* Izvestiia, No. 155/1,002 (July 16,1920), 2. The largest number of victims (273) were executed for desertion and self-inflicted wounds to avoid military service.
* The Bullitt Mission to Russia (New York, 1919), 58, 50. Bullitt at the time favored U.S. recognition of the U.S.S.R. In 1933 he became America’s first ambassador to that country. Later in his life he turned passionately anti-Communist.
Afterword
In November 1918, when the Great War came to an end, the Bolsheviks controlled twenty-seven provinces of European Russia, inhabited by some 70 million people, or one-half of the Empire’s pre-war population. The borderlands—Poland, Finland, the Baltic area, the Ukraine, Transcaucasia, Central Asia, and Siberia—had either separated themselves and formed sovereign states or were controlled by anti-Bolshevik Whites. The Communist realm encompassed the defunct Empire’s heartland, populated almost exclusively by Great Russians. Ahead lay a civil war in the course of which Moscow would reconquer by force of arms most but not all of its borderland areas and try to spread its regime to Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. The Revolution now would enter another phase, that of expansion.
The first year of Bolshevik rule left Russians not only cowed by the unprecedented application of largely random terror but thoroughly bewildered. Those who had lived through it were exposed to a complete reevaluation of all values: whatever had been good and rewarded was now evil and punished. The traditional virtues of faith in God, charity, tolerance, patriotism, and thrift were denounced by the new regime as unacceptable legacies of a doomed civilization. Killing and robbing, slander and lying were good, if committed for the sake of a proper cause as defined by the new regime. Nothing made sense. The perplexity of contemporaries is reflected in the ruminations published in the summer of 1918 in one of the few relatively independent dailies still allowed to appear:1
There was a time when a man lived somewhere beyond the Narva Gate, in the morning drunk tea from a samovar placed in front of him. For dinner, he emptied half a bottle of vodka and read
The Petrograd Rag
. When once a year someone was murdered, he felt indignant for a whole week, at the very least. And now …
About murders, dear sir, they have stopped writing: on the contrary, they inform us that the day before only thirty people have been bumped off and another hundred robbed.… This means that everything is in order. And whatever happens, it is better not even to look out of the window. Today they parade with red flags, tomorrow with banners, then again with red ones, and then again with banners. Today Kornilov has been killed, tomorrow he is resurrected. The day after Kornilov is not Kornilov but Dutov, and Dutov is Kornilov, and they are, all of them, neither officers nor Cossacks nor even Russians but Czechs. And where these Czechs came from, no one knows.… We fight them, they fight us. Nicholas Romanov has been killed, he has not been killed. Who killed whom, who fled where, why the Volga is no longer the Volga and the Ukraine no longer Russia. Why the Germans promise to return to us the Crimea, where did the Hetman come from, what Hetman, why does he have a boil under his nose.… Why aren’t we in an insane asylum?
So unnatural were the new conditions, they so outraged common sense and decency, that the vast majority of the population viewed the regime responsible for them as some terrible and inexplicable cataclysm which could not be resisted but had to be endured until it disappeared as suddenly as it had come. As time would show, however, these expectations were mistaken. Russians and the people under their rule would know no respite: those who experienced and survived the Revolution would never see the return of normalcy. The Revolution was only the beginning of their sorrows.
GLOSSARY
N
OTE
: The accent over a Russian letter indicates the stress. The letter “ë” is pronounced “yo” and stressed.
apparátchik/i
Communist bureaucratic “operator/s”
artél’
worker or peasant cooperative
batrák/i
poor peasant/s; farmhand/s
bol’shák
head of peasant household
bunt
rebellion; mutiny
burzhúi
bourgeois
Cheká
Soviet secret police (1917–21)
cherespolósitsa
strip farming
chin
official rank
chinóvnik/i
official/s; bureaucrat/s
derévnia/i
village/s
desiatína/y
land measure equal to 2.7 acres
Dúma
lower house of Russian parliament
duván
division of loot
dvoevlástie
dyarchy
dvor
household; court
dvoriáne
gentry
dvorianín
a member of the gentry
dvorianstvo
the gentry estate
eshelón (echelon
)
military train
Fabzavkóm/y
Factory Committee/s (1917–20)
glásnost’
open government
glávka/i
subdivision/s of VSNKh
gosudár’
sovereign
gosudárstvo
state; government
gubérniia/i
province/s
Gubispolkóm/y
Provincial Soviet Executive Committee/s
Gulág
Administration of concentration camps
inogoródnyi
settler from other towns
intelligént/y
member/s of the intelligentsia
Ispolkóm
Executive Committee
isprávnik
tsarist police official
iúnker
student at military academy
izbá
peasant hut
kátorga
hard labor
khoziáin
same as
bol’shak
khútor
farm; farmstead
kombédy
Committees of the [Village] Poor (1918)
Kompród
Commissariat of Supply
Komúch
Committee of the Constituent Assembly
kramóla
sedition
kresfiáne
peasants
krestiánstvo
peasantry
kulák
prominent peasant; rural exploiter
kustár’
craftsman; artisan
meshcháne
burghers
meshóchnik
illegal food peddler (1918–20)
miatézh
mutiny; revolt
Milrevkóm
Military-Revolutionary Committee
mir
peasant commune
muzhík/í
peasant/s
nadél/y
communal land allotment/s
nagáika
Cossack whip
naród
the people
Naródnaia Vólia
People’s Will
NarodovóPtsy
members of People’s Will
óblast’/i
region/s
obshchína
same as
mir
Okhrána
Imperial security police
otrézok
small land allotment
ótrub
land in the commune privately owned
paëk
ration
páshnia
arable land
peredél
repartition of communal land
peredýshka
breathing spell; respite
Pogróm
beating and looting, usually of Jews
polpréd
Soviet diplomatic representative
poméshchik/i
non-peasant landowner/s
pomés’e/ia
fief/s; landed estate/s
pop
Orthodox priest
pravítel’stvo
government
Pravoslávie
Greek Orthodox religion
prodrazvërstka
requisition of farm produce
prómysly
cottage industries
pud
weight measure equal to 16.38 kilograms
Ráda
Ukrainian for “Soviet”
raskól’niki
pejorative for religious dissenters
razgróm
assaults on property
samoderzhávie
autocracy
samoderzhávnyi
autocratic
seló/á
large village/s
sél’skii skhod
village assembly
soiúz
union; association
soslóvie/ia
legal estate/s
sovét/y
council/s
Sovnarkóm
Council of People’s Commissars
ssýlka
penal exile
staroobriádtsy
Old Believers (lit. “Old Ritualists”)
starósta
elected village official
tiáglo
in Muscovy, obligatory state labor
Trudármiia
Labor Army (introduced in 1920)
Trudovík
member of peasant party in Duma
tsentr/y
same as
glavka/i
uézd
lowest administrative entity
ukász
Imperial decree
vlast’
authority; government
vólia
freedom; license
vólost’
smallest rural administrative unit
vótchina
allodium; patrimony
vozhd’
leader
VSNKh
Supreme Council of the National Economy
zakónnost’
legality
Zemgór
Union of Municipal Councils and Zemstva
zemliá
land
zémstvo/a
organ/s of provincial self-government
zhid/ý
pejorative term for Jew/s
CHRONOLOGY
The chronology lists the principal events dealt with in this book. Unless otherwise indicated, dates prior to February 1918 are given according to the Julian calendar (“Old Style”), which was twelve days behind the Western calendar in the nineteenth century and thirteen days behind in the twentieth. From February 1918 on dates are given in the “New Style,” which corresponds to dates in the Western calendar.
1899
February–March: Strike of Russian university students.
July 29: “Temporary Rules” authorizing induction into the armed forces of unruly students.
1900
Government restricts taxation powers of
zemstva
.
November: Disturbances in Kiev and at other universities.
1901
January 11: Induction into the army of 183 Kievan students.
February: Assassination of Minister of Education Bogolepov. First police-sponsored (Zubatov) trade unions formed.
1902
Winter 1901–2: Formation of Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party (PSR).
June: Liberals publish in Germany, under the editorship of Struve, fortnightly
Osvobozhdenie
(
Liberation
).
March: Lenin’s
What Is to Be Done?
April 2: Assassination of Interior Minister Sipiagin; he is succeeded by Plehve.
1903
April 4: Kishinev pogrom.
July–August: Second (founding) Congress of Russian Social-Democratic Party: split into Menshevik and Bolshevik factions.
July 20–22: Union of Liberation founded in Switzerland.
1904
January 3–5: Union of Liberation organized in St. Petersburg.
February 4: Plehve authorizes Gapon’s Assembly.
February 8: Japanese attack Port Arthur; beginning of Russo-Japanese War.
July 15: Assassination of Plehve.
August: Russians defeated at Liaoyang.
August 25: Sviatopolk-Mirskii Minister of the Interior.
October 20: Second Congress of Union of Liberation.
November 6-9: Zemstvo Congress in St. Petersburg.
November–December: Union of Liberation organizes nationwide campaign of banquets.
December 7: Nicholas and high officials discuss reform proposals; idea of introducing elected representatives into State Council rejected.
December 12: Publication of edict promising reforms.
December 20: Port Arthur surrenders to the Japanese.
1905
January 7–8: Major industrial strike in St. Petersburg organized by Father Gapon.
January 9: Bloody Sunday.
January 18: Sviatopolk-Mirskii dismissed; replaced by Bulygin.
January 10 ff.: Wave of industrial strikes throughout Russia.
January 18: Government promises convocation of Duma and invites population to submit petitions stating grievances.
February: Government-sponsored elections in St. Petersburg factories.
February: Russians abandon Mukden.
March 18: All institutions of higher learning closed for remainder of academic year.
April: Second Zemstvo Congress calls for Constituent Assembly.
Spring: 60,000 peasant petitions submitted.
May 8: Union of Unions formed under chairmanship of Miliukov.
May 14: Russian fleet destroyed in battle of Tsushima Strait; D. F. Trepov appointed Deputy Minister of the Interior.
June: Riots and massacres in Odessa; mutiny on the battleship
Potemkin
.
August 6: Bulygin (consultative) Duma announced.
August 27: Government announces liberal university regulations.
September 5 (NS): Russo-Japanese peace treaty signed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
September: Students open university facilities to workers; mass agitation.
September 19: Strike activity resumes.
October 9–10: Witte urges Nicholas to make major political concessions.
October 12–18: Constitutional-Democratic (Kadet) Party formed.
October 13: Central strike committee formed in St. Petersburg, soon renamed St. Petersburg Soviet.
October 14: Capital paralyzed by strikes.
October 15: Witte submits draft of what became October Manifesto.
October 17: Nicholas signs October Manifesto.
October 18 ff.: Anti-Jewish and anti-student pogroms: rural violence begins.
October–November: As Chairman of Council of Ministers, Witte initiates discussions with public figures to have them join cabinet.
November 21: Moscow Soviet formed.
November 24: Preliminary censorship of periodicals abolished.
December 6: St. Petersburg Soviet orders general strike.
December 8: Armed uprising in Moscow suppressed by force.
1906
March 4: Laws issued guaranteeing the rights of assembly and association.
April 16: Witte resigns as Chairman of Council of Ministers, replaced by Goremykin.
April 26: New Fundamental Laws (constitution) made public; Stolypin Minister of the Interior.
April 27: Duma opens.
July 8: Duma dissolved; Stolypin appointed Chairman of Council of Ministers.
August 12: Attempt by Socialist-Revolutionary Maximalists on Stolypin’s life.
&nbs
p; August 12 and 27: Stolypin’s first agrarian reforms.
August 19: Courts-martial for civilians introduced.
November 9: Stolypin’s reform concerning communal landholding.
1907
February 20: Second Duma opens.
March: Stolypin announces reform program.
June 2: Second Duma dissolved; new electoral law.
November 7: Third Duma opens; in session until 1912.
1911
January–March: Western
zemstvo
crisis.
September 1: Stolypin shot; dies four days later; replaced by Kokovtsov.
1912
November 15: Fourth (and last) Duma opens.
Conclusive split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
1914
January 20: Goremykin Chairman of Council of Ministers.
July 15/28: Nicholas orders partial mobilization.
July 17/30: Full Russian mobilization.
July 18/31: German ultimatum to Russia.
Julv 19/August 1: Germany declares war on Russia.
July 27: Russia suspends convertibility of ruble.
August: Russian armies invade East Prussia and Austrian Galicia.
Late August: Russian armies crushed in East Prussia.
September 3: Russians capture Lemberg (Lwow), capital of Austrian Galicia.
1915
April 15/28: Germans launch offensive operations in Poland.
June 11: Sukhomlinov dismissed as Minister of War; replaced by Polivanov.
June: Further cabinet changes.
June–July: Formation of Progressive Bloc.
July: Special Council of Defense of the Country created; other councils and committees follow to help with war effort, including Military-Industrial Committees.
July 9/22: Russians begin withdrawal from Poland.
July 19: Duma reconvened for six weeks; Russian troops evacuate Warsaw.
August 21: Most ministers request Nicholas to let Duma form cabinet.
August 22: Nicholas assumes personal command of Russian armed forces, departs for headquarters at Mogilev.
August 25: Progressive Bloc makes public nine-point program.
August: Government authorizes creation of national
The Russian Revolution Page 131
