One of the attractive features of the four books under review is that they are not afraid of the big questions. While each is focused on specific empirical issues, they all seek to address the fundamental question of the intertwined fate of tsarist Russia and "the revolution." Taken together, the books start with the run-up to 1905 and end in the fall of 1917, with a special look at the closest approach to a revolutionary crisis in the interim—namely, the Lena Goldfields Massacre in 1912 and its aftermath. Although coming from very different parts of the scholarly world, the four books are in constant and instructive dialogue with each other.
As suggested by the title, Pervaia revoliutsiia v Rossii: Vzgliad cherez sto let was written—at top speed, we are told—in 2005. During the Soviet [End Page 861] period, the Revolution of 1905 was the subject of special scholarly attention at each jubilee date: 1925, 1955, and so on. The authorial kollektiv of Pervaia revoliutsiia wanted both to continue this tradition of reconsidering a crucial event in Russian history and to stake out a new and independent position for post-Soviet historiography. Thus the centennial of 1905 was marked in Russia by the kind of global overview of events that was conspicuous by its absence in the West.
In his introduction to the volume, Stanislav Tiutiukin makes a contrast between the present book and one of the last syntheses of the Soviet period, Pervyi shturm tsarizma (The First Assault on Tsarism [1985]). What he does not mention is that there is considerable overlap among the authors of the two books.1 The present book thus cannot help being a personal reflection by the authors on the change in their own outlook. The impression I received is that these historians welcome the opportunity and the duty to be open to new perspectives and to confront difficult questions, but that they have no intention of simply rejecting their past. They are open to and respectful of Western scholarship, but they reject the Russian voices that adopt Western perspectives wholesale, that treat the 1905 Revolution from a hostile, semi-monarchist standpoint, or (perhaps most depressing) simply dismiss the whole subject. There is thus a sense of intellectual engagement with meaningful issues that is no longer present in Western views of 1905. Indeed, I had the following odd thought: Soviet accounts of 1905 are clearly a much worse place to end up than many Western accounts. But—such is the dialectic of historiography—the best Soviet accounts might turn out to be a better place to start from—if the mythical Soviet narrative is secularized and defactionalized. Not only did Soviet accounts give all credit to the Bolsheviks, but they portrayed the Bolsheviks as the chosen leader of the chosen class. While properly rejecting these aspects of Soviet historiography, Western accounts tended also to reject the whole idea of any leadership by the socialist underground. In this, as we shall see, they were aided and abetted by some myths of their own.
One of the very few book-length centennial appreciations of the 1905 Revolution to be published in the West is a special issue of Revolutionary History entitled "The Russian Revolution of 1905: Change through Struggle." Revolutionary History is a journal, published in Britain, that interests itself mainly in the history of the Trotskyist movement, with a shift to wider historical topics in recent issues. The principal editor of this issue, Pete Glatter, had the brilliant idea of providing a wide range of selections from memoirs and reminiscences originally published either in 1906–7 or in the early 1920s, [End Page 862] along with a smattering of documents from 1905 itself. Among the more important sources are S. I. Somov, a Menshevik activist who participated in the events of Bloody Sunday; A. Kovalenko, an officer who threw in his lot with the Potemkin mutineers; and M. I. Vasil´ev (Iuzhin), a Bolshevik activist who played a major role in the Moscow uprising of December 1905. The result is highly successful in giving a feel for the atmosphere of the revolution, from at least one side of the barricades, in a way I have not found in any other book on the subject.2
Glatter sketches his own view on the dynamics of 1905 and its continued relevance in his useful editorial introductions to the excerpts. His interpretation is well-grounded and challenging, but strictly within a Trotskyist framework. If Trotskii dismissed the liberals as cowards and cheats, then so they were (39–46). Besides 174 pages on the events in Russia in 1905, the issue contains a shorter section on the gruesome repression in Riga, three previously untranslated articles by Rosa Luxemburg from 1905, and a useful statistical analysis by Mike Haynes of the course of the strike movement and its connection to military mutinies and peasant protest. I call particular attention to the first two Luxemburg selections—not because they say anything original, but because they do not. They give what was more or less the standard Iskra-ite view of things and, as such, they are one of the few documents available in English that set out the role of political freedom in the outlook of Russian Social Democracy. Political freedom was light and air for any social democratic movement, but the resulting revolutionary push for these freedoms by the Russian workers created a temptation for Social Democrats to underplay the class struggle (192–207). (Many people will be surprised to learn that a central point of the Menshevik polemics of 1903–4 was that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were too concerned with political freedom and not enough with class struggle. This Menshevik case was not entirely misguided.)
What were the ultimate consequences of 1905? Did it result in a subterranean stream of unresolved contradictions and tension that lay low for a while but spurted up again in 1912–14 and flooded the land in 1917? Or did the revolution lead to the creation of a system that was far from perfect but nonetheless had a capacity for evolution that historians are too quick to dismiss? This is the Big Question that forms the subtext of Michael Melancon's monograph on the 1912 massacre of determinedly peaceful striking workers in the Lena goldfields and the immediate aftermath of the massacre. The first three-fourths of the book consist of a detailed reconstruction of the lead-up to the events of 4 April, the events themselves, [End Page 863] and then the first investigations of the tragedy. As mentors for his scholarly enterprise, Melancon invokes those patron saints of postmodernism, Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon and Mikhail Bakhtin, and fashions his account around the "competing discourses" of the participants. I myself would describe Melancon's considerable achievement in different terms. I see this book as a sterling example of what used to be called scientific history: finding out wie es eigentlich gewesen (how it really was) by means of painstakingly critical examination of evidence from the past.3 Every document thrown up by these events came from someone with a particular viewpoint that is usually understandable in straightforward sociological terms of group interest and outlook. If Melancon wants to call these "competing discourses," I have no objection, seeing that he does such an exemplary job of interrogating the material. What Melancon shows is that "objectivity" is not the result of a personal desire to remain unbiased, but the reward of hard work and critical acumen.
In the last quarter of the book, Melancon shifts from "competing discourses" to "unexpected consensus," as he examines the immediate reaction to the Lena events in the press and in the Duma. Melancon thinks this consensus demolishes the hypothesis of Leopold Haimson and others who see irreparable conflict surfacing in Russian society in the years immediately prior to the outbreak of war.
Haimson gives us his own take on the aftermath of the Lena shooting in his new book Russia's Revolutionary Experience, 1905–1917. But I find it unexpectedly difficult to state what this book is actually about. Half the book is an essay entitled "Lenin, Martov, and the Issue of Power." One-third of this approximately 100-page essay briefly surveys its two protagonists from 1905 to 1917, followed by a detailed examination of 1917. The second half of the book is an essay entitled "The Workers' Movement after Lena: The Dynamics of Labor Unrest in the Wake of the Lena Goldfields Massacre (April 1912–July 1914)." Thus we have two essays on disparate topics, stapled together with a meaningless title. The same curious lack of focus can be found in the two essays taken separately. One has the impression of ceaseless qualifications, extensions, and digressions, all revolving around a phantom thesis that is never quite to be found. But even though this book cannot be accounted the final and definitive statement to which I looked forward, it contains much that is stimulating and useful. Haimson's approach to Lenin, for example, is almost uniquely secular, with Lenin neither demonized or angelized.
Let us now turn to some of the issues that arise when we let these books talk to one another. An expectedly crucial one is the stikhiinost´ (spontaneity) [End Page 864] paradigm—that is, the contention that Lenin was deeply worried about the workers' lack of revolutionary inclinations.4 Reading these books together brought home to me the importance of getting Lenin right for a much wider range of issues than just a correct description of one influential man's outlook. Lenin was both a participant in the events of 1905 and (as it turned out) a key figure in its historiography. Thus both the Russian kollektiv and Melancon define their own particular historical methods in explicit contrast to Lenin's alleged insistence that "all important impulses [came] from the top down."5 Lenin's alleged "worry about workers" then infects our view of all other socialist revolutionaries by two contrasting logics. Sometimes Lenin is seen as just the most vivid expression of an arrogance characteristic of all Russian Social Democrats and indeed all Russian radical intellectuals. Or conversely, opposition to Lenin by other Social Democrats is read as a rejection of "worry about workers," and therefore as some sort of "workerphile" outlook.6 Finally, the outlook of the workers themselves is sometimes deduced on the basis of their indifference to or support of Bolshevik agitation. So the question of "Lenin on stikhiinost´ " cannot be avoided, and a radical shift on this topic can have far-ranging consequences.
On the one hand, Haimson was crucial in imposing the stikhiinost´ paradigm, and he continues to defend it in the current book and in recent articles.7 On the other, he also adds qualifications and new observations that help free us from his own conceptual straitjacket. I therefore regret Haimson's continued defense of something we need to get away from—namely, the idea that the key to Lenin's outlook is his feelings about stikhiinost´. Haimson's current defense fails on a number of counts. He claims that Lenin's use of stikhiinyi in What Is to Be Done? was "the first use of the term by Russian Social Democrats."8 This is far from [End Page 865] the case. In particular, Lenin's discussion of the topic is only a reaction to Boris Krichevskii's article of September 1901 which made stikhiinost´ a central issue in a slashing attack on the Iskra group to which Lenin belonged. It is therefore revealing that Haimson misdates the Krichevskii article by a year, thus making it a reaction to rather than an instigation of Lenin's own polemics.9
Haimson's own discussion of later events brings out further problems with the stikhiinost´ paradigm. He points to Lenin's "inebriation" with the Russian workers in 1905 (10) because they were acting in a revolutionary manner without waiting for "impulses from the top down" (in Melancon's phrase). This accurate observation comes from asking the right question—not, "what did Lenin think about some vague abstract concept?" but "what did Lenin think of concrete developments in the Russia of his day?" Haimson (as well as many other historians, including the Trotskyists) deduces from Lenin's attitude in 1905 that he must have radically changed his outlook. But if Haimson had asked the same concrete question about Lenin's views prior to 1905 and looked at Lenin's reaction to the May Day events in Khar´kov in 1900, the "spring demonstrations" and the "Obukhov defense" in 1901, the Rostov strike and demonstrations in 1902, and the strike waves in southern Russia in 1903, he would easily perceive the complete predictability of Lenin's reaction in 1905.10 Lenin may have been inebriated in 1905, but he was hardly sober before.
Haimson further asserts that there is something peculiarly Russian about a dislike for stikhiinost´—that is, disorganization, impulsiveness, and violent unpredictability.11 I respond that there is something peculiarly Social Democratic about this dislike. As opposed to other socialist currents in the 19th century, Marx-based Social Democracy insisted that socialism could come about only when the workers took state power as a class and used it [End Page 866] to remake society. To make this scenario the least bit plausible, the workers had to be seen to move beyond the evident disorganization, impulsiveness, and unpredictability of early worker protest. Accordingly, we find in the Communist Manifesto (1848) a sketch of the workers' steady progress away from stikhiinost´ toward organization and enlightenment, and this sketch is further filled out by Karl Kautsky in the canonical Erfurt Program (1892). Thus both factions of Russian Social Democracy disliked stikhiinost´—indeed, the Mensheviks typically more than the Bolsheviks—and, one may ask, why not?12
I cannot stress enough that the debate over the stikhiinost´ paradigm is not just a matter of getting Lenin himself right. Like a shard of ice from the Snow Queen's palace that is lodged in our eye, this seemingly localized issue can lead to fundamental distortions in our vision of large-scale historical processes. I will illustrate by looking at a major fault line that distinguishes different views of the revolutionary dynamics of 1905.
Let us begin our explanation of this clash somewhat indirectly by comparing the new Russian account to its Soviet predecessor of 1985. In each case, Irina Pushkareva contributed the chapter on the October general strike that resulted in the tsar's granting some measure of political freedom. The leitmotif of the Soviet-era chapter is that "the political awareness of the mass of workers became more and more clarified under the influence of the Bolsheviks."13 Since the Bolsheviks favored armed uprising, their vast and unrivaled influence meant that the general strike was basically an armed uprising in embryo. The all-pervasive, wonder-working nature of Bolshevik leadership is pushed to the point of absurdity and considerably beyond.
This absurdity is no longer present in the corresponding chapter by Pushkareva in the post-Soviet volume. The discussion has been secularized, or at least moved a considerable distance toward this goal: the slogans of the underground are now only one force in a highly interactive stew, rather than a demiurge directing the masses. The discussion has also been defactionalized, with credit given to all the revolutionary parties. A page is devoted to combating Soviet distortions of the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) as a solely terrorist and peasant party. The support given to the strike by the Moscow Duma and educated society in general is not muffled but instead emphasized. The drive toward an armed uprising is still a major theme, but it [End Page 867] is now treated in a cooler, more secular way—not as a heroic step forward in humanity's march to communism but as an indication of Russia's backward political structure.
One theme, however, remains the same and reveals itself as perhaps the heart of the story even in its earlier Soviet integument: the power of the slogan. In the post-Soviet centennial book, Pushkareva puts it this way: "The slogans of the RSDWP [Russian Social Democratic Workers Party] and the other leftist parties reflected the interests of the mass of the population of the country. This fact was the main reason for the success of the October all-Russian strike" (303).
The power of the slogan has three aspects. The first is the content of the slogans: the eight-hour day for the workers, land for the peasants, and—especially important for the present discussion—political freedom for the country as a whole. The second is the material presence of the slogans in rallies, leaflets, and the like. Pushkareva is never happier than when she can quote a leaflet or give statistics on how many leaflets were issued by this or that committee. The third is the institutional structure for composing and disseminating the slogans—namely, the activist underground. "When we turn to the reminiscences of participants and eyewitnesses of the events of 1905, we cannot miss seeing in the revolutionary Russia of the time the self-sacrificing work of party propagandists and agitators, the disseminators of revolutionary literature, initiators and organizers of strikes, meetings, rallies, and demonstrations. These were Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, SRs, bundovtsy, representatives of the national social democratic and socialist parties" (288).
This defactionalized and secularized insistence on the power of the slogan is not just an indication of continuity with Soviet historiography. It also rests on substantial new empirical research that finds expression in the continuing series Rabochee dvizhenie v Rossii: 1895–fevral´ 1917 g. Khronika (A Chronicle of the Worker Movement in Russia, 1895–February 1917). The Khronika, based on an inclusive, non-factional approach to the worker movement and the revolutionary underground, is vastly enlarging the database for worker protest of all kinds, underground organizations of all stripes, and printed agitational material. The volume for the year 1904 has just been published.14 The volumes I have been able to consult have given me a far more concrete picture of the revolutionary underground than I have gleaned from any other source. If nothing else, the sheer volume of agitational material is impressive. [End Page 868]
Pete Glatter's collection of activist memoirs gives human content to the power of the slogan. One striking eyewitness report reveals the romantic way the activists thought of themselves—what I have elsewhere called the image of the inspired and inspiring activist. The Bolshevik Dmitrii Sverchkov looked out a university window in Petersburg in October 1905 and was "transfixed with delight at the magical picture before me." A worker was making a fiery speech:
His inspired face was illuminated by the flickering red light of the torch.… The bulk of the crowd was completely swallowed up in darkness, and it seemed that there was no end to the army of workers listening intently to their leader. The torchlight picked out the faces of individual listeners in the gloom, and on them was written both the joy of struggle, the thrill of awareness of their power, the happiness of the approach of freedom, and the inspiration of the revolution.
(111)
When we turn to the standard Western account—Abraham Ascher's The Revolution of 1905—we find, not a matter of more or less, but a fundamentally different vision. Ascher denies that the slogans of the underground had any meaningful influence on events in 1905 and on the outcome of the October strike in particular. The general strike that led to the October Manifesto was "a classic example of a momentous historical event that developed spontaneously," so that the "leaders of the revolutionary left were taken by surprise."15 No wonder, since the underground activists had no idea what was going on. The Social Democrats in particular were "saddled with a dogmatic view of the historical process," trying to "cope with complexities they had not, and could not have, anticipated." As a result, "the course of events in 1905 played havoc with the theories evolved by both groups of Marxists."16
Ascher's account has standing because, on the strength of his biography of the Menshevik leader Pavel Axelrod, he is thought to have a good grasp of "the theories evolved" by the Russian Social Democrats.17 But he demonstrably does not. Much of the problem can be traced back to our old friend, the stikhiinost´ paradigm, which claims that Lenin's main concern in What Is to Be Done? was (in Ascher's words) "the masses' political inertia." Ascher extends this same paradigm to the radical Left in general: "The Marxists faced a problem [at the turn of the century] that had plagued radicals in the [End Page 869] 1870's and would be a perennial obstacle for them: the political inertia of the masses."18
Naturally, the events of 1905 played havoc with this theory—but it bears no resemblance to the actual outlook of the radical Left in the years prior to 1905. On the contrary, activists on the left were almost literally hopping with excitement about the perceived political radicalization of the masses. In consequence, the underground stepped up its bombardment of the target population with agitation that pounded home the message Doloi samoderzhavie! (Down with Autocracy!) and Da zdravstvuet politicheskaia svoboda! (Long Live Political Freedom!). The slogan Da zdravstvuet sotsializm! (Long Live Socialism!), while still prominent, ran a distant third. But Ascher seems uninterested in either the content or the extent of underground agitation. He seems, indeed, unaware that the Social Democrats had made the achievement of political freedom a top priority (for reasons rooted in the logic of international Social Democracy) and had insisted on this for a decade prior to the revolution.19 In one of his very few mentions of Social Democratic leaflets, Ascher writes that in October "the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks promoted socialism as their goal in the many thousands of leaflets they distributed."20 Where then did the workers get their slogans demanding political freedom? It must have been from the liberals—after all, in August 1905, liberals "began to distribute agitational literature among the workers and peasants and address their meetings," and this effort "presaged the collaboration between liberals and workers a few weeks later during the revolution's most massive attack on the autocracy."21 One month of liberal agitation is emphasized, one decade of Social Democratic agitation is ignored.
So, on the Russian side, we have a mythical Soviet narrative that has been secularized, defactionalized, and given a strong empirical base. On the Western side, we have unquestioned loyalty to the stikhiinost´ paradigm, with all its consequences for our understanding of the revolutionary process as a whole. The Russian scholars say that a decade of underground activity in pushing certain slogans, an activity that resulted in hundreds of revolutionary organizations and tens of thousands of leaflets, had some sort of connection with the fact that the workers adopted these very same slogans when they [End Page 870] forced the tsar to issue the October Manifesto. The Western historians seem unaware of political freedom as a fundamental Social Democratic battle cry and accordingly deny any connection at all.22 I am with the Russians on this fundamental issue (although the Russian historians never even try to explain the Social Democratic logic behind the slogan of political freedom). Accordingly, if you can only read one general account of the 1905 revolution, I recommend Pervaia revoliutsiia over Ascher's Revolution of 1905.
Although Melancon himself is overtly hostile to any theme coming from Soviet historiography, he provides a good formula for what might be called the "Russian" approach when he talks about the workers' "fruitful interactions with socialist activists of multiple party organizations" (180). In Melancon's writing I find some of the best passages in Western scholarship on this topic, combined with what from my point of view is backsliding into the clichés of the stikhiinost´ paradigm—for instance, the casual claim that Russian socialists regarded the worker as "malleable clay" (179).23
On the surface, the special issue of Revolutionary History combines the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, Glatter's interpretation is, to my taste, insufficiently secularized and defactionalized. On the other hand, one oddity of the Trotskyist interpretation of 1905 (not necessarily that of Trotskii himself) is a certain condescension bordering on hostility aimed specifically at Bolshevik activists, who, we are told, reacted to the revolutionary events in a "sectarian" way and had to be straightened out by Lenin. But the official stance of "Change through Struggle" is not so important, since the overall thrust of this special issue is to put the activists front and center and to give us their independent viewpoint.
In his essay on Lenin and Martov, Haimson attempts a sketch of Social Democratic beliefs in the decade following the revolution. I am not going to discuss this essay because, unfortunately, very little that is useful can be [End Page 871] extracted from it. First of all, there is a serious problem of quality control. A hefty percentage of the essay consists of long quotations (mostly from now published sources), yet these turn out to be highly unreliable. The number of sheer translation errors is unacceptable. Beyond that, we often find brief paraphrases parading as direct quotations, as if Haimson is giving us his notes instead of a translation.
It is also more difficult than it should be to pin down exactly what Haimson is arguing in this essay. When there is a definite thesis, it is implausible and unsupported. For example, Haimson asserts that as October 1917 approached, Martov and Lenin, "by a supreme irony of history," switched their long-standing views on the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, with Martov now emphasizing this potential and Lenin becoming more jaundiced (60). Ironical indeed—except that Haimson offers no proof for either of the two leaders. Haimson states as a fact that Martov was greatly impressed by the peasant disorders in Tambov province (78, 81). He provides no documentation for this assertion, and I can find none in the relevant volume of Men´sheviki v 1917 gody.24 I just don't believe it. For Lenin, Haimson doesn't even provide this much argumentation.
Haimson's second essay on the aftermath of the Lena events in 1912–14 is much more substantive and focused, especially when read in conjunction with Melancon's masterly recreation of the Lena events themselves (and I strongly recommend reading these two accounts together). There is a direct connection between these events and our view of the accomplishments of the 1905 Revolution. The massacre itself, the virtually unanimous chorus of condemnation that followed, the accelerated strike movement by individual workers, and the shift in worker support to the Bolsheviks that occurred shortly before the outbreak of war—do these events show that, despite its gains, the 1905 Revolution failed to heal the fissures in Russian society and to establish a viable polity?25 Or do they show a viable polity in action, as constructive forces react to an isolated system breakdown and in the process affirm a widespread consensus in a way that was not possible earlier?
These two contrasting views are put forth respectively by Haimson and Melancon. To tell the truth, I was looking forward to a Battle of the Titans, as Haimson made a final statement of his position and Melancon mounted a full-scale attack on the "serried ranks" of Haimson and his [End Page 872] supporters (Melancon's martial imagery) (194). Indeed, I found much that was instructive and mind-opening. But I also feel the great debate did not quite come off—more like shadow-boxing than a direct clash.
I am not saying Melancon is ultimately wrong in stressing integrative forces in Russian society during this period, but I do say that the main argument he employs here is unsuccessful. To begin with, the historiographical framework is set up in a less than helpful manner. Haimson is identified as the author of the theory of "social fragmentation" (Melancon puts these words in quotation marks, although I cannot find that Haimson ever even talked about fragmentation, much less used it as a label for his theory).26 This theory is identified with the assertion that "the various segments of Russian society were hopelessly at odds with one another" (154, 183, 173). That's it. We undoubtedly have to cut some slack for polemical exaggeration, but this is not even a caricature of Haimson's actual argument in his famous two-part article of 1964–65. If we want a handy label, "dual polarization" will do: one polarization process between society as a whole and the tsarist state, and another between workers and educated elites.27
More substantively, Melancon puts too many of his eggs in one basket, namely, the immediate reaction to the Lena massacre. He seems to feel that this chorus of condemnation, in and of itself, destroys Haimson's theory: "It is doubtful that anyone reading the press coverage of the Lena events then or now without prior knowledge of the fragmentation theory would guess at its existence or find it adequate" (173). But when we turn to Haimson, we find that he actually goes into considerably more detail about the press campaign and the Duma debate than does Melancon. He even brings out aspects of the consensus that Melancon himself passed over.28 Where, then, is the clash? One place is Haimson's assertion that there were no elite protest actions. Melancon makes his strongest blow against Haimson when he documents instances of elite protest.29 But Haimson diminishes the impact of any consensus by describing the strike movement that exploded shortly after the protest strikes and the very hard-line response by business organizations. This is the heart [End Page 873] of the Haimson polarization thesis, but Melancon does not address it, since he goes no further than the immediate aftermath of the massacre.
Melancon sets forth the "surprising consensus" he has found in these words: "As of 1912 the empire's social and political elements, from the far right to the left, agreed that laboring people required a better deal than they were getting. They also agreed that the mere quest for profit did not outweigh the right to life and the government at all levels was delinquent as regards workers" (181). How we rate such a consensus derives from our wider view of political dynamics. I myself find it much too thin and abstract to be particularly surprised if it fell apart under any sort of strain. Melancon argues, for example, that even the antisemitic nationalists were part of his consensus, although they unfortunately combined consensual themes with "noxious ritualistic anti-Semitism" (does the word "ritualistic" suggest that we should not take this antisemitism too seriously?) (173). A consensus that includes anti-capitalist proto-Communists, anti-capitalist proto-Nazis, and pro-capitalist business leaders does not seem terribly robust.
In his highly dramatic account of the Duma debate, Melancon himself shows how the consensus might fall apart. A Trudovik speaker accuses the Duma of showing "solidarity with the Lena murderers." In response, a Nationalist speaker recommends that "dogs' muzzles" be used to silence the leftists' "brazenness and gall." Despite their mutual outrage at the massacre, the Duma party groups were unable to pass any resolution with even the mildest rebuke to the government (173–79). Melancon tries his best to minimize the impact on the reader of what he aptly calls the "debacle in the Duma" (181). All the name-calling resulted from a tactless phrase here, some partisan ill will there ("people at the political antipodes employed rhetorical strategies … aimed at achieving goals other than consensus building") (178). The fact remains that these people hated and mistrusted one another. Partisan dynamics can rip apart a much more robust consensus than the one Melancon shows us (I wonder if Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites are all that far apart in their social values).
The strains imposed by the war were also waiting just around the corner. Melancon criticizes his opponents for treating the war as only an accidental cause of the revolution (194). In the overall context of his argument, I read this as an invitation to consider the war as an accidental interruption of the positive development of Russian society. But the war was not something that just happened in 1914. The war was one expression of the international pressures that helped shape everything about Russian society. Melancon provides an excellent example when he traces the Lena massacre back to the gold mining industry's monopoly position and its many personal connections within high state circles. This privileged position rested ultimately on the need to maintain the gold standard, for reasons of international competition [End Page 874] (41). We should also reflect that the very existence after 1905 of a Duma and a semi-free press was due to a failed war and a benign international environment (Russia was allowed to escape the full consequences of its military defeat by Japan). The social and political breakdown of 1917 was due to a failed war and a much less benign international environment. The international context giveth and the international context taketh away.
Nevertheless, one cannot declare Haimson the winner of this debate. He does not really show how the verbal consensus that both he and Melancon describe fits in with his earlier thesis of extreme alienation between nizy and verkhi, because he never clearly sets out this thesis in the book under review (perhaps assuming, wrongly, that we have all read and accurately remember his 1964–65 articles). Indeed, he argues here for something that sounds quite different: the workers were "ambivalent" about elite approval and even felt empowered to begin their strike movement by the chorus of elite condemnation of the government over the Lena massacre (164–65, 183). It is hard to tell whether this is meant as a qualification of his original thesis or a substantively new one.
I conclude by going over a few aspects of Haimson's argument that leave me uneasy. Haimson wants to stress the extent to which the worker alienation of 1912–14 was new and unprecedented. He occasionally mentions continuities with worker protest in the past, but grudgingly, as a forced concession. His treatment of the demand for "courteous treatment" is typical. He clearly wants to ground this demand in a "new feeling of self-worth" (my emphasis), yet adds so many qualifications that I am not sure how to present his thesis. Even with all the qualifications, my own unsystematic impression is that Haimson has overstated the novelty of these demands and of the articulate fervor with which they were presented (179–80).
Haimson treats peasant cultural influence on the workers as strictly negative, leading to demoralized and slavish behavior and nothing else. Haimson leaves the impression that the only way the village could contribute to worker militancy was by doing a thorough and instantaneous job of alienating the losers in the Stolypin reforms (201). But were peasants themselves not capable of militant collective protest? Should we not consider the possibility (advanced by the Russian authorial kollektiv, among others) that a traditional, village-based "collective mentality" was part and parcel of worker protest?30
More broadly, Haimson rarely steps beyond psychological and cultural processes. This is a matter of taste, I suppose, but speculation about whether [End Page 875] the workers felt sinfulness, guilt, or shame leaves me indifferent (187, 203). I would like to see less attention paid to the workers' emotions and more to their minds—that is, to their assessment of the society around them and in particular the chances of achieving meaningful political freedom without a revolutionary overthrow of tsarism. We would then account for the shift to Bolshevik support not by generational conflict, desire to distinguish oneself from peasant culture, and the like but by a genuine shift in the balance of plausibility between competing political strategies. Along with all the emotional rhetoric, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks presented themselves as rational alternative strategies for achieving the common goal of complete "Europeanization," that is, full political freedom—strategies that differed in their empirical assessment of the post-1905 Third of June system. But in a way reminiscent of Ascher, Haimson treats worker demands for political freedom as prima facie evidence of reformism and sees the Bolshevik message as little more than highly emotional rejectionism of existing society (227–28).
I have been able to discuss only a small sample of the issues thrown up by the interaction of these four books. Each book is valuable in itself, but taken together, they impart a genuine sense of intellectual excitement to the political history of tsarist Russia in its final years.
