Russian Historiography of the 1917 Revolution: <em>New Challenges to Old
Paradigms?</em>
Authors(s): Boris Kolonitskii and Yisrael Elliot Cohen
Source:

History and Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2, Special Issue: Historical Scholarship in Post-

Soviet Russia / Edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky (Fall/Winter 2009), pp. 34-59
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/his.2009.21.2.34
Accessed: 26-03-2016 16:44 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted

digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about

JSTOR, please contact [e-mail].

Indiana University Press

is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

History

and Memory

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

34

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

Russian Historiography of the

1917 Revolution

New Challenges to Old Paradigms?

B

oris

K

olonitsKii

This article addresses the relations between the official “politics of memory” and
historical research in the Soviet Union and postcommunist Russia, with particu-
lar attention to the 1917 revolution. The myth of the Great October Socialist
Revolution was the founding myth of the Soviet Union, the great myth of the
establishment of a new society and a new state. Historical study of the revolution
was subject to strict ideological control, but after 1956 the destalinization processes
enabled certain Russian historians to write academically important works despite
the continuing censorship. Paradoxically, after the demise of the Soviet Union,
much less work has been done on the history of the revolution, which can partly
be explained by the new “politics of memory” in contemporary Russia, linked to
the quest for a new national identity.

François Furet, the well-known historian of the French Revolution,
stated with justification that “the revolution is over.”

1

For 200 years now

the main figures of contemporary politics have not identified with the
main figures of that revolution; the memory of this distant event is not
a weapon in today’s political battles. For the French today the history of
their revolution is “just history.”

In contrast, historians of the Russian Revolution of 1917 can jus-

tifiably say: “the revolution is continuing.” Researchers, politicians and
ordinary citizens in Russia continue to identify with the main figures of
their revolution and view the events of ninety years ago through the eyes
of their participants. The leader of the Bolshevik Party Vladimir Lenin
and the last Russian tsar Nicholas II, the proponents of “strong rule,”

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

35

The 1917 Revolution

General Lavr Kornilov and Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, the conservative
philosopher Peter Struve and the Menshevik (moderate Marxist)

leader

Iulii Martov, all personify desired alternatives of historical development.
They embody either the Russia “we lost” or the Russia “we did not gain.”
Revolutionary activists were also the revolution’s first historians. Works by
such leaders as the Constitutional-Democratic Party leader Peter Miliukov,
the Bolshevik Lev Trotsky, the “White” leader General

Anton Denikin,

and the head of the last Provisional Government Alexander Kerensky,
who was the most popular leader of the February Revolution of 1917,
combined autobiographical narrative and historical study. Even today these
figures have great influence on people’s understanding of the revolution.
In fact, no subsequent historians have had the same degree of influence
on today’s historical consciousness as the founding fathers of the various
ideological streams of historiography.

However, contemporary historical consciousness also reflects the

major influence of the paradigms of the “short course” of the history of
the Bolshevik Party (Istoriia VKP[b]: Kratkii kurs), written at the peak of
the Great Terror and published in 1938.

2

This Stalinist interpretation of

events is important not only for the contemporary Russian Communists
and National-Bolsheviks who sympathetically cite it.

3

Its indirect influence

can be detected also in the works of many anti-Communists who, while
fervently rejecting the conclusions of the Short Course, have often repro-
duced the very structure of its narrative while reversing its evaluations,
treating as negative what the Short Course presents as positive. Although
it falsified events of the past in order to justify the policies of a dictato-
rial regime, this official Bolshevik history was one of the most successful
commemorative projects

of modern history.

Of course, historians cannot, by themselves, lead society to a state

where it can say with confidence: “the Russian Revolution is over,” but
nor can this task be achieved without historians. Hence, contemporary
students of that period bear a tremendous responsibility.

The historiographic situation in today’s post-Soviet society is some-

times depicted as an institutional, generational and intellectual conflict. It
is claimed that, due to political, financial and organizational factors, the
“older generation” of ideological historians retain the leading positions in
academic institutes and major universities, where they continue to influence
the choice of research topics, the distribution of resources and the granting

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Boris Kolonitskii

36

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

of academic degrees. It is also often assumed that the “new generation”
of researchers, who have adopted the sociological, ethnological and
linguistic methods of “Western” historiography, are being discriminated
against by their senior colleagues, who block the adoption of “progressive
methodologies” by the community of historians, including students and
graduate students. “New” academic and educational structures involving
“young” researchers are often favorably contrasted to “old” institutions.
Indeed, there are quite a few cases of political taboos on certain topics of
research. Historians in postcommunist Russia enjoyed academic freedom,
which of course did not exclude instances of censorship of self-censorship
However, in various regions and various academic institutions there were
particular notions of what was permissible and desirable, which endowed
researchers with certain room for maneuver. Unfortunately, the situation
has recently become more difficult following the establishment, on May
19, 2009, of a Presidential Commission “on counteracting attempts to
falsify history to the detriment of Russia’s interests.”

A law is also being drawn up to enable the criminal prosecution of

persons who falsify Russian history. There is the danger that these juridi-
cal acts will enable the establishment of censorship in historical research
and have an even greater impact on the “politics of memory.” But politi-
cal pressure is only one, albeit the main way of influencing the work of
contemporary historians. As in other countries, there are also attempts to
make certain academic approaches and terms taboo. Merely mentioning
the term “discourse” can cause an allergic reaction from many colleagues,
irrespective of their age. Based on my own experience, I can testify to
the fact that a researcher who chooses to study the political culture of a
revolutionary society is sometimes viewed by colleagues as marginal, as
addressing problems that are either of little significance or are not real
problems at all.

However, despite such simple dichotomies, the conflict between

“new” and “old” in contemporary Russian historiography is in reality
complex, contradictory and multifaceted. Some historians of both the
younger and older generations write politicized history in a “moderniz-
ing” or even “postmodernizing’” vein, unable to conceive of a historical
text that is not intentionally and consciously ideological. This adherence
to the tradition of ideological chameleonism is not always opportunistic.
Many researchers sincerely believe that the historian should be partisan.

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

37

The 1917 Revolution

This view, formerly part and parcel of communist ideology, characterizes
a number of convinced anti-Communists. Hence today, nationalists and
liberals, neo-Communists and advocates of strong government also enthu-
siastically create their own ideologized and politicized “short courses” of
the history of Russia. For some Lenin is replaced by émigré philosophers
like Nikolai Berdyaev or Ivan Il’in. Other scholars pepper their texts with
terms like “mentality,” “gender” and “discourse,” in accordance with
the latest intellectual fashion. Well-honed experience in adapting to the
demands of superiors or grant providers often encourages researchers
to make rapid shifts in their research topics, linguistic terminology and
manner of presenting material. (This phenomenon sometimes confuses
foreign colleagues who are used to classifying researchers and schools
of thought.) If in times past many “pragmatic” Russian historians took
their cues from the Department of Science of the Central Committee of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), now they are “tuned
in” to the office of the president and/or Western foundations. Given this
situation, one is tempted to have greater sympathy for reliable, seemingly
old-fashioned “positivists,” whether old or young, who reject the novel-
ties of intellectual fashions and/or new government demands (although
it should not be assumed that historians who serve the contemporary
regime necessarily reject the latest academic jargon; in this respect they
may be just as “Westernizing” as their political opponents). This article
will seek to demonstrate these historiographical trends by analyzing the
case of the history of the 1917 Russian Revolution.

*

The myth of the 1917 revolution was the founding myth of the Soviet
Union.

4

November 7 (October 25, according to the old, pre-revolution

calendar), the Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution, was the main
state holiday, with public events in all the cities of the USSR and military
parades in the major cities (after the First of May parades were abolished
in the mid-1960s, annual military parades were held only in November).
November 7 gained additional significance during World War II. On that
day in 1941 the traditional military parade was held in Red Square even
though German troops were on the very outskirts of Moscow. Right
after the parade some of the military units were immediately sent into

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Boris Kolonitskii

38

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

combat. The parade of 1941 facilitated a patriotic mobilization and, to
this day, remains a component of the myth of what the Soviets referred
to as the Great Patriotic War, a myth that is central for the identity of the
Russians today.

The mythologized history of October and the sacralized biography

of its leader, Lenin, were at the center of political and historical education
in school and at university (courses on the history of the Communist Party
were required for college

students in all fields). The average Soviet citi-

zen could not help being familiar with this historical myth since not only
school and political propaganda but also films and literature all projected
it into public consciousness. There was no special interest in the history
of the revolution since it was assumed everything was already known.
At the same time, the overthrow of the monarchy in February 1917 did
not greatly interest propagandists or writers since it was considered to be
merely a prologue to the “Great October.” Nonetheless, even though
these propaganda patterns were reflected in Soviet historiography, it
should be acknowledged that some quite important historical works were
written in the USSR. Some of these appeared in the 1920s. Under the
Stalinist dictatorship research into the revolution was severely curtailed,
but was renewed after 1956, with the beginning of the “Thaw” under
Nikita Khrushchev.

During the destalinization of the 1960s profound changes took place

in Soviet historiography of the 1917 revolution. This turning point was
connected, first and foremost, with the name of Eduard N. Burdzhalov,
who wrote a classic study of the previously underestimated history of the
February Revolution. As the deputy editor of the main Soviet historical
journal Voprosy istorii (Questions of history), he questioned important ele-
ments of the Stalinist interpretation of the revolution. This approach was
considered too radical for that time and the editorial board was replaced.
However, certain ideas, which had originally seemed “heretical,” were
soon taken up by many Soviet historians. Burdzhalov himself had the
opportunity to prepare two volumes of his remarkable study, which was one
of the few Russian historical works translated into English.

5

Of particular

importance for the study of the October Revolution was the so-called
“Leningrad school” (Iurii. S. Tokarev, Oleg. N. Znamenskii, Vitalii. I.
Startsev, and Gennadii. L. Sobolev). Tokarev, who studied the history of
the Petrograd Soviet, penned an innovative book that dealt with popular

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

39

The 1917 Revolution

perceptions and practices of justice.

6

Znamenskii gained renown for major

works devoted to the crisis of July 1917, the Constituent Assembly and
the intelligentsia during the period of the revolution.

7

Startsev provided

readers with new information about the history of the Red Guards and
the workers’ militias, made an important contribution to the study of the
life of Lenin and compiled a detailed picture of the storming of the Winter
Palace.

8

Sobolev’s book, which examined the political consciousness of

the revolutionary period, had a considerable impact on historians of my
generation.

9

Sobolev tried to apply the notion of historical psychology

to the study of the revolution. On the basis of a scrupulous study of the
sources of that time, he convincingly showed that the rank-and-file par-
ticipants in the revolution adhered to contradictory, paradoxical ideas that
could not be reduced to the ideology of the leading political parties. He
also demonstrated that a study of the political history of the revolution
would be incomplete if historians failed to take into account the influences
of religion and popular culture.

In its best works, even under conditions of increasingly harsh political

censorship during the “stagnation” under Leonid Brezhnev, the Lenin-
grad school attained some success by continuing to make worthwhile
contributions by discovering new sources and analyzing them critically.
In this regard they reflected the positive influence of the old prerevolu-
tionary

“Petersburg historical school” characterized by the meticulous

interpretation of historical sources. Tokarev, Znamenskii, Startsev and
Raphail Sh. Ganelin, a well-known expert in the history of the February
Revolution, were involved in compiling a collective monograph on the
October armed uprising in Petrograd, which for a long time was the best
general Russian-language study of the revolution.

10

Another member of

the Leningrad school, Khanan M. Astrakhan, wrote an important work
on the history of political parties in 1917.

11

While his works are now

undeservedly largely unknown, he did succeed in cautiously formulating
some ideas that were being elaborated at approximately the same time,
but in a much more favorable academic environment, by the American
scholar Alexander Rabinowitch.

12

Both scholars illuminated the multi-

plicity of political trends that existed within Bolshevism. Furthermore,
Astrakhan convincingly demonstrated that there had not always been a
clear distinction between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and that
many local and front-line party organizations had sent delegates to both

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Boris Kolonitskii

40

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

Bolshevik and Menshevik Party congresses and conferences. Moreover, a
number of party organizations remained united for some time even after
October. He thus undermined the image of a monolithic party, which,
for various reasons but with equal enthusiasm, had been created by both
partisan communist and anti-communist historiography. Another impor-
tant area in Soviet historiography of that period was the history of the
so-called “non-proletarian” parties; this was fruitfully explored in works
by Pavel V. Volobuev, Viktor I. Miller, Genrikh. Z. Ioffe and Natal’ia. G.
Dumova.

13

Moreover, Academician Isaak I. Mints, who was considered

one of the main official Soviet historians of the October Revolution, in
fact held a comparatively moderate position.

14

Although he did at times

criticize the new works, he did not initiate ideological “pogroms” in the
historiographic “fiefdom” under his control.

These works by Soviet historians of the 1960s thus created a pic-

ture of various aspects of the revolution that differed significantly from
standard textbook and propaganda

interpretations of the history of the

CPSU. Therefore, graduates of Soviet institutions of higher education
who had been certain that they “knew everything” about 1917 were
sometimes shocked when they encountered even those historical sources
that were available at that time and some of the historical research cited
above. While representatives of the Leningrad school and other researchers
already mentioned did not directly challenge the traditional paradigms of
the history of the CPSU and continued to “adorn” their texts with the
requisite citations and clichés, their rejection of the “Bolshevik-centric”
view of the revolution actually contradicted the conclusions and para-
digms of official party historiography by undermining the historical myth
of October from within. In the 1970s and 1980s a number of younger
historians significantly clarified the picture of the revolution. Since they
had an important historiographic tradition to follow, the historians from
Leningrad Nikolai N. Smirnov, Vladimir Iu. Cherniaev, and Andrei B.
Nikolaev were prominent in this elaboration.

15

The positive developments in Soviet historiography of the 1917

revolution were connected with several trends. First, there was a traditional
elaboration of the history of political institutions, based on the scrupulous
study of the archival collections of relevant institutions (Tokarev, Znamen-
skii, Miller, Smirnov, Nikolaev). Second, as noted previously, there was
the history of the “non-proletarian” political parties (Astrakhan, Ioffe,

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

41

The 1917 Revolution

Dumova). Third, there was research that elaborated on a topic that was
traditional for Soviet historiography, the history of social groups, especially
the working class. Apart from extremely ideological and, hence, eminently
forgettable books, there also appeared studies based on the examina-
tion of new sources. Outstanding among these was the monograph on
Petersburg workers and the October Revolution by Znamenskii, Sobolev,
Startsev, Smirnov and Cherniaev.

16

Interest in the careful reconstruction

of the local history of the revolution was also manifest. Indeed, many
of the achievements of the historians of the Leningrad school reflected
their efforts to depict the way the geography of the city had affected the
revolutionary events. And finally, the legal and political consciousness of
the revolutionary period was elucidated by Tokarev and Sobolev, who
meticulously analyzed contemporary historical

sources.

These developments were to a certain extent similar to the studies

being carried out at the same time by the “revisionists” in the West (those
historians who rejected the study of the USSR as a monolithic, totalitarian
state), and almost all the trends noted above had their analogy abroad (at
times the innovative Soviet historians were even referred to as “revision-
ists” in party circles). Hence, the historiography followed a similar overall
path of development on both sides of the “iron curtain.”

Among Western scholars Leopold Haimson, William Rosenberg,

Diane Koenker, Steve Smith and Marc Ferro studied the social dimension
of the revolution, especially in terms of the working class.

17

As already

mentioned they did so in a more intensive and interesting way than their
Soviet colleagues. Their success may be attributed to several circumstances.
For one thing, the foreign historians were often influenced by new works
of social history relating to various countries, while the interest of many
Soviet researchers of Russian history

was often restricted to the history of

their own country. In the USSR the historiography of the working class
also suffered from strict ideological oversight so that attempts to study
the working class in a new way were frustrated. One blatant example of
this control was the fierce ideological criticism directed against a collec-
tion of articles, surprisingly innovative for its time, that under different
conditions might have had a significant impact on Soviet historiography.

18

In contrast to their Soviet counterparts, some foreign historians

studied political history in conjunction with social history. Orlando Figes
studied the peasantry, and Alan Wildman, the soldiers of the imperial

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Boris Kolonitskii

42

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

army.

19

Russian political parties were the subjects of works by Haim-

son, Rosenberg and Ziva Galili, as well as the aforementioned works by
Rabinowitch.

20

Local history of the revolution was examined in works

by Ronald Grigor Suny and Donald Raleigh, and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
wrote an important work on the history of the February Revolution,
while Richard Stites innovatively stressed the cultural dimension of the
revolution.

21

However, these works were rarely used by historians in the

USSR. Western historians with the most diverse views were dubbed “bour-
geois falsifiers,” and their works were kept in special sections of the main
academic libraries, which were not freely accessible to researchers. The
situation changed dramatically in the period of perestroika, the economic
and political reforms initiated in the late 1980s by Mikhail Gorbachev.

Foreign researchers have had certain obvious advantages over their

Russian colleagues. Works that were written in the USSR clearly cannot be
evaluated without taking into consideration the role of extremely strong

censorship and self-censorship (often Soviet studies of that period require
a significant amount of commentary simply in order to be understood).
Censorship not only affected interpretation; it also limited the sources of
information to which historians had access. Even those documents and
studies that were located in the “special sections” of various libraries were
not uniformly available or unavailable. Access was granted or denied to
Soviet scholars depending on their status. In contrast to foreign scholars,
Soviet historians of the 1917 revolution were generally not very inter-
ested in the approaches of other social sciences, exceptions being Tokarev

and Startsev, who were initially trained as lawyers, and Sobolev, who was
influenced by significant contemporary works of social psychology. For-
eign historians of the same generation were greatly influenced by other
social sciences, especially sociology. This influence was not only direct but
also indirect, via the historiography of other countries and other epochs.
However, Soviet historians of that time

did have the advantage in terms

of sources: they were more familiar with Soviet archival collection, even
though, as noted, not all researchers had equal access.

This relative advantage was reduced in the late Soviet period, when an

increasing number of foreign researchers gained the opportunity to work in
Soviet archives. There were direct and indirect contacts between historians
in various countries, which, albeit limited by political conditions of the
Soviet period, were of great mutual advantage. In this context one may

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

43

The 1917 Revolution

speak of a kind of “historiographic convergence.” While in their censored
publications Soviet historians continued, as required, to criticize represen-
tatives of “bourgeois historiography,” without making an exception for the
“revisionists” among them, at the same time they adopted some of their
observations and conclusions. In parallel, some foreign historians realized
that, on close examination, Soviet historiography was not as monolithic
as official Soviet propaganda tried to portray it. Also of significance was
the inauguration of direct professional contacts. Furthermore, as noted
above, in Russia and the West historians almost simultaneously undertook
the study of similar topics. However, this phenomenon was of course
limited since the dialogue between Western “revisionists” and those
Soviet researchers no long bound by the ideological paradigms of party
historiography remained subject to Soviet restrictions. However, in the
late 1980s, when perestroika enabled full academic contacts, it turned out
that, even when they were using different words, historians of the 1917
revolution from various countries were speaking the same language as a
result of the convergence that had begun developing earlier.

*

Perestroika significantly altered the political and cultural context of vari-
ous forms of history writing. The fight against the basic Soviet historical
myth, the desacralization of the October Revolution, was an important
development in the political battles at that time. The politics of memory
occurring in the USSR created the necessary framework: the rituals
and symbols of October were sometimes simply inverted to give them
a completely opposite meaning. For example, November 7, the Day of
the Great October Socialist Revolution, became an occasion for various
anti-communist activities, and the very slogan of the October Revolution,
“All power to the Soviets,” could be used against the Communist Party’s
monopoly of power.

During perestroika the liberal-democratic interpretation of the revolu-

tion gained great popularity in the mass media. The February Revolution
was then presented as the real revolution that had launched the democratic
experiment in Russia. “October” lost its revolutionary status and began
to be referred to as a “coup.” The Bolsheviks were depicted as the sole
barrier on Russia’s path to progress and prosperity. The historiographic

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Boris Kolonitskii

44

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

harbinger of such a construction of reality was Alexander Kerensky, whose
writings, both historical and autobiographical, belong to the genre of
auto-hagiography or self-adulation.

22

The Bolsheviks’ dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January

1918 was seen as a turning point in the history of Russia. The deconstruc-
tion of the Bolshevik myth was accompanied by the creation of a new
mythology in which many important facts, such as the degree of political
support received by the Bolsheviks, were ignored. For example, in the
elections for the Constituent Assembly in the two capital cities, Moscow
and Petrograd, the Bolsheviks had gained a clear majority which provided
them a definite advantage in the struggle for power.

23

On the whole, the attempt to create a “democratic mythology” of

the revolution was essentially ineffective: while communist and national-
ist ideologies were able to consolidate their influence by constructing,
reconstructing and circulating both old and new myths, it was precisely a
more rational historical consciousness that was needed to strengthen lib-
eral and democratic ideologies. However, it is difficult to create a national
historical myth without a historical figure to personify the main events.
In this case the main leader of the February Revolution, Kerensky, had
fled from Petrograd during the Bolshevik uprising, and hence was hardly
suitable for the role of hero in the country’s history.

It is clear that while professional historians have not had, and do not

have, significant influence on mass historical consciousness, the changed
political situation in Russia has affected the activity of historians. One
result of perestroika was relative academic freedom. It became clear that
certain interpretations regarding the 1917 revolution had been encour-
aged from above and that the choice of research topics had not been the
result of free scholarly preference, of the genuine interest of the researcher.
However, the abolition of political fiat may be the reason why the social
history of the revolution has not been further developed in recent Rus-
sian historiography. It is true that the history of the working class is also
not popular among scholars outside Russia, who have devoted relatively
little attention to the workers in contemporary works about the history of
the 1917 revolution.

24

However, the almost complete absence in Russian

historiography of studies on the history of the workers and other social
groups has specific causes that can be attributed not only to the fluctuations
of intellectual fashion—in this case involving a decline in interest in social

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

45

The 1917 Revolution

history. A more convincing explanation is that the avoidance of such topics
is a reaction to the previous hyper-ideologization of the historiography of
the working class, which was particularly marked in the USSR from the
1970s, in the wake of party criticism of several collections of articles that
were most interesting for their time.

25

Among the few exceptions to this

lacuna in contemporary Russian historiography are the studies of Olga.
S. Porshneva, who has attempted to link social history to the history of
mentalities and has devoted some attention also to the workers.

26

By contrast, other trends in historiography that have been liberated

from the constraints of censorship have flourished. Many studies have
appeared that deal with Russian political parties. One significant example
is the project of a Russian political encyclopedia, within whose framework
both research studies and documents are being published. Some of the
most successful endeavors have been the result of cooperation between
historians of different countries. Outstanding among such works is a mul-
tivolume documentary publication dealing with the Mensheviks, compiled
by Haimson, Galili and Nenarokov.

27

Other new studies include a major

reference work, an encyclopedia of the political parties of the revolutionary
period, based on research by dozens of historians.

28

The publication of

this work testifies to the high level of contemporary study on this topic,
which, to a large degree, is nourished by research conducted in the late
Soviet period

before perestroika. It promises to significantly facilitate future

work on these topics.

As some of these examples indicate, this new research on the political

history of 1917 would have been impossible without the groundbreaking
achievements of Soviet historians from the 1960s to the 1980s in gather-
ing factual material. Nonetheless, from theoretical and methodological
perspectives, these new works remain fundamentally traditional even when
they are based on interesting new sources discovered in archival collections.
Thus, the valuable work by Lev G. Protasov on the Constituent Assembly,
which continues the research carried out by Znamenskii, could have been
published in the form of articles even in the Soviet era if the author had cut
some anti-communist passages that are hardly essential to it.

29

In the late

Soviet period there also appeared the punctiliously compiled factographic
monograph by Andrei B. Nikolaev on the State Duma during the Febru-
ary Revolution.

30

Some major document publication projects that were

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Boris Kolonitskii

46

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

largely prepared during the Soviet period have also been completed, the
most important being the documents of the Petrograd Soviet.

31

A unique achievement in Russian historiography was the study of

revolutionary violence by the Moscow scholar Vladimir P. Buldakov.

32

This

work posed such a challenge to traditional academic history writing that
some

critics of the author coined the term buldakovshchina (“buldakov-

ism”) to describe the phenomenon. His book is argumentative and, in
some places, journalistic, written with great passion, raising new questions
rather than providing answers. Although his argumentation is not always
convincing, and his use of sources not immune to criticism,

33

the impact

of this work on the historiography has been positive: it has encouraged
sharp debate and attracted the attention of young researchers to topical
issues. Being well acquainted with contemporary historiography, both
Russian and foreign, Buldakov combines political history with social his-
tory and psychohistory. Of particular interest is his examination of the
imperial and ethnic dimensions of the 1917 revolution, which have been
clearly underestimated by previous

historians. In any case, the “Buldakov

case” does not at all fit into the paradigm of the opposition between
young progressive Westernizers and ideological nationalists belonging
to an older generation of researchers. Buldakov, who already began to
work in the Soviet period, has both supporters and opponents among
members of various generations. Moreover, since it is difficult to assign
him to any particular ideology, neo-communists, liberals and nationalists
all find reasons to criticize him.

Nonetheless, in Russia today fewer and fewer researchers are inter-

ested in the revolution of 1917. The revolution may not be “over,” but it
does not interest scholars; the

topic has lost its social and political

signifi-

cance. It is not attracting young historians, although there are exceptions
such as Pavel G. Rogoznyi, who wrote a monograph on the bishops of
the Russian Orthodox Church, and Denis. A. Bazhanov, who published
a book on the everyday life of the sailors who served on dreadnaughts,
the most powerful ships of the Baltic Fleet.

34

The vast majority of the

new generation of historians apparently also share the view that “all has
already been said,” even if their ideological position is quite different from
the communist one. It seems, however, that this situation is not specifi-
cally Russian, for in other countries also there is a decreasing number of
graduate students choosing the Russian Revolution as a research topic

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

47

The 1917 Revolution

and fewer monographs are being written on this subject (among the rare
exceptions is the recent book by the British scholar Sarah Badcock).

35

One of the causes for the decrease in interest in the 1917 revolution,

both in Russia and in the West, is the implosion of the communist experi-
ment in the USSR. The 1917 revolution was the foundational myth of a
society that now no longer exists. In this new, post-Soviet situation the
simple paradigms of the “totalitarian school” are once again becoming
popular. Indicative of this is the success of a book by Richard Pipes, The
Russian Revolution, which cannot be attributed solely to the undisputed
masterful style of the author. Indeed, Pipes’s book has also attained a
degree of success in Russia, despite the fact that some of its passages are
perceived by its readers as anti-Russian.

36

In Russian society today there is

clearly a demand for this kind of partisan writing, which Russian authors
with a political orientation similar to that of Pipes are unable to satisfy due
to their lack of the requisite erudition and literary gifts, both of which are
undeniably possessed by the American historian.

Furthermore, the decline in interest in the history of the 1917

revolution should not be attributed to non-academic factors alone.
Neither Russian nor Western researchers have been able to propose
new and interesting interpretative paradigms for the general process of
revolution, nor did the majority of interesting monographs on specific
topics generate innovative theories. Neither the younger generation of
historians nor a broad readership of historical literature was presented
with a major history of the Russian Revolution that would correspond
to the contemporary level of intellectual and social needs. The extremely
popular book by Figes, which was translated into many languages (but
not Russian)

only partially filled this gap.

37

An article by Steve Smith, one

of the most interesting of this type of historians, may be considered to be
a self-criticism of revisionism. In the mid-1990s both Smith and Ronald
Grigor Suny, another well-known “revisionist,” expressed their hopes for a
linguistic turn in the historiography of the revolution.

38

However, despite

the publication of a number of works,

39

these hopes were not realized.

Indeed, the various interesting observations have not coalesced to form
an essentially new concept of the revolution, and many researchers of
political history regard study of the language of revolution as something
marginal and continue to focus on political leaders, parties and organs of
power (this applies especially to Russian historians, but those who study

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Boris Kolonitskii

48

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

the language of revolution are sometimes criticized by colleagues from
other countries as well).

The notion that young Russian researchers who have studied at

Berkeley or Cambridge

are now proposing a new conception of the revolu-

tion that was rejected by the ideologically influential die-hards embodying
the Soviet historiographical past does not correspond to reality. Further-
more, the older generation of Russian

historians, who labored under

Soviet conditions that were much less favorable for academic research
than those of the post-Soviet period, did much more for the study of the
1917 revolution. In this respect, there is little difference on either side
of the ruins of the iron curtain.

We need to recognize that no one has

yet proposed a new, convincing (at least for the time being) conception
of the revolutionary process. Since the traditional institutional approach
that continues to dominate the historiography of the revolution can no
longer inspire the new generation of scholars, a possible avenue towards
a new understanding of 1917 might be facilitated by a discussion of the
general nature of revolutionary rule.

*

To return to an overall consideration of the state of historical science in
contemporary Russia, it is obvious that there is a continuous battle between
schools, trends, conceptions and research institutions in the academic
world. This struggle is often based on a conflict between generations
or connected with a fight for power and resources within the academic
community. Such a battle is indeed taking place in Russia today. However
what is more important is a different conflict: a number of historians of
different generations, different schools and with different political views
are attempting to resist the catastrophic erosion of professional ethics
and standards of research. In Russia today dissertations and academic
degrees can be bought and plagiarism is rife. Since this situation threatens
to poison the atmosphere of all scholarly discussion, it is most important
to support all professional historians even those who employ antiquated
research methods or indulge in moralizing conclusions.

The contemporary social and political situation in Russia is adversely

affecting scholarly discussion. Some scholars are awkwardly attempting to
exploit politicians for their own goals, while politicians, more successfully,

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

49

The 1917 Revolution

are exploiting scholars for theirs. Although the political climate in Russia
has changed significantly, the interpretation of events continues to be
dominated by the accusatory question “who is guilty?” rather than by the
scholarly question “why?” The former approach of applied historiosophy
that entails a search for guilty parties is not only represented by the mass
media but also appears in contemporary historiography. For example, in a
book dealing with the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917,
Mikhail A. Babkin advocates a conspiracy theory alleging that some bishops
had ties with the Freemasons.

40

(This proposition fits the overall scheme

of the author, according to whom the main reason for the victory of the
revolution was the position taken by the upper clergy.)

Today’s new Russian state is faced with the need to alter its politics

of memory. After the breakup of the USSR it was no longer possible to
celebrate the Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution as a common
national holiday. On November 7, 1996, President Boris Yeltsin signed a
decree proclaiming November 7 the Day of Harmony and Reconciliation,
and 1997—the eightieth anniversary of the revolution—the Year of Har-
mony and Reconciliation.

41

Some people close to Yeltsin were interested

in the Spanish politics of memory in regard to the Spanish Civil War both
under Franco and after his death (these ideas, along with plans to endow
official state status on members of the Romanov dynasty who currently
reside outside Russia, were attributed to Alexander Korzhakov, the influ-
ential head of the Presidential Security Service under Yeltsin). Yeltsin’s
holiday of harmony was not widely accepted, and November 7 continued
to be an occasion for protests on the part of Yeltsin’s opponents, especially
the Communists and their allies. This can be partially attributed to the
fact that they were easily able to exploit the familiar system of symbols
and rituals that had been elaborated during the Soviet period. In contrast,
Yeltsin supporters did not demonstrate the creativity that would have
been required to produce new rituals and symbols to serve the politics of
memory that Yeltsin wished to further.

President Vladimir Putin and his regime have brought about a change

in the politics of memory. Evidently considering it desirable to preserve
the traditional national holiday at the beginning of November, in 2005 he
inaugurated a “Day of National Unity,” celebrated on November 4, which
is the day on which Russian Orthodox believers celebrate the holiday of
the Kazan icon of the Mother of God. On that day in 1612 (although this

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Boris Kolonitskii

50

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

date is disputed by many historians), during the Time of Troubles, the
Russian forces in Moscow crushed the Polish invaders, who were forced
to retreat to the Kremlin. The leaders of the Russian troops entered the
city with the Kazan icon and promised to build a cathedral in honor of the
victory. The Poles soon surrendered, and in early 1613 Mikhail Romanov
was chosen tsar, ultimately, becoming the founder of a new dynasty. In
1649 his son Tsar Alexei proclaimed the day of the Kazan Icon of the
Mother of God a national holiday, which was celebrated until 1917.

Indeed, the events of the Time of Troubles were extremely impor-

tant for the politics of memory espoused by the Russian monarchy in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as manifested in the erection of
monuments and the creation of artistic works, including paintings and
operas. The celebration in 1913 of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov
dynasty was the last major jubilee of old Russia.

42

On the eve of World War II Stalin exploited the events of Russian

history to arouse the patriotism of the Soviet population. The Molotov-
Ribbentrop Pact between Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany
was, first and foremost, directed against Poland, the country that in
Russian historical memory was guilty of invading Russia at the beginning
of the seventeenth century. However, since the anti-religious policies of
the Stalin regime made it inappropriate to celebrate a church holiday,
the key events of the Time of Troubles

were linked to the main national

holiday on November 7, thus invoking the official

revolutionary tradi-

tion.

43

However, the current Russian authorities do not reject the use

of certain prerevolutionary commemorative means in order to promote
their own politics of memory. Thus, although the secular character of the
new-old holiday is stressed, many commentators regard it as a manifesta-
tion of the special nature of the relations between today’s Russian state
and the Russian Orthodox Church, even though, officially, the initiative
for the holiday came from Russia’s Interreligious Council, the organiza-
tion, founded in 1998, that unites the spiritual leaders of the “traditional
religious communities of Russia” (the Russian Orthodox Church, Islam,
Judaism and Buddhism). In December 2004, the State Duma adopted
legislation establishing the holiday of November 4, which was opposed
only by communist members of the Duma. November 7 ceased being an
official national holiday and is referred to as the Day of Russian Military
Glory in commemoration of the 1941 parade.

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

51

The 1917 Revolution

Nevertheless, the new politics of memory has not entirely succeeded:

November 4 has not been widely accepted as a holiday. In November 2007
a sociological survey indicated that 58 percent of those polled opposed
the abolition of the holiday of November 7 (another survey indicated 63
percent). These results should not be attributed to ideological factors,
however, since some respondents preferred the traditional holiday while
others gave a variety of reasons for rejecting the new politics of memory,
ranging from opposition to the resurrection of the monarchic politics of
memory to rejection of what they regarded as cynical and tasteless exer-
cises on the part of politicians. Public opinion surveys conducted in 2008
indicated that only 28 percent of the respondents knew the correct name
of the new holiday: 21 percent referred to it as the Day of the October
Revolution, and 18 percent as the Day of Popular Unity. The majority
of respondents reported that they would not be celebrating the holiday
under any name.

44

It should be noted that while the holiday of November 7 offered

opportunities for public activity by Communists and their allies, Novem-
ber 4 was actively exploited by nationalistic forces, for example, to hold
a “Russian march” in a number of cities. The creators of the new holiday
could have easily foreseen such consequences of “inventing” tradition.

Not only holidays but disputes about the revolution, which is some-

times referred to as the Time of Troubles of the twentieth century, also
have relevance today. The tone for much current public discussion of the
causes of the revolution was set by an article by Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
originally written in the early 1980s and published many times in various
collections, which was republished in 2007 by a government publishing
house in the form of a separate book to mark the ninetieth anniversary
of the February Revolution.

45

Solzhenitsyn noted that “the revolution

began without revolutionaries,” stressing that those who were responsible
included generals, bureaucrats, members of the clergy, and even the tsar
himself. However, he placed the main blame for the revolution, which he
saw as a national catastrophe, on members of the intelligentsia, liberals
and radicals.

46

Simplified and vulgarized to the point of caricature, Solzhenit-

syn’s conclusions were circulated by historically-minded politicians and
politically-minded historians

to create the impression that the views of the

world-famous writer were consonant with the applied historiosophy of the

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Boris Kolonitskii

52

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

new Russian regime. In early 2008 a roundtable discussion on the 1917
revolution took place at the Russian State University of the Humanities.
The keynote speaker, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of
the Russian Federation Vladimislav Iu. Surkov, described the events that
had occurred ninety years earlier in terms reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn:
“The revolution was mainly destruction, damage. While we cry about
demography [the decline in longevity and birthrate in contemporary
Russia], at the same time we long for troubles. We have to eliminate the
revolution forever from our political practice.” Surkov cited Gennadii A.
Ziuganov, the current head of the Communist Party of the Russian Fed-
eration, who once remarked that “the quota on revolution in our country
has been exhausted.” Surkov formulated his “lessons” of the February
Revolution in the form of advice to “aspiring liberals.” One of his admoni-
tions was: “Give up your hopes to make our country happy with the help
of foreign governments…. It is no secret to anyone that then [in 1917]
also a number of political forces relied, out of various considerations, on
the aid of foreign countries.”

47

It is quite possible that the remarks of this influential bureaucrat

were inspired by some contemporary historical writing on the February
Revolution. Indeed, a number of scholars continue to cast the blame for
the revolution on German agents, British intelligence services and/or the
Freemasons (which Surkov also noted).

48

Such interpretations of history

are also quite popular today with the mass media in Russia. In a similar
vein many influential Russian analysts—with varying degrees of sincer-
ity—depict the recent “colored” revolutions (the “Orange Revolution”
in Ukraine, the “rose revolution” in Georgia) as the exclusive work of
outside forces (a similar evaluation can be found both in official statements
by Russian politicians and in the media). Such a view of history is charac-
teristic of today’s detective-minded mass consciousness, which considers
conspiracies and secret associations to be the driving forces of history.

Nonetheless, in contemporary Russia, it is precisely such clumsy

attempts at political exploitation of the past that have the potential to create
the social and cultural circumstances conducive to the serious academic
study of the 1917 revolution. The use of history by politicians, who with
amazing adroitness construct historical myths that are convenient to them,
may motivate a new generation of historians to deconstruct such myths.
The intellectual climate—the interest of scholars in the social sciences

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

53

The 1917 Revolution

and humanities in “historical memory,” “social memory” and “collective
memory”—may well stimulate this aspiration toward deconstruction.
Then a serious history of the revolution will once again be in demand.

Translated from Russian by Yisrael Elliot Cohen

N

OTES

1. “La révolution est terminée” is the title of part 1 of François Furet, Penser

la Révolution française (Paris: Gallimard, 1978).

2. English translation: History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

(Bolshevicks): Short Course, edited by a Commission of the CC of the CPSU (B)
(New York: International Publishers, 1939).

3. The National-Bolshevik Party, led by the writer Eduard Limonov, was

established in 1993. It professes an eclectic ideology, at various times including
radical nationalist elements along with left-wing socialist slogans. In 2007 it was
officially recognized in Russia as an extremist organization and its activity was
banned.

4. On the emergence of this myth, see: Frederick C. Corney, Telling October:

Memory and the Making of the Bolshevik Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2004), 301.

5. Eduard N. Burdzhalov, Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia: Vosstanie v Petrograde

(The second Russian revolution: The uprising in Petrograd); idem, Vtoraia russkaia
revoliutsiia: Moskva, front, periferiia (The second Russian revolution: Moscow, the
front, the periphery) (Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, 1971); English edition:
Eduard N. Burdzhalov, Russian’s Second Revolution: The February 1917 Uprising
in Petrograd, ed. and trans. Donald J. Raleigh (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1987).

6. Iurii S. Tokarev, Narodnoe pravotvorchestvo nakanune Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi

sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii, mart–oktiabr’ 1917g. (Lawmaking by the people on
the eve of the Great October Socialist Revolution, March–October 1917) (Mos-
cow and Leningrad: Nauka, Leningrad Branch, 1965); idem., Petrogradskii sovet
rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov v marte–aprele 1917 g. (The Petrograd Soviet of
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies in March–April 1917) (Leningrad: Nauka, 1976).

7. Oleg N. Znamenskii, Iiul’skii krizis 1917 goda (The July crisis of 1917)

(Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, 1964); idem, Vserossiiskoe Uchreditel’noe sobranie:
Istoriia sozyva i politicheskogo krusheniia (The All-Russian Constituent Assembly:
The history of its convocation and political collapse) (Leningrad: Nauka, 1988).

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Boris Kolonitskii

54

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

8. Vitalii I. Startsev, Ocherki po istorii petrogradskoi Krasnoi gvardii i rabochei

militsii, mart 1917–aprel’ 1918 g. (Essays on the history of the Petrograd Red
Guards and workers’ militia, March 1917–April 1918) (Moscow and Leningrad:
Nauka, 1965); idem, Revoliutsiia i vlast’: Petroradskii sovet i Vremennoe pravitel’stvo
v marte–aprele 1917 g. (Revolution and power: The Petrograd Soviet and the Pro-
visional Government in March–April 1917) (Moscow, 1978); idem, Vnutrenniaia
politika Vremennogo pravitel’stva pervogo sostava (The domestic policy of the first
Provisional Government) (Leningrad: Nauka, 1980); idem, Krakh kerenshchiny
(The fall of Kerensky’s disastrous rule) (Leningrad: Nauka, 1982); idem, Shturm
Zimnego: Dokumental’nyi ocherk (The storming of the Winter Palace: A documen-
tary survey) (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1987).

9. Gennadii L. Sobolev, Revoliutsionnoe soznanie rabochikh i soldat Petrograda v

1917 g. (The revolutionary consciousness of the workers and soldiers of Petrograd
in 1917) (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973).

10. Oktiabr’skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie: Semnadtsatyi god v Petrograde (The

October armed uprising: The year 1917 in Petrograd) (Leningrd: Nauka, 1967),
vols. 1–2.

11. Khanan M. Astrakhan, Bol’sheviki i ikh politicheskie protivniki v 1917 godu: Iz

istorii politicheskikh partii v Rossii mezhdu dvumia revoliutsiiami (The Bolsheviks
and their political opponents in 1917: From the history of the political parties in
Russia between the two revolutions) (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1973).

12. Alexander Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and

the July 1917 Uprising (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968) (a Russian
translation appeared in 1992); idem, The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolu-
tion of 1917 in Petrograd (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976) (a Russian translation
appeared in 1989 and a 2nd revised and expanded edition in 2003).

13. Pavel V. Volobuev, Ekonomicheskaia politika Vremennogo pravitel’stva (The

economic policy of the Provisional Government) (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii
nauk, 1962); idem, Proletariat i burzhuaziia Rossii v 1917 (The proletariat and the
bourgeoisie of Russia in 1917) (Moscow: Mysl’, 1964); Viktor I. Miller, Soldatskie
komitety russkoi armii v 1917 godu: Vozniknovenie i nachal’nyi period deiatel’nosti
(Soldiers’ committees of the Russian army in 1917: Formation and initial period of
their activity) (Moscow: Nauka, 1973); Genrikh Z. Ioffe, Krakh rossiiskoi monar-
khicheskoi kontrrevoliutsii (The fall of the Russian monarchical counterrevolution)
(Moscow: Nauka, 1977); Natal’ia G. Dumova, Kadetskaia kontrrevoliusiia i ee
razgrom, oktiabr’ 1917–1920 gg. (The Constitutional-Democratic counterrevolu-
tion and its rout, October 1917–1920) (Moscow: Nauka, 1982).

14. See Elaine MacKinnon, “Writing History for Stalin: Isaak Izrailevich Mints

and the Istoriia grazhdanskoi voiny,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian
History 6, no. 1 (2005): 5–54.

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

55

The 1917 Revolution

15. Nikolai N. Smirnov, III Vserossiiskii s”ezd Sovetov: Istoriia sozyva i raboty (The

third All-Russian Session of the Soviets: History of its convocation and activity)
(Leningrad: Nauka, Leningrad Department, 1988); idem, Na perelome: Rossiiskoe
uchitel’stvo nakanune i v dni revoliutsii 1917 g. (At a turning point: Russian teachers
on the eve and during the days of the 1917 revolution) (St. Petersburg: Nauka,
1994); Vladimir Iu. Cherniaev, “Iiun’skii politicheskii krizis” (The June political
crisis), abstract of a dissertation for the degree of candidate of historical sciences
(Leningrad Department of the Institute of History of the USSR, USSR Academy
of Sciences, 1986); Andrei B. Nikolaev, “Bor’ba sil revoliutsii i kontrevoliutsii v
sviazi s sozyvom gosudarstvennogo soveshchaniia, aprel’–avgust 1917 g.” (The
struggle of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces in connection with the
convocation of the State Assembly, April–August 1917), abstract of a dissertation
for the degree of candidate of historical sciences (Leningrad Department of the
Institute of History of the USSR, USSR Academy of Sciences, 1990).

16. Piterskie rabochie i Velikiii Oktiabr’ (Petersburg workers and the Great

October) (Leningrad: Nauka, 1987).

17. Leopold H. Haimson “The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia,

1905–1917,” Slavic Review 23, no. 4 (1964): 619–42, and 24, no. 1 (1965):
1–22; idem., “The Problem of Political and Social Stability in Urban Russia on the
Eve of War and Revolution Revisited,” Slavic Review 59, no. 4 (2000): 848–75;
Diane P. Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981); Diane P. Koenker and William G. Rosenberg, “Skilled
Workers and the Strike Movement in Revolutionary Russia,” Journal of Social
History 19, no. 4 (1986): 605–29; S. A. Smith, Red Petrograd: Revolution in
the Factories, 1917–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Marc
Ferro, La Révolution de 1917 (Paris: Aubier, 1967).

18. L. M. Ivanov, ed., Rossiiskii proletariat: Oblik, bor’ba, gegemoniia (The

Russian proletariat: Profile, struggle, hegemony) (Moscow: Nauka, 1970).

19. Alan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, 2 vols. (1980;

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Orlando Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil
War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917–1921 (Oxford: The Clarendon
Press, 1989).

20. Leopold H. Haimson, The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955); idem, ed., The Mensheviks from
the Revolution of 1917 to the Second World War (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1975); idem, ed., in collaboration with Ziva Galili y Garcia and Richard
Wortman, The Making of Three Russian Revolutionaries: Voices from the Menshevik
Past (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); William G. Rosenberg, Lib-
erals in the Russian Revolution: The Constitutional Democratic Party, 1917–1921
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974); Ziva Galili, The Menshevik Lead-

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Boris Kolonitskii

56

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

ers in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political Strategies (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1989).

21. Ronald G. Suny, The Baku Commune, 1917–1918: Class and Nationality

in the Russian Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972); Donald
J. Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov (Ithaca, 1985); Tsuyoshi
Hasegawa, The February Revolution: Petrograd, 1917 (Seattle and London: Uni-
versity of Washington Press, 1981); Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian
Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1979).

22. Kerensky wrote several versions of his memoirs in which he tried to justify

his position in 1917. The last and most widely circulated version is Alexander
Kerensky,

The Kerensky Memoirs: Russia and History’s Turning Point (New York:

Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1965). In Russia the first translation of this book was
published only after the collapse of the Soviet Union: Aleksandr Federovich
Kerenskii Rossiia na istoricheskom povorote: Memuary (Russia at a historical turning
point: Memoirs) (Moscow: Respublika, 1993).

23. In Petrograd the Bolsheviks received 45% of the votes, in Moscow, around

50%. Nonetheless, 79.2% of the soldiers of the Petrograd garrison, and 79% of the
Moscow garrison, voted for this party.

24. The lack of works on the history of the revolution in current research

was noted by William G. Rosenberg at an international conference on the 90th
anniversary of the revolution, held in Rome, November 2007, in his paper “La
rivoluzione del 1917 e gli operari.” Unfortunately this important paper has not
yet been published.

25. The best-known case of such criticism was the reaction of historians of the

CPSU to the appearance of a collection of articles (Ivanov, ed., Rossiiskii prole-
tariat) that tried to provide a new approach to the history of the workers.

The

criticism of the so-called “new direction” in Soviet historiography by orthodox
historians supported by the party organs was connected to greater ideological con-
trol of the social sciences and the humanities, largely as a reaction to the “Prague
spring.”

26. O. S. Porshneva, Mentalitet i sotisal’noe povedenie rabochikh, krest’ian i soldat

Rossii v period pervoi mirovoi voiny, 1914–mart 1918 (The mentality and social
behavior of workers, peasants and soldiers of Russia in the period of the First World
War, 1914–March 1918) (Ekaterinburg: Ural’skoe otdelenie Rossiiskoi Akademii
nauk, 2000); idem., Krest’iane, rabochie i soldaty Rossii nakanune i v gody Pervoi
mirovoi voiny (The peasants, workers and soldiers of Russia before and during the
First World War) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004).

27. Z. Galili, A. Nenarokov and L. Haimson, eds., Men’sheviki v 1917 (The

Mensheviks in 1917) (Moscow: Progess-Akademiia, 1994).

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

57

The 1917 Revolution

28. V. V. Shelokhaev, ed., Politicheskie partii Rossii: Konets XIX–pervaia tret’

XX veka: Entsiklopediia (Political parties of Russia of the end of the 19th and first
third of the 20th century: Encyclopedia) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1996).

29. L. G. Protasov, Vserossiiskoe Uchreditel’noe sobranie: Istoriia rozhdeniia i

gibeli (The All-Russian Constituent Assembly: The history of its birth and death)
(Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1997); see also the author’s most recent work: Liudi
Uchreditel’nogo sobraniia: Portret v inter’ere epokhi (Personalities of the Constitu-
ent Assembly: Portrait from the inside of the era) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008).

30. Andrei Borisovich Nikolaev, Gosudarstvennaia duma v Febral’skoi revoliut-

sii: Ocherki istorii (The State Duma during the February revolution: Historical
essays), New Russian History: Research and Documents (Ryazan: n.p., 2002);
idem, Revoliutsiia i vlast’: IV Gosudarstvennaia duma, 27 fevral’ia–3 marta 1917
(Revolution and power: The 4th State Duma, February 27–March 3, 1917), 2nd
expanded and revised ed. (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo RGPU im. A. I. Gertsena,
2005).

31. Iu. S. Tokarev et al., Petrogradskii Sovet rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov

v 1917 godu: Protokoly, stenogrammy i otchety rezoliutzii, postanovleniia obshchikh
sobranii, sobranii sektsii, zasedanii Ispolnitel’nogo komiteta i faktsii 27 fevralia–25
oktiabria 1917 goda (The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies in
1917: Minutes, shorthand records and reports, resolutions, decisions of general
meetings, section meetings, sessions of the Executive Committee and factions,
February 27–October 25, 1917) (St. Petersburg: Biblioteka “Zvezdy”; Moscow:
Rossiiskaia politichiskaia entsiklopediia, 1993–2003), vols. 1–4.

32. V. P. Buldakov, Krasnaia smuta: Priroda i posledstviia revoliutsionnogo

nasiliya (The Red turmoil: The nature and consequences of revolutionary violence)
(Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1997).

33. In certain cases the author draws an important conclusion regarding major

social and cultural processes on the basis of specific evidence, while in others he
makes a vague reference to an archive without indicating what particular source
he is citing.

34. P. G. Rogoznyi, Tserkovnaia revoliutsiia 1917 goda (The church revolution

of 1917) (St. Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 2008); D. A. Bazhanov, Shchit Petrograda:
Sluzhebnye budni baltiiskikh drednoutov v 1914–1917 gg., Monografiia (The shield
of Petrograd: Daily life of service on the Baltic Dreadnaughts, 1914–1917, a
monograph) (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo RGPU im. A. I. Gertsena, 2007).

35. Sarah Badcock, Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial

History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

36. Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990).

It is noteworthy that the Russian translation appeared fairly soon (in 1994), fol-
lowed by a new edition in 2005.

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Boris Kolonitskii

58

History & Memory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2009)

37. Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924

(London: Jonathan Cape, 1996).

38. Steve Smith, “Writing the History of the Russian Revolution after the Fall

of Communism,” Europe–Asia Studies 46, no. 4 (1994): 563–78; Ronald Grigor
Suny, “Revision and Retreat in the Historiography of 1917: Social History and
Its Critics,” The Russian Review 58, no. 2 (1994): 165–82.

39. Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitskii. Interpreting the Russian Revolution:

The Language and Symbols of 1917 (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1999); Boris I. Kolonitskii, Simvoly vlasti i bor’ba za vlast’: K izucheniiu
politicheskoi kul’tury Rossiiskoi revoliutzii 1917 goda (Symbols of power and struggle
for power: A study of the political culture of the Russian Revolution of 1917) (St.
Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin, 2001); Mark D. Steinberg, Proletarian Imagination:
Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia, 1910–1925 (Ithaca, NY and London:
Cornell University Press, 2002).

40. M. A. Babkin, Dukhoventsvo Russkoi Pravoslavnoi tserkvi i sverzhenie monar-

khii (nachalo XX v.–konets 1917 g.) (The clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church
and the overthrow of the monarchy [the beginning of the 20th century to the
end of 1917]) (Moscow, Gosudarstvennaia publichnaia istoricheskaia biblioteka,
2007).

41. Available on the official Russian government website, http://document.

kremlin.ru/doc.asp?ID=79721&PSC=1&PT=1&Page=2 (accessed July 6, 2009).

42. See: Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian

Monarchy, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

43. See the feature film Minin i Pozharskii, dir. Vsevold Pudovkin and Mikhail

Doller, screeenplay by Viktor Shklovskii (Mosfil’m, 1939), titled after Prince
Dmitrii Pozharskii and Kuz’ma Minin, leaders of the Russian troops who expelled
the Poles from Moscow. In 1941 the film was awarded a Stalin Prize, 1st class.

44. Data available on the website of the public opinion agency Levada Center,

http://www.levada.ru/press/20081031-1.html (accessed November 7, 2008).

45. Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, Razmyshleniia nad Fevral’skoi revoliutsiei

(Reflections on the February Revolution) (Moscow: Rossiiskaia gazeta, 2007).

46. A. Solzhenitsyn, “Razmyshleniia nad fevral’skoi revoliutsiei” (Reflections

on the February revolution), Rossiiskaia gazeta, February 27, 2007, available at
http://www.solgenizin.net.ru/razdel-al-elbook-615/ (accessed July 6, 2009).

47. Rossiiskaia gazeta, March 15, 2007, available at http://www.rg.ru/2007/

03/15/fevral-surkov.html (accessed July 6, 2009).

48. Among prominent historians who attributed excessive significance to the

actions of the secret services and the Freemasons, one can mention the British
historian of Russian origin, George Katkov, Russia 1917: The February Revolution
(New York: Harper & Row 1967). Nonetheless, Katkov also took other factors

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

59

The 1917 Revolution

into consideration. The Masonic theme was also developed by Nikolai Ia. Iakovlev
in his book 1 avgusta 1914 (August 1, 1914) (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1974).
The first edition appeared in 200,000 copies, and was republished several times,
The book continues to have a great influence on Russian historical consciousness.
Iakovlev subsequently admitted that the book was written and published on the
order of the KGB. At the same time the author was given the opportunity to use
materials from KGB interrogations (in the book he notes that he used “memoirs”).

This content downloaded from 156.17.58.23 on Sat, 26 Mar 2016 16:44:12 UTC

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms