Time to read: 20 minutes(s)

Suddenly, the head of the provincial gendarmerie department learned that a congress of political exiles was being held in Vologda in the autumn of 1907, and that its initiator was none other than the governor himself, and that the congress of political exiles itself was to be held in the governor's office...

STUDIO: Whether this congress took place or not, we'll find out a little later. We're starting the second season, and today we'll move away from how the imperial regime organized governance in various parts of the country and look at how people themselves tried to self-organize in conditions that seemed completely unsuitable. This is the podcast "We'll Do It Ourselves From Now On." My name is Andrey Allahverdov. Hello.

Schweik began asking one after another why they were imprisoned. From all five, he received almost the same answer: 
- Because of Sarajevo. […]
An unusually fat gentleman in glasses was arrested […] because two days before the Sarajevo assassination attempt he had paid the bill for two Serbian engineering students […] Another was a history teacher. […] He was arrested as he was concluding a general psychological analysis of the assassination attempts with the words: “The idea behind the assassination attempt is as simple as Columbus’s egg.” […] The third was the chairman of the “Dobrolyub” charity circle […] and had organized a musical party in the garden. The gendarme sergeant demanded that the participants disperse, as Austria was in mourning. To this the chairman […] said: “Wait until they finish playing ‘Hey, Slavs.’” [The fourth] avoided all conversation about Ferdinand for two days and only in the evening, at a café over “marriage,” having beaten the king with a trump seven, said:
- Seven bullets, like in Sarajevo!

STUDIO: What does the good soldier Švejk have to do with our stories, one might ask? It was with this analogy that my interlocutor, Pavel Tikhomirov, a historian and researcher of the lives of political exiles, began our conversation. Today we will discuss those who found themselves in exile in the Russian North at the beginning of the 20th century, their participation in self-government, and first, it would be helpful to understand who these exiles were.

PAVEL TIKHOMIROV: For a contemporary Russian in the early 20th century, this was a subject of considerable criticism. Many members of the intelligentsia remarked that anyone could be exiled. This stilted image of a political exile is no longer so much a fighter for justice and the people's happiness, as, say, Alexander Ivanovich Herzen portrayed them, but often a person who, while drunk, insulted the royal family and pretended not to remember how it happened. As for peasants, a special situation existed: many were exiled not by decision of the local authorities, but by the local community. If a person was guilty, they were expelled from local society and sent to another province. In other words, political exiles are a very vague category. This was implied by both the legal norm and the practice itself.

STUDIO: And how many exiles are we talking about?

PAVEL TIKHOMIROV: I'm studying the history of political exile in the early 20th century in the Arkhangelsk, Vologda, and Olonetsk provinces, which by that time had begun to coalesce into a complex entity known as the "Russian North." If we're talking about three provinces—Arkhangelsk, Vologda, and Olonetsk—the peak occurred in the years after, well, the end of the first Russian Revolution, when the number of state crimes increased accordingly. And that's several thousand political exiles across three large provinces. So, overall, not an insanely large number. Siberia, of course, was the destination of more exiles, more frequently, and perhaps more readily. And to the Russian North—it's worth noting—they were most often sent for two or three years.

STUDIO: We are going to talk about what political exiles did, but they were limited in their actions.x?

PAVEL TIKHOMIROV: This is a serious question, because they often did what they couldn't do. There were a number of restrictions on movement: one could travel from one county to another with the governor's permission, but not every exile felt the need to notify the governor in advance and ask for permission to leave. They could also travel to other provinces. One striking example is Ivan Platonovich Kalyayev, who was exiled to the Yaroslavl province and simply came to Vologda to visit his friend Boris Viktorovich Savinkov. Together with Alexei Remizov, he translated Przybyshevsky from Polish into Russian, and no one seemed bothered by the fact that they were actually exiles from different provinces, let alone counties. He did this illegally, and many of his movements remain unknown because no one could record them. This doesn't mean it was always this way. For example, certain categories of the population, generally speaking, non-Russians, typically Poles and Jews, were tended to be relocated to more remote districts, somewhere further north or further east. It was precisely this difficulty that made it more difficult for them to obtain permission to move. This is more a question of how local authorities, and the authorities in general, viewed politically powerful subjects of the empire and how they were able to regulate such often complex processes. There were also a number of restrictions on certain professions. That is, anything related to public activity was prohibited. Lectures and teaching were prohibited. But, again, this prohibition was very often violated, and among the exiles were also participants in the zemstvo movement, the cooperative movement, and trade union leaders. That is, on the one hand, there is a law that prohibits this, on the other hand, there is a problem of governance, especially in the provinces, places of political exile, where there is a shortage of gendarmerie staff, a shortage of police, a shortage of funding, and therefore the severity of the law is compensated by its enforcement.

When heading into political exile, many of them encountered a number of difficulties from the very beginning. First, it's difficult to find housing, and it's difficult to prove to a potential landlord that you're a worthy tenant. Then financial difficulties immediately arise, because the benefits political exiles receive are, firstly, insufficient, and secondly, not everyone receives them. Legally, these are their own problems, but when the local administration, local police, and gendarmerie are faced with the fact that they gather at the local police station and demand that they receive their benefits, this also becomes the concern of the police, the governor, and the local police officer, but legally, it is the concern of the political exiles alone.

STUDIO: That is, if we talk about self-organization, then, as I understand it, it primarily concerned establishing one’s own life, correct?

PAVEL TIKHOMIROV: Political exiles have varying income levels. Some were able to find work, others were unable to, some receive welfare benefits, others do not. One possible way to resolve these material problems is to organize mutual aid funds. Members of the political exile colony would make monthly contributions, and they could also count on outside assistance, such as the sympathy of local residents. Furthermore, I would highlight other factors that contribute to self-organization. A passion for reading was combined with limited access to information, and self-organization among political exiles largely consisted of organizing libraries, or, one might say, simply collecting books, magazines, and newspapers that the political exiles brought with them, received from outside, and shared with each other. After their exile, they were usually left behind, not taken away.

When political exiles are actually in exile, they often share apartments, work in nearby places, and can no longer ignore each other. And suddenly, it turns out that many of them share the same ideas; they become close, united. Perhaps one of the most curious cases is that of the exile Alexander Alexandrovich Bogdanov and Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky. They live in the same building, they are neighbors, and they communicate every day, well, not to mention being friends. And in exile, they meet some local residents who, like Bogdanov, work in a hospital. They gather and discuss complex theories of empiriomonism, how to combine Avenarius, Mach, and Marxism, and ultimately publish a collection, which Vladimir Ilyich Lenin later responded to. In other words, political exile is also a meeting place for representatives of different parties, different tendencies, different currents. And when several Poles meet in the northern district of the Arkhangelsk or Volgograd provinces, it is easier for them to unite with each other, considering that some of them may not know Russian or know it poorly, and thus, well, as they say, make their lives easier.

But at the same time, political exile also brought together unexpected representatives of different worlds within the Russian Empire. It's easy to imagine, for example, a peasant exiled for insulting the royal family, a fact he has no recollection of, standing next to, say, Boris Viktorovich Savinkov, who at that time was still a Social Democrat and, in exile in Vologda, made his transition to the Socialist Revolutionaries, later becoming the leader of a militant organization.

STUDIO: But this peasant was also an exile. And we, of course, are primarily interested in their social life, how they participated in the life of the province or district where they found themselves. You mentioned the zemstvo, cooperatives, and trade unions.

PAVEL TIKHOMIROV: Peasants find themselves the object of attention among those exiled in political exile; they sometimes seek some way to preserve their identity as underground people, in the broadest sense. And by organizing a cooperative, they thus attempt to transform their time in exile into a time of social activism, which was very important to many of them.

From the documents of the II All-Russian Congress of Cooperation, 1913

The Congress believes that it is essential for cooperatives to participate as much as possible in educational activities and to devote as much effort and resources as possible to raising public education and public consciousness. […] In their cultural endeavors, cooperatives should pursue not only educational but also pedagogical goals, instilling in the population a spirit of solidarity and developing habits of social activity. Cooperatives should promote the formation of local societies and circles pursuing cultural goals. 

PAVEL TIKHOMIROV: The cooperative movement began to develop after the first Russian revolution, when many members of the Russian intelligentsia began to channel their fervent energy not so much into political action as into cultural and educational activities. In fact, many had very different understandings of what constitutes a cooperative. For example, some leaders of the Arkhangelsk cooperative movement, before becoming such, admitted to having read Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Owen, and they believed that cooperatives were a path to socialism. That is, when cooperative members give lectures, hold exhibitions, and talk about raising peasant literacy, some of them also perceived this as a way to achieve freedom and equality, along with the fact that they would help increase crop yields. It must be said that the authorities also had mixed feelings about cooperatives, and when confronted with this innovation, they would issue warnings to local police.

From a letter from the Vologda governor to the head of the provincial gendarmerie department

"Enclosing herewith a cutting from the newspaper 'Rech', indicating that the agricultural and other types of cooperatives, which are emerging with extraordinary speed in the Vologda province, are one of the stages of socialism and have been chosen by peasant brotherhoods as one of the instruments for organizing the peasant population, I ask Your Excellency to inform me who are the members of the provincial central body of the said cooperatives and whether the said body is disguised as the Vologda Society of Agriculture, whose information bureau, according to unofficial information, consists of unreliable individuals headed by the livestock specialist Tulubiyev."

STUDIO: How do exiles organize or participate in cooperatives? So, do they simply approach peasants and propose they form a cooperative, say, for shared land use?

PAVEL TIKHOMIROV: They visited the peasants, gave lectures, held exhibitions, and remained convinced that their work had helped the peasants. These were simply associations, often sponsored by the state, sometimes with private funds. Essentially, they were a broad, professional, or cultural-educational movement, without any experiments in the spirit of collective land use of the Soviet era. Some societies were unregistered. And since we're talking about political exiles and their rights and restrictions, it's important to keep in mind that they couldn't actually participate, couldn't formally participate, in the activities of the cooperatives. However, the police and gendarmerie often record that the speeches of political exiles, who for some reason attend, despite the law, exert a huge influence at society meetings. And they don't just attend; they sometimes even organize these very cooperatives, which exist illegally. Sometimes they write charters, they receive literature by mail from their friends on how to run a farm, and they teach the peasants how to do so. Having experience in self-organization, they write charters and so on. It's also important to look at the history that preceded the emergence of these cooperatives. That is, cooperatives emerged in 1907-1908, and before that, in the early years of the 20th century, political exiles attempted to influence peasant self-government, which was represented primarily at assemblies. The problem they encountered almost immediately was that political exiles, who hailed from various provinces, were not allowed to participate in these assemblies. Therefore, they often tried to influence things through certain influential figures, influential peasants, teachers. And if we're talking about the northern provinces, then by the beginning of the first Russian revolution, and during the first Russian revolution as well, we don't really notice any noticeable influence of political exiles on the peasants. And then this whole story of cooperatives, these formal, peasant-centered organizations, emerges.

From the report of the Vytegorsk district police officer to the governor, February 3, 1907

"On January 25, Ilya Proskuryakov, a guard with the Pudozh convoy detachment, returning from Vytegra to Pudozh, stopped by the house of peasant Ivan Sergeyev and, approaching the peasants Matvey Sergeyev and Vasily Afonin who were there, […] asked them: "How are you, peasants, doing?" – "It has become difficult to live in Russia now, there is no order in it at all, and this is because the people are unfriendly and ignorant […]. You yourselves do not understand anything, listen to the exiles and do what they teach, only then will the people achieve their will. If only you read more political books, then everyone would understand and know what to do. It's a pity that I do not have these books with me, but I have half a chest at home. The exiles understand everything, and yet they are punished for telling the truth."

PAVEL TIKHOMIROV: Subsequently, it became clear that cooperatives could help the government itself, that they truly offered a new way to solve old problems—changing land use practices to improve labor efficiency, crop yields, and the literacy of the peasant masses, among other things. And here, political exiles could be viewed not only and not so much as state criminals, but rather as true experts in certain fields. When the February Revolution occurred, an article appeared in the journal of the Vologda Agricultural Society, one of the largest agricultural societies in the entire empire, beginning with the words, "Finally, we can now drop our masks and declare that our cooperatives were initiated by political exiles and opposition zemstvo leaders." The editor of this magazine was a former political exile who, while in Arkhangelsk Province in 1913, was amnestied on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. Returning home via Vologda, he received an offer from local cooperative members to become an agronomist and, later, the magazine's editor. This was Sergei Semenovich Maslov, a prominent Socialist Revolutionary (SR) figure. A circle of former political figures, typically SRs, would later form around him in 1914-16, within the Vologda Agricultural Society.

STUDIO: Did the exiles also influence the work of the zemstvo? Did they work in zemstvo institutions?

PAVEL TIKHOMIROV: Indeed, political exiles did participate in zemstvo work. But it should be noted right away that zemstvos appeared in Arkhangelsk Province only in 1917, and in Olonetsk Province, the same influence as in Vologda Province is not evident. Here, it seems to me, the point is again that political exiles were not only and not so much criminals as they were also experts of sorts. If we look at the composition of the Vologda zemstvos for 1900, we find that the majority of statisticians could be represented by exiled Social Democrats, for example. The statistics department was headed by the exiled Social Democrat Rumyantsev, and he influenced the selection of personnel. And this doesn't seem to bother anyone, at least for the time being. Besides statisticians, exiled doctors also played an important role. Some of them were, apparently, good specialists. To personalize this story a bit, we can cite the example of Yulian Grabowski, a Polish exile who ended up in Ust-Sysolsk, Vologda Province. At some point, he received permission to complete his education at Kazan University. Formally a political exile, he went to Kazan, defended his thesis, then returned to Vologda Province to serve out the remainder of his exile. He found work at a zemstvo hospital. He later returned to his homeland, several years after serving his exile. He remained in Vologda Province, working there, becoming a resident and teacher, and then returned to his home province and left the socialist movement. So, on the one hand, this story is about how politically powerful individuals can be experts, who are in short supply, as they used to say, in remote places. On the other hand, I think it's also important to note that the exiles themselves also received money, resources, and perhaps the opportunity to pursue professional work, and in some cases, the opportunity to live in the provincial capital. But at the same time, the Vologda Zemstvo quickly became radicalized. For example, at one point, the Zemstvo warehouse became a library for political exiles. In other words, we see the influence of the Zemstvo on the exiles, and the influence of the exiles on the Zemstvo. But this situation would be very difficult to imagine without some personal factor. It must be said that a local intellectual, the Zemstvo chairman Viktor Andreevich Kudryavy, played a significant role. He was the founder of the local Cadet organization, but at the same time, strong Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries regularly gathered in his apartment.

From the political review of the Vologda Provincial Gendarme Administration for 1902. 

No harmful tendencies were observed in urban or peasant institutions, which cannot be said of the zemstvo and, especially, of the staff of the provincial zemstvo council. Among the individuals serving in this institution, the most noteworthy is […] the chairman of the provincial zemstvo council, Viktor Andreyev Kudryavy (under secret surveillance), who has held this prominent post for the second three years. He is undoubtedly politically unreliable, openly acquainting himself with local subjects under his supervision and providing them with extensive patronage. During the tenure of Governor Knyazev, a completely abnormal regime was established regarding political exiles. Granting them every possible concession, the governor even expressed a desire to certain officials of the provincial administration and police not to impede the exiles in any way. […] By hiring exclusively his supporters to serve in the council, Kudryavy made it almost impossible for individuals not compromised politically to enter. […] In view of the above, sensing ground beneath them, local exiles found it possible to completely ignore the orders of the provincial authorities. Unwilling to obey the governor's mandatory decrees, these individuals were exiled from Vologda to remote districts, but this decree was not actually enforced.

PAVEL TIKHOMIROV: That is, political exiles could obtain permission to work in the zemstvos. Formally, it was possible to circumvent this ban. Some of them did just that, obtaining permission from the governor and working in zemstvo offices. Some, apparently, even worked without any special permission, because the gendarmes didn't immediately discover that Kudryavy was not only associating with disloyal individuals under surveillance but also hiring them to work in zemstvo offices. In 1906, Alexei Nikolaevich Khvostov assumed the post of Vologda governor. We remember him best for the story of Grigori Rasputin. When he took office, something rather strange happened. Suddenly, the local head of the provincial gendarmerie department learned from the intercepted correspondence of political exiles that a congress of political exiles was convening in Vologda in the fall of 1907. Its initiator was none other than the governor himself, and the congress itself was to be held in the governor's office. Khvostov hadn't informed Lamzin, the head of the gendarmerie department, of this, apparently intending to hold the congress secretly. Ultimately, the congress took place, and Lamzin attended. The congress began with a reading of the charter to the exiles, outlining their rights and responsibilities. After this, exiles from the district colonies began to complain that their rights were not being respected. At this point, the congress was largely suspended, and the exiles held an illegal congress that evening and departed. All of this raised concerns among the chief of the gendarmerie. Let me remind you that we're talking about 1907, a period familiar to us from Soviet historiography as a period of reaction—a time of restrictions on public life, the closure of many societies, and the tightening of regulations for their organization. Then correspondence began between Gendarmerie Chief Lamzin and the police department, and between Khvostov and the same department. Each of them presented their own view of the situation. Lamzin argued that all this would only radicalize the political exiles, that they would gather at their own congresses and plot terrorist acts, and that this was generally against the law. Khvostov, however, responded to these attacks by saying that he still considered it permissible to allow political exiles to hold congresses and associations, since this was the only thing that could distract them from revolutionary activity. And, in fact, Khvostov writes, "I looked at what these exiles were doing. They were reading their books and setting up mutual aid funds."

STUDIO: Well, after all, they did more than just read books and help each other with money..

PAVEL TIKHOMIROV: If we're talking about self-government and self-organization among political exiles, we're talking—and this is probably a benefit for some, a detriment for others—about influencing political self-organization in the province as a whole. That is, political exiles often end up either organizers of local political parties or their important members. The point is that they possess important resources, literature, experience, conspiracy skills, and so on. And, for example, when the first Cadet group was organized in Arkhangelsk, for lack of anything better, they used the literature provided by the exiled Socialist Revolutionaries. In other words, exiles are an important factor, but certainly not the only one, in political life within the provinces. Besides cooperatives and zemstvos, we must also mention the attempts of politically powerful figures to influence trade unions. That is, this is a story about how the exiles hoped to see some kind of revolutionary class in the proletariat and were sent to, as they say, self-organize it. And trade unions are probably another important element in this overall influence of political exiles on local provincial life. They believed that workers' self-organization was, again, an important stage in the cause of liberation, as it was widely understood at the time. Trade union activity often consisted of uniting workers, who were supposed to understand their economic and political needs and learn to demand their rights from their employers or local authorities. Furthermore, within these trade unions, some kind of educational activity, as it was understood at the time, was also widely practiced. That is, these were various legal and illegal meetings—more often illegal, if we're talking about political, powerful ones—which included lectures and reports. Sometimes this could manifest itself in the creation of educational courses in languages, geography, mathematics—that is, some kind of knowledge course, with a lecturer for each subject.

The thing is, this story is all about illegal activity, for the most part. One of the first trade unions in the northern provinces was conceived—yes, conceived—and developed by Lunacharsky. He decided to create an artel, which he called, apparently with a high dose of humor, the "artel of freemasons," with all the allusions to the Masons, and wrote its charter. This was in 1903, I think. Then he left exile, and it seemed the story had been safely forgotten. However, with the outbreak of the First Russian Revolution, and subsequently, as the trade union movement gained momentum, the existence of this charter and its name were suddenly remembered. And so, the artel of freemasons became one of the first trade unions in the province. And the fact that it was written by the exiled Bogdanov and Lunacharsky, they had no idea. That is, there should have been other names, surnames, and other people should have been named as members of the union. But they really were masons and probably really wanted to become free, but it is not very clear in what sense exactly.

What always inspired me about this story was the self-organization of people under police surveillance, which in no way prevented them from moving from the legal to the illegal. It was a unique culture, as if there was some kind of special habit attached to self-government—a unafraid to self-organize, despite external circumstances. The principles on which this was based, at least as they explained it, or as they tried to portray it, were, after all, a striving for a more equitable redistribution of resources and a desire for knowledge. This was an era of people who had not yet lost faith in progress and faith in knowledge. And thirdly, perhaps, was their ability to act in situations that seemed inappropriate.

STUDIO: I thank Pavel Tikhomirov, a historian and researcher of political exiles in the Russian Empire, for his engaging account. This was the podcast "We'll Take It Ourselves From Now On." Listen in, comment, we're very interested in your opinions. See you there.