Part One

One of the peculiarities of the Russian Revolution was that almost as soon as it occurred, there were attempts to fit it within a broader schema of both Russian and Western history. Needless to say, much of this early historiography was highly politicized and either tacked to a strongly pro-Bolshevik narrative or an anti-Bolshevik/Communist one. Despite the problems inherent to such an approach, these two major narratives of 1917 would remain dominant ones during the lifespan of the USSR and still find vocal proponents even today.

As good Marxists, the Bolsheviks naturally portrayed their revolution as the culmination of historical forces and processes. However, the Bolshevik leadership also soon realized the importance of history to both legitimize the Soviet state and its rulers. The result was a heroic narrative that retroactively fit Russian revolutionary activism within a Marxist paradigm of Russia's proletariat gaining class consciousness with considerable help from the Bolshevik wing of the RSDLP. Such a class-based interpretation of history relegated the February Revolution to an ephemeral event in which the bourgeoisie took power, but lost it in the face of the class-conscious masses. The death of Lenin and the rise of the Lenin cult added a twist in which the leaders of the Bolsheviks became both the embodiment of these revolutionary aspirations and their enabler; in such a heroic narrative they knew both what revolution meant in terms of historical-material development and how to act accordingly.

The heroic narrative of 1917 had a twin in the anti-Bolshevik historiography that soon merged with the emerging totalitarian interpretation of the Soviet Union that coalesced in the 1930s/40s. Instead of being sagacious protagonists, the totalitarian school cast Lenin and his ilk as conspirators that hijacked the revolution to create a one-party state. Perhaps most forcefully argued by Richard Pipes, Lenin's championship of slogans like "all power to the Soviets" or anti-tsarist appeals to non-Russians were just window-dressing for a dictatorship that transformed the USSR into a "prison of the peoples." Totalitarian scholarship often emphasized the contradictions of Bolshevik pronouncements and their tactical maneuverings as evidence of their disingenuousness, and their acceptance of German money and the famous "sealed train" as a sign that their seizure of power was artificial.

As these two paradigms, heroic and totalitarian, became the dominant historiogrpahical themes of 1917 in the 1930s, the rise of Stalin and the Terror led to two minor variations that fit into neither paradigm very easily. The fatalist or Menshevik interpretation emphasized that while revolutionary aspirations and popular discontent were real in the runup to 1917, material and political conditions of the Romanov state precluded a genuine expression of revolution. This scholarship, often based sources gleaned from Menshevik and Kadet emigres, contended that Russia was too underdeveloped and its political structures were too anemic to translate the political wishes of the masses into something stable. The result was that the single-party state was almost inevitable. The second minor key centered around various left-wing factions purged out of the USSR under Stalin that argued that Stalin was a betrayal of the ideals of 1917. This interpretation, often put forth by Trotskyites, was that while Lenin was the leader of a revolutionary movement, the RSDLP unfortunately attracted figures like Stalin who opportunistically seized power after Lenin's death and twisted the ideals of 1917 to suit a one-party state.

These two minor keys in the historiography provided cover for scholars between the two dominant interpretations whose lines only hardened with the advent of the Cold War and the breakdown of relations between the two superpowers. Ironically, the narrative of 1917 pushed by both interpretations was remarkably similar despite their divergent politics. Both the heroic and totalitarian schools placed extreme emphasis upon high politics and the agency of individual Bolshevik leaders who either manipulated or led the masses in the events of 1917. Additionally, both schools treated the storming of the Winter Palace as an end to the Revolution, treating the Civil War as an afterthought and the emergence of the Soviet state as a confirmation of their political principles, whether as jailer or liberator of the world.

Neither interpretation was particularly satisfying for the emerging field of social history of the 1960s. Since the Soviet state put intense pressure upon its historians to hew to the state-sanctioned heroic narrative, the onus for a historiographic revision of 1917 often fell upon Western scholars. The Soviet state's hoarding of sources and archives and their access counterintuitively aided the revision process as it forced a generation of younger historians to look outside high politics for a better understanding of 1917. Alexander Rabinowitch, who would soon become the doyen of the Revisionist interpretation of 1917, based a lot of his early work on Petrograd newspapers and the portrait they painted of the revolutionary milieu. Sheila Fitzpatrick, who like Rabinowitch would exercise influence far outside her tiny frame (seriously, she is super short in real life!), looked at Bolshevik cultural and educational policies and lesser Bolsheviks like Anatoly Lunacharsky. The main contribution of the Revisionists was that they presented a much more nuanced vision of 1917 than prior historical interpretations. For example, Rabinowitch noted that while newspapers showed considerable sentiment in favor of revolution, Lenin and his compatriots were often led by events rather than leading them. The Bolsheviks also emerged in this historiography as a much less monolithic group and although the early Revisionists were still focused upon the intersection of the Revolution with high politics, they injected a degree of interest into the thoughts and aspirations of those below who experienced revolution.

Not surprisingly, the Revisionists were subject to attacks from both the left and the right for either undercutting the heroic image of Lenin or actually acknowledging some revolutionary sentiment existed among the masses. For example, a Soviet newspaper attacked Fitzpatrick as an ideological saboteur and spy for a minor article she wrote about Lunacharsky; and fortunately for her, the paper only identified her as S. Fitzpatrick and assumed she was a male historian, otherwise her research in the USSR might have been quite short-lived. But the Revisionists had a major factor working in their favor that saw them rise above their rivals. In short, the type of history they were doing fit within larger trends within the Western historical academy. The Revisionist methodology fit within broader historiographic developments that eschewed high politics and fit better with intellectual shifts of the 1960s and 70s. But Revisionists also had the benefit of larger generational changes as well. As totalitarian scholars aged and became emeriti, Revisionist historians like Rex Wade became established figures in various Russian departments and newer generation of totalitarianists became enmeshed within Cold War think tanks like Team-B instead of engaging with larger trends in historical scholarship and methodology. Therefore, when this totalitarian scholars often debated the Revisionists in venues like the NYRB, their relative academic isolation ensured that their arguments came across as passe.

Changes within the USSR itself also gave Revisionists a leg up within the academy. Both Glasnost and Perestroika led to a shift with regards to the Soviet state's approach to 1917 which reemphasized the ideals of 1917 as opposed to the etatisme trajectory. Gorbachev also saw historians achieve much freer access to the archives and although certain topics like the Great Purges were taboo, this allowed historians to look at areas other than Petrograd or the RSDLP activists. The result was that the 1980s witnessed a blossoming of scholarship of 1917 from the perspective of the bottom-up. The Revisionists' view that the revolution did not end with the Winter Palace furthered this bottom-up perspective because it allowed historians to examine the trajectory of the Revolution outside of its previously defined epicenter of Lenin and his compatriots.