The Russian Revolutionary Era,
1856-1927,
As the Defining Moment of Modern Russian History

The phases of Russian revolutionary history are linked below with SAC and braided into the main periods of modern Russian history.

The first three revolutionary phases are preparatory to the central moment, the 1905 Revolution.

The last phases are the immediate legacy of 1905, profoundly altered by conditions of WW1 and terminated in the restoration of absolutist centralism and social regimentation in the era of Joseph Stalin.

But the Stalinist termination was not permanent. The 1905 legacy resurrected itself in the last half decade in the life of the Soviet Union, and perhaps it pushes on into more recent years.

The main implication of this scheme is that the Bolshevik Revolution should not be thought of as a transformational intervention into Russian history. The events of 1917 do not represent a curtain down on a failed spectacle and then a curtain up on a wholly new era. Nor was the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 such an utter break in time, at least not for the Russian people. A significant auxiliary implication of this scheme is that the concept of civil society and public mobilization must keep open lines of inquiry into the behavior and structures of state power as well as the larger behavior of what used to be called the "political economy", the evolution of the mode of production and distribution of things of value. There are continuities over the long duration of Russian history. In the past century and a half, the rise of a Russian concept of civil society and traditions of public political mobilization are among the most important continuities.

Table of Contents
The Russian "long duration" [TXT of HIST 4/545 syllabus]
The General European and Global Background [TXT]
Phases Preparatory to the Revolutionary Twentieth Century [TXT of HIST 4/545 syllabus]
Readings on Russian revolutions, 1880-1920 [TXT]
The 1905 Revolution
The Legacy of 1905
Dénouement
The Legacy Born Again?

 

 

The 1905 Revolution

*1899:1906; "The first Russian Revolution" (could be called the third Russian revolutionary situation) [SAC]

  • Industrial labor in Russian political culture [SAC 37-hop LOOP] through a half-century period from beginnings of modern industrialization in central and eastern Europe, through the 1905 Revolution, and into the years of WW1 (a time of great crisis in world labor movements. The LOOP puts Russia in a general European (or "Western" context). We earlier confronted the Russian intelligentsia. This LOOP introduces us to the second major demographic or social imbalance in modern Russian experience, and allows us to begin thinking about how the interests of intelligents and workers fit, or did not fit, one another.
  • The problem of urban or political culture [SAC 11-hop LOOP on the keyword "urban"]
  • Russian "Zemstvo liberalism" [SAC 19-hop LOOP on keyword "Zemstvo"]. Follow the LOOP into the 1905 Revolution
  • 1905: The First Russian Revolution [SAC 16-hop 1905 LOOP]. NB! = many entries within several of the jumps
  • Sergei Witte and the 1905 Revolution [SAC 17-hop LOOP], with the option of LOOPING back to his earlier career
  • Parliament (Duma) [SAC 18-hop LOOP], from the first formal plans for a Duma until the Duma dissolved in 1917
  • Marx & Russia [LOOP]
  • Vladimir I'lich Ulianov (Lenin), his career before the 1917 revolution [a 10-hop LOOP from 1895 to 1916]
  • Women in early 20th-c political culture [SAC]

Readings

The Legacy of 1905

*1907:1917; Third State Duma [SAC] and Fourth State Dumas [SAC]

*1914:1921; War and revolution [SAC]

  • 1914:1917mr; "The second Russian Revolution" [SAC], or collapse of autocracy in WW1
  • 1917mr:1918ja; Provisional Government [SAC] and the Constituent Assembly [SAC]
  • 1917oc:1921; Soviet Revolution (October Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution) [SAC]
  • Leon Trotsky [LOOP]
  • Establishment of single-party rule in contest among political parties [SAC]
  • Revolutionary civil war [SAC]

*1921:1927; The New Economic Policy (NEP), the first resurrection of the 1905 legacy? [SAC]

  • "Lenin's last struggle" [SAC]
  • 1924:Soviet Constitution and Soviet Marxist political and juridical ideas at the time of Lenin's death [SAC]

Readings

Dénouement

*1927:1941; When Joseph Stalin and the administrative or managerial elites associated with him rose to power within the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the revolutionary era was brought to a close. Critics of Stalin, including Marxists, accused him of restoring an even harsher "Asiatic despotism" than that of previous tsarist regimes. Familiar Russian absolutist centralization and social/service hierarchy were restored. Civil society dissolved itself once again in crouching, atomized and private kruzhoks

Readings

*1941:1945; WW2

*1945:1985; Cold War stagnation and opportunity,
punctuated by the Khrushchev flourish and the rise of a dogged dissent movement

The Legacy Born Again?

*1985:1991; Did Mikhail Gorbachev revive the 1905 legacy with his vast programs of "Perestroika"? [LOOP]

  • Collapse of USSR [SAC], what some Russians called "katastroika" [SAC]

*1991:+; A troubled era of adjustment followed

  • 1992:+; Rise of a new Russia: Capitalism & democracy, free market & mafia [TXT]

Readings