‘This powerful book takes a close look at the relationship between the Bolshevik party and the democratic aspirations of rank-and-file workers in Moscow in the crucial early years of the Russian revolution. Simon Pirani’s prodigious utilization of local party and secret police archives allows him to show how the Bolshevik party leadership systematically destroyed democratic voices on the shop floor: the party offered a ‘‘social contract’’ that promised improving standards of living in exchange for the loss of a political voice. Paying close attention to the material reality of the post-revolutionary period and to moments of intense shop floor dissent, this book goes beyond Robert Daniels’s classic The Conscience of the Revolution in emphasizing the importance of independent and non-party socialist worker activists. He instructs careful readers about the complex, fragile thing called democracy, exploring its origin and demise in economically and politically fraught conditions of revolutionary change.’ Diane P. Koenker University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ‘Why did the Russian revolution, a mass uprising for justice and democracy, end in a single Party dictatorship? This gripping tale of workers in revolution and retreat is essential reading for anyone inter- ested in an answer. Pirani follows Russian workers as they seize power, fight for a democratic revolution, and lose to a Bolshevik Party bureaucracy intent on consolidating control. Using exciting new sources, Pirani takes us into the factories of Moscow to understand relations among activists, workers, bureaucrats, and a multiplicity of revolutionary parties.’ Wendy Goldman Carnegie Mellon University The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920–24 The Russian revolution of 1917 was a defining event of the twentieth century, and its achievements and failures remain controversial in the twenty-first. This book focuses on the retreat from the revolution’s aims in 1920–24, after the civil war and at the start of the New Economic Policy – and spe- cifically, on the turbulent relationship between the working class and the Communist Party in those years. It is based on extensive original research of the actions and reactions of the party leadership and ranks, of dissidents and members of other parties, and of trade union activists and ordinary factory workers. It discusses working-class collective action before, during and after the crisis of 1921, when the Bolsheviks were confronted by the revolt at the Kronshtadt naval base and other protest movements. This book argues that the working class was politically expropriated by the Bol- shevik party, as democratic bodies such as soviets and factory committees were deprived of decision-making power; it examines how the new Soviet ruling class began to take shape. It shows how some worker activists con- cluded that the principles of 1917 had been betrayed, while others accepted a social contract, under which workers were assured of improvements in living standards in exchange for increased labour discipline and productivity, and a surrender of political power to the party. Simon Pirani studied Russian at the University of London and wrote a doctoral dissertation at the University of Essex. He writes about the economy and politics of the former Soviet Union as a journalist. He is currently a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, and is working on book projects on the post-Soviet period. BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies Series editor: Richard Sakwa, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent Editorial Committee: Julian Cooper, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham Terry Cox, Department of Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow Rosalind Marsh, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath David Moon, Department of History, University of Durham Hilary Pilkington, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick Stephen White, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow Founding Editorial Committee Member: George Blazyca, Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University of Paisley. This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Associa- tion for Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, high-quality, research-level work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social science subjects. 1 Ukraine’s Foreign and Security 6 Dostoevsky and the Idea of Policy, 1991–2000 Russianness Roman Wolczuk Sarah Hudspith 2 Political Parties in the Russian 7 Performing Russia – Folk Revival Regions and Russian Identity Derek S. Hutcheson Laura J. Olson 3 Local Communities and Post- 8 Russian Transformations Communist Transformation Edited by Leo McCann Edited by Simon Smith 9 Soviet Music and Society under 4 Repression and Resistance in Lenin and Stalin Communist Europe The Baton and Sickle J.C. Sharman Edited by Neil Edmunds 5 Political Elites and the New 10 State Building in Ukraine Russia The Ukranian parliament, 1990– Anton Steen 2003 Sarah Whitmore 11 Defending Human Rights in 19 Russia as a Great Power Russia Dimensions of Security Under Putin Sergei Kovalyov, Dissident and Edited by Jakob Hedenskog, Human Rights Commissioner, Vilhelm Konnander, Bertil 1969–2003 Nygren, Ingmar Oldberg and Emma Gilligan Christer Pursiainen 12 Small-Town Russia 20 Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of Postcommunist Livelihoods 1940 and Identities A Portrait of the Truth, Justice and Memory Intelligentsia in Achit, George Sanford Bednodemyanovsk and Zubtsov, 1999–2000 21 Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Anne White Soviet Russia Philip Boobbyer 13 Russian Society and the Orthodox Church 22 The Limits of Russian Democrati- Religion in Russia after sation Communism Emergency Powers and States of Zoe Knox Emergency Alexander N. Domrin 14 Russian Literary Culture in the Camera Age 23 The Dilemmas of Destalinisation The Word as Image A Social and Cultural History of Stephen Hutchings Reform in the Khrushchev Era Edited by Polly Jones 15 Between Stalin and Hitler Class War and Race War on the 24 News Media and Power in Russia Dvina, 1940–46 Olessia Koltsova Geoffrey Swain 25 Post-Soviet Civil Society 16 Literature in Post-Communist Democratization in Russia and Russia and Eastern Europe the Baltic States The Russian, Czech and Slovak Anders Uhlin Fiction of the Changes 1988–98 Rajendra A. Chitnis 26 The Collapse of Communist Power in Poland 17 Soviet Dissent and Russia’s Jacqueline Hayden Transition to Democracy Dissident Legacies 27 Television, Democracy and Elections Robert Horvath in Russia Sarah Oates 18 Russian and Soviet Film Adapta- tions of Literature, 1900–2001 28 Russian Constitutionalism Screening the Word Historical and Contemporary Edited by Stephen Hutchings Development and Anat Vernitski Andrey N. Medushevsky 29 Late Stalinist Russia 38 Peopling the Russian Periphery Society Between Reconstruction Borderland Colonization in and Reinvention Eurasian History Edited by Juliane Fu¨rst Edited by Nicholas B Breyfogle, Abby Schrader and Willard 30 The Transformation of Urban Sunderland Space in Post-Soviet Russia Konstantin Axenov, Isolde 39 Russian Legal Culture Before and Brade and Evgenij Bondarchuk After Communism Criminal Justice, Politics and the 31 Western Intellectuals and the Public Sphere Soviet Union, 1920–40 Frances Nethercott From Red Square to the Left Bank 40 Political and Social Thought in Ludmila Stern Post-Communist Russia Axel Kaehne 32 The Germans of the Soviet Union Irina Mukhina 41 The Demise of the Soviet Communist Party 33 Re-constructing the Post-Soviet Atsushi Ogushi Industrial Region The Donbas in Transition 42 Russian Policy towards China and Edited by Adam Swain Japan The El’tsin and Putin Periods 34 Chechnya – Russia’s ‘‘War on Natasha Kuhrt Terror’’ John Russell 43 Soviet Karelia Politics, Planning and Terror in 35 The New Right in the New Europe Stalin’s Russia, 1920–39 Czech Transformation and Right- Nick Baron Wing Politics, 1989–2006 Sea´n Hanley 44 Reinventing Poland Economic and Political 36 Democracy and Myth in Russia Transformation and Evolving and Eastern Europe National Identity Edited by Alexander Wo¨ll and Edited by Martin Myant and Harald Wydra Terry Cox 37 Energy Dependency, Politics and 45 The Russian Revolution in Retreat, Corruption in the Former Soviet 1920–24 Union Soviet Workers and the New Russia’s Power, Oligarchs’ Profits Communist Elite and Ukraine’s Missing Energy Simon Pirani Policy, 1995–2006 Margarita M. Balmaceda The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920–24 Soviet workers and the new communist elite Simon Pirani First published 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business # 2008 Simon Pirani All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing