Holquist, Peter. Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921

Holquist, Peter. Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Agenda: to look at Russian history not within conventional chronological breaks, but rather focus on continuity where a rupture (1917) was customarily seen. It will also allow for a reinterpretation of Russian history after 1917 into a wider European history. “The continuum of mobilization and violence that began with World War I and extended through Russia’s civil war.” Wartime mobilization as a context which created structures, institutions, modes of thinking for the revolutionary mobilization.

Main aim: “I examine the mechanisms for instituting and reinforcing political projections, the methods for finding a political purchase in sociological experience,” in a way of top-to-bottom approach (how elites used social resources). (6) Studies a relationship between politics and ideology in three particular practices: “state management of food supply; the employment of official violence for political ends; and state surveillance of the population for purposes of coercion and ‘enlightenment’.” (6)

In other ways, this books is a story of how Bolsheviks used the debris of the old world to build a new one, what political institutions, practices (Holquist doesn’t write, but also modes of argumentation, concepts, etc.) were used to achieve new socialist political goals. This research is based on a case of Don Territory, a specific Cossack territory.

Chapter 1 starts with pre-WWI polarization of the Russian political spectrum: Nicolas – government; bureaucracy – parties; intellectuals – people. State control over the food supply for the Russian Army some time after the war broke out. “Fusion of government structures and public efforts:” “many public organizations… willingly collaborated in the state’s war-mobilization plans because they believed they provided an unparalleled opportunity to transform society according to their own programs.” Then comes August 1915: a split between the government and parastatal organizations. Government now exercises a direct control over the food supply through a bulky chain of bureaucratic management.

Food crisis of 1916 and 1917: contracted production of grain, insufficient transportation infrastructure, “scissors crisis” when rising prices on scarce manufactured goods and stagnant or falling prices on agricultural products led peasants to holding their grain from the market. Russian government then tried to use extraordinary wartime circumstances to supplant market structure and establish a direct connection between the producer and the consumer. Moreover, democratic opposition advocated (although still opposing to ruling policies) a state grain monopoly. Political struggle over food supply in Russia focused on the criticism of inefficient autocracy and greedy private trade, missing dissatisfaction and concerns of rural producers.

Thus, “roots [of the antimarket outlook] were in a broader [not exclusively Bolshevik] ecosystem in which both the Bolsheviks and their political competitors were situated.” (45)

Chapter 2 “Radiant Days of Freedom” examines how a new political process was organized in the Don Territory after the February Revolution of 1917. Inability of new organs of power to exercise their control over remote areas with a distinct identity brings to life new form of political organization (such as the Cossack Congress) which inherited their political legitimacy from regional master-narratives (of a specific role of Cossacks in history). Non-Cossacks, in response, employed new forms of political mobilization (Soviets) to fight for their perceived rights.

Chapter 3 “Persuasion and Force” describes how collapse of hopes for a voluntary and united war sacrifice forced new political forces to appeal to force (damned tautology) in maintaining the war effort. In Don, the important development was a rising importance of Soviets to struggle Cossacks’ structures. In return, the Provisional Government read into Cossacks its narratives of statist principles of government, relying on them as a pro-governmental force. Among Cossacks themselves, counter-revolutionary sentiment grew strong. Conflicts throughout 1917 polarized Cossack society, too, with younger and poorer social groups among Cossacks coming into opposition to the Cossack establishment.

Simultaneously, during the summer of 1917, the Provisional government introduced and tried to exercise grain monopoly, which peasants opposed, since it was not followed by a monopoly and fixed prices on manufactured goods. Makes interesting observations on how visions of the role of the State (sic) among, primarily, Kadets influenced their food politics leading, among other things, to attempts to increase the role of food-supply committees in the use of force to requisition grain (101) – a direct predecessor to Bolshevik prodrazverstka: Not only Army had to supply through this, but the whole exchange of grain between producers and consumers was envisioned in these terms (105).

Conclusion: the Russian educated society turned during the WWI into a “parastatal complex under the aegis of the state,” which with its “mobilization techniques provided a common heritage for all political movements after 1917.” (110) Attempts after February 1917 to impose a new political order based on “statist consciousness” onto defragmented Russian society only accelerated its disintegration.

Chapter 4 “Toward Civil War”: Bolsheviks’ seizure of power demonstrated a split among Cossacks: leaders were eager to send forces to suppress the Bolshevik revolt, while rank-and-file Cossacks opposed to this idea and were ready to defend only their native Don Territory. From outside, however, there were monolithic beliefs that Cossacks were a-priori anti-revolutionary, which was imposed on them by all forces in the Russian Civil War, notwithstanding the “real” split inside the Don Territory (The Silent Don).

After Bolshevik forces took control in February 1918 over Don Republic, they had to issue a certain degree of autonomy to it to secure loyalty of revolutionary Cossacks. This allowed the latter to pursue their own goals which could be different from the way Moscow wanted to define them. In particular, an emphasis was on the idea of local self-government through soviets, which were not necessarily controlled by Bolsheviks. In particular, instead of universal representation of all social groups, soviets in the Don Republic were still dominated by Cossacks. Neither helped the class struggle which was embodied in arrests and executions of Cossack officers.  

Chapter 5 “Forging a Social Movement” looks more closely at how “the institutions and practices of total mobilization became the building blocs of both a new state and a new socio-economic order” (144). Holquist offers an interesting story of interchange between narratives/perceptions and political events, arguing that narratives and perceptions did more for the polarization of the situation in the Don Territory than “real” hostile actions. Manipulation of identities (accusing hesitant Cossacks of “treason” by persistent anti-Bolsheviks) and of institutions (adaptation of, say, “soviets” or “Bolshevism” to reach one’s own political purposes) was a commonplace practice. This game of identities and loyalties resulted in escalation of civil conflict in the Cossack-populated areas.

Chapter 6 “We Will Have to Exterminate the Cossacks” looks at the level of Bolshevik ideology which informed their revolutionary practice in suppressing the Cossack rebellion of 1918. Subordination of all pro-Soviet forces under strict Bolshevik control as a wartime measure, thus suppressing local deviations into a uniform Bolshevik vision of a proper power control. A reinforced image of Cossacks as a uniform anti-Soviet force, which was, in particular, facilitated by an existing split between “Cossacks” and “peasants” (or non-Cossacks) in the Don Territory (the latter tended to support Soviet power). Resulting “de-Cossackization” during the Red Army’s advance in early 1919. Anti-Cossack terror, which was “policy – organized, sanctioned, and conducted by officially established institutions” (182). Curiously, here Hollquist deviates from his own hypothesis that the Civil War mutated from WWI-practices and forms: terror against civilian population wasn’t practiced there, other than in the case of Armenian genocide. He, however, later makes comparisons between de-Cossackization and earlier colonialist practices of genocide, mass deportations, etc.

This policy sparked a wide-spread anti-Soviet uprising in Cossack-populated territories. Much of discursive logic is borrowed from Sholokhov, but nowhere it is expressed explicitly, although there are a couple of references to Sholokhov. It required a reassessment of Bolsheviks’ attitude to Cossacks. Their construction as a hostile class discontinued, instead, tactics of the “normalization” were employed.

Chapter 7 “Psychological Consolidation” addresses state surveillance, disciplining and propaganda in the Cossack areas by Tsarist, Provisional and then Bolshevik and anti-Soviet governments as a form of control, simultaneously in the Army and in home front. Cooperation between state and civic institutions in “rededicating” the society for continued war effort. Makes parallels with similar developments elsewhere among belligerent nations.

The final chapter 8 “The Revolution as Orthodoxy” looks at how Bolsheviks reinforced their rule after immediate victory in 1920. Military measures were for a while retained (prodrazverstka, in particular), although certain concessions were made and no large-scale attack at the Cossackry was anymore conducted. “The statist planning ethos, fostered in the Great War, thus was endemic to nearly all movements in the Civil War” – and its immediate aftermath. Use of state surveillance (perlustration of letters) to trace popular dissatisfaction with these methods. Still imposition of the Bolshevik worldview “in the face of” obvious signals from below. Application of “military-command” principle as a universal solution. Resulting famine and forced transitions to NEP. An accent on popular participation as a characteristic feature of Russian revolution, and therefore the alienation of people from public politics by the end of the Civil War Hollquist regards as a political orthodoxy: “By 1921, revolution as event had ended. For the Soviet state and its supporters, revolution as ongoing state project, as a work-in-progress, was just beginning.” (281)

Conclusion: Post-Civil War Soviet Russia – a result of failed experience to impose a new social order on an old society, in which political practice was much based on international practices of policing one’s or another countries and populations.