Russia's Peasants in Revolution and Civil War
How did peasants experience and help guide Russia's war, revolution, and ...
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Russia's Peasants in Revolution and Civil War
How did peasants experience and help guide Russia's war, revolution, and civil war? Why in the end did most agree to live as part of the Bolshevik regime? Taking the First World War to the end of the Civil War as a unified era of revolution, this book shows how peasant society and peasants' conceptions of themselves as citizens in the nation evolved in a period of total war, mass revolutionary politics, and civil breakdown. Aaron Retish reveals that the fateful decision by individuals to join the Revolution or to accommodate their lifestyle within it gave the Bo.1sheviks the resources and philosophical foundation on which to build the Soviet experiment and reshape international politics. He argues that peasants wanted more than land from the Revolution; they wanted to be active citizens. This is an important contribution to our understanding of the nature of the Russian Revolution and peasant-state relations. AARON B. RETISH is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Wayne State University.
Russia's Peasants in Revolution and Civil War Citizenship) Identity) and the Creation of the Soviet State) 1914-1922 Aaron B. ~tish Wayne State University, Detroit
, CAMllRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Contents
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521896894 © Aaron B. Retish 2008
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2008 Printed in the Unite
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75
Kukarskaia zhizn', 3 September 1917, 2. Burbank, 'An Imperial RigJ:.l&ts Regime', 426. Rosenberg, 'The Zemstvo in 1917' in Emmons and Vucirich, eds, The Zemstvo in Russia, 398.
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Peasant and nation in revolution
those who have given them tobacco. This was presumably a dig at the Peasant Union, which often distributed goods at local meetings. Educated society blamed its loss on the ignorance of the peasantry and lashed out at the people. The newspaper editors printed the electoral results and below them wrote that it was clear from the numbers that 'the population of Kukarskaia volost considers itself to be more developed and conscious (soznatel'nye) than other places, but its activity in the elections showed the exact opposite. The village did not understand the significance of the elections to the zemstvo, and the conscious implementation of its duty of citizenship. ,76 According to the editors, by not voting for the intelligentsia, the peasants held a false consciousness and failed as citizens. The elites were the victims of the incongruities of their national viewpoint. They could not reconcile their image of the peasantry as a homogenous uneducated mass who needed the intelligentsia to mediate between village and nation, with the fact that peasants had a complex understanding of the democratic process and used it for their own good. The elite was in the process of losing control over the rituals of citizenship and the practices of nationalism. Throughout the province peasants almost uniformly elected respected peasants. Nine-tenths of those elected to the district zemstvo in Kotel'nich and Viatka districts were peasants. Only five of the elected representatives were from the rural intelligentsia. 77 In Kadamskaia volost, Iaransk district, twenty-seven out of twenty-eight people elected were peasants. Notably, all of the representatives were literate. Similar trends of peasants electing educated peasants can be seen in both the volost and district zemstvo elections. Peasants understood the importance of literacy and education when representing their causes to the outside world. For all its problems and pockets of resistance, almost half of registered voters cast a ballot in the zemstvo election. 78 An active and developed political culture and sense of citizenship had emerged in the countryside. Political allegiances coalesced around lists that engaged in a serious campaign to turn out the vote and win support. They advertised in the newspapers, published platforms, held organizational meetings, and
76
77
78
Kukarskaia zhizn', 24 August 1917,2. GA RF, f. 1791, op. 6, d. 78, I. 46. Similar trends in which peasants beat intelligentsia candidates can be seen throughout Iaransk district. Kukarskaia zhizn', 10 September 1917, 2. This corresponds with results in Simbirsk province. Gerasimova, 'Zemskaia reforrna', 81. Documentary lapses in the archival records prevent an exact computation of the percentage of voters. I estimate it at forty-five per cent, based on evidence from two districts. Krest'ianskaia gazeta, 15 September 1917, 12.
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tried to persuade voter groups. Political parties and soviets sent agitators to rally support. 79 By the autumn, many peasant communities had gained confidence and political experience. They could free themselves from the necessity of relying on rural educated society, a mediator to the nation, by electing those of their own social background who possessed the skills needed in fighting for peasant causes. It should then come as no surprise that peasants appropriated the zemstvo elections and made the zemstvo a peasant institution. The elections for the zemstvo were more significant than the reconstituted bodies that began to meet at the end of September. Volost zemstvo officials sometimes replicated previous volost administrators and carried on their work as before. Overall, though, many volost zemstvos met sporadically over the next months, hearing petitions on land disputes and attempting to improve local material well-being. 8o Their work was undermined because constituted state power at the volost level became exceptionally confusing at this point. Land committees, food provisions, and volost skhods all made declarations that asserted power over their constituents. Volost zemstvos over the winter either withered away or ceded power to the soviets.
The climax of the democratic experiment The Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd happened against the background of a socially polarized world. By the autumn, peasants freqU(!ntly spoke with disgust and bitterness towards public society and state officials. There was a general feeling that the state administration was collapsing under the pressures of food crises, social instability, and lack of popular confidence. Bolshevik rule did not affect the countryside until the winter transition to soviet power and the implementation of the popular Soviet Land Decree. This is not to say that the event went unnoticed by the more politically attuned volosts. Land committees of Bobinskaia and Kstininskaia, volosts abutting Viatka city with a vibrant kustar' economy tied to the city, condemned the Bolsheviks for usurping the right to transfer national democratic power from the Constituent Assembly. Neither committee defended the Provisional Government, but they did stand by the sovereignty of the state. 8I However, the democratic experiment of politics based on popular sovereignty and
79
80 81
Gerasimova, 'Zemskaia refonna', 80-1. GAKO, f. 1351, op. 1, d. 15,11. 10-18; f. 589, op. 2, d. 19,11. 34-60b. GAKO, f. 1345,op. 1 d. 27, 11. 100, 122-220b.
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Peasant and nation in revolution
mass participation continued despite events that transpired in Petrograd. The post-February order ended not in the last grains of the harvest in late October, but with the voting for the Constituent Assembly in the swirling snow of December. The Constituent Assembly election marked the climax in the struggle over national politics in 1917. It seems odd that peasants would care about the Constituent Assembly elections, given the mixed success of the zemstvo elections, delays in calling the election, and popular mistrust of government provisions policies. Of any of the national political symbols in 1917, though, the Constituent Assembly had the most resonance with all inhabitants of the countryside throughout the ninemonth marathon to its election. 82 For peasants, most political leaders, and government figures, the Constituent Assembly remained a pure, untainted symbol of the revolution's potential and the last chance to solve such seemingly insolvable problems as land reform. In the end, more than one million people came out to vote in Viatka, and over ninety per cent of them were peasants. If elections are symbolic, ritualistic events that reaffirm citizens' acceptance of the current order, the Constituent Assembly election, by November, was a contradictory symbol. Peasants engaged and participated in the elections, but did not support the post-February order or its representatives. The election also reveals the increasingly complex political field in the village as the peasantry became more experienced politically. Peasants were hopeful of finally participating in the Constituent Assembly election. Peasants from all walks of life petitioned the provincial electoral commission to get their candidate lists on the ballot. Peasants young and old signed the application for a regional affiliate of the Peasant Union and 38 of the 115 peasant signatories were women. 83 While the above applicant succeeded in getting their candidates on the ballot, many peasant political groups failed. The commission rejected applications by a peasant community from Elovskaia volost in Glazov district, the Pachinsk Soviet of Peasant Deputies from Iaransk district, and a group of Mari peasants from Iaransk district attempting to make their teacher, Leonid Mendiiarov, a candidate in the election, all for applying past the 13 October deadline. Interestingly, all three rejected applications were dated before the deadline. 84
82
83
L. G. Protasov, Vserossiiskoe uchreditel'noe sobranie: Istoriia rozhdeniia i gibeli (Moscow, 1997), ch. 2; OIiver Radkey, Russia Goes to the Polls: The Election to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, 1917 (Ithaca, 1989). GAKO, f. 1349, op. 1, d. 29, n. 3--4ob, 8. 84 GAKO, f. 1349, op. 1, d. 41, 50, 59.
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The commission favoured candidates from the moderate socialist parties. The Popular Socialist Party application was supported by 116 signatories, all but 2 of whom were members of educated society. The list contained two of the most famous figures of liberal Viatka Nikolai A. Charushin and Nikolai V. Chaikovskii. The Popular Socialist Party clearly violated electoral regulations. Four of the candidates did not include their statements announcing intent to stand as candidates and the commission could not read other statements since they were in Mari, transcribed but not translated into Russian. The commission initially rejected the four candidates, but the following day mysteriously reversed its decision and allowed all the candidates to stand. 85 In a move to increase their odds of winning enough votes to send their representatives to the Constituent Assembly, the Popular Socialist Party formed a bloc with the National Union of Mari ofViatka Province and included a few Maris among their nineteen candidates. One was Mendiiarov, who the peasants three days earlier failed to get on their own ballot. 86 Peasants had twelve lists from which to choose: the Bolsheviks, the provincial Muslim Union, the Popular Socialist Party and provincial Mari Union bloc, the Kadets, Mensheviks, a clerical party, a merchant's list, four local lists, and the Provincial Congress of Peasant Deputies and the Socialist Revolutionary Party (CPD/SR) bloc. The last alliance was forged only in late September at the Third Provincial Congress of the Soviet of Peasant Deputies. The campaign for peasant votes and the electoral results reveal the strong social divisions in the autumn and winter of 1917. The CPD/SR bloc gained the most from the tensions. It had entrenched local organizations and experienced agitators. Villages had sent their representatives to the congresses since it had represented the Peasant Union in the spring. Now, as a more politically radical institution, it appealed to peasant solidarity and class antagonism. The Congress's political literature played off the peasants' antipathy towards the intelligentsia and political leadership's definition of the peasantry as 'dark and unconscious'. It urged peasants to disprove non-toilers' conceptions that peasants were willing to remain exploited, with the men in their fieldwork and the women in domestic chores. The CPD/SRs attacked the merchants' lists as rich industrialists, landowners, and lawyers, and dismissed the clergy list for its 'hope that the unconscious peasants will vote for them'. 87 In local meetings, the Congress of Peasant Deputies encouraged members to vote for its list because it would defend the 85
87
15,
GAKO, f. 1349, op. 1, d. 26. 86 GAKO, f. 1349, op. 1, d. 25, 1. 33. Narodnoe delo, 8 November 1917, 1.
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Peasant and nation in revolution
working peasant. Agitators for the Congress of Peasant Deputies travelled throughout the countryside and held meetings in every volost of Urzhum district. Women were especially important in the 1917 elections as they remained in the vast majority in the village. Their participation in the zemstvo elections showed that their support was essential for a party's success. Of all of the lists, however, only the CPD/SR bloc campaigned for the peasant woman vote, and even it had a limited vision of women's emancipation and participation in revolutionary society. Its literature emphasized the danger of peasant women's ignorance and political isolation brought on, it argued, from exclusion from the skhod. This failing of political consciousness threatened the welfare of the state and class solidarity. It had already led to the failure of the zemstvo elections. Women supposedly said, 'the baba doesn't need a thing from the zemstvo, and so we do not need to vote'. Since the women did not vote, then people who 'were not for the working peasant' dominated the elections. The author warned that women's ignorance would also destroy the peasantry's fate in the Constituent Assembly elections, in which 'candidates of the rich' will out-vote the peasantry unless the women go to the polls. Women's participation in this public ritual was a necessary evil for the greater good. The CPD/SRs framed the ritual of the election, and the women's duty as citizens in terms of sacrifice for the greater good of the peasantry and for the good of their husbands: If their husbands remain at the front for the nation, and the victory of the revolution and freedom, then their wives in the village are obliged to fight for land, by casting their votes for the candidates of the working people. 88
It was therefore essential for all the peasantry to agitate and clarify to the women their duty to help the 'conscious inhabitants of the villages' and the CPD/SRs. Agitators in 1917 were right to target women, for they made up a solid majority of the voters. Based on demographic data, the 'average' vote in Russia's Constituent Assembly election was a Russian peasant woman in her mid-thirties. 89 L. G. Protasov has also found that women were more likely to vote in the Constituent Assembly election than men. 90 Results from Slobodskoi district confirm his conclusions; 60.2% of registered women voted, over 54% of registered men. Women composed 52% of the population, but represented 55% of the vote. In Sochnevskaia volost, 88 89 90
Narodnoe de/o, 29 October 1917, 3. I determined the average age of the voter from Protasov's calculation for Moscow province, Vserossiiskoe uchredite/'noe sobranie, 201. Protasov, Vserossiiskoe uchreditel'noe sobranie, 202.
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more than twice as many women registered to vote than men and they made up 68% of the final vote. 91 Women built on their experience in the zemstvo elections and used the electoral arena to enter the public sphere on equal legal grounds to men. The electoral campaign also accented ethnic minorities' political marginalization and ethnic tensions in citizenship in general. Language barriers put many non-Russians at a disadvantage. For example, the ispolkom of the Soviet of Peasant Deputies sent a Muslim representative to the Tatar village (selo) of Karino, Slobodskoi district, to agitate. The representative went to the mullah, who announced to the people, 'This is one of ours who will speak in our way and explain everything in our language.' When the representative asked them if they knew about the parties for the Constituent Assembly, the peasants answered, 'We don't know anything. There were Russians here, but they talked something incomprehensible. We heard only that there is democracy, but what this is - we don't knoW.'92 The Tatars in this village may not have been part of electoral politics in the autumn of 1917, but they were actively engaged with the larger politics of the Provisional Government. During the meeting they complained about the state's grain monopoly and inquired about the feasibility of establishing Tatar schools. The Mari and Tatar national parties overcame communication hurdles and agitated to their rural constituents in the native language. Once again, the CPD/SR bloc was the only other party to place significance on targeting under-represented populations and distributed copies of its programme in both Russian and Mari. Udmurts did not enjoy special attention from any of the parties, despite being the largest ethnic minority in the province. The Udmurt national agents remained smaller and politically weaker than their respective Tatar and Mari groups and did not form their own national congress, the precursor to national party formation in the province. Non-Russians' resistance to the summer census also hindered their involvement in the elections since they were not registered on voter lists.' For example, the voting precinct of Irnusk in Urzhum district, a heavily Tatar precinct, had only 17.5% of the total population registered to vote, 10% of women and 31.2% of men. Other heavily non-Russian regions had similar numbers. Popular protests against grain inventories led by non-Russians in the southern districts politically disenfranchised them. While they could fight to get on voter lists in the autumn, most did not.
91 92
..
GAKO, f. 1349, op. 1, d. 14, ll. 384-92ob. Krest'ianskaia gazeta, 25 August 1917, 11-12.
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Peasant and nation in revolution
The campaign lasted three weeks longer than expected. The vote was originally scheduled for 12 to 14 November but basic technical difficulties forced the commission to postpone the election. Like the rest of the Russian Empire, the Viatka provincial government lacked reliable resources and sufficient manpower. The commission realized that not only had Petrograd not sent enough paper for printing the twelve final lists of candidates, but the Viatka printing presses could only run off a portion of the required ballots. 93 The provincial commission and local administrators also fought over the size of voting districts. Using their experience from the zemstvo elections, the provincial electoral commissions tried to establish smaller voting districts. Most districts had corresponded to a major village within a volost, with volosts divided into three or more districts. The vast size of the province with its small, remote villages compelled peasants to travel more than ten versts (6.6 miles) to vote. Peasants in Elabuga district therefore demanded that the electoral commission increase the number of voting districts. 94 Nevertheless, some local election officials fought the provincial commission on this issue, arguing that while smaller districts 'would be more convenient for the population', the local administration simply did not have the personnel or money to man more districts. In Nolinsk district, officials unsuccessfully demanded that the number of voting districts be reduced from 177 to 25, so that every volost count as only one voting district. 95 Since the census went so poorly and the government lacked competent officials, the electoral commission struggled even to compile voter lists. In September it sent out urgent messages to the regions to finish their lists as soon as possible. Most localities did not compile definite numbers of voters until October or November, and even then the numbers were rough estimates. To make matters worse, the commission published the electoral lists only eighteen days before the elections, not giving voters enough time to know the candidates. 96 Only Elabuga district held its elections on time. The other ten districts conducted their elections from 2 to 5 December. The technical problems that plagued the election's preparation continued on election day. Some peasants were not informed of the new election date. At least one village was never told that the election was taking place. The government's fear that they would not have enough 93
94 96
GAKO, f. 1349, op. 1, d. 75,1. 38; GAKO, f. 1349,op. 1, d. 14, ll. 20-1; GA RF, f. 1810, op. 1, d. 178, 1. 19. Several provinces struggled to find paper. Protasov, Vserossiiskoe uchreditel'noe sobranie, 92-3. GAKO, f. 1349, op. 1, d. 14, 1. 50. 95 GAKO, f. 1349, op. 1, d. 14, 1. 78. S. P.-Zubarev, Za respubliku sovetov. Kommunisty Prikam'ia v bor'be protiv burzhuaznoi parlamentskoi respubliki (man 1917-noiabr' 1918 g.) (Izhevsk, 1970),68-9.
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personnel was justified. No election officials were present in Raevsk district, or Verkhoshizhemskaia volost, Orlov district during the voting. Soldiers on leave took it upon themselves to guarantee that the peasants could vote by going to the volost centre and demanding that the volost administration combine Raevsk district with the neighbouring district. The administration complied. 97 Peasant celebrations during the elections, despite the government's debilitating technical problems, show the significance villagers placed on the Constituent Assembly vote. They had more time to spend on the Constituent Assembly elections in December than they had for the zemstvo elections during harvest time. They were finished in the fields and with the decline in factory production and overall turmoil, many out-migrants stayed at home. Villagers put on their best clothes and crossed themselves as they cast their vote. Peasants voted by individual written ballots, not by communal voice vote. District administrators paid close attention to the validity of ballots. The Elabuga district electoral commissioners rejected open vote ballots not signed by the voter. Illiterate peasants were permitted to mark their ballot with an 'x: or other distinguishing mark. 98 The administration still threw out ballots erased or with extra marks, or if there were more ballots in the sealed envelope than that declared by the precinct. Sixty-six per cent of registered voters in Viatka cast their ballot for the Constituent Assembly, slightly higher than the national average. More peasants voted in December than in the autumn zemstvo elections. Residents of Troitskaia and Pasegovskaia volosts, Viatka district, who had refused to vote for the zemstvo, were some of the most active voters for the Constituent Assembly in the district. On the surface, the Constituent Assembly election results in Viatka look nearly identical to the national numbers. The SRs claimed a resounding victory, with 57% of the vote. Their bloc with the CPD received more votes than a,ny other list in every district; indeed, the population was more likely to vote for it than the Bolsheviks by a ratio of three to one. The Bolsheviks still won a respectable second place, garnering 22.1 %. The Muslim Union was a distant third, with 5.2% of the vote, and the Kadets fourth with 4.5% (see Table 3.2). What appears to be a dominant Socialist Revolutionary Party victory is more complex when placed in the context of rural political organization since March 1917. Peasants supported organizations and political ideals 97 98
GAKO, f. 1349, op. 1, d. Ij,1. 251. GAKO, f. 1349, op. 1, d. 14, ll. 604-8ob. For some districts I was able to read the individual ballots.
Conclusion
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