Historians and the Centennial of the Russian Revolution

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This article is the republished version of:

Historians and the Centennial of the Russian Revolution

Notes

^1. A 1990 Levada Center survey found that 6 percent of respondents believed the revolution resulted from a “plot by enemies of the Russian people.” By 1997 that figure had increased to 11 percent, while in March 2017 it reached 20 percent. Available at https://www.levada.ru/2017/04/05/oktyabrskaya-revolyutsiya-2/

^2. Nikolaev’s conclusions made a strong impression on Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, which the American historian recognized in a paper delivered in St. Petersburg in 2016 (Ts. Khasegava, “Mogla li Fevral’skaia revoliutsiia byt’ revoliutsiei liberal’noi?” In Epokha voin i revoliutsii, 1914–922: Materialy mezhdunarodnogo kollokviuma [Sankt- Peterburg, 9–1 iiunia 2016 goda]. St. Petersburg, 2017, pp. 22–36) and took into account in his book, which is currently the most thorough description of how the February Revolution unfolded in Petrograd: T. Hasegawa, The February Revolution: Petrograd, 1917 (Seattle: 1981).

^3. On how the principles by which archives are organized influences researchers, see F. Blouin; and U. Rozenberg, Proiskhozhdenie proshlogo: “Podlinnost’” dlia istorikov i arkhivistov. St. Petersburg: 2017. [Francis X. Blouin and William G. Rosenberg, Processing the Past: Contesting Authority in History and the Archives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).—Trans.]

^4. On the question of the revolution’s spontaneity, see two 1997 conference papers published in 80 let revoliutsii 1917 goda v Rossii (Respublikanskaia nauchnaia konferentsiia): Tezisy dokladov i soobshchenii (St. Petersburg: 1997): G.L. Sobolev, “Fevral’skoe vosstanie rabochikh i soldat v Petrograde: Psikhologiia kollektivnogo povedeniia v ekstremal’nykh usloviiakh,” p. 3; and V.I. Startsev, “Stikhiinost’ i organizovannost’ v Fevral’skom vosstanii 1917 goda v Petrograde,” pp. 22–26.

^5. On the early stages of this policy, see: Kolonitskii (1997).

^6. For more on this see Pethybridge (1972) and Aksenov (2017). Almost all researchers working in this area have written about the planned takeover of communication centers in Petrograd in October 1917, but this subject undoubtedly requires further investigation.

^7. Plamper draws on the works of E. Shils, who explored the interweaving of power, authority, and the sacral.