Challenging Traditional Views of Russian

This collection presents radically new views on key aspects of Russian/Soviet history: the non-Slavic sources of Russian statehood, tsarist penal systems, the pre-evolutionary technological level, the famine of 1931-3, patronage practices in Stalin's Russia, the incidence and mechanism of Stalinist repression, the dissident roots of glasnost, Russian patriotic histories of War in the Caucasus, and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Stephen G. Wheatcroft is Associate Professor in Russian and Soviet History at the University of Melbourne where he was the Foundation Director of the Centre for Russian and Euroasian Studies.

List of Figures

viii

List of Tables

ix

List of Abbreviations

xi

Notes on the Contributors

xiii

Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction

xvii

PART I: THE PRE-REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD

1

(66)

The Kaghanate of the Rus': Non-Slavic Sources of Russian Statehood

3

(24)

David Christian

The background: peasant migrations, Khazar power and expanding trade

4

(9)

Volga Bulgaria

13

(1)

The Kaghanate of the Rus'

14

(5)

The turn to the Dnieper

19

(2)

Conclusions

21

(6)

The Crisis of the Late Tsarist Penal System

27

(28)

Stephen G. Wheatcroft

Developments in the Russian prison system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in comparison with the West

29

(4)

Detailed materials from the annual reports of the Tsarist Prison Administration from the 1880s to 1905: the years of imprisonment

33

(6)

Changes in prison developments, 1906--14

39

(3)

Conclusion

42

(13)

The Russian Army and American Industry, 1915--17: Globalisation and the Transfer of Technology

55

(12)

Frederick R. Zuckerman

PART II: THE STALIN PERIOD

67

(104)

The Soviet Famine of 1932--33 and the Crisis in Agriculture

69

(23)

R. W. Davies

S. G. Wheatcroft

The grain harvest

69

(2)

Why was grain production so low in 1931 and 1932?

71

(7)

The grain crisis of 1932--33

78

(9)

Changes in the grain balance

87

(1)

Conclusion

88

(4)

Patronage and the Intelligentsia in Stalin's Russia

92

(20)

Sheila Fitzpatrick

Who were the patrons?

94

(3)

What could the patrons do for their clients?

97

(1)

How to acquire a patron

98

(1)

Brokers

99

(1)

How to write to a patron

100

(1)

The human factor: affective ties between patrons and clients

101

(2)

Hierarchies of patronage

103

(1)

Perils and pleasures of patronage

104

(8)

Towards Explaining the Changing Levels of Stalinist Repression in the 1930s: Mass Killings

112

(35)

S. G. Wheatcroft

Stalinist mass killings in perspective

113

(1)

The 1930--31 wave of mass killings, and why the killings were drastically reduced in July 1931

114

(9)

The reduction in mass killings from the second half of 1931 to 1936

123

(6)

The Ezhovshchina and the resumption of mass killings, 1937--38

129

(9)

Conclusions

138

(9)

The Great Terror: Leningrad -- a Quantitative Analysis

147

(24)

Melanie Ilic

The purges: historiographical debates

147

(2)

Sources

149

(1)

Methodology

150

(1)

Sex ratios

150

(1)

Age profile

151

(1)

Residency

151

(1)

Communist Party membership

152

(2)

Nationality

154

(1)

Social composition

154

(3)

Dates of arrests, trials and executions

157

(4)

Number of days between arrest and trial, trial and execution

161

(1)

State organisation responsible for conducting trials

162

(1)

Statute Code

163

(3)

Women

166

(1)

Family ties

166

(1)

Conclusions

167

(4)

PART III: THE POST-STALIN PERIOD

171

(64)

The Dissident Roots of Glasnost

173

(30)

Robert Horvath

Leninist sources of Gorbachev's glasnost

175

(1)

The demand for glasnost

176

(6)

The weapon of glasnost

182

(3)

The practice of glasnost

185

(4)

Official glasnost versus dissident glasnost

189

(14)

Rethinking Yermolov's Legacy: New Patriotic Narratives of Russia's Engagement with Chechnya

203

(14)

Julie Elkner

Seeing the Chechen through Yermolov's eyes

207

(2)

Yermolov's tragedy

209

(1)

Punishing civilians

210

(2)

Conclusion

212

(5)

Stalinism and the Fall of the Soviet Union

217

(18)

Graeme Gill

The emergence of the Stalinist power structure

218

(7)

Reform of the power structure?

225

(5)

The collapse of the power structure?

230

(5)

Name index

235

(5)

Subject index

240

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Challenging Traditional Views of Russian History

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials