This ambitious book provides a new lynchpin for studies of the revolutionary period and of Russia’s rural population. Its key contributions to the field are firstly, a re-conceptualization of the problem of peasant national identity and the peasantry’s relationship to the state; secondly, a reassessment of the revolutionary transformation to include the whole period 1914–1922; thirdly, expanding the geographic scope of study of revolutionary processes; and finally, an integration of the history of peasant revolution in Russian into the contexts of peasant studies elsewhere.
Retish’s work draws on an impressive source base, drawing on Kirov’s regional archives alongside central archives in Russia and the States, newspapers and periodicals, and the most recent literature in Russian and English His enthusiasm to engage with interdisciplinary and comparative approaches is notable, and sets him apart from the often myopic approach of other specialists in the field. His close reading of local sources enables him to personalize, complicate, and explain day-to-day peasant relationships and politics.
The province of Viatka provides the geographic focus for this study. Retish’s introduction does a great job of giving the reader a sense of the particularities of Viatka and its people. A number of factors distinguished Viatka from the more commonly studied Black Earth region. Ninety per cent of the peasants in Viatka had been emancipated as state peasants in 1866, which meant that they had never laboured for a landlord, fulfilling their obligations in cash or with goods. Their neighbours in the Black Earth regions, most of whom had been the property of private landowners before emancipation, suffered from land hunger, and deep resentments festered because the private landlords tended to retain the best land for themselves after emancipation. Viatka’s peasants did not as a whole suffer from the land hunger that characterized the Black Earth regions, and did not have the landlord figure on which to concentrate resentment. Viatka’s peasants were outward bound and outward looking even before World War I, as more than 90 per cent of households in the province relied on non-land based peasant handicrafts and out-migrant labour to supplement their incomes. These regional specificities are a starting point for Retish’s key argument, that Viatka’s peasants experienced the revolutionary period of 1914–1922 as a development and intensification of their interaction with the national polity and their willingness to utilize the state as arbitrators of their daily lives. This is an important departure from the drift of earlier historiography on Russia’s peasants.
The book is organised chronologically, with chapters covering World War I, revolution, Soviet power, and the Civil War. Chapter 1, on World War I, presents a detailed evaluation of the sometimes conflicting responses of Viatka’s peasants to the war effort. Like Joshua Sanborn and others, Retish argues that the war provided a forum for the development of nationalist identities and aspirations for inclusion in the state polity. He draws out the contradictory ways in which cultural elites depicted the region’s non-Russian peoples (Udmurt, Mari, and Tatars), as within the national struggle but outside the parameters of national citizens. Chapters 2 and 3 tackle the tumultuous events of 1917. Retish argues that peasants sought to be active citizens within the provisional government’s new regime, but increasingly clashed with rural elites over how their participation in the state was to be framed. Chapter 4 looks at peasants’ response to the Bolsheviks’ land decree of 1918, and argues that the peasantry sought to involve the state in conflict resolution. Chapter 5 explores the three-way conflict that developed between Bolsheviks, anti-Bolsheviks, and peasants in the early civil war period, crystallizing around the issues of military conscription and grain procurement. Chapter 6 describes the state’s attempts to entrench itself in the countryside, through the development of rural institutions and alliances with the peasant population. Chapter 7 indicates a degree of success in these state efforts, showing how peasant language and identity became increasingly “Soviet” following state Cultural Enlightenment and propaganda campaigns. Chapter 8 underscores the devastation of the civil war period, with famine, open revolt, and mass migration, but argues that the state efforts to alleviate famine provided further foundations for an active relationship between Viatka’s peasantry and the state.
An overarching theme of his work is peasant agency and rationality. Retish studies Russia’s rural population as subjects in their own right, rather than the passive objects as portrayed in the more dated historiography. Retish draws out peasant conceptions of themselves as citizens, and skilfully brings together the periods of World War I, revolution, and civil war. Viatka’s peasants differed from their fellow peasants in other, more studied regions of the Black Earth, central region, and Ukraine, and Retish argues convincingly that Viatka’s peasants were not concerned primarily with “land and freedom” – that is, control of land and complete autonomy in their daily governance. Putting these old historiographical obsessions to one side enables Retish to show that Viatka’s peasants were active participants in a (sometimes one-sided) dialogue with the state and its agents. Peasants were active and rational agents in their often difficult political and personal negotiations through the tumultuous years of war and revolution.
Although some social and cultural structures endured through revolution and war, village attitudes towards the national polity were fundamentally transformed in the period. Retish argues that peasants wanted to participate in state-building, and that the young Soviet state gave them that opportunity. Throughout, Retish places Viatka’s peasantry in an international context, and draws attention to ethnic and gender specificities of experience. Viatka’s Udmurt and Mari populations are sensitively treated.
The book is clearly and lucidly written, and includes a number of illuminating illustrations and tables. A map showing Viatka’s position within the Russian Empire would have helped less specialist readers contextualize the space discussed. Retish’s book will be required reading for subject specialists and undergraduate reading lists, but will also be a valuable comparative point for scholars of peasant communities in other contexts.
