Abstract
In recent articles, both Ronald Suny and Steve Smith ask that historians give heed to discourses shaping public identities and political dispositions during Russia's 1917 revolutions.1 Doing so, as Boris I. Kolonitskii has shown in Antibourgeois Propaganda and Anti-'Burzhui' Consciousness in 1917, can yield fresh perspectives on revolutionary politics and political cultures.2 In following essay, I analyze discourses of public identity in Smolensk to address an aspect of revolutionary politics that has eluded serious discussion-the weakness of liberalism in provincial Russia in Spring 1917. Liberals in provincial cities quickly found themselves on periphery of revolutionary politics in 1917-Saratov is best-known example. But historians have treated liberals' weakness in provinces as an a priori phenomenon.3 Historians of the center usually explain liberalism's weakness by pointing to personal failings of Kadet leaders, whom they envision as idealists lacking skill to govern, or as inept opportunists.4 William Rosenberg, moving beyond simplifications, concluded that the greatest failing of Petrograd party leaders in early part of
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