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Family Networks and the Russian Revolutionary Movement, 1870–1940

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Abstract

This chapter argues that familial support was vital when a party agent was imprisoned, not least because only relations or spouses had official rights in relation to a prisoner’s welfare. Family members could appeal for a prisoner’s release or for a reduction of his or her sentence and had the right to visit the prisoner. Such visits provided the prisoner with emotional and material support, but also helped maintain his or her contact with the underground. This chapter also describes the way in which having children affected the interaction between the prisoner and the state. While mothers were often able to appeal for early release, fathers rarely received such concessions and Tsarist officials were able to intensify their punishment by deliberately separating individuals from their children.

[There is] an actual anguish, unknown to other men, but which is the most agonizing torture, and, so to speak, the daily torture of a Russian Revolutionist, who, parting from his friends or his wife for half an hour, is not sure that he will ever see them again.

Sergei Mikhailovich Stepniak-Kravchinskii (Sergei Stepniak, Underground Russia: Revolutionary Profiles and Sketches from Life (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1890), p. 59)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Much of the material for this chapter is drawn from my article ‘The Revolutionary, his Wife, the Party, and the Sympathizer: The Role of Family Members and Party Supporters in the Release of Revolutionary Prisoners’ which was published in The Russian Review, 2010, Vol. 69, No. 1, pp. 73–92 and is used here with The Russian Review’s kind permission.

  2. 2.

    Nurit Schleifman , Undercover Agents in the Russian Revolutionary Movement: The SR Party, 1902–1914 (Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1988), p. 9.

  3. 3.

    Alexander N. Domrin, The Limits of Russian Democratization: Emergency Powers and States of Emergency (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 71–75.

  4. 4.

    See, for example, Domrin, The Limits of Russian Democratization; Jonathan W. Daly, The Watchful State: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1906–1917 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004); Jonathan W. Daly, ‘On the Significance of Emergency Legislation in Late Imperial Russia’, in Slavic Review, 1995, Vol. 54, No. 3, pp. 602, 626.

  5. 5.

    P. Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York: Horizon Press, 1968), p. 336.

  6. 6.

    Vl. Vilenskii (Sibiriakov), ‘Rol’ politicheskoi katorgi i ssylki v Russkoi Revoliutsii’, in Katorga i ssylka , 1923, No. 5, p. 15.

  7. 7.

    The Political Red Cross was a non-partisan organization led by, amongst others, the socialist theorist P.L. Lavrov , which raised money in Russia and beyond to help political prisoners and exiles (I.S. Vakhriushev and V.M. Andreev , ‘Korrespondenty L. Lavrova o Sibirskoi ssylke’, in N.N. Shcherbakov, ed., Ssyl’nye revoliutsionery v Sibiri, XIX v.—fevral’ 1917 g. (Irkutsk: Irkutskii Gosudarstevnnyi Universitet Imenii A.A. Zhdanov, 1973), p. 49).

  8. 8.

    Andrew Verner, ‘Discursive Strategies in the 1905 Revolution: Peasant Petitions from Vladimir Province’, in Russian Review, 1995, Vol. 54, No. 1, p. 66; Gregory L. Freeze, From Supplication to Revolution: A Documentary Social History of Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 5; Sheila Fitzpatrick , ‘Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s’, in Slavic Review, 1996, Vol. 55, No. 1, p. 84.

  9. 9.

    See Daly, The Watchful State, p. 45, for one example of arbitrary release.

  10. 10.

    Alice Stone Blackwell, ed., The Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution: Reminiscences and Letters of Catherine Breshkovsky (Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, Inc., 1973), p. 134; Vladimir Zenzinov , The Road to Oblivion (New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, 1933), p. 10.

  11. 11.

    V. Kartsev , Krzhizhanovskii (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ‘Molodaia gvardiia’, 1985), p. 131.

  12. 12.

    See, for example, letter, Zlata Evnovna Radomysl’skaia to the Chief of the Okhrana Department, 1908, RGASPI, f. 324, o. 1, ed. khr. 1, l. 1.

  13. 13.

    Stepniak, Underground Russia, p. 134.

  14. 14.

    Arvids Jurevics, ‘Through Latvian Eyes’, in Norman Stone and Michael Glenny, eds., The Other Russia (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), p. 125.

  15. 15.

    Letter, I.G. Bukharin to Arkhangel’sk Governor, 27 May 1911, in GARF, f. 1764, o. 1, d. 5, l. 2; Letter, G.G. Bukharin to His Excellency Nikolai Alekseevich , undated, in GARF, f. 1764, o. 1, d. 5, l. 4.

  16. 16.

    O.I. Gorelov, Tsugtsvang Mikhaila Tomskogo (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), p. 35.

  17. 17.

    Krupskaia, Vospominaniia, p. 27.

  18. 18.

    Katy Turton, ‘A Mother’s Love or Political Statement? The Role of Mariia Aleksandrovna Ul’ianova in her Family’s Revolutionary Struggle’, in Women’s History Review, 2007, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 577–594.

  19. 19.

    Kartsev , Krzhizhanovskii, pp. 215–216.

  20. 20.

    ‘Vera Figner ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 31.

  21. 21.

    Ulam, In the Name of the People: Prophets and Conspirators in Pre-Revolutionary Russia: Prophets and Conspirators in Prerevolutionary Russia (New York: The Viking Press, 1977), p. 395.

  22. 22.

    O.I. Gorelov , Tsugtsvang Mikhaila Tomskogo (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000), p. 35.

  23. 23.

    These roles are seen time and again in petitions. See, for example, Emily E. Pyle, ‘Peasant Strategies for Obtaining State Aid: A Study of Petitions During World War I’, in Russian History, 1997, Vol. 24, No. 1/2, p. 49 and Golfo Alexopoulos , ‘The Ritual Lament: A Narrative of Appeal in the 1920s and 1930s’, in Russian History, 1997, Vol. 24, No. 1/2, pp. 117–129.

  24. 24.

    K. Norinskii , ‘Ekaterinoslavskaia zabastovka, 1903g.’, in Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1922, No. 7, p. 168. For another example of the police allowing one parent to be released to care for children, see Turton, ‘A Mother’s Love’, p. 581.

  25. 25.

    ‘Anna’, in David Tutaev, ed. and trans., The Alliluyev Memoirs: Recollections of Svetlana Stalin’s Maternal Aunt Anna Alliluyeva and her Grandfather Sergei Alliluyev (London: Michael Joseph, 1968), p. 73.

  26. 26.

    A. Gazenbum , ‘Vospominaniia o M.A. Ul’ianovoi’, in Istoricheskii arkhiv, 1958, No. 2, p. 165.

  27. 27.

    Letter, Sheina Abramovna Asnes to Chief of Gendarmes Authority, Kiev , 21 May 1904, GARF, f. 1764, o. 1, d. 58, l. 194.

  28. 28.

    Kotkin , Stephen, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (London: Penguin, 2015), p. 52.

  29. 29.

    ‘Vera Figner ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 31; Ulam, In the Name of the People, p. 395.

  30. 30.

    Kotkin , Stalin, p. 52.

  31. 31.

    See, for example, Ulam, In the Name of the People, p. 134.

  32. 32.

    Letters, Zlata Evnovna Radomysl’skaia to the Chief of the Okhrana Department, 1908, RGASPI, f. 324, o. 1, ed. khr. 1, l. 1. The letter gives only the year, 1908, but since there are letters after it in the file dated from 31 March, it seems likely it was written the day after Zinoviev’s arrest, that is, after 30 March 1908; Letter, Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomysl’skii to St Petersburg Governor, 4 April 1908, RGASPI, f. 324, o. 1, ed. khr.1, l. 5; Letter, Zlata Evnovna Radomysl’skaia to the Chief of the Okhrana Department, undated, RGASPI, f. 324, o. 1, ed. khr. 1, l. 1; Letter, Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomysl’skii to St Petersburg Governor, 4 April 1908, in f. 324, o. 1, ed. khr. 1, l. 5; Letter, Zlata Evnovna Radomysl’skaia to St Petersburg Governor, 24 May 1908, RGASPI, f. 324, o. 1, ed. khr. 1, l. 14; Letter, Zlata Evnovna Radomysl’skaia to St Petersburg Governor, 25 April 1908, in f. 324, o. 1, ed. khr. 1, l. 11; Letter, Zlata Evnovna Radomysl’skaia to Chief of the Okhrana Department, 1 May 1908, RGASPI, f. 324, o. 1, ed. khr. 1, l. 12.

  33. 33.

    E.D. Stasova , Vospominaniia (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ‘Mysl’, 1969), p. 89; Iu.O. Martov, Zapiski sotsial-demokrata, ed. P.Iu. Savel’ev (Moskva: ROSSPEN, 2004), p. 160.

  34. 34.

    ‘Praskovaia Ivanovskaia ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 136; Zinoviev, Autobiographical notes, RGASPI, f. 324, o. 1, ed. khr. 9, l. 46 ob and l. 47.

  35. 35.

    Kropotkin, Memoirs, pp. 426–427.

  36. 36.

    George Kennan , Siberia and the Exile System (London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., 1891), Vol. 2, p. 9; Cecilia Bobrovskaya, Twenty Years in Underground Russia (London: Martin Lawrence Ltd, 1934), p. 15; Kropotkin, Memoirs, pp. 426–427; ‘Praskovaia Ivanovskaia ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, pp. 134–135.

  37. 37.

    Martynov-Piker, ‘Vospominaniia revoliutsionera’, in Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1925, No. 11, p. 266.

  38. 38.

    Kropotkin, Memoirs, pp. 256–257; ‘Elizaveta Kovalskaia’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 241.

  39. 39.

    Ivan Alexandrovich Yukhotsky, ‘Prisoner of the Tsar’, in Stone and Glenny, The Other Russia, p. 85.

  40. 40.

    ‘Praskovia Ivanovskaia ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 138.

  41. 41.

    I have included Kara in this section for while prisoners here were technically sentenced to hard labour , they were in fact kept isolated in a special compound and not made to work (‘Praskovia Ivanovskaia ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 133).

  42. 42.

    Leo Deutsch , Sixteen Years in Siberia , trans. by Helen Chisholm (London: J. Murray, 1905), pp. 250–251.

  43. 43.

    ‘Praskovia Ivanovskaia ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 137.

  44. 44.

    Deutsch , Sixteen Years, pp. 250–251.

  45. 45.

    Letter, S.G. Shiriaev to Anna Dmitrievna Dolgorukova, 9 July 1880, in ‘Avtobiograficheskaia zapisa S. Shiriaeva’, in Krasnyi arhkhiv, 1924, No. 7, p. 100.

  46. 46.

    Letter, Krzhizhanovskii to his mother, 5 March 1896, quoted in Kartsev , Krzhizhanovskii, p. 103.

  47. 47.

    Marie Sukloff, The Life Story of a Russian Exile (New York: The Century Co., 1914), p. 67.

  48. 48.

    Deutsch , Sixteen Years, pp. 250–251.

  49. 49.

    ‘Sergei’, in The Alliluyev Memoirs, p. 98; ‘Praskovia Ivanovskaia ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 138.

  50. 50.

    Bobrovskaya, Twenty Years, p. 143.

  51. 51.

    Leon Trotsky, My Life: The Rise and Fall of a Dictator (London: Thornton Butterworth, Limited, 1930), pp. 103–104.

  52. 52.

    Kropotkin, Memoirs, p. 348.

  53. 53.

    ‘Aleksandr “Dmitrievich” Mikhailov. Avtobiograficheskiia zametki’, in Byloe, 1906, No. 2, p. 158; Trotsky, My Life, p. 105.

  54. 54.

    For examples of prisoners whose parents refused to support them in prison, see ‘Olga Liubatovich ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, pp. 152–153 and S.F. Medvedeva-Ter-Petrosian, ‘Tovarishch Kamo ’, in Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1924, No. 8–9, p. 123; for a discussion of the fictitious fiancés, see Krupskaia, Vospominaniia, p. 26.

  55. 55.

    Deutsch , Sixteen Years, p. 127.

  56. 56.

    ‘Sergei’, in The Alliluyev Memoirs, p. 44.

  57. 57.

    Yukhotsky, ‘Prisoner of the Tsar’, in Stone and Glenny, p. 84.

  58. 58.

    Deutsch , Sixteen Years, p. 120.

  59. 59.

    Deutsch , Sixteen Years, pp. 250–251; see also, ‘Praskovia Ivanovskaia ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 133.

  60. 60.

    See, for example, GARF, f. 1764, o. 1, d. 58, l. 206 and l. 207, in which a prisoner in Kiev requested to be allowed to meet with his fiancée but was turned down.

  61. 61.

    Kropotkin, Memoirs, p. 356.

  62. 62.

    Stepniak, Underground Russia, p. 142.

  63. 63.

    Zinoviev, Autobiographical notes, RGASPI, f. 324, o. 1, ed. khr. 9, l. 46 ob.

  64. 64.

    My thanks to Dr Jarrod Tanny of Ohio University for explaining to me what the ‘telephone’ system was.

  65. 65.

    Zinoviev, Autobiographical notes, RGASPI, f. 324, o. 1, ed. khr. 9, l. 46 ob.

  66. 66.

    Kotkin , Stalin, p. 55.

  67. 67.

    Blackwell, Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution, p. 84.

  68. 68.

    Vladimir (Zeev) Zhabotinskii, O zheleznoi stene: rechi, stat’i, vospominaniia (Minsk : Izdatel’stvo ‘Belorusskii dom pechati’, 2004), p. 487.

  69. 69.

    ‘Praskovia Ivanovskaia ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 134.

  70. 70.

    Kropotkin, Memoirs, p. 426.

  71. 71.

    ‘Elizaveta Kovalskaia’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 241.

  72. 72.

    Nikolay Valentinov (N.V. Volsky), Encounters with Lenin, trans. by Paul Rosta and Brian Pearce, foreward by Leonard Schapiro (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 1.

  73. 73.

    Valentinov, Encounters with Lenin, pp. 1, 21.

  74. 74.

    Turton, Forgotten Lives, p. 34.

  75. 75.

    ‘Anna’, in The Alliluev Memoirs, p. 33.

  76. 76.

    Katy Turton, Forgotten Lives: The Role of Lenin’s Sisters in the Russian Revolution, 1864–1937 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 35.

  77. 77.

    Zinoviev, Autobiographical notes, RGASPI, f. 324, o. 1, ed. khr. 9, l. 46 ob.

  78. 78.

    Kartsev , Krzhizhanovskii, p. 103.

  79. 79.

    Turton, Forgotten Lives, p. 34.

  80. 80.

    Krupskaia, Vospominaniia, p. 26.

  81. 81.

    Trotsky, My Life, p. 164.

  82. 82.

    S. Balashov , ‘Rabochee dvizhenie v Ivanovo-Voznesenske (1898–1905 gg.)’, in Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1925, No. 9, p. 161.

  83. 83.

    Eva L’vovna Broido, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, ed. and trans. by Vera Broido (London, 1967), p. 47.

  84. 84.

    Turton, Forgotten Lives, p. 69.

  85. 85.

    Georgii Iakovlevich Lozgachev-Elizarov, Nezabyvaemoe (Leningrad : Lenizdat, 1970), p. 116.

  86. 86.

    Kropotkin, Memoirs, pp. 370, 374.

  87. 87.

    Kropotkin, Memoirs, p. 358.

  88. 88.

    Bobrovskaya, Twenty Years, p. 221.

  89. 89.

    ‘Elizaveta Kovalskaia’ in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 240.

  90. 90.

    ‘Praskovia Ivanovskaia ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 135.

  91. 91.

    Barbara Evans Clements , Bolshevik Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 89; Aleksandra Arenshtein, ‘Kamnia tverzhe (K.T. Novgorodsteva-Sverdlova)’, in Zhak and Itkina, Zhenshchiny russkoi revoliutsiia, p. 313); Sukloff, The Life Story of a Russian Exile, pp. 231–232.

  92. 92.

    Sergei Usol’tsev, ‘Ot Tolstogo – k Leniny (V.M. VelichkinannBonch-Bruevich )’, in Zhak and Itkina, Zhenshchiny russkoi revoliutsiia, p. 49.

  93. 93.

    ‘Elizaveta Kovalskaia’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 244.

  94. 94.

    Sukloff, The Life Story of a Russian Exile, pp. 71–76.

  95. 95.

    Norinskii , ‘Ekaterinoslavskaia zabastovka’, p. 167 and Turton, ‘The Revolutionary, His Wife, the Party, and the Sympathizer’, p. 82. The frustration fathers felt in being unable to protect their pregnant wives from Tsarist officials is also discussed in Kennan , Siberia , Vol. 2, pp. 410–412.

  96. 96.

    Yarmolinsky, Road to Revolution, p. 288; ‘Olga Liubatovich ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, pp. 186–187.

  97. 97.

    ‘Olga Liubatovich ’, in Engel and Rosenthal, Five Sisters, p. 187. Gelf’man died of peritonitis in February 1882; Yarmolinsky, Road to Revolution, p. 287.

  98. 98.

    Clements , Bolshevik Women, p. 89.

  99. 99.

    L. Krechet, ‘Sof’ia Nikolaevna Smidovich’, in V. Ignat’eva, ed., Slavnye bol’shevichki (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1958), pp. 276–277.

  100. 100.

    Letter, V.I. Lenin to V.A. Ter-Ioannisyan, 5 May 1912, in Lenin’s Collected Works, 45 Vols. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), Vol. 43, pp. 287–288, at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/may/05vati.htm, last accessed 10 May 2017.

  101. 101.

    Stepniak, Underground Russia, pp. 254–245.

  102. 102.

    Kotkin , Stalin, p. 106.

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  1. School of History, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

    Katy Turton

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Turton, K. (2018). Prison. In: Family Networks and the Russian Revolutionary Movement, 1870–1940. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-0-230-39308-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-0-230-39308-0_3

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