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Political Economy for Workers: A. N. Bakh’s Tsar-Golod

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Deborah L. Pearl
Deborah L. Pearl*
Affiliation:
Cleveland State University
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Extract

“There’s a tsar in the world, a merciless tsar; / His name is—hunger!” These lines, taken from Nikolai A. Nekrasov’s poem “Zheleznaia doroga” (1864), serve as the epigraph for one of the most popular works of Russian revolutionary propaganda literature of the late nineteenth century, the pamphlet Tsar-golod by Aleksei Nikolaevich Bakh, a People’s Will activist of the early 1880s. Nekrasov’s poem vividly depicts the cost in human suffering of the construction of the Moscow to St. Petersburg railroad. As with other works by Nekrasov, the poem arouses the reader’s sympathy for Russian common folk and outrage at their plight. Bakh, when faced with the task of devising lessons for workers’ propaganda circles, picked up the striking image of Tsar Hunger, driving workers to labor and often to death, and used it as a recurring theme, while he transformed the message. Bakh’s brochure, a dissection and analysis of the capitalist system, leaves behind the world of poetry for that of cold reality. The author’s purpose is not simply to inspire sympathy for the people’s suffering, but also to lead his worker audience to understand the economic system that exploited them and to recognize the urgent need for revolution.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , Winter 1991 , pp. 768 - 778
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Inc. 1991

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References

I am grateful to Reginald Zelnik. Isabel Tirado, and Brace Richman for their helpful suggestions and comments on earlier drafts of this article. 1 also wish to acknowledge the research support provided by grants from the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace (Discretionary Grant Program, Department of State, Soviet-Eastern European Research and Training Act of 1983, Public Law 98-104, Title VIII, 97 Stat. 1047-50) and the Cleveland State University Research and Creative Activities Grants Program. An earlier version of this research was presented at the 1988 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. This article is part of a broader study of propaganda literature directed at Russian workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

1. Nekrasov, N. A., “Zheleznaia doroga,” Stikhotvoreniia. Komu na Rusi ihiť khorosho (Moscow, 1969), 38–43 Google Scholar.

2. To date, the content and history of these works have not been studied extensively. The most significant analysis of propaganda literature has focused on populist pamphlets of the 1870s. See Bazanov, V. G., “‘Khozhdenie v naród’ i knigi dlia národa (1873-1875),” introductory essay to Agitatsionnaia literatura russkikh revoliutsionnykh narodnikov. Potaennye proizvedeniia 1873-1875 gg. (Leningrad, 1970), 6–73 Google Scholar; Zakharina, V. F., Golos revoliutsionnoi Rossii. Literatura revoliutsionnogo podpol’ia 70-kh godov XIX v. “hdaniia dlia národa” (Moscow, 1971)Google Scholar.

3. For recent research on the People’s Will in the 1880s, see Naimark, Norman M., Terrorists and Social Democrats: The Russian Revolutionary Movement Under Alexander III (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Offord, Derek, The Russian Revolutionary Movement in the 1880s (Cambridge, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pearl, Deborah L., “Revolutionaries and Workers: A Study of Revolutionary Propaganda among Russian Workers, 1880-1892” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley; 1984)Google Scholar.

4. Bakh, A. N., Zapiski narodovol’tsa, 2nd ed. (Leningrad, 1931), 26–29, 33-34Google Scholar; “Bakh, A.N.” [autobiography], Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ russkogo bibliograficheskogo instituto Granat, 7th ed., Nauka reprint (Tokyo, 1981) 40: col. 20Google Scholar; Zalkind, L. S., “Vospominaniia narodovol’tsa,” Katorga i ssylka, no. 3 (24) (1926), 91–93 Google Scholar; TsGIA, f. 1405, op. 83, d. 11101 (1883 g.).

5. Bakh, Zapiski, 32.

6. Ibid., 73-74.

7. See ibid., 176, 180-183. Bakh’s perspective was much more common inside Russia than it was among members and sympathizers of the People’s Will in emigration.

8. Brokgauz, F. A. and Efron, I. A., Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (St. Petersburg, 1898) 24:305 Google Scholar. Compare the definition in Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed. (New York, 1885) 19:346–347 Google Scholar.

9. See Katalog sistematicheskogo chteniia [Odessa catalog], 2nd ed. (Odessa, 1883), 27–28 Google Scholar; Sistematicħeskii ukazatel’ luchshikh knig i zhurnal’nykh statei (1856-1883 g.) [Cheliabinsk catalog] (Cheliabinsk, 1883), 13–15 Google Scholar.

10. For further discussion of the changing views of narodovol’tsy in this period, see Pearl, “Revolutionaries and Workers,” chap. 5.

11. These three works are reprinted in Bazárov, Agitatsionnaia literatura.

12. See Zakharina, , Golos, 34-35, 90–91 Google Scholar. This version is reprinted in Voi’naia russkaia poeziia vtoroi poloviny XIX veka, ed. Reiserand, S. A. Shilov, A. A. (Leningrad, 1959), 243–245 Google Scholar.

13. All references to Tsar-golod are to the 1895 edition, published by the Narodovol’tsev, Gruppa: Tsar-golod (Gruppy Narodovol’tsev, 1-go Maia 1895 g.), 79 ppGoogle Scholar.

14. Bakh, Zapiski, 74. By 1883-1884, the People’s Will party was facing its final crisis, battered by waves of arrests and confronted by growing conflict and confusion within its ranks over questions of ideology and strategy. Bakh was involved in efforts to save the organization, but he was convinced that it was doomed and despaired of the possibility of revolution in the near future. He decided to leave Russia rather than wait for almost certain arrest. On Bakh’s early years and revolutionary career see, in addition to works previously cited, Deiateli revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia v Rossii. Bio-bibliograficheskii slovar’ 3 (vyp. 1): cols. 220-221; Bakh, L. A. and Oparin, A. I., Aleksei Nikolaevich Bakh: Biograficheskii ocherk (Moscow, 1957), chap. 1.Google Scholar

15. Ol’minskii, M., “Davnie sviazi,” in Ot gruppy Blagoeva k “Soiuzu Bor’by” (Donskoe Otdelenie, 1921), 69–70 Google Scholar; Ol’minskii, M., “Iz vospominanii revoliutsionera,” Rabochii mir, no. 4-5 (1919): 12–13 Google Scholar.

16. Bakh, Zapiski, 32-33.

17. TsGIA, f. 1405, op. 88, d. 10094, 69ob. TsGAOR, f. 102, d-vo 3 (1892), d. 331, 3ob.-4ob. Tereshkovich, K., “Pannati trekh druzei,” in lakutskaia tragediia—22 marta (3 aprelia) 1889 goda—Sbornik vospominanii i materialov, ed. Braginskii, M. A. and Tereshkovich, K. M. (Moscow, 1925), 134–135 Google Scholar. See Livshitz, S., “Ocherki istorii Kazanskoi sotsial-demokratii (1888-1916 gg.),” Puti revoliutsii, no. 1 (March 1922): 92, 112Google Scholar; Livshitz, S., “Podpol’nye tipografii 60-kh, 70-kh i 80-kh godov,” Katorga i ssylka, no. 2 (51) (1928): 73 Google Scholar; Berezin, M. E., Borodin, Iu. O., et al., “Vospominaniia iz zhizni narodnicheskikh kruzhkov v Kazáni (1875-1892 gg.),” Katorga i ssylka, no. 10 (71) (1930): 125 Google Scholar. On Ivanovo-Voznesensk in the early 1890s, see Shesternin, S. P., Perezhitoe. Iz istorii rabochego i revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia 1880-1900 gg. (Ivanovo, 1940), 99 Google Scholar; on Khar’kov in the mid-1880s: Veden’ev, I., “V khar’kovskikh revoliutsionnykh kruzhkakh 1882-1889 gg.,” Letopis’ revoliutsii, no. 5 (1923): 103 Google Scholar; see also TsGIA, f. 1405, op. 90, 1889 g.,d. 10847, 76.

18. TsGAOR, f. 102, 3 d-vo, 1893: d. 467, 10ob., 25ob.; d. 91, 13ob. The association member was Breitfus, Andrei, “Tochiskii i ego kruzhok,” Krasnaia letopis’, no. 7 (1923): 330 Google Scholar.

19. See Kudelli, P., NarodovOl’tsy na perepuťi. Delo lakhtinskoi tipografii (Leningrad, 1926), 13 Google Scholar; Shapovalov, A. I., Po doroge k marksizmu. Vospominanii rabochego revoliutsionera (Moscow, 1922), 62 Google Scholar; Smirnov, N. E., “Cherty iz zhizni lakhtinskoi tipografii,” in NarodovOl’tsy 80-kh i 90-kh godov, ed. Iakimova-Dikovskaia, A. V. et al. (Moscow, 1929), 198 Google Scholar; TsGAOR, f. 102, 7 d-vo, 1896, d. 257, p. 198. See also “Doklad po delu o voznikshikh v Peterburge v 1894 i 1895 godakh prestupnykh kruzhkakh lits, imenuiu-shchikh sebia’Sotsial-demokratami’,” Sbornik materiálov i statei (Moscow, 1921) 1:96–97, 99Google Scholar, et passim; and TsGAOR, f. 102, 7 d-vo, 1896, d. 319, T.l-266ob., T. 2-239; TsGAOR, f. 124 (MIu), op. 5, d. 2 / 1896, 237a, 238, 272ob. On distribution in Moscow and Ivanovo-Voznesensk, see Rabochee dvizhenie v Rossii v XIX veke, ed. Ivanov, L. M. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1961) 4 (pt. 1): 388, 443, 493Google Scholar.

20. Tsar-golod (Biblioteka “Narodnogo Dela”, 1902), 2. See “A. N. Bakh” [autobiography], Ents. slovar’ Granat, cols. 21, 24.

21. Tsar-golod (1902), 57.

22. Ibid., 106.

23. Ibid., 107.

24. Bakh, A. N., Ekonomicheskie ocherki (Rostov na Donu, 1906)Google Scholar.

25. Bakh, A., Ekonomicheskie ocherki (Moscow: Zemlia i Volia, 1917)Google Scholar. See Bakh and Oparin, Bakh, 105. Other twentieth century editions are listed in the bibliography of Bakh’s works in Aleksei Nikolaevich Bakh, Materiály k biobibliografii uchenykh SSSR, Seriia biokhimii. Vyp. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1946).

26. A note on the later career of Aleksei Bakh: During his student years, Bakh had been torn between his commitment to scientific research and to the revolutionary movement. Through the mid-1880s, he put science aside and became, in effect, a professional revolutionary. When he left Russia in 1885 he went to Paris and pursued a scientific career in the west until 1917; he published some notable biochemistry works. Bakh was involved in some of the preliminary negotiations leading to the formation of the Socialist Revolutionary party, which he joined in 1905. (See “A. N. Bakh,” Ents. slovar’ Granat, cols. 24-25; Deiateli rev. dvizheniia, col. 222.) He returned to Russia in 1917 and broke with the SRs over their opposition to the Bolshevik government. He was an early organizer of institutes of chemistry and biochemistry for the new Soviet state and was, according to the third edition of Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, “the founder of the school of Soviet biochemistry.” Surviving the 1930s and World War II, Bakh died in 1946, a respected figure in the Soviet scientific world. (On Bakh’s scientific activity, see above sources and entries in Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsikopediia, >1st ed. (Moscow, 1927) 5 1st+ed.+(Moscow,+1927)+5>Google Scholar: cols. 91-92; and 3rd ed. (Moscow, 1970) 3:51.)