Introduction

This study began with the discovery of an anomaly: very large numbers of mutinies in the Tsarist armed forces took place in 1905 and 1906. There were, at last count, a minimum of 211 mutinies between October 17 and December 31, 1905, another 202 in 1906. Long before the full extent of the upheaval in the army became apparent, the evidence appeared to indicate that disaffection among soldiers had far surpassed the level that could be accommodated by the universally accepted assumption—my own assumption—that the principal role of the army during the 1905 Revolution was suppression of civil disorder. And the army had, indubitably, suppressed revolution. My first supposition was, therefore, that with perhaps a few exceptions the mutinies could not have been of much consequence. Presentation of a petition of service-related grievances—the high point of most of the disorders in the army—may have been mutiny as defined by law but appeared to be a feeble challenge to the military order, and no threat at all to the Tsarist regime. However, collation of mutinies with units garrisoned in European Russia in late 1905 disclosed that one-third of the infantry regiments with which the regime presumably crushed revolution had mutinied. Even had the mutinies been of little account individually, their number made them significant. A closer look at the mutinies showed that they were not individually inconsequential, and that they were the tangible issue of a military revolution that went far beyond mutiny and involved many more than mutinous units. The mutinies of 1905 could not be explained away and so presented something of a puzzle. The mutinies of 1906 were positively unsettling, because by 1906 revolution was supposed to have been over. This book, then, emerged from the questions raised by the soldiers’ behavior in 1905 and 1906.

The obvious question is how the Tsarist regime managed to survive with its army so thoroughly disaffected. The equally obvious answer— that soldiers could at almost the same time mutiny and suppress revolution—is very nearly the initial question rephrased, but at least points to the critical importance of understanding the soldiers’ psychology. One probes collective mentalities gingerly and ever alert for treacherous missteps. My own endeavor moved progressively from inferences that could reasonably be drawn from the soldiers’ behavior, to an examination of service in the Imperial Russian army as soldiers experienced it, to exploration of the characteristics of Tsarist society that shaped the army, its officers and its men. The soldiers’ behavior during the 1905 Revolution turned out to hinge on features of Russian history far removed from the revolution and even from the army.

The regime’s ability to survive widespread mutiny in 1905 and 1906 suggests that its existence may not in fact have rested on its ability to suppress civilian discontent. The mutinies, though noteworthy, would in that case not have been terribly threatening in themselves. However, investigation of the army’s repressive role in 1905 and 1906, and of the policing duties that the army routinely performed even in the absence of revolution, underscored the regime’s dependence upon the availability of a large and reliable punitive force. The mutinies did pose a potentially mortal threat to the regime, and the regime’s survival in 1905 and 1906 thus turned on the psychology of its soldiers.

Russia did not lack for men and women who sought to destroy the regime, and who grasped eagerly at every opportunity to do so. The efforts they made to destabilize and win support in the army—though occupying a minor place in the history of the revolutionary movement— assume importance once it is recognized that there was, even briefly, severe revolutionary discontent in the armed forces. The outcome of the revolution alone tells us that revolutionaries failed to turn the mutinies to their advantage. The soldiers’ mentality was one obstacle, but the assumptions revolutionaries made about the soldiers’ role in revolution reduced their ability to exploit, and affected the course, of the revolution in the army. These assumptions did not emerge from a vacuum in 1905, but were a product of the intellectual and organizational history of the revolutionary movement.

Finally, and to return to the initial impetus for the study, the mutinies must be accommodated within the 1905 Revolution itself. The Western understanding that the revolution reached its high point in the general strike that wrung the October Manifesto from the Tsar, and that the regime handily suppressed the December insurrections and so brought revolution to an end, does not readily encompass the mutinies that swept through the army after October 17. The mutinies of 1906 do not fit that scheme at all. Finding a place for the mutinies required modification of the prevailing view of the situation in the Russian empire in late 1905, and a rather more complete redrawing of the accepted picture of 1906.

What began as an effort to account for the 400-odd mutinies that occurred in 1905 and 1906 has thus grown into a good deal more than a close analysis of the mutinies themselves. The logic of the inquiry led to a lengthy excursus on the relationship between army and society in Imperial Russia—society molding the army, the army holding society together—detours down some byways of the revolutionary movement, and reconceptualization of the 1905 Revolution. The result, I hope, is a demonstration that the mutinies were not anomalous after all.

I have received generous support for this study from many sources. The International Research and Exchanges Board and the Committee on Fulbright-Hays Fellowships sponsored and funded a year of research in the Soviet Union, and Indiana University supported another year of research with an Edwards Fellowship. I am indebted to Boris Sapir of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam for granting me access to the SR Party archive in his charge. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities permitted work at Columbia University’s Bakhmeteff Archive and the Bund Archive in New York, and the American Philosophical Society provided funds for research at the Archives Nationales in Paris. My gratitude to those institutes is not the less for the fact that I owe even more to Progress Publishers, which employed my wife and me as translators and so provided the opportunity for three years of research in the Soviet Union beyond the year we spent on academic exchange. Only prolonged access to Soviet libraries made it possible to pursue the puzzling mutinies of 1905 and 1906, and to turn what was meant to be no more than an introduction to a dissertation on revolutionary activity in the garrisons in 1917 into the present study.

Debts to friends and colleagues are not so easily measured. Alexander Rabinowitch, who directed my dissertation, has offered encouragement and advice and—most important of all—exhibited exceptional forbearance toward a student who scrapped a dissertation topic when the work was well under way. Ben Eklof was present at the inception of this study, and his interest in it then and since has made the labor seem worthwhile; I have drawn heavily—far more than the footnotes indicate—on his study of peasants, and he offered valuable advice on the manuscript. Allan Wildman, too, provided a critical reading of the manuscript and important suggestions. Bill Fuller shared both his thoughts and his manuscript on Civil-Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881-1914, which complements my own work and yielded a wealth of valuable material. Roberta Manning was kind enough to provide a manuscript copy of her fascinating Crisis of the Old Order in Russia prior to publication. The history departments of Carnegie-Mellon and Northwestern Universities have provided intellectual stimulation, a truly congenial atmosphere, and the example of their own high standards. The gentle prodding of senior colleagues has encouraged me to bring this book, at last, to completion.

I cannot, without seeming to belittle it, convey the magnitude of my appreciation and indebtedness to Kristine Bushnell, who has over the years tolerated my preoccupation with mutiny and suffered my work to intrude on her own.