Sarah Badcock. Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 280 pp. $99.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-87623-0.

Francis King. The Narodniks in the Russian Revolution. Socialist History Occasional Pamphlet Series. London: Socialist History Society, 2007. Illustrations. 114 pp. No price listed (paper), ISBN 978-0-9555138-2-4.

Reviewed by Lutz Haefner
Published on H-HistGeog (June, 2009)
Commissioned by Eva M. Stolberg (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany)

People, Politics, and Revolution on Russia's Countryside

On the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917, two more books join the inestimable number of studies of this cataclysmic event. One is a thoroughly researched study that focuses on communications between political elites and ordinary people, whereas the second is a short documentary history of the Socialist Revolutionary Party compiled and annotated with a pro-socialist bias. Sarah Badcock’s study of the revolution offers a detailed and absorbing analysis of political power in the revolutionary setting of 1917. She meticulously traces the contradictions and mutual misunderstandings of various social groups--especially urban intellectuals and peasants--from an everyday historical approach. According to the foreword written by the compiler Francis King, the aim of the short documentary history of the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) in 1917 is to present the party’s perspectives, which on many issues differed fundamentally from the position of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Party, to an English-speaking readership.

Over the last twenty years, Western historiography has devoted increased attention to the study of provinces during the revolutionary year 1917 focusing either on important cities, such as Baku, Odessa, Saratov, Smolensk, and Kharkov, or on whole provinces or regions, such as Saratov, Tambov, Viatka, Voronezh, or the Don region. In her well-researched monograph, Badcock follows this path but, unusually, provides us with a comparative study of two provinces situated along the Volga: Nizhnii Novgorod and Kazan. Her basic aim is twofold. First, she focuses on the attempts of activists of different parties to communicate with ordinary people, and, second, she tries to address the failure of party politics from the viewpoint of ordinary people and their experiences.

The units of comparison are well chosen. These two neighboring provinces were quite distinct. On the one hand, Nizhnii Novgorod was predominantly Great Russian in its ethnic structure. In terms of its economy, it was not only well known for its big annual fair but also for its highly industrialized centers. For instance, metallurgical and other heavy industries were located in Nizhnii Novgorod and its suburbs of Kanavin and Sormovo. Kazan, on the other hand, was ethnically, denominationally, and culturally diverse. Only about 40 percent of the inhabitants of this province were Great Russian and nearly one-third were Tatars. Kazan’s industry was less developed than Nizhnii’s. Neither province belonged to the nearby fertile Black Earth region. But whereas Nizhnii Novgorod counted as a grain consuming province, which had to import grain, Kazan was a net producer that could export its grain surpluses. This was an important aspect of local politics, especially against the background of the provisions crisis that characterized the country during 1917.

The book covers a time period of just eight months, from the February Revolution to the Bolshevik uprising in October. It consists of an introduction and conclusion, and is divided into seven thematically arranged chapters. The second chapter shows how news of the successful February Revolution spread. The third chapter is devoted to the most influential, at least in terms of members, political party in 1917: the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The fourth chapter interestingly switches the point of view to not party politics but the people. This section emphasizes that local affiliations and identities were more important in order to be chosen as local leader than ties to a political party organization. Ideology and political consciousness played only a secondary role in the process of generating social support. The cultural enlightenment campaigns of 1917 form the nucleus of the fifth chapter. The author analyzes how Russia’s political elite was inclined to communicate with ordinary men and women to educate and enlighten them. The issue at stake was whether education could transform the people into conscious and full-fledged democratic citizens. The sixth chapter analyzes the situation of the soldiers and their wives. The last two chapters deal with two issues that had top priority on the political agenda throughout 1917: the land question and the provisions crisis.

Badcock’s study underlines the argument stressed by Don Raleigh that local issues really mattered. She asserts that the big political issues discussed in the capitals did not shape the understanding of what local politics really was; rather, local interests, concerns, and conditions were at the center. Thus, in effect, she supports an argument proferred by the well-known German sociologist Max Weber. In his voluminous sociology of religion first published in 1920, he stated that interests, especially material but also mental, and not ideas, directly dominate people’s actions.

The heterogeneity of the initially very popular SRs caused a problem of perception among the people of the two provinces. The intelligentsia tried hard to be understood by the people. However, their “civilizing mission” and their growing interest in “state affairs” widened the gap between elites and people. Instead of their amalgamation with the people, which was the party elite’s intention, an insurmountable alienation arose. Some details of her discussion of the SRs seem to be doubtful. She reiterates the often stressed reproach that the party lacked a strong organization. However, it would be unfair to attribute this deficiency solely to this party. Stefan Karsch has convincingly claimed the opposite in his very thoughtful and recently published book on Voronezh. Moreover, one has to keep in mind that the leading Bolshevik, Iakov M. Sverdlov, was dismayed at the organizational defects of his party in 1917-18, indicating that even the supposedly well-organized Bolsheviks had to fight with the same problems. It is very likely that some of the organizational and financial problems resulted from the rapid development of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Yet these problems did not prevent the SRs from publishing many newspapers and brochures in 1917. Minor points of critique are that Badcock misnames the leader of the Left SRs in Kazan (Aleksandr instead of Andrei [pp. 73, 258]) as well as Leopold H. Haimson (pp. 78, 249), and some figures contradict each other (pp. 66-67).

These cavils aside, her book is well researched. Drawing on hitherto almost unexploited local archival materials and a huge array of local newspapers, she evaluates the roles of popular institutions and of various social groups. Moreover, she seriously questions the historical paradigm of dual power as an adequate description for the complex relationship of power in the provinces. She stresses that regional government lost control of the countryside in 1917, and this loss of control was precipitated by the provision crisis. Central and local governmental policies on grain procurement widened the gulf between their visions of the countryside and those of the rank and file. Government grain procurement failed because it lacked an effective administration and the willingness of the grain producing peasants to make economic sacrifices in the name of the common good. Thus, Badcock makes a significant contribution to the study of the 1917 revolutions and of Russia’s political, social, and everyday history.

King's documentary account, which covers the historically tumultuous period from the February Revolution to the dissolution of the Russian Constituent Assembly, begins with a foreword and a concise introductory chapter on the populist movement from the 1860s to 1917. The volume consists of forty-seven documents arranged into eleven sections. The third section deals with the February Revolution. The next sections are devoted to important questions of the political agenda in 1917 and of dissension within the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Two sections (the fifth and the eighth) deal with the question of war and peace: the “April Crisis” about the provisional government’s war aims and the so-called Kerensky Offensive of summer 1917. Sections 6 and 9 are devoted to the relationship of the Socialist Revolutionary Party to other socialist and democratic organizations and to the debates of the warring factions within the party, such as the SR-Maximalist heresy and the internationalist left SRs. Amid the sailors of the Baltic fleet, as well as in the garrisons of port cities of northern Russia, such as Helsingsfors, Reval, Kronstadt, and Petrograd, both left-wing factions had the strongholds. Section 7 focuses on the peasants, the question of land reform, and the provisions crisis. The last four chapters are devoted to important political issues, such as the Kornilov revolt, the Bolshevik coup d’état and the convocation of the Second Soviet Congress, the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, and the split of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Regarding the split, the left SRs were expelled from the party right after the overthrow of the provisional government, leading to the formation of an independent party organization by the left SRs.

The compiler selected few documents from contemporary publications and brochures. Most were taken instead from post-Soviet documentary editions, i.e., the proceedings of the Petrograd Soviet or the voluminous editions of such materials on the SRs, left SRs, and SR-Maximalists published by the Russian publishing house ROSSPĖN. One document pertaining to everday life during mid-April 1917 in a hamlet of Tambov Province is taken from a Russian Internet source. The selection of documents is appropriate; the translations are close to the originals and fluidly written.

Unfortunately, omissions in text passages are not always indicated, and annotations and footnotes are rare. Moreover, the edition lacks an index and references for further reading. Nevertheless, this publication is to be welcomed. A great many of the existing documentary editions dealing with the Russian Revolution of 1917 do not cover the viewpoint of the Socialist Revolutionary Party as fully as they should. In this respect, this documentary edition fills a gap. It enhances our opportunity to deal more adequately in undergraduate classes with the SRs during the revolutionary period of 1917.

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Citation: Lutz Haefner. Review of Badcock, Sarah, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History and King, Francis, The Narodniks in the Russian Revolution. H-HistGeog, H-Net Reviews. June, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24654

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