Russian revolution 1917: reading guide

Not being too pushy here but could I recomend adding to this list of short texts the Wildcat article 'The Hunt for Red October' in the library here and the book by S.A.Smith titled 'Red Petrograd - Revolution in the factories 1917-1918' originally published by Cambridge University Press.

Thanks Ed,

The book 'Red Petrograd' is a well reserached and detailed study of the impact of the Russian Revolution at Factory level in Petrograd and deals in particular with the factory councils implementation of workers control of production in conditions of economic chaos and in relation to syndicalist and bolshevik ideology. It is not written from a particularly pro-revolutionary perspective but is a useful accompliment to the Maurice Brinton booklet which gets a brief mention.

Red Petrograd is great. Indeed, all the books on the reading list are worth reading. The only problem is that anyone who only read these books might be left with the impression that, in 1917, Russia's workers were desperate to self-manage their workplaces - and that if it wasn't for the authoritarian Bolsheviks, they would have gone on to create a genuinely anarchist-communist society.

Unfortunately things were more complicated than this. In conditions of extreme hunger and poverty, workers were more interested in individual survival than in self-management of their miserable factory jobs. Then when they did express opinions about wider political issues, they often voted for soviet and factory committee representatives who promised very strict discipline, simply in order to keep the economy going so they wouldn't all starve to death (often these representatives were Bolsheviks but some Russian anarchists, such as Makhno, could also be quite authoritarian).

By the summer of 1918 most workers were very disillusioned by the Bolshevik dictatorship - but they could see no practical alternative. These workers had organisations, such as the Assemblies of Factory Representatives, and they had access to guns, but they made no serious attempts to overthrow the very unstable Bolshevik regime. Of course, Bolshevik repression was also a major factor in this hesitancy but it was clearly not the only factor.

The best article on this situation (and a must in any reading list) is
'Russian Labour and Bolshevik Power after October' by William Rosenberg.

Chris Goodey's article, 'Factory Committees in 1918', and his debate with Maurice Brinton, is posted at lib com, is very thought provoking and gets beyond any crude ideas of factory committees are 'good' and Bolsheviks are 'bad'.

Until Michael Sideman publishes his promised work on the Russian Revolution, Christopher Read's
From Tsar to Soviets is probably the best recent account of the revolution seen from the point of view of the workers and peasants.

Barbara Engels' 'Subsistence riots in Russia during World War I' (at Libcom)
and
Jane McDermid's Midwives of the Revolution
both provide crucial information on proletarian women's often ignored role in initiating the Russian Revolution.

And Alexander Rabinowitch's three books on the revolution in Petrograd are unsurpassed, especially The Prelude to Revolution.

There he shows how the workers largely wanted a change of government and hence looked to politicians, such as the Bolsheviks for leadership. Like the Trotskyist parties of today, the Bolsheviks, however, hesitated to lead any direct action and instead focused on flooding demonstrations with their slogans. Meanwhile the anarchists hung out a the back of the demonstrations, attacked prisons and squatted large buildings. In other words things were uncannily similar to the activities of today's workers and lefties!

Hopefully any anti-capitalist revolution in the 21st Century will take place without the hunger, illiteracy and isolation of Russia in 1917 - and will be vastly more radical than the tragic dead-end of the 1917 revolution and its horrific outcome in Stalinism.

fromp,

Agree with your opening comment and...

Yes the Chris Goodey-Maurice Brinton debate in the library is a good shortish item to reference and something more on the role of women would be good though I haven't read the books mentioned.

Must say that despite an initial interest in Michael Seidman's de-romanticising efforts on some of the the anarchist accounts of the Spanish Civil War that I saw a long time back, I was more than dissapointed with his pretty unbalanced follow up in 'Republic of Egos' and would be a little suspicious of anything he produced on the Russian revolution.

Maximoff's - The Guillotine at Work?

Here's links to those various texts:

William Rosenberg - 'Russian Labour and Bolshevik Power after October'

Chris Goodey - 'Factory Committees in 1918'

Barbara Engels - 'Subsistence Riots in Russia during World War One'

Gregor Maximoff - The Guillotine at Work

Anyone interested in Michael Seidman's unique, thought-provoking (and controversial) approach to revolutionary history should check this post: 'Michael Seidman versus stuart Christie on Paul Preston's The Spanish Holocaust'

"MK" "Beyond Kronstadt" One of the clearest articles on what went wrong and why it was not just 'circumstances'. Strongly recommended.

An absolutely top book about Kronstadt is:
Kronstadt 1917-1921 - The fate of a Soviet democracy, Israel Getzler, Cambridge University Press, 1983

Of course, it's long out of print but you can still order it online from places like Abe Books. It traces the whole history of the Kronstadt Soviet from February 1917 to its suppression after the 1921 uprising.

Reading this book gives you a really strong sense of all the different influences on the workers and sailors of Kronstadt as they tried to work out the way forward and, along the way, nails the ridiculous Bolshevik lie about how the rebels of 1921 were "different people" from those who participated in the revolution of 1917. The continuity (right down to individual people) between those who fought the Tsar and those who fought the Bolsheviks is spelt out very clearly.

some interesting articles: Revolutionary Russia. The Journal of the Study Group on the Russian Revolution

Can I add Simon Pirani's book The Revolution in Retreat which is on here on libcom. I haven't read it myself, but I've heard its great. Afaik it basically continues what Steve Smith did for Petrograd but looking mainly at Moscow.

Thanks for mentioning 'Beyond Kronstadt'. The better version is here:

'Beyond Kronstadt; the Bolsheviks in Power' - Mark Kosman

Hm. About this:

The unknown revolution, 1917-1921 - Volin - Extensive work on the Russian Revolution, its usurping by the Bolsheviks and on workers' rebellions against the new dictatorship.

The Unknown Revolution's timeline starts in 1825, certainly not 1917 given the space given to 1905. It actually starts with a note to the reader:

"Russian Revolution" can mean three things: either the entire revolutionary movement, from the revolt of the Decembrists (1825) until the present; or only the two consecutive uprisings of 1905 and 1917; or, finally, only the great explosion of 1917. In this work, "Russian Revolution" is used in the first sense, as the entire movement.

The title of your article implies that you choose on the third possibility (which is a very strange partisan choice for libertarian communists, but it belongs to you). However, citing the dates 1917-1921 for The Unknown Revolution is just weird.

'From Tsar to Lenin'
- classic documentary on the Russian Revolution narrated by Max Eastman.

This documentary is now on Youtube HERE. It could have had more on the involvement of women, workers and peasants in 1917 - and could have been more critical of the Bolsheviks. But it still contains some of the most amazing footage from the period.

One of the great puzzles of the February revolution is why, having initiated the revolution, working-class women were then unable to maintain this level of organisation in the upheavals of 1917. Bobroff-Hajal's well-researched book is, so far, the most in-depth attempt to understand the roots of this mystery. She vividly discusses women's roles in food riots, street fighting and political activism, as well as in courtship and wedding rituals. She concludes that traditional male-dominated culture tied working-class and peasant women to the nuclear family rather than to each other.

Working Women in Russia under the Hunger Tsars: political activism and daily life, by Anne Bobroff-Hajal

See here for pdfs:

Chapters 1 to 7.

Chapters 8 to 12.

Chapters 12 to 14.

I second fromp's recommendation of Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising by Alexander Rabinowitch.

While not the major focus of the book, it still contains more information on the Anarchist-Communist organization in Petrograd and some of its key figures (like Bliekhman - who Trotsky attacked in an anti-semitic tone) and the pressure they exerted on the movement there, than I've seen anywhere else.