Was the fall of the Russian monarchy in 1917 an inevitable result of the tsarist government's inability to deal with political, social, and economic change?

Viewpoint: Yes. Russia's undemocratic monarchy, its fragmented society, and its troubled economy made radical revolution inescapable.

Viewpoint: No. The defeats and failures of domestic leadership during World War I drove Russia to revolution.

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By early 1917 the military defeats and social strains of World War I had created a political crisis in Imperial Russia. Over several unseasonably warm days in February and March of that year, angry crowds gathered in the capital of Petrograd (formerly and once again St. Petersburg), and the capital garrison refused to suppress the disturbances. Isolated at military headquarters near the front, Tsar Nicholas II did not realize the gravity of the situation until too late. He waited too long to return to the seat of his government and was forced to abdicate in Pskov, where his train was diverted.
Historians have often wondered if Nicholas's abdication was inevitable. The Soviets, who came to power in November 1917, and sympathetic Marxist historians have argued that it was an unavoidable step in a scientifically determined progression of history. In their view the old-regime autocracy gave way to a "bourgeois-democratic" government that in turn gave way to socialism. While most Western historians disagree with this dogmatic explanation, many nevertheless believe that Imperial Russia was doomed. That is, its highly authoritarian character, its reliance on anachronistic social structures, its inability to cope with rapid social and economic change, and its general inflexibility were bound to result in violent upheaval. Thus, they argue, the nature of the tsarist regime contained the seeds of its destruction.
Yet, an emerging school of thought on late Imperial Russia argues that, despite the persistence of authoritarian political structures, there seem to have been many promising developments in Russian social and political life, which might have allowed Imperial Russia to evolve peacefully into a modern democratic country if the pressures of World War I had not led to the revolutions of 1917. The creation of a national representative body (the Duma), which first met in 1906, the increasing activism of local governmental bodies, the growth of an independent civil society, and a vast expansion of educational institutions were a few of many developments that suggest Russia was moving toward social and economic modernization and political liberalization. In this view, if the disasters of World War I had been avoided, Russia might have followed a peaceful course to a prosperous future.



Viewpoint: Yes. Russia's undemocratic monarchy, its fragmented society, and its troubled economy made radical revolution inescapable.

In November 1913 moderate Octobrist Party leader Aleksandr Guchkov warned that Nicholas II's government was carrying Russia "toward an inevitable and grave catastrophe." He was right about the catastrophe. Historians, however, differ on whether it was inevitable. "Optimists" point to developments such as the 1905 creation of the Duma, a quasi-parliamentary body that met for the first time in 1906, and Prime Minister Petr Stolypin's 1906 land-privatization reforms as proof that Russia was progressing politically, socially, and economically in the years before World War I. If the war had not intervened, they argue, Russia could have transformed itself into a modern constitutional monarchy. "Pessimists" maintain that the war was only the final blow to an antiquated autocracy incapable of solving Russia's many social and economic problems.

The pessimists are right. By 1913 the collapse of the autocracy had long been inevitable. Nicholas II could not solve Russia's problems and would not cede power to those who thought they could. The coming war was certain to overtax Russian resources and exacerbate popular dissatisfaction with the existing regime. Furthermore, Russians from all walks of life considered revolution not only a possibility but a probability. Their expectation that things would change was the most important factor in the revolution of February-March 1917. Once the tsar had been overthrown, personalities, socio-economic circumstances, and popular expectations led inexorably to the Bolshevik Revolution that occurred in November.

The prerevolutionary Russian government was incompetent. As historian Dominic Lieven has written, Nicholas "could not co-ordinate and manage his government effectively but was in a position to stop anyone else from attempting to do the job for him." He viewed with suspicion any proposal that threatened to infringe on the autocratic power he had inherited. Most of his advisers and top officials rose and fell based on their loyalty to him rather than their merits, while the bureaucracy they oversaw was inefficient and riddled with corruption. After Nicholas dissolved the first two popularly elected Dumas in 1906 and 1907 and rewrote the election law to ensure that a disproportionate number of Duma representatives came from "trustworthy" social groups, especially the nobility, the members of the Duma learned from their predecessors' mistakes, preferring to cooperate with mediocrity rather than put forth any significant legislation of their own. Government activity, in Guchkov's words, consisted of "a conflict of personal intrigues and aspirations, a continual attempt to settle personal accounts, and dissensions between various departments," so that "the ship of state has lost its course, and is aimlessly tossing on the waves."

Of course, these circumstances were not peculiar to Russia, nor to revolutionary situations. Many incompetent regimes throughout the ages have muddled along in spite of themselves. When they are faced with serious problems, however, they are likely to falter. Russia did have a serious problem: chronic discontent. Peasants wanted more land. Workers wanted higher wages, better working conditions, and the political right to articulate their demands. The intelligentsia and the "middle classes" wanted more say in the government. Revolutionaries from various walks of life wanted socialism to replace capitalism, or they sought the abolition of the central government. Some wanted both. These groups had tasted power during the Revolution of 1905 and smaller strikes and uprisings in later years, as well as through participation in local-government institutions (zemstvo; plural: zemstva) permitted by the tsarist government and in voluntary organizations. They wanted more participation in government.

In a 1914 memorandum to Nicholas, Interior Minister Petr Durnovo attributed such discontent to "the excessive nervousness and spirit of opposition of our society." Indeed, historian Richard Pipes has argued that "the Revolution was the result not of insufferable conditions but of irreconcilable attitudes, of a clash between those who wanted sweeping changes in government and a government whose ruler refused to change anything." It is irrelevant, however, whether Durnovo and Pipes were correct in implying that Russians were overreacting to their country's difficulties. It is irrelevant that generations of scholars have measured the extent to which Russian society was becoming open and democratic, and that statistics showing Russian economic progress under Nicholas may be more reliable than statistics indicating economic stagnation. What is relevant was the belief among Russians that their lives could be better, and that in failing to bring about that improvement, the state proved itself inadequate. The omnipresence of this belief made Russia susceptible to revolution even before its military defeats, supply problems, and economic privations during World War I. As Guchkov put it, "people of the most sharply opposed political views, of the most varied social groups, all agree with a rare, an unprecedented unanimity" that Russia in 1913 was approaching catastrophe.

In fact, a revolution was inevitable precisely because everyone believed it was coming. Members of the Duma warned of it: "Never has the authority of the Imperial government sunk so low," wrote Guchkov; "Not only has the government failed to arouse sympathy or confidence; it is incapable of inspiring even fear." The media trumpeted the coming revolution. One article by a liberal politician,Vasilii Maklakov, compared Nicholas II to a "mad chauffeur," ignoring passengers who were more capable drivers and piloting the automobile of state headlong down steep roads toward catastrophe. In urban areas such as Petrograd, where the revolution eventually began, residents who could not read newspapers heard articles expressing similar sentiments read aloud or discussed in public. Even if they supported the monarchy, many people started to believe the widespread voices of doom. Thus, when spontaneous protests over bread shortages and working conditions reached a critical point in February 1917, everyone decided that it was the long-awaited, or long-feared, revolution and acted accordingly. Most soldiers of the garrison in the capital went over to the side of the revolutionaries. More workers all over Russia took to the streets. Members of Nicholas's cabinet, seeing what they thought was a revolution, resigned even before the tsar abdicated, thus confirming the perception that a revolution was occurring. Most of the tsar's generals told him that he could no longer rely on the support of the field armies to keep the monarch in power.

The Provisional Government established after this revolution likewise fell prey to a lethal combination of circumstances and perceptions. From the beginning its leaders had to share power with the newly established soviets, or "councils," of workers and soldiers; Guchkov, who had become minister of war, believed that "the provisional government exists only so long as it is permitted by the Soviet." The new government could not implement reforms quickly enough to suit its constituents, whose sympathies seemed to lie somewhere to the left of the government and whose attitude was often typified by the complaint of a Riazan peasant that "nothing has changed yet, and the revolution is already six weeks old." The Provisional Government further alienated large numbers of Russians by continuing the war with Germany and maintaining the imperialist goals of its tsarist predecessor. Furthermore, politicians' assertions that they held only provisional power forfeited them any chance they might have had to hold full power. They did not have the faith in themselves and in their politics that the socialists, and especially the Bolsheviks, displayed. They could not hold out against socialists who might not always have believed that the revolution would come in their lifetimes but who were convinced that it was coming.

"Optimistic" historians of the Russian Revolution argue that things could have been different. If Stolypin had not been assassinated in 1911, they say, or if the war had been postponed until 1920, or if Nicholas had behaved differently in February 1917, perhaps there would have been no revolution. Stolypin was "dying" politically before the assassin's bullet hit him. It seems unlikely that Nicholas II would have been any more competent in 1920 than he was in 1917; nor does it seem probable that by 1920 he would have brought the Russian military up to par with Germany's. Even if Nicholas had proved more sensitive to public opinion in February 1917, it would have been too late. As Durnovo predicted in 1914, the war brought about social unrest and "a Weakening of the Monarchist Principle" that made revolution inevitable not only in Russia but in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire as well. If Lenin had died in a train wreck on his way to Petrograd, Russia might have had Socialist Revolutionaries in December rather than Bolsheviks in November, but it could not have avoided socialism entirely.

The Revolution was like an avalanche. One can look at the gathering weight of stones and snow and predict an avalanche, but one cannot predict precisely when it will occur and what path it will take. Once it starts, however, it is unstoppable.

-- Catherine Blair, Georgetown University


Viewpoint: No. The defeats and failures of domestic leadership during World War I drove Russia to revolution.

The reign of the last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II (ruled 1894-1917), has come under increasing scrutiny since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 reawakened scholarly interest in late Imperial Russia. Before that time most of the literature dealing with the period between 1894 and 1917 sought narrowly for the reasons underlying the fall of the Romanov dynasty rather than examining Russian history of the period as a whole. Leopold Haimson's 1964-1965 article "The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917" presented the thesis that Russian society was so afraid of revolution that it was unwilling to force social and political reforms lest they spark the conflagration. Also published in 1964, the first edition of Theodore H. von Laue's Why Lenin? Why Stalin? echoed Haimson's argument, concluding that there was no chance whatsoever for Russia's peaceful evolution because the rapid pace of industrialization had separated the elite from the people. This approach was largely the result of uncritical acceptance of Lev Trotsky's observation that the revolution in 1905 was only a "dress rehearsal." Much attention was paid to the dramatic growth of the labor movement after 1905, even though an increase in its size and activity should have been expected given the legalization of trade unions by the tsarist government in that year. Since the end of the Soviet Union, however, the reign of Nicholas II is no longer being judged merely by the historical fact of its ultimate demise. Recent scholarship has begun to focus on Russia's considerable achievements in the political, social, and economic realms during the two decades prior to the outbreak of World War I.

New research suggests that the surge of reform that swept through the Russian towns and countryside prior to World War I led to a clear commitment of the emerging "middle" groups to civic activity in order to effect the regeneration of Russian social and political life. Such works as Adèle Lindenmeyr's Poverty is Not a Vice: Charity, Society, and the State in Imperial Russia (1996) and the 1998 collection Emerging Democracy in Late Imperial Russia suggest that educated Russian society (obshchestvo) was in fact becoming increasingly active and reformist. This marked increase in social and political activism refutes the once dominant paradigm in the field that contends that obshchestvo was demoralized and marginalized and thus unable to play any constructive role in Russian life, especially after the so-called reaction that set after the revolution of 1905.

Other scholars have found evidence to support this more positive assessment of developments in late Imperial Russia, especially in studies of the entrepreneurial skills of the Russian business community. Also, in contrast to earlier scholarship, most recent studies of urban life in Russia during the period have concluded that living conditions in the towns and cities were rapidly improving. Historians have discovered that industrial workers not only enjoyed opportunities for advancement, but also--contrary to the findings of an earlier generation of social and labor historians--were not united in their support for destroying the Russian social and political order. To be sure, the tsarist government was still authoritarian on the eve of World War I. Nevertheless, autonomous civic groups were beginning to play a role in the transformation of Russia from a servile to a civil society.

Despite limits on the initiative of the emerging Russian "middle" groups, there is clear evidence that Russia was moving, however slowly, away from a service state with an estate-based society of orders (sosloviia) toward a modern polity. These groups actively sought to work with the government to resolve the social problems that inevitably arise in modernizing societies. Although the tsarist regime continued to espouse outdated ideals and to extol the virtues of autocracy, it was meanwhile pursuing a modernization process that would fundamentally alter Russian society. Indeed, the industrialization programs of Nicholas II and his predecessor, Alexander III (ruled 1881-1894), brought into existence a middle class, which in turn demanded an end to the restrictions imposed on it by the state.

This new middle class perhaps represented tsarist Russia's best hope for a modern democratic government and a thriving capitalist economy. In Moscow and several other industrial centers various philanthropic organizations, members of the municipal governments (many of whom came from the business community), and liberal industrialists committed themselves to urban and democratic reform. Some notable individuals from this class of Russians--such as Octobrist Party members Pavel Riabushinskii and Aleksandr Guchkov and Constitutional Democrats Aleksandr Konovalov and Mikhail Tereshchenko--became national leaders between 1907 and 1917. Even as the social and economic crises attendant to modernization escalated, however, the tsar clung to his outdated notions of personal rule based on the traditional estate system--despite the efforts of far-sighted ministers such as Petr Stolypin, prime minister from 1906 to 1911, who sought to integrate the peasantry into the social, economic, and political life of the nation as a necessary step toward the creation of a civil society.

If it had been fully realized, Stolypin's program could have forced Russia to evolve from its traditional political culture, where authority was based on legitimacy and precedent, to a modern political order along the lines of those in Western Europe, with legal protection of civil liberties, legal political parties, and public involvement in governance. Stolypin had convinced Nicholas to issue the ukaz (decree) of 6 October 1906, which restored the peasantry's right to elect its own delegates to the zemstva (singular: zemstvo)--elected institutions of local government established in most provinces of European Russia after 1864--which had been taken from them by a counterreform measure in 1890. The ukaz of 1906 also gave peasants the right to participate in the second, nonnoble electoral curia and congresses (usually reserved for townspeople) for provincial zemstva if they held private farmsteads, as increasing numbers of peasants did in the years before World War I. Further plans were drawn up, though not realized, to establish an all-class local (volost', or canton) level of the zemstvo, and one below the volost' that would have transferred much local political power to the peasantry while greatly reducing that of the nobility.

Since Stolypin hoped to make the peasants into citizens with a stake in the system, these plans were designed to break down the estate system and to give the peasantry equal voting rights to the nobility. Stolypin was determined to end the system of apartheid that maintained the Old Regime's society of orders in Russia. He accomplished this goal through a series of decrees passed between 1906 and 1910, finally breaking the stultifying grip of the peasant commune, the structure set up to govern the legal, social, and economic aspects of peasant life after the emancipation of serfdom in 1863. The practice of collective responsibility for the commune's tax burden and legal obligations had already been ended, and Stolypin's granting of passports to the peasantry enabled them to move freely. More important, he wanted to give the peasants the right to own as private property their allotments of communal land, which were periodically redistributed and usually uneconomically dispersed over a wide area. Once these strips of land were consolidated into private farms, as they increasingly were in the years before 1914, the emergence of a prosperous, stable, and property-owning peasantry reached toward rural political stability.

The seizure of the zemstva by conservative landowners in the aftermath of the revolution of 1905 has been well chronicled. Special emphasis has been placed on the broad array of programs that were immediately slashed or shut down. The fact that conservative gentry controlled the zemstva after 1905 has been repeatedly cited as proof that these organs of local self-government could not serve as agents for change in the countryside and thus could not further the development of a civil society. The problem with this standard view, however, is that it looks at events before 1907 and does not take into account the historical record from 1908 to 1914 and even during the war years. After 1907 the nobility soon realized that not only would continued repression undermine the stability of the countryside and increase the peasantry's disaffection but that the nobility would ultimately become irrelevant and lose their influence in Russia unless they reinvigorated the zemstva and limited state authority over them. While they defeated many of Stolypin's proposals to democratize the zemstva, they also began to reassemble programs they had cut and to implement broad-ranging programs for educational, health, and welfare reforms that were even more impressive than those of their predecessors. The noble delegates also began a protracted, well-organized campaign--in many ways reminiscent of the struggle conducted by their liberal forbears--to allow society more autonomy and leeway in governance.

During the years 1907-1914 zemstvo activity increased dramatically. Budgets skyrocketed after Stolypin removed the restriction placed on the zemstva by the law of 12 June 1900, which limited tax increases to no more than 3 percent per annum. By 1912 the overall budget of the thirty-four zemstvo provinces was 220 million rubles, a sum more than triple their combined budgets in 1895. Just two years later--after nine additional provinces had been allowed to established zemstva--the total budget of the forty-three zemstvo provinces was 347.5 million rubles. Fully three-quarters of these funds went to health, education, and welfare; only 12 percent went toward administrative overhead. Entirely new fields of endeavor, such as agronomy and adult education, were created. This process was accelerating on the eve of the war. In arguably the most important zemstvo field, education, zemstvo activists (zemtsy) entered into negotiations with the Ministry of Education over how best to implement plans for universal schooling, which the tsarist government planned to achieve by the 1920s. In 1913 the total zemstvo budget increased by 39.8 million rubles over the previous year, with more than 40 percent of the increase (16.5 million rubles) going to education. While it is true that state subsidies increased dramatically (from a mere 2 million rubles in 1907 to more than 40 million rubles in 1913), zemstvo contributions grew at an even faster rate, with the result that by 1914 spending on schools surpassed spending on medicine.

This expansion of zemstvo services in turn made necessary the hiring of tens of thousands of specialists (the so-called Third Element) such as doctors, teachers, veterinarians, agronomists, accountants, and others who saw themselves as public servants, as opposed to government officials. This group's cooperation and expertise were crucial if the state and educated society were to resolve the myriad social and economic problems brought about by modernization. One need only look at zemstvo schools to understand how crucial the Third Element was in prewar development. In 1879, 22,767 rural schools in the provinces of European Russia employed 24,389 teachers. Thirty-two years later 62,913 teachers filled the classrooms of a new generation of learners. As Jeffrey Brooks has indicated in his When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917 (1985), of all the areas of zemstvo activity, primary education showed the most impressive growth between 1880 and 1914.

On the eve of World War I the political and social transformation of Russia was well under way. The political experience of state and educated society working together to succor victims of famine and disease, to hasten the acculturation of the peasantry through mass education, to facilitate the breakup of the commune, and to resettle several million peasants in the empty spaces of Siberia promoted a détente between these two important elements of the Russian polity. This cooperation of intellectuals and the state undercuts the traditional "state versus society" argument found in the writings of prerevolutionary liberal activists. Recent scholars have found, for example, that provincial governors welcomed the assistance of the zemstva, especially in the areas of public education and health.

Looking on from his exile abroad, Vladimir Lenin cautioned his few followers not to take Stolypin's policies lightly. Contrary to the standard view, the coming of World War I did not entirely derail this slow evolution toward a civil society. Russia's educated society responded to the crises that the conflict engendered by assuming many burdens that normally would have been the responsibility of the state in time of war. These activities included providing munitions to the army, rendering assistance to refugees and medical services to wounded soldiers, and administering vaccination programs. The increasing confidence of Russian "middle" groups and the impetus given to peasant demands for education about the Germans or how an airplane worked--demonstrating, as Scott Seregny has noted, their interest in the larger world--shows how the war acted as an accelerator of change.

Proof that some elements of a democratic, civil society were at least incipient might be found in the zemstvo elections in the fall of 1917, before the Bolshevik coup, and those for the Constituent Assembly in November of that same year. Some scholars have pointed to the low turnouts for the zemstvo elections as evidence of the intransigence and isolation of the peasantry from political life. But considering that the election was held at harvesttime and that women (who were eligible to vote for the first time) generally stayed away from the polls, the turnout of 40 to 50 percent was remarkably high. (The turnout in the American presidential election of 2000 was just under 50 percent.) The political progress of Russian society was revealed in the Constituent Assembly elections: even in the intimidating circumstances of the Bolsheviks' "temporary" dictatorship, fifty million citizens expressed their will through the ballot box and not in the street. After the demise of the Soviet Union, Russians began looking to the last years of Romanov Russia as a way to guide or legitimize Russia's current democratic experiment. One should take note of the symbolism involved in reinstituting the State Duma as the national legislature, the readoption of the traditional tricolored flag and double-headed Romanov eagle, and even the reburial and canonization of Nicholas II. Developments during the reign of the last tsar had important implications for peasant integration and the evolution of a civic identity. By minimizing or ignoring countervailing trends that do not fit into prearranged political categories, historians run the risk of accepting historical outcomes as being inevitable. There were alternative paths open to Russia in 1917, and those opportunities, which reflect a long-standing political reality, remain open.

-- Thomas Earl Porter, North Carolina A&T State University

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THE FIRST DUMA

When the Russian Duma met for the first time in April 1906, it presented an ambitious agenda to Tsar Nicholas II, who rejected their demands and dissolved the legislative body in July. The Duma's message to the tsar included the following points:

The country has concluded that the arbitrariness of the administrative officials who separate the Tsar from the people is the fundamental shortcoming in the national life. With a united voice the country has loudly declared that the renewal of national life is possible only on the basis of freedom, the right of independent popular action, popular participation in the legislative power, and popular control over the executive power. . . .

Together with the establishment of administrative responsibility to the legislature, it is imperative to follow the basic principle of true popular representation, so that the unity of the monarch with the people can be the sole source of legislative power. Thus all barriers between the Supreme Power and the people must be removed. Likewise no limits should be set to the legislative competence of the popular legislature in unity with the monarch. The State Duma feels obliged to declare to Your Imperial Majesty in the name of the people that the entire population can join in the creative task of renewing the national life with true inspiration and true faith in the development of national prosperity only when nothing will stand between the people and the Throne, no State Council of officials chosen only from the highest class of the people; when the levying of taxes and duties becomes the responsibility of the popular legislature alone; and when no special laws whatever will set limits to the legislative competence of the popular legislature. . . .

The State Duma . . . considers it urgently necessary to agree upon precise laws guaranteeing personal immunity, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and the press, freedom of union and assembly, and freedom to strike. . . .

The State Duma holds firmly to the conviction that neither freedom nor order founded on right can be strong or lasting without strict observation of the principle of the equality of all citizens before the law (without exception). The State Duma will therefore work out bills for the full equalization of all citizens, and for the abolition of all restrictions and privileges accruing to anyone by reason of class, nationality, religion, or sex. . . . The State Duma considers the use of the death penalty intolerable, even by judicial sentence. . . .

Clarification of the needs of the rural population and the undertaking of legislative measures appropriate to meet them is the most immediate problem facing the State Duma. The working peasantry, the largest part of our population, are impatiently awaiting satisfaction of their acute need for land. The first Russian State Duma will not have fulfilled its duty if it does not work out a law providing land for the peasants. . . .

The State Duma also deems it necessary to work out laws which will secure equal rights for the peasant and do away with the arbitrary and tutelary authority which they have so long endured. The State Duma recognizes as equally urgent the satisfaction of the needs of the working class by legislative measures which will protect the rights of the wage laborer. . . .

The State Duma likewise considers it its duty to do all it can to raise the level of popular enlightenment; thus we should turn our attention to laws concerning universal free education.

The Duma will also give special attention to an equitable distribution of the tax burden, which today weighs disproportionately on the poorest classes of the people, and to the study of the most advisable use of the state revenues.

Fundamental reform of local administration and local self-government is no less essential a legislative task. The entire population should be enlisted for equal participation in local self-government according to the principles of universal suffrage. Remembering the burden of service which the people bear in your Majesty's army and navy, the State Duma is concerned with the strengthening of the principles of equity and justice in the armed forces.

Finally, the State Duma considers it necessary to list among our urgent problems the satisfaction of the long-pressing demands of the various nationalities. Russia is a state populated by many tribes and peoples. A true spiritual union of all these tribes and peoples can be possible only when each is enabled to live its own peculiar and separate way of life. The State Duma will thus concern itself with ways to satisfy those demands.

Your Imperial Majesty! . . . The first word which was spoken in this hall . . . was the word amnesty. The country awaits it; an amnesty granted to all those convicted for religious or political reasons, and for all violations of agrarian laws.

. . . Sire, the Duma awaits from you a full political amnesty, as a first guarantee of the mutual understanding and mutual agreement between the Tsar and the people.

Source: "The Reply of the State Duma," in Imperial Russia, 1700-1917, volume 2 of Readings in Russian Civilization, edited by Thomas Riha, second edition, revised (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 446-449.

FURTHER READINGS


References


Abraham Ascher, P. A. Stolypin: The Search for Stability in Late Imperial Russia (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 2001).

Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).

Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Nicholas II. The Interrupted Transition(New York: Holmes & Meier, 2000).

Mary Schaeffer Conroy, ed., Emerging Democracy in Late Imperial Russia: Case Studies on Local Self-Government (the Zemstvos), State Duma Elections, the Tsarist Government, and the State Council before and during World War I (Niwot: University of Colorado Press, 1998).

James Cracraft, ed., Major Problems in the History of Imperial Russia (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1994).

Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 (New York: Viking, 1997).

Paul Gregory, Before Command: An Economic History of Russia from the Emancipation to the First Five Year Plan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

Leopold Haimson, "The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917," Slavic Review, 23 (December 1964): 620-642; 24 (March 1965): 1-22.

Michael F. Hamm, Kiev: A Portrait, 1800-1917(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

Geoffrey Hosking, The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within, second edition, enlarged (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).

Stephen Kotkin, "1991 and the Russian Revolution: Sources, Conceptual Categories, Analytical Frameworks," Journal of Modern History, 70 (June 1998): 384-425.

Dominic Lieven, Nicholas II: Twilight of the Empire(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994).

Adèle Lindenmeyr, Poverty is Not a Vice: Charity, Society, and the State in Imperial Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

Nicolai N. Petro, The Rebirth of Russian Democracy: An Interpretation of Political Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995).

Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1990).

Thomas Porter and Scott Seregny, "The Zemstvo Reconsidered," in Russian Local Government: Power, Authority and Civic Participation, edited by Alfred B. Evans (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming).

Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, sixth edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Thomas Riha, ed., Imperial Russia, 1700-1917, volume 2 of Readings in Russian Civilization, second edition, revised (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1969).

Scott Seregny, "Zemstvos, Peasants, and Citizenship: The Russian Adult Education Movement and World War I," Slavic Review, 59, no. 2 (2000): 290-315.

Ronald Grigor Suny, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Leon Trotsky, The Essential Trotsky (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963).

Theodore H. von Laue, Why Lenin? Why Stalin? A Reappraisal of the Russian Revolution, 1900-1930 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1964); revised and enlarged as Why Lenin? Why Stalin? Why Gorbachev? The Rise and Fall of the Soviet System (New York: HarperCollins, 1993).