THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AS TRIUMPH AND CATASTROPHE IN GENERATIONAL MEMORY

Experience and Remembrance of the Revolutionary Generation of the 1870-s

Tatiana Saburova (Omsk State Pedagogical University, Russia)

The generational identity in the nineteenth century Russia

• “…an important way that Russian intellectuals thought about their own history. …They found in the generation concept a powerful source of self-definition—more powerful than class, culture or nationality…The intelligentsia has tended to present itself as a group of like-minded contemporaries who cut themselves free from family ties in order to devote themselves to the cause of social improvements”.

• (Stephen Lovell, Kritika, 2008, vol.9)

The revolutionary generation of the 1870-es: identity and memory

• An “imagined community” created by the Populist movement, a “site of memory” as the set of representations about revolution and the intelligentsia, as a symbol of the Russian youth.

• a real community, an “age cohort” linked by participation in populist organizations, by the “Going to the People” movement, the court trials of the 1870s, and by the time in prison and exile.

“The Chaikovsky circle” and the generation of 70-s• Nikolai Chaikovsky was one

of the active members of the circle.

• The Chaikovskists aimed to spread Socialist ideas, using of legally printed books and illegal printing presses, propagandizing amidst workers and peasants in many provinces of Russia.

• The Chaikovskists can be called the first large Populist movement

“AN EMPIRE UNDER THREAT”

The “Great Reforms” and the Russian Intelligentsia

The Russian Intelligentsia

• Many definitions of the term of intelligentsia (as many authors writing and discussing about it)

• A symbol of the opposition and revolution and/or the educated society (“a critical thinking being”, “intellectuals”, etc.)

• 10 universities (16,500 students) in Russia by the end of the 19th century and 20 universities (32,000 students) in Germany.

The “Going to the People” movement of 1874 as a “youth revolution” in Russia

• “Four thousand people were imprisoned, questioned or at least harassed, by the police. Nowhere had the Populists been able to arouse a revolt or upheaval. But the government understood that a new revolutionary movement had now been born”. (Franco Ventury, Roots of Revolution)

The moral principles and ethical qualities of the revolutionary generation of 70-s• public service, self-sacrifice, companionate ties, sense of

obligation

• indifference to religion (“we were not imbued with authentic religious feelings as children and the doings of the official church rather than inspire us, actually fomented negative responses”

• a deep faith  in the vitality of the ideas of Populism (“people had undying faith in their mission... This was its own variant of religious ecstasy, in which reason and sound judgment had no place” (Nikolai Charushin)

The influence of the Paris Commune

• “Examining the decade of the seventies, one frequently comes upon the influence of these events upon the intelligentsia of that time.” (V. Bogucharskii)

THE SOVIET UNION UNDER THREAT

A new historical narrative, memory and struggle for legitimacy of power.

The Bolshevik party after 1917 is in need of legitimacy

A creation a “usable past”, a new historical, triumphalist narrative of the Soviet coming to power,

The juxtaposition the new, Soviet Russia to a rotten, exploitative and repressive Tsarist predecessor

A creation of new heroes, revolutionaries, including the revolutionary generation of the 1870-s

An “explosion” of memoirs (1921-1925)

• The Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiles (1921-1935)

• A journal “Katorga I ssylka” (“Hard Labor and Exile”)

• About 1200 memoirs of the revolutionaries were published in the 1920-es

• A bio-bibliographic dictionary “Members of the Revolutionary Movement in Russia from the Decembrists to the Collapse of Tsarism” (1927-1933)

Vera Figner, The Imprint of Life’s Endeavors” (Memoir of a revolutionary)

• Figner was an icon of the Populist movement. Her beauty, personal dignity, and resilience during nearly a quarter century of imprisonment, much of it in solitary confinement, were legendary.

• “The will to struggle is reinforced by such vibrant and convincing material” (Dmitri Furmanov about the Figner’s

memoirs)

GENERATION AND MEMORY UNDER THREAT

A description of Kara, a well-known prison and hard-labor

place in Siberia. • “An entire generation of revolutionary youth passed through the

Kara political prison, and more dozens of young people just coming into maturity it was not only a welcoming alma mater, a university and a public arena.” (Gekker, 1906)

• “Kara was almost like a resort, providing for the restoration of one’s physical and mental capacities.” (Charushin, 1929)

Сorrespondence in the descriptions of Kononovich, a governor of Kara prison in the memoirs of Sinegub and Charushin

Синегуб, Записки чайковца (1906)

• «Не старый еще человек, хорошо сложенный, с умным, интеллигентным лицом, в военном мундире...».

• «Кононович был человек умный и самостоятельный и прекрасно умел отгрызаться перед начальством, пока только была возможность».

Чарушин, О далеком прошлом на Каре (1929)

• «Это был высокий человек, лет 40-50, с военной выправкой, умным и интеллигентным лицом, одетый по-военному»

• «Кононович был умный человек, не трус и умел отгрызаться».

Nikolai Charushin (1851-1937), member of the Chaikovsky circle

• “The years pass by and the bright colors of this past grow fainter; much actually escapes from one’s memory. The danger always existed that in reconstructing and evaluating events of the past, the telling will be affected by the mood of a subsequent time and will therefore provide a less than accurate coloration of the events described”.

The debate over the role of Populism in the revolutionary movement in the 1930-s

• “It is especially important to explain that Marxism emerged and evolved in a struggle against Populism as its primary enemy and by destroying its ideological postulates, its means and methods of struggle.” (Pravda, 1930)

• The new heroes of Russian history (Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky), embodying and institutionalizing the memory of Russia as a Great Power

IS HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION A NEW THREAT TO THE POWERS THAT BE IN RUSSIA TODAY?Debates over Russian history in contemporary Russia