Russian Revolution in Moscow and other areas outside Petrograd?

Grover Furr Discussion

What are the best scholarly sources for the history of the Russian Revolution of 1917 in Moscow? In cities and areas outside Petrograd?

I'm especially interested in scholarly accounts: first of all, in English; then in other languages.

Thanks for any and all suggestions!

Grover Furr

Montclair State University

furrg_nj@fastmail.fm

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"Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov", book of
Donald J. Raleigh

"Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia
Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia
A Provincial History", by Sarah Badcock

Series of books under the title "Russia's Great War & Revolution", description is here: http://russiasgreatwar.org/index.php

Dear Grover,

There is a rich and developing scholarship on 1917 outside the capital. I've made a few core reading suggestions below.

Much of this scholarship tackles the revolutionary period as part of a longer process, 1914-1921. A book published by Kritika as part of the 'Russia's Great War And Revolution' series, edited by me along with Aaron Retish and Liudmila Novikova, might be a useful starting point.
Russia's Home Front In War And Revolution, 1914-22: Book 1. Russia's Revolution In Regional Perspective https://slavica.indiana.edu/series/Russia_Great_War_Series/Home_Front_1

My own book (CUP, 2007) looks at Nizhegorod and Kazan provinces in 1917. Aaron Retish's (CUP 2008) looks at Viatka.

Donald J. Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986),
A Russian Civil War Diary (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 1988),
Experiencing Russia’s Civil War (Princeton,: Princeton University Press, 2002).

Orlando Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War; The Volga Countryside in Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).

Raleigh and Figes’s works were part of a larger wave of social histories that gave us local histories, even without full access to the archives.

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

Michael Hickey has published a series of important and influential articles on Smolensk in 1917. For example,
Michael Hickey, ““Local Government and State Authority in the Provinces: Smolensk, February-June 1917,” Slavic Review 55, no. 4 (1996): 863-881;
“Paper, Memory, and a Good Story: How Smolensk Got Its ‘October.’” Revolutionary Russia 13, no. 1 (Dec.2000): 1-19;

Tanja Penter, Odessa 1917: Revolution an der Peripherie (Vienna: Bohlau Verlag, 2000);

I. V. Narskii, Zhizn’ v katastrofe: Budni naseleniia Urala v 1917-1922 gg. (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001);

Sarah Badcock, Politics and the People: A provincial History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007);

Aaron B. Retish, Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914-1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008);

L. N. Novikova Provintsial’naia kontrrevoliutsiia: Beloe dvizhenie i Grazhdanskaia voina na Russkom Severe, 1917-1920 (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011).

Any queries, feel free to mail me directly.
Sarah

All of this newer scholarship on the provinces is wonderful, but of course it would also be a shame to overlook the classic work on 1917 in Moscow: Diane Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1981).

Thanks for this suggestioni!

As you say, it was published 36 years ago.

Is there nothing more recent -- say, in Russian? Making use of documents from the Soviet archives?

Grover Furr
Montclair SU

The most recent books are two collections of articles and conference papers:

Эпоха войн и революций. 1914-1922.
Редактор: Колоницкий Борис Иванович, Орловски Дэниель
Издательство: Нестор-История, 2017 г.

Города империи в годы Великой войны и революции. Сборник статей
Редактор: Миллер Алексей, Черный Дмитрий
Издательство: Нестор-История, 2017 г.