Welcoming Violence: a Psychohistorical View of the Russian Revolution
Anna Geifman
Boston University
Shifting the emphasis from ideological justifications for revolutionary activism to psychological conditions that contributed to the escalation of political violence in Russia after the turn of the twentieth century, this article analyses the impact of a rapid breakdown of traditional collective identities on radical behavior patterns. It focuses on individual pressures and limitations, camouflaged motives, and aberrant personality states as driving forces behind extremist tendencies and demonstrates that as part of the turbulent individuation process, self-loathing and self-denial were often projected externally, manifesting themselves in aggressive and destructive political acts.
In considering revolutionary politics in the late-Russian empire, historians tend to take for granted that radical behavior was principally a response to oppressive socio-economic and political conditions under the autocratic regime. Accordingly, scholars traditionally accept the extremists’ justifications for subversive activities and focus on ideological viewpoints and controversies within the antigovernment camp. They also typically attribute to theoretical polemics à propos the most befitting revolutionary tactics primary importance for the growth and development of the opposition movement around the turn of the twentieth century.
Grievous economic conditions and complex relations among and within the newly-emerging social groups during the initial phases of the country’s industrialization indeed seemed to validate the radical socialists’ claim that exploitation, competition, and alienation of individuals—these odious features of capitalism--would disappear only after the overthrow of the old regime. Likewise, the unexpected and devastating effects of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 and generally inflexible policies of the autocratic government encouraged revolutionary action as a logical course. Yet, despite their obvious importance, ‘objective circumstances per se are not a sufficient, perhaps not even a necessary condition’ for the escalation of political extremism and violence,[1] and the process of becoming a revolutionary is hardly self-evident. Ideological rhetoric notwithstanding, numerous extremists demonstrated not only the utter disregard for the interests of the people they purportedly loved and sought to liberate, but also for the fundamentals of their own utopian doctrines. Significantly, by joining the radical camp, participants sought to undermine and overturn the world of which they were integral parts and thus, in effect, were engaged in self-destructive behavior—evidently anomalous and requiring psychological scrutiny. In analyzing the revolutionary process, it is therefore methodologically misleading to rely primarily on more than questionable post factum rationalizations offered by the radicals themselves in order to justify their involvement in extremist politics. A psychohistorical approach warrants a substantial shift in focus from the revolutionaries’ ostensible ideological motives to their psychological environment that shaped and provided the venues for expression of personal needs, based on deeper and often-aberrant inner states.
Against their penchant to bemoan the suffering masses, many of those who came to espouse the revolution around the turn of the century exhibited the type of mentality that was best summarised by the popular motto: ‘the worse, the better’ (chem khuzhe, tem luchshe). In essence, they presupposed that further deterioration of Russia’s domestic situation, including grave agrarian and urban problems intensified by the country’s swift modernization, would contribute to the growing instability of the regime and benefited the revolutionary cause. In accordance with their assumption that people’s proclivity for protest was directly proportionate to the degree of suffering, the radicals condemned any liberal measures aimed to help the peasants during famines, arguing that such charities deviously helped the government to deal with general impoverishment and only strengthened the ‘sickly regime’.[2] ‘If, God willing’, wrote one revolutionary in a private letter, ‘we have a bad harvest this year, you’ll see what a game will begin’.[3] Similarly, the extremists considered any official action damaging to the welfare of the people to be propitious for the revolution. In this context, a typical reaction of radical émigrés to the news of Bloody Sunday is particularly revealing. One revolutionary recounted these early days in 1905: ‘Surprisingly, no one among the Russians was depressed. . . . On the contrary, [they] were in a lively, uplifted mood. It was clear that 22 (9) January would be the signal for a victorious struggle’.[4]
Deeply felt compassion for the people’s plight was thus hardly among primary stimuli for participation in revolutionary politics. Still, it is necessary to question the radicals’ motives further due to the extremists’ proneness to discard their own fundamental theoretical principles for the sake of practical (or tactical) advantages, or to ignore ideology altogether. Initial signs of this tendency were present already in the nineteenth century. Yet, in comparison with most of their theory-oriented predecessors, for whom the intricate details of the revolutionary socialist dogma were essential both in forming their outlook and in guiding their activities, in the post-1900 era, extremists evinced a considerably lower level of intellectual and ideological awareness. Their behavior also demonstrated lesser inclination toward selfless idealism and dedication to the cause. By the outbreak of the 1905 crisis, the prevalent prototype, branded by contemporaries ‘the new type’ or ‘the new breed’ of radical, dominated the antigovernment camp numerically and in spirit, its psychology showing signs of ‘liberation . . . from all moral restraints’.[5]
Indifference not only to conventional, but also to revolutionary ethics was particularly common among the combatants (boeviki) involved in daily political assassinations and various forms of expropriation, including robbery, extortion, and blackmail—acts that in the nineteenth century radicals had rejected with ‘unconcealed feeling of disgust’.[6] New type of terrorism became ‘so addictive that it was often carried out without even weighing the moral questions posed by earlier generations’.[7] In fact, it was often difficult to distinguish between an allegedly altruistic, politically motivated rebel, and a common criminal, especially in cases involving individuals with lengthy histories of contact with the police authorities. Such a person might be arrested for felonious behavior initially, then several years later be sentenced to a term of imprisonment for taking part in a terrorist attempt, and eventually end up in court again on rape charges.[8] Contrasting sharply with the traditionally accepted portrait of the selfless revolutionary idealist, were--among numberless other examples--members of an anarchist crew operating in the Moscow area: a navy deserter, who claimed responsibility for eleven murders, although admittedly failed to grasp the meaning of the group’s program until his arrest; his girlfriend, a registered prostitute; another fugitive sailor, who had been sentenced to hard labour for taking part in killing a priest and robbing a church; and that convict’s lover, a thief with a police record.[9] Overwhelming confusion between activities of self-proclaimed freedom-fighters and common criminals, who used revolutionary rhetoric to justify pure banditry, became a major theme in a popular anecdote: ‘How does a murderer become a revolutionary? When, browning [pistol] in hand, he robs a bank. How does a revolutionary become a murderer, then? In the same way!’[10]
Theoretical incompatibility of party doctrines with terrorist ventures--as, for example, was the case with the Marxists —did not restrain any of the Social Democratic organizations operating in the Russian empire after the turn of the century from supporting and often participating in individual acts of violence.[11] Nor did dogmatic discrepancies prevent extremists of various (and often rival) organizations from joining forces in preparation for political assassinations and expropriations. They frequently acted spontaneously and indiscriminately, without sanction from the parties they claimed to represent.[12] More often than not, they were either illiterate or semi-literate, ‘green youths, absolute babes in the political sense,’ according to one revolutionary; they had great trouble verbalizing (much less defending) their ‘extremely obscure perception of the revolution’ and were unaware of the basic differences among party programmes.[13] The relatively few combatants who were sophisticated enough to develop a philosophical outlook typically considered debate over theory to be idle talk and an excuse to evade fighting. Convinced anarchist Fedor Nazarov found himself member of the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Combat Organization but ‘in his views stood far from the PSR programme’, as did Boris Moiseenko, ‘a man of independent and original opinions [and] from the party’s point of view . . . a heretic,’ who ‘regarded conferences, meetings, and congresses with badly concealed disdain. He believed in terror alone’. Likewise, SR Abram Gots declared himself a follower of Immanuel Kant, and terrorist Mariia Benevskaia was an ardent Christian who never parted with the Gospels.[14] Thus, despite ideological squabbles among party leaders in Paris, Geneva, and other centers of émigré politics, dogmatic controversies seem to be less than relevant for the numerous extremist practitioners operating inside Russia—a phenomenon suggesting that theoretical ideals might not have been the essential motives that had driven them to violence. Lofty rhetoric, to which their creed was often reduced, served as rationalization of deeper drives instigating extremist behavior.
‘The degeneration of the revolutionary spirit’, of which the radicals themselves were well aware,[15] occurred simultaneously with (and largely as a result of) the democratization of their ranks—something which presented a marked contrast to the situation in the nineteenth century, when the underground circles consisted predominantly of men from privileged society. By 1905, the overwhelming majority of the extremists issued from various new social groups, whose members suddenly found themselves out of place when the traditionally static autocratic system was undermined by intricate socio-cultural transformations: post-1861 emancipation agricultural developments, industrialization, urbanization, and spread of education.
Amid rampant poverty, drunkenness, and diseases in the cities’ slums, typical of early phases of the industrialization, legions of industrial labourers became most susceptible to radical indoctrination. Young, predominantly single men from impoverished peasant families, who had migrated from the countryside, swarmed the cities as first generation proletarians and performed at least fifty per cent of all SR terrorist acts, with the percentage of worker-terrorists in other radical groups being even higher.[16] For their part, as a result of rapidly changing family relations, many young girls from various social strata could no longer be confined to the conventionally prescribed role of a woman at home, yet, as a rule, found little opportunity to realise their intellectual or social ambitions.[17] The government’s rigidly conservative policies with regards to higher education and career opportunities drove these women into the ranks of radical outcasts, the revolutionary milieu being the only one where females could feel almost equal to their male comrades, who gave them ample opportunity to assert themselves by taking part in dangerous underground operations. Women thus came to comprise approximately one-fourth of all Russian terrorists and nearly one-third of the SR Combat Organization.[18] Finally, representatives of various minority groups within the empire, including the traditional Jewish communities, the nationalities of the Caucasus, Poland, and the Baltics--all subjects to varying degree of nationalist or religious discrimination, joined the Russian radical camp much more frequently than ever before. In sum, by the outbreak of the 1905-7 Revolution, the collective portrait of the revolutionary movement ‘became as [socially] complex as the social structure of Imperial Russia itself’.[19]
‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’. While referring to Ireland, this line from W. B. Yeats’ ‘Second Coming’ describes perfectly the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Russia. Along with long-term socio-economic processes which undermined traditional ways of life, growing disregard not only for the official Orthodox church but also for the very fundamentals of faith and Christian spirituality impeded old forms of communication, as well as time-honored customs and social practices. In many ways, the country was catching up with other European societies in renouncing organised religion, traditional communal and family forms of life, and in espousing individualism as a social norm. In other words, Russia was rapidly turning into a ‘modern society’, whose main attribute was a special emphasis on the hitherto unrecognised powers and responsibilities of the individual.
As with other pivotal points in Russia’s history, the break with age-old communal traditions, based on cooperative land cultivation and on the Russian Orthodox adherence to sobornost (conjoint God-worship), occurred too abruptly to allow a smooth transformation from collectivism to individualism. Scores of displaced and unsettled individuals, neophytes as far as urban life was concerned, experienced the new situation as arduous and disheartening. Perhaps more consequential than miserable economic conditions, psychological adaptation to the alien milieu and lifestyle was exceedingly slow. Thousands have severed physical and spiritual ties with their indigenous communities, but only a few displayed the ability to function outside a collective and to react adequately to new obligations of life as ‘I’, not ‘we’.[20]
Ordinarily, a ‘modern Russian’[21] had no experience as a separated self. The traditional communal life spared him from angst-provoking attributes of individualistic existence: self-doubts and self-assertion; inner conflicts and consequences of their projections; the need for privacy and simultaneous fear of isolation. With the old defense mechanisms inefficacious outside of the commune, the individual lacked the means to deal with anxiety, concomitant with alienation, inevitably invading his life. Increased competition that intensified interpersonal hostility in a stratified, urbanised, and mechanised environment reinforced fear, confusion, and distress.[22] Life turned harsh, discomfiting, and devoid of basic social security when traditional mores and ways of mutual assistance no longer provided rudimentary economic protection. Fast-paced city life, ‘in which factories replaced cathedrals as the great monuments of a new society’ and ‘the instruments of technology had come between humankind and God’,[23] did not offer a relief for anxiety and the feelings of helplessness to the germinating self.[24] The ‘I’, isolated as it was from any accustomed communal ways, submerged into ego-dystonic confusion when forced by modern metropolitan life to face all the challenges of being the adult individual.[25]
Indeed, from the point of view of psychological development, many of the proverbially ‘superfluous people’ were infant-like: they exhibited discordant or fluid personalities, which lacked cohesiveness and distinct ego boundaries. Few found sufficient ego resources to face the demands that modern life made on their puerile, weak, maladjusted, and often disturbed selves.[26] Estranged from their new environment and frustrated, some—primarily representatives of new social groups--engaged in extremist politics, since they ‘could not envision a satisfactory place for themselves in the future, if Russia were to remain as it was’.[27] For many, including members of the intelligentsia, destructive behavior, which often took the form of political action, became an outlet for inner tensions.