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The 1917 Petrograd Soviet and the Centralist Issue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Roger W. Pethybridge
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Extract

VIRTUALLY ALL THE MAJOR ACCOUNTS OF 1917 IN ENGLISH TO DATE deal almost exclusively with events in Petrograd, paying occasional attention to other parts of European Russia. An admirable exception has been provided by Dr John Keep, who has written a fascinating account of the reception of the October coup in the provinces. In this essay other neglected aspects of the hiatus between the capital and the rest of the country are taken up which refer to the period prior to October. As an introduction to these aspects it would seem useful in the first place to mention some of the well-established considerations on this subject.

Historians of every political hue have tended to equate the Petrograd-centred events with the Russian revolution. Because they were initially successful in Petrograd above all, the bolsheviks have preferred since 1917 to concentrate on the political course of events in the capital in order to justify their claim to have inherited the cloak of sovereignty from the old regime.

Type
Original Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1970 , pp. 327 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1970

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References

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4 The total membership of the Second Congress of Soviets can only be approsi- mately determined, but the figure was about 900 at the time of its dispersal. At the start of the Congress there were about 690 delegates, of whom 390 sere bolsheviks or bolshevik supporters. At the First Congress in July, 19x7, there were 1090 delegates; at the Third Congress in January, 1918, 942; and at the Fourth Congress in March, 1918, 1204 delegates.

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26 See his The Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism, New York, 1958, and The Sickle Under the Hammer, New York, 1963.

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28 Ibidem, pp. 278–9.

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37 See Suptra, p. 329, n. 4.

38 Hannah Arendt considers that once the initial stages of a political revolu- tion are over, it is impossible for ‘spontaneous’ organs of direct democracy to survive, particularly in a country the size of Russia. See her book On Revolution, London, 1963, pp. 268 ff.

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