States of Anxiety : Scarcity and Loss in Revolutionary Russia

Amidst the vast literature on the parties and politics of revolutionary Russia and its near constant appropriation for presentist purposes over the years, States of Anxiety assesses the effects of the great scarcities and enormous losses that Russia experienced between 1914 and 1921, a period of dramatic civil conflicts and Russia's "long World War." Scarcities meant not only the deficits of necessary goods like food, but also their accompanying anxieties and fears. Using archival documents and materials of the period almost exclusively, this study explores how the tsarist, democratic liberal, democratic socialist, and Bolshevik regimes all addressed the forms and effects of scarcity and loss in ways they hoped would assure the revolutionary outcomes of their own historical imaginations. Looking closely at their efforts, it suggests how and why each failed to do so. Approaching the Russian revolutionary period in these terms involves exploring a broad range of connected issues. Material scarcities involved problems with market exchange, prices, and inflation, as well as procurement, production, and distribution. They involved fiscal policies, monetary emissions, and the effects of escalating debt. But they also directly engaged cultural understandings of fairness, sacrifice, and social difference, and were accompanied by what today would be called today the anxieties of "food insecurity," the dangerous risks of unemployment, and a range of fears about family and community welfare. Officials and members of various state and public committees of various political orientations faced both the threats and actualities of market collapse, rampant speculation, black markets, increasingly visible social inequalities, and an array of emotional fields whose implications need to be understood. The statistical and other objective dimensions of scarcity and loss are generally described in ways that omit their complex emotional dimension, as the language of "food insecurity" obscures the actual effects of hunger. While taking into account important recent contributions to a large historiography, new efforts to decipher historical feelings and emotions, and attention to the languages through which events and feelings both were represented and given coherence, this book contributes to a broader understanding of the social and cultural foundations of uprisings and revolutionary upheavals. Cover States of Anxiety Copyright Dedication Contents Preface Introduction: “Beyond the Great Stories” of Russia’s Wars and Revolutions The Past and Present in Three “Great Stories” Material Conditions, Emotional Fields, Power, and Their “Voices” Historical Imagination and Its Mindsets The Focus of This Study A Methodological Challenge: Reading beyond Description Putting the Revolution in Its Place: Great Stories and Historical Explanations PART I THE IMPERIAL MEANINGSOF SCARCITY AND LOSS 1. “Fighting with God” and the Languages of Loss Assessing Patriotism Surveilling Loyalty Early Losses and Their Implications At the Front: The Shocks of War Reading Soldiers’ Moods Military Censorship and the Galician Disaster 2. Was Russia Prepared? “Embedded” Underdevelopment, Russia’s Peasants, and the Market Problem Fault Lines of Economic Mobilization Russia’s Railroad Lifeline The Strains of State Finance Assessing Loss 3. “Dying of Hunger”: Representations and Realities of Scarcity Early Voices of “Extreme Need” The Military Zone of Violence “Dying of Hunger”: Procurements, Prices, and the Rising Cost of Living “Extreme Need” in the Workplace Food Insecurities and the “Baba” Question 4. Empowering “Responsible Publics” and the Emergence of War Capitalism War Industries Committees and the Special Councils Devolving Authority, Engaging the Localities The Progressive Bloc and the Question of Autocratic Power Funding Production, Regulating Distribution Contesting Authorities: The Emissary Problem Militarization vs. Mediation: The “Worker Question” War Capitalism and Its Cultures Rising Anxieties with the Coming of Winter 5. Seeking Solutions, Drowning in Blood Winter and Spring of 1916: Anxieties about Mismanagement and Malfeasance from Below Contending Anxieties: Confusion and Chaos from Above The Vexing Problems of Rationing and Fixed Prices State Finance as a “Bacchanalia of Corruption” Political Dilemmas Scarcity, Railroads, and the Labor Question: Militarization as Solution “Brusilov’s Breakthrough” as Tragic Romance The Soldiers’ Story: “Drowning in Blood” 6. Scripting Revolution “Literally Facing Starvation” Extending Compulsory Labor: From World War to Civil War The Rittikh Confiscation Subsistence Protests and the October Strikes Russia’s Revolutionary Situation Scripting the Revolution PART II: REVOLUTIONARY IMPERATIVES 7. “Responsible Men in Whom the Country Has Confidence”: The Challenges of Revolutionary Governance Writing the “Truth” in the Third Winter of War Scarcity and Anxiety on the Home Front Uprising, Insurrection, Revolution Locations and Forms of Power and Questions of Political Legitimacy Scarcity and Social Identity Loss and the Meanings of War The Challenges of Revolutionary Governance 8. Addressing Scarcity, Confronting Loss Food Anxiety and the Grain Monopoly: Legitimacy and Function Food Supply, Land Redistribution, and Democratic Practice Democratizing the Railroads and the Concept of “Statization” Controlling the Cost of Living: Revolutionary State Finances, War Capitalism, and the Liberty Loan Giving Meaning to Loss: Politics, Passions, and the April Crisis 9. Social Conflict, Mediation, and the Revolutionary State Politics and the First Coalition Coalition Governance and the Weighty Actor Thesis Seeking Security and Dignity in the Spring Strike Wave The Ministry of Labor as a Site of Mediation Activism in the Countryside Once More “on the Brink of Catastrophe” 10. “Slaughter” at the Front, the July Insurrection, and a “Government to Save the Revolution” Brusilov Redux: The Kerensky Offensive Threats to “Great Russia” and the Liberals’ Retreat The July Insurrection The “Real Demands of Russian Life” The “Government to Save the Revolution” Once Again “on the Brink of Catastrophe” 11. The Collapse of War Capitalism Village Sovereignty Who Owns the Workplace? Summer Strikes Beleaguered Ministries: Labor, Trade and Industry, and Finance War Capitalism and the Revolutionary State 12. Democratic Predicaments and the Bolshevik Coup Scarcity, Loss, and Politics at the Moscow State Conference Kornilov, the Front, and the Countryside “Radical Dictatorships,” Autonomous Nationalities The Railroad Republic The Anxieties and Predicaments of October PART III: FROM WORLD WAR TO TOTAL WAR:SCARCITY, LOSS, AND DYSFUNCTIONALDICTATORSHIPS AFTER OCTOBER 13. Circumstance, Ideology, and Bolshevik Power Rhetoric, Realities, and the Limits of Bolshevik Power Illusions of Peace Land and Bread as Metaphors of Hope Nationalization from Below, Refinancing Production from Above, Repudiating Debt “Still Starving” Workers and Increasingly Hungry Peasants Dictatorship as the Primary Task of Soviet Power 14. “Our Lives Have Become Unbearable!”: Dictatorships in the “Fight against Hunger” Extreme Need as Counterrevolution Once Again, “the Revolution Is in Danger!” Once Again, Mobilizing “Solutions” Scarcity and the Anti-​Bolshevik Dictatorships The Bolsheviks’ “Fight against Hunger” The Normalization of Concealment Losing the “Hunger War” 15. Violence, Loss, and the Collapse of War Communism “Vectors of Social Violence” Scarcity, Loss, and the Trauma Question Losing Great Russia: Paramilitary Violence and the Defeat of the Whites The Fight against Desertion Rabkrin and the Obligation to Work “All for Transport!” Tsektran and the Labor Armies The Collapse of War Communism: “Bolshevism without the Bolsheviks!” Epilogue: Scarcity, Loss, and Soviet History Soviet Russia’s Long Civil War Stalin’s Assaults and Soviet “Redemption” Loss and Scarcity after the “Great Patriotic Struggle” Challenges and Adaptations: Reform, Stability, and Stagnation Archiving the Soviet Great Story Bibliography Index