0521876230 cambridge university press politics and the people in revolutionary russia a provincial history nov 2007

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POLITICS AND THE PEOPLE IN
R E VO L U T I O N A RY RU S S I A

After the collapse of the Romanov dynasty in February 1917, Russia was subject to an eight-month experiment in democracy. Sarah
Badcock studies its failure through an exploration of the experiences
and motivations of ordinary men and women, urban and rural, military and civilian. Using previously neglected documents from regional
archives, she offers a new history of the revolution as experienced in the
two Volga provinces of Nizhegorod and Kazan. She exposes the confusions and contradictions between political elites and ordinary people
and emphasises the role of the latter as political actors. By looking
beyond Petersburg and Moscow, she shows how local concerns, conditions and interests were foremost in shaping how the revolution
was received and understood. She also reveals the ways in which the
small group of intellectuals who dominated the high political scene of
1917 had their political alternatives circumscribed by the desires and
demands of ordinary people.
sar ah b ad co c k is Lecturer in History at the University of
Nottingham.


n ew s t u die s in e u rope a n h isto ry
Edited by
pe t er b a l dw in , University of California, Los Angeles
chr is to pher c l a rk , University of Cambridge
j a m es b. co l l in s , Georgetown University
m i a rodr´ı g u e z - s a lg a d o , London School of Economics and Political
Science
lyn d a l ro per , University of Oxford

The aim of this series in early modern and modern European history is to publish outstanding works of research, addressed to important themes across a wide
geographical range, from southern and central Europe, to Scandinavia and Russia,
from the time of the Renaissance to the Second World War. As it develops the series
will comprise focused works of wide contextual range and intellectual ambition.
For a full list of titles published in the series, please see the end of the book.


POLITICS AND THE
PEOPLE IN
R E VO LU T I O N A RY RU S S I A
A Provincial History

SA R A H B A D C O C K
University of Nottingham


CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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© Sarah Badcock 2007
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relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2007
eBook (EBL)

ISBN-13 978-0-511-35459-5
ISBN-10 0-511-35459-2
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ISBN-13
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Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls
for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.


This book is dedicated to my grandparents,
Ted and Freda Ellis



Contents

List of figures and table
Notes on the text
Acknowledgements
Maps

page viii
ix

x
xii

1 Introduction

1

2 The February revolution: whose story to believe?

30

3 The Socialist Revolutionary Party and the place of
party politics

56

4 Choosing local leaders

87

5 Talking to the people and shaping revolution

123

6 Soldiers and their wives

145

7 ‘Water is yours, light is yours, the land is yours, the wood
is yours’

181

8 Feeding Russia

211

Conclusions

238

Bibliography
Index

244
257

vii


Figures and table

figures
1.1 Great Russian population (%) in Kazan province, by uezd
page 7
1.2 Political constitution of Town Dumas after re-elections
in 1917
26
3.1 Dates of membership and first arrest of PSR members
63

3.2 Election results in Sormovo for July, September and
November 1917
82
4.1 Education levels of local leaders in 1917
89
4.2 Occupations of local leaders in 1917
90
7.1 Livestock (per head) held in Nizhegorod and Kazan
provinces, by uezd, for 1916
184
7.2 Sown areas (in desiatins) in Nizhegorod and Kazan provinces,
by uezd, showing crop types, for 1916
185
7.3 Land sown (in desiatins) by peasant and private owners, 1916
187
7.4 Ownership of woodland in Nizhegorod province
193
table
1.1 The Provincial Government’s five incarnations

viii

12


Notes on the text

All dates before 31 January 1918 are given according to the Julian (oldstyle) calendar, which ran thirteen days behind the Gregorian (new-style)
calendar in use in Western Europe. The Gregorian calendar was adopted
in Russia on the day following 31 January 1918, which was declared to be

14 February, though many regional Soviet newspapers began to give new
dates, with old dates in brackets, in their publications, after the Bolshevik
seizure of power on 25 October 1917.
In transliterating Russian titles, quotations and names, I have used the
Library of Congress system, except in the case of well-known persons, or
names that are familiar in other spellings, such as Alexander Kerensky and
Rimsky-Korsakov. Soft signs at the ends of words have been omitted.
I have tried to keep the use of Russian terms and abbreviations in the text
to an absolute minimum. There are a number of terms, however, which
translate clumsily, and have been given in Russian throughout.
Each province is divided into uezdy and each uezd subdivided into volosti.
desiatina: measurement of area, equivalent to 2.7 acres
narodnyi dom: People’s house
otrub (pl. otruba): peasant household farm with enclosed field strips
PSR: Socialist Revolutionary Party
pud: measurement of weight, equivalent to 36.113 pounds
samosud: mob law
skhod: village or communal gathering
soldatka (pl. soldatki): soldier’s wife
soslovie (noun), soslovnyi (adj.): social categories applied in tsarist period
SD: Social Democrat
SR: member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party
uezd: district; subdivision of province
volost: rural district; subdivision of uezd
zemstvo (pl. zemstva): local self-government organ
Archival materials are referred to by their collection fond (f.), section opis
(op.), file delo (d.) and page number listok (l.). Unless otherwise indicated,
all translations are my own.
ix

Acknowledgements

This study has been made possible by the financial and moral support
that I have received from a wide variety of sources. Funding from scholarly bodies and from my indefatigable parents enabled me to pursue my
research interests. The Arts and Humanities Research Board, the University
of Durham, the British Foundation of Women Graduates and the Royal
Historical Society all provided me with financial support in the course of my
doctoral research, on which this work is partly based. The financial support
of the Leverhulme Trust enabled me to spend an invaluable year in Russia
furthering my research. The study leave afforded me by the University of
Nottingham gave me the time I needed to complete this manuscript.
I could not have completed this book without the help of the staff of
various archives and libraries, in Moscow, St Petersburg, Kazan, Nizhnii
Novgorod, London and Nottingham. I’m only sorry I don’t remember the
names of the many archivists who were so kind and helpful to me, especially
the reading room staff who bore my amateurish spoken Russian and my
fixation on 1917 with good humour. I spent many months in the newspaper
room of the Russian National Library on the Fontanka in St Petersburg and
the then head of the section, Victor Victorovich, brightened my day with his
cheery hellos and chocolate treats. I am particularly grateful to the director
of Nizhnii Novgorod’s State Archive, Victor Alekseevich Kharmalov, and
the director of the National Archive of the Republic of Tatarstan, Liudmila
Vasil evna Gorokhova, for permitting me to use their wonderful archives.
The scholars of revolutionary Russia are an exceptionally welcoming and
friendly bunch. Michael Hickey has offered more support than I should
really have dared to ask for. His painstaking comments and criticisms of
my work over the last few years have improved this book beyond measure. Geoff Swain and Chris Read have generously and patiently read and
commented on very many versions of this work. They have also offered
me a lot of support right through my career. Dan Orlovsky’s insightful

comments on a final version of this manuscript helped me clarify my
x


Acknowledgements

xi

ideas. The detailed evaluation from the anonymous reader consulted by
Cambridge University Press improved this book significantly. The Study
Group on the Russian Revolution provided a knowledgeable and supportive forum for the exchange of ideas. I have bludgeoned too many people
into conversation about 1917 to name them all here. I would however like
to thank, in no particular order, Aaron Retish, Liudmila Novikova, Murray
Frame, Jimmy White, Ian Thatcher, Cath Brennan, Paul Dukes, Bob McKean, Peter Gatrell, Boris Kolonitskii, David Saunders, John Slatter, David
Moon, David Longley, Michael Melancon, Mark Baker, John Morison and
Maureen Perrie. Any shortcomings and errors in this work are, of course,
my own and have endured despite all these individuals’ best efforts.
Finally, I’d like to thank my friends and family, who may not have read
the mountains of paper I’ve generated over the last few years, but have
offered the trappings of sanity in my ivory tower world. My mam and
dad Louise and Ernie, and my sister Zoe, have been unflagging in their
support for me through all the ups and downs of academic study. My boon
companions Louise, Lolly, Becky, Karen, Sam and of course the infamous
Ben Aldridge have conspired to keep things in perspective, and life cheery
over the last few years. Graham Tan has borne the brunt of my scholarly
anxieties with forbearance and love.
A portion of chapter 6 appeared in the International Review of Social
History 49 (2004), 47–70, and a version of chapter 5 appeared in the Russian
Review 65 (October 2006), 2–21. I thank both publishers for permission to
reprint this material.

Maps


Maps

xiii

NORWAY

C

T

I

C

Barents Sea
Baltic Sea

Poland

St Petersburg

SERBIA

Kara Sea

Archangel

Smolensk

Vologda

s

ai

n

Moscow

Dnieper

Nizhnii Novgorod

nt

Riazan

M

B

Do
n

Kharkiv

ou

IA
AR
LG
BU

Kiev

Odessa

Murmansk

Finland

Novgorod

ROMANIA

R

E N
S W E D

GERMAN
EMPIRE

AUSTR I AH U N G ARY

A

U

S

S

I

A

N

a

Ob

uc

as

Omsk

C

Aral
Sea

Tu r k e s t a n

Daria
Amu

aria
rD
Sy

as

Tomsk
Ir tysh

pia

Mts

n S
ea

us

AN EMPIRE

Ca

TOM

a

Se

R

l

ck

Ob

la

OT

Kazan
Penza
Perm
West
Simbirsk
Saratov
Vo l g a
Samara
Tsaritsyn
Ekaterinburg S i b e r i a
Ufa U r
Stavropol
Ura
Orenburg
l
Astrakhan

Lake
Balkash

Tashkent

PER S I A

A F G H A N I S TA N

Map 1. The Russian Empire, c. 1900

C

H


Maps

xiv

Chukchi
Sea

O

C

E

A

N

East Siberian
Sea

Ber ing
Sea

Laptev Sea

Verkhoiansk
na
Le

E a s t

M

P

I

R

E

Sea of
Okhotsk

Aldan

E

S i b e r i a
Le

sei

na

Eni

Lake
Baikal

Irkutsk

Manchuria
Outer
Mongolia

Vladivostok
Sea of
Japan
KOREA

I

N

A
0
0

250

500
250

750
500

1000

1250
750

500 km
1000 miles

Map 1. (cont.)

JAPAN


Maps
Pale of Jewish
settlement

International frontier
0
0

200

400

100

200

xv

Barents
Sea

600 km
300

400 miles

Arkangel'sk

ea

Olonets

v

Penza

rn

Tambov

he

Kiev

rg
bu

a
Tula

Ufa

Or

Samara
Saratov

Kursk

C

o

Ni

Novzhnii
gor od

nd

la
iv

igo

Grodn
o

K

Orel

Kazan
Si
m
rsk
bi

Volynia
Po
d

g

n

ilev

Minsk

Vladimir
M
sk oscow
u
al

Viatka

Kostroma

aza
Ri

Mo g

en

Smo
l

S

c

v

Tver

o s l av l ’

Ps
ko
Vi t
eb
sk

Vilna

Perm
Iar

L

Kovno

Po
lt

lia
rabia
ss a
Be

Kherson

ava
Eka t

ezh
ron
Vo
Kharkiv

er inoslav

da

Don
Astrakhan

Tauri

Poland

g
St sbur
r
te
e
Novgorod
P

Estland

i

lt
B a Kurland

Vologda

Caucasus

pi

Sea

Cas

Black

an

Se

a

Map 2. European Russia, c. 1900

en


Iadrin

Kozmodem´iansk

Tetiushi

Sviazhsk

Laishev

Spassk

Kazan

Map 3. Kazan province, c. 1900

Tsivilsk

Cheboksary

Tsarevokokshaisk

Chistopol

Mamadysh


Maps

xvii

Semenov
Balakhna
Nizhnii

Novgorod

Makar´ev

Gorbatov

VasilSursk

Kniaginin

Sergach
Arzamas
Ardatov
Lukoianov

Map 4. Nizhegorod province, c. 1900



chap t e r 1

Introduction

The catastrophic failure of the Provisional Government’s attempts to govern Russia and to safely usher in a democratically elected national assembly
overshadows any study of 1917. The democratic party political system that
was used as a basis for the new regime failed to take root, and was swept
away by the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917. This book will look
at the roots of Russian democracy’s collapse after only eight brief months,
by exploring the experiences of ordinary people in 1917. The evidence from
Nizhegorod and Kazan suggests that localism overwhelmed national interests in 1917, and that, as Donald Raleigh put it, ‘Russia was breaking into

local economic units’.1 This study argues that ordinary people displayed
autonomy and direction in 1917, but that their motivations and shortterm goals did not coincide with those of the state. For Nizhegorod and
Kazan, February 1917 began the process of a complete collapse of central
governmental power. The Provisional Government’s faith in democratic
government, and in the potential of Russia’s people to govern themselves,
proved to be incompatible with their other goals of maintaining domestic
peace and order, and continuing Russia’s involvement in the war effort.
There is a massive body of literature tackling the events of 1917, and a
number of recent works have provided full and balanced accounts of the
course of events.2 Despite the rich historiography of the Russian revolution,
however, the focus of historical study has been on the capitals, and the
urban, organised population. There is a wealth of Russian experience still
1

2

Raleigh used this phrase to describe the situation in Saratov by summer (Donald J. Raleigh, ‘The
revolution of 1917 and the establishment of Soviet power in Saratov’, in Rex A. Wade and Scott
J. Seregny (eds.), Politics and society in provincial Russia: Saratov, 1590–1917 (Columbus, OH, 1989),
pp. 277–306, p. 293).
See, for example, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, The February revolution: Petrograd 1917 (Seattle, 1981); Orlando
Figes, A people’s tragedy: the Russian revolution 1891–1924 (London, 1996); Christopher Read, From tsar
to soviets: the Russian people and their revolution (London, 1996); Rex A. Wade, The Russian revolution,
1917 (Cambridge, 2000); Steve A. Smith, The Russian revolution: a very short introduction (Oxford,
2002).

1


2

Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia

to be explored, away from the urban centres and political elites, that can
alter our perceptions of Russia’s revolutionary year. This book, by taking
a regional perspective, and by concentrating on the political experiences
of ordinary Russians, aims to provide a counterbalance to the many, and
excellent, histories of Russia which have privileged events in the capital
cities, and the experiences of the urban and the organised population.
Historians have focused on the activities of the organised and the ‘conscious’ within the population, namely political elites, workers and to some
extent soldiers. These groups were important, and their activities undoubtedly had disproportionate impact on the course of revolutionary events.
The focus of this work, however, will be on understanding the revolutionary experience of the elusive ‘average Joe’. Much of this book is concerned with Russia’s peasant population, which formed the vast majority
of the population, but it does not deal exclusively with the experiences of
rural Russia. I have tried to consider ordinary people together, men and
women, urban and rural, and military and civilian, in order to get a more
rounded picture of the revolution’s implications. This approach brings its
own problems, and necessitates a loss of the sharp focus and insights that
have been drawn from more specific studies. It does, however, emphasise
the loose and uncertain identities that were a feature of the late Imperial and especially the revolutionary period. By looking at urban and rural
experiences of revolution alongside one another, a more holistic version
of 1917’s events emerges. Where the political elite is considered, it is in
their attempts to communicate with ordinary people. These channels of
communication help us understand that ordinary people participated in
the political process in rational ways, but in ways that often did not correspond with the aspirations of Russia’s political elite. Far from an elite
few conducting the masses along their revolutionary path, the small group
of intellectuals who dominated the high political scene of 1917 had their
political alternatives circumscribed by the desires and demands of ordinary
people.
With some notable exceptions, studies of 1917 have concentrated on
events in Petrograd and to a lesser extent Moscow. When I started this

project one senior authority in the field told me that study of the provinces
was pointless, because ‘when the bell tolls in Petersburg, the bell tolls all
over Russia’. This common misperception of Russia, that events in the
provinces simply followed the course set by the capitals, is one that recent
historiography has been challenging, and that this work, with its focus
on life in two of Russia’s provinces, Kazan and Nizhegorod, seeks to further undermine. These provinces, despite their position as neighbours in
central eastern European Russia, provide examples of Russia’s tremendous


Introduction

3

geographic, ethnic and economic diversity. Kazan and Nizhegorod cannot
be taken as exemplars for every Russian province, or even for the Volga
region. If we are to understand revolutionary events at grass-roots level, we
need to look at different provinces individually.
This work shows conclusively that local concerns, conditions and interests dominated the ways that the revolution was received and understood
by ordinary people in Nizhegorod and Kazan. Few direct comparisons
between the two provinces have been made, as the differences within
uezds of each province were often greater than differences between the two
provinces as a whole. Only in more specific cases, as between Kazan town
and Nizhnii Novgorod town, can direct comparisons be drawn. Ordinary
people’s responses to revolution need to be understood in their local context, and these contexts defy straightforward comparisons and summaries.
This is not grand history that comes to elegant and sweeping conclusions.
It is small and messy, very much like ordinary people’s lives.
This study focuses on an extremely narrow chronological window, from
the February revolution up until the Bolshevik seizure of power in October.
Recent works by, amongst others, Peter Holquist and Joshua Sanborn have
stressed the importance of seeing 1917 in a ‘continuum of crisis’ with the

years of the First World War that preceded it and with the civil war that
followed it.3 Studying 1917 as part of a broader chronological picture has
provided an important corrective to the tendency to see 1917 in isolated
and exceptionalist terms. The narrow chronological focus of this study can,
however, also contribute to our understanding of the revolution. The eightmonth term of the Provisional Government did not occur in an historical
vacuum, but it can be considered on its own terms, and as more than
just a stepping stone to its ugly and historically significant postscript, the
Bolshevik seizure of power and subsequent civil war. The Bolshevisation of
revolutionary history, in which the history of the victors seems to dominate
the whole historical process, is hard to avoid. By looking at ordinary people’s
responses to the exceptional circumstances of 1917, with its rapid formation
of local governmental forms and unique opportunities for popular selfgovernment and autonomy, we can make some progress in our attempts
to understand ordinary people’s responses to revolutionary events, and
ultimately the failure of the Provisional Government on its own terms,
rather than on the terms of the Bolshevik victors.4
3

4

Peter Holquist, Making war, forging revolution: Russia’s continuum of crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge,
MA, 2002); Joshua A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian nation: military conscription, total war, and mass
politics, 1905–1925 (DeKalb, IL 2003).
Michael Melancon expressed similar concerns about ‘Bolshevised’ history (Michael Melancon, ‘The
Neopopulist experience: default interpretations and new approaches’, Kritika 5 (2004), 195–206).


4

Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia

When studying Russia’s revolution, it is often difficult to discern the
perspectives of ordinary Russian people. We are drawn into revolutionary
events by the grand narratives of revolution, but in doing so we sometimes
lose individuals. A collection of documents edited by Mark Steinberg sought
to find the individual in revolution by seeking out ordinary people’s voices
in their letters and proclamations.5 The quest for the ordinary person’s
perspective is a frustrating one. The vast majority of Russia’s ordinary people
did not express their views and feelings in the written word. The voices
heard in Steinberg’s collection, in letters to newspapers or ministers that
expressed individuals’ opinions, demands and desires, are not representative
of Russia’s whole population. In particular, the voices of male, urban and
often armed Russians far outnumbered and overpowered female, rural and
civilian voices. This study explores the environment in which ordinary
men and women lived, and the challenges they faced in making political
decisions and getting on with daily life. In this way we can gain an insight
into the revolutionary year for ordinary people.
This book looks at the dialogues between political elites and ordinary
people, and the confusions and contradictions these dialogues exposed.
One of the problems we have in trying to understand ordinary people’s
experiences of 1917 is that most of the historical sources were constructed by
the political elite. As James Scott commented, the peasantry often appeared
in the historical records not as actors in their own right, but as contributors
to statistics.6 The rich records of police surveillance that historians have
mined for the Soviet period to uncover ‘hidden transcripts’, is not available
for the revolutionary period, when the state was at its weakest ebb.7 What
we know, especially of rural life in revolutionary Russia, is seen through
a filter of the political elite’s perceptions of events. This study has drawn
on a wide range of sources but has relied particularly on local newspapers
and on records of local government, grass-roots administration and soviet
organisations. Many of these sources are dominated by the urban political

elite, but by evaluating them carefully, we can challenge the assumptions
and misconceptions inherent in the sources, and a subtly altered picture
of the revolutionary year emerges. We need to start by challenging the
tropes used to describe the countryside. Peasants and rural life are described
5
6
7

Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of revolution, 1917 (New Haven, CT, 2001).
James Scott, Weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance (New Haven, CT, 1985), p. 29.
The work of Lynne Viola and Sheila Fitzpatrick used svodki, secret police reports, extensively in their
attempts to penetrate the experience of daily rural life in Soviet Russia (Lynne Viola, Peasant rebels
under Stalin: collectivisation and the culture of peasant resistance (New York, 1996); Sheila Fitzpatrick,
Stalin’s peasants: resistance and survival in the Russian village after collectivisation (Oxford, 1994)).


Introduction

5

repeatedly in newspapers, literature and local government sources as ‘dark’,
‘ignorant’ and needing ‘enlightenment’. These value judgements are put
to one side here and the perspectives of ordinary people themselves are
considered. Ordinary people made rational and informed choices about
their best interests in 1917, and they engaged in political life consciously
and pragmatically.
Throughout this book reference is made to ‘ordinary people’ and the
‘political elite’. ‘Political elite’ refers both to the political elite at the centre
of power in Petrograd, and to those individuals who were in positions
of authority in regional politics. The term ‘ordinary people’ is used with

reservations, but because it was the least judgemental and broadest way to
describe those individuals who were not active in the formal political and
administrative structures that developed in 1917. Stephen Frank and Mark
Steinberg used the term ‘lower class’ in their collection of essays to try and
embrace the same range of people, but I have avoided this because of its
negative connotations.8 The Russian word most closely associated with my
understanding of ordinary people is the difficult to translate narod. I have
deliberately avoided using narod, because it is often used to refer only to
rural people. The distinctions between peasant, worker and soldier were
fluid and difficult to pinpoint with accuracy. A better Russian word to use
is probably trudiashchiesia, or working people, but this might exclude the
unemployed or other marginal groups. This broad term ‘ordinary people’
is not intended to place all those included in it in an easily lumped together
mass. Ordinary people were in no way homogenous, and the term allows
room for the huge range of different identities that were adopted by them.
These terms are intended to be understood loosely, even amorphously, and
are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some ‘ordinary people’ could also be
described as members of the political elite, if, for example, they participated
in local administration or leadership. These general groupings are, however,
helpful in understanding grass-roots politics, and communication between
political leaders and their constituents.
a sketch of nizhegorod and kaz an
Nizhegorod and Kazan 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
8

Stephen P. Frank and Mark D. Steinberg, Cultures in flux: lower-class values, practices and resistance in
late Imperial Russia (Princeton, NJ, 1994).