A century-plus of both Ukrainian and Russian nationalism entangled

That's my take on Orlando Figes' "A People's Tragedy," about the Russian Revolutions, plus the run-up to them starting with the coronation of Nicholas II, and more importantly for this blog post, the follow-on to them, with the Russian Civil War and War Communism up to the death of Lenin. What follows is an edited and expanded version of my Goodreads review.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924 by Orlando Figes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Simply fantastic, and especially because it continues past 1918 through Lenin's death and the start of Stalinism. And, as of the time I write this review, the 1918-20 period of the civil war is quite valuable in re the current Russia-Ukraine conflict.

I’ll confess to not reading all of this book, and I’ll explain why. Knowing the end date, I wanted something that looked hefty enough to cover the ground of the two revolutions, including their playout in Ukraine, plus the Civil War, plus the NEP after War Communism. And Figes delivers in spades.

The chapter that starts with Brusilov and the Summer Offensive, then moves to the Kornilov-Kerensky showdown is just about exactly at the midpoint. Figes shows how a V.N. Lvov, no relation to the prince, expanded on Kerensky’s message to Kornilov and basically set him up. So, Kornilov said, “if you’re going to declare me a rebel, I’ll be one.”

This is the best portrait I’ve read of Kerensky, including showing his Napoleonic complex in all its shabby detail. It probably shows why he had no interest in the proposed Stockholm Peace Conference and was fine with the Allies blocking their social democrat parties from attending — if they even wanted to.

One point about Prince Lvov, before he stepped down from heading the Provisional Governemnt, I’d not read before. He urged the government to make terms with the other nationalities, speciflcally the emerging first Ukrainian Republic. And it did not.

Figes is arguably at his best in showing the playout of the civil war in Ukraine, with Russian Whites and Don Cossacks making an uneasy alliance. Nestor Makhno (had never heard of him before, like the “other” Lvov) and his Blacks were in almost as uneasy an alliance with the Reds. Meanwhile, Greens, peasants who attempted their own degree of political organization if and when savvy enough, were also in the mix.

[As I've noted elsewhere, starting with Alexander III, Tsarist Russia was expanding its campaign of Russiafiction to three areas, two of them nominally separate from Russia, but both under the control of the Tsars. The first? Ukraine. The others? The Grand Duchy of Finland and the Kingdom of Poland. The latter lost some of its autonomy after 1829-31 rebellions, and the rest of it after 1863.)

Figes also notes how, even before cancelling the Constituent Assembly because the Left Social Revolutionaries won a plurality, despised the Russian peasant for backwardness, superstition and alleged intractability. Early on, they were willing to crush them, as soon as they didn’t need them co-opted against the Whites. Class warfare was stoked to empower them, and to crush the rural gentry before the Bolsheviks crushed them.

Also, Figes reminds that the Soviets and the Bolsheviks were not the same. Essentially, Lenin decided he had to co-opt the Soviets and call the November revolution before the All-Russian Congress met. And, Lenin, and other Bolsheviks’ attitude toward factory workers wasn’t much better than toward peasants. By the end of 1918, already, they were replacing Soviet worker cooperative factory management with Bolshevik-imposed factory managers. In all of this, Stalin didn’t go that much beyond Lenin, Figues says.

Also, Lenin getting the Tenth Party Congress in 1921 to pass a ban on factions made the Central Committee the ruler of the party and thus of Russia. And, gave Stalin a tool.

Figes also takes the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to task. At times like the Kaplan assassination attempt on Lenin, they weren’t prepared to act, and weren’t ready to think outside the box of the Russian version of “rule of law,” and were in general idealists.

In his conclusion, Figes says that, given what Nicholas II did to pull the rug out from under the Duma in particular and democratic reform in general after the Revolution of 1905 had faded, the liberals of the first revolution in 1917 had no chance.

Figes does have a stumble or two, not huge, in the next to last chapter. Darwin, unlike Huxley, did not believe in “materialist determination” of human nature. It’s arguable that the eugenics half of Nazism DID have Enlightenment connections. After all, it DOES go back to Plato. And “Robot” entered English from Czech, not Russian. And, that one is well known.

(I intend to expand this review even further at my blog, along with some alternative history questions Figes provoked.)

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And, here are those alternative history questions.

What if Kerensky had told the Allies to go get stupid, and before wrangling within the Provisional Government, had sent a team to Stockholm? (He’d have had to follow it up with a Lenin-like “land, peace and bread,” or “peace” at a minimum with a promise to work on the “land.”)

What if Fanny Kaplan had succeeded in assassinating Lenin? Trotsky was the most dynamic Bolshevik, but his support within the party was thin. Stalin was still more of a backbencher. Who would have succeeded? Could the Bolsheviks stay on?

Per Figes, had Denikin marched earlier to Tsaritsyn in 1918, could he have united with Kolchak? I personally doubt it, because, the revolt in his rear of 1919 probably would have been greater.

What if Makhno had played coy on Trotsky’s request to attack Deniken’s left in 1919? Could we have had a true three-way civil war at some point? What if he had made more formal common cause with Green-type peasant groups, to the degree they were becoming militarily active in Ukraine, and to the degree we consider him, as largely a cavalry leader, separate from peasant rebellions?

Not exactly a counterfactual history, but why did February 1917 succeed and February 1921 not? Probably because the last remnants of Tsardom were fighting the Germans and Austrians, while the Bolsheviks had defeated the Whites and Poles and had no other exterior enemies.