Biography of the revolutionaries of Russia

Its authors, historians Tatyana Saburova and Ben Eklof, talk about their joint study and its unexpected results; About whether the revolutionaries really abandoned personal affection for the sake of a common cause and whether the gap between the tsarist power and the opposition was so great, as we used to count. It is also about the influence of the prison and a link to Siberia on the populists, what they did after the liberation and how they perceived the revolutionary events of the year.

Narodniks L. Zalkind, N. Charushin, I. End of the x The Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts about the protagonist of our book ... Tatyana Saburova Omsk State Pedagogical University and Ben Eklof Indian University, the United States propose to look at the revolutionary movement in Russia in a new way, showing the importance of family relations and friendship for revolutionaries-seven people, features of the identity and collective memory of generation.

Turning to the history of childhood, populism, zemstvo, provincial culture and political link, the narrative covers Vyatka, Petersburg and Siberia. The struggle around the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia flared up shortly after the revolution of the year - how to write the history of political parties and movements, to determine their role in the overthrow of the autocracy ...

The desire of the Bolsheviks to send the populists to the "landfill of history" was expressed in recognition of their ideas erroneous, views - petty -bourgeois and counter -revolutionary ones. It was no longer necessary to fight the old Narodniks, they preferred to forget about them, the political regime needed other heroes. But the participants in the populist movement stubbornly tried to preserve the memory of their “their” past, and the memoirs of the “old revolutionaries” represented an attempt to protect the heritage of populism.

Nikolai Charushin was one of this generation of the Narodniks - who became the main character of our book. Arriving in St. Petersburg in the beginning of the x, he joined the mug of the Tchaikovites or the large society of propaganda, as he began to be called later, who stood at the beginning of the populist movement. Participation in the circle largely determined his entire future life - influenced political views, beliefs and values, social activities and personal life.

Convicted by the “process x” to hard labor and settlement to Siberia, he became a successful photographer there, also taking part in the creation of a local history museum and library. Having returned to European Russia, he actively worked in the Vyatka Zemstvo and the National Economic Organization. During the revolution of the year, he participated in the creation of the peasant union and the Party of People's Socialists, founded an independent opposition newspaper, and in the year he did not enter the Supreme Council of the Vyatka province in a long time, trying to resist the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

About the genre of biography ... Charushin’s biography was not only a way to talk about a whole era in Russian history, full of dramatic events and processes that changed the country, about the interaction of society and the authorities, about the generation of revolutionaries-people's years, about the political exile, zemstvo, revolution and the policy of memory.

The life of Charushin, his family and friends, was at the same time an independent object of research, revealing the individual world of values, moral norms and emotions. Individual memory was combined with the “collective memory” of generation, personal political beliefs - with the “ethical rationalism” of populism, a story of love and family relations - with gender stereotypes and political activities.

Charushin’s biography has incorporated the stories of other people who were related to his fate, the culture of the historical era, events and phenomena, which have become part of the “life project” of the protagonist of this book. How did they become revolutionaries ... It would seem that it can be added to the carefully studied history of the populist movement, even taking into account the existing myths and stereotypes about revolutionaries-propagandists or terrorists?

We again turned to the question, repeatedly asked for many decades, but remaining unanswered: why did they become revolutionaries? Can the life of Charushin and other seventies give an answer to this question? If you look for an answer in the history of childhood and family, we recall that the sisters of Charushin, having not received education, married local Vyatka officials and led a calm, measured life in a provincial city, and the brothers made a successful career - one as a capital official of the resettlement department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the other as a flourishing Vyatian architect.

Despite the numerous psychological studies, which proves that the behavior of an adult can be a compensatory reaction, overcoming complexes or injury experienced in childhood, we cannot give a universal explanation of the appearance of revolutionaries in society. Tatyana Saburova tells about revolutionaries-people's people on posttnauuka "postnouka". The ideology of social movements could have a generational basis, expressing the interests of the young generation, which rebelled against the authorities of the “fathers”, claiming their place and the new hierarchy.But vice versa, political movements could use generational rhetoric to strengthen social solidarity, especially given the specifics of the structure of Russian society and the speed of changes in the country.

In any case, the “generation” has become an important way of identifying and self -identification, and the generational consciousness in the traditional sense retained its significance in Russia throughout the 19th century, reflected in the widespread spread of the generational discourse. Each generation created its own symbols of identity and solidarity, and for the generation of sevenths, the moral imperative became central, public good and, accordingly, “duty to the people”, which received vivid embodiment in the discourse of the Russian intelligentsia of this period.

Despite the certain influence of nihilism, the ostentatious indifference of the populists in relation to religion and hostility to the Orthodox Church, many researchers note the religious nature of the populist discourse. Indeed, one can find Christian motives for sacrifice, devotion, faith, suffering and even messianism in autobiographical and memoir texts of the populists.

But how to draw a border between ethics and religion, speaking of the state of minds of that era? The need for moral ideals along with growing disappointment in the church, the influence of Chernyshevsky led to a rethinking of Christianity, filling religious symbols with a new content or the use of an existing religious language to express revolutionary ideas. The space of the camera became a new house in which each trifle acquired special significance and was imprinted in the “Crime and Punishment” for many years ...

We tried to reveal the question of “Crime and Punishment” in the anthropological perspective, finding out how the young revolutionaries were perceived, how the everyday life took place in a solitary imprisonment and how the widespread was relate to it. The “narrative of suffering”, created in the first decades of the twentieth century by former prisoners of the royal prisons.

The space of the camera became a new house in which each trifle acquired special significance and was imprinted in memory for many years; Time slowed down, stopped or ceased to be felt in the usual categories, transforming into a new temporality, determined by the ringing of hours on the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Fortress or household changes in the life of prisoners. The fear of insanity, pursuing young people, deprived of communication, torn from active life and prisoners in space, in which even ordinary sounds began to be perceived differently, and the methods of adaptation they found, which allowed them to survive-all this changed the life of those who, at the age of twenty years, were socialized not only in universities and circles, but also in prisons.

How imprisonment did the life of this generation have influenced their beliefs? Someone could not stand the conclusion-he went crazy, committed suicide or refused further revolutionary activity. But, as many were admitted, years in prison remained with them forever, and most only strengthened in their desire to fight the autocracy, using “free time” in conclusion for systematic reading and pondering further ways of struggle for freedom, not only their own, but the whole society.

The prison was often described as a “threshold”, changing through which a person was transformed outwardly by changing clothes into prison clothes in all memoirs, lost the former social status and physical freedom, but sought to maintain control of his mind and freedom of thought. About gender stereotypes and “communication nets” ... Based on a significant complex of memoir literature, we wanted to prove that the gender roles of participants in the revolutionary movement were somewhat different than it is traditionally considered.

There is a stereotype that men and women of the revolutionary generation of the Narodniks contributed everything to the victim of the public. In our opinion, despite all the difficulties experienced and sacrifices made for the idea of ​​liberating the people, the house and family mean a lot for many people's revolutionaries. Charushin’s life history proves that family relations were extremely important for him, and this was manifested not only in relation to marriage, care of children, but also in maintaining ties with his mother, brothers and sisters.

In turn, the brothers Charushin were ready to take a chance of their career and well -being, trying to help him in difficult situations, petitioning for him first before the Tsarskoye, and then before the Soviet regime.

Most of the revolutionaries, the political exiles, which we wrote about in this book, sought to live a full life, enjoying travel, communication, joint holidays, trips to nature, scientific research or hunting. They have maintained friendly relations for many years, despite the dispersion of different cities and countries.But at the same time, this did not exclude the emergence of tense and even conflict personal relationships within their circle, especially after the revolution of the year, in the conditions of the decline of the political activity of society and repression of autocratic power.

Carrying out actively social activities, the populists maintained close contact and often working in insurance campaigns with the business world, which turned out to be somewhat unexpected for us, the local administration, various professional groups, educational and cultural institutions, public organizations. About the Siberian exile, foreigners and photographs ...

Like many other exile populists in Siberia, Charushin, who spent 17 years in Siberia, took an active part in the creation of a local history museum, a public library, and research in the region. However, he admitted that it was not easy to enter the Siberian society, and the political link, despite active educational activities, remained quite isolated and closed. Social relations were built, first of all, within the Community of the exiles, were used to obtain work or change of place of residence, but new social networks were gradually formed, including representatives of the administration, merchants, and scientific societies.

For example, thanks to the patronage of I. Popov, later the editor of the Eastern Ferris, the largest Siberian newspaper, married to the daughter of the Kyakhtinsky merchant Lushnikov, Charushin enjoyed success as a photographer, receiving a large number of orders. The revolutionaries, exiled to Siberia, often became professional photographers, and their photos appeared on the pages of Russian and foreign publications, photographic albums were presented at exhibitions, replenished collections of university and public libraries, museums.

Photos of "types and types" have become part of imperial projects in different countries; Requirements for anthropological photographs were widely discussed; The ethnographic society in Paris, the ethnological society in London, the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg developed projects to capture and systematize racial groups using various parameters.

Charushin, who took part in the expedition of G. Potanin in Mongolia as a photographer, like other exiles who devoted himself to improving the life of the people, nevertheless, did not see the same people in the indigenous population of Siberia that should be liberated. The state and society, power and the opposition were even more closely connected than one could suggest the Zemstvo and the peasantry, society and the authorities ...

Work about the Narodniks, like their own biographies, as a rule, end with the story of prison and exile and are silent about the period of life no less than the time associated with the return to European Russia, the search for a new place in a society from which they were excluded for many years back. For Charushin, return to his native Vyatka was closely connected with the zemstvo.

For twelve years, Charushin worked as an insurance agent, during a large -scale attempt to fundamentally change the layout of the Russian village in order to minimize the destructive and expensive consequences of frequent fires. For several years, he was an authorized national organization, providing assistance to the starving peasants, responsible for organizing canteens, school food, distribution of flour, sugar and necessary things among peasant families, for providing medical care for depleted and patients as a result of hunger in the vast Vyatka province.

Charushin was very responsible for his duties in the zemstvo for twelve years, he never took a vacation, and his work was evaluated positively by the Vyatian Zemstvo and the leadership of the National -Madame in Moscow, at least until the “rejection” of the Zemstvo and persecution of the “third element” in the years, which forced him to leave the Zemstvo service, began.

But Charushin managed to gain significant experience in the village, for the first time faced with the peasantry, he did not participate in the famous “going to the people” of the year. Undoubtedly, Charushin had different experience in interacting with the peasantry: as an insurance agent entering into contractual relations with peasants, to discuss all the details of insurance, the conditions for the payment of insurance premiums, the assessment of property, and as an authorized public organization, a philanthropist who distributed assistance that did not always need to determine who really needed it.

As a result, he began to understand the life and needs of the village much better, and by the year he had no illusions regarding the peasantry, he clearly saw his difficult situation, could not but sympathize with him, but also clearly represented the complexity of the transformation of agrarian relations in the country. The study of Charushin’s activities as a zemstvo insurance agent, as well as his friends, including former political exiles, in the statistical bureau, a book and artisanal warehouse, and even in the Zemstvo administration led us to the need and the opportunity to look at the situation in the Vyatka Zemstvo at the turn of the 19th - XXxx centuries.The study of a very difficult relationship between the governor’s power, the Zemstvo and the City Duma in Vyatka at the beginning of the twentieth century made it possible to see not only the struggle between “power” and “society”, but also the lack of strict borders between them, when the same people or members of the same families consisted or freely passed from state authorities to local self -government and vice versa.

For example, a steamboat magnate and philanthropist Tikhon Bulychev was closely connected with elected representatives of local authorities; The provincial architect Ivan Charushin - with the office of the governor and with the same steamer magnate; The exiles were employees of zemstvos and newspaper editors, and were also associated with city and local self -government.

The state and society, power and the opposition were even more closely connected than we could assume. A noticeable split between them manifested itself in the course of subsequent revolutionary upheavals. The central place in the activities of Charushin in the years was occupied by the opposition newspaper Vyatka Speech created by him. The provincial press played an important role in the formation of public opinion, and, using her connections with the press of Moscow and St.

Petersburg, she often made public problems, exerting powerful pressure on the provincial authorities. The game, which Vyatka Governor and Opposition newspaper Charushin, forced the latter to constantly find new ways to survive under the threat of closing, fines, arrests, but did not exclude the opportunity to call the local authorities to answer. Sometimes the newspaper was forced to publish refutations of accusations of arbitrariness and corruption, but at the same time, practice was established when the Minister of Internal Affairs demanded a detailed investigation of any incident and explanations from the governor on the basis of the material published in the newspaper, which sometimes even forced the governor to cancel the previously unjust decision.

Charushin and employees of the newspaper Vyatka School. Kirov State Universal Regional Scientific Bible. Herzen's revolution of the year and the “black ingratitude of the liberated people” ... An appeal to the events of the year in the Vyatka province through the experience of their Charushin and other Narodniks of his generation allowed us to look differently at the history of the revolution in Russia.

Charushin’s activity was connected with the newly formed peasant union, he was also chosen into the renewed zemstvo and participated in the shortly existing Supreme Council of the Vyatka province, who, together with the zemstvo, tried almost two months after the Bolsheviks came to power, but along with this tried to support all the vital institutions of the province, education, food and the page.

Having met the February revolution with mixed feelings as well as the famous Vera Figner, joy and anxiety at the same time, Charushin gradually came to deep disappointment and realization that in the revolution in Russia there was his share of guilt as “deepening it and deepening it to Bolshevism”, and the growing chaos and a wave of violence, their own arrest caused even more arrest.

Bitter disappointment - in the people, the liberation of which he devoted his life. He arrested several times and could be shot by the Cheka as a hostage, but was released thanks to the intervention of Blucher, after which he finally moved away from political activity. Nevertheless, he tried to find his place in Soviet society, continuing educational activities and giving all his strength to work in the library, the creation of unique bibliographic pointers in local history, as if returning to a “sweet and distant” past.

The efforts of Charushin, like many of his friends, turn libraries and museums into enlightenment centers, preserve the culture and history of the region, reflected not only disappointment in the revolution that occurred in the country, but also the desire for activities in accordance with the ethical principles that were formed in his youth. After the Narodniks were declared the “worst enemies of Marxism” and excluded from the Stalinist “triumphal” historical narrative, they were again remembered in the “thaw” era to return to the “distant past” and the struggle for the heritage of populism in Soviet Russia ...

After the Narodniks were declared the “worst enemies of Marxism” and excluded from the Stalinsky “triumphant” historical historical historical historical The narrative, they were again remembered in the era of the "thaw." In the search for that “genuine”, “present” that seemed lost or blurred in Soviet society, the intelligentsia again discovered a legacy of populism for itself, finding in this generation the basis for the formation of its own identity.

And during the period of perestroika, the life and views of Charushin became the subject of sharp disputes in his native Vyatka Kirov, and as his hot defender wrote, historian V. Sergeyev, "if you look by and large - the attitude to the memory of Nikolai Apollonovich is two views on our history." Charushin and I.The Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts about co -authorship and “difficulties of translation” ...

We are often asked how we write together. Must say that working in co -authorship is always not easy, including when it comes to historical research. It sets the task of finding compromises, connecting different methodological approaches and even letters of writing. At the same time, our “Correspondence from two corners” helped us look differently at the history of Russia.

For one of us, this is the view “from the inside” on the history of our country, for the other - this is the view “from the outside”, despite the long -standing strong ties with Russia. Russian-American co-authorship made it possible to rethink Russian history, to see the new in a well-known one, to combine different historiographical traditions. In addition, we often had to discuss the meaning of key concepts.

Trying to accurately convey their meaning, working simultaneously in Russian and English, we felt both “difficulties of translation” and the joy of a deeper understanding of Russian history. Now we are preparing the publication of the book in English, which will be released in the year, trying to make the Russian history a closer and understandable to foreign readers.