Controlling Revolution: Understandings of Violence through the Rural Soviet Courts, 1917–1923

Abstract

This essay is a study of how Soviet jurists and rural citizens attempted to understand and control illicit social violence during the Civil War and its immediate aftermath in the rural courts. It examines how Soviet leaders, people's courts and criminologists understood the role of the courts in controlling violence and how decisions of local courts actually limited the effects of the violence of revolution and civil war. It underscores the complexity of violence and the need to understand state and peasant attempts to control social violence in an age marked by political, state violence.

Notes

I would like to thank the participants of the ‘Victims and Villains Conference’ as well as Sarah Badcock, Gerald Suhr and the journal's anonymous readers whose comments greatly improved this article. Funding for research was provided by the American Philosophical Society, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and Wayne State University.

¹ Holquist (2003) discusses these two views in depth. A broad example of the history and analytical frameworks of violence in Russia can be seen in Merridale (2000). Kalyas (2006) provides a good overview of recent scholarship on violence and civil war in general.

² Ryan presents a nuanced argument on the ideological drive of revolutionary violence and recognises that Lenin did not desire violence. Ryan also does not eschew the importance of the circumstances of war and social breakdown on violence during the revolution. However, in an earlier work Ryan (2007) argues that Lenin in State and Revolution did see the need for violent state repression of bourgeois enemies.

³ Mayer (2000) emphasises the necessity of violence in revolution. Holquist (2002) places Russia's revolutionary era in its pan-European context of modernity and deadly world war. Buldakov (1997) sees a uniquely Russian mix of peasant primitivism and imperialist rule that created spontaneous revolutionary violence.

⁴ Sanborn does discuss Red Army efforts to control its soldiers' violent acts.

⁵ See, for example, Slavin (1922a, 1922b) and Portnov and Slavin (1990, pp. 10–11).

⁶ Gosdurstvennyi arkhiv Kirovskoi Oblasti (hereafter GAKO), R-479, opis' 2, delo 2, listy 194, 199.

⁷ GAKO, f. 582, op. 194, d. 2, l. 14, d. 4, ll. 11–12; Berdinskikh (1994). The People's Commissariat of Health argued that a ‘suicide epidemic’ occurred in the last decade of the Imperial period and was not such a problem in the early years of socialist rule (Pinnow 2010, pp. 23–61).

⁸ Anti-Soviet groups and states also committed similar violence in defence of their own political ideals, and populations under their control also turned to legal bodies, a topic that I will not address here; see Landis (2008) and Novikova's article in this collection as well as Novikova (2011) for examples.

⁹ Definitions are my own. Kleinman (2000, pp. 226–41) offers a broad interpretation of social violence as force, both physical and emotional, that acts against the social order. While I do not disagree, for this piece I see social violence as physical acts outside the state. Landis (2008) presents the complex relationship between the consequences of political violence (such as food brigades) on social violence (banditry) and vice versa. I do not pretend to capture violence, or its effects here. Part of the difficulty in studying violence from early Soviet trials is that it became a meaningful narrative only when it entered the realm of the state court. Violence is often an intimate, emotional and subjective act, which makes it difficult to capture its complexities in official documents.

¹⁰ Burbank (1995) spells out the complicated evolution of Lenin's legal thought in detail; see also Kozhevnikov (1957, pp. 14–15). On the Bolsheviks' early views on law, see Solomon (1996, pp. 18–27). Pipes (1986) presents early Soviet law as a tool for state terror.

¹¹ Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (hereafter GARF), f. R-393, op. 3, d. 1, ll. 29ob, 72. Of course, dates varied widely based on local political conditions. Officials in Western Siberia reported to the central Narkomyust that local people's courts in the region began to hear cases as early as 16 December 1917. Narkomyust officials in Penza reported the court was organised in May 1918. Materialy narkomyusta, vyp. I (Moscow 1918), pp. 20–29. In Samara, the Commissariat of Justice seized the records of the old court in mid-January 1918. In the spring, in conjunction with peasant representatives of the third provincial peasant congress, the commissariat pushed through the elections and reorganisation of the new local courts. In Malmyzh uezd, Vyatka province, however, the transition to the people's court happened even before Soviet power displaced Provisional Government rule in January 1918. See GAKO, f. R-885, op. 1, d. 50, ll. 3, 14–15; Lotov (1919, pp. 86–87); Portnov and Slavin (1990, p. 21).

¹² For a discussion of the staggered administrative growth of the court system during this period, see Kucherov (1970), Oleinik (2003, pp. 49–107) and Hazard (1960, pp. 1–63); on people's courts see, Dobrovol'skaya (1956, ch. 1).

¹³ A. V. Lunacharskii, quoted in Oleinik (2003). Oleinik also notes that the Party programme and court officials in Ivanovo-Voznesensk province saw the courts as expressions of popular revolutionary legal consciousness (pp. 65–66).

¹⁴ Complaints by provincial Narkomyust officials fill the pages of Materialy Narodnogo komissariata yustitsii. For example, see Samylkin-Doktorov (1918, p. 29), Materialy (1918a, pp. 86, 89; 1918b, pp. 3–11). Reflecting the decentralised court system in 1918, the selection process and time of service varied greatly by province (Materialy 1918c, pp. 74–76).

¹⁵ On criticisms of the volost' court, see Gaudin (2007, pp. 26–27, 91–101) and Burbank (2004, esp. pp. 5–8).

¹⁶ Rossisskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (hereafter RGASPI), f. 17, op. 5, d. 17, l. 48.

¹⁷ Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Samarskoi oblasti (hereafter TsGASO), f. R-1868, op. 2, d. 1, l. 20.

¹⁸ On former court bureaucrats continuing in the Soviet courts, see Materialy (1918e, p. 73) and Palkin (1966, pp. 86–87); Demichev et al. (2008, pp. 71–73) come to the same conclusions based on information from across Central Russia. In his memoirs, Ivan Morozov, one of the few Bolshevik judges sitting on a local court in Slobodskoi uezd (Vyatka province), gave a vivid picture of what he saw as the problems of the courts. While he had studied some law on his own, he quickly realised that there was not a single jurist who understood Soviet law and only one barely literate policeman sitting on the court. While filled with colourful details, like many memoirs of Communist Party members, this also follows the narrative of personal enlightenment during the Bolshevik Revolution followed by the author's quest to rid the populace of backwardness through the Soviet project. See Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii Kirovskoi oblasti (hereafter GASPI KO), f. 6810, op. 1, d. 81, ll. 45–47.

¹⁹ TsGASO, f. R-1868, op. 2, d. 96, ll. 68–72.

²⁰ Stuchka (1918b, pp. 1–8; 1918c, pp. 5–15). In the latter Stuchka attacks critics who claimed that Soviet law was leading to anarchy ‘and other sins’ (p. 9).

²¹ For similar numbers of cases received and heard in Glazov uezd, Vyatka province, see Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Udmurtskoi Respubliki (hereafter TsGAUR), f. R-611, op. 1, d. 9, ll. 1–33.

²² GAKO, f. R-1322, op. 1a, d. 1.

²³ GARF, f. A-353, op. 4, d. 106, l. 80; courts in Glazov uezd decided three times as many criminal cases as civil cases by October 1918. TsGAUR, f. R-613, op. 1, d. 9, ll. 32–33; Yakubson (1922, pp. 3–4).

²⁴ Calculated by a survey of the cases with the defendants with the last name of A in Vedomost' (1923).

²⁵ On peasants' brutality toward horse thieves, see Worobec (1987).

²⁶ GAKO, f. R-439, op. 2, d. 2, ll. 12–18.

²⁷ GARF, f. A-353, op. 3, d. 100, l. 28.

²⁸ This applies to Russian peasants. Non-Orthodox subjects followed their own confessional rules wrapped up with Imperial law (see, for example, Freeze 2001).

²⁹ For men seeking divorce, see GAKO, f. R-398, op. 2, d. 27, l. 20; f. R-1062, op. 1, d. 5, l. 39. Since divorce became largely pro forma, a single judge oversaw their passage in the court after November 1918.

³⁰ TsGAUR, f. R-278, op. 1, d. 11, l. 1. In the whole of Moscow province, including the city of Moscow, individuals filed 4,913 applications for divorce in the first seven months of 1918. Men filed 30.1%, women 68.8%. Unfortunately, the report does not differentiate between urban and rural regions (Goikhbarg 1918, pp. 11–13).

³¹ TsGAUR, f. R-290, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 1–13, quote on l. 1ob.

³² On the historical context of the family law code and popular urban responses to it, see Goldman (1993, pp. 1–59). My understanding of the relationship of the court with the social revolution within the family comes from Desan (2006).

³³ GAKO, f. R-2506, op. 1, d. 37, l. 34.

³⁴ GAKO, f. R-3238, op. 1, d. 22, l. 82. Unfortunately, I could not find the court's decision. On soldatki, see Badcock (2004).

³⁵ On this see Goikhbarg (1918, p. 16).

³⁶ Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Moskovskoi oblasti (hereafter TsGAMO), f. 4850, op. 1, d. 496. For similar cases, see TsGASO, f. R-357, op. 36, d. 91, l. 20; op. 42, d. 81, l. 3, 7.

³⁷ TsGAMO, f. 2463, op. 1, d. 53, ll. 2–3ob.

³⁸ See, for example, TsGAUR, f. R-876, op. 1, d. 1; d. 5; f. R-1013, op. 1, d. 2; TsGAMO, f. 3966, op. 1, d. 268, ll. 1–18ob. For more on peasant adoptions, see Worobec (1995) and Burbank (2004, p. 17).

³⁹ GARF, f. A-353, op. 3 d. 100, l. 30.

⁴⁰ GAKO, f. R-439, op. 2, d. 7, ll. 10–11ob.

⁴¹ TsGAUR, f. R-278, op. 1, d. 59, l. 2; d. 19, ll. 1–9; for calls to spouses to appear at court see, Derevenskii (1919a, p. 5; 1919b, p. 5). In Krest'yanin-Kommunist (Yaransk, Vyatka province), calls to appear were announced throughout 1919. For example see Krest'yanin-Kommunist (1919a, p. 4; 1919b, p. 4).

⁴² GAKO, f. R-2757, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 1–10ob.

⁴³ My understanding of Soviet criminology is deeply influenced by Beer (2008). For criminologists' views of female deviance, including infanticide and sexual partners, see Kowalsky (2009). Halfin (2003) places criminology into Communist hermeneutics. Alongside the Petrov and Suslov cases discussed here, one could also place Tat'yana M., a 14-year-old who killed her 54-year-old mother and became a special subject of the Moscow State University psychiatric ward (Petrova & Edel'shtein 1924, pp. 93–109); and another unnamed killer of his family who also became an object of study for criminologists and the court (Amenitskii 1924, pp. 95–98).

⁴⁴ GAKO, f. R-1322, op. 1a, d. 4150. Judges were not always so sympathetic. In a case in Penza province, Efronina Tarkhanova was found guilty of complicity in murder and immediately put in prison. The young daughter of the murdered victim as well as his widow both spoke in favour of Tarkhanova, but the court upheld the sentence. GARF, f. A-353, op. 3, d. 100, l. 139.

⁴⁵ Krasnushkin (1923, p. 128). Soviet criminology would come into its own in 1925 with the establishment of the State Institute for the Study of Crime and Criminology and criminologists there also understood crime and criminals in biological and socio-economic terms (see Shelley 1979). The Petrov case corresponded with the introduction of the first Soviet criminal code in 1922. Criminologists deeply influenced the categorisation of crimes and especially punishment in this code. On the importance of how the state saw biography in shaping the self, see Halfin (2003) and Kowalsky (2009, pp. 49–78).

⁴⁶ As remarked in Krasnushkin (1923, p. 131).

⁴⁷ The court also threatened to prosecute those who refused to aid the famished (Ezhenedel'nik 1922b, p. 1).