Liberals and Bureaucrats at War

The study of Russia's domestic political struggle during the years of World War I began even before those battles were fully over; and it has continued, more or less unabated, ever since. Rich (though not coterminous) source bases existed both inside and outside the Soviet Union, and the dramatic and weighty events of the war years made for good history. All the ingredients for a great potboiler were there: high-stakes political gambling, conspiracy and intrigue, mysticism and murder. The main actors were distinctive personalities, and they were bold. Furthermore, since the leaders of the opposition were inclined both to rhetorical virtuosity and to the practice of history, they left fine sources and their own histories of the events they helped shape.

In the West, these factors combined with the unavoidable question of "what went wrong" in the Russian Revolution to produce an extremely distinguished lineage of historical works on the period.¹ In the Soviet Union, as the authors under review all argue in their surveys of the literature, the scope of investigation was rather more limited. Still, as they also make clear, scholars tugged on their Stalinist and neo-Stalinist leashes, eager to get at least a taste of the raw historical morsels that the period provided.²

The opportunity for young Russian scholars like those under review was, no doubt, clear. With the topic no longer restricted, with foreign scholarship now available, and with archival sources open, the chance to write the definitive work on wartime politics glittered before them. Armed with knowledge of foreign languages, strong interpretive bents, and a healthy dose of vigor, they threw themselves into their projects with abandon and emerged with significant findings. Fedor Gaida's work, in particular, is so comprehensive and deeply researched that a Russian colleague of mine commented informally to me that he considered it "the last word" on the subject of Russian liberals in the war.

I cannot agree with this assessment, but Gaida himself claimed no such lofty pretensions. Instead, he wanted his work to be seen as the "beginning of a new stage" (11) in the historiography, one that was able to use fresh materials and the older works within a broad context. His main goal was to "examine the question of power and the methods of struggle for it" (31) in the Russian liberal movement during World War I and the February Revolution. In practice, this meant a study of Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) in Petrograd during these years.

The focus is announced on the cover of the book, which includes miniature photographs of 19 men and 1 woman (Ariadna Tyrkova). All of them were members of the Central Committee of the Kadet Party. Other important figures play significant roles in the story, notably the most prominent Octobrists and Progressists, the leaders of the public organizations that coordinated much of the wartime relief work, and the provincial Kadets who eventually became more radicalized than their compatriots in the capital. But these men are examined largely in the context of their relationship with the Petrograd Kadets. Gaida's focus is defensible, for in important ways the Kadet Duma delegation was the beating heart of the "liberal opposition" throughout the war. Still, if a "new stage" in the historiography of the movement is in fact beginning, one hopes that future authors will devote more attention to a wider group of liberal activists.

Gaida divides his work into three large chapters, each representing a major period in the wartime struggle for power. The first chapter, "A Liberal...