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2. Identity and Empire: the Making of the Bolshevik EBte, 1880-1917LiUana RigaDepartment of SociologyMcGill University, MontralAugust 2000A thess submiued to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fuIDlment 01the requirements of the degree of Doctorof Philosophycopyright e LUlana Riga 2000 3. 1+1 National Ubraryof CanadaAcquisitions andBibliographie Services395 Wellington StreetOttawa ON K1A 0N4canadaBibliothque nationaledu CanadaAcquisitions etservices bibliographiques395. rue WellingtonOttawa ON K1A 0N4canadaThe author has granted a nonexclusivelicence allowing theNational Library ofCanada toreproduce, loan, distribute or sellcopies of this thesis in microfonn,paper or electronic formats.The author retains ownership ofthecopyright in this thesis. Neither thethesis nor substantial extracts from itmay be printed or otherwisereproduced without the author'spennission.L'auteur a accord une licence nonexclusive pennettant laBibliothque nationale du Canada dereproduire, prter, distribuer ouvendre des copies de cette thse sousla fonne de microfiche/film, dereproduction sur papier ou sur fonnatlectronique.L'auteur conserve la proprit dudroit d'auteur qui protge cette thse.Ni la thse ni des extraits substantielsde celle-ci ne doivent tre imprimsou autrement reproduits sans sonautorisation.0-612-70136-0Canadl 4. Table or ContentsAbstraetRsumAcknowledgementsMap: Origins of the Bolshevik Elite 1917-24PartIChapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: Literature Reviewl. The Bolshevik EliteIT. Historical Sociology on the Russian Revolutionm. Empire, nationalities, Russification and the stateChapter 3: Methods and SourcesI. Data SetII. Methods and Sourcesm. Nationality, ethnicity and language in Census dataPartnChapter4: Late Imperial Russia. 1880-1917L Nationality in Imperial state and societyClass, nationality, and estateProvincial 'civil society' vs. imperial 'civil society'The 'language question' and educationIT. Russification and nationality in late imperial RussiaChapter 5: Bolshevik Origins and the Russian EmpireLNational originsIT. Geographical originsm. Social originsIV. Education, early radicaiism, and exilepp. 1-5p.6pp.6-9pp.9-20pp.20-46p.47pp.47-48pp.48-55pp.55-61p.62p.62pp.62-84pp 84-95pp.95-101pp.l01-126p.127pp. 127-130pp.130-136pp. 136-143pp. 143-149 5. PartmChapter 6: The Jewish BolsheviksJ. Iews and the Tsarist Empirell. Social and 6national' origins of the lewish Boisheviksm. Piatnitskii: Lithuanian-Jewish radicalism in VilnaIV. Uritskii: Polish-Jewish radicalism in KievV. Zinoviev, Chubar', Kaganovich: Ukrainian-Jewish radicalismVI. Trotsky and Odessa JewryVll. Russian-Jewish Bolsheviks' early radicalismVIU. Nationalisms, anti-Semitisms, and international socialismChapter 7: Polish and Lithuanian BolsheviksI. Russian Poland and western guberniia under TsarismII. Kapsukas: Lithuanian nationalist to Boishevikm. Dzierzynski and Polish gentry radicalism in the kresyIV. Radek and Polish-lewish radicalism in GaliciaV. Why no Polish lews?Chapter 8: The Ukrainian BolsheviksI. Ukrainians under imperial ruleII. Tsiurupa and zemstvo radicalismm. Petrovskii and Lebed': Russified worker radicalism in Left BankIV. Skrypnyk: Ukrainian radicalism, the lnational' and the lsocial'V. Krestinskii and Manuit' sky: internationalists in the western provincesChapter 9: The Transcaucasian BolsheviksI. Tsarist colonial and military rule in Transcaucasiall. Imperial incorporation of elites and ldivide and rule'm. Provincial and imperial access and estate membershipIV. Narimanov and Muslim Azerbaijani radicalism, cultural and socialistV. OrakhelashviIi, Ordzhonikidze, Dhzaparidze: petty gentry socialismVI. Mikoian, Miasnikov, Shaumian: Armenian geopolitical inseeurityChapter 10: The Latvian BoisheviksI. Latvians in Baltie German societyll. Latvians in imperial Russian societynI. Stuchka: Latvian socialist radicalism and Baltie German societyIV. Berzins, Danishevskii: russophile middle class' radicalismV. Rudzutaks and Lepse: socialist labour radicalism in RigaVI. Smilga: rural gentry radiealism and Baltie Revolutionsvn. The absent EstoniansCoopter 11: Conclusionp.150pp.150-162pp.162-176pp.176-183pp.183-190pp.190-199pp.200-207pp.208-214pp.214-219p.220pp.220-228pp.228-238pp.238-255pp.255-274pp.274-277pp.278-280pp.280-299pp.299-30Spp.305-315pp.315-325pp.325-337pp.338-341pp.341-348pp.348-357pp.357-363pp.363-381pp.38 1-397pp.398-425pp.426-427pp.427-438pp.438-444pp.444-455pp.455-466pp.466-474pp.474-482pp.482-487pp.488-498 6. BibliographyAppendix to Chapter 5pp.499-S0S 7. AbstractThis study concems the sources of the revolutionary Boishevik elite 's social andethnie origins in Late Imperial Russia. The key finding is that the Boishevik leadership ofthe revolutionary years 1917-1924 was highly ethnically diverse in origin with 000Russians-- Jews, Latvians, Georgians, Armenians, Poles.. Lithuanians, and Ukrainians constitutingnearly two-thirds of the elite. The .Russian' Revolution was led primarily byelites of the empire's non-Russian national minorities. This thesis therefore considers thesources of their radicalism in the peripheries of the multinational empire.Although the 'class' language of socialism bas dominated accounts not only of thecauses of the Revolution but also of the sources of Boishevik socialism. in my view theBolsheviks were more a response to a variety of cultural. linguistic. religious. and ethniesocial identities than they were a response to class conflict. The appeal of a theory aboutclass connict does not necessarily mean that it was class conflict to which the Bolshevikswere responding; they were much more a product of the tensions of a multi-ethnic imperialstate than of the alienating 'class' effects of an industrializing Russian state.How 'peripherals' of the imperial borderlands came to espouse an ideology of theimperial 'center' is the empirical focus. Five substantive chaplers on Jews, Poles andLithuanians. Ukrainians. Transcaucasians. and Latvians, consider the sources of theirradicalism by contextualizing their biographies in regional ethnopolitics and in relationshipsto the Tsarist slate. A great attraction of Russian (Boishevik) socialism was in what ilmeant for ethnopolitics in the multi-elhnic borderlands: much of the appeal lay in itssecularism. its 'ecumenical' political vision, its universalism. its anti-nationalism, and in itsimplied commitment to "the good imperial ideaf7. The 'elective affinities' betweenindividuals ofdifferent ethnic strata and Russian socialism varied across ethnic groups, andoften within them. One of the key themes. therefore. is how a social and political identityis worked out within the context of a multinational empire, invoking s~ial processes suchas nationalism. assimilation, Russification, social mobility, access to provincial andimperial 'civil societies',linguistic and cultural choices, and ethnopolitical relationships. 8. RsumCette thse ce concentre sur les sources sociales et ethniques de l'lite rvolutionnairebolchevique la fin de l'Empire russe. L'argument central est que l'lite bolchevique desannes rvolutionnaires 1917-1924 tait d'origines ethniques trs varies; les non-Russes-IesJuifs, Lettons, Gorgiens, Annniens, Polonais, Lituaniens, et Ukrainiens-reprsentaient apeux prs deux tiers de l'lite. La Rvolution russe tait dirige principalement par les litesdes minorits non-russes de l'Empire. La thse souligne les sources du radicalisme dans lespriphries de l'empire multinational.Bien que le langage de classe du socialisme ait domin l'tude non seulement descauses de la Rvolution, mais aussi des sources du socialisme bolchevique, mon avis lesBolcheviques taient davantage une rponse a une varit d'identits sociales, culturelles,linguistiques, religieuses, et ethniques plutt qu' des conflits de classes. L'attrait d'unethorie sur les conflits de classes ne signifie pas que c'tait ce dernier que les bolcheviquesragissaient; ils taient plutt le rsultat des tensions existant dans un tat imprialpluriethnique que des effets alinant du conflit de classes dans une Russie industrielle.La voie par laquelle les 'priphraux' des frontires impriales ont embrassl'idologie de la mtropole impriale est le sujet principal de recherche. Les cinq chapitressubstantifs sur les Juifs, les Polonais et les Lituaniens, les Ukrainiens, les Transcaucasiens,et les Lettons, traitent des sources de leur radicalisme en contextualisant leurs biographiesdans les ethnopolitiques rgionales et en leur relation avec l'tat tsariste.Un des attraits principaux du socialisme russe tait ce qu'il signifiait pour lesethnopolitiques des frontires pluriethniques: une grande partie del'attraction se base sur sonengagement avec son lacisme, son oecumnisme, son universalisme, son contrenationalisme,et son ide d'un empire bienveillant. Les "affinits electives" entre lesindividus de divers niveaux ethniques, et le socialisme Russe variaient travers les groupesethniques, et souvent l'intrieur de ceux-ci. Un des thmes principaux traite de la maniredans laquelle une identit sociale et politique se forme dans le contexte d'un empiremultinational, en invoquant des proces sus sociaux comme le nationalisme, l'assimilation,la Russification, la mobilit sociale, raccs aux socits civiles provinciales et impriales,les choix linguistiques et culturels, et les relations ethnopolitiques. 9. ActaowledeatsFor financial support which permitted research for this thesis, 1 gratefullyacknowledge the assistance of a McGill University Social Science and HumanitiesResearch Grant. The McGill Department of Sociology also provided generous support inthe way ofTeaching Assistantships and severai Lectureships in political sociology. 1amalso grateful for the kind assistance of the staff and archivists al Stanford University'sHoover Institution Archives during the Summer and Fall of 1997. And finally 1would liketo thank Kevin Hagen and Richard Bacband of the McGill Geography Department for theirexpert and creative work constructing the map, based only on the barely inteUigible Russianand Gennan sources 1provided.That 1 was able to do this projecl owes absolutely everything to Professor John A.Hall, whose confidence in me and in this work in political and bistorical sociology has beenmore unwavering than my own. But as importandy, my thinking here bas been influencedby John Hall's body of work in subtle and not 50 subtle ways. And his early advice tomake my work about something', since in ~doing history' ideas will 5uggesl themselves.has been lhe organizing intellectual force behind this thesis.1am very grateful to my parents, Giorgio and Carla, and to my sister Roberta, forlove. encouragement, and support through years of graduate study and tbesis work. Myfather saved the day with last minute computer assistance, and my mother graciouslyhelped with the French translation of the abstract. Tbanks are also due to Devrirn YavuzJulie Micbaud for assistance in translating the abstractoMost especially. 1owe a great personal debt lo my husband, James Kennedy, forbis gentle constancy, for bis immovable love and faith, and for bis intellectual advice inmoments when tbese quaiities were most needed.Auronzo di Cadore, flalyJuly 2000 10. OTTOMANEMPI REE p p E- ... ~':"-__ C E N T RA L...,--................5 T....~r--.--,:-._,-( .--_... ..--i ::.-S:' -'. ------..J~.: _ ...... -ASIA1.1 1t.... ...."1,.o !CI P-~ ezI s.na,edezJ f.-.. Finns:~CheI8n"V~ ,.",.. Vocal.~,...C~popu'*d)c=J T".1CiraNzl2"2J lIshIdrl_SK!3IICmIIuuvkIIh.~--- ~~'-.-.~ ~GERMANY-. AU5TRIA-HUNGARY-.CoOngins of the Bofshevik Elite (.)1917-1924M.;or Ethnie GroupsCJGrut RUISiIn _ ltGmIniIn_ lJIcqnian _ Gn!eItE::llelonluill'l _ LIIViIn (Leal_ PoIsh and LefPs)._ luIpNn UIhuIniIn_ GermIn _ AnneniIfI_ 5wediIh _ Talilh. KunI.Jews 0BetIIn._mm lIICft INn""01""""'" lIIIll 1().',,, ofpopuI8JtJn11111'" NSIIIm boundIIyolhieof~ 11. 1Chapter 1IntroductionThis study concems the sources of the revolutionary Bolshevik elite's social andethnic origins in Late Imperial Russia. The key finding is that the Bolshevik leadership ofthe revolutionary years 1917-1924 was highly ethnieally diverse in origin with nonRussians-- Jews. Latvians. Georgians, Annenians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians -constitutingnearly two-thirds of the elite. The Russian' Revolution was led primarily byeHtes of the empire's non-Russian national minorities.Historical and political sociology has traditionally conceived of Russia'sRevolution either as a soeial revolution' understood in elass terms, or as politicalrevolution' (or political eollapse) understood in statist terms. On bath views Russia iseonceived as a modemizing -backward state'. the Revolution as .Russo-centric' , and theBolsheviks as something between modemizing elites or messianic, ideologically-inspiredpolitical revolutionaries whose Russian soul' found affinity with Marxism. Yet a betterunderstanding of the ethnie origins of the revolutionary Boishevik eHte suggests thepossibility of a rather different interpretation. This was not merely a Russian Revolutionwithin an industrializing autocratie state, but a Revolution within a multinational empire,led by a multi-ethnie revolutionary elite. The seismie shift tbat augured the revolutionaryperiod in Russia was as much the produet of higbly eomplex and differentiated ethnierelations and statuses in imperial society as it was the produet of a socioeconomicallydifferentiated industrializing state. The central question then is this: how did -peripherals'of the imperial borderlands come to espouse an ideology of the imperial center'?This tums attention to sources of radiealism in the alien' peripheries of themultinational empire. [offer an account of the Boisheviks of the revolutionary years asproducts of the late Russian empire and in understanding their politicizations. 1 considerthe relationships between the empire's constituent nationalities and the Tsarist state, asweil as the nationalities' regional ethnopolitical contexts.ln politica11y consequential respects the Russian empire remained traditionallydynastic and status-based in its social stratification, despite ils industrializing drive. Whilesocial change caused estate categories to he fluid and boundaries between status groups to 12. 2become increasingly blurred, the persistence of estates continued through the late imperialperiod, assisted bath by pressures from insecure and threatened elites and by the Russianstate' s commitment to maintaining social baniers. lndeed imperial Russian societyremained so status-particularistic that it was easier for the state to design policies of 'divideand role' within ethnicities than between them -- so pronounced were the cultural-linguisticdifferences between Ukrainian or Polish peasants and eHtes, and 50 persistent the culturallinguisticsimilarities whicb brought both Ukrainian and Polish eHtes inside imperialRussian culture. So status-related linguistic and cultural markers were shifting bathbecause of social changes and in response to Tsarist nationality policies. Russification forinstance challenged, amang other things, ethnie classifications and cultural possibilities.And the alien' peripheries produced not ooly most of the Boisheviks, but most otherradical ideological groups as weil, including Russian nationalists.Broadly then, the objectives of this thesis are three. Most narrowly and mostimmediately it is an auempt to understand the sources of the social and nationalcomposition of the Bolshevik revolutionary eHte. Their early radicalizations and how theycame to Russian Social Democrncy and Boishevism comprise the substantive focus of theCive area chapters, eacb devoted to Bolsheviks of different nationalities: Jews, Poles andLithuanians, Ukrainians, Transcaucasians, and Latvians. By working through theirbiographies and autobiographies, ( situate them within the etbnopolitical contexts of theimperial borderlands and in connection with Tsarist nationality policies.Secondly and as suggested above, the ethnic diversity of the Boishevik eHteunderscores the political importance of ethnicity or nationality and demands that this beconsidered in the social stratification of Late Imperial Russia and in its political radicalism.This study, therefore, attempts both a better appreciation of the role of linguistie andcultural identities in the social radicalism of the Russian empire, and a clearer and moreprecise role for nationality, status and 'social class'. 'Class'" 'status', and 'nation'were related in a variety of complex ways in the empire's different regions, giving rise notonly to variations in local ethnopolitics but also to differential appeals of 'empire". Theelective affinities' between individuals and Russian socialism varied across ethnie groups,and oCten within them. So in terms of social origin, for instance, the Georgians tended to 13. 3be impoverished rural gentry, the Jews educated professionals. the Latvians sons ofpropertied rural elites. the Armenians and the Azerbaijani Turk cultural-literary elites. andUk.rainians Russified workers and Russified 'middling classes'. Vet they ail becameBolsheviks. These differences, considered together with various ethnopolitical contexts(the Polish-Lithuanian borderlands, the industrializing southem Ukraine, the Right-bank,the Muslim-Christian Caucasus, the Baltics) and with various Tsarist policies. suggestpatterns of 'elective affinities' as differentiated systems of social mobility, statuses, andcultural and linguistic markers.The third objective of this study is more analytical. One of the key themes is howa social and political identity is worked out within the context of a multi-ethnie empire.This invokes a variety of social proeesses including nationalism, assimilation,acculturation. Russification, social mobility, access to provincial civil society' vs. accessto imperial civil society', socioethnic stratification, pllitical inclusion-exclusion, languageand culture. and ethnopolitieal conflict. In transition to modem industrial society,intertwined social markers -- status, rank, class, sosloviie, ethnicity, religion, language,and culture -- shifted to define new positions and social strala and new relationsbipsbetween ethnicities and between ethnie groups and the state. Some resulted in political andcultural national identities, others resulted in purely assimilationist identities. and manymore either embodied more dualistic and comple" combinations somewhere in between oroscillated between the two.Ethnopolitics in the imperial borderlands tberefore produced not only nationalists,nationalist socialists. and internationalists, but Russian eentralists' as weil - among thenon-Russians often in vicious defense of their new' identities. Sorne feroeiouslyreasserted their new' Russified identities against previous ethnic origins. Here 1includeDzienynski, Kapsukas, Manuil'sky, and Ordzhonikidze. Vet others, Narimanov andSkrypnyk, maintained national' identities -- ultimately to their very great eost. And theJews in this elite. though most were Russified and only Jewish by ongin not "affiliation',never escaped their ethnie origins; some had already intemalized surrounding antiSemitism,and though they joined Jewish' radical groupings (Le. the Bund), renounced aJewish 'ethnie' identity. 14. 4Imperial ethnopolities were also sueh that different social strata of differentethnieities found politieal affinities. So, for instance, the son of an impoverished Polishsz/achla of the kresy (Dzierzynski) had more in common with Vilna Jews than with ethnicPales in Russian Poland. The Russian educated sons of rural impoverished Georgiangentry feh more at home' in non-Georgian multi-ethnie Baku and among Azerbaijanipeasants and workers than in the Georgian capital Tiflis among European-educatedGeorgian Mensheviks. And while Polish Jews confronted a strain of Polish anti-Semitismwhieh by the tum of the century viewed Jews as the avant garde of European urbanbourgeois deeadenee and materialism (and nihilism and socialism), Ukrainian JewishBoisheviks were eonfronted with the more rural-inspired, communalistie anti-Semitism ofJews on the land'. For sorne Bolsheviks early politieal radicalism went from involvementin .provincial " "patriotie', or national ' groupings to more intemationalist' and 'socialist'ones. As testament of the initial ethnie openness' of the socialist (and nationalist) groupswhieh were often multi-ethnie and "imperial' in character. the same group had within itRussified Jews, impoverished Polish Catholie gentry, Russified Ukrainian elites, andPolonized qlllBi-aristocratie Lithuanian intelleetuals.ln terms of the organization of the thesis, Pan 1comprises two ehapters: a generalcontextual chapter on tbe Russian empire which highlights a few key relevant features oflate imperial Russia, and Chapter 5 which presents my findings on the social and nationalcomposition of the Boishevik elite. Part Il contains five chapters, each corresponding to anumerically relevant national grouping: Poles and Litbuanians. Jews, Ukrainians,Transcaucasians (Georgians, Annenians, Azerbaijani Turks), and Latvians. The Mostnumerically important national minority contingent were the Jews (17), followed by theUkrainians (8), Latvians (6), Georgians (4), and Armenians (4). Chapter 7 on the Jewsineludes a brief section on the absence of Polish Jews from Russian Poland, just asChapter 10 on the Latvians required a brief account of the absence of Estonians from therevolutionary Boishevik elite.However certain groupings have been omitted, namely the Russians, the CentralAsians, and others' (Bulgarian. Moldavian, Old Sectarian~ Belorussian, etc.). A chapteron the Russian Boisheviks wouId essentially consist of materials already presented in 15. 5other works on the Boisbeviks since Most have focused on the Russians anyway - Lenin..Bukharin, Molotov, Rykov, Tomskii.. Preobrazhenskii, etc. There were only 3 CentralAsians for whom relatively little material was available to me. The other' Bolsheviks(e.g.Rakovskii, Frunze, Shliapnikov.. Tuntul) were of such disparate nationalbackgrounds that they could not easily he grouped together and would have requiredseparale treatment.. too extensive for thesis purposes. Yet a more complete analysis of tbiseHte would necessarily include each ofthe ethnicities omitted from this thesis.The five area chapters are organized around individuals with varyiog degrees ofdetail. depending 00 the quality and quantity of source materials available. So the cbapteron the Poles and Lithuanians involves greater detail on three individuals (Dzierzynski.Kapsukas. and Radek) than the chapters on the Ukrainians or Jews. ln eacb case.however, an attempt is made to situate the individuals within their specific social context.including discussion of the relationship between the particularnationality and the state, andhetween the nationality and other nationalities. This is most clear in the cbapter on theJews in which the relationship of Jews to the Russian state is highlighted, as weil as therelationships hetween Jews and Ukrainians, Jews and Lithuanians. Jews and Russians.and Jews and Pales. 16. 6Chapter 2Litenature ReviewIn this review 1address three literature: specific studies on the composition of theBolsheviksy key historica! sociological works on the Russian Revolution, and key ideas onthe political sociology of the Tsarist empire.1. The Bolshevik eliteSynthetic works on the social or national composition of the Bolsheviks arerelatively few, though of high quality. Rigby's class analysis' of the Communist Party in1917, basecl on nearly 24.UUlJ party menibersm Tyr/, -"ouno -6U~ meJlbers ot theworking class, 1.59(, peasant. and 32.2'5 white coilar or 'other'! But tbis referTed to"occupation on the eve of the RevDJ~&t''',.arut.nnt.U'..~IJJ~in fba. tm,.1Rl.h,tJJe~J;pthe increase in the number of proletarian workerst9 and the withdrawal of theintelligentsia", those drawn from the white collar and educated strata continued to beoverrepresented vis-a-vis their numbers in the population as a whole. My own researchbased on ooly the Bolshevik elite over a seven year period reveals a much higher 'whitecollar and other' occupalionaJ and class base, however 1am in broad agreement with Rigbythat the educated strala had far higher representation than would be assumed given theirnumbers in the wider population.A different general finding resulted from Lane's very similar analysis of RussianSocial Democracy of an earlier period (1898-1907). Lane's cluster sampling technique of986 SOs was based on 'class' as an economic position. He concluded that the RSDLP wasprimarilya working class party and not a pany of middle class intellectuals. 2 Based onregional studies of the RSDLP in St. Petersburg, Moscowy lvanono-Voznesensk, Tver,Ekaterinoslav, Bakuy and Omsk, Lane found that wbile the Bolsbeviks remained tighllyconnected to the working class and tended to be more downwardly mobile' than theMensheviks, their strength lay in the Russian speaking areas of the empire (Central Russia1 T.H. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the USSR 1917-1967. Princeton. PrincelOn UniversityPress. 1968, pp.85-87.2 David laRe. The Roots of Russian Communism: A Social and Historical Sludv of Russian SocialDemocracv 1~1907. London; Martin Robenson. 1975. pp.I7-27. 17. 7and the Urals) while the Mensheviks received greater support in the south and in theCaucasus among national minorities. Accordingly, Lane found that Boishevism was more'nationally homogeneous" (e.g. Russian) and Menshevism had greater "nationaldivisions". And finally, Lane interestingly found that while Menshevism had more'townsmen" (meshchane) Boisbevism bad far more men and women of gentry origin.3My own work makes no attempt al comparison, but 1will challenge Lane's finding on theethnie homogeneity of Bolshevism and on their geographical origin: they were mostlyperipherals. based on my study of the composition on the arguably more consequentialrevolutionary period (and not in the years 1898-1907). However, [ concur with Lane'sconclusion that a distinctive feature of Russian Social Democracy (and panicularly itsBoishevik contingent) was the disproponionate number of men of gentry origin.Shapiro's landmark 1960 The Communist Party of the Soviet Union hadremarkably Iittle discussion of the nationalities composition of the party, though his moregeneral Origins of the Communist Autocracy and his essay on Jews in the revolutionarymovement did address this.~ ln his analysis of the composition of the party as a whole(not just the Boishevik elite) between 1917 and 1922 (a period very similar to mine),Shapiro focused on the youth of the pany (in 1919 112 of the pany were under 30), the faetthat they had Httle political experience, and that based on a Soviet study in 1920, only 8%bad secondary school education and 5% had received higher education.5 Shapiro found,and other scholars have generally concurred, tbat Jews abounded in the lower levels of theparty machinery, especially in the Cheka and the GPU, OCiPU, and NKVD of 1937 inwhich more than 11% of the 407 officiais were of Jewish origin.6 And finally Shapirofound that in 1923 45% of the party membership (notjust the leadership) were workers,26% peasants, and 29% others'. which if taken together with the party census of 19223 Ibid. pp.21-28. 49-50. 95-118 " 132 (Moscow). 145-148 (lvanovo-Voznesensk " Tver). 160-162(EkalCrinoslav). 183-191 (Caucasus). 209-215.-l Leonard Shapiro. The Communist Partv of the Sovict Union. Random House. New York. 1960. andShapiro. Thc Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Sovict Stuc. First Ptla.~1917-192"'.. Harvard. 1977; and Shapiros "Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement". EllenDahrendorf(Ed.). Russian Studies. Collins Harvill. London. 1986. pp.266-288.5 Shapiro. Communist Partv. pp.233.6 Shapiro. "Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movemcnt". p.286. 18. 8defined 213 of the party as 'proletarian' (e.g. those with only elementary education). [nterms of nationalities composition, and based on the same 1922 party census, Shapiroquoted Pipes' figures: 72% of the party was Russian, 5.88% Ukrainian. and 5.20%Jewish. He saw, then, a predominance of Russians and assimilated non-Russians dueprimarily to the party's centralization and its urban population base.'The differing figures on national composition in the various studies, my ownincluded, initially reflect different data sets. So, for instance, while acknowledging that the'-information provided in Granat is in some cases deficient'. of his sample of 246revolutionaries Mosse found 45% of the revolutionaries (drawn from 34.5% of thepopulation) to he of non-Russiao extraction.8 More recently Mawdsely found the 19171923CC eHte (78 including candidate members) were ooly one-half (38 of 78) GreatRussian.9 Mann's revolutionary group however. based on the leadership of the MilitaryRevolutionary Council, the 1917 Central Committee, and the Petrograd Soviet, is by mycount, at least 55% or 37 of 65 non-Russian, Most of which are Jewish.l 0The few studies making specific mention of the national or ethnic origin of Russia'srevolutionaries pose difficulties of comparison because of the use of different data sets.Mawdsely and Mosse's studies are concemed with differences between old vs. newBoisheviks (though both treat the revolutionary period as a whole); Rigby's study ofCPSU elites covered the period from the Revolution to 1967; Lane's work concems earlyBoishevism and Social Democracy more generally in the years 1898-1907; and mostrecently Mann's work-in-progress is concerned with the revol utionary seizure of power. l 1Part of the reason for the quite significant discrepancies in class or social origins,nationaHties composition, occupational structures, and other measures of socialstratification across studies (tbis thesis included) lies in the different data sets. But an7 Shapiro. Communist Pany. pp.:!13."''''7. Pipes based his sludy on the partyts own l~'" ccnsus.8 Werner Mossc~ uMakers of the Soviet Union". Slavonie and East European Review. V01.46. 1968,pp. 147148. Because of the uncven data for ail 246. Mosse's samples ....ary belween 8 and 246.9 Mawdsely. "Makers of the Soviet Union Revisited: The Bolshe"ik CC Elite in the RevolutionaryPcriod". Revolulionar" Russia. Vol.S. No.:2, Deccmber 1995. p.204.lO Calculations based on data from Vork in progress.1 L David Lane. ROOlS of Russian Communism; Rigby. Communist Part" Membership; Masse. "Makersof the Soviet Union"; E,,an Mawdsely~ "Makers orthe So"'et Union Re"isited". 19. 9equally important difficulty in finding commensurate measures across studies derives fromvariations in measures of social or "status stratifications. For instance, Shapiroobserved that a crucial problem in accurately detennining social origin was the Bolsheviksdeliberate eoncealment of non-proletarian origin. l2 Aiso problematic has been the use ofoccupation as an indicator of class origin (as Mawdsely uses it) or the use of "class as aneconomic position. with "estate' membership marking offboth social origin and occupation(as Lane uses it). Much of our use of classical social stratification categories not onlycomplicate analysis of the underlying data. but based on recent bistoriographical studies ofthe use of "class and "estate' and .profession' , we DOW know that the traditional 'estates'persisted tbrough 1917, making application of western ctass' analysis anachronistic andpotentially distorting. and that 'estate', professions', and ethnie classifications cross-eut inways more compte~.l3Moreover, Mosse's figure of 34.5% for non-Russians followed Tsarist "ethniecounting' roles, whicb iDcluded Ukrainians and Belorussians as Russians' . Masseassumed that "unless otherwise stated, a persan is of Russian (including Ukrainian andWhite Russian) extraction". So any name of slavic derivation is designated as Russian'.1, too, problematically default' as ethnie Russian those for whom Httte or no reliable data isavailable, but count Ukrainians and Belorussians as ethnically distinct. and Jews as a group- though tbey were Ukrainian Jews, Lithuanian Jews, Russian Jews. etc.II. Historical sociology on the Russian RevolutionWestern bistoriography on 1917 and the Boisheviks bas undergone at least twodistinct phases. The works of Shapiro, Pipes. Seton-Watson, and Carrere-D'Encausse.largely in response to the historiograpby of the revolutionaries tbemselves. were of the"polilical' school seeing political action as responsible for the October Revolution and forl2 Shapiro. Communist Party. p.234.l3 Gregory Freeze. 4"he Soslovie (Estale) Paradigm in Russian Social History". American HisloricalRevicw. Vol.9l. 1986. pp.1l-36; Elise Kimeriing Wirtsehafter. oOProblematies of Status Definition inImperial Russia: The Ra:nocincy", Jahrbucher fur Geschiehte Osteuropas. 40. 1992, pp.319-339; WilliamPomeranz, "'Profession' or 'Estale'? The Case of the Russian Pre-Revolutionary AiIvokalura'" TheSlavonie and East European Review. Vol.77. No.2, April 1999, pp.240-268; John W. Sloeum, "Who. andWhen, Were lhe /norodlsy? The Evolution of lhe Category of Aliens' in Imperial Russia", RussianReview.57, April 1998, pp. 137-190. 20. 10the course of politics.1-J The emphasis was on the policies of the Tsarist state and itspolitical collapse, and on the Boisheviks as disciplined, ideologically motivated politicalactors who seized power at a crucial moment of social unrest and manipulated disaffectedsocial groups. The moral outcome of 1917 was clear and unambiguous. The (usuallyRussian. but sometimes Jewish) Bolsheviks were alienated intellectuals drawn to radicalIdeologies, and particularly to the eschatological aspects of socialism. They were alienatedby an exclusionary state and by the absence of a civil society. 15 Interestingly there wasattention paid to the geopolitical pressures on the Tsarist state. not as a unitary actor, but asan imperialist power. including analyses of the Boisbevik willingness to dismantle theterritorial multinational empire al Brest-Litovsk in order to preserve the revolution. 16Although these works were sensitive to the national, ethnic, and religious dimensions ofthe Russian context, there was still a .Russo-centric bias in the accounts.Largely in response to the 'political' accounts of Russianists of the 1950's and196O's, accounts of 'social' historians sucb as Bonneil. Koeneker, Mandel, and Suny,retrieved earlier works of Haimson, and even Lukacs and Trotsky, in arguing tbat theRussian working class on its own efforts would only bave displayed 'lrade unionconsciousness'. The pivotai role of the Boisheviks was in leading revolutionary action andin creating and articulating its discourse.l 7 The Bolsheviks provided the guidingideological orientation for more general social uorest. Earlier emphasis on political factorsl-J John Erie Marot. .utA 'Post-modcm' Approach to the Russian Revolution? Commcnts on Suny", TheRussian Re'ic,,", Vol.S4, No.:!, 1995, pp.:!60-264.15 Sec Marc Raeff. Undersranding Imperial Russia: State and Society in the Cid Regime (Trans. ArthurGoldhammer). New York, 1984, on cducated society's more generaJ seareh for a civic lire and theintelligentsia's politica1 and ,-~vie exclusion.16 Helene Carrere-D'Encausse. unin: Revolution and Power. Longman (1979). 1982, especially pans ofChaptcr 2? pp.76-97, and Chapter 3; Shapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracv. pp.89-109; andHugh Seton-WalSOn. The Russian Empire, 1801-1917. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.17 Victoria Bonneil. The Rts of Rebellion: Workers Politics and Organization in SL Petersburg andMoscow. 1900-1914. Berkeley. UCB Press, 1983; Diane Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917Revolution. Princeton University Press. 1981; David Mandel. The Petrograd Workers and the FaU of theCid Regime. London? Macmillan. 1983; Ronald Grlgor Suny, 1"oward a Social History of the OCtoberRcolution". American Historical Rcview. 88. no.l (1983). pp.31-52, and "Revision and Retreat in theHistoriographyof 1917: Social History and ilS Critics", The Russian Review. Vol.53. April 1994. pp.165182;Leopold Haimson. The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Boishevism. Beacon: Boston, L955;Georg Lukacs, HislOrv and Class Consciousncss, [19191. Cambridge. MA: MIT Press. 1971. 21. 11ceded to a view of the Revolution as the culmination of 'social' forcesy socioeeonomictensions, and class contlict. These views navigated between "material" conditions and"discursive" ones, as in Suny's work, which higblights the "construction" of identities andmeanings. 18 Unlike the 'political' historians, however, the causes and outcomes of theRevolution were far more ambiguous, and earlier attention to national or ethnie factors, ifconsidered, was seen as a function of 'class' analyses.Moreover, the Bolsheviks have been seen as 'ideologists' , often to the neglect their'interests'. Richard Pipes' important and influential accounts. for instance, consistentlyconceive of the Boisheviks as recldess and power-hungry political actors. Setting asidewhether this is an accurate characterization, it does not carry sociological (or historical)understanding very far. A more suggestive approach - and one that 1have been influencedby -- has conceived of Bolshevism in Weberian tenns as a charismatic-heroic orcharismatic-salvationaist emergence, and eommunism more generally as a chiliasticsalvationistmovementy whose revolutionary dialectic "routinized neo-traditionally' in theface of the mundane needs and pressures of the members of the revolutionarycommunity.19 Yet on both views much attention has been paid to their ideas. to Leninistdoctrine, and to Bolshevik ideology, and far less attention to how and why Bolshevism hadthe social and national composition tbat it did. [n other words. we need a bettersociological connection between their "ideas' and their 'interests'.While there is great merit in the accounts of the social historians', this thesis seeksto retrieve sorne of the earlier emphasis on the Tsarist state, particularly its imperialdimension. But in so doing 1seek to rectify sorne of the Russo-centrism of the politicalapproaches by situating the analysis within the context of the late 19th century multinationalempire. And in retrieving the earlier "political' accounts, [ add to the more recent literatureon Russification, nationalities, and the (geo)politics of empire in situating Russian eventsas part of European history. Although there are excellent regional studies of revolutionary18 Maro~ ~A Post-Modem' Approach to the Russian Revolution". pp_260-264; Suny, "Nationalism andC1ass in the Russian Revolution: A Comparative Discussion", in E.R. Frankcl, J. Frankel. B. Knei-Paz.Revolution in Russia: Reassessments of 1917. Cambridge University Press. 1992, pp.219-246.i 9 [ am thinking here of the work of Ken JowitL For a more detailed discussion. see Andrew Janos'important WSocial Science. Communism. and the Dynamics of Political Change", World Politics. 44.Ocaoher 1991. pp.81-112. 22. 12events, tbey bave not generally cballenged one of the key assumptions of 1917: tbat il wasnot simply a social revolution in a state. but a revolution in a multi-ethnic empire. Classand national loyalties were in tension, but they were not as incompatible as scholars haveseen them.20 Bath iotemationalism and socialism, 1tbiole. may have had undemeath themcommitments to etbnic. national, or imperial identities expressed in the language ofc1ass.[n addition to general historiographical trends, historical sociology on the RussianRevolution and the Bolsheviks bas produced several key approaches. The influentialsocio-structural approacbes of the 1960's and 1970's viewed revolutionary eHtes. theBoisbeviks included. as modemizers. or functional elites who emerged for modemizationor developmental purposes. This was part of a general view of communism (and itsLeninist-Marxist variant) as an ideology of development and modemization. used by eHtesin backward states to organize the processes of catcbing up'. But more recent thinkinghas correctly suggested tbat these "functional eHtes' were more a producr of modemizationthan they were its functional response.:u Their roles were as much political associoeconomic.With her influential States and Social Revolutions Theda Skocpol revisited thesesodo-structural approaches, but argued that the Revolution was best understood byanalyzing the interests of the Tsarist state -- an autonomous, coercive. and bureaucratieorganization. Along with the French and Chinese Revolutions. geopolitically inducedfiscal crises and agrarian relations were important companents to an explanation of thecauses and outcomes of the revolutions. Her comparative socio-struclural approachnecessarily reduced the role of revolutionary ideologies and political eHtes by viewing themas limited by structural conditions.22 So not only their autonomous political role. but noweven their ideological role was diminished. That this was fundamentally problematic hasbeen noted.My disagreement with Skocpol's analysis lies elsewhere. Though she consistentlyreferred to the Russian state as an Imperial state" and "Imperial Russia", the consequences20 Suny makcs this argument. "Nationalism and Class"'. pp.2l9-123.21 Sec especially Janos. '"Social Science. Communism. and the Dymanics of Political Change".22 TbcdaSkocpol. Slates and Social Revolutions, Cambridge University Press. 1979, pp.168-17L 23. 13of its imperial' qualities were omitted from the argument that was then joined.23Skocpol's geopolitical account overlooked the fact that Russia was a multi-national empireand not merely an autocratie, modemizing state swimming in geopolitical waters. Ourunderstanding of the empire's geopolitical concems should take ioto consideration not onlygeopolitically-induced fiscal crises and their effects on state finances and agrarian reform -asSkocPOI does - but also on St. Petersburg's considerable frontier anxiety" about thefragility of its western and southem borderlands and the loyalty of its Most 'troublesome'subjects in such close proximity to the Austrian, German. and Ottoman empires. It wasupon these latter geopolitical worries that sorne of the Most socially consequential domesticpolicies and reforms (and Russification) were predicated: intensified state repression.language restrictions and educational policies, "ethnie and religious' and passport controls,..emergency legislation' religious (Catholic and Muslim) suppression, curtailment of localelite autonomy. the withbolding of zemstvo institutions and other local and municipalgovemment. military draft legislation, Jewish restrictions, land reform. and emancipationsettlements of national peasantries (notjust the Russian).The geopolitical threat was conceived by state elites as laying in internai sedition..irredentism, and separatism.. in relations between disloyal subjects inside imperial bordersand cO-ethnics on the other side. Indeed the social fact of the incongruence of ethnie andpolitical borders was a constitutive feature of the imperium. State elites viewed theirgreatest geopolitical threats as residing in .. international' Polish organizations seen as eitherseparatist or irredentist, but in either case thriving in Austrian Galicia. "Little Russian"separatism was similarly troublesome. Particularly after 1871 worries of pan-Gennanismand growing Gennan identity tumed attention to Jews and Ukrainians near Gennan bordersand to questions of Baltie Gennan loyalty. Tsarist rapproachment with the Ottoman state(triggered by the need to tum attention to the Balkans) meant that securing Armenian loyaltywas less urgent and Armenian radicalism more bothersome. And'lewishcosmopolitanism' began to look increasingly destabilizing and disloyal. Coneeived as23 See. for instance. Skocpol's discussion of the landed nobility. Saale and Social Revolutions. pp.85-90.II is unclear whelher lhe references are to Russian nobles or those of other nalionalities. or both. Similarlysee her discussion of the 1905 revolution as a peasant revol~ to the great omission of one of ilS mostsignificanl dimensions. the nationa1ities rebellions. 24. 14tbreats to the integrity of the empire. sedition had to he rooted out. so the response wasRussificatory and repressive toward disloyal national elites. 2~ ln addition to a better theoryof the geopolitics of the state. we May also need is a bener theory of the geopolitics of theempire.As Starr wrote. there was hardly a distinction in the minds of imperial elitesbetween foreign policies and imperial (nationatities) policies.25 Indeed even analyses ofTsarist state budgets reveal anxieties and insecurities over internai and external security: theTsarist govemment had. much like Imperial Gennany, a highly centralized budget. andvery tinle was given to provincial authorities. with Most resources devoted to centraladministration and defense. But within the centralized administrative budget, the largestponion was devoted to ~intemal surveillance' ( 1/4 of the budget in 1900).26Moreover. in addition to fiscal crisis which split elites" nationalist separatistgroupings were profoundly implicated in Russia's conduct of WWI and the geoPOlitics ofthe state's collapse. This is vastly understudied but we know. for instance, that the degreeto which the integrity of the empire was threatened by minority nationalisms before WWIbas been overstated. while the effects of the war bath on oatiooalist separatism and socialistintemationalism have been underestimated. The more than 3.5 million displaced civiliansand refugees created by the war's moving eastem front 00 the imperial borderlaods notooly challenged traditional social categories, but provided imponant social bases fornationalist and socialist groupings. 27 The German occupation of the Ukrainian tenitories.for example, was absolutely determinative. On Geoff Eley's view, for instance, the2.JQuoled in Scton-WalsOn. The Russian Empire. p314. 50 in 1849 when Kossuth was elected Ruler ofHungary. Nicholas was less concemed about the disorders in Galieia or Russian Poland lhan he was fearfulof the presence of Polish revolutionaries among the commanders of Hungarian armies ~ evidence of aninternational conspiracy againsl Russia". He wrote of Russia~s "dutYto defend the security of the boundariesof the Russia...for in the Hungarian rebellion are clearly visible the erreclS of a general plot against aH thalis sacred~ and especially against Russi~ for al the head of the rebellion, and acting as lhe main instrumentsof il. are our etemal enemies. the Poles".ZS 5. Frcderick 5Earr. -rhe Tsarist Govcmmenc the Imperial Dimension", in Jeremy Azrael, (cd.). ~NationaJilY Policcs and Practices. New York. ?raeger. L978. pp.3-38.26 Peter Gauell, ""Economie Culture. Economie Poliey, and Economie Growth in Russia 1961-1914".Cahiers du Monde Russe, 36 (1-2>, janvier-juin. 1995. pp.37-52.27 Peter Gatrell. A Whole Empire Walkin,: ReCUlees in Russia DurinB World War 1. Bloomington,Indiana: Indiana University Press. 1999. 25. 15Skoropadsky coup was stage-managed by Germans and the Hetmanate was practically afront for German requirements: 'German imperialism decisively structured options inUkrainian politics for most of 1918". as German sponsorsbip trapped Ukrainiandemocratic nationalists.28 The German occupation of Latvia also had a mobilizing effecton ethnie Latvian refugees. or 1/2 the Latvian population which was forced to evaeuate inthe two years prior to the Revolution because of Gennan invasions. These refugeesbecame imponant sources of socialist and nationalist radicalism. and created an importantdivergence in the developments of Estonian and Latvian radicalism.29The war and the 1915 Annenian genocide in Anatolia at the hands of the Turksprofoundly changed the Armenian movement in the Russian Caucasus as thousands ofrefugees fled to Baku and Tiflis: the Annenian revolutionary Dashnaks overwhelming wonAnnenian support. as war and genocide mobilized the population in a way mat 25 years ofrevolutionary activism could'not. More generally. in the (Trans) Caucasus and CentralAsia the war years saw the intervention of no less than 14 states. Indeed Pipes consideredthat no other territory of the empire had suffered greater lasses during the war than theAnnenian -- and none was as threatened by imperial integration.3o The Annenian genocidemakes tbis assessment largely true.But Jews. too. and especially Polish Jews. were threatened both by invadingarmies and by the Stavka's intensely anti-Semitie policies. though no genocide occurred.3128 Geoff Eley. '"Remapping the Nation: War. Revolutionary Upheaval. and Slate Fonnation in ca.stemEurope, 1914-1g'),.3", in Peter J. Potichnyj and Howard Aister (eds), Ukrainian-Jewish Relations inHislorical Perspective. Edmonton. 1988. p.239.29 James White, ""National Communism and Wortd Revolution: The PoliticaJ Consequences of GermanMililary Withdrawal from the 8allic Area in 1918-1919". Europe.AsiaStudies. Vol.46. No.S. 1994,pp. 1349-1369; Stanley W. Page. The Formation of the Ballie Stales: A Studv of the Effects of GreaiPower Polities Upon the Emergence of Ulhuania. Lan'la, and Estonia. Harvard University Press, 1959.30 Richard Pipes. The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nalionaiism. 1917-19".3,HarvardUniversity Press, 1964. p.208.31 [n laie 1914 the Russians lost Lodz and with it 100.000 Jewish and Polish refugees. Vith entire lewishvillages removed; 190,000 Jews were deported from Courland, Kovno. and Grodno gubemiia.. And in July1915 Warsaw. then Kaunas (with 88,()(X)) Jews. and then Vilna fell. As more than 6OO.()(X) Jews wereevacuated from the front lines into the Russian interior. 250.000 would die in the Civil War and in theSoviet-Polish War. With the de facto dissolution of the Pale, Jews entered the Russian inlerior in largenumbees for the first lime - and triggercd worries of possible assimilation, Figures in Gatrcll. A WholeEmpire Walking. pp. 145-150 and John Klier and Shiomo Lambroza, (cds) Pogroms: Ant-Jewish Violencein Modem Russian Hislorv. Cambridge University Press,. 1992. p.291. 26. 16As the plethora of armies moved through Ukrainian. Lithuanian. and Polish territories,Jews were clientalistically caught between them. In the Ukraine Jews were politicized andmobilized in great numbers to join the Bolsheviks because of the progromism of theUkrainian nationalist and the White armies. But at various times both the Austrian andGerman armies and occupying forces were quite preferential toward Jews in these borderzones since their Yiddish was familiar and they were viewed as sources of support inhostile stavic environments.32 White Tsarism's survival would ensure that Jews remain ." aconsiderable minority of6 million in a big empire rather than a series of small minorities inMany liule countries", Jewish security could conceivably also be sought by the impositionof a German Ostimperium embracing the same borderlands.33 Levene writes,"The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 seemed to providefor the latter scenario. Gennany's defeat in the west ...however,determined tbat the Jews had only one real alternative: The Bolsheviks.It was no coincidence that only the annies of these two powersmaintained a rigorous "no pogrom' poliey" .3~Ten years after Skocpol's classic McDaniel's Autocraey. Capitalism. andRevolution in Russia studied the relationship between autocratie capitalism.labor pllieies,and the Russian labor movement.35 Regarding the specifie role of the revolutionaryintelligentsia, McDaniel was concemed to understand the effects of autoeracy andcapitalism on the relationship between workers and the revolutionary intelligentsia.36However the latter was assumed to be Russian, the alienated product of a Russianautocratie state, and no distinction was made to account for the fact that there were severalnational intelligentsias and an equal numberof national working classes at play.32 See the discussion in Jonathan Frankel. "fhe Paradoxical Politics of Marginality: Thoughts on theJewish Situation During the Ycars 1914-1921". Sludies in Contemporarv Jewrv. Vol.4. 1988. p.s.33 Quoted in Mark Lcvcne. "Frontiers of Genocide: Jews in the Eastern War Zones 1914-1920 and 1941".in Panikos Pana~i (cd), Minorities in Wanime. Berg (Oxford). Pro'idence. 1993. p.99.3~Jbid.3S Tim McDaniel. AUlocracv. Capitalism. and Revolution in Russia. Berkeley. UCB Press. 1988.36 Ibid. Chapler 9. 27. 17McDaniel's study focused on the relationship between the 'vertical' demands ofautocracy and the 'horizontal' needs of eapitalism. But the "autocratie" nature of Russianstate in its eapitalist development May need to he somewbat attenuated. We know that nonRussiancommerce, capitalism. and industrialism actually flourished and thrived underRussian protection. Tatar, Greek, Armenian, Ballie German. and certain Jewish capital.for instance, were at various limes proteeted and assisted by Russian laws and anns. Andeconomie and trade polieies in the 'colonial' Transcaucasus were qualitatively distinct fromthose applied elsewhere. We know, too, tbat while merchants and industrialists displayeddifferent 'economic cultures" within the merchant soslovnie', for example. differentethnie affiliations were often reinforced, not attenuated.37The state's industrial-labor policies were often intimately related to its nationalitypolicies, particularly since Jews and capitalists were seen by the Tsarist state as proponentsofliberalism.J8 Though this. too, is understudied. we May take one eumple. Much of theancient regime state's anti-capitalism derived from i15 anti-Semitism and Jews historieassociation in commercial professions, witb "capitalist exploitation' of Russian peasantsand Russian merchants, and the urban meshchane. This is imponant beeause Jews figuredprominently in nearly ail radical groups. So important was the "Jewisb Question" in themind of the state, tbat the Minister of Interior Pieve believed that the Russian state'sgreatest problem was the 'Jewisb Question" - above the 'worker's question", the "peasantquestion", and the 'sehool's question".39 Indeed, McDaniel's research on the autocratiecharaeter of the patemalist Zubatov societies neglects i15 profound anti-Semitism: Jewishworkers were pointedly excluded from the state-run societies, to important effect.How the Jewish Question" affeeted the batlles between the Pleve's Ministry of(nterior and Witte's Ministry of Finance - battles at the hem of the autocratie capitaliststate's industrial and labor policies during the years covered by MeDaoiel's account areignored. Witte as Finance Minister pressed Russiao industrialization, and beeause of bisclassic liberal views on capitalist development he opPOsed most anti-Jewisb legislation as37 Gattell. ""Economic Culture. Economic Poticy, Economie Groo"th in Russia".38 Heinz-Dietrich Lowe. The Tsars and the Jews: Refonn. Reaction and Anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia.Im-1917. Harwood Academie Press. Switzerland. 1993. p.lll.39 Ibid.. p.139. 28. 18both uojust and hannful to the ioterests of the empire. Witte's was a "liberal capitalismversus an old regime anti-Semitism"...0 The Inlerior Minister Pieve's views 00 social andeconomic reform were defensive of aristocratie privilege. anti-capitalist. and repressivetowards (even aceulturated) Jews and bourgeoisie alike: even the Jewish greatbourgeoisie' was targeted.Moreover. 'Jewish capital' also tended ta have Russifieatory effects in localetbnopolitics. In Kiev. for instance, Tsarist officials viewed the city as a 'iRussian outpost"amid Jewish traders and Polisb landlords in a kind of siege mentality. as Russianmerchants complained of Jewish competition. In 1884 there were only 4 Christian firstmerchantsguilds as against 117 Jewish guilds; the numbers rose proportionally until thetum of the century when in 1894 there were 90 Christian guilds and 301 Jewish guilds.The pattern was reversed however. in the less lucrative second merchants guilds where 288were Christian and ooly 39 Jewisb.~1 The prominent Jewish capitalist elite in Kiev. likethe magnate Brodsky who controlled 1/4 of the empire's sugar production. and the fact thatonly 1 in lO substantial propeny owners in Kiev were Polish. while 1 in 5 were Jewish.also fueled perceptions that capital was Jewish' .-1.2Though the majority of Kiev's Jews were too poor to appear on the tax rolls. andperhaps a class' of Jewish property owners did not exist in Kiev.~3 the very Jewishdominance of commercial Kiev guaranteed that it would be "Russian. The pattern forlanguage and culture of commercial business was set: because the most influential wereJewish. imPerial Russian became the language of transactions. Indeed Hamm concludesthat the "prominence of Jewish merchants contributed ta the Russification of Kiev'scommercial culture".~ Kiev's ethnie Russian migrant labor force, ils Polish culturalinfluences.. and Jewish commerce, contributed to the Russification of Kiev' and set thesocial base for radical politics in the lale 1890'~ and again in 1905.40Ibid. pp.ll2-122.41 Figures cited in Michael Hamm. Kiev A Portrait 1800-1917. PrincelOn. 1993. pp.93-94...2 Ibid p.13 1..13 [bid., pp.5O. Herc delned as more lhan 10,000 roubles of ncomeoU[bid., p.94. [n 1897 Ulmainians were 1% of mercbants and 6% of nobles and civil servants. 29. 19So for different reasons and with different consequences, Skocpol's andMcDaniel 's, important studies ignored the nationalities and the imperial dimensions of theRussian Revolution. The traditional idiom of the -Russian' Revolution, and of therevolutionaries themselves was of course a socialist or class-based' one, seeing Russia asan essentially agrarian state wbich in ils drive for industrialized modernity was generatingthe traditional classes of a new industrial social order: the working class, the bourgeoisie,the Russian intelligentsia as the revolutionary element of the -bourgeois' class, thepeasantry, the capitalist autocratie state. But the idiom of the revolutionaries themselvesbas been taken up almost wholesale and bas set the parameters of most scbolarly inquiry.My critique here is not to deny the important role played by Russia's industrialization or itsnew 'classes', and 1 certainly do not want to minimize the controlling role of socialistideology. But perbaps empire' sbould figure more prominently in our analyses of 1917and of the Boisbeviks.Specifically, we should not take unreservedly the Revolution's class idiom. Theattractiveness of a theory about classes and a classless society should not be taken to meantbat class conflict produced it. It is one claim of this thesis that what is most interestingabout the Boisbeviks was not their class base or social composition as -bourgeoisintelleetuals' or intelligentsia, but their ethnie and national composition and that many hadbeen active in nationalist and cultural groupings. This suggests that it may not have beenclass confliet to whieh they were responding, but regional-nationalist, ethnie conflicts,interests, and ideas.Historical and soeiological work has accorded nationalism and etbnicity animportant role in European state formation in France, Germany, and the Habsburgsuceessors, but tbis dimension of Russia's transition from empire to nation-state has beenail but negleeted in ils most important state-building moment, 1917 (althougb post-I989/91scholarsbip is now somewhat problematically reading recent events back into 1917). Theappeal of socialism, 1 will suggest, was was not so mucb in its -scientifie':bistorical', ordevelopmental-functional value, orin the meaning' and eschatology it gave to the alienatedRussian intellectual as a messianic ideology. Neitber was it a -developmental' ideologyused by elites in ~backward' Russia [0 modemize. Rather, a good part of socialism's 30. 20appeal, for the Boisheviks at least. lay in its secularist and universalist theory of an impliedimperial state, in its slatism, and in i15 seeming indifference to ethnicity, itsanti-naliona/istvalue. Socialism may have been an antidote to the disintegrating effects ofan multinationalempire more than to the alienating effects of an industrializing stale.While sorne of the Russian revolutionary parties addressed the empire's nationalityquestion, the Boisheviks above ail made it an issue of central concem. As Seton-Watsonobserved. "Lenin's [nationalitiesl fonnulation [of self-determination] was certainly moreattractive to non-Russian nationalists than those of the SR's or the Menshevik's'" and theBolsheviks' opposition to Russian nationalists. led many national minorities to supportthem -- particularly during the Civil War...5III. Empire. Russification and the stateIf the Bolsheviks are re-conceived as pan of a revoit of the empire's ethnieperipheries to Romanov role. attention should tum to several important properties of theTsarist empire which produced the Boisheviks. 1address three relevant literatures on (a)the relationship between the 'Russian nation' and its empire, (b) the nature of imperial ofrole over the ethnically diverse parts of the empire, and (c) Russification or thehomogenizing, '-nationalizing" state.The Russian nation andthe Russian empireA key argument in Hosking's excellent synthetic Russia: People and Empire, 15521917is tbat Russian nationhood was imperfectly or incompletely constructed because itwas an empire, the building of an empire impeded the fonnation of a nation",46 Hoskingviews the historie Russian empire as a multi-ethnic service state which imperfectly emergedas a Russian nation' despite fitful attempts at creating a nation-state. Taking seriously the~5 Sclon-WalSOn. The Russian Empire. pp.675-676; Roman Szporluk. '7he FaU of the Tsarist Empireand the USSR: The Russian Question and lmperial (herexlension". in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parroteds,. The End of Empire. New York. M.F. Sharpe. 1997. p.77..-6 Geoffrey Hosking. Russia: People and EmDire: 1552-1917, Fonlana Press, 1998. pp.478-481. Asimilar idea was held by Russian ethnographers: thal the multinational empire hindered i15 social andeconomic developmenl. Catherine Clay. "Russian Elhnographers in the Service of Empire. 1856-1862".Siavic Review. Vol.S4. No.l. Spring 1995. pp.45-46. This is pcrhaps a compeling explanalion forRussian 'bIckwardness', 31. 21iiRussian obsession with the national problem" and its national identity~ Hosking arguesthat neither "civic" nor "ethnic" fomlS of Russian nationalism developed because-'nationhood had to be generated partly in opposition to the empire bearing its name":--The effort required to mobilize revenues and raise annies for theneeds of the empire entailed the subjection of virtually the wholepopulation. but especially the Russians. to the demands of stateservice. and thus enfeebled the creation of the community associationswhich commonly provide the basis for the civic sense of nationhood:'..J7ln other words. empire-building impeded the emergence of a civil society, which would intum have been necessary for the creation of a civic Russian nationalism. Hoskingconcludes: .6autocracy [and backwardness werel generated by the needs ofempire, and hadto he reinforced as tbat empire came increasingly into conflict with nation-building";"autocracy and backwardness were symptoms and not causes: both were generated by theway in which the building and maintaining ofempire obstructed the fonnation of a nation".So prescriptively he writes "if Russia can find a new identity for herself as a nation-stateamong other nation-states. autocracy and backwardness will fade out"...J8Suny too has argued that it was not that "Russia did not succeed in building astate.but tbat she succeeded too weil in building an empire and failed to create a ;, Russian nation'within tbat empire."..J9 Roman SZPQrluk bas come to a similar conclusion: the "Russiannation' contributed to the fall of the empire because it had no identity distinct from empireand so failed to solve the 'Russian question' ...Russia's experience has been one ofincompletenation-making".50 ln this context. Hosking's Most important claim is that theRussian Orthodox Church's failure to integrate the Russian nation was "perhaps mostdamaging ofaU!!' ,"Russia's church was compelled to renounce its function as..J7 Hosking. Rus...ia: People and Empire. [ntroducton. cspeciatly pp.~..'~-x.,vi. quote pp.x.,iv.48 Ibid, pp.x.,vi-x."tvii..J9 Ronald Grigor Suny. Ambiguous Categories: States. Empires and Nations", Post-Soviet Arrairs.Vol.ll. No.2. 1995, p. L91.50Szporluk. ',[,he Fatl of the Tsarist Empire", pp.65-66. 32. 22guarantor ofthe national myth to become the marginalizedprop ofan activist secular state. A messianic national mythwhicb had demonstrated its viability in tbe crises of thesixteenth and seventeentb centuries was spumed in favor ofa cosmopolitan Enligbtenment project which required a1l theretinements ofa 'we1l-ordered police state'.51Conceding the undesirability of the 'well-ordered police state', the sociology bere May heweak: it is extremely dHficult to imagine tbat in a multi-ethnie, multi-religious, and multiIinguistiepolity, a "'messianic national [Russianl myth" socially carried by the Churchwould have been preferable to the semi-repressive, semi-tolerant muddling through' tbatactuallyexisted. Indeed the Catherinian relegation of the role of the church to 'demoted'status may actually have been one of the empire's few beneficial features, as mueh past andpresent soeiology would tell us, because il crucially pennitted religious toleration andincorporation of non-Orthodox elites,52 But more generai1y, tbat autocracy or imperialbackwardness would have been lessened had Russia found its national identity seems, byitself, equally implausible: recent history is full of autocratie states with national identitiesfully intact.Scholars' post-l89819l concem with Russian national identity is clearly promptinga re-interpretation of Tsarism and ilS imperial collapse, one tbat moves away fromtraditional explanations of "autocracy' and backwardness'. The idea that the constructionof Russian nationhood was fractured and imperfect because of its colonial or imperialambitions seems now to he widely accepted. These recent views draw from Carlyle'sCamous conception (as Hosking acknowledges) of Russia as a "mighty empire of brutalforce" devoid of a national or cultural identity. That empire-building impeded nationbuilding,which in tum contributed to imperial collapse, however, adds an important newcausal and historical analysis deserving ofattention.My sense is that the sociology may he mis-specified. 1 would offer a differentempirical analysis, and a different antidote. My disagreement with these scholars is that5l Hosking. Russia: People and Empire. p.478.52 ln addition lo Gibbon's classic accounl on religious tolerance in carly Rome. see recenl social theorye.g. Victor Perez-Di~The RelUm of Civil Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. 33. 23Tsarist Russia's principle weakness was not tbat it bad an inc:omplete national identitybec:ause it was an empire; its prineiple weaknesses were tbat it was fundamentallyautocratie and rigidly prohibited societal organization (Russian and non-Russian) and that itwas an administratively under-govemed and under-institutionalized weak state, ultimatelyeollapsing beeause of geopolitieally-indueed nationalist separatisme As good sociologytells us., had Carlyle been more precise. by "mighty empire of brutal force" he may havesaid "despotically mighty'Jt and not "infrastructurally mighty".53 With significantexceptions (British and Ameriean) empires are typieally weak. not mighty. states. Whatmakes them weak is their inability to organize. coordinate, or mobilize their domains.unless under threat of force; part of what made the British and the American eomparativelystronger was that they had civil societies. 1 retum to the weakness of the Tsarist statebelow.More immediately. however. at least sinee Gibbon we know that despotism is not aconstitutive feature of empire, but a contingent one. The needs of empire-building cited byHosking., Szporluk., and others were also needs of state-building (demands for stateservice, linguistic rationalization. administrative centralization. etc.). And it was in itsstate-building, not nation-building. tbat the Russian empire failed most consequentially. Sothe faet that the Tsarist imperial state 'politically crystallized' in partieular ways should tellus not tbat it was an empire, but more precisely tbat its empire-building was refractedthrough a weak and autocratic state.54 The sociology may he that autocracy destroyed civilsociety,55 thereby preventing the formation of a coherent nationalism. Studies byKappeler. Weeks. and Rogger show that Tsarist eHtes' persistent fear of any fonn ofsoeietal initiative (even of the conservative and reactionary Russian kind) made it53 Michael Mann. Sources of Social Power. Vol.1. Cambridge University Press. 1986. Chapter 1. andMichael Mann "'The Autonomous Power of the State: lis Origins. Mechanics. and Rcsults". in States. Warand Capitalism: Studies in Political Sociology. (){ford. Basil Blackwell. 1988.54Mann. Sources of Social Power. Vol. IL Cambridge University Press. 1993.55 John A. Hall. "In Search of Civil Society", in John A. Hall (ed). Civil Society: Theory. Historv.Comoarison. Polily Press. 1995, ChapCer 1. especially pp.7-1S on Tocqueville and MonleSquieu. 34. 24impossible to create strong civil institutions for eilher a civie or an ethnie nationalism.56The Russian state was even hesitant and conflicted toward Russian politieal and ethnienationalism. Despite recent interest in Russian nationalism' .. 1think canonical scholarshipbad this part rigbt: autocracy. illiberalism. and the state's infrastructural weakness -- notthe absence of a coherent Russian national identity - kept the empire weak and backwardand set the conditions for social and political breakdown under pressure ofwar.[n fact. the absence of civil society may not be a constitutive feature ofempire, butit is an important feature of autocracy. The explanation for weak towns. commerce and the'missing bourgeoisie" (Hosking's excellent cbapter), or the absence of an imperial middleclass lies more in the political conditions between society and state than it does on theimperatives of empire; the British. the Dutch. the American were liberal empires withfunctioning civil societies. at least at home. But the Russian was no more liberal or tolerantin the Russian interior' than il was in its imperial borderland conquests - and indeed incertain moments il may even bave been les5 50.Gibbon's well-known concem about the corruption of Rome"s "'civie spirit'" due to'pemicious luxury" caused him to believe that it was not commerce or affluence which hadcreated the Romans' love of 'Iuxury' and 'polish' above commercial and civic pursuits, butdespotism: "indolent despair (caused by arbitrary.. conupt role1says to enjoy the presenthour and not think of future" .57 The uncertain political conditions of the pursuit ofproperty, wealth. commerce, or other fonns of 'civility' had discouraged the Romans fromactivities which required long terro planning.58 Besides a weak legal framework andpolitical infrastructure. Russian industrialists complained of state restrictions on theirfreedom of maneuver.. the arbitrary bebavior of govemment9 and ilS lack of56 Hans Rogger. "'Nationalism and the Saale; A Russian Dilemma.... Comparative Sllidics in Society andHistory, Vol.4. N.3. April 1962,. pp.2S3-264.. and Hans Rogger. Jewish Policies and Righi Wing Poliliesin Imperial Russia.. Berkeley. 1986; Andreas Kappeler, Russland Ais Vielvolkerreich: Entstehung.Geschichae, Zerfall. Munehen: Verlag C,H. Bcck.. 1992.57 EdwardGibbon, Decline and FaU of the Roman Empire, Pcnguin Classics (abridged version). 1981;J.A. Pocock, "'Setween Machiavelli and Hume: Gibbon as Civic Humanist and Philosophical HislOrian.... inG.W. Bowersoc~ John Clive. Stephen R. Graubard (cds), Edward Gibbon and the Decline and Faitcambridge MA/London.. Harvard University Press, 1977. pp. 103-1 19.58 Pocock.. "Between Machiavelli and Hume.... pp. 109-1 15. espcciaJly p.113. Corruption of civic virtuewas nOl due 10 lo.1(ul), poIish. or refinemcnl, but 10 despotisme In his defense of "polite society'" Gibbonfollows the Scots: the purpose of commercial society is 10 permit a leisured and civilized ruling class. 35. 2Saccountability.59 Despotic rule was first the cause, then the effect~ of the weakness of'civility'.ln sho~ wbat the empire required was not more nationalism but more liberalismand better state institutions. This is not to argue tbat Iiberalism would bave 'saved' theempire - indeed by 1918 almost any multi-national empire ofits scope was geopoliticallyinviable. But it May bave been that given that most of the empire's constituent nationalitiesfound sufficient 'interests' in the empire (judged by patterns of self-Russification. access topositions, bi- and multi-lingualism etc.), and 'national' identities were 50 weak and vaguelyarticulated. that greater toleration and institutional rationalization may bave softened thegeopolitical blows. (The exceptions were, of course, the Poles and the Finns. but neitherof tbese nationalities were themselves causes of imperial weakness or collapse).The antidote was (and arguably continues to be) not a stronger Russian nationalidentity, a more coherent nationalizing project.. or nationalist ideological glue for socialmobilization or cohesion, but a political and social unity predicated on some fonn ofconstitutional settlemen~ precisely because it was (and continues to he) ethnically pluralist.ln addition to the recent social tbeory cited above, Gibbon's prescription that empires hebased on 'tolerant enlightened institutions" as the foundation of social and political imperialunity still resonates.60This is not to minimize the functional requirement of the 18th and 19th centuries:'the nation-state' was the geopolitical winner over 'the empire' in part because of thesociallyand politically integrative functions of 'nation-state' building. And while Lieven isright.. in my view, to argue that at the heart of the loss of Russian legitimacy was the state'sgeopolitical weakness in the international environment..61 geopolitical failure May bave59 .,.here was no assurance that the govemment would not suddenly impose fresh restrictions on corporateactivity. still less that the regime would remove existing restrictions on company formation andorganization". Gaarelt "Economie Culture, Economie Potiey and Economie Growth". p.49.60 Edward Gibbon, The Decline and FaU of the Roman Empire; sec Giarrizzo's classie discussion ofGibbon's requirementlhat laws provide Ihe basis for the cohesion of diverse "nations', and thal poIiticalunity requires enlighlened institutions, Giuseppe Giarrizzo, Edward Gibbon e la cullura eurooea deiSenecento. Naplli: Sede dell'lstitulO, 1954, pp.2aJ-204, and on Gibbon's argumcRl on loleratioo's abilityto get cohesiveness, Patricia Craddock, Edward Gibbon: Lumioous Historian 1772-1794. Baltimore,lohnsHopkins University, 1989, p.17.61 Dominic Lieven. "Dilemmas of Empire. 1850-1918. Power, Terrilory, Identity", Journal ofCoolemoorary HislOry. Vol.32. No.2. 1999, pp. 163-200. 36. 26been in the first instance the result~ not the cause~ of the state ~s domestic weakness. WereRussia a nation-state it would likely have been a stronger state~ tbough perhaps no lessautocratie. But there were several features of Russian nation-building tbat made it quitedistinctive. First~ the development of the Russian 'nation' (in a modem sense) was quitelate.62 Russia was an essentially peasant 'nation' in the "fourth lime zone' and Russiannationalism dates i15 political phase' to the last decades of the 19th century.Second, Russian 'nation-building' occurred in an established political andgeopolitical context of nearly 400 years of building -- and being -- an empire. As Roggerargued, imperial territorial consolidation had been completed before nationalism became amajorfact in Russian life.63 So at the very core of the creation of the Russian "nation' wasilS imperial identity. The Russian imperial mission or imperial purpose was conceived, aswith so many empires since Rome, as an historical echo of Rome itself. "Moscow ThirdRome". So~ for instance, we see the Russian nationalist Mikhail Katkov's influential viewof the raie of the Russian language:"Under favorable conditions, the Russian language is destinedfor a great future in the Stavic world; it could become theindisputable center for the unity ofdiverse tribes. And it isobvious that history has prepared us for that mission..."64But this Roman archetype as 'imperial purpose' is generally vague enough that itcao be infused with virtually any imperial content, and by i15elf does not constitute a'theory ofthe imperial state' .65 This was not really a failure of a compound identity, as in'Britons". The mission of the Russian nation was to "Iead" other nations. [15 nationalidentity was fused into its longstanding imperial identity.Thirdly and relatedly. the timing of this fourth time zone' nationalism coincided62 Suny. '~Ambiguous Categories: Slates. Empires and Nations", p.191. Suny sees Russia's nationbuildingproeess as incompletc in the way Ukraine's was. [disagrce: they May both be 'incomplcle', but ifsa it was due to a very different social and political processes.63 Rogger, ~ationalism and the State", p.2SS.64Martin Katz. Mikhail Katkov: A PoIilical Biographv. 1818-1887. The Hague, Mouton. 1966. pp.62--63.65 50. for instance. the same Roman Imperial archetype: on the British 'imperial purpose' in compuisonlo Rome. Linda Colley, Bnlons. Forgins lhe Nation. 1707-1837. Pimlico. 1992. Chapler 4, or TomNaim's discussion of ScotJand's cole as "1he junioc panner in the New Rome", The Break-Up of Britain:Crisis and Neo-NationaJism. London. New Lert Books. 1971, p.129; on lhe Spanish. Anthony Pagden,Lords of alilhe Worlds. New haven, CT. 1995. 37. 27with the European iage of empire'. Russian nationalism's imperial mission borrowed thefullness of European racialist and geopolitical militarism (e.g. witness the justifications forRussia's expansion in Central Asia). Szporluk writes that Russia's was an empire in theage of nationalism'. Yet Russia had been an empire for 400 years; rather it was theimagining' of its nation in ithe age ofempire'. Russian nation-building was imagined in ageopolitical context in which other European powers were articulating their imperialambitions, and Russian nationalism developed late in the 19th century in the service of a400 year empire. Indeed Russian poliey makers' very motivation for transfonning theempire into a ination-state' was that this would strengthen both its geopolitical power in theinternational arena and that it would strengthen autocracy. They considered this to he thelesson of the age.The fourth feature of the development of the Russian "nation' was that it was not. toborrow Gellner's model. a "High Culture' which was then diffused. Suny is correct todisagree with Beissinger's claim that the Tsarist regime did wbat the French and Englishdid in creating loyal subjects by transforming their cultural identities: Russia's integrationof elites was very differentiated across nationalities, and minority peasant populations werehardly integraled into the Russian "nation', retaining for the most part their tribal, ethnie,and religious identities.66 There was, as Suny points out, no ethnie nation-making projector even consistent and effective Russification program" to "nationalize' subjects as therewas in France around the idea of the "nation' .67 But neitber was tbere such a ination-making'program in Russia itself designed to make "Russian ' peasants into Russians' . Inpart this was because, as Hosking emphasizes, Russian' High Culture was itself hardlyRussian but European, cosmopolitan, and borrowed.Fifth. if tbe creation of the Russian nation did not involve the diffusion of a HighCulture, neither did it involve the universalization of "Iow' or peasant culture, as in mast ofCentral Europe's nation-building movements. And this despite its being an essentiallypeasant nation. Neither Populists9 nor Tsars. nor Church effectively served as spokesmen66 Suny. 06Ambiguous Categories: States, Empires. and Nations", p.191. We can also add the Mostimp:n1ant- linguistic identities.67 Ibid. 38. 28for the Russian narod.Sixth and reiatedlY9 as Resbetar said of the Ukraine: 'no middle class9 nonationalism'. None of the Russian middle social strala - the First Element (bureaucracY)9the Second Element (zemstvo deputies)9 'educated political society' (obshchestvennost)9and the Third Bernent (ra:nochintsy) - were able to articulate a national identity or 'speakfor the nation as did the Frencb Third Estate (as Rogger argues) or the '''towns andmissing bourgeoisie" (as Hosking argues).68 There was no 'middle dass nation' (Mann'sterm for Britain).ln shon, neitber a slate directed 'nationalism from above' on the Prussian model,nor a social movement 'nationalism from below' (High Culture9Low Culture9or "Middleclass9) could develop in state whicb feared any societal associatioD.69 As Ragger wrote,19th century Russian nationalism could only with difficulty view the Tsarist state as theembodiment of the "national purpose"9"white the slate9for its part9looked upon everyautonomous expression of nationaiism witb fear and suspicion".70 Russian nationalism9be argued, remained essentially a problem of cultural identity for elites" and not a politicalreality" since imperial "territorial consolidation brought witb il no extension of politicalrigbts, no interpenetration of state and society, no lasting accommodation between them''':no fonn of nationalism -- radical, liberal, or conservative - was acceptable to the Russianslate, not even under pressure of WW1.71 So in the Russian case al least, we ean amendReshetarslighdy: no civil society, DO nationalismeAnd finally, the most overlooked feature of the those who did embody and advocatean official nationality' and/or an ethnie Russian nationalism were eitber Russianadministralors or settlers in the imperial peripheries or non-Russians. [discuss possiblereasons for this - lack of confidence, weak: ethnie Russian presence in the peripheries, therise of regional-national identities, and the fael tbat the Russian was a .. geopolitical state' -68 Rogger. "Nalionalism and the State". pp.263-264; Hosking. Russia: People and Empire. pp.319, 479andpassim ntChaptcron the '1"owns and Missing Bourgeoisie",69 This is derived from John A. Hall's typology, "Nationalisms: Classified and E.~plained". OaedaIus.Vol.122. No.3, Summer 1993. pp. 1-28.70 Hans Rogger. ""Nationaiism and the State", p.2S3.71 Ibid.. pp.2S6. 262. 39. 29in the next cbapter. But tbis was as true of "Official Nationalityn as it was of anti-Semitism. Nationalist Rigbtism, and ultimately Bolsbevism.Reiber and Starr argued tbat, apparently in contrast to other empires, Russiansettlers and colonizers in the peripheries (in part because tbey included Cossacks and OldSectarians) did not really develop a "settlermentality" ora "distinctive cultural identity".721 disagree. Russian seulers and imperial administrators (many of whom were nonRussian)living in the 'shatterzones' in a kind ofpennanent 'ruling insecurity' and anxietywere the initial bearers of an ethnie Russian na1ionalism: anti-Semitism, innovations' inJudeophobia and Polonophobia', conservative rightism, Russificatory policies, illiberaleconomic practices and policies, and Great Russian nationalism itself, ail originated amongRussians in the imperial peripheries, not in the Russian center. We know that most of theempire's greatest rightists and Russian nationalists were not from Petersburg, Moscow orthe Central Russian provinces, but from the western borderlands (Vilna, Bessarabia,Volynia, and Kiev). Particularly after 1905 the western borderlands were strongholds ofnationalist and rightist parties, anti-Semitism, and polonophobia. 73 The Russian landlordsin the southwest were the core of the Russian Nationalist Party and the rightists in the 3rdand 4th Dumas. 'Innovations' in Judeophobia (initially borrowed' from Polish rule) camefrom Govemor-Generals and other officiais in the western provinces not from Petersburgelites.74 Demands for restrictions 00 non-Russian commerce and trade (especially towardJews, Germans, and Armeniaos) came from Russian merchants and financiers. In 1905progromism was primarily a southem Russian' or Ukrainian pbenomenon socially carriedby Russian and Ukrainian workers and peasants responding to calls from groups like theBlack Hundreds, who following the announcements ofJewish liberalizations contained inthe Detober Manifesto set out in reactionary defense of Fatherland and Tsar.75 And themost influential proponents of "Official Nationality" of the first balf of the L9th century72 Reibery "Struggle over the Borderiands". p.85; Starr. "1'he Tsarist Govemment". pp.3-38.73 Don Rawson. Russian RightislS and the Revolution of 1905, Cambridge University Pressy 1995;Theodore Weeks. Nation and Stale in laie Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification 00 the WesternFmotier. 1863-1914. DeKalb. 1996.74Weeks. Nation and Saale in laie Imperial Russia.7SKlierand Lambrom(cds), Posroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modem Russian HislOrv. 40. 30were largely non-Russians. and in composition bore strong resemblance to the Bolsbeviks.Reiber argues that refonn. revolution. and Russification '''rippled out from the metropolecore to tbe periphery".76 but the sociology of these processes suggests the oppositedynamic: they originated in the peripberies and moved into the center.Lieven writes tbat "twice in this century empire in Russia has been brought downabove ail by a revoit among ethnie Russians against the burdens ofempire and the ideologythat sustains them".77 1am not sure that this is true: ethnie Russians both times began to'liberalize'. 'refonn', or 'modemize', and bath times did 50 in defense of empire or to savethe empire and the ideology that sustained it, wbile the true revoit against the burdens ofempire (and the ideology that sustained it) actually came from the non-Russial1 ethnieperipheries. In short, bOlh an ethnie Russian national identity. andan imperial, geoPOliticalRussian identity were products not of the imperial 'center' but of 'peripherals', Russianand non-Russian. The negative argument is tbat tbere was no Russian nationalism becauseautocratie Russia bad no civil society; the positive argument is that tbe social carriers ofmuch of the Russian or imperial 'national' identity that did exist bring us to the very core ofthe cultural dimensions of empire, to tbe relationsbip between metropole and peripheries,and to Boisbevism and how 'peripherals' come to espouse an ideology of the 'metropole'.The imperial Slale andimperial rule1 begin with Gibbon on imperial rule. Momigliano's classic work argued matGibbon's history of Rome represented the crocial dilemma between "enlightenment" and"Christianity"; and Gibbon's bostility to Rome as an 'empire"78 was firmly 18th century:he saw it as the "extended despotism" of a "universai monarcby",79 quite distinct from theprinciples of the British empire. More specificallY9 for Gibbon the social intricacies ofimperial society are what cnacially distinguished the accumulation of Roman despotism76 Rieber WStruggleoverthe Bordcrlands".77 Lieven. "1lilemmas of Empire". p.l64.78 Arnaldo Momigliano. 04(jibbon's Contribution to Hislorical Melhoo". in Momigliano. Sludies inHistoriographv. London. L966. pp.40-55.79 John Robertson. "Gibbon's Roman Empire as a universal monarchy: DeclilU!andFall and the imperialidea in early modem Europe". in McKiuerick and Quinault, (005). Edward Gibbon and Empire, p.265. 41. 31from other run-of-the-mill despotisms.Gibbon was not deeply nterested in Rome's size, extension. or 'overextension'.Rather he wanted to understand the sources of cohesion of the empire on the premise matextended societies are held together by 'artifice' .80 "Small societies", he believed. bave acertain cobesion which "extended societies" do not, but which they create 'artificially'. Thedifferences between small. organic' units and gigantic, diverse empires he borrowed fromMontesquieu. further believing tbat in small societies the slippage between culture andmanageable institutions is relatively sligbt, while in empires il is far greater. 81 The"artifice" and Intolerance of Rome, not the size of Rome, was al fault in its decline.82Giarrizzo insightfully argued that Gibbon 's moral bistory calling for an"enlightenment tolerance" was an essentially pre-modem relativismotradi:.ionaJ