Early Twentieth-century Russian Research Articles

The War at Home: Photography, Political Violence, and Spectacle in the Russian Revolution of 1905

Abstract In early twentieth-century Russia, a disastrous war and social revolution shook the foundations of the imperial state, unleashing the press from censorship and demanding innovation in media coverage. At this very moment, new photographic technology was democratizing access and making high-quality reproductions affordable. This article explores how photography responded to and visualized the unprecedented political violence that engulfed Russia during the Revolution of 1905. Situating this “war at home” in a global context of early commercial and humanitarian photography of violence, it charts the emergence of distinctive visual regimes and spectatorial practices. As photographs made political violence visible within an unruly public sphere, they spotlighted some forms of violence and occluded others. Visual frames and narratives shaped new modes of representation and spectatorship, including regimes of commemoration, documentation, sensationalism, and forensics. This article opens with the most conventional photographic form, the studio portrait, and shows how it became imbricated with the political struggle and a forum for contesting the status of victim and martyr. The second section considers how the illustrated press crafted the terrorist bombing as a visual spectacle, using images with paratext to tell different kinds of stories. Shifting focus from the event to the body, the final section analyzes explicit photographs of the corpse. By exposing the violated body to the public gaze, these photographs posed a question fundamental to modernity, capitalism, and photography: who counts as fully human? This case study concludes with reflections on the categories of proximity and distance in the photography of violence. While the revolution was suppressed by 1907, it inaugurated a vibrant era of mass culture, capitalist consumption, and cultural pessimism, in which photography and film would play increasingly dominant roles.

Civilizational Myth and Class Politics

Abstract What is the connection between class and race? Socialist revolutionaries in early twentieth-century Russia engaged with this question in their political essays. The imperial partition of China and the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway made the China question one of the most topical issues in Russia. This article examines Lenin’s essays on China in which he criticizes racist ideas popular in Russia and Europe. By comparing his essays with other Russian political commentaries on China, this article argues that Lenin views racism as a matter of political economy and global class politics. On the one hand, the myth of racial rivalry and clash of civilizations veils class struggle. On the other, racial and ethnic issues complicate class politics. Lenin’s critique of racism elaborated in the discussion of wars and revolutions in China is not a dogmatic extension of Marx, but directly addresses the transnational migration, geopolitical tension, and intellectual network.

Lower‐Class Reading in Late Imperial Russia

AbstractThis article demonstrates widespread engagement of lower‐class people with the written word in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russian Empire, in rural and urban locales, in homes, workplaces, and social spaces. We explore how lower‐class people read: the daily habits, personal relationships, and social spaces that shaped engagement with texts, and especially collective reading, a widespread phenomenon that extended the reach of the written word to less‐ or non‐literate audiences. Many lower‐class Russians experienced reading as a collective, public, aural activity, not a solitary, private, internal one. Reading was entwined with the rhythms of everyday social life and provoked critical thought and active engagement within countless lower‐class reading groups, as evidenced by collective letter‐writing and observations of post‐reading discussions. This article therefore contributes to scholarship exploring lower‐class Russians’ conscious and meaningful engagement with the textual world, and by association with late imperial Russia’s transforming social and political spheres.

Platonov or bust

The author presents a highly personal case for considering Andrey Platonov as the third person of a ‘holy trinity’ of writers from early twentieth-century Russia. Where Chekhov foresaw huge social upheaval (but died before seeing it) and Gorky staged the beginnings of insurrection, Platonov explores the fallout of the Revolution. The malign impact of Gorky’s doctrine of Socialist Realism on Platonov’s life and work is tracked. The challenges of adapting Platonov’s fiction to the stage are examined, and a case study offered of the new play Bliss, based on ‘The River Potudan’, which premiered in Platonov’s hometown of Voronezh, in June 2019.

From Birth to Marriage: Sex Ratios in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Urals

This article analyses sex ratios in late nineteenth – to early twentieth-century Russia focusing on the easternmost frontier of its European part – Perm Province with a population of about 3 million. High sex ratio at birth, in infancy, and childhood has been widely used to assess gender discriminatory practices in several countries, including some European ones. Russia is usually depicted as highly patriarchal with a low social status of women, always subordinated to their fathers and husbands. However, little has been done to study sex ratios. This article presents the first long-term research on sex ratio which relies on county (uyezd)-level information from the 1897 Russian census and the first Soviet 1926 census as well as the household censuses of 1887, 1900, and 1912. The authors also used local statistics based on the parish records with vital events. Additionally, they computed the sex ratios in different groups from birth to age at marriage, their dynamics over almost 40 years and their correlation with several factors including infant mortality rates, religious adherence, and occupations. They did not find signs of gender specific practices discriminating females right after their birth, during infancy or childhood. The research shows that average sex ratios at birth in Perm province were close to the biological norm 105, and its dramatic decrease in the following months was due to the high infant mortality rate combined with the girls’ biological advantage. This advantage, however, ended once they reached marriageable age.

Modification of the Principles of Freedom and Equality in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Liberal Thought

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the change in interpretation of the principles of freedom and equality in liberal thought in Russian in the early twentieth century. From the classical negative understanding of freedom as noninterference of the state in a person’s private life, the new liberalism transitioned to a positive interpretation of freedom as the state’s ensuring of conditions for citizens to enjoy equal freedom. The classical liberal interpretation of equality as the absence of various social privileges and restrictions was supplemented by the idea of equality of opportunity. Thus, formal-legal equality was balanced with social equality. With that in mind, this article devotes special attention to the new liberals’ defense of the right to a decent living as a complex of personal social rights, as a rights claim that allows every citizen to demand a minimum of social benefits from the state. This article shows that early-twentieth-century liberals proposed a qualitatively new interpretation of the relationship between the state and the individual, one that affirmed the mutual rights and obligations of the individual and the state and entailed the expansion of the latter’s social functions. The author concludes that early-twentieth-century liberalism substantiated the idea of a legal social state for which implementation has proven the most important task of the current stage of social development.

The Social Ideal of Early Twentieth-Century Russian Liberal-Centrists

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the origins and essence of the social ideal of the early-twentieth-century Russian liberal-centrists. We note the leading role played by a number of their most prominent representatives who determined the direction of the oldest liberal publications in Russia (the journal Vestnik Evropy and the newspaper Russkie Vedomosti) in shaping the unique quality of Russian liberalism, in forming the “core” of general liberal ideas about the future (beginning in the 1860s). The author establishes that the patriarchs of liberal centrism in the post-reform decades laid the foundations of the “new liberalism” in Russia and argues that it was the liberal-centrists who played the role of “custodians of the foundations” of Russian liberalism in the early twentieth century. The article describes the differences in the sociopolitical position defended by the liberal “center” ideologists and by the party-organizational and strategic-tactical views of the Cadets and the Octobrists. It emphasizes the significance of the psychological and moral–ethical standpoints of the liberal-centrists in the process of their political self-determination. The author shows the innovative character of ideas put forward by the representatives of the “centrist” wing of early-twentieth-century Russian liberalism. Those innovations are especially obvious in the field of party-building, and in the essential contribution to the development of education and to the development of church and religious issues as one of the key concerns in the process of reform. The author draws conclusions about the demand for the liberal-centrist social ideal both in the early twentieth century and in the present day.

The Experience of Deaconesses in Europe as a Basis for Organising a Marfo-Mariinsky Convent of Mercy

The article explores the attempt to revive the order of deaconesses, which existed since antiquity, by Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent founded by her in Moscow, in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. Raised in the European tradition of charity and benevolence, the Grand Duchess Elisabeth transferred her experience of charitable ministry to the Russian land. The article demonstrates that the idea of reviving the order of deaconesses was met with a mixed public reaction. “A Great Undertaking in Moscow” was the title of the article on the founding of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent by the famous philosopher Vasily Rozanov. At the same time Bishop Hermogenes (Dolganov) of Saratov was categorically against the institution of deaconesses, mentioning in the heat of the debate that the idea of reviving the order was “muddled with Protestant yeast”. The article outlines the complex process of discussing the question of deaconesses. The Synod considered it in two sessions, in March and November–December 1911. Since the Synod failed to arrive at a unified position, it was decided to postpone consideration of the issue to the Local Council. However, the 1917–1918 Council never had time to reach a decision on the diaconesses, as its sessions were discontinued under pressure from the Soviet authorities. The question of re-establishing the order of deaconesses on a full scale is not on the current agenda. Nevertheless, the experience of early twentieth-century Russia is quite relevant and needed today.

Nethercott , Frances Writing History in Late Imperial Russia: Scholarship and the Literary Canon (review)

REVIEWS 771 Nethercott, Frances. Writing History in Late Imperial Russia: Scholarship and the Literary Canon. Library of Modern Russia. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2020. x + 280 pp. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. £90.00; £28.99: £26.09 (e-book). No-one doubts that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian novelists and poets cast light on Russian history, but Frances Nethercott argues that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian historians reflect or embody trends in Russian literature. This is hardly surprising, for many of the historians who figure in the book received their training in what were once called ‘Historico-Philological Faculties’ (i.e. parts of universities in which both history and literature were studied), and until quite late in the nineteenth century historical writing in most European countries, not just in Russia, was thought to be a subdivision of belles-lettres rather than the less entertaining discipline it often is today. It was a rare historian in nineteenth-century Europe who did not derive a degree of inspiration from the historical novels of Walter Scott. Nethercott knows these things, and by way of contextualizing her Russian historians speaks of the literary dimension of the work of Jules Michelet, Augustin Thierry and Hippolyte Taine. She might have added Lord Macaulay, who was certainly style-driven and no less famous for his Lays of Ancient Rome than for his History of England. Nevertheless, the thesis of the book reminds readers of a truth they may have forgotten, and may also do something to broaden the modern understanding of what should be included in the classical Russian literary canon. Today, pre-1917 Russian historians are usually assigned to political, ideological, chronological, typological, or geographical (rather than literary) categories; they tend to be divided into statists and populists, idealists and postivists,modernistsandmedievalists,synthesizersanddocument-collectors, Russianists and Europeanists, or historians of the ‘Moscow School’ or the ‘St Petersburg School’ (rather than, say, writers of epics or lyrics). Nethercott cuts across such polarities by thinking of her historians as writers first and truthseekers second. Her chapters are thematic rather than chronological (let alone biographical). After discussing, in chapter one, the part that the state thought it should play in the management of historical instruction and publication in Russia (was it to be a hands-off patron or an interventionist overseer?), in chapter two she sketches the literary sensibilities of some of the historians whose work best enables her to make her case (especially Timofei Granovskii, Vasilii Kliuchevskii and Ivan Grevs, who are perhaps the scholars who appear most frequently in the book as a whole). The later chapters deal with Russian historians’ style; their interest in providing portraits of historical figures; the extent to which and the reasons why they made use of literary evidence; their SEER, 99, 4, OCTOBER 2021 772 depiction of place; and their work on poets and novelists (Grevs, for example, on Turgenev). In the final chapter the author returns to her over-arching question: whether we should be thinking of tsarist historiography not as art or science but, at the very least, as a literary-investigative hybrid. The book makes no attempt to embrace the work of all the historians at work in nineteenth- or early twentieth-century Russia. Indeed, Nethercott’s approach limits the number of historians on whom she can focus, for not all the historians at work in her period are grist to her mill. Different readers will have different views about who should have been included and who omitted. The present reviewer particularly welcomed the appearances in the book of Nikolai Kostomarov and did not regret the near-total absence of Nikolai Ustrialov and Sergei Solov´ev, but he was disappointed that Nikolai Polevoi did not attract much attention and that neither Ivan Beliaev nor Vasilii Semevskii rated a mention. But the book is not trying to supplant George Vernadsky’s Russian Historiography: A History (Belmont, MA, 1978), let alone the monstrous volumes of the collective Soviet Ocherki istorii istoricheskoi nauki v SSSR (5 volumes + 2 volumes of bibliography, Moscow, 1955–85). Dr Nethercott is putting forward a thesis. At times, she protests too much, for the endnotes take up more than a quarter of...

Cronin , Glenn Disenchanted Wanderer: The Apocalyptic Vision of Konstantin Leontiev (review)

SEER, 99, 4, OCTOBER 2021 772 depiction of place; and their work on poets and novelists (Grevs, for example, on Turgenev). In the final chapter the author returns to her over-arching question: whether we should be thinking of tsarist historiography not as art or science but, at the very least, as a literary-investigative hybrid. The book makes no attempt to embrace the work of all the historians at work in nineteenth- or early twentieth-century Russia. Indeed, Nethercott’s approach limits the number of historians on whom she can focus, for not all the historians at work in her period are grist to her mill. Different readers will have different views about who should have been included and who omitted. The present reviewer particularly welcomed the appearances in the book of Nikolai Kostomarov and did not regret the near-total absence of Nikolai Ustrialov and Sergei Solov´ev, but he was disappointed that Nikolai Polevoi did not attract much attention and that neither Ivan Beliaev nor Vasilii Semevskii rated a mention. But the book is not trying to supplant George Vernadsky’s Russian Historiography: A History (Belmont, MA, 1978), let alone the monstrous volumes of the collective Soviet Ocherki istorii istoricheskoi nauki v SSSR (5 volumes + 2 volumes of bibliography, Moscow, 1955–85). Dr Nethercott is putting forward a thesis. At times, she protests too much, for the endnotes take up more than a quarter of her space and often continue discussions begun in the text. Nevertheless, the book achieves its purpose of suggesting an additional way of reading some of the famous Russian-language historians of the later tsarist period. Newcastle University David Saunders Cronin, Glenn. Disenchanted Wanderer: The Apocalyptic Vision of Konstantin Leontiev. NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Northern Illinois University Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2021. xi + 261 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $49.95. In the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, there has been a flowering of scholarly interest in Konstantin Nikolaevich Leont´ev (1831–91), especially in Russia. Glenn Cronin has written the first English-language biography of Leont´ev since Stephen Lukashevich’s Konstantin Leontev, 1831–91: A Study in Russian ‘Heroic Vitalism’ (New York, 1967). Lukashevich adopted a narrow, psychological approach and failed to produce a convincing picture of his subject. By contrast, Cronin’s highly readable biography is rooted in deep knowledge of the intellectual and literary context of Leont´ev’s life. After studying medicine and serving as a military doctor in the Crimean War, Leont´ev sought to make his mark as a writer. He emerged as a defender REVIEWS 773 of art for art’s sake, as opposed to the view, predominant in Russian letters at the time, that the proper function of literature was to draw attention to social problems. Cronin surveys Leont´ev’s writings from this period of his life, finding early precursors of the emphasis on ‘unity in variety’ which would be the hallmark of his later thought (p. 18). Having failed to earn his living as an author, Leont´ev joined the diplomatic service, and between 1863 and 1871 he served in various Russian consulates in the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Throughout this period Leont´ev continued to write, and Cronin traces his intellectual development through his novels. However, Leont´ev’s official diplomatic activities receive only cursory treatment, despite the availability of his dispatches, which depict how the struggle between the great powers for influence over the Ottoman Empire unfolded between their representatives in remote postings. In July 1871, Leont´ev abandoned his post in Salonica in order to take up residence in the Orthodox monasteries on Mount Athos. His flight was prompted by a simultaneous illness and religious awakening, which, Cronin unconvincingly suggests, were the product of guilt about an illicit relationship with his niece Maria. Cronin’s treatment of Leont´ev’s time on Athos is oddly perfunctory, and relatively little effort is made to connect his experiences as a diplomat and a pilgrim with the developmentoftheviewsexpressedintheprofusionofexplicitlypoliticalworks, most notably Byzantinism and Slavdom (1875), which Leont´ev subsequently produced while residing in Constantinople. Cronin does...

The Peripheries of Omnivorousness: Vegetarian Canteens and Social Activism in the Early Twentieth-Century Russian Empire

ABSTRACT Unlike the British, American, or Central European vegetarian movements, which emerged in the nineteenth century, organized vegetarianism did not emerge in the Russian Empire until the turn of the century. By the 1910s, enthusiasts had formed vegetarian societies and developed an infrastructure in many of the empire’s cities. Drawing on mainstream literature and utilizing a variety of primary sources, this article examines vegetarian eating establishments started by vegetarian activists in the early twentieth century. It uncovers the rationale behind its emergence, ideological framework and disputes, and the mechanisms that brought it to life, showcasing the collective efforts to promote a vegetarian dietary regimen and worldview. I argue that vegetarian canteens appeared as multifunctional venues resulting from a fledgling vegetarian activism. Finally, the study unveils what was served and eaten in the vegetarian canteens of the early twentieth century, shedding light on urban vegetarian cuisine(s) in terms of its form and content in some European parts of the Russian Empire.

The Moment of Worldwide Renewal: Hillel Zeitlin and the Theosophical Activity in Warsaw 1917–1924

Abstract This article examines the idiosyncratic conduct of the philosopher, journalist and mystic, Hillel Zeitlin (1871–1942). Both Zeitlin's writings and activities are unique or even strange when viewed against the backdrop of the Jewish streets of Warsaw during those years, even when considering other “neo-Hasidic” projects. He published poem-prayers and a personal-mystical diary, founded journals, called for religious and spiritual awakening and tried to start mystical study and prayer groups. Zeitlin's work had a messianic fervor that was lacking in the activity of other Jewish figures. Despite an expansion of scholarly interest in Zeitlin's writings and activities, no satisfactory explanation of his behavior has yet been proposed. This article contextualizes Zeitlin's writing and activities in light of those of various spiritual and esoteric movements that flourished in early twentieth century Poland, Russia and Germany, in particular, those of the Theosophical Societies in Warsaw. He was aware and deeply sympathetic to the various movements of spiritual awakening, and these affected his work profoundly.

The Phenomenon of Conversion from Orthodoxy to the Armenian Faith in the Russian Empire in the 19th - early 20th Century

The article analyzes why and how persons of the Orthodox confession converted to the Armenian faith in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian Empire. This phenomenon is linked to the practice of mixed marriages between persons belonging to the Orthodox and Armenian confessions. While the status of non-Orthodox Christian confessions in Russia during the synodal period has received a good amount of scholarly attention, not much research has been devoted to the conversion from Orthodoxy to the Armenian faith, and to the issue of marriages between persons belonging to these faiths. The present paper identifies the motives and circumstances of religious conversions and the peculiarities of mixed marriages. It does so on the basis of unpublished documents from the funds of the National Archive of the Republic of Armenia. Equally new is the authors suggestion to consider these phenomena as an integral component in the history of Russian-Armenian church relations in the period 1828-1917. Until 1905, the regulations of the Orthodox Church demanded that after the conduction of an interreligious marriage, both spouses continued to practice their respective faiths, and their children were baptized in Orthodoxy. This is reflected in the metric books of the Erivan Pokrovsky Orthodox Cathedral (1880-1885). The analysis of archival documents allows us to conclude that after 1905, most of the conversions from Orthodoxy to the Armenian faith were performed by women who intended to marry men of the Armenian confession. The reason for this phenomenon is that interreligious marriages and the baptism of children born from mixed couples was still in the competence of the Russian Orthodox Church. Only if both partners belonged to the Armenian faith, the wedding could take place in the Armenian Church, and their children were brought up in the Armenian faith. In addition to matrimonial reasons, the article underlines some other important motives behind conversions from Orthodoxy to the Armenian confession.

Yuly Aykhenvald: in search of aesthetic and historiosophical harmony

This article explores the question of literary criticism in the context of interactions between literature and philosophy. The best example of such interaction is the legacy of the early twentieth century Russian literary critic, Yuly Aykhenvald (1872–1928). This article gives a brief overview of his works of literary criticism and their thematic repertoire. Aykhenvald’s philosophical background, professional education, and personal connections with renowned Russian thinkers, including Vladimir Solovyov, Fyodor Stepun, and Semyon Frank, are included in an evaluation of Aykhenvald’s position on one of the most discussed relationships in Russian culture—that of Russia and the West. The issue of relations between the West and Russia acquired a particular urgency after the October Revolution of 1917, when Russian culture split into two realms—Soviet and emigre. This article analyzes Aykhenvald’s position on this issue, which is present in both his philosophical responses to the Eurasianists and in his essays written on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth. Throughout the mid-1920s Aykhenvald wrote that Pushkin was the ideal of spiritual and aesthetic balance. In Pushkin’s work Aykhenvald found the embodiment of his own historiosophical aspirations—the harmonious fusion of Russia and the West.

The Celestial’s Position, or Over Barriers. Boris Pasternak and Fyodor Stepun

ABSTRACT In this article, the author examines the work of Boris Pasternak, primarily his novel Doctor Zhivago, in the context of his Marburg experience and Kantian ideas as the basis of his moral-aesthetic position. Pasternak tried to live and write over the barriers that a totalitarian era had erected in human life. His late novel managed to tell Russia and the rest of humanity about this tragic century in Russian history, using as the basis of his reflections a Russian intellectual who grew up on the pathos of a Christianity rethought in early twentieth-century Russia. What happened in Russia in 1917 was not only a social pogrom, but also an intellectual one. Pasternak’s novel was a unique attempt to cope with this intellectual catastrophe by relying on Christianity. The very name of the protagonist, Zhivago, has a rhyme in the Gospels. It was not by chance that Pasternak shared with the Christian thinker Fyodor Stepun that he had written about Doctor Zhivago while working on a translation of Goethe’s Faust, that great mystery-drama. He recounted Russia’s historical tragedy through the fate of a single man, a doctor and poet. Pasternak won the battle against the darkness that had engulfed his homeland, preserving a soul capable of grieving for loved ones despite restrictive barriers, for the starry heavens above and the moral law within made the core of his personhood.

Universalising idealism: the cross-cultural case of Russian religious thought

ABSTRACT The article analyses the idealist dimension of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian religious thought as it appears in key works by Vladimir Solov’ev (1853–1900), Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944) and Nikolai Berdiaev (1874–1948). Under the impact of Schelling in particular, these thinkers took religious experience and human consciousness as a starting point for their projects. On the one hand, the article shows that this had a very significant impact also on the way in which they approached classical religious themes. More specifically, it examines how the transmission of idealist philosophy from Western Europe to Russia led to a reinterpretation in the works of these thinkers of certain themes of the Orthodox heritage as well as everyday cultural practices. On the other hand, it points to significant parallels between Russian religious idealism and idealist theology in the West, most notably Paul Tillich. Thus, the transfer of ideas from its Schellingian origin to Russia becomes, the article claims, an example of universalisation, in this case of Shellingian idealism, through the active use and application of ideas and concepts in new contexts.

Parliamentarianism in the Ideology of Early Twentieth-Century Russian Conservatives

Parliamentarianism in the Ideology of Early Twentieth-Century Russian Conservatives

The Worker Question in the Ideology and Practice of Early Twentieth-Century Russian Conservatives

The Worker Question in the Ideology and Practice of Early Twentieth-Century Russian Conservatives

Was A. I. Guchkov’s Constitution a Right-Liberal Draft of the Basic Law of Russian Empire or a Party Program?

The article analyzes the political and legal nature of "The Draft Constitution of the Russian Empire" stored in A. I. Guchkov’s personal archive. A. I. Guchkov was the founder and leader of "The Union of October 17", a political party formed in the early twentieth century Russia. Russian historical and legal science considers these materials as a draft Constitution drawn by the representatives of the right wing of Russian liberalism. We conducted a comparative analysis of Guchkov’s Constitution and the versions of "The Union of October 17" political party programs. The Constitution proved almost identical with the texts of two versions of the party program. The draft could fill the intermediate place in a series of different versions of the party program. The party programs were successively adopted by the first and second party Congresses and the Moscow Central Committee. Therefore, it is necessary to refer the document not to the constitutional projects, but to the legal and political materials of "The Union of October 17". Thus, the right wing of the liberal forces had no independent constitutional project.

Artistic Communities and Educational Approaches in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Russia

Artistic Communities and Educational Approaches in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Russia