Social Identities in Revolutionary Russia by Madhavan K. s> Palat (review)

Abstract

564 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 revolutionary.She accepts, however, that he remained a genuine internationalist , seeing the revolution as spreadingnotjust across Europe but acrossthe world.As is to be expected given the author'sexpertisethebook isparticularly strongon thenationalminoritiesandtheforeignpolicyofthenewgovernment. There is little on social or culturalpolicy and even War Communism is paid relativelylittle attention and seen as a policy of the left ratherthan of Lenin himself. Powerwas thus all importantto Lenin and, althoughthe dreamsof a future utopia remained, the role he played in the last five years of his effective life was in creating and ruling a state. In that sense the policy of socialismin one countrytrulystartedwith Lenin, althoughlater Soviet or Russiannationalism did not. He was sincere in his attackson Great Russian chauvinism, and the author portrays him as, above all, a Westernizer, seeing German-type modernization as his goal. Indeed she arguesthat he would have preferredto starthis revolutionin WesternEurope if given the chance. It isjust one of the many contradictionsshe highlightsthat he succeeded only in isolatinghis new statefromthe Westerndevelopment he in many ways admired. School ofEuropean Studies BERYL WILLIAMS University ofSussex Palat, Madhavan K. (ed.). SocialIdentities in Revolutionay Russia.Palgrave, in associationwith IndiraGandhi National Centreforthe Arts,Basingstoke and New York,2001. XV+ 246 pp. Glossary.Notes. Index. ?47.50. THIS collection derives from an international conference held in Delhi in I996, and comprises ten chapters by contributors from India, the former Soviet Union, WesternEurope and North America. The fashionableconcept of 'identity'supposedlyprovides a common theme for the volume but, as so often happens with conference proceedings of this kind, the contributionsare in practice only loosely connected with one another and with the theme of social identities. The chronological coverage rangesfrom the mid-nineteenth century to the early Soviet period, with some of the individual chapters notablyDietrich Beyrau'susefuloverviewof the intelligentsia'srelationshipto the state, and Gregory L. Freeze'saccount of parish reform spanning the revolutions of I917. Madhavan K. Palat in his brief editorial introduction identifiesthree main groups of essaysin the volume, but these groups are not entirelycohesive, nor do they provide the primaryorganizationalprincipleof the collection. Palat'sfirstgroup dealswith the identityof region. It includesa ratherwoolly piece by V. V. Serbinenkoon 'The RussianIdea', which focuses on Dostoevskii and Vladimir Solov'ev;a chapter by Bohdan Krawchenkoon the forging of national identity among the Ukrainian peasantry in the early twentieth century; an essay by Hari Vasudevan on the identity of zemstho liberals in Tver' province; and a discussion by Harsha Ram of Velimir Khlebnikov'sconcept of Eurasia,which includes as an appendix the Russian text (with English translation) of Khlebnikov's I9I8 manifesto, 'An IndoRussian Union'. The second group of essays deals with aspects of peasant identity.A. V. Buganov considersnineteenth-centuryRussianpeasants'views REVIEWS 565 of historical figures and events; Palat examines peasants' and workers' petitions in the second third of the nineteenth century; and Judith Pallot discusses 'The Stolypin Land Reform as "Administrative Utopia"'. In addition to the chapters by Beyrau and Freeze, the final group of essays, devoted to the intelligentsiaand the Church, contains a usefuland suggestive piece by BorisKolonitskiion the concept of 'democracy'in I9I7. For this reviewer, the articles on the peasantry were of greatest interest. Pallot examines the new image of the peasant as backward,but capable of enlightenment and change which influenced the land reformersof I906 onwards.Krawchenkoarguesthat Ukrainiannational identityhad developed in the countryside by I9I7 as a result of peasant disillusionment with the prospects of agrarian reform emanating from St Petersburg, but this conclusion is merely asserted rather than convincingly demonstrated. Buganov'spiece providesa usefulEnglishsummaryof some of the materialin his Russkaiaistoriiav pamiati krest'ianXIX vekai natsional'noe samosoznanie (Moscow, I992), although it is too lightly footnoted to provide persuasive supportfor allof his claims.In contrastto older Soviet accountsof the popular images of historical figures, Buganov pays due attention to the religious dimension of peasant evaluationsof individualssuch as Ivan the Terribleand Stepan Razin, and notes that for peasants their own religious identity as Orthodox Christianswas often more important than their ethnic identity as Russians. Although his article is subtitled 'National Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century', Buganov in fact provides little evidence of the development in the countryside of a Russian national identity which overrodesocialdivisions.On the contrary,he...