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A Note on the Speech of Peter Alekseev

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Robert Otto
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The speech of the worker Peter Alekseev, delivered on March 9, 1877, at the famous trial of “the fifty,” occupies a sensitive position in the debate concerning the contributions and participation of workers and peasants in the Russian revolutionary movement. Between 1877 and 1917, the speech was reprinted more than twenty times by both populists and Marxists, thus providing the Russian free press with one of its classic publications. Adam Ulam has recently questioned Alekseev's authorship of the printed text on two grounds. First, Ulam considers the printed speech too polished to have been written by a worker.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 650 - 654
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1979

References

1. N. B. Panukhina, “K istorii rechi Petra Alekseeva,” Moskovskii Universitet: Vestnik, 9th series: Istoriia, no. 5 (1965), p. 83. Levina, S. S., “Novye dannye o publikatsii rechi Petra Alekseeva,” Arkheograficheskii eshegodnik za 1973 (Moscow, 1974), p. 85.Google Scholar Panukhina also includes a list of Soviet publications in which the speech has appeared. The Russian Underground Collection at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, possesses four underground editions of the speech. Excerpts of the speech can be found in Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution, trans. Francis Haskell (New York: Grosset Dunlap, 1966), pp. 534-35. Unfortunately, the speech has never been fully translated into English.

2. Ulam, Adam, In the Name of the People (New York: Viking Press, 1977, p. 256.Google Scholar

3. Panukhina, “K istorii rechi,” pp. 82-83.

4. Ivanovskaia, P., “Pis'ma Petra Alekseeva iz ssylki,” Katorga i ssylka, no. 13 (1924), p. 168.Google Scholar

5. Pekarskii, E. K., “Rabochii Petr Alekseev,” Byloe, no. 19 (1922), p. 100.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., pp. 85-86.

7. Sinegub, S. S., “Vospominanie chaikovtsa (Prodolzhenie),” Byloe, no. 9 (1906), pp. 109–10.Google Scholar

8. Ivanovskaia, “Pis'ma Petra Alekseeva,” pp. 167-68. See also Levin, Sh. M., “Kruzhok chaikovtsev i propaganda sredi peterburgskikh rabochikh v nachale 1870 gg.,” Katorga i ssylka, no. 61 (1929), p. 15.Google Scholar

9. Dzhabadari, I. S., “Protsess ‘SO’ (Prodolzhenie),” Byloe, no. 9 (1907), pp. 188 and 190.Google Scholar

10. Dzhabadari, I. S., “Protsess ‘SO’ (Okonchanie),” Byloe, no. 10 (1907), p. 168.Google Scholar Alekseev himself, being a weaver, was a fabrichnyi worker. For possible clues to the development of his attitude, see Levin, “Kruzhok chaikovtsev,” pp. IS, 22-24; and Golosov, G., “K biografii odnogo iz osnovatelei ‘Severo-Russkogo Rabochego Soiuza, '” Katorga i ssylka, no. 13 (1924), pp. 51–55.Google Scholar

11. Lukashevich, A. O., “V narod!,” Byloe, no. 3 (1907), pp. 37 and 42.Google Scholar

12. Bazilevskii, B., Gosudarstvennye prestupleniia v Rossii v XIX veke, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1904), p. 157–401.Google Scholar This work contains the official indictment. See also Troitskii, N. A., Tsarskie sudy protiv revoliutsionnoi Rossii: Politicheskie protsessy 1871-1880 (Saratov, 1976), p. 167–80.Google Scholar

13. Pravitel'stvennyi vestnik, no. 66 (March 25, 1877), p. 4.

14. Dzhabadari, “Protsess ‘50’ (Okonchanie),” pp. 193-94.

15. Panukhina, “K istorii rechi,” p. 83; Troitskii, Tsarskie sudy, p. 175.

16. Dzhabadari, “Protsess ‘SO’ (Okonchanie),” pp. ip4-95.

17. The most recent publication to reprint the speech is Itenberg, B. S., ed., Revoliutsiotmoe narodnichestvo 70kh godov XIX veka, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1964), p. 363–67.Google Scholar

18. Eight of Alekseev's letters from exile have been published. Three are found in Ivanovskaia, “Pis'ma Petra Alekseeva,” pp. 172-78; four in “Neopublikovannye pis'ma Petra Alekseeva,” Katorga i ssylka, no. 34 (1927), pp. 162-69f and one in “Pis'mo rabochego P. A. Alekseeva,” Krasnyi arkhiv, no. 44 (1930), pp. 170-73.

19. Pekarskii, “Rabochii Petr Alekseev,” p. 99.

20. Figner, Vera, “Protsess ‘50, '” Katorga i ssylka, no. 33 (1927), p. 17.Google Scholar The fact that there were spelling mistakes in this text, as well as the large letters, reinforces my belief that Alekseev copied the edited speech.

21. Pokrovskaia, Z. A., “Nelegal'naia tipografiia A. N. Averkieva i A. N. Kuznetsova,” Kniga, vol. 30 (1975), pp. 125 and 128.Google Scholar

22. Panukhina, “K istorii rechi,” p. 84.

23. Pokrovskaia, “Nelegal'naia tipografiia,” p. 128. Studies that have attributed significance to this variation are Panukhina, , “K istorii rechi,” pp. 84-85; and N. S. Karzhanskii, Moskovskii tkach Petr Alekseev (Moscow, 1954), p. 116–17.Google Scholar More recent works, such as Troitskii, Tsarskie sudy, state that the printed variants are of little significance. While it is true that the edition employing the phrase “muscular peasant fist” was directed at the peasantry, the editions using “working people” were not aimed solely at factory workers. The term should be understood in the broader sense of both peasants and factory workers.

24. Volkhovskii, F., Russkii tkach Petr Alekseev (London, 1900), p. 18 Google Scholar.