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Facts of Russian History and Its Philosophy as Viewed by Bertram D. Wolfe in Three Who Made a Revolution. (A Case Study of Historical Methodology.)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2019
Extract
Among different genres of historical writing, historical biography seems to have exerted in recent years a particularly strong attraction on students of history. This attraction is easily explicable: the life of a person provides a clearly outlined chronological and topical pattern, while within it liberty still remains for the literary or psychological treatment of outstanding personal events. This latter opportunity has greatly enlarged the circle of historical biographers, bringing into it writers, whose interest and method is less historical than purely biographical. This advent of the biographers might be welcomed if it were accompanied by the recognition of the necessity to borrow from the historian his method, whenever nonbiographical problems appear in the historical biography. Still, a method is not easily borrowed, and writers skilled in other fields such as literature or journalism have sometimes erred on this score. This study has been undertaken in order to show through the analysis of an outstanding case the danger of such neglect of historical method.
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- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1956
References
1 This memorandum (zapiska) was published with Peter Struve's notes s.t. Samoderzhame i zemstvo in Stuttgart, 1901; Lenin devoted to it an extensive article: Goniteli zemstva i Annibaly liberalisma (Zarja, Dec. 1901; c£r V. I. Lenin, Sochinenija, 4th ed. t.5, 1946). On Witte's attitude toward the zemstvo see Shipov, D. N., Vospominanija i dumy o perezhitom (Moscow, 1918)Google Scholar and Gurko, V., Features and Figures of the Past, (Stanford University Press, 1939).Google Scholar
2 Levin, Alfred, The Second Duma (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1940)Google Scholar, Appendix IA; also Proceedings of the London Social-Democratic Convention (1909), pp. 451-52.
3 Bol'shaja sovetskaja enciclopedija (1952), Vol. 12, article “Gosud. Duma.” We omit the reference to “tour sympathizers” as problematic.
4 Gen. Guerassimov, Tsarisme et terrorisme (Paris, 1934), Chapter XXII.
5 Bol'sheviki v gosudarstvennoj dume (1930), pp. 229 and 240.
6 Padenie tsarskogo rezhima, Vol. III.
7 Ibid.,V, 214.
8 Na velikom izlome, Arkhiv russkoj revoljucii, XI, 53-55.
9 As to Junkovsky, more has been learned recently about his fate. R. Ivanov-Razumnik, in his memoirs, Tyurmy i ssylki (New York, 1953), relates that in April, 1938, during Ezhov's purges, he spent three days in the Butyrskaja prison with General Junkovsky as his cell mate (p. 350). It appears that contrary to the general belief that Junkovsky was shot in 1918 (shared by Mr. Wolfe, p. 557), he was treated by the Bolsheviks “with respect for his revelations on Malinovsky and … even given a personal pension. With Ezhov's advent, Junkovsky was linked to a ‘monarchist conspiracy.’ … He was transferred from us, where—we could not guess” (loc. cit.).
10 They have not yet been eliminated; cfr. Encyclopaedia Britannica, ed. 1953, Vol. 9, “Flogging” (see also a recent report on a discussion in the British Parliament concerning easing of provisions on flogging, The New York Times, May 5, 1955). The persistence of corporal punishment in the criminal law and educational discipline of Great Britain should in itself considerably weaken the idea that with regard to political institutions there might be a connection between this persistence and “patriarchal despotism,” or that the former might serve as an illustration of the latter.
11 This theory has much in common with the ideas of the “Russian jacobines” of the 186o's and 187o's, especially S. Nechaev and P. Tkachev; cfr Wetter, G., materialismo djalettico sovietico (1948), p. 73 Google Scholar and Berdyaev, N., The Origin of Russian Communism (N. Y., 1937), pp. 80 Google Scholar sq. It remains to be seen, however, to what extent these Russian revolutionaries reflected Western European conspiratorial theory: Filippe Buonarotti's Histoire de la conspiration pour I'egalite, dite de Babeuf (Brussels, 1828) is mentioned by Z. K. Ralli, in his article on S. Nechaev (Byloe, 1906, VII) as a book widely studied in the latter's circle, while Tkachev himself referred to Auguste Blanqui's influence on his ideas (cfr Venturi, F., II populismo russo, 1952, II, p. 65 Google Scholar). Also N. Chernyshevskij's not only philosophical, but political, influence on Lenin has been lately emphasized in a series of studies by Valentinov, N. (Vstrechi s Leninym, [New York, 1953 Google Scholar]; also articles in Novyj zhurnal, New York, Vols. 26-27 \l95l] and 41 955D
12 La Revolution russe (Paris, 1931), Vol. II.
13 Dallin, D. and Nicolaevsky, B., Forced Labor in Soviet Russia (New Haven, 1947), p. 303.Google Scholar