142. I. Steinberg, Gewalt und Terror in der Revolution (Berlin, 1974), 16.
143. Ibid., 138–39.
144. The Bullitt Mission to Russia (New York, 1919), 115.
145. Pierre Pascal, En Russie Rouge (Petrograd, 1920), 6.
146. International Committee for Political Prisoners, Letters from Russian Prisons (New York, 1925), 2, 15, 13.
Afterword
1. A. Ksiunin in VO, No. 55 (June 22, 1918), 1.
ONE HUNDRED WORKS ON THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
The following selection of literature on the Russian Revolution is admittedly subjective: I have chosen books from which I have learned the most. Unfortunately, although the serious literature in Western languages increases each year, the bulk of the material is still in Russian. Additional references will be found in the footnotes and endnotes.
Part I
The best general surveys of the final years of the monarchy are by Bernard Pares, who was both an eyewitness and a historian: Russia and Reform (London, 1907) and The Fall of the Russian Monarchy (London, 1929). There exists a sympathetic history of Nicholas II by S. S. Oldenburg, Tsarstvovanie Imperatora Nikolaia II [The Reign of Emperor Nicholas II], 2 vols. (Belgrade-Munich, 1939–49). It has been translated as Last Tsar: Nicholas II, His Reign and His Russia, 4 vols. (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1975–78). Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu’s three-volume The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians (New York-London, 1898) is a comprehensive survey of Imperial Russia in the 1880s. The reader may also wish to consult my Russia under the Old Regime (London-New York, 1974), which interprets the course of Russia’s political and social history.
There exists a unique source of testimonies by high officials on the last years of the old regime taken by a commission of the Provisional Government and published under the editorship of P. E. Shcheglovitov: Padenie tsarskogo rezhima [The Fall of the Tsarist Regime], 7 vols. (Leningrad, 1924–27). Selections from it have been published in French: La Chute du Régime Tsariste: Interrogatoires (Paris, 1927). A six-volume “chronicle” of the year 1917 edited by N. Avdeev et al., Revoliutsiia 1917: khronika sobytii [The Revolution of 1917: A Chronicle of Events] (Moscow, 1923–30), delivers much more than its title promises, for it contains a wealth of information from rare and unpublished contemporary sources.
Of the memoir literature on late Imperial Russia, the most outstanding are the recollections of Sergei Witte, Vospominaniia [Memoirs], 3 vols. (Moscow, 1960). The one-volume English condensation by Abraham Yarmolinsky, Memoirs of Count Witte (London-Garden City, N.Y., 1921), is a pale shadow of the original. Very informative on the mentality of the high Imperial bureaucracy are the recollections of State Secretary S. E. Kryzhanovskii, Vospominaniia [Memoirs] (Berlin, [1938]). The recollections of the liberal leader Paul Miliukov appeared posthumously: Vospominaniia [Memoirs] (New York, 1955) (in English: Political Memoirs, 1905–1917, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1967). Dmitrii Shipov, a leading liberal-conservative, wrote Vospominaniia i dumy o perezhitom [Recollections and Reflections on the Past] (Moscow, 1918).
The best study of the late Imperial bureaucracy unfortunately remains unpublished: Theodore Taranovsky, The Politics of Counter-Reform: Autocracy and Bureaucracy in the Reign of Alexander III 1881–1894, Ph.D. Dissertation, 1976, Harvard University.
On the peasants, outstanding are the personal observations of A. N. Engelgardt, Iz derevni [From the Village] (Moscow, 1987), and Stepniak [S. M. Kravchinskii], The Russian Peasantry (New York, 1888). Theodore Shanin’s The Awkward Class (Oxford, 1972) is a study of Russian peasants under tsarist and Communist rule.
On the phenomenon of the intelligentsia, there is an informative collection of essays edited by George B. de Huszar, The Intellectuals (London and Glencoe, Ill., 1960). There exists no satisfactory history of the Russian intelligentsia in the twentieth century. On the Socialists-Revolutionaries, there is Manfred Hildermeier’s Die Sozialrevolutionäre Partei Russlands [The Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party] (Köln-Vienna, 1978). On the Social-Democrats, the reader may consult Leonard Schapiro’s The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York, 1960) and John L. H. Keep’s The Rise of Social Democracy in Russia (Oxford, 1963). On the early liberals, Shmuel Galai has written The Liberation Movement in Russia, 1900–1905 (Cambridge, 1973). The four-volume Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii v nachale XX-go veka [Public Currents in Russia at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century] (St. Petersburg, 1910–14), edited by Martov and other Mensheviks, provides an intelligent if partisan survey. Revolutionary terrorism is recounted in A. Spiridovich’s Histoire du Terrorisme Russe, 1886–1917 (Paris, 1930). My two-volume biography, Struve: Liberal on the Left (1870–1905) (Cambridge, Mass., 1970) and Struve: Liberal on the Right (1905–1944) (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), deals with an outstanding Russian intellectual of the age who evolved from Marxism to liberalism and ended up as a monarchist.
The first Russian Revolution is the subject of Abraham Ascher’s The Revolution of 1905 (Stanford, Calif., 1988); a sequel, dealing with 1906, is in progress. Andrew M. Verner’s Nicholas II and the Role of the Autocrat during the First Russian Revolution, 1904–1907, Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1986, supplies much archival information on tsarist policies.
The 1906 Fundamental Laws are translated and analyzed in M. Szeftel’s The Russian Constitution of April 23, 1906 (Brussels, 1976).
The Duma period is discussed in G. A. Hosking, The Russian Constitutional Experiment (Cambridge, 1973). The best history of Stolypin’s administration, alas, is available only in Polish: Ludwig Bazylow, Ostatnie lata Rosji Carskiej: Rzady Stolypina [The Final Years of Tsarism: The Rule of Stolypin], (Warsaw, 1972). Stolypin’s peasant policies are the subject of S. M. Dubrovskii’s Stolypinskaia zemel’naia reforma [Stolypin’sAgrarian Reform] (Moscow, 1963). Materials on his assassination have been collected by A. Serebrennikov, Ubiistvo Stolypina: svidetel’stva i dokumenty [The Murder of Stolypin: Testimonies and Documents] (New York, 1986).
Russia at war is treated by Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914–1917 (London and New York, 1975). A. Knox’s With the Russian Army, 2 vols. (London, 1921), is an informative account by the British military attaché. V. A. Emets in Ocherki vneshnei politiki Rossii, 1914–17 [Outlines of Russia’s Foreign Policy, 1914–17] (Moscow, 1977) and V. S. Diakin’s Russkaia burzhuaziia i tsarizm v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny (1914–1917) [The Russian Bourgeoisie and Tsarism during the World War (1914–1917) (Leningrad, 1967) provide analyses of the political situation in Russia during World War I, relatively free of customary Soviet distortions. The same holds true of the book by the Polish historian Ludwig Bazylow, Obalenie caratu [The Overthrow of Tsarism] (Warsaw, 1976). There is much to be learned from A. I. Spiridovich’s Velikaia voina ifevral’skaia revoliutsiia, 1914–1918 gg. [The Great War and the February Revolution], 3 vols. (New York, 1962). The economic antecedents of the Revolution are treated by A. L. Sidorov’s Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny [The Economic Situation of Russia during World War I] (Moscow, 1973).