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Local Government and State Authority in the Provinces: Smolensk, February-June 1917

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Michael C. Hickey
Michael C. Hickey*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Bloomsburg University
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Extract

In the last decade, state building and the problems of establishing state authority in the provinces in 1917 have begun to attract historians’ attention. Several works by Russian authors treat state building under the Provisional Government, with emphasis upon organizational activities “at the center.” Daniel T. Orlovsky and Howard J. White (with greater analytical rigor than their Russian counterparts) have studied the work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the provinces. But none of these works has offered a sustained discussion of the revolution in a single city or province. Local studies have concentrated on popular institutions (for example, unions, Red Guards, and the Soviets) and the process of social polarization but have paid litde attention to the state. My aim is to bridge the gap between institutional studies and local studies by looking at local government and the contested nature of state authority in Smolensk from March to June 1917, tracing especially the conflict between class-based politics and state interests.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , Winter 1996 , pp. 863 - 881
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1996

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References

My thanks to Rex Wade, Michael Melancon, Susan E. Stemont, the Delaware Valley Seminar on Russian History, and this journal's anonymous readers for comments on this manuscript, and to S. L. Solodovnikova at the Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Smolenskoi Oblasti (GASO) for her gracious assistance in making materials available.

1. For instance, Startsev, V. I., Vnutrenniaia politika Vremennogo pravitel'stva pervogo sostava (Moscow, 1980)Google Scholar; Andreev, A. M., Mestnye Sovety i organy burzhuaznoi vlasti, 1917 g. (Moscow, 1983)Google Scholar; and also Gerasimenko, G. A., Zemskoe samoupravlenie v Rossii (Moscow, 1990)Google Scholar.

2. H.J. White, “The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Revolution in the Provinces” (paper, Center for Russian and East European Studies, Birmingham, 1988); Daniel T. Orlovsky, “Reform during Revolution: Governing the Provinces in 1917,” in Crummey, Robert O., ed., Reform in Russia and the USSR: Past and Prospects (Urbana, 1989)Google Scholar.

3. This is true, for instance, of Donald Raleigh's excellent Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov (Ithaca, 1986).

4. William G. Rosenberg, “Social Mediation and State Construction(s) in Revolutionary Russia,” Social History 19, no. 2 (May 1994): 175. Rosenberg argues that constructing the state as an arena for labor mediation proved paradoxical: organized workers on the one hand and capitalists on the other identified their own corporate interests as the national interest; as society became increasingly polarized along class lines, each group demanded that the state intervene on its behalf. While workers read the reluctance of moderate socialist Soviet (and later Provisional Government) leaders to intervene as proof that the state represented the bourgeoisie, propertied elements took any intervention as an attack upon capitalism. As a result, the state's very effort to mediate labor conflict ultimately undermined its legitimacy.

5. F. Shperk, “Smolenskaia guberniia,” in Brokgaus and Efron, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', vol. 60 (St. Petersburg, 1900); records of the Smolensk oblast’ of the AU-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1917–1941, National Archive, Microfilm Publication T-87, file WKP 1 (hereafter cited as WKP 1); Statisticheskoe otdelenie Smolenskoi gubernskoi zemskoi upravy, Kratkiia khoziaistvenno-statisticheskiia svedeniia po Smolenskoi gubemii (Smolensk, 1912); Sovet s “ezdov predstavitelei promyshlennosti i torgovli, Fabrichno-zavodskiia predpriiatiia Rossiiskoi Imperii (iskliuchaia Finliandiiu), prepared by D. P. Kandaurov and Son, ed. F. A. Shober, 2d ed. (Petrograd, 1914); Soviet Union, Tsentral'noe statisticheskoe upravlenie, Trudy, vol. 18, Sbomik statisticheskikh svedeniipo Soiuzu SSR, 1918–1923 (Moscow, 1924).

6. GASO, f. 7, op. 4, d. 1777 (Provincial zemstvo administration, correspondence and telegrams concerning February revolution and formation of the Provisional Government); f. 799, op. 1, d. 1 (Dukhovshchinskii uzed commissar, correspondence, including circulars and correspondence with and from the provincial commissar); Smolenskii vestnik, 1–5 March 1917; Utro Rossii, 5 March 1917; Moskovskiia vedomosti, 14 March 1917; Leivik, Hodis, Biographie und Schriften, ed. Dubnov-Erlich, Sophia (New York, 1962), 17–19Google Scholar; S. V., Ivanov, “Krest'ianstvo i oktiabr,” Krasnaia letopis, no. 6 (1923): 281 Google Scholar; Isakovskii, Mikhail V., Na El'ninskoi zemle, avtobiograficheskie stranitsy (Moscow, 1973), 324 Google Scholar; Smolenskii obkom KPSS, Partiinyi arkhiv, Ustanovlenie i uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Smolenskoi gubemii: Sbornik dokumentov, ed. N. M. Gorodskoi (Smolensk, 1957); and Smolenskii obkom KPSS, Partiinyi, arkhiv, Ocherki istorii Smolenskoi organizatsii KPSS, vol. 1, 2d ed. (Smolensk, 1985), 43.Google Scholar

7. For a more detailed treatment of the Provisional Executive Committee's activities in March, and for a discussion of social polarization in Smolensk in spring 1917, see Michael C. Hickey, “Discourses of Public Identity and Liberalism in the February Revolution: Smolensk, Spring 1917,” Russian Review 55, no. 4 (October 1996): 615–37.

8. On the relations between Smolensk's major political party organizations, see Michael C. Hickey, “Politicheskaia kul'tura i mezhpartiinoe sotrudnichestvo v Smolenske,” in D. I. Budaev and A. A. Il'iukov, eds., Obshchestvennaia mysl’ i politicheskie deiateli Rossii XIX i XX w.: Materialy nauchnoi konferentsii (Smolensk, 1996), 207–10. The Socialist Revolutionaries had the largest political organization in Smolensk province, with well over 100 members in early March and several thousand by June. The local social democratic organization included both Menshevik and Bolshevik factions until mid-April, when the Bolsheviks formed a separate party organization. By June the Bolshevik organization had nearly 200 members, while the Mensheviks had three times that number. The Smolensk Kadet organization was by far the smallest of the major parties in Smolensk (the Bund had more members than did the Kadets). For a more detailed discussion of party strength during this period, see Michael C. Hickey, “Revolutionary Smolensk: The Establishment of Soviet Power in Smolensk Province, 1917–1918” (Ph.D. diss., Northern Illinois University, 1993), vol. 1.

9. Smolenskii vestnik, 4 March 1917, 6 March 1917, 9 March 1917, 10 March 1917, 15 March 1917.

10. GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 105; Smolenskii vestnik, 9 March 1917, 6 April 1917, 17 April 1917; M. Daiian, Smolensk v revoliutsii 1917 g. (Smolensk, 1927), 10.

11. GASO, f. 1289, op. 2, d. 497 (Provincial militia administration, correspondence), II. 3–6; f. 799, op. 1. d. 1, II. 33, 35, 142–65; WKP 1: 1; Smolenskii vestnik, 17 April 1917, 18 April 1917, 20 April 1917, 25 April 1917.

12. Browder, Robert Paul and Kerensky, Alexander F., eds., The Russian Provisional Government, 1917: Documents, vol. 1 (Stanford, 1961), 243 Google Scholar. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, in a 27 April circular, admitted that “under the present system of popular elections, the idea of appointment [of commissars] did not fit with the national understanding. It suspected in this practice an encroachment upon its liberties.” Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, 246.

13. Aleksandr Mikhailovich Tukhachevskii, chairman of the Smolensk Provincial Duma, began his career as a local zemstvo (and later duma) activist in 1892. While Tukhachevskii was considered a member of the liberal camp in Smolensk, he did not belong to the local Kadet organization. (He was, incidentally, the uncle of future Red Army General Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevskii.)

14. Smolenskii vestnik, 8 March 1917, 12 March 1917; GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 11. 60, 62, 66.

15. The Conference of Provincial Commissars in Petrograd on 22–24 April 1917 discussed the formation of such councils. The Ministry of Internal Affairs called commissars’ councils an expedient means of consolidating the management of provincial administrative institutions, but the majority of commissars at the conference disagreed. Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, 252–53.

16. Smolenskii vestnik, 17 March 1917, 19 March 1917, 22 March 1917, 25 March 1917.

17. GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 65; Smolenskii vestnik, 6 April 1917. The workers’ and soldiers’ Soviets had formed a united soviet on 8 March.

18. Smolenskii vestnik, 28 March 1917.

19. GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 95; Smolenskii vestnik, 6 April 1917.

20. Smolenskii vestnik, 14 March 1917, 16 March 1917, 17 March 1917, 18 March 1917, 6 April 1917, 12 April 1917.

21. GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 11. 184–85; Smolenskii vestnik, 6 April 1917.

22. Smolenskii vestnik, 12 April 1917. The Ministry of Internal Affairs responded to the preponderance of such “local” reorganizations in a 24 April circular to the provincial commissars. Self-government organs might in extraordinary circumstances be “reinforced … by representatives of the democratic groups of the population in a number [sufficient] to guarantee … self-government the confidence of large circles of the local [population]…” Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, 263–64; GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 228.

23. la. Kurnatovskii and S. Zhdanovich continued to oppose expansion of the duma, which they considered illegal. Smolenskii vestnik, 12 April 1917, 17 April 1917, 18 April 1917, 19 April 1917, 27 April 1917.

24. Ibid., 21 April 1917, 25 April 1917.

25. Ibid., 28 April 1917.

26. Ibid., 30 April 1917.

27. Ibid., 4 May 1917, 5 May 1917, 11 May 1917; WKP 1: 126.

28. Smolenskii vestnik, 13 May 1917.

29. Ibid., 13 May 1917, 20 May 1917, 21 May 1917.

30. Ustanovlenie i uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Smolenskoi gubernii, 352.

31. Smolenskii vestnik, 16 June 1917.

32. See Hickey, “Discourses of Public Identity,” 632–36.

33. Golos'bunda, 8 August 1917, 19 August 1917.

34. Smolenskii vestnik, 21 April 1917, 15June 1917, 17 June 1917; WKP 1: 5, 6, 9; hvestiia Petrogradskogo soveta, 17 August 1917; Izvestiia Moskovskogo soveta, 12 August 1917.

35. Smolenskii vestnik, 6 April 1917. For a similar declaration by the Iartsevo Soviet, see GASO, f. 98, op. 2, d. 195 (Iartsevo Soviet, April 1917-August 1918), 1. 6. See also GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 200; Diane P. Koenker and William G. Rosenberg, “Perceptions and Reality of Labour Protest, March to October 1917,” in Frankel, Edith Rogovin, Frankel, Jonathan, and Knei-Paz, Baruch, eds., Revolution in Russia: Reassessments of 1917 (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), 149–.Google Scholar

36. GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 215; Smolenskii vestnik, 17 April 1917.

37. See GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 187; Smolenskii vestnik, 16 April 1917.

38. Browder and Kerensky, Russian Provisional Government, 256.

39. GASO, f. 774, op. 1, d. 1 (Sychevskii uezd, Spasskaia Volost’ Executive Committee); f. 884, op. 2, d. 228 (Smolensk district court material, 1917); f. 799, op. 1, d. 1; f. 799, op. 1, d. 3 (Dukhovshchinskii uezd, Zimnitskaia Volost’ Executive Committee); f. 799, op. 1, d. 4 (Dukhovshchinskii uezd, Syr-Lipetskaia Volost’ Executive Committee); f. 799, op. 1, d. 22 (Dukhovshchinskii uezd, Uezd Executive Council, March-April 1917).

40. GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 11. 202, 208–10, 253; Smolenskii vestnik, 2 April 1917, 17 April 1917, 22 April 1917, 26 April 1917; Delo naroda, 30 April 1917; Volia naroda, 8 June 1917; hvestiia Moskovskogo soveta, 4 May 1917, 5 May 1917, 10 May 1917, 21 May 1917; Zemlia i volia, 16 June 1917; Ustanovlenie i uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Smolenskoi gubernii, 55–56.

41. Smolenskii vestnik, 11 April 1917, 17 April 1917.

42. GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 11. 309–11, 318, 333–35, 342.

43. Smolenskii vestnik, 25 April 1917; GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 11. 109–13, 118–31, 201.

44. Smolenskii vestnik, 13 April 1917, 17 April 1917; GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, II. 211–13, 269.

45. GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 11. 195, 203, 303.

46. Smolenskii vestnik, 27 April 1917.

47. Smolenskii vestnik, 17 April 1917; GASO, f. 799, d. 1. op. 1, 11. 215, 373; Delo naroda, 7 May 1917, 12 May 1917.

48. Smolenskii vestnik, 4 May 1917. The First Smolensk Provincial Peasant Congress met from 28 April to 1 May 1917. The Socialist Revolutionaries held the majority. On 1 May the congress, now renamed the Provincial Peasants’ Soviet, elected a twelvemember executive committee, in which the Socialist Revolutionaries again held a majority. GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 221; Smolenskii vestnik, 30 April 1917, 2 May 1917, 3 May 1917; Ustanovlenie i uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Smolenskoi gubernii, 50, 66–69; Ivanov, “Krest'ianstvo i oktiabr',” 283; Zemlia i volia, 23 June 1917; Maliavskii, A. D., Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 1917g., mart-oktiabr’ (Moscow, 1981), 382 Google Scholar; Smirnov, A. S., Krest'ianskie s'ezdy v 1917 godu (Moscow, 1979), 72.Google Scholar

49. GASO, f. 1, op. 6, d. 1969 (Provincial Commissar, correspondence with Ministry of Internal Affairs), 11. 1–5.

50. Smolenskii vestnik, 24 May 1917; GASO, f. 1, op. 6, d. 1969, 11. 5–8.

51. Ocherki istorii Smolenskoi organizatsii KPSS, 45; Ustanovlenie i uprochenie Sovetskoi vlasti v Smolenskoi gubernii, 55.

52. GASO, f. 1, op. 6, d. 1969, 11. 9–25, 16–17; Smolenskii vestnik, 24 May 1917, 2 June 1917.

53. GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 11. 134–35, 382; Smolenskii vestnik, 9 May 1917.

54. GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 222; Smolenskii vestnik, 3 May 1917.

55. Smolenskii vestnik, 11 May 1917, 14 May 1917.

56. Ibid., 14 May 1917.

57. Ibid., 16 May 1917.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid., 25 May 1917, 26 May 1917.

60. Ibid., 26 May 1917.

61. Ibid., 27 May 1917, 28 May 1917, 30 May 1917; GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 1. 323.

62. Smolenskii vestnik, 31 May 1917.

63. Ibid., 1 June 1917.

64. Ibid., 3June 1917, 4June 1917; GASO, f. 799, op. 1, d. 1, 11. 360–61.

65. Smolenskii vestnik, 4 June 1917.

66. Ibid. Churakov, a Trudovik, considered it a personal affront that the guards at the Smolensk Soviet frequently asked him for identification during a visit on 25 May. Smolenskii vestnik, 27 May 1917, 30 May 1917.

67. Smolenskii vestnik, 8 June 1917.

68. Ibid., 9 June 1917.

69. See ibid., 30 May 1917.

70. Ibid., 31 May 1917. The GublK continued hearing reports and petitions from the countryside, many of which concerned arbitrary legislation and the problem of mnogovlastiia. But few members attended sessions, which had difficulty achieving quorums. Smolenskii vestnik, 2 June 1917, 3June 1917, 4 June 1917, 9June 1917.

71. Ibid., 17 June 1917, 20 June 1917, 21 June 1917.

72. This conflict is described in more detail in Michael C. Hickey, “Peasant Autonomy, Soviet Power, and Land Redistribution in Smolensk Province, November 1917-May 1918,” Revolutionary Russia 9, no. 1 (June 1996): 19–21.