Abstract
The paper considers the process of forming political authority during the 1917 Russian Revolution on the example of anarchist Shlioma Asnin. The importance of belonging to a subculture for building a political figure’s image and an enemy image is demonstrated. Various options of participation in a revolutionary subculture are considered, and mutual influence between common-criminal and revolutionary subcultures is described. Hard labor created “counter-mores” shared by both groups of criminals but social capital accumulated within political-prison subculture could not necessarily be translated into political authority at liberty. In Asnin’s case, perception of him as a revolutionary was undermined by a tattoo discovered on his body, the tattoo being linked to his common-criminal past before his “conversion” into a convinced anarchist. A revolutionary’s image was “assembled” from the elements some of which made the person unacceptable for society in general. Pathologization of opponents, in part due to subcultural identity, made political dialogue more difficult and increased the probability of violence. Methods of sociology of deviance were employed as the paper’s analytical apparatus.
Highlights
Personal authority was an important source of political power during the Russian Revolution of 1917
The paper considers the process of forming political authority during the 1917 Russian Revolution on the example of anarchist Shlioma Asnin
What turned a person into a revolutionary in 1917 and what gave him or her political authority? How was the image of a revolutionary formed and what could destroy it? We shall discuss this using the example of the anarchist Shlioma Asnin
Summary
Personal authority was an important source of political power during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Swearing addressed to crown wearers in the last years of the Russian Empire was a relatively trivial crime and was not necessarily evidence of revolutionary sentiments.20 This episode showed what gave Asnin the authority in the eyes of many other inmates, namely his preparedness to stand up to prison administrators, which was noted by political prisoners who knew him at the Shlisselburg Hard-Labor Prison. Asnin’s status as a “political” was not questioned by other prisoners; he was included in the lists of political inmates compiled by the members of the Shlisselburg fraternity of the Society of Former Political Prisoners, the historian Sergei Gessen and the memoirist Veniamin Simonovich respectively (as Simkha Asnin) Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1961), 307–14, quote on p. 307
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