Intelligentsia and Revolution This page intentionally left blank INTELLIGENTSIA AND REVOLUTION Russian Views of Bolshevism 1917-1922 Jane Burbank OXFORD UNIVERSITY P RESS New York Oxford Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1986 by Oxford University Press, Inc. First published in 1986 by Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 3989 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burbank, Jane. Intelligentsia and revolution. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Communism and intellectuals-Soviet Union. 2. Soviet Union—History—Revolution. 1917-1921. 3. Intellectuals—Soviet Union—Political activity. I. Title. HX528.B87 1986 320.5'322 85-32096 ISBN 0-19-504061-9 ISBN 0-19-504573-4 (PBK) 2 4 68 10 97 5 31 Printed in the United States of America Acknowledgments The people who have helped me write this book have, perhaps, as divergent points of view as the Russian intellectuals who are my subjects. This is for the better and I am grateful to them all. First, I wish to thank Richard Pipes, Edward L. Keenan, and James D. Wilkinson for their advice and careful reading when this project was a dissertation. As the thesis became a book, Paul Avrich, Elizabeth Wood, and Ronald Mercier read entire drafts and gave me the great benefit of their suggestions. Frederick Cooper, Marc Jansen, and Andre Liebich offered very helpful comments on sections of the manuscript. Several people who lived during the revolution or in the early emigration shared their memories and ideas with me. Olga Chernov Andreyev and Natasha Chernov Reznikova, Vera Broido-Cohn, Valentina Maximovna Cremer, Tatiana Sergeevna Frank, George Garvy, Anya Gourevitch, and Sylvia Gourevitch helped to shape my image of their parents', or husbands', generation. Tamara Klepinine, Igor Aleksandrovich Krivoshein, Wladimir Weidle, and Sergei Pavlovich Zhaba generously described their early lives and their experiences of the revolution and civil war. Pierre Pascal discussed his lengthy stay in Russia, and Boris Sapir, scholar and activist in the best intelligentsia tradition, offered not only a glimpse into his past, but also valuable guidance for my archival searches. Without archives and libraries, the past itself could not speak, and I was fortunate to be able to use many excellent and accommodating facilities. I am grateful to the librarians and other workers at the following institutions: the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam; the archive and library of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University, VI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS especially Hilya Kukk; the Bibliotheque de documentation internationale contemporaine at Nanterre, in particular Mme. Kaplan; the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the Osteuropa-Institut in Munich; the library of the Eberhard-Karls-Universitat in Tubingen; the Bakhmeteff Archive at Columbia University and its former curator Stephen Corrsin; the Bibliotheque nationale, the Archives nationales, and the Turgenev Library in Paris; the British Museum in London; the Public Record Office at Kew; the Graduate Library of the University of Michigan, in particular Joseph Placek; at Harvard University— the Houghton Library, the Russian Research Center and its administrator Mary Towle and librarian Susan Gardos, and Sheila Hart and my other friends and former co-workers in Widener Library. To reach these far-flung collections and to use them I needed material resources. My research on this project was supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Krupp Foundation, and the Whiting Foundation, and by faculty research grants from Harvard University. As this project reached its final stages, new people joined it. I was privileged to work with Nancy Lane of Oxford University Press, and 1 am grateful to Kate Schecter, who painstakingly reviewed the entire text and notes. 1 also wish to thank the editors of the Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique, in which material from the first two chapters appeared in a different form. Although it may seem that this book has had a history as peripatetic as that of the Russian intellectuals after 1917, in fact it had only three homes. One was Paris, in 1977 and 1978, when I first conceptualized the project and where I was sheltered and encouraged by two very kind and very different representa- tives of the St. Petersburg intelligentsia, both born in 1895—Wladimir Weidle and Valentina Maximovna Cremer, nee Vinaver. The second home was Adams House at Harvard, where Robert and Jana Kiely provided me with both company and a quiet place to write my dissertation and begin a book. Most of the work on the book was completed in a third home, Ann Arbor, where I found intellectual community a reality and not a myth. Two groups in particular enlivened my year's leave in Ann Arbor in 1983-84. William Rosenberg and Ronald Suny and other members of the University of Michigan's Center for Russian and East European Studies offered a warm and scholarly welcome, and the members of the Community Action/Social History group who gathered in Charles and Louise Tilly's living room on Sunday evenings showed what seminars should be. Many friends in many places have made my life pleasant while 1 was working on this project. I am very grateful to them. Above all, 1 thank Fred Cooper for our companionship, with its happy past and its promise for the future. Ann Arbor, Mich. J.B. September 1985 Contents Introduction: The Intelligentsia Tradition 5 1 Revolutionaries in the Revolution: The Search for Democratic Socialism Menshevik Prospects 13 lulii Martov: Principled Protest Against the Commissarocracy 76 Menshevik Dissenters: Plekhanov, Potresov, Zasulich 35 Pavel Axelrod: "A Dictatorship over the Proletariat" 46 Martov's Battles 57 2 Revolutionaries in the Revolution: Populist Perspectives The Revival of Russian Populism 66 Viktor Chernov: "The Dictatorship of the City over the Country" 69 Mark Vishniak: Constitutional Illusions 85 Petr Kropotkin: "How Communism Cannot Be Introduced" 99 Populism in Defeat 705 3 Two Russian Liberals: Socialism on Trial Principles and Goals 113 P. N. Miliukov and Bolshevik Power 776 Petr Struve: "The Experimental Refutation of Socialism" 128 Vlll CONTENTS Struve: Searching for the Nation 143 Miliukov: "The Birth of Russian Democracy" 154 The Liberals and the People 165 4 The Monarchy in Fact and Fancy The Autocratic Legacy 170 F. V. Vinberg: "The Forces of Darkness" 777 S. S. Ol'denburg: The Best Case for the Sovereign 775 Monarchist Politics: 1921-1922 184 The Kingdom of Ideals 787 5 A Different Culture From the Depths 790 Nikolai Berdiaev: "The Pecularity of Bitter Russian Fate" 793 N. S. Trubetskoi: The Rebellion of the Despised 208 N. V. Ustrialov: Changing Landmarks 222 6 The Revolution and the Intelligentsia 238 Notes 257 Selected Bibliography 315 Index 327 Intelligentsia and Revolution