The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political Strategies

Description

At the end of February 1917 the tsarist government of Russia collapsed in a whirlwind of demonstrations by the workers and soldiers of Petrograd. Ziva Galili tells how the moderate socialists, or Mensheviks, then attempted to prevent the conflicts between the newly formed liberal Provisional Government (the "bourgeois" camp) and the Petrograd Soviet (the "democratic" camp) from escalating into civil war--and how, in October of that same year, they finally failed. Placing narrative history in a broad social and political context, she creates an absorbing study of idealists who tried in vain to reflect as well as to contain the unfolding revolutionary process. Galili focuses on the Menshevik Revolutionary Defensists who became the leaders of the Petrograd Soviet and of the all-Russian network of soviets. She examines Menshevik political strategy as well as the three-way interaction between Mensheviks (both in the Soviet and the Provisional Government), workers, and industrialists. She emphasizes the perceptual and interactive aspects of the analysis of revolutions: the relations between social realities, perceptions of realities, and the formulation of political strategies; the roles of rhetorics and societal conflict in shaping social identities; and the impact of political authority and state institutions on the terms of social interaction. Contents Illustrations Acknowledgments Author's Note Abbreviations Introduction One. The February Revolution and Its Leaders Two. The Origins of Dual Power Three. Dual Power Tested: Workers, Industrialists, and the Menshevik Mediators Four. Dual Power Reexamined: The Questions of the Economy, the War, and Political Power Five. Toward a Coalition Government Six. Labor Relations under Coalition: Social Conflict and Economic Crisis Seven. The Menshevik Ministry of Labor: Socialists in a Coalition Government Eight. The Coalition in Crisis Nine. Revolutionary Defensism at an Impasse Conclusions Appendixes Glossary of Political Organizations and Groupings Glossary of Menshevik Factions and Groupings Biographical Sketches of Menshevik Leaders Results of Elections to Petrograd Municipal Duma, May and August 1917 Party Composition of Soviet Representational Bodies, June and October 1917 Bibliography Index