The Peasant War 1905–07: Who Led Whom?

Abstract

From the moment when the twentieth century struggle of the Russian peasants undermined the late nineteenth century assumptions about their essential meekness, stolid conservatism and incapacity for revolutionary action, a debate commenced over who led them or enticed them into rebellion. The very fact of the debate bears evidence to the surprise of the contemporary Russian peasant-watchers, in the face of peasant political behaviour which defied any manner of prediction. The passing of time has not banished this discussion or its significance. The reasons for its persistence involve both analysis and ideology. The assumed mode of interpretation forms a necessary centre-piece of any historiographical and/or structural analysis of the 1905–07 and 1917 revolutions and consequently of the history of modern Russia. Its significance for understanding the peasant economy and political action elsewhere had been also considerable, for Russia was often used as the model and as decisive evidence for these matters, especially by socialists. The issues around which the debate centred have played a strategic role in the reproduction and construction of the ideological images of Russia, reading back into history the concerns, the justifications and the strictures of both the ‘establishment’ and the ‘dissent’ in each consecutive generation. The long shadow of that particularly vehement argument about the past extended all the way to the recent Polish or Chinese agricultural crises, to the critique of India’s last five-year plan, and to the collectivisation of Soviet agriculture, if not to the last crop-failure in a nearby kolkhoz.

At the very least, statistically, by what they do or leave undone it is the led who lead.

Berthold Brecht

The interrelation, confusions and infections of human consciousness are, for history, reality itself.

Mark Bloch