Table Of ContentROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Volume 4
Volume 4
MAKERS OF THE RUSSIAN
MAKERS OF THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION
REVOLUTION
MAKERS OF THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION
Biographies
GEORGES HAUPT AND JEAN-JACQUES MARIE
Translated from the Russian by
C.I.P. Ferdinand
Commentaries translated from the French by
D.M. Bellos
MAKERS OF THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION
Biographies
GEORGES HAUPT AND JEAN-JACQUES MARIE
Translated from the Russian by
C.I.P. Ferdinand
Commentaries translated from the French by
D.M. Bellos
FirstpublishedinEnglishin1974byGeorgeAllen&UnwinLtd
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MAIZERS OF
THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION
Biographies of Bolshevik leaders
by Georges Haupt and Jean-Jacques Marie
Translated from the Russian
by C. I. P. Ferdinand
Commentaries translated from the French
by D. M. Bellos
London George Allen & Unwin Ltd
Ruskin House Museum Street
First published in 1974
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights are
reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private
study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copy-
right Act, 1956, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photo-
copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the
copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers.
This translation© George Allen & Unwin Ltd 1974
ISBN 0 04 947021 3
Translated from the French
Les Bolcheviks par ewe-memes
© Librairie Fran9ois Maspero 1969
Printed in Great Britain
in 10 pt 'Monotype' Plantin type
by W & J Mackay Limited
Authors' Note
As the original French title of this work (Les Bolcheviks par eux-memes)
was meant to suggest, the documents themselves form the major part of
the text. Selecting which documents to include was a difficult but
challenging task. The main difficulty was that the dimensions of this
book obliged us to limit ourselves to a small number of characters.
The first and essential criterion of selection we used was the im-
portance of the role played by the character in the Russian Revolution.
We do not restrict the term 'revolution' to mean only the year 1917, but
consider it to cover a whole process which started well before the birth
of Bolshevism and continued through the early years of Soviet power.
Thus we have included not only members of the political general staff of
the Bolshevik movement in 1917 and the military leaders of the October
uprisings, but also men who were in the foreground during the Civil War,
in the building of the Soviet State and in the internal struggles of the
Party. Thus Bogdanov has his place in this volume, for although he
retired from the political scene in 1913, he was important in the history
of Bolshevism as the leader of a whole group of 'dissidents' who joined
the Party in 1917 and formed a considerable contingent of its general
staff; for the same reason we have included Kirov, a minor militant in
1917 who became a figure of the first importance as Stalin's team became
established in the 1920s.
The second criterion - which flows naturally from the first - was that
of political representativeness. The third criterion was, where possible,
to use original documents, that is autobiographies, rather than other
sources. The three criteria of selection, taken together, account, for
example, for the inclusion ofStasova and the exclusion ofLashevich and
Lutovinov.
A second problem was the manner in which the documents were to be
presented. Our aim was not to compose a biographical dictionary.
Therefore we decided, out of the many possible ways of grouping the
documents, on that which seemed least bad. We rejected classification
8 AUTHORS' NOTE
by membership of the various post-revolutionary splinter groups and
tendencies, particularly since neither the groups nor their members were
very fixed. Bukharin is a case in point-a 'left-wing' communist until
1919, and then leader of the 'right' from 1924. The same problems occur
in attempting to classify these documents by the occupations or achieve-
ments of their authors, using categories such as 'political leaders', 'Party
men', 'theoreticians', 'military chiefs', etc., since each in fact took on, in
turn and according to circumstances, extremely diverse tasks and posi-
tions.
The classification adopted in the end derives from our introductory
essay: considering 1917 as a point of arrival, not as a starting-point, we
have taken as our framework the political origins and allegiances to pre-
revolutionary splinter groups of the selected militants.
The presentation of this material involved some technical problems
which call for comment. Though we hope to have obeyed the rules of
historical science, we intended to provide not a work of scholarship but
a book that could be useful to anyone who might wish to have reliable
documentation on the Bolsheviks and the 1917 Revolution. Footnotes
seemed inadequate to this task, and we have therefore employed a
different technique. Each biographical document is followed by a more
or less lengthy note, in which we have sought to correct whatever errors
there may be in the text, be they involuntary omissions or deliberate
distortions, and to draw a portrait of the character concerned-and
especially to sketch in his life after the composition of the autobiography.
We have used numerous sources for these complementary notes, but
provide no bibliography of them.
We are well aware that these notes are incomplete and may contain
errors: Soviet archives are to this day almost totally inaccessible. Many
oft he victims of the purges are still 'Unpersons', on whom it is extremely
difficult to obtain information. To fill these gaps, researchers often have
recourse to second-hand sources: there is a great body of erroneous, not
to say fabricated, information of that currency. We have tried, not always
successfully, to avoid falling into this trap. Lack of fact, as well as the
desire to make these notes more readable, accounts for the anecdotes in
our commentaries.
As a general rule these autobiographies are complete; but we have
indicated in the usual way [ . . . ] the suppression of minor episodes
from overlong or overwordy biographies, and the omission of otiose or
familiar details.
The reader will find a glossary at the back of the volume, containing
short notes on the organisations, institutions and newspapers quoted in
the text.
AUTHORS' NOTE 9
We must express our sincere thanks to Claudie Weill, who gave us
valuable help in composing this volume and compiling the glossary; and
to Marie Bennigsen who took on the task of checking a number of
documents.
For the help that was afforded us in our research for this book we
must thank the USSR and Slavic Documentation Centre of the Ecole
Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, and the librarians at the Bibliotheque
de Documentation Intemationale Contemporaine.
Georges Haupt
Jean-Jacques Marie*
*Each commentary is signed with the initials of its author.
