Across the Revolutionary Divide

Russia and the USSR, 1861-1945

Theodore R. Weeks

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781405169608, 9781405169615
• eBook ISBN: 9781444351606
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

Across the Revolutionary Divide: Russia and the USSR 1861-1945 offers a broad interpretive account of Russian history from the emancipation of the serfs to the end of World War II.

• Provides a coherent overview of Russia's development from 1861 through to 1945
• Reflects the latest scholarship by taking a thematic approach to Russian history and bridging the 'revolutionary divide' of 1917
• Covers political, economic, cultural, and everyday life issues during a period of major changes in Russian history
• Addresses throughout the diversity of national groups, cultures, and religions in the Russian Empire and USSR
• Shows how the radical policies adopted after 1917 both changed Russia and perpetuated an economic and political rigidity that continues to influence modern society

Chapter 1

Politics

In the modern world, politics forms the backdrop – perhaps the skeleton – of everyday life. The modern state taxes, conscripts, arrests or, to stress more positive matters, assures security, funds education, subsidizes culture, builds hospitals. Throughout Russian history, the state has played a strong role: classical laissez-faire liberalism never took root here. No Russian constitution ever proclaimed the right for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Rather the Russian Empire and Soviet Union aimed to protect its citizenry but at the same time to preserve the political leadership from the mainly uninformed and possibly seditious masses. This dynamic between, on the one hand, state policies sincerely aiming at the betterment of economic and social conditions and, on the other, policies restricting basic freedoms (the exercise of which seemed potentially dangerous for state order and stability) will be seen throughout the pages that follow. Both Russian and Soviet politics was often “for the people” but almost never “through the people.”

The Great Reforms: 1861–1876

The Great Reforms aimed to reform Russia’s social and economic structure in the wake of the stunning defeat in the Crimean War (1854–6). Despite having the largest army in Europe and fighting on Russian territory (though, to be sure, a great distance from central Russia: the Crimean Peninsula is closer to Istanbul than to St Petersburg), Russia suffered a string of military setbacks at the hands of British and French forces. The failure of the army to protect Russian territory convinced even the most conservative Russians that fundamental reforms were necessary, if only to preserve Russia’s military power and international prestige.

Yet there were other long-term causes for the reforms. The existence of serfdom, a form of unfree labor wherein peasants are not free to move and must give up a significant part of their labor and/or produce to the landowner, had long been seen as economically retrograde and morally repugnant. Liberal economists argued that serfdom (and unfree labor in general) stifled initiative and retarded economic development. Certainly industrial growth demanded a more fluid labor market than serfdom allowed. Many were disturbed by the moral implications of serfdom: arch- conservative Tsar Nicholas I (reigned 1825–55) reportedly feared divine retribution for presiding over such an immoral system, but at the same time dreaded the social upheaval that liberation might unleash. The obviously enormous complications of liberating nearly half of the Russian population (44.5 percent on the eve of emancipation, or even 80 percent if one includes “state peasants” owned by the imperial family and the Russian state) from serfdom prevented any significant reform from occurring during Nicholas I’s reign. The fear of serf rebellion always formed the background to discussions about serf emancipation. The number of disturbances on the countryside had been growing from the 1830s to 1850s and it was feared that trying to reform the system might touch off a general serf revolt.

The death of Nicholas I in the midst of the Crimean War brought to the throne his son Alexander II (reigned 1855–81) who was neither very young (born 1818) nor particularly liberal, but enough of a realist to recognize the need for major reform. Still, Alexander proceeded cautiously. In 1856 he famously announced at a gathering of Moscow nobles that while he had no plans for the immediate emancipation, it would be better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for it “to abolish itself spontaneously from below.” The tsar called on landowners (in other words, the nobility) to discuss the details of emancipation and report to him. Perhaps predictably the nobles submitted proposals very favorable to their own interests, in particular keeping the best land and demanding payment from the freed serfs for any arable land they would thereby obtain. Frustrated with the unwillingness of landowners to sacrifice some of their landed wealth for the greater good of the Russian state, Alexander set up a Secret Committee on Peasant Affairs (later known as the “Main Committee”) in January 1857 to consider concrete measures. Provincial committees of the nobility were allowed to submit proposals but these did not have to be accepted or even acknowledged by the Main Committee or the Editing Commission set up in 1859 to draft the actual emancipation statutes. The result was a compromise that satisfied few and disappointed nearly everyone.

One group that warmly welcomed emancipation was educated society, that is, the intelligentsia (see discussion in chapter 2, “Society,” pp. 64–8). From abroad the radical writer Alexander Herzen hailed the tsar’s planned reform in his influential newspaper Kolokol (The Bell). Within Russia the press eagerly discussed the plans for reform, taking advantage of a less stringent censorship regime. Alexander in part encouraged these discussions, seeing glasnost (a word used at the time referring to public debate) as a means of gauging public opinions. On the other hand, proposals seen as too extreme or infringing on the tsar’s power would bring a reprimand or worse. Alexander II wanted, indeed needed, the help of educated Russians to help craft and carry through the reforms, but fearing for his own unlimited power, he was constantly apprehensive about giving them “too much freedom.” Serfs themselves, as mainly illiterate, were not consulted at all.¹

The cornerstone of the Great Reforms was the emancipation of the serfs. This measure – really a number of separate statutes – was immensely complex, filling a volume of over 300 pages. The act was announced in churches throughout Russia on February 19, 1861. The authorities’fear of peasant unrest can be seen both in the choice of this date (at the beginning of Lent, when Russians would refrain from drinking alcohol) and the mobilization of troops throughout the Russian provinces. As it turned out, despite eventual peasant disillusionment when the specific terms of emancipation came to be known, few significant clashes with government authorities or landlords occurred. The manifesto of February 19 abolished serfdom officially, making the sale of serfs with land impossible and ending the landlord’s right to mete out corporal punishment on his serfs. On a practical level, however, little changed immediately: the manifesto admonished the peasants to continue to pay rents and other obligations to their landlords for the next two years.

The basic aim of emancipation was to sever the direct dependence of the peasantry on their former landlords, provide peasants with enough land so that they would not become an impoverished and dangerous rural proletariat, and leave the landlords with sufficient land to continue to serve the state as bureaucrats and army officers. Peasants were shocked to learn that they would not be granted all the land they tilled but only a part of it, and furthermore they would be obligated to pay for this land (few accepted the so-called pauper’s allotment, which would give peasants a much smaller plot but without having to pay for it). Officially landlords were to receive compensation from the peasants only for the land’s fair price, not for the loss of serf labor. In fact the rate at which land prices were figured was often inflated to their landlord’s advantage. The former serfs were to make “redemption payments” for 49 years to compensate the government, which was to pay off the landlords. They did not, however, receive payment in cash but in government bonds that were to be cashed in over the following decades. In any case over half of the redemption payments from serfs to landowners went to paying the latter’s accumulated debts to the state. Thus the emancipation statutes burdened peasants with long - term payments but did not provide landowners with capital that might have been used to modernize agriculture. In part a major banking crisis further undermined the government’s ability to help finance emancipation, an indication of the weak financial position of the Russian state.² Another important aspect of emancipation was that peasants did not gain private ownership of the land they “redeemed” from their former landlords. Instead the peasant commune (obshchina) owned the land and was responsible for redemption payments and other state obligations such as the providing of draftees for the army. In certain respects the serf’s former dependence on the landlord was replaced by the peasant’s dependence on the commune. Now the individual peasant had to ask the commune’s permission to leave (e.g., to seek work in the city), paid taxes and redemption payments to the commune, and was called to serve in the army through the commune. There were many reasons why the government decided to entrust the commune with these responsibilities, ranging from a Slavophile belief in the intrinsic moral value of that institution to practical considerations of administration and social control. The Russian state wished to “fix” the newly liberated peasants in some kind of institution: the idea of millions of “loose” peasants freely roaming the empire was terrifying. By entrusting the land to the commune, the government gave this institution considerable power, in particular as land would be periodically redistributed among peasant households according to their growing or declining size. With the tiny numbers of provincial and rural police, the Russian state needed to count on the commune to maintain order on the countryside.

The actual implementation of the emancipation provisions took years and in some cases even decades. When peasants realized that the landlords were to retain much land – and often the best quality fields – while former serfs would be saddled with payments over two generations, they were appalled. Peasants often refused to believe that this could be the long-awaited liberation; rumors persisted of a far more favorable “Golden Charter,” supposedly issued by the benevolent tsar but hidden by evil nobles. The worst case of peasant unrest after the February 19 manifesto came in the village of Bezdna in Kazan province. Here in April 1861 the semiliterate peasant Anton Sidorov, after urgently consulting the extremely complex legal language of the statutes, announced that the tsar had granted the land to the peasants and had ended payments and labor duties to landlords. As thousands of peasants flocked to the village to hear Sidorov’s interpretation, the local governor sent troops to arrest him. In the ensuing clashes over 50 peasants were killed and hundreds wounded. While Bezdna was the most significant incident of peasant unrest in the wake of emancipation, the general reaction of serfs to the terms of emancipation was stunned surprise, followed by deep disappointment and resentment.³

Several other significant reforms were also carried out, most remarkable among them reforms of local government, education, the justice system, the military, and censorship. Local government reform was undertaken at two different levels: on the countryside and in urban areas. On the countryside an entirely new institution was set up in 1864, called the zemstvo (pl. zemstva), a word that evoked the noble land assemblies of centuries earlier (zemlia is the Russian word for “land”). The zemstva were elected in rural districts as well as for the entire province. At both levels the nobility was over-represented, but this was probably inevitable given the greater literacy and wealth enjoyed by this privileged group. More important was the fact that peasants were represented in all zemstva where they voted on an equal basis with representatives of the landowning nobles and clergy. The zemstvo was allowed to levy taxes to pay for important practical measures: building roads and schools, encouraging the local economy, setting up clinics and hiring agronomists to help modernize local agriculture. Besides these practical benefits for the local economy, the zemstvo influenced the development of civil society in Russia. The zemstva demonstrated that the Russian public (not government) could elect its own representatives – at least at the local level – who then capably carried out measures for the public good. Zemstvo members came to see themselves as representatives of the local people and not infrequently clashed with government administrators carrying out the orders of the central government. Participation in these bodies thus became a kind of “school for democracy.” But not every region of the Russian Empire had zemstva: in the western and Polish provinces, for example, the government mistrusted the largely Polish nobility and refused to allow the establishment of zemstva there. There were also no zemstva in Siberia or the north of Russia because the nobility was too weak there, the government felt, to assure their proper and loyal functioning.⁴

The pre-reform administration of towns was generally agreed to have been inadequate, inefficient, corrupt, and unable to cope with basic economic and sanitary needs. The city reform law of 1870 introduced elected city governments, though the vote was slanted toward those holding considerable urban property. The elected city council (duma) selected from among its members an executive board (uprava) and a mayor (golova), who had to be approved by the minister of internal affairs. The elected city governments, introduced first in central Russia and later elsewhere (though not in many non-Russian regions), allowed local citizenry to play a significant part in the economic development of their town and carried out improvements such as the construction of sewers, roads, public transport systems, and the like.

Reforms attacked the educational system from both ends, so to speak. The Elementary School Statute of 1864 allowed and encouraged the creation of schools at the local level, but did not provide money. Funding had to be sought from three sources: zemstva, the Orthodox Church, or the Ministry of Education. University reform was particularly significant: a reform statute of 1863 abolished previous restrictions, opened universities up to members of all estates from peasant to noble, and granted universities a significant measure of self-government. Conservatives would soon complain that the university statute opened up a dangerous “free zone” where radical ideas could be discussed and advocated with impunity. Liberals saw matters differently, considering that the free exchange of ideas was crucial for the training of self-sufficient, enlightened, and professionally competent citizens.

Perhaps the single most successful reform of all was the judicial reform of 1864, which swept away a justice system universally acknowledged to have been corrupt, inefficient, and cumbersome. This reform set up a legal system independent of government administrators. Court trials were to be open to the public with both oral and documentary evidence accepted; juries decided on the guilt or innocence of the accused. With judges appointed according to their professional capabilities and enjoying lifetime tenure, it became more difficult for officials to intimidate or silence court trials. The need for competent judges and lawyers required the creation of a Russian Bar, a professional class of lawyers. Legal education was much improved and lawyers came to see themselves not just as advocates for a specific client but as the champions of justice. Many trained in the law helped create the first Russian political parties after 1905, and it is perhaps not without significance that V. I. Ulianov (Lenin) received a legal education. Parallel to and separate from the main legal system described here was a system of peasant courts generally presided over by a justice of the peace who dispensed quick, if not always legally sophisticated, justice.

Although not abolished, censorship was significantly mitigated during the Great Reforms. New regulations of 1865 abolished most “preliminary censorship” but allowed the government to confiscate, punish, or even shut down publishers responsible for material deemed in violence of the censorship law. For periodicals, a government license was required for publication and some periodicals received the privilege of not undergoing preliminary censorship. As writers and editors quickly grew accustomed to pushing the limits of censorship, a great variety of books, journals, and newspapers appeared, catering to growing literacy rates.

As we have seen, the primary impulse toward the Great Reforms was provided by Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War. The complexities of the military reform meant that it was the last major reform, going into effect on January 1, 1874. The urgent need for sweeping reform of the Russian army was provided by the outstanding performance of the Prussian army in the Franco-Prussian war and the subsequent unification of Germany in 1871. With a newly united, economically vibrant, and militarily strong neighbor on its western border, the Russian Empire could not delay in improving its own military institutions.

This new conscription law obliged every male Russian (in principle) to serve in the military for a period ranging from six years to only a few months. Thus an illiterate peasant lad called to arms would serve six years, but if he had attended an elementary school his service would be reduced to only four. University graduates served only six months and if they volunteered for service this term was cut in half. After this period of active service draftees were enrolled in the reserves for an additional nine years. The principle of all Russians regardless of birth or social class carrying out military service was thus established, though in practical terms peasants were far more likely to serve for six years than their middle-class or noble coevals would. Moreover budget shortfalls meant that only a fraction of young Russian men were actually called to arms.⁵ Besides the conscription law, the military reform set up new officers’schools based on western models, abolished corporal punishment for soldiers, and established literacy and basic educational training for illiterate recruits. In the next half- century before World War I more young Russians learned basic literacy in the army than in elementary schools.

The Great Reforms radically changed the political structure of Russia, transforming serfs into free peasants, creating an open and independent judiciary, allowing the public to contribute to local economic development through the elected city governments and zemstva. But the fundamental political reality of Russia – autocracy, the unlimited rule of the tsar – remained untouched. Alexander II refused even to allow the creation of any kind of advisory body elected from among his subjects. Moreover the government expressly forbade provincial zemstva to cooperate or even meet with zemstva in neighboring provinces, fearing that such cooperation would infringe on the administrative prerogatives of tsarist officials. In effect the tsar refused to recognize the population of Russia as citizens to whom the welfare of the country could be entrusted. Rather they remained the tsar’s subjects, subject to his will and without any right or possibility to influence further political reform. This, combined with specific disappointments in the terms of serf emancipation, the limited scope of local government, and continued censorship, meant that in the next few decades a significant number of the tsar’s subjects began to seek more radical – even revolutionary – solutions to Russia’s economic, social, and political ills.⁶

Government under Siege: 1876–1904

On April 4, 1866, a young former student, Dmitrii Karakozov, approached Tsar Alexander II in a garden near the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, aimed a gun at him, and pulled the trigger. The gun failed to go off and the tsar was unhurt; Karakozov was instantly set upon by bystanders, arrested and eventually hanged. Alexander’s first words to Karakozov were “Are you a Pole?”, reflecting the tsar’s knowledge of the great bitterness Poles felt toward him after his crushing of their November Insurrection in 1863–4 (see chapter 3,“Nations,”pp. 97–8). In fact not just Poles but many Russians – Karakozov replied to Alexander that he was a “pure Russian” – were dissatisfied with tsarist rule, the failure to grant peasants more land, and the lack of political reform. Karakozov’s shot was the work of an unstable individual, but it reflected broad dissatisfaction that would only grow in the next decades. The gap between the Russian people, whether peasants, educated professionals, or even privileged noble landowners, and the tsar’s government grew steadily, as Russians sometimes expressed themselves openly but were sometimes forced underground. The unwillingness or inability of the tsarist regime to compromise on political issues or at least to coopt some segments of the population meant that when revolution finally broke out in 1905 the regime barely survived, only to be entirely broken and swept away by the stresses of World War I.

Alexis de Tocqueville once remarked that the most dangerous moment for a government was when it embarked on major reforms. Certainly this appeared to be the case in Russia in the 1860s. Following his brother Nicholas I’s repressive rule, Alexander II’s apparent liberalism gave rise to hopes for concessions and reforms that far exceeded anything the tsar would or could advocate. We have already seen the delicate balancing act that serf emancipation entailed in order at least partially to satisfy the demands of the liberal public, the landowners, and the peasantry. Similarly Alexander wanted to ease somewhat the extremely restrictive policies followed by Nicholas I toward Poles, but his desire to allow more free play for Polish language and culture (including the opening of a university in Warsaw) backfired in the November 1863 Polish insurrection against Russian rule. The Polish uprising and Karakozov’s attempt on Alexander’s life convinced conservatives, and to some extent the tsar himself, that reform needed to be scaled back to prevent further unrest – or worse. Thus from around 1870 at the latest we see the paradoxical situation in which the government grew more and more suspicious of reform even...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Illustrations
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Politics
• Chapter 2: Society
• Chapter 3: Nations
• Chapter 4: Modernization
• Chapter 5: Belief
• Chapter 6: World
• Chapter 7: Culture
• Conclusion
• Timeline of Important Events
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index