Contenu du sommaire

L. Haimson, The Mensheviks and the October Revolution. The extraordinary Party Congress of the RSDRP (November-December 1917). This article is devoted to an examination of the deliberations of the Extraordinary Congress of the RSDRP(o) in November-December 1917, in the broader context of the evolution of political attitudes in various factions of the Menshevik Party after the Bolshevik seizure of power. The extraordinary Congress was the first congress of the Menshevik Party held after the October Revolution, as well as the first dominated by its new Internationalist majority. The article examines the major debates between this new party majority and its Defensist opponents on the crucial issues that now divided them : the posture to be adopted toward the Soviet regime— and specifically the character of the government that should be installed to replace it, the issue of the war, and the policies to be adopted toward the Constituent Assembly, the democratic organs of local self-government, and the central and local organs of Soviets. The article examines the reasons for the sense of paralysis felt by most factions within the Menshevik Party at this time, as well as the factors that caused them — temporarily — to attenuate if not bury their differences.

M. Ferro, 1917 : The Revolution and the villages. With reference to the example of peasants of the central region (Samara, Rjazan', etc.), the article shows the way in which the land reform was carried out before October. The immediate resistance of large landowners caused an explosion of trouble which resulted in a breach in the economical and social relations in villages. The outlook of peasants on political life underwent also a change. They considered henceforth the State as an institution which legalized the measures both necessary and legitimate taken by the new sovereign: the "people-tsar." As the revolution did not bring an immediate progress in the material state of villages, peasants turned against cityfolk, who "as always deceived them — all of them thieves."

I. Volgyes, Hungarians prisoners of war in Russia, 1916-1919. During the four years of World War I, more than 600,000 Hungarians were taken prisoners in Russia. Of this group, nearly 100,000 fought on the side of the Bolsheviks and for the maintenance of the Communist power. They contributed to the Bolshevik success by helping to quell the SR uprising in Moscow, by reinforcing the Communist units in Iaroslavl' and by acting as leaders among the internationalist units of the Red Army during the Civil War. Several significant reasons determined Hungarian aid to the Bolsheviks: a too rigid class discrimination introduced into the prisoners camp life, resulting in special tension between the officers and men, the emotional attraction of the Communist promises of a fairer new world, and the skillful alternate use of propaganda and pressure by the Bolsheviks. However, although nearly a 100,000 men were willing to fight for the Russian Bolsheviks, only a minor number adopted the Communist ideology and very few actually became members of the various Communist parties.

Journal de Russie (April 22-June 19, 1917), by Albert Thomas, an unpublished document edited by I. Sinanoglou. Of the many Western socialist missions to Russia in spring 1917 that of Albert Thomas stands out as the most important. He combined extensive experience in the international socialist movement with a passionate zeal for the Allied cause. Endowed by his government with extraordinary powers to determine French policy in the new Russia, Thomas had also to convince the more sceptical Russian socialists that the cause of European socialism and democracy and the defence of revolutionary Russia's newly-won liberty could be promoted only by a vigorous military effort against the Central Powers. In his Russian diary, Thomas records his intimate contacts with the leaders of the Provisional Government and the Petrograd soviet. He attempted, without success, to convince his governement that the Allies would have to accept the revision of their war aims and participate in an international socialist conference in order to win revolutionary Russia to the cause of the Entente.