States of Anxiety Scarcity and Loss in Revolutionary Russia

by Rosenberg, William G.

• ISBN13: 9780197610152
• ISBN10: 0197610153
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780197610176
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2023-10-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Amidst the vast literature on the parties and politics of revolutionary Russia and its near constant appropriation for presentist purposes over the years, States of Anxiety assesses the effects of the great scarcities and enormous losses that Russia experienced between 1914 and 1921, a period of dramatic civil conflicts and Russia's “long World War.” Scarcities meant not only the deficits of necessary goods like food, but also their accompanying anxieties and fears. Using archival documents and materials of the period almost exclusively, this study explores how the tsarist, democratic liberal, democratic socialist, and Bolshevik regimes all addressed the forms and effects of scarcity and loss in ways they hoped would assure the revolutionary outcomes of their own historical imaginations. Looking closely at their efforts, it suggests how and why each failed to do so.

Approaching the Russian revolutionary period in these terms involves exploring a broad range of connected issues. Material scarcities involved problems with market exchange, prices, and inflation, as well as procurement, production, and distribution. They involved fiscal policies, monetary emissions, and the effects of escalating debt. But they also directly engaged cultural understandings of fairness, sacrifice, and social difference, and were accompanied by what today would be called today the anxieties of “food insecurity,” the dangerous risks of unemployment, and a range of fears about family and community welfare. Officials and members of various state and public committees of various political orientations faced both the threats and actualities of market collapse, rampant speculation, black markets, increasingly visible social inequalities, and an array of emotional fields whose implications need to be understood.

The statistical and other objective dimensions of scarcity and loss are generally described in ways that omit their complex emotional dimension, as the language of “food insecurity” obscures the actual effects of hunger. While taking into account important recent contributions to a large historiography, new efforts to decipher historical feelings and emotions, and attention to the languages through which events and feelings both were represented and given coherence, this book contributes to a broader understanding of the social and cultural foundations of uprisings and revolutionary upheavals.

Author Biography

William G. Rosenberg taught for 46 years at the University of Michigan. A former President of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) and Vice President for Research of the American Historical Association, he was appointed to the board of trustees of the European University at St. Petersburg in 2006, serving as Vice Chair until the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In 2010 he was elected to the St. Petersburg Institute of History. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 13 books and more than 70 articles.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: “BEYOND THE GREAT STORIES” OF RUSSIA'S WAR AND REVOLUTION

PART I: THE IMPERIAL MEANINGS OF SCARCITY AND LOSS

Chap. 1: “FIGHTING WITH GOD” AND THE LANGUAGES OF LOSS
Assessing Patriotism
Surveilling Loyalty
Early Losses and their Implications
At the Front: The Shocks of War
Reading Soldiers' Moods
Military Censorship and the Galician Disaster

Chap. 2, WAS RUSSIA PREPARED?
“Embedded” Underdevelopment, Russia's Peasants, and the Market Problem
Fault Lines of Economic Mobilization
Russia's Railroad Lifeline
The Strains of State Finance
Assessing Loss

Chap. 3: “DYING OF HUNGER”: REPRESENTATIONS AND REALITIES OF SCARCITY
Early Voices of “Extreme Need”
The Military Zone of Violence
“Dying of Hunger”: Procurements, Prices, and the Rising Cost of Living
“Extreme Need” in the Workplace
Food Insecurities and the “Baba” Question

Chap. 4: EMPOWERING "RESPONSIBLE PUBLICS" AND THE EMERGENCE OF WAR CAPITALISM
War Industries Committees and the Special Councils
Devolving Authority, Engaging the Localities
The Progressive Bloc and the Question of Autocratic Power
Funding Production, Regulating Distribution
Contesting Authorities: The Emissary Problem
Militarization vs. Mediation: The “Workers Question”
War Capitalism and its Cultures
Rising Anxieties with the Coming of Winter

Chap. 5: SEEKING SOLUTIONS, DROWNING IN BLOOD
Narratives of Mismanagement and Malfeasance from Below in the Winter and Spring of 1916
The Contending Story of Confusion and Chaos from Above
The Vexing Problems of Rationing and Fixed Prices
State Finance as a “Bacchanalia of Corruption”
Political Dilemmas
Scarcity, Railroads, and the Labor Question: Militarization as Solution
“Brusilov's “Breakthrough” as Tragic Romance
The Soldiers' Story: “Drowning in Blood”

Chap. 6: SCRIPTING REVOLUTION
“Literally Facing Starvation”
Extending Compulsory Labor: From World War to Civil War
The Rittikh Confiscation
Subsistence Protests and the October Strikes
Russia's Revolutionary Situation
Scripting the Revolution

PART II: REVOLUTIONARY IMPERATIVES

Chap. 7: “RESPONSIBLE MEN IN WHOM THE COUNTRY HAS CONFIDENCE”: THE CHALLENGES OF REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNANCE
Writing the “Truth” in the Third Winter of War
Scarcity and Anxiety on the Home Front
Uprising, Insurrection, Revolution,
Locations and Forms of Power and Questions of Political Legitimacy
Scarcity and Social Identity
Loss and the Meanings of War
The Challenges of Revolutionary Governance

Chap. 8: ASSESSING SCARCITY, CONFRONTING LOSS
Food Anxiety and the Grain Monopoly: Legitimacy, and Function
Food Supply, Land Redistribution, and Democratic Practice
Democratizing the Railroads and the Concept of "Statization"
Controlling the Cost of Living: Revolutionary State Finances, War Capitalism, and the Liberty Loan
Giving Meaning to Loss: Politics, Passions, and the April Crisis

Chap. 9: SOCIAL CONFLICT, MEDIATION AND THE REVOLUTIONARY STATE
Politics and the First Coalition
Coalition Governance and the Weighty Actor Thesis
Seeking Security and Dignity in the Spring Strike Wave
The Ministry of Labor as a Site of Mediation
Activism in the Countryside
Once More “On the Brink of Catastrophe”

Chap. 10: “SLAUGHTER” AT THE FRONT, THE JULY INSURRECTION AND A “GOVERNMENT TO SAVE THE REVOLUTION”
Brusilov Redux: The Kerensky's Offensive
Threats to Great Russia and the Liberals' Retreat
The July Insurrection
The “Real Demands of Russian Life”
The “Government to Save the Revolution”
Once Again “On the Brink of Catastrophe”


Chap. 11: THE COLLAPSE OF WAR CAPITALISM
Village Sovereignty
Who Owns the Workplace?
Summer Strikes
Beleaguered Ministries: Labor, Trade and Industry, and Finance
War Capitalism and the Revolutionary State


Chap. 12: DEMOCRATIC PREDICAMENTS AND THE BOLSHEVIK COUP
Scarcity, Loss, and Politics at the Moscow State Conference
Kornilov, the Front, and the Countryside
“Radical Dictatorships,” Autonomous Nationalities
The Railroad Republic
The Anxieties and Predicaments of October

PART III: FROM WORLD WAR TO TOTAL WAR: SCARCITY, LOSS, AND DYSFUNCTIONAL DICTATORSHIPS AFTER OCTOBER

Chap. 13: CIRCUMSTANCE, IDEOLOGY AND BOLSHEVIK POWER
Rhetoric, Realities, and the Limits of Bolshevik Power
Illusions of Peace
Land and Bread as Metaphors of Hope
Nationalization from Below, Refinancing Production from Above, Repudiating Debt
”Still Starving” Workers and Increasingly Hungry Peasants
Dictatorship as the Primary Task of Soviet Power

Chap. 14: “OUR LIVES HAVE BECOME UNBEARABLE!”: DICTATORSHIPS IN THE “FIGHT AGAINST HUNGER”
Extreme Need as Counter-Revolution
Once Again, “The Revolution is in Danger!”:
Once Again, Mobilizing New “Solutions”
Scarcity and the Anti-Bolshevik Dictatorships
The Bolsheviks' “Fight against Hunger”
The Normalization of Concealment
Losing the “Hunger War”

Chap. 15: VIOLENCE, LOSS, AND THE COLLAPSE OF WAR COMMUNISM
“Vectors of Social Violence”
Scarcity, Loss, and the Trauma Question
Losing Great Russia: Paramilitary Violence and the Defeat of the Whites
The Fight against Desertion
Rabkrin and the Obligation to Work
"All for Transport": Tsektran and the Labor Armies
The Collapse of War Communism: “Bolshevism without the Bolsheviks”

EPILOGUE: SCARCITY, LOSS, AND SOVIET HISTORY
Soviet Russia's Long Civil War
Stalin's Assaults and Soviet "Redemption"
Loss and Scarcity after the "Great Patriotic Struggle"
Challenges and Adaptations: The Thaw, Reform, Stability, and Stagnation
Archiving the Soviet Great Story

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CITED SOURCES
NOTES
INDEX