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“Changing Landmarks” in Russian Berlin, 1922-1924

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Robert C. Williams
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Extract

One of the most pressing problems facing the Soviet government in the 1920s was how to recruit the technical intelligentsia and professional classes behind the new regime. Just as the officer corps of the Imperial government was a necessary adjunct to the Red Army during the Civil War, so the businessman, the doctor, and the bureaucrat were essential to the functioning of orderly social and political institutions under the New Economic Policy. The story of the economic concessions made to revive the dormant links between city and countryside is well known. But the recruitment of trained personnel involved not only economic concession but also ideological conversion. Beginning in 1921 the Soviet leaders took great pains to legitimize their rule by portraying themselves as heirs to Russian national traditions and defenders of Russian soil against foreign intervention.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , December 1968 , pp. 581 - 593
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1968

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References

1 Speech to the Petrograd Soviet, Nov. 30, 1917; cited in Jane Degras, ed., Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, I : 1917-1924 (London, 1951), 13.

2 Ibid., pp. 248-49.

3 See Geoffrey, Bailey, The Conspirators (New York, 1960)Google Scholar for a history of “Trust” and other Soviet-émigré” intrigues in the 1920s and 1930s; also Richard Wraga, “Trest,” Vozrozhdenie, VII (Jan.-Feb. 1950), 114-35.

4 Ilya, Ehrenburg, Men, Years, Life (London, 1962-63), III, 26.Google Scholar

5 Z. Arbatov, “Vstrecha s Maksimom Gor'kim,” Grani, No. 42, 1959, p. 111.

6 Useful sketches of the Smena vekh movement are given from the émigré side in Gleb, Struve, Russkaia literatura v izgnanii (New York, 1956), pp. 30–35 Google Scholar, and in a Soviet article by Trifonov, I. la., “Iz istorii bor'by kommunisticheskoi partii protiv smenovekhovstva,” Istoriia SSSR , No. 3, 1959, pp. 64–82 Google Scholar. See also Carr, Edward Hallett, Socialism in One Country, I : 1924-1926 (London, 1958), 56–59 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (“A History of Soviet Russia“). This essay is based primarily on the writings of the smenovekhovtsy—their pamphlets and the journals Smena vekh and Nakanune—and on the archives of N. V. Ustrialov, currently deposited in the Hoover Library in Palo Alto, California, and cited hereafter as UA with the requisite envelope and page numbers. Smenovekhovstvo has generally been treated by Soviet historians as a “bourgeois” movement, “a tendency within part of the Russian bourgeoisie, mainly White émigé intellectuals, which advocated a policy of cooperation with Soviet authorities because of the bourgeois regeneration of the Soviet state.” Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (2nd ed.; Moscow, 1949-58), XXXIX, 391-92. Like the emigration in general, it has not attracted much attention among Soviet historians. Trifonov (p. 79) concluded that “unlike the monarchists, Kadets, Mensheviks, and SR's, the smenovekhovtsy were the type of class enemies of the dictatorship of the proletariat who favored agreement and cooperation with it.” For a more recent study of the effect of the Smena vekh movement inside Soviet Russia in the early 1920s see E. Oberländer, “Nationalbolschewistische Tendenzen in der russischen Intelligenz : Die ‘Smena Vech'—Diskussion, 1921-1922,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, XVI, No. 2 (June 1968), 194-211.Google Scholar

7 V. I. Lenin, Sochineniia (4th ed.; Leningrad, 1951), XXXIII, 256-57. Taken from Lenin's March 27, 1922, speech to the Eleventh RKP(b) Party Congress.

8 KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s“ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK (Moscow, 1954). I” 671.

9 I. V. Stalin, Sochineniia (Moscow, 1947), VII, 341-42. Taken from Stalin's December 18, 1925, speech to the Fourteenth Party Congress. For a general account of the Bolshevik policy of seeking “bourgeois” support for the regime under the NEP see Carr, Socialism in One Country, I : 1924-1926, pp. 112-24.

10 Trifonov, pp. 65-66.

11 Smena vekh (Prague, 1921), p. 49. In 1922 a second edition appeared simultaneously in Berlin and Smolensk.

12 Ibid., pp. 79, 96, 135.

13 N. V. Ustrialov, V bor'be za Rossiiu (Harbin, 1920), pp. 5, 17, 55.

14 UA, folder 2, p. 17.

15 Ibid., p. 32; Ustrialov to Potekhin, Harbin, Feb. 14, 1922.

16 Smena vekh, Oct. 29, 1921, p. 2. Smena vekh appeared as a weekly in Paris from October 29, 1921, to March 25, 1922, when it moved to Berlin as the daily newspaper Nakanune. The Hoover Library has a complete file of the journal.

17 Smena vekh, Nov. 12, 1921, p. 4.

18 Ibid., Jan. 7, 1922, pp. 10-12.

19 Ibid., Dec. 24, 1921, pp. 1-4.

20 Ibid., Dec. 31, 1921, pp. 1-3.

21 UA, folder 2, p. 39; Kliuchnikov to Ustrialov, Genoa, Apr. 17, 1922.

22 Nakanune appeared as a daily in Perlin from March 26, 1922, until June 1924. Kliuchnikov and Kirdetsov were assisted IA the editing by S. S. Lukianov, B. V. Diushen, and Potekhin. By the autumn of 1922 Kliuchnikov and Potekhin had left for Moscow, leaving Diushen and Kirdetsov as editors with Lukianov, Sadyker, and S. S. Chakhotin as associates.

23 Nakanune, Mar. 26, 1922, p. 1.

24 Ibid., Apr. 20, 1922, pp. 2-3.

25 UA, folder 2, p. 44; Ustrialov to Bobrishchev-Pushkin, Harbin, Apr. 25, 1922. The term “national-bolshevism” was probably coined by Ustrialov in 1920. The smenovekhovtsy were aware of the movements in Germany by the same name in the 1920s but had no formal ties with them.

26 Ibid., folder 2, p. 74; Ustrialov to Alekseev, Nov. 4, 1922.

27 Ibid., folder 5; N. A. Ukhtomsky to Ustrialov, Berlin, June 30, 1924.

28 Nakanune, May 4, 1922, p. 1, July 13, p. 5, Nov. 14, p. 3, and Nov. 26, pp. 2-3.

29 Ibid., Dec. 22, 1923, p. 3.

30 Ibid., Jan. 22, 1924, p. 1.

31 UA, folder 3, p. 33; Ustrialov to I. G. Lezhnev, Harbin, Oct. 23, 1924. Folder 2, pp. 51-53, 55; Bobrishchev-Pushkin to Ustrialov, Monte Carlo, June 10, 1922.

32 Ibid., folder 2, p. 59.

33 Ibid.

34 Nakanune, Sept. 16, 1922, p. 2.

35 UA, folder 2, p. 65; Bobrishchev-Pushkin to Ustrialov, Monte Carlo, July 30, Aug. 22, 1922.

36 Ibid., folder 2, pp. 67-68, 71; Ustrialov to Lukianov, Harbin, Oct. 19, 1922.

37 Ibid., folder 2, pp. 70-73; Ustrialov to Bobrishchev-Pushkin, Harbin, Oct. 20, 1922; Bobrishchev-Pushkin to Ustrialov, Monte Carlo, Nov. 9, 1922.

38 Ibid., folder 5, p. 55; Ukhtomsky to Ustrialov, Berlin, Mar. 8, 1923. Folder 3, p. 3; Ustrialov to I. G. Lezhnev, Harbin, Mar. 15, 1923. Folder 5, p. 65; Ukhtomsky to Ustrialov, Berlin, June 15, 1923.

39 Ibid., p. 66. Folder 5; Ukhtomsky to Ustrialov, Berlin, Aug. 29, 1923; Ustrialov to Ukhtomsky, Harbin, July 15, 1923. Folder 5, p. 64; Ukhtomsky to Ustrialov, Berlin, June 15, 1923. Folder 3, p. 17; Lezhnev to Ustrialov, Moscow, Oct. 15, 1923.

40 Nakanune, Dec. 16, 1923, p. 1.

41 UA, folder 5, pp. 82-83; Ukhtomsky to Ustrialov, Berlin, June 30, 1924.

42 G. Cherniavsky, D. Daskalov, “Sud'by russkoi beloemigratsii v Bolgarii,” Istoriia SSSR, No. 1, 1961, p. 116.

43 On pro-Soviet movements within the Russian student organizations see the letter of F. T. Pianov to E. T. Colton, Berlin, Dec. 17, 1926, in the YMCA Historical Archive in New York, World Service Box 8, folder D.

44 Born in 1883 in the province of Samara, Tolstoy had established himself as a writer of note even before World War I. In July 1918 he moved with his family to South Russia and then on to France, where he lived until the autumn of 1921. During this time he wrote a great deal and became increasingly disenchanted with the ideals of the emigration and the White movements. His first venture into politics with smenovekhovstvo and his final decision to return to Russia probably date from the winter of 1921-22. See V., Shcherbina, A. N. Tolstoi : Tvorcheskii put’ (Moscow, 1956)Google Scholar; M., Charny, Put’ Alekseia Tolstogo (Moscow, 1961)Google Scholar; Rozhdestvenskaia, I. and Khodiuk, A., A. N. Tolstoi : Seminarii (Leningrad, 1962).Google Scholar

45 Literaturnye zapiski, No. 1 (May 25), 1922, p. 4.

46 Tolstoy to A. Sobol, Berlin, June 12, 1922; cited in Shcherbina, p. 193.

47 Shcherbina, pp. 193-95; Rozhdestvenskaia and Khodiuk, pp. 145-47.