kronstadt Naval Base

  97 Peasant rebels attack a train of requisitioned grain

  98 Bolshevik commissars inspect the harvest failure in the Volga region

  99 Unburied corpses from the famine crisis

  100 Cannibals with their victims

  101 Street orphans in Saratov hunt for food in a rubbish tip

  102 The Secretary of the Tula Komsomol

  103 A juvenile unit of the Red Army in Turkestan

  104 Red Army soldiers confiscate valuables from the Semenov Monastery

  105 A propaganda meeting in Bukhara

  106 Two Bolshevik commissars in the Far East

  107 The dying Lenin in 1923

  Photographic Credits

  Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University: 58; California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside: 20. Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, California: 82-4; Life on the Russian Country Estate. A Social and Cultural history, by Priscilla Roosevelt (Yale University Press, 1995): 26; Museum of the Revolution, Moscow: 7, 15, 36, 52, 61-2, 77-8, 90; Photo-khronika Tass, Moscow: 107; private collections: 10, 32, 97; Russian in Original Photographs 1860—1920, by Marvin Lyons (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1977): 25, 47; Russie, 1904-1924: La Revolution est Id, (Baschet, Paris, 1978): 80; Russian Century, The, by Brian Moynahan (Chatto & Windus, London, 1994): 13, 28 (courtesy of Slava Katamidze Collection/Endeavour Group, London), 46 (Courtesy of the Endeavour Group, London); Russian State Archive of Film and Photographic Documents, Krasnogorsk: 18—19, 21—3, 35, 37—8, 40, 45, 48, 51, 59-60, 65-71, 73-6, 79, 81, 85-93, 98-106; Russian State Military History Archive, Moscow: 29; Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, St Petersburg: 12; State Archive of Film and Photographic Documents, St Petersburg: 1—6, 8—9, II, 14, 16-17, 24, 27, 30-1, 34, 39, 41-4, 49-50, 53-7, 63-4, 72, 94-6; Tula District Museum: 33.

  Preface

  These days we call so many things a 'revolution' — a change in the government's policies on sport, a technological innovation, or even a new trend in marketing — that it may be hard for the reader of this book to take on board the vast scale of its subject at the start. The Russian Revolution was, at least in terms of its effects, one of the biggest events in the history of the world. Within a generation of the establishment of Soviet power, one-third of humanity was living under regimes modelled upon it. The revolution of 1917 has defined the shape of the contemporary world, and we are only now emerging from its shadow. It was not so much a single revolution — the compact eruption of 1917 so often depicted in the history books — as a whole complex of different revolutions which exploded in the middle of the First World War and set off a chain reaction of more revolutions, civil, ethnic and national wars. By the time that it was over, it had blown apart — and then put back together — an empire covering one-sixth of the surface of the globe. At the risk of appearing callous, the easiest way to convey the revolution's scope is to list the ways in which it wasted human life: tens of thousands were killed by the bombs and bullets of the revolutionaries, and at least an equal number by the repressions of the tsarist regime, before 1917; thousands died in the street fighting of that year; hundreds of thousands from the Terror of the Reds — and an equal number from the Terror of the Whites, if one counts the victims of their pogroms against Jews — during the years that followed; more than a million perished in the fighting of the civil war, including civilians in the rear; and yet more people died from hunger, cold and disease than from all these put together.

  All of which, I suppose, is by way of an apology for the vast size of this book — the first attempt at a comprehensive history of the entire revolutionary period in a single volume. Its narrative begins in the 1890s, when the revolutionary crisis really started, and more specifically in 1891, when the public's reaction to the famine crisis set it for the first time on a collision course with the tsarist autocracy. And our story ends in 1924, with the death of Lenin, by which time the revolution had come full circle and the basic institutions, if not all the practices, of the Stalinist regime were in place. This is to give to the revolution a much longer lifespan than is customary. But it seems to me that,

  with one or two exceptions, previous histories of the revolution have been too narrowly focused on the events of 1917, and that this has made the range of its possible outcomes appear much more limited than they actually were. It was by no means inevitable that the revolution should have ended in the Bolshevik dictatorship, although looking only at that fateful year would lead one towards this conclusion. There were a number of decisive moments, both before and during 1917, when Russia might have followed a more democratic course. It is the aim of A People's Tragedy, by looking at the revolution in the longue durée, to explain why it did not at each of these in turn. As its title is intended to suggest, the book rests on the proposition that Russia's democratic failure was deeply rooted in its political culture and social history. Many of the themes of the four introductory chapters in Part One — the absence of a state-based counterbalance to the despotism of the Tsar; the isolation and fragility of liberal civil society; the backwardness and violence of the Russian village that drove so many peasants to go and seek a better life in the industrial towns; and the strange fanaticism of the Russian radical intelligentsia — will reappear as constant themes in the narrative of Parts Two, Three and Four.

  Although politics are never far away, this is, I suppose, a social history in the sense that its main focus is the common people. I have tried to present the major social forces — the peasantry, the working class, the soldiers and the national minorities — as the participants in their own revolutionary drama rather than as 'victims' of the revolution. This is not to deny that there were many victims. Nor is it to adopt the 'bottom-up' approach so fashionable these days among the 'revisionist' historians of Soviet Russia. It would be absurd — and in Russia's case obscene — to imply that a people gets the rulers it deserves. But it is to argue that the sort of politiciz
ed 'top-down' histories of the Russian Revolution which used to be written in the Cold War era, in which the common people appeared as the passive objects of the evil machinations of the Bolsheviks, are no longer adequate. We now have a rich and growing literature, based upon research in the newly opened archives, on the social life of the Russian peasantry, the workers, the soldiers and the sailors, the provincial towns, the Cossacks and the non-Russian regions of the Empire during the revolutionary period. These monographs have given us a much more complex and convincing picture of the relationship between the party and the people than the one presented in the older 'top-down' version. They have shown that instead of a single abstract revolution imposed by the Bolsheviks on the whole of Russia, it was as often shaped by local passions and interests. A People's Tragedy is an attempt to synthesize this reappraisal and to push the argument one stage further. It attempts to show, as its title indicates, that what began as a people's revolution contained the seeds of its own degeneration into violence and dictatorship. The same social forces which brought about the triumph of the Bolshevik regime became its main victims.

  Finally, the narrative of A People's Tragedy weaves between the private and the public spheres. Wherever possible, I have tried to emphasize the human aspect of its great events by listening to the voices of individual people whose lives became caught up in the storm. Their diaries, letters and other private writings feature prominently in this book. More substantially, the personal histories of several figures have been interwoven through the narrative. Some of these figures are well known (Maxim Gorky, General Brusilov and Prince Lvov), while others are unknown even to historians (the peasant reformer Sergei Semenov and the soldier-commissar Dmitry Os'kin). But all of them had hopes and aspirations, fears and disappointments, that were typical of the revolutionary experience as a whole. In following the fortunes of these figures, my aim has been to convey the chaos of these years, as it must have been felt by ordinary men and women. I have tried to present the revolution not as a march of abstract social forces and ideologies but as a human event of complicated individual tragedies. It was a story, by and large, of people, like the figures in this book, setting out with high ideals to achieve one thing, only to find out later that the outcome was quite different. This, again, is why I chose to call the book A People's Tragedy. For it is not just about the tragic turning-point in the history of a people. It is also about the ways in which the tragedy of the revolution engulfed the destinies of those who lived through it.