Captives of Revolution: The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolshevik Dictatorship, 1918-1923

401 Pages·2011·2.107 MB·English

by  Scott B. Smith

CAPTIVES OF REVOLUTION
Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies
Jonathan Harris, Editor
Captives of
Revolution
THE SOCIALIST
REVOLUTIONARIES
AND THE BOLSHEVIK
DICTATORSHIP,
1918–1923
Scott B. Smith
University of Pittsburgh Press
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2011, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Scott B. (Scott Baldwin), 1963–
Captives of revolution : the socialist revolutionaries and the Bolshevik dictatorship, 1918–1923 /
Scott B. Smith.
p. cm. — (Pitt series in Russian and East European studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-4403-4 (cloth : acid-free paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8229-4403-0 (cloth : acid-free paper)
1. Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917-1921. 2. Soviet Union—Politics and govern-
ment—1917–1936. 3. Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov—History. 4. Socialists—Soviet Union—
History. 5. Revolutionaries—Soviet Union—History. 6. Communism—Soviet Union—History.
7. Socialism—Soviet Union—History. 8. Dictatorship—Soviet Union—History. 9. Political
culture—Soviet Union—History. I. Title.
DK265.S5296 2011
947.084’1—dc22
2010046565
“Important lecture!” cried Pnin. “What to do? It is a cata-stroph!”
—Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
1. Dilemmas of Civil War 1
2. The Shape of Dictatorship 43
3. Komuch 89
4. The Politics of the Eastern Front 123
Illustrations 177–180
5. Between Red and White 181
6. The End of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries 215
7. “Renegades of Socialism” and the Making of Bolshevik
Political Culture 239
Notes 279
Bibliography 349
Index 371
vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Like any work of scholarship, this book is the product of solitary labors made
possible by wider communities. Overlapping networks of teachers, colleagues,
archivists, librarians, students, and friends supported me in many ways dur-
ing the years I was engaged in this project. Most will remain unnamed, but
I am grateful to them all. Research trips to Russia were made possible by the
International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by
the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Information
Agency, and the United States Department of State, which administers the Rus-
sian, Eurasian, and East European research program (Title 8). The bulk of the
research was carried out in Widener Library at Harvard University, the library
and archives of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the State Ar-
chive of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii,
GARF), the Russian State Library, and the Russian State Archive of Social and
Political History (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi
istorii, RGASPI).
The book draws on two of my previously published articles: “The Socialists-
Revolutionaries and the Dilemmas of Civil War,” in The Bolsheviks in Rus-
sian Society: The Revolution and the Civil Wars, edited by Vladimir Brovkin
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997); and “Who Shot Lenin? Fania
Kaplan, the SR Underground, and the August 1918 Assassination Attempt on
Lenin,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 46 (1998): 100–19. I am grateful to
Yale University Press and Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas for permission
to incorporate material from those articles here.
Photographs that appear in this work are credited as follows: Viktor Cher-
nov, Courtesy of the Slavic and Baltic Division, New York Public Library;
Nikolai Avksent’ev and SRs in Prague, 1935, Courtesy of the Amherst College
Center for Russian Culture; Nikolai Bukharin with defendants, A. L. Litvin,
“Azef Vtoroi,” Rodina 9 (1999): 80 (original image located at RGAKFD [Russian
State Archive of Film and Photographic Documents]); Abram Gots, Dmitrii
ix