When the first edition of The Bolsheviks Come to Power was published, the fate of many of the Petrograd Bolsheviks who figure prominently in the book was uncertain. This is no longer the case. As a follow-up to this story, we now know that some died in the life-or-death struggle for survival in the civil war. Victims of the civil war included V. Volodarskii and M. Uritskii (both assassinated in Petrograd by terrorists), A. I. Slutskii, V. K. Slutskaia, I. A. Rakhia, and S. G. Roshal. However, many more survived the civil war and 1920s only to lose their lives during Stalin's Great Terror. Thus, of the Central Committee elected at the Sixth Party Congress in late July, most of those who survived into the 1930s perished. An exception, of course, was Stalin. Purge victims included I. T. Smilga, L. B. Kamenev, G. E. Zinoviev, A. S. Bubnov, N. N. Krestinskii, Ia. A. Berzin, V. P. Militiutin, A. I. Rykov, N. I. Bukharin, and Leon Trotsky (brutally murdered in Mexico by an agent of Stalin). Among prominent members of the Bolshevik Petersburg Committee who fell victim to the purges were A. G. Shliapnikov, P. A. Zalutskii, M. Ia. Latsis, I. N. Stukov, G. E. Evdokimov, V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, G. I. Bokii, S. M. Gessen, M. A. Saveliev, E. N. Egorova, S. K. Ordzhonikidze, and M. P. Tomskii (the last two escaped execution by committing suicide); among those from the Bolshevik Military Organization who perished were V. I. Nevskii, N. V. Krylenko, M. S. Kedrov, K. A. Mekhanoshin, A. F. Il'in-Zhenevskii, and F. P. Khaustov; two prominent Kronstadt Bolsheviks, F. F. Raskolnikov and A. M. Liubovich, were also among Stalin's victims. Among prominent Petrograd Bolsheviks who somehow survived both the civil war and Stalin's repressions were V. M. Molotov, M. I. Kalinin, Elena Stasova, Aleksandra Kollontai, and N. I. Podvoiskii.
As the centenary of 1917 approached, I was often asked whether my conclusions about the character of the Bolshevik Party and its coming to power had changed over time. My answer, "No, not significantly," is the same as it was in 1991, when Russian historical archives first became available to me. However, the critical importance of looking back at and learning from momentous historical events has never been greater than in today's deeply troubled world. It is with these realities in mind that I welcome this new Haymarket Books edition of my study of "Red October" in Petrograd, where one of the seminal events in modern history began.
Notes
Traditionally, both in the West and in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia the February and October "revolutions" have been viewed as separate events. In recent years, however, the periodization of the revolution has been hotly disputed. I now view the events of February and October, 1917 as important phases of the same Great Russian Revolution.
Four moderates, Lev Kamenev, Viktor Nogin, Vladimir Miliutin, and Grig- orii Fedorov, were members of the nine-man Central Committee elected by the conference.
See P. F. Kudelli, ed. Pervyi legal'nyi Petersburgskii komitet bol'shevikov v 1917
(Moscow—Leningrad, 1927). For an updated, more complete, and greatly enhanced edition of these protocols see T. A. Abrosimova, T. P. Bondarevskaia, E. T. Leikina, and V. Iu. Cherniaev, eds, Pervyi Petersburgskii Komitet RSDRP (b) v 1917godu: Pro- tokoly i materialy zasedanii (St. Petersburg, 2003).
In 1917, Nevskii had been a prominent leader of the Bolshevik Military Organization.
Alexander Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising (Bloomington, IN, 1968).
N. V. Romanovskii, "Iiul'skie sobytiia v sovremennoi burzhuaznoi isto- riografii," Istoriia SSSR no. 3 (1971): 220-21.
Marc Ferro, Annales no. 4 (July-August 1979): pp. 898-99.
Israel Getzler, Soviet Studies 21, no. 2 (October 1969): 255-57; Nicholas V. Riazanovsky, Political Science Quarterly 84, no. 1 (March, 1969): 125-27.
John L. H. Keep, Slavonic and East European Review 48, no. 112 (July 1970): 464-66.
Theodore H. Von Laue, American Historical Review 74, no. 1 (October 1968): 234-35.
Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd (New York, 1976).
Communication from Howe to James L. Mairs, my editor at W. W. Norton, undated.
Robert Rosenstone, New Republic, June 18, 1977, 35-36.
Communication from Cohen to James L. Mairs, undated.
Allan Wildman, Russian History 4 (1977): 86-88.
"Three Sides of Bolshevism," Economist, October 27, 1979, 120.
Stephen F. Cohen is the author of the classic biography of N. I. Bukharin, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (New York, 1973). In the case of Robert C. Tucker, Kennan was probably referring to the first volume of his widely acclaimed Stalin biography, Stalin as Revolutionary (New York, 1973), and in the case of Moshe Lewin, to his important works Russian Peasants and Soviet Power (Evanston, IL, 1968), Lenin's Last Struggle (New York, 1968), and Political Currents in Soviet Economic Debates: From Bukharin to the Modern Reformers (Princeton, NJ, 1974).
Aleksandr Rabinovich, Bol'shevikiprikhodiat k vlasti: Revoliutsiia 1917goda v Petrograde (Moscow, 1989).
Thus, in a review of The Bolsheviks in Power Boris Kolonitskii, the leading contemporary Petersburg historian of the 1917 Russian revolutions, wrote that "no one studying the history of the revolution [today] can do without Prelude to Revolution and The Bolsheviks Come to Power." See Kolonitskii's review in Rossiiskaia istoriia, no. 4, 2009, 193-95.
Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington, IN and Indianapolis, IN, 2007); Aleksandr Rabinovich, Bol'sheviki u vlasti: Pervyi godsovetskoi epokhi v Petrograde (Moscow, 2007).
A. V. Nikolaev, Revoliutsiia i vlast': IV Gosudarstennaia duma 27 fevralia—3 marta 1917goda (St. Petersburg, 2005).
See Diane P. Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1981); S. A. Smith, Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories (Cambridge, 1984); David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers and the Fall of the Old Regime: From the February Revolution to the July Days 1917 (London, 1983) and The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power: From the July Days 1917 to July 1918 (London, 1984); Rex A. Wade, Red Guards and Workers' Militias in the Russian Revolution (Stanford, CA, 1984); and Gennady Shkliarevsky, Labor in the Russian Revolution: Factory Committees and Trade Unions (New York, 1993).
Allan K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Old Army and the Soldiers' Revolt (Princeton, NJ, 1980) and The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Road to Soviet Power and Peace (Princeton, NJ, 1987), and Joshua A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905-1925 (DeKalb, IL, 2003); Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Revolution and the Baltic Fleet: War and Politics, February 1917-April 1918 (London, 1978); and Israel Getzler, Kronstadt, 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy (Cambridge, 1983).