Notes of a Red Guard * Notes of a Red Guard * Eduard M. Dune Translated and edited by Diane P. Koenker and S. A. Smith UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS © 1993 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois Manufactured in the United States of America p This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dune, Eduard M. (Eduard Martynovich), 1899-1953. Notes of a Red Guard/ Eduard M. Dune ; translated and edited by Diane P. Koenker and S. A. Smith. p. cm. Translated from Russian. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-252-01972-5 (cl) (alk. paper). - ISBN 0-252-06277-9 (pb) 1. Dune, Eduard M. (Eduard Martynovich), 1899-1953. 2. Soviet Union-History-Revolution, 1917-1921-Personal narratives. 3. Revolutionaries-Soviet Union-Biography. I. Koenker, Diane, 1947- . II. Smith, S. A. (Stephen Anthony), 1952- 111. Title. DK254.D78A3 1993 947.084' l '092-dc20 92-18937 CIP For the descendants of Eduard Martynovich Dune Contents * Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi Note on the Translation xxxv Part One * The Red Guard 1. To Moscow 3 2. The February Revolution 27 3. Workers' Power 43 4. Rob the Robbers 75 5. The Russian Vendee 89 Part Two * The Red Army 6. Soviet Power in 1918 117 7. On the Don Again 137 8. Retreat 151 9. Prisoner of the Volunteer Army 171 10. In the Novorossiisk Underground 187 11. On My Own Again 203 12. Rebellion in Dagestan 213 Postscript 231 Notes 233 Suggestions for Further Reading 267 Works by Eduard Dune 269 Reference Bibliography 271 Index 275 Acknowledgments The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University has generously given us permission to publish this translation, and we are indebted to the staffs of the Hoover Insti­ tution's archive and library for their help throughout our work on this project. Thanks are also due to the superb Slavic Library of the University of Illinois and especially to Helen Sullivan. The Uni­ versity of Illinois provided financial support in the critical final stages of the manuscript's preparation. Lewis Siegelbaum, William Rosenberg, Andrew Verner, and Ben Eklof read versions of the manuscript and offered their encouragement for our efforts. Kath­ leen McFarland helped to track down aspects of Dune's biography. A Soviet archivist also provided key information about Dune's career. Chris Ward solved a refractory problem about rifles and discussed encouragingly a text he never got to see. James A. Bier drew the maps. Natalia Pervukhin's careful review of our transla­ tion, as well as her knowledge of Chekhov, was extremely helpful in the final stages of our work. Vicki Miller contributed efficient clerical and editorial services. Any errors remain our sole respon­ sibility. Diane Koenker wishes also to thank Steve Smith, who gave generously of his time, even when conducting his own research in far-flung locations, for his stimulating ideas about the project and for his unflagging enthusiasm. Steve Smith thanks Diane Koenker for making his first experience of collaborative scholarly work entirely enjoyable and for proving that the Atlantic Ocean is no bar to efficiency and effective coordination. Introduction * The events in Russia in 1917 that toppled the old regime and brought into being the first socialist society continue to provoke controversy and debate. Generations of public figures as well as historians have argued whether the 1917 revolution was a triumph of social justice or a world tragedy of the highest order, whether it represented the aspirations and self-determination of society in the Russian Empire or whether it was a conspiracy engineered by ruthless intellectuals. The conflict of ideals represented by these diverging views has provided much of the motive force of twenti­ eth-century history. Assessments of the revolution differ so wide­ ly not only because revolutions are such complex events, inher­ ently difficult to disentangle, but above all because revolutions represent the clash of subjective values. Revolutions happen in part because shared value systems break down or because domi­ nant value systems become challenged by the mobilization of a competing value system. Well before 1917 the tenets of the Russian autocratic order­ hierarchy, patriarchy, and privilege-were already facing severe challenge from many elements in society. But there was no single, uniform "opposition" position. Proponents of civil rights, of wom­ en's rights, of economic democracy, of national self-determina­ tion, and of political democracy vied for influence among Russia's elite and among society at large. Their political messages some­ times contradicted and sometimes reinforced one another. The clash of values implicit in these contradictory appeals helps ex­ plain why contemporary accounts as well as historical ones of the Russian revolution have differed so widely in their perspectives and interpretations. xii * Introduction Eyewitness accounts of the revolution-diaries, letters, and ret­ rospective memoirs-provide a valuable and abundant trove of insight into the revolutionary process, events, and consequences. Such accounts have emanated from all parties in the revolution­ ary struggle, from partisans of the old regime, from supporters of the liberal revolution, from socialist intellectuals both radical and moderate, from distressed bystanders who professed no political allegiance, and from outside observers such as journalists, diplo­ mats, and foreign visitors of all sympathies. All brought to their memories and their records their own perspectives shaped by their values, their positions in society, and their specific experiences. Inevitably most of those who recorded their memoirs came from educated society, and their perspective on events tended to focus their attention on high politics, on leadership, and on ideas. Some of these accounts have become classics in aid of understanding the dynamics of the revolution and the motivations of the partici­ pants.1 With one important class of exceptions, fewer usable accounts have emerged from among eyewitnesses in the rank-and-file of the revolutionary movement, from peasants or soldiers, accountants or shop clerks, housewives or schoolteachers. The one exception to this absence of reminiscences "from below" has been an out­ pouring of memoir writing from factory worker participants in the revolution. These accounts emerged from oral "evenings of remi­ niscences" starting in the early 1920s and from more formal ef­ forts to provide workers, the official victors of the revolution, with their own history.2 Their numbers run into the thousands, rang­ ing from one-paragraph anecdotes to several-hundred-page books. The best of them are extraordinarily rich documents of working­ class life and values, especially for the portions that deal with pre­ revolutionary conditions and themes.3 Memoirs about 1917, however, with a few exceptions, tend to focus on narrowly formulaic issues and to emphasize the success and legitimacy of Bolshevik party policies and actions. The effort to give workers their history was also one to legitimize their rev­ olution, to refashion retrospective memories into a politically ac­ ceptable justification for communist society. These formulas ap­ plied even in the 1920s, before Lenin's death, and the genre became progressively more rigid and prescribed with the onset of the Stalinist political mentality of the late 1920s and 1930s. This Introduction * xiii meant, of course, the elimination of Trotsky and other subsequent opponents of Stalin from the historical record, but also the purg­ ing of doubt, of ambiguity, and of conflict within the working class and its parties. It is consequently extremely difficult to use such sources to evaluate popular attitudes and perceptions during the immediate revolutionary period. This memoir by Eduard Dune is a unique and valuable excep­ tion to this pattern. Dune was an enthusiastic participant in the revolutionary events of 1917-21, but also a lifelong opponent of the Stalinist regime. This memoir consequently offers the authen­ tic voice of a fiercely independent thinker, but one who was an equally fierce supporter of the ideals of the 1917 revolution. There is nothing else like this on the revolution and civil war. Eduard Martynovich Dune was born in Riga, of Latvian parents Martyn and Zila Kristina Dune, on 10 September 1899. His father was a skilled worker at one of Riga's largest factories, the Provod­ nik rubber plant. Riga at this time was a thriving city of half a million people, the fourth largest city in the Russian Empire. Ger­ man and Russian influences were strong, as Dune describes, but the native population was Latvian. Riga's political life was circum­ scribed by Russian autocratic rule, just as in the largest cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, but Riga's citizens enjoyed substantial freedom to form cultural and civic organizations, and according to Dune's recollections, workers in Riga had extensive access to evening schools, choral societies, temperance societies, and the like. Young Eduard attended school in Riga and developed a vora­ cious appetite for books; his family hoped he would finish school, find employment in the lower echelons of the factory administra­ tion, and thus rise above the skilled blue-collar position held by his father. Growing up, Dune absorbed tales of factory life from his father, and the 1905 revolution intensified the family's interest in politics and social questions. In 1915, the Dune family was uprooted by the transfer of the Provodnik factory to Moscow. The German army threatened to capture Riga and its important armaments production, so the Rus­ sian government ordered the city's most important factories to resettle, with their work forces, to locations inside Russia. The Provodnik plant was one of 352 enterprises to be transferred from Riga, among which a third were sent to the Moscow region. For Dune, the move to Moscow more or less coincided with his xiv * Introduction entry into the world of work, and his memoir of his revolutionary experiences begins at this point.