Defenders of the Motherland: The Tsarist Elite in Revolutionary Russia (review)

That revolutions begin not when a nation’s oppressed rise, but when its elites abandon the existing order is a seldom-challenged historical truism. Equally well established is the view that having opened the door to revolt, the elites of old regimes are quickly swept aside by the unstoppable forces their desertion of the status quo conjured. The historical stage then belongs to the masses, and the elites’ role in the revolutions they helped create is reduced to sullen, fruitless opposition or hopeless armed resistance. In this useful study of the Russian case, Matthew Rendle does not reject outright these conventional observations, but instead provides a more nuanced picture of the way elites influenced the course of events during 1917.

Rendle limits his definition of “elites” to the nobility, and excludes from consideration other social groups that might qualify for that title such as the upper ranks of the Orthodox clergy and the major industrialists. Rendle justifies this somewhat questionable decision by arguing that these other groups have been well studied elsewhere. He further reminds us that at the time of the revolution members of the dvorianstvo, about one percent of the population, made up two thirds of the senior officials in the central government and thoroughly controlled the state administration at the province and county (uezd) levels. They held sway in elected zemstvo institutions and constituted 46 and 55 percent of the delegates in the Third and Fourth Dumas respectively. The nobility also dominated the officer corps. To be sure, by 1914 its lower and middle ranks had seen a significant influx of non-noble elements, a trend that increased rapidly once the Great War began. Still, throughout the revolution, the corps’ upper stratum, Colonels and above, came overwhelmingly from the dvorianstvo.

More than anything else, the misfortunes of war caused the noble elite to shift its allegiance from tsar and dynasty to state and people and led its members to accept, even welcome, a revolution they hoped would make possible victory and national salvation. But Rendle argues that World War I had simply accelerated transformations that were already affecting the noble estate before 1914: fragmentation along the lines of professional and economic interest, and the willingness to countenance greater political democracy. As a whole, the noble elite may not have envisioned the extent of the changes that February would unleash, but once they had occurred its majority quickly recognized that there could be no return to the past. Nobles sought now to engage the revolution and to promote a democracy in which all Russians could work together for a common goal. In that process they moved away from estate-based organizations like the United Nobility. Instead, they created “unions”—homeowners, landowners, and various officers’ groups—designed to defend property and status and to incorporate representatives of other social elements. Although never truly unified, these organizations sought to pressure the Provisional Government to maintain order and legal processes and to mobilize the country in support of the war and defense of the motherland. Remnants of the most reactionary wing of the nobility did, of course, remain, but Rendle shows they were largely marginalized, and that their ideas played little role in the activities of the elite in 1917.

Rendle urges his readers to reconsider the nature of conservatism as it developed during the course of the revolutionary year and to abandon the notion that nobles wished to bring back the tsar even when it became clear that events were moving in a direction that profoundly endangered both their economic interests and physical safety. As they increasingly despaired of the Provisional Government’s ability to achieve the goals they sought, many nobles began to look favorably on the prospect of military dictatorship. But when the Kornilov “revolt” took place in August, promising to reestablish order in society and discipline in the army, support for the general proved weak and fragmented. Even among the officers, the majority of...