Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

The literature on Russia in 1919–1924 is rich and often of high quality, although with the opening of Russian archives much of it may have to be revised. Below is a selection of secondary works that I have found particularly instructive in my work.

The Civil War

While a definitive history of the Russian Civil War remains to be written, the following impressed me as informative: Volume 2 of W. H. Chamberlin’s The Russian Revolution (New York and London, 1935) and Evan Mawdsley’s The Russian Civil War (London and Boston, 1987). N. Kakurin, Kak srazhalas’ revoliutsiia, 2 vols., (Moscow, 1925), is a narrowly military account based on Red Army archives. Lev Trotskii, Kak vooruzhalas’ revoliutsiia, 3 vols. (Moscow, 1923–25), is a collection of Trotsky’s wartime directives.

On the anti-Bolshevik forces, George Stewart’s The White Armies of Russia (New York, 1933) does a creditable job. Indispensable are the memoirs of General A. Denikin, Ocherki russkoi smuty, Vols. 3–5 (Berlin, 1924–1925). The story of Kolchak is told by S. P. Melgunov, Tragediia Admirala Kolchaka (Belgrade, 1930–31; repr. New York, 1963) and Peter Fleming, The Fate of Admiral Kolchak (New York, 1963).

On the Ukrainian pogroms in 1918–20, there is I. B. Shekhtman, Pogromy Dohrovol’cheskoi Armii na Ukraine (Berlin, 1932).

For particulars of the complex diplomatic relations involving Russia, Red and White, and the foreign powers during and after the Civil War (other than Germany) the reader can consult John M. Thompson, Russia, Bolshevism, and the Versailles Peace (Princeton, N. J., 1966), Richard H. Ullman, Britain and the Russian Civil War (Princeton, 1968), and Piotr S. Wandycz, Soviet-Polish Relations, 1917–1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969).

The repercussions of the Civil War in the rural areas is the subject of Orlando Figes’s Peasant Russia, Civil War (Oxford, 1989). Iu. A. Poliakov, Sovetskaia strana posle okonchaniia grazhdanskoi voiny (Moscow, 1986) is a Communist account of the effects of the Civil War on Russia and her inhabitants.

The Red Empire

A general history of the disintegration of the Russian Empire and its reconquest and reintegration by the Communists is Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1964).

Communism for Export

A good account of the Comintern is by an ex-member, Franz Borkenau, World Communism: A History of the Communist International (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1962). Julius Braunthal, History of the International, II (London, New York, and Washington, 1967), is written from a socialist perspective. Angelica Balabanoff’s Impressions of Lenin (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1964) are by an admiring but not uncritical Secretary of the Comintern.

Soviet Russia’s external relations during this period are described by Alfred L. P. Dennis, The Foreign Policies of Soviet Russia (London and New York, 1924). Her relations with Germany are treated in Gerald Freund, Unholy Alliance (New York, 1957), and Rolf-Dieter Müller, Das Tor zur Weltmacht (Boppard am Rhein, 1984). Russo-British relations in 1920 and after are dealt with in Richard Ullman’s The Anglo-Soviet Accord (Princeton, N.J., 1972).

Norman Davies deals with the Russo-Polish war of 1920 in White Eagle, Red Star (London, 1972).

Pro-Communist foreign intellectuals are dissected in David Caute’s The Fellow-travellers, rev. ed. (New Haven and London, 1988).

Communism, Fascism, National Socialism

There is no book that deals specifically with the influence of Bolshevism on right-wing movements. Of the extensive literature on totalitarianism, I found the following particularly informative: Carl J. Friedrich, Totalitarianism (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), and, with Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, Mass., 1956). Hans Buchheim, Totalitarian Rule (Middletown, Conn., 1968); a brilliant, succinct analysis. Hermann Rauschning, Germany’s Revolution of Destruction (London, 1939), also published as The Revolution of Nihilism (New York, 1939), is by an early Hitler confidant.

Culture as Propaganda

The single most illuminating insight into early Communist cultural policies is René Fülöp-Miller’s Geist und Gesicht des Bolschewismus (Zurich, 1926). The English condensation, Mind and Face of Bolshevism (London and New York, 1927) conveys little of the original’s richness.

A good account of every aspect of Soviet cultural policies can be found in Oskar Anweiler and Karl-Heinz Ruffman, eds., Kulturpolitik der Sowjetunion (Stuttgart, 1973). The central administrative entity directing cultural life is described in Sheila Fitzpatrick’s The Commissariat of Enlightenment (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1970).

The best history of Soviet educational policies is Oskar Anweiler’s Geschichte der Schule und Pëdagogik in Russland vom Ende des Zarenreiches bis zum Beginn der Stalin Ära (Heidelberg, 1964).

The Assault on the Church

Lev Regelson, Tragediia russkoi tserkvi, 1917–1945 (Paris, 1977), is a collection of documents. Relations between the new regime and Orthodoxy are treated by John S. Curtiss in The Russian Church and the Soviet State (Boston, 1953). B. V. Titlinov, Tserkov’ vo vremia revoliutsii (Petrograd, 1924), is a Communist account.

Nora Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917, 2 vols. (New York and London, 1988), is well-informed and intelligent. Zvi Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics (Princeton, 1972), is a basic study.

On Communist policies toward the Muslims, see Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Islam in the Soviet Union (London, New York, and Washington, 1967).

NEP: The False Thermidor

No authoritative history of the New Economic Policy exists. Much information can be found in Volume 2 of E. H. Carr’s The Bolshevik Revolution (London and New York, 1952). Roger Pethybridge, One Step Backwards, Two Steps Forward (Oxford, 1990), studies its implementation on the local level. Simon Liberman, Building Lenin’s Russia (Chicago, 1945), recounts fascinating experiences of a Menshevik expert in Communist service.

On the peasant revolt against Communist rule in 1920–21, the literature is still limited by the paucity of archival sources. Oliver H. Radkey, The Unknown Civil War in Soviet Russia (Stanford, 1976), and Mikhail Frenkin, Tragediia krest’ianskikh vosstanii v Rossii, 1918–1921 gg. ([Jerusalem], 1987), give the fullest accounts. I. Ia. Trifonov, Klassy i klassovaia bor’ba v SSSR v nachale NEPa, 2 vols. (Leningrad, 1964), is the only Communist work with serious information on the subject. A. Okninskii, Dva goda sredi krest’ian (Riga, 1936), is unique in providing a firsthand account of peasant reactions.

On the sailor mutiny, there is Paul Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921 (New York and London, 1970).

The Volga famine of 1921 also awaits its historian. For the time being, the best is the account of a member of Hoover’s Relief Administration, H. H. Fisher, The Famine in Soviet Russia (New York, 1927).

The Crisis of the New Regime

As documents are released from Russian archives, most of the secondary literature on Soviet politics of 1921–24 must be regarded as obsolete. A large number of previously unpublished documents appeared in Izvestiia TsK when it resumed publication in the late 1980s.

The internal conflicts are described in Merle Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled, rev. ed. (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1963); Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1977); E. H. Carr, The Interregnum, 1923–1924 (London and New York, 1954); and Vadim Rogovin, Byla li al’ternativa? (Moscow, 1992). Robert Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1960), discusses the opposition groups within the Party. T. H. Rigby, Lenin’s Government: Sovnarkom, 1917–1922 (Cambridge, 1979), traces the evolution of state institutions. Soviet treatment of workers and trade unions is the subject of Margaret Dewar’s Labour Policy in the USSR, 1917–1928 (London and New York, 1956).

In addition, much on intraparty conflicts is to be found in the biographies of the chief protagonists. Isaac Deutscher’s The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921–1929 (London, 1959), although very readable, is marred by uncritical adulation of its protagonist and careless use of sources. It is somewhat balanced by Dmitrii Volkogonov’s Trotskii, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1992). Trotsky’s autobiography, My Life, 2 vols. (London and New York, 1930), is full of interest.

On Stalin’s rise to power there are Boris Souvarine’s Staline (Paris, rev. ed., 1985) and Dmitrii Volkogonov’s Stalin (London and New York, 1991), the latter the first to draw on archival sources.

ARCHIVAL SOURCES

Russkii Tsentr Khraneniia i Izucheniia Dokumentov Noveishei Istorii (RTsKhIDNI), Moscow (previously: Central Party Archive)

Fond 2

opis 1: Lenin’s published and recently declassified documents opis 2: Lenin’s unpublished documents

Fond 5: Lenin’s Secretariat

Fond 17: The Central Committee of the Communist Party

Fond 64: The Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee

Fond 76: F. E. Dzerzhinskii

Fond 85: G. K. Ordzhonikidze

Fond 89: E. M. Iaroslavskii

Fond 489: Second Congress of the Comintern

Fond 495: The Executive Committee of the Comintern (IKKI)

Fond 558: I. V. Stalin

Harvard University, Houghton Library

Trotsky Archive (bMS Russian 13)

Georgian Archive (bMS Georgian 2)

Bakhmeteff Archive, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University

Denikin Papers

Aleksei Brusilov Collection

Panina Papers