The 1920s: The Soviet Communist Party and the Rural Scene

Abstract

The Bolsheviks at the time of the 1917 revolutions were an urban party whose ideology was founded on Marxism and who came to power in the proletarian centre of Petrograd: Russia in 1917 was predominantly a peasant country. The peasant’s outer limits were traditionally the commune and village, which he regarded as his own world: Moscow and the state appeared remote and alien.¹ By the time of the revolution this alienation had abated somewhat. With the rise of Russian industry in the 1890s, peasants increasingly undertook seasonal work in the towns (otkhodniki), were often employed in construction work and increasingly engaged in trade, and during the world war and the civil war many of them served in the tsarist and Red armies.