1. Gai, Gr., Skazka pro Kol'ku Kabatchika, Proshku Men'shevika da Proshku Bol'shevika (Moscow, 1917), p. 3. This pamphlet was published by “Volia” in a 50,000 copy edition sometime before September 1917, most likely during the summer. The identity and biography of the author, who used a pseudonym, remain uncertain.Google Scholar

2. Mikula Selianinovich was a peasant-hero in epic tales (bylina), and Il'ia Muromets was the main hero of the Kievan epic cycle. Hubbs, Joanna, Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1988), pp. 153–159. With this move, the author rhetorically displaces Nicholas II from his place as Batiushka, or father.Google Scholar

3. One of his policies, for instance, promotes the increased licensing of taverns, ensuring that he can collect all the other children's money (that is, what little wealth the workers and peasants possess) through his taverns and exorbitant taxes, while keeping them amply supplied with vodka. Kol'ka's second name, “Kabatchik” or tavern-keeper, indicates the importance of this policy to his identity in the story.Google Scholar

4. Here and elsewhere, Alexandra is referred to as the “Hessian fly.” Gai labels the Germans in this story “bastards” and “hangers-on.”Google Scholar

5. Gai refers to some of the most notorious events of Nicholas's reign, which contributed to his downfall. During Nicholas and Alexandra's coronation festivities in May 1896, hundreds of celebrants were trampled to death at the Khodynka field outside Moscow. The Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905, proved a military disaster for the Russians, and ended in their defeat. Widespread discontent within Russia as a result of the war contributed to the disaster on 9 January 1905, when the St. Petersburg police and Palace Guards shot at petitioners marching to the Winter Palace, killing 130 and wounding several hundred. “Bloody Sunday” provided the spark for the 1905 Revolution.Google Scholar

6. Rodzianko was the Duma president in February 1917.Google Scholar

7. Gai, p. 24.Google Scholar

8. For a contemporary reading of the Mother Russia image, see Harriet Murav, “Engendering the Russian Body Politic,” in Ellen E. Berny, ed., Postcommunism and the Body Politic (Genders) (New York, 1995), pp. 32–56. I am grateful to Beth Holmgren for pointing out this article to me.Google Scholar

9. Vera Sandomirsky Dunham, “The Strong-Woman Motif,” in Cyril E. Black, ed., The Transformation of Russian Society: Aspects of Social Change Since 1861 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 459–483.Google Scholar

10. See Homi K. Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration (London, 1990), pp. 1-7.Google Scholar

11. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edn (London, 1991), p. 7. Emphasis added. For other work on gender, nationalism, and narrative, see Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yeager, “Introduction,” Nationalisms and Sexualities (New York, 1992), pp. 1-18; Homi K. Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration', and George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

12. Hunt, Lynn, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). See “The Band of Brothers,” pp. 53-88, especially pp. 79-80; and “The Bad Mother,” pp. 89-123. Hunt uses Freud's Totem and Taboo to analyze the texts of the French Revolution explaining and justifying a new political order. She argues that in the French “collective unconscious” political change was framed in terms of father—son conflict, simultaneous desire for and revulsion of the mother, and the affirmation of bonds among brothers as equals. She also draws upon René Girard's work to examine the ways in which the ritual violence of the revolutionary period demonstrated French citizens' fear of their own capacity for violence and served to delimit the boundaries of the new community. In Hunt's analysis, the fundamental dilemma for the French revolutionary brothers, once they had destroyed the patriarchal order, remained how to imagine a new community based on the ideal of “fraternity” while continuing to assert control over less powerful members of the community, especially women. Although I do not want to present the events of 1917 as the enactment of an Oedipal struggle, I find Hunt's analogy useful in exploring the imagined relationships between ruler and ruled, and among the revolutionaries as individuals and groups.Google Scholar

13. This article is part of a larger study of revolutionary narratives based on a sample of approximately 100 tales, as well as several hundred party and revolutionary pamphlets, newspapers, and larger collections of stories.Google Scholar

14. For a theoretical discussion of gender, see Scott, Joan Wallach, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), especially “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” pp. 28–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. For women's activity during the revolution, see Barbara Evans Clements, “Bolshevik Women: The First Generation,” in Tova Yedlin, ed., Women in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (New York, 1980), pp. 65-74; Richard Stites, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930 (Princeton, 1978), pp. 278-345; Barbara Norton, “Laying the Foundations of Democracy in Russia: E. D. Kuskova's Contribution, February-October 1917,” and Richard Abraham, “Bochkareva, Mariia L. and the Russian Amazons of 1917,” in Linda Edmondson, ed., Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union (New York, 1992), pp. 101-123, 124-144. For the development of Marxist ideology and Soviet policy toward women, see Buckley, Mary, Women and Ideology in the Soviet Union (Ann Arbor, 1989); Goldman, Wendy, Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

16. Bobroff-Hajal, Anne, Working Women in Russia Under the Hunger Tsars: Political Activism and Daily Life (Brooklyn, 1994). See also Bobroff, Anne, “The Bolsheviks and Working Women, 1905-20,” Soviet Studies, Vol. 26, 1974, pp. 540–567.Google Scholar

17. Clements, Barbara Evans, “Baba and Bolshevik: Russian Women and Revolutionary Change,” Soviet Union/Union Sovietique, Vol. 12, Pt. 2, 1985, pp. 161-184, especially pp. 167-168; “Working-Class and Peasant Women in the Russian Revolution, 1917-1923,” Signs, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1982, pp. 215-235; and “Bolshevik Women.”Google Scholar

18. Bonnell, Victoria, “The Representation of Women in Early Soviet Political Art,” The Russian Review, Vol. 50, 1991, pp. 267–288; Waters, Elizabeth, “The Female Form in Soviet Political Iconography, 1917-1932,” in Barbara Evans Clements, Barbara Alpern Engel, and Christine D. Worobec, eds, Russia's Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 225-242. For a discussion of women's roles and representations in another context, see Joan B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Versions of Bakh's, A. N. Tsar-golod, for instance, circulated underground in the 1880s and 1890s and resurfaced in 1917. This pamphlet tells the story of the workers' plight in their own language and shows how Tsar-Hunger dominates their lives and renders them powerless through constant demands for more labor. Through several chapters, Bakh explains some basic concepts of socialism, using Marx's Das Kapital as his main theoretical framework. Bakh, A. N., Tsar'-golod (Petrograd, 1917). See Pearl, Deborah L., “Political Economy for Workers: A. N. Bakh's Tsar-Golod,” Slavic Review, Vol. 50, No. 4, Winter 1991, pp. 768–778. Other skazki were first published shortly after the 1905 revolution then re-issued (often unedited) in 1917, S. Basov-Verkhoiantsev, Konek-Skakunok. Russkaia skazka (Petrograd, 1908, 1917); S. Zaiats, Kak muzhiki ostalis' bez nachaVstva. Skazka (Moscow, 1906; Petrograd, 1917).Google Scholar

20. Pearl's general comment about political skazki is worth noting: “Tsar-golod and other pamphlets read and discussed in workers' study circles are more accurate evidence of the ideas actually transmitted to workers by revolutionaries than are manifestoes of revolutionary organizations or memoirs written decades later.” Pearl, p. 768.Google Scholar

21. Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale, trans. Laurence Scott, Svatava Pirkova-Jakobson, ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958). Second edition, 1968.Google Scholar

22. Circulation figures are available for 44 separate editions, with nine titles of 2,000 to 10,000 copies; twenty-one of 11,000 to 50,000; nine of 51,000 to 100,000; and five over 100,000, the highest being 500,000. These figures are taken from Knizhnaia letopis' for 1917.Google Scholar

23. The standard collection of traditional folk tales is Narodnye russkie skazki A. N. Afanas'eva, 3 vols (Moscow, 1957).Google Scholar

24. Hubbs, p. 231.Google Scholar

25. Hubbs, pp. 27–51.Google Scholar

26. While some tales were specific to a particular political party, most were generic enough for various parties. The tale by Sten'ka Zaiats, for example, has a distinct anarchist message: Kak muzhiki ostalis' bez nachal'stva. Skazka. At least four editions came out in 1917, one with a press run of 25,000 copies. Once published, though, some stories were subsequently re-issued by other independent and party presses. Pearl notes, “Little marks Tsar-golod as a work of specifically People's Will propaganda; in fact it was subsequently used by both Social Democrats and narodovol'tsy.” Pearl, p. 775.Google Scholar

27. Izvestiia was the organ of the Central Executive Committee of Soviets. From its founding in February 1917 it was published by Mensheviks and SRs, and after October the Bolsheviks took over the editorial board. Pravda, the central organ of the Bolshevik party, was also published under the title Rabochii put' before October. The Socialist Revolutionaries published Delo naroda, and the Mensheviks Rabochaia gazeta. For more information on newspapers production and politics, see Il'inskii, L. K., Spisok povremmennykh izdanii za 1917 g., ed. and intro. Jones, David (New York, 1986); Okorokov, A. Z., Oktiabr' i krakh russkoi burzhuaznoi pressy (Moscow, 1970); Kuznetsov, I. V., Gazetnyi mir Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1917-1970 gg. (Moscow, 1972); Kenez, Peter, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917-1929 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 30-44.Google Scholar

28. According to Michael Cherniavsky, this myth died out in the late nineteenth century, during the reign of Alexander III. However, political skazki in 1917 continued to refer to tsars as father or batiushka, and their treatment of Nicholas constitutes an attempt to demonstrate his unworthiness as father. Michael Cherniavsky, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths, 2nd edn (New Haven, 1969), pp. 83-85. See also Pearl, p. 773.Google Scholar

29. Cherniavsky, p. 221.Google Scholar

30. Nikulin, Lev, O russkoi razrukhe i gessenskoi mukhe. Politicheskaia skazka (Moscow, 1917). Nikulin published another story with a similar plot line under the name V. Karatygin, Pro tsaria i pro tsaritsu i pro chestnuiu vdovitsu. Politicheskaia skazka v stikhakh (Moscow, 1917).Google Scholar

31. , Khersonskii Skazka o Tsare-Durake, o Tsaritse Bludnitse i o Grishke—Rasputnoi shishke (Petrograd, 1917).Google Scholar

32. Karatygin, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

33. Other skazki that explicitly criticized Nicholas include: Diez, Skazka o tsare-nedoumke i vel'mozhakh-umnikakh (Petrograd, 1917); Skazka pro Tsaria Nikolaia i kuchera Ermolaia (Moscow, 1917); Skazka pro tsaria Niku i kazatskuiu piku (Moscow, 1917); L. Makarych, Ivanushka-Durachek (Moscow, 1917).Google Scholar

34. Gai, pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

35. Gai, pp. 19-20. Similarly, R. Rozotsvetova quotes Nicholas saying, “I will become a free citizen and live in the country with my son. I will realize my dreams; after all, I so love flowers.” Roza Rozotsvetova, Kak tsar' Nikola lishilsia prestola (Moscow, 1917), p. 11. Nicholas's new occupation is also mentioned in A. Nagvela, Nikolai v adu (Moscow, 1917), p. 5.Google Scholar

36. Rozotsvetova, p. 11.Google Scholar

37. “Lishenie svobody Nikolaia II,” Rech', No. 59, 10 March 1917, p. 2; “Podrobnosti aresta tsaria,” Izvestiia, No. 11, 10 March 1917, p. 1; “Arest Nikolaia Romanova,” Rabochaia gazeta, No. 4, 10 March 1917, p. 2.Google Scholar

38. Other accounts focused on the end of the Romanov dynasty and the break-up of the imperial family. See “Otrechenie ot prestola” and “Otrechenie Velikogo Kniazia Mikhaila Aleksandrovicha,” Izvestiia, No. 5, 4 March 1917, p. 1. The tale Nicholas in Hell invoked both the Romanov and Russian families, as both Nicholas and his brother Mikhail expressed grief over the fact that their father's and grandfather's throne would not be passed on to the next generation. Nagvela, Nikolai v adu, pp. 3–6.Google Scholar

39. Basov-Verkhoiantsev, Examples include S. A., Konek-Skakunok. Russkaia skazka (Petrograd, 1917); Volkhovskii, F. V., Skazanie o tsare Simeone (Irkutsk, 1917); Volkhovskii, F. V., Kak muzhik u vsekh v dolgu ostalsia. Skazka (Petrograd, Kiev, Tver', 1917).Google Scholar

40. , Volkhovskii Kak muzhik u vsekh v dolgu ostalsia. Skazka (Kiev, 1917), p. 18. This Socialist-Revolutionary edition was printed in a 100,000-copy run. Three other editions also came out in 1917, two in Petrograd and one in Tver'.Google Scholar

41. Volkhovskii, V., Skazanie o tsare Simeone, p. 5. This edition was issued by the Irkutsk Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The Petrograd Soviet published another edition in 1918.Google Scholar

42. Bednyi, “Tsarskii son ili muzhich'ia“moroka”,” Pravda, No. 4, 9 March 1917, p. 2.Google Scholar

43. Bednyi, “Tsarskii son.” See also Dem'ian Bednyi, “Tofuta Mudryi,” Izvestiia , No. 2, 1 March 1917, p. 3.Google Scholar

44. Basov-Verkhoiantsev, pp. 61–62. This tale was first written in 1906-1907 and was reissued in at least eleven editions in 1917.Google Scholar

45. Hunt, p. 53.Google Scholar

46. In fact, Nicholas's murder was nothing like the ritualistic public sacrifice of the French king described by Hunt. Ibid., pp. 53–67.Google Scholar

47. Basov-Verkhoiantsev, p. 64.Google Scholar

48. Four daughters were born before Alexandra gave birth to Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia.Google Scholar

49. Examples of skazki about Rasputin include: Anzhelika Saf ianova (Nikulin, L. V.), O startse Grigorii i russkoi istorii. Skazka nashikh dnei (Moscow, 1917); Khersonskii, Veselaia knizhka pro liubovnye delishki konokrada-Grishki (Petrograd, 1917); Khersonskii, Tsarskii klopovnik (Petrograd, 1917). A large body of publicist literature from 1917 deals with Rasputin, his alleged affairs with Alexandra and Anna Vyrubova, and his role in the downfall of the autocracy. For an overview of these pamphlets, see Mark Kulikowski, “Rethinking the Origins of the Rasputin Legend,” in Edward H. Judge and James Y. Simms, Jr., eds, Modernization and Revolution: Dilemmas of Progress in Late Imperial Russia. Essays in Honor of Arthur P. Mendel (New York, 1992), pp. 169–186.Google Scholar

50. Rozotsvetova, p. 5; “Sud'ba tsaria Nikolaia II,” Izvestiia, No. 3, 2 March 1917, p. 2; “Konets dinastii Romanovykh,” Rabochaia gazeta, No. 3, 9 March 1917, p. 2.Google Scholar

51. Several tales repeatedly point out Alexandra's German (specifically Hessian) origins. Often she is not named but merely referred to as “the foreign princess.” Nikulin, O russkoi razrukhe i gessenskoi mukhe; Basov-Verkhoiantsev, Konek-Skakunok; Karatygin, Pro tsaria i pro tsaritsu i pro chestnuiu vdovitsu; Gai, Skazka pro Kol'ku Kabatchika, Proshku Men'shevika da Proshku Bol'shevika. Lynn Hunt argues that in the revolutionary narrative the foreign queen (in the case of the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette) represented a source of evil which destroyed the royal and national families. At her trial, Marie was accused not only of failing as a mother to the French people, but of committing incest with her son, the heir to the throne. Hunt, pp. 89, 100-102.Google Scholar

52. “Prizyv V. G. Korolenko,” Delo Naroda, No. 1, 15 March 1917, p. 1. This article was published separately as Telegramma No. 1 (Petrograd, 1917) in a run of 150,000 copies. See also Korolenko, Padenie tsarskoi vlasti. (Rech' prostym liudiam o sobytiiakh v Rossii) (Moscow, 1917). At least six editions of the latter came out in Moscow alone, with a total circulation of over 375,000 copies.Google Scholar

53. The last two sections of this article will broaden the scope of sources, looking at motifs of gender and national identity in party newspapers and leaflets.Google Scholar

54. Cherniavsky, p. 14.Google Scholar

55. Regarding women revolutionaries, one need only think of Ekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaia, dubbed the “Grandmother of the Revolution.” This epithet appeared often, drawing constant attention to her maternal role.Google Scholar

56. “Khod sobytii,” Pravda, No. 1, 5 March 1917, p. 3. Emphasis added. This item begins, “How quickly everything occurred! Like a fairy tale, like a fantasy—beautifully and solemnly.” Another reference to revolutionary skazki appears just before the passage about Women's Day, where a worker delivers a speech protesting “tsar-golod.”Google Scholar

57. “Khod sobytii,” p. 3.Google Scholar

58. “Velikii den',” Pravda, No. 2, 7 March 1917, p. 1.Google Scholar

59. Murav discusses this phenomenon in late twentieth-century Soviet and Russian fiction, noting that the feminine self as autonomous from the Russian nation collective most often appears within the confines of the hospital or prison. See especially Murav, pp. 50-52.Google Scholar

60. Basov-Verkhoiantsev, p. 40.Google Scholar

61. Hunt, pp. 53–67.Google Scholar

62. “K naseleniiu Petrograda” and “Pered resheniem,” Rabochii put', No. 45, 7 November 1917, p. 1; “K grazhdanam Rossii,” Rabochii put', No. 46, 8 November 1917, p. 1.Google Scholar

63. “Maski doloi!” Izvestiia, 31 October 1917, p. 1; “Tovarishchi! Ne ver'te kornilovskim gazetam!” and “Prichiny vrazhdy k bol'shevikam,” Izvestiia, 1 November 1917, p. 1.Google Scholar

64. See, for example, “Tovarishchi rabochie, krest'iane, soldaty i matrosy!” Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), fond R-9550, opis' 9, delo 216; “Tovarishchi! (O revoliutsionnoi situatsii …),” d. 306; “Stremias' k nasil'stvennomu zakhvatu vlasti nad svobodnym russkim narodom, bol'sheviki soznatel'no podniali grazhdanskuiu krovoprolitnuiu voinu,” d. 287; “Obrashchenie k ubiitsam,” d. 336; “Kto oni?” d. 259. This fond holds a collection of leaflets published by non-Bolshevik parties during the revolution and civil war period.Google Scholar

65. “Protopopovskie dni bol'shevizma,” Den', No. 192, 18 October 1917, p. 1; “Arakcheevshchina,” Den', No. 202, 8 November 1917, p. 1; “Prokuror' revoliutsii,” Luch, No. 1, 19 November 1917, p. 1; “ëPokhabnaia' politika,” Shchit', No. 1, 30 November 1917, p. 1; “Snachala ugnetenie—potom svoboda,” Delo Naroda, No. 194, 30 October 1917, p. 1; “Stremias' k nasil'stvennomu zakhvatu vlasti …,” GARF, f. R-9550, op. 9, d. 287.Google Scholar

66. “Ko vsei revoliutsionnoi demokratii Rossii,” GARF, f. R-9550, op. 9, d. 213.Google Scholar

67. “Tovarishchi i Grazhdane!” GARF, f. R-9550, op. 9, d. 354; “… K rabochim Petrograda. Tovarishchi!” d. 5; “Ko vsem chlenam partii RSDRP (ob“edinennoi),” d. 204; “Poka bol'sheviki zakryvaiut gazety…,” d. 362; “Tovarishchi soldaty, krest'iane i rabochie, Grazhdane Rossiiskoi Respubliki!” d. 363.Google Scholar

68. “Grazhdane!” GARF, f. R-9550, op. 9, d. 325.Google Scholar