Richard Pipes’s
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
“Masterful and timely … [Pipes’s] history blends uncannily with today’s … headlines.… A brilliantly focused portrait.”
—Newsweek
“Pipes’s compellingly written account … is … a masterful culmination of his lifelong investigations of the revolutionary period.”
—Newsday
“A truly impressive piece of scholarship … A fascinating treatise, certain to become the basic research text on the subject.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“Panoramic … The first attempt in any language to offer a comprehensive study of the Russian Revolution … Pipes is not a mere communicator of facts but a philosopher examining the deeper, broader trends beneath the surface of history.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Like his illustrious predecessor among students of revolutions, Alexis de Tocqueville, Pipes has a broad, sweeping view.… An imposing achievement … His craftsmanship as a writer … serves him well.”
—Boston Globe
“Pipes is an extremely knowledgeable and careful historian.… This is probably the best overall study of those momentous events … a good, important book.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
ALSO BY RICHARD PIPES
The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–23 (1964)
Struve: Liberal on the Left, 1870–1905 (1970)
Russia under the Old Regime (1974)
Struve: Liberal on the Right, 1905–1944 (1980)
Survival Is Not Enough (1984)
Russia Observed (1989)
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, DECEMBER 1991
Copyright © 1990 by Richard Pipes
Maps copyright © 1990 by Bernhard H. Wagner
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1990.
Owing to limitations of space, acknowledgment of permission to reprint previously published material will be found on this page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pipes, Richard.
The Russian Revolution/Richard Pipes.—1st Vintage Books ed.
p. cm.
Reprint. Originally published: New York: Knopf, 1990.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78857-3
1. Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921.
2. Soviet Union—History—Nicholas II, 1894–1917. I. Title.
[DK265.P474 1991]
947.084′I—dc20 91-50008
v3.1
To the victims
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
PART ONE The Agony of the Old Regime
1 1905: The Foreshock
University disturbances of 1899 as beginning of revolution
Plehve and Zubatov
outbreak of Russo-Japanese War, Plehve assassinated and replaced by Mirskii: the great Zemstvo Congress (November 1904)
“Bloody Sunday”
tsarism tries moderate reforms
the debacle of Tsushima and talk of a representative body
university turmoil resumes and leads to general strike
Witte advises concessions
emergence of St. Petersburg Soviet
the October Manifesto
Witte forms cabinet and represses radicals; nationwide pogroms
1905 as apogee of Russian liberalism
2 Official Russia
Patrimonialism
Nicholas and Alexandra
the bureaucracy
ministries
conservative and liberal officialdom
economic development undermines autocracy
the army
the gentry
the Orthodox church
3 Rural Russia
Household, village, and commune
land shortage
industrial workers
peasant mentality
peasant attitudes to law and property
changes in peasant mood after 1900
4 The Intelligentsia
Its European origins
sociétés de pensée
socialism as ideology of the intelligentsia
the ideal of a “new man”
emergence of Russian intelligentsia
revolutionary movement in nineteenth century Russia
the Socialists-Revolutionaries
Russian liberals
5 The Constitutional Experiment
Monarchy and constitutionalism
the Fundamental Laws of 1906
elections to the Duma
the First Duma
Stolypin
Stolypin represses terror
his agrarian reforms
the Second Duma and the electoral law of June 3, 1907
Stolypin’s political difficulties begin
the Western zemstvo crisis
Stolypins murder
assessment of Stolypin
Russia on the eve of World War I
6 Russia at War
Strategic preparations and Russia’s readiness for war
early campaigns: East Prussia and Galicia
Russian debacle in Poland, 1915
changes in government
emergence of the Progressive Bloc and Nicholas’s assumption of high command
bringing society into limited partnership in the war effort
7 Toward the Catastrophe
Inflation
the Brusilov offensive
rise of tension in the country
food crisis
Protopopov
the liberals decide to attack
Duma sessions of November 1916
assassination of Rasputin
last days at Tsarskoe Selo
plots against the Imperial family
8 The February Revolution
Mutiny of Petrograd garrison
the Duma hesitates to claim power
emergence of Petrograd Soviet and of its Executive Committee