THE JOURNAL OF REGIONAL HISTORY V.6 No.1
How does a minister read a socialist? Political protest of the 1870s as viewed by participants in interdepartmental meetings
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The article is devoted to the governmental policy in relation to political protest during the reign of Alexander II of Russia. Based on the materials of interdepartmental meetings of the first half of the 1870s, it shows that the decisions that played a key role in the escalation of revolutionary violence and the emergence of political terrorism did not result from “fear” of revolutionary threat. On the contrary, they arose as a result of misunderstanding the nature of the new phase of youth protest, partly associated with the inertia of the perception of the incipient “going to the people” (khozhdenie v narod) by analogy with the European revolutionary movement, on the one hand, and earlier organizations, primarily the People’s Retribution (Narodnaya rasprava), on the other.
At the same time, participants in interdepartmental meetings had to make decisions in conditions of knowingly incomplete information about the ideology of political protest and its specific manifestations. Under those circumstances they had to trust experts from the Third Section and the Ministry of Justice who prepared analytical notes on illegal communities, focusing on the interests of their own departments. Analysis of the materials provided for discussion, primarily texts attributed by the police as the writings of Kropotkin brothers, allows us to conclude that the Russian bureaucratic elite, who perceived socialism as “wild theories,” refused to consider youth protest as a serious threat and gave complete control over the solution to the problem to the relevant departments. This attitude was determined by contradictions within the government, where the struggle to form a further political course prevented the development of a coordinated policy regarding revolutionary movement.
At the same time, participants in interdepartmental meetings had to make decisions in conditions of knowingly incomplete information about the ideology of political protest and its specific manifestations. Under those circumstances they had to trust experts from the Third Section and the Ministry of Justice who prepared analytical notes on illegal communities, focusing on the interests of their own departments. Analysis of the materials provided for discussion, primarily texts attributed by the police as the writings of Kropotkin brothers, allows us to conclude that the Russian bureaucratic elite, who perceived socialism as “wild theories,” refused to consider youth protest as a serious threat and gave complete control over the solution to the problem to the relevant departments. This attitude was determined by contradictions within the government, where the struggle to form a further political course prevented the development of a coordinated policy regarding revolutionary movement.
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Valk, S.N., ed. Revolyutsionnoe narodnichestvo 70-kh godov XIX veka [Revolutionary populism of the 1870s]. Vol. 1, 1870–1875. Moscow: Nauka, 1964. (In Russian)
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Zaionchkovskii, P.A., ed. Dnevnik P.A. Valueva, ministra vnutrennikh del. [The diary of Pyotr Valuev, Minister of Internal Affairs]. Vol. 2, 1865–1876. Moscow: AN SSSR, 1961. (In Russian)
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Bogucharskii, V.Ya. Iz istorii politicheskoi bor'by v 70-kh i 80-kh gg. XIX veka. Partiya “Narodnaya volya”, ee proiskhozhdenie, sud'ba i gibel' [From the history of political struggle in the 1870s and 1880s. The Narodnaya Volya party, its origin, fate and death]. Moscow: Russkaya mysl', 1912. (In Russian)
Itenberg, B.S., A.M. Anfimov, A.M. Solov'eva, et al. Rossiya v revolyutsionnoi situatsii na rubezhe 1870–1880-kh godov: kollektivnaya monografiya [Russia in a revolutionary situation at the turn of the 1870s–1880s: a multi-authored monograph]. Moscow: Nauka, 1983. (In Russian)
Khristoforov, I.A. “V poiskakh edinstva: administrativnye preobrazovaniya v kontekste Velikikh reform (1850–1870-e gg.)” [In search of unity: administrative transformations in the context of the Great Reforms (1850s–1870s)]. In Administrativnye reformy v Rossii: istoriya i sovremennost' [Administrative reforms in Russia: history and modernity], edited by R.N. Baigzin, 177–219. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006. (In Russian)
Kropotkin, P.A. Zapiski revolyutsionera [Notes of a revolutionary]. Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1988. (In Russian)
Milyutin, D.A. Dnevnik [Diary]. Vol. 1, 1873–1875. Moscow: Gosudarstennaya ordena Lenina biblioteka SSSR im. V.I. Lenina, otdel rukopisei, 1947. (In Russian)
Remnev, A.V. Samoderzhavnoe pravitel'stvo: Komitet ministrov v sisteme vysshego upravleniya Rossiiskoi imperii (vtoraya polovina XIX – nachalo XX veka) [Autocratic government: Committee of Ministers in the system of supreme government of the Russian Empire (the second half of the 19th – early 20th century)]. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010. (In Russian)
Rieber, A.J. “Bureaucratic politics in imperial Russia.” Social Science History, vol. 2, no. 4 (1978): 399–413.
Rubtsov, A.A. “Ot besporyadkov k demonstratsiyam: interpretatsiya massovykh politicheskikh prestuplenii 1870-kh gg. rossiiskimi vlastyami” [From unrest to demonstrations: the policy of the Russian authorities regarding mass political actions of the radical youth of the 1870s]. Antropologicheskii forum, no. 44 (2020): 114–38. (In Russian)
Rubtsov, A.A. “Sotsial'nye seti revolyutsionnogo narodnichestva 1870-kh godov v materialakh sledstvennykh del” [Social networks of Russian revolutionary populism of the 1870s in investigative materials]. Vestnik Permskogo universiteta. Istoriya, no. 2 (2018): 75–84. (In Russian)
Shchennikova, O.N. “Znachenie zapiski P.A. Kropotkina ‘Dolzhny li my zanyat'sya rassmotreniem ideala budushchego stroya?’ dlya razvitiya narodnicheskoi ideologii” [The importance of the note “Must we occupy ourselves with an examination of the ideal of a future system?” by P.A. Kropotkin for the development of the Narodnik ideology]. Izvestiya Altaiskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, no. 4 (2006): 87–90. (In Russian)
Troitskii, N.A. Bezumstvo khrabrykh. Russkie revolyutsionery i karatel'naya politika tsarizma. 1866–1882 gg. [The daring of the valiant. Russian revolutionaries and the punitive policy of tsarism. 1866–1882]. Moscow: Mysl', 1978. (In Russian)
Troitskii, N.A. Pervye iz blestyashchei pleyady. Bol'shoe obshchestvo propagandy 1871–1874 godov [The first in the brilliant pleiad. The Grand Propaganda Society of 1871–1874]. Saratov: Izdatel'stvo Saratovskogo universiteta, 1991. (In Russian)
Valk, S.N., ed. Revolyutsionnoe narodnichestvo 70-kh godov XIX veka [Revolutionary populism of the 1870s]. Vol. 1, 1870–1875. Moscow: Nauka, 1964. (In Russian)
Zaionchkovskii, P.A. Krizis samoderzhaviya na rubezhe 1870–1880-kh godov [The crisis of autocracy at the turn of the 1870s–1880s]. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1964. (In Russian)
Zaionchkovskii, P.A., ed. Dnevnik P.A. Valueva, ministra vnutrennikh del. [The diary of Pyotr Valuev, Minister of Internal Affairs]. Vol. 2, 1865–1876. Moscow: AN SSSR, 1961. (In Russian)
“Zapiska ministra yustitsii grafa Palena. Uspekhi revolyutsionnoi propagandy v Rossii (1875 g.)” [Note by Minister of Justice Count Palen. The progress of revolutionary propaganda in Russia (1875)]. Byloe, no. 9 (1907): 268–76. (In Russian)
Keywords:
political protest, Alexander II, revolutionary populism, Narodnik movement, bureaucracy, reading practices
For citation:
Yu.A. Safronova, “How does a minister read a socialist? Political protest of the 1870s as viewed by participants in interdepartmental meetings,” Historia Provinciae – the Journal of Regional History, vol. 6, no. 1 (2022): 126–63, https://doi.org/10.23859/2587-8344-2022-6-1-3
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
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