The Russian Revolution

Richard Pipes’s

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

“Masterful and timely … [Pipes’s] history blends uncannily with today’s … headlines.… A brilliantly focused portrait.”

—Newsweek

“Pipes’s compellingly written account … is … a masterful culmination of his lifelong investigations of the revolutionary period.”

—Newsday

“A truly impressive piece of scholarship … A fascinating treatise, certain to become the basic research text on the subject.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer

“Panoramic … The first attempt in any language to offer a comprehensive study of the Russian Revolution … Pipes is not a mere communicator of facts but a philosopher examining the deeper, broader trends beneath the surface of history.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“Like his illustrious predecessor among students of revolutions, Alexis de Tocqueville, Pipes has a broad, sweeping view.… An imposing achievement … His craftsmanship as a writer … serves him well.”

—Boston Globe

“Pipes is an extremely knowledgeable and careful historian.… This is probably the best overall study of those momentous events … a good, important book.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

ALSO BY RICHARD PIPES

The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–23 (1964)

Struve: Liberal on the Left, 1870–1905 (1970)

Russia under the Old Regime (1974)

Struve: Liberal on the Right, 1905–1944 (1980)

Survival Is Not Enough (1984)

Russia Observed (1989)

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, DECEMBER 1991

Copyright © 1990 by Richard Pipes

Maps copyright © 1990 by Bernhard H. Wagner

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1990.

Owing to limitations of space, acknowledgment of permission to reprint previously published material will be found on this page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pipes, Richard.

The Russian Revolution/Richard Pipes.—1st Vintage Books ed.

p.   cm.

Reprint. Originally published: New York: Knopf, 1990.

eISBN: 978-0-307-78857-3

1. Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921.

2. Soviet Union—History—Nicholas II, 1894–1917. I. Title.

[DK265.P474 1991]

947.084′I—dc20    91-50008

v3.1

To the victims

CONTENTS

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

PART ONE    The Agony of the Old Regime

1    1905: The Foreshock

University disturbances of 1899 as beginning of revolution

Plehve and Zubatov

outbreak of Russo-Japanese War, Plehve assassinated and replaced by Mirskii: the great Zemstvo Congress (November 1904)

“Bloody Sunday”

tsarism tries moderate reforms

the debacle of Tsushima and talk of a representative body

university turmoil resumes and leads to general strike

Witte advises concessions

emergence of St. Petersburg Soviet

the October Manifesto

Witte forms cabinet and represses radicals; nationwide pogroms

1905 as apogee of Russian liberalism

2    Official Russia

Patrimonialism

Nicholas and Alexandra

the bureaucracy

ministries

conservative and liberal officialdom

economic development undermines autocracy

the army

the gentry

the Orthodox church

3    Rural Russia

Household, village, and commune

land shortage

industrial workers

peasant mentality

peasant attitudes to law and property

changes in peasant mood after 1900

4    The Intelligentsia

Its European origins

sociétés de pensée

socialism as ideology of the intelligentsia

the ideal of a “new man”