Aaron B. Retish

Creating peasant citizens: Rituals of power, rituals of citizenship in Viatka province, 1917

The February Revolution initiated a reinvention of the Russian nation. In Viatka province, elites and peasants created a new political world through administrative bodies, holidays, festivals and ceremonies. In the centre of this world was a debate about citizenship, power and how the peasantry should fit into the new Russian nation. Through these rituals elites tried to dictate to the peasantry their definition of peasant citizenship, which reflected their image of the ‘dark’ peasant. Peasants eagerly participated and accepted the elite definition of the nation, but they had different ideas of what constituted citizenship.

The ‘lessons’ of 1917

So far this year, the response to the centenary of 1917 in Russia has been underwhelming. Faced with an event that does not fit neatly into the positive, patriotic and unifying version of Russian history promoted in recent years, and fearing that commemorating a revolution might encourage the opposition movement, President Vladimir Putin and his government have done relatively little to mark one of the greatest events of the twentieth century. To be sure, the Russian Revolution has long been about October rather than February in Russia’s popular memory and more may be to come, especially as Putin has stated repeatedly that 1917 is too significant to ignore. Yet it was only in December 2016 that a commission to oversee the commemoration of 1917 was established under the auspices of the patriotic Russian Historical Society. Composed mainly of state officials, leading cultural figures and representatives of the media, with very few professional historians, it held its first meeting only in late January 2017. This meeting produced a list of exhibitions, conferences, media events and ‘educational projects,’most of which had already been organised by other groups, but there is little that resembles the resources and effort that went into commemorating the bicentenary of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 2012 – an event that fits neatly into the official narrative of Russian history. Even the 2014 commemoration of the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, a war that Russia eventually lost, enjoyed greater official memorialisation; it included a new monument at Moscow’s Poklonnaia Gora to the heroes of the Russian army unveiled by Putin himself who emphasised the importance of patriotism and properly recognising soldiers. The committee did, however, provide a strong indication of the ‘official’ line on 1917. Various speakers talked of the ‘lessons’ that needed to be learned from 1917 and, when later asked to summarise these lessons, one member responded bluntly that revolution was not the best means of resolving social conflict as it leads only to violence and death. This same ‘lesson’ came through during the ‘official’ events that did occur around the centenary of the February Revolution. On its eve, a conference organised by the committee in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow – a symbolic location but not for historical reasons – the Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinskii, stressed the national ‘tragedy’ of a revolution that failed to solve Russia’s problems. An exhibition in the same cathedral was dedicated to the ‘victims’ of the revolution. Finally, Patriarch Kirill prayed for the victims on the anniversary of Nicholas’s abdication and later blamed the intelligentsia for the revolution, with the implicit message that political upheaval was fostered by those who failed to place the concerns of ordinary Russians to the fore. Notwithstanding the historical inaccuracy of some of this, these ‘lessons’ clearly echoed Putin’s call from his presidential address in December 2016 to learn from history’s lessons to foster reconciliation and unity in Russia.

Controlling Revolution: Understandings of Violence through the Rural Soviet Courts, 1917–1923

This essay is a study of how Soviet jurists and rural citizens attempted to understand and control illicit social violence during the Civil War and its immediate aftermath in the rural courts. It examines how Soviet leaders, peoples courts and criminologists understood the role of the courts in controlling violence and how decisions of local courts actually limited the effects of the violence of revolution and civil war. It underscores the complexity of violence and the need to understand state and peasant attempts to control social violence in an age marked by political, state violence.

IntroductionSilences and noises: commemorating 1917

In the introduction to the first issue of Revolutionary Russia in this centenary year, we commented that the official response to commemorating 1917 had been ‘underwhelming’ thus far, qualifying our judgement by noting the possibility that there may be more to come given that the October Revolution has always enjoyed far more prominence in Russia than its predecessor in February. Now that we have passed the centenary of October, however, it seems that there was little or nothing more to come. Putin may have said that 1917 was too significant to ignore, but the Kremlin did precisely that; a spokesman, presumably responding to rumours, denied the Kremlin was cancelling its commemorations, declaring nothing had been planned in the first place and questioning what there was to commemorate. The only group that marked the centenary officially was the Communist Party who alleged the Kremlin was deliberately seeking to ‘silence’ the issue, distracting the population to such an extent that the majority of people were apparently not even aware the centenary was upon them (not least by organizing a march in Red Square on 7 November in honour of those who gathered there in 1941 before marching to the front). Defiantly, the Communists co-ordinated a gala reception and a march in the neighbouring Revolution Square attended by several thousand people from over 80 countries, some holding up posters of Lenin and Stalin. In contrast, the centenary, according to a spokesman, was a ‘routine working day’ for Putin who had several meetings in the Kremlin, within spitting distance of the two marches. Western publications also talked of the ‘official silence’ and ‘reticence’ surrounding 1917 and how it has been ‘banished almost entirely from public places and official narratives.’ The latter may be largely true, but the former is not entirely; there has been plenty of ‘noise’ surrounding the centenary in various public arenas. The organizing committee established by the Kremlin under the auspices of the patriotic Russian Historical Society has continued its work, sponsoring conferences, exhibitions and publications, whilst promoting the state’s anti-revolutionary message. Following the lead set by the Museum of Contemporary History with its ‘Khod revoliutsii’ exhibition earlier this year, the Central Manezh (on the Comintern), Federal Archive (on Lenin), the State Historical Museum (on the ‘energy of dreams’), and the State Tret’iakov Gallery (on the artists of 1917) have also opened high-profile exhibitions and no doubt there are many more.

Breaking free from the prison walls: penal reforms and prison life in revolutionary Russia

This article examines the attempts of early Soviet penal reformers and criminologists to turn prisons into institutions of discipline and rehabilitation for their inmates. Their proposed reforms championed a proletarian prisoner who with individual attention would become a full member of Soviet socialist society. However, the lack of resources and short sentences, alongside the upheaval of civil war, undermined these reforms with the result that early Soviet prisons became the mirror image of the humane, modern institutions that reformers had envisioned.