Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (review)

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution is a model of social history at a time when social history of the Russian Revolution is sorely needed. The centennial of the Revolution produced several fine works, but this is one of the only English-language monographs based on new archival research on the subject that was published last year. Hasegawa studies how and why crime in the capital city Petrograd escalated through 1917, creating a crisis of authority for the new Provisional Government that the Bolsheviks would exploit.

Hasegawa paints a picture of growing crime and a descent into anarchy in Petrograd. Robberies and thefts increased steadily after the February Revolution, peaking in the Fall. Economic woes were partially to blame. People became destitute with run-away inflation and they turned to petty theft to survive. The number of murders also rose and became more brazen. Hasegawa describes other signs of social breakdown, like drunkenness, prostitution and narcotics that were all reported on in detail in daily newspaper reports and the boulevard press most of all. Drawing especially on Emile Durkheim, Hasegawa argues that the larger problem was that social cohesion fractured in Petrograd, which fueled mob violence and crime.

As the dreams of the February Revolution grew distant with political and economic instability and the breakdown of authority, more people turned to mob justice (samosud). These violent and often cruel public acts were led by the urban poor, soldiers and hooligans. Hasegawa offers two interpretations of mob justice in Petrograd, drawing on the work on social psychology by Durkheim and Gustave Le Bon. Durkheim saw a crowd as reacting collectively against the failures of a political order, much like in the village. Le Bon, though, saw the crowd as anonymous actors of violence in an industrial landscape without a collective moral compass. Hasegawa favors Le Bon’s pessimistic interpretation of the crowd mentality. I see mob justice during the revolution as inescapably a political expression. This was especially true in Petrograd where the public space was itself political. Hasegawa’s tone of the accounts sometimes echo the established press that bemoaned growing anarchy but which could also be seen as popular fears of class conflict as workers and urban poor became more confident in their political strength. That might be intentional, though. One of the several important contributions of the book is how Hasegawa finds people on the streets and in dark alleys that have been forgotten in Soviet historiography that focused on workers and ideologically-driven politics. Hasegawa widens the lens on important actors in the Russian Revolution.

The breakdown of social cohesion is one of the main themes and reflects how social forces directed the revolution; the second main theme is the state’s failure to control the rise of crime or monopolize violence. Drawing on Max Weber, Hasegawa argues that “the failure of the state was both manifest and reinforced by its inability to establish law and order” (14–15). It was not for want of trying. The Provisional Government implemented revolutionary humanitarian reforms to make the legal order work better and more justly than in the tsarist era. It abolished the death penalty, amnestied common criminals and disbanded the tsarist police, even as crime soared. Provisional courts overseen by judges and soldiers that emerged in Petrograd in the spring to give newly empowered revolutionaries a voice also reflected the confusion that weighed down the efficacy of law and order. On top of that, “leaky prisons” (95) also put criminals back on the streets. The new militias that replaced the police reflected the confusion of law and governance in Petrograd’s revolutionary environment. A workers’ militia joined the new state militia and city militias to police the city but each organization had its own goals and leadership hierarchy. They worked well together at first but by the summer, the workers’ militia and Red Guard broke from the city militia. Rumors of corruption and infiltration by criminals...