Makers of the Russian Revolution: Biographies of Bolshevik Leaders PDF
Preview Makers of the Russian Revolution: Biographies of Bolshevik Leaders
ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Volume 4 Volume 4 MAKERS OF THE RUSSIAN MAKERS OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION REVOLUTION MAKERS OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Biographies GEORGES HAUPT AND JEAN-JACQUES MARIE Translated from the Russian by C.I.P. Ferdinand Commentaries translated from the French by D.M. Bellos MAKERS OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Biographies GEORGES HAUPT AND JEAN-JACQUES MARIE Translated from the Russian by C.I.P. Ferdinand Commentaries translated from the French by D.M. Bellos FirstpublishedinEnglishin1974byGeorgeAllen&UnwinLtd Thiseditionfirstpublishedin2017 byRoutledge 2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN andbyRoutledge 711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017 RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness Thistranslation©1974GeorgeAllen&UnwinLtd Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedorutilised inanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,nowknownor hereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinanyinformation storageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublishers. Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintentto infringe. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary ISBN:978-1-138-21999-1(Set) ISBN:978-1-315-31269-9(Set)(ebk) ISBN:978-1-138-22530-5(Volume4)(hbk) ISBN:978-1-315-40022-8(Volume4)(ebk) Publisher’sNote Thepublisherhasgonetogreatlengthstoensurethequalityofthisreprintbut pointsoutthatsomeimperfectionsintheoriginalcopiesmaybeapparent. Disclaimer Thepublisherhasmadeeveryefforttotracecopyrightholdersandwouldwelcome correspondencefromthosetheyhavebeenunabletotrace. MAIZERS OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Biographies of Bolshevik leaders by Georges Haupt and Jean-Jacques Marie Translated from the Russian by C. I. P. Ferdinand Commentaries translated from the French by D. M. Bellos London George Allen & Unwin Ltd Ruskin House Museum Street First published in 1974 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights are reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copy- right Act, 1956, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photo- copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers. This translation© George Allen & Unwin Ltd 1974 ISBN 0 04 947021 3 Translated from the French Les Bolcheviks par ewe-memes © Librairie Fran9ois Maspero 1969 Printed in Great Britain in 10 pt 'Monotype' Plantin type by W & J Mackay Limited Authors' Note As the original French title of this work (Les Bolcheviks par eux-memes) was meant to suggest, the documents themselves form the major part of the text. Selecting which documents to include was a difficult but challenging task. The main difficulty was that the dimensions of this book obliged us to limit ourselves to a small number of characters. The first and essential criterion of selection we used was the im- portance of the role played by the character in the Russian Revolution. We do not restrict the term 'revolution' to mean only the year 1917, but consider it to cover a whole process which started well before the birth of Bolshevism and continued through the early years of Soviet power. Thus we have included not only members of the political general staff of the Bolshevik movement in 1917 and the military leaders of the October uprisings, but also men who were in the foreground during the Civil War, in the building of the Soviet State and in the internal struggles of the Party. Thus Bogdanov has his place in this volume, for although he retired from the political scene in 1913, he was important in the history of Bolshevism as the leader of a whole group of 'dissidents' who joined the Party in 1917 and formed a considerable contingent of its general staff; for the same reason we have included Kirov, a minor militant in 1917 who became a figure of the first importance as Stalin's team became established in the 1920s. The second criterion - which flows naturally from the first - was that of political representativeness. The third criterion was, where possible, to use original documents, that is autobiographies, rather than other sources. The three criteria of selection, taken together, account, for example, for the inclusion ofStasova and the exclusion ofLashevich and Lutovinov. A second problem was the manner in which the documents were to be presented. Our aim was not to compose a biographical dictionary. Therefore we decided, out of the many possible ways of grouping the documents, on that which seemed least bad. We rejected classification 8 AUTHORS' NOTE by membership of the various post-revolutionary splinter groups and tendencies, particularly since neither the groups nor their members were very fixed. Bukharin is a case in point-a 'left-wing' communist until 1919, and then leader of the 'right' from 1924. The same problems occur in attempting to classify these documents by the occupations or achieve- ments of their authors, using categories such as 'political leaders', 'Party men', 'theoreticians', 'military chiefs', etc., since each in fact took on, in turn and according to circumstances, extremely diverse tasks and posi- tions. The classification adopted in the end derives from our introductory essay: considering 1917 as a point of arrival, not as a starting-point, we have taken as our framework the political origins and allegiances to pre- revolutionary splinter groups of the selected militants. The presentation of this material involved some technical problems which call for comment. Though we hope to have obeyed the rules of historical science, we intended to provide not a work of scholarship but a book that could be useful to anyone who might wish to have reliable documentation on the Bolsheviks and the 1917 Revolution. Footnotes seemed inadequate to this task, and we have therefore employed a different technique. Each biographical document is followed by a more or less lengthy note, in which we have sought to correct whatever errors there may be in the text, be they involuntary omissions or deliberate distortions, and to draw a portrait of the character concerned-and especially to sketch in his life after the composition of the autobiography. We have used numerous sources for these complementary notes, but provide no bibliography of them. We are well aware that these notes are incomplete and may contain errors: Soviet archives are to this day almost totally inaccessible. Many oft he victims of the purges are still 'Unpersons', on whom it is extremely difficult to obtain information. To fill these gaps, researchers often have recourse to second-hand sources: there is a great body of erroneous, not to say fabricated, information of that currency. We have tried, not always successfully, to avoid falling into this trap. Lack of fact, as well as the desire to make these notes more readable, accounts for the anecdotes in our commentaries. As a general rule these autobiographies are complete; but we have indicated in the usual way [ . . . ] the suppression of minor episodes from overlong or overwordy biographies, and the omission of otiose or familiar details. The reader will find a glossary at the back of the volume, containing short notes on the organisations, institutions and newspapers quoted in the text. AUTHORS' NOTE 9 We must express our sincere thanks to Claudie Weill, who gave us valuable help in composing this volume and compiling the glossary; and to Marie Bennigsen who took on the task of checking a number of documents. For the help that was afforded us in our research for this book we must thank the USSR and Slavic Documentation Centre of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, and the librarians at the Bibliotheque de Documentation Intemationale Contemporaine. Georges Haupt Jean-Jacques Marie* *Each commentary is signed with the initials of its author.
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