Experiencing Russia's Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917-1922

Donald J. Raleigh

Published by Princeton University Press 2003

Experiencing Russia's Civil War

Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917-1922

Donald J. Raleigh

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400843749

Overview
Contents

About this book

This book is the only comprehensive history of the total experience of the Russian Civil War. Focusing on the key Volga city of Saratov and the surrounding region, Donald Raleigh is the first historian to fully show how the experience of civil war embedded itself into both the people's and the state's outlook and behavior. He demonstrates how and why the programs and ideals that had propelled the Bolsheviks into power were so quickly lost and the repressive Soviet party-state was born.

Experiencing Russia's Civil War is based on exhaustive use of previously classified local and central archives. It is also bold and ambitious in its breadth of thematic coverage, dealing with all aspects of the war experience from institutional evolution and demographics to survival strategies. Complicating our understanding of this formative period, Raleigh provides compelling evidence that many features of the Soviet system that we associate with the Stalin era were already adumbrated and practiced by the early 1920s, as Bolshevism became closed to real alternatives. Raleigh interprets this as the consequence of a complex dynamic shaped by Russia's political tradition and culture, Bolshevik ideology, and dire political, economic, and military crises starting with World War I and strongly reinforced by the indelible, mythologized experience of survival in the Civil War.

Fluidly written, replete with new information, and always engaged with important questions, this is history finely wrought.

Author / Editor information

Donald J. Raleigh is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has edited and translated many volumes on Russian history and is the author of Revolution on the Volga.

Reviews

"This work will be the first of its kind on the Russian civil war. It is based on prodigious research using archival sources that were utterly off limits to scholars before 1990, from a city that was itself closed to foreigners. It is the first to take seriously the application of the 'cultural turn' to the history of the Russian revolution. Last but no less important, it will be the first comprehensive local study of the civil war. Raleigh has shown the rest of us how it should be done."—Diane P. Koenker, author of Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution and coauthor of Strikes and Revolution in Russia, 1917

"Very readable and convincingly argued, this book is a much needed and anticipated revelation of local experience of the Civil War. This jewel of Soviet studies is not to be missed by any student or scholar of the Soviet Union."---Irina Mukhina, Journal of Social History

"This book makes an outstanding contribution to scholarship through its exhaustive and shrewd examination of new archival materials. It also makes imaginative and original use of language and ideology as tools of historical interpretation."---N.G.O. Pereira, American Historical Review

"Experiencing Russia's Civil War is a comprehensive political, social, economic, and cultural history of the key Volga city of Saratov during the Russian Civil War. Its great virtue lies in its extraordinary breadth and depth. It is difficult to exaggerate its significance to historiography on the civil war era in Russia and to informed thinking about the Soviet experience generally."—Alexander Rabinowitch, author of The Bolsheviks Come to Power and Prelude to Revolution

"By revealing the complexity of the civil war in one province, Raleigh's book will revitalize scholarly debate on the civil war."---S. A. Smith, Slavic Review

"An excellent work that will become required reading for all students of this turbulent period in twentieth-century history."---Jack M. Lauber, History: Review of Books

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Tables Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Glossary and Abbreviations Used in Archival Citations Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
Introduction: Experiencing Russia's Civil War Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part One POLITICS
1. Revolution on the Volga Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
2. Languages of Power: How the Saratov Bolsheviks Imagined Their Enemies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
3. The Rise and Fall of the Saratov "Republic" Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
4. Cadres Resolve All: The Communists in Power Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
5. Co-optation amid Repression: The Revolutionary Communists and Other Socialist Parties in Saratov Province Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	142
Part Two SOCIETY AND REVOLUTIONARY CULTURE
6. A Community in Disarray, a Community in the Making Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
7. The Cultural Practices of Provincial Communism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	208
8. Narratives of Self and Other Saratov's Bourgeoisie Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	246
9. Not Seeing Like a State The Red Guard Assault on Capital Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	282
10. Peasants in a Workers' Revolution Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	312
11. "Given His Class Position, a Worker Can Be Nothing but a Communist" Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	348
12. A Provincial Kronstadt, Another Tambov? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	379
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	409
Bibliographical Essay Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	417
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	425