States of anxiety : scarcity and loss in revolutionary Russia / William G. Rosenberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rosenberg, William G., author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Scarcity.

Russia--History--Nicholas II, 1894-1917.

Russia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (529 pages)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2023.

Summary:

States of Anxiety assesses the effects of the great scarcities and enormous losses that revolutionary Russia experienced between 1914 and 1921. Focusing on the effects of food insecurity, scarcities of other essential goods, and the losses of war in their various forms, it represents a new approach to understanding the period's politics and ideologies. In contrast to the traditional concentration on the period's politics and ideology, this imaginative reinterpretation argues for greater attention to its emotional dimensions and contributes to the historical study of emotions and its complex methodologies.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

Preface

Introduction: "Beyond the Great Stories" of Russia's Wars and Revolutions

The Past and Present in Three "Great Stories"

Material Conditions, Emotional Fields, Power, and Their "Voices"

Historical Imagination and Its Mindsets

The Focus of This Study

A Methodological Challenge: Reading beyond Description

Putting the Revolution in Its Place: Great Stories and Historical Explanations

Part I: The Imperial Meanings of Scarcity and Loss

1. "Fighting with God" and the Languages of Loss

Assessing Patriotism

Surveilling Loyalty

Early Losses and Their Implications

At the Front: The Shocks of War

Reading Soldiers' Moods

Military Censorship and the Galician Disaster

2. Was Russia Prepared?

"Embedded" Underdevelopment, Russia's Peasants, and the Market Problem

Fault Lines of Economic Mobilization

Russia's Railroad Lifeline

The Strains of State Finance

Assessing Loss

3. "Dying of Hunger": Representations and Realities of Scarcity

Early Voices of "Extreme Need"

The Military Zone of Violence

"Dying of Hunger": Procurements, Prices, and the Rising Cost of Living

"Extreme Need" in the Workplace

Food Insecurities and the "Baba" Question

4. Empowering "Responsible Publics" and the Emergence of War Capitalism

War Industries Committees and the Special Councils

Devolving Authority, Engaging the Localities

The Progressive Bloc and the Question of Autocratic Power

Funding Production, Regulating Distribution

Contesting Authorities: The Emissary Problem

Militarization vs. Mediation: The "Worker Question"

War Capitalism and Its Cultures

Rising Anxieties with the Coming of Winter

5. Seeking Solutions, Drowning in Blood.

Winter and Spring of 1916: Anxieties about Mismanagement and Malfeasance from Below

Contending Anxieties: Confusion and Chaos from Above

The Vexing Problems of Rationing and Fixed Prices

State Finance as a "Bacchanalia of Corruption"

Political Dilemmas

Scarcity, Railroads, and the Labor Question: Militarization as Solution

"Brusilov's Breakthrough" as Tragic Romance

The Soldiers' Story: "Drowning in Blood"

6. Scripting Revolution

"Literally Facing Starvation"

Extending Compulsory Labor: From World War to Civil War

The Rittikh Confiscation

Subsistence Protests and the October Strikes

Russia's Revolutionary Situation

Scripting the Revolution

Part II: Revolutionary Imperatives

7. "Responsible Men in Whom the Country Has Confidence": The Challenges of Revolutionary Governance

Writing the "Truth" in the Third Winter of War

Scarcity and Anxiety on the Home Front

Uprising, Insurrection, Revolution

Locations and Forms of Power and Questions of Political Legitimacy

Scarcity and Social Identity

Loss and the Meanings of War

The Challenges of Revolutionary Governance

8. Addressing Scarcity, Confronting Loss

Food Anxiety and the Grain Monopoly: Legitimacy and Function

Food Supply, Land Redistribution, and Democratic Practice

Democratizing the Railroads and the Concept of "Statization"

Controlling the Cost of Living: Revolutionary State Finances, War Capitalism, and the Liberty Loan

Giving Meaning to Loss: Politics, Passions, and the April Crisis

9. Social Conflict, Mediation, and the Revolutionary State

Politics and the First Coalition

Coalition Governance and the Weighty Actor Thesis

Seeking Security and Dignity in the Spring Strike Wave

The Ministry of Labor as a Site of Mediation

Activism in the Countryside

Once More "on the Brink of Catastrophe".

10. "Slaughter" at the Front, the July Insurrection, and a "Government to Save the Revolution"

Brusilov Redux: The Kerensky Offensive

Threats to "Great Russia" and the Liberals' Retreat

The July Insurrection

The "Real Demands of Russian Life"

The "Government to Save the Revolution"

Once Again "on the Brink of Catastrophe"

11. The Collapse of War Capitalism

Village Sovereignty

Who Owns the Workplace?

Summer Strikes

Beleaguered Ministries: Labor, Trade and Industry, and Finance

War Capitalism and the Revolutionary State

12. Democratic Predicaments and the Bolshevik Coup

Scarcity, Loss, and Politics at the Moscow State Conference

Kornilov, the Front, and the Countryside

"Radical Dictatorships," Autonomous Nationalities

The Railroad Republic

The Anxieties and Predicaments of October

Part III: From World War to Total War: Scarcity, Loss, and Dysfunctional Dictatorships after October

13. Circumstance, Ideology, and Bolshevik Power

Rhetoric, Realities, and the Limits of Bolshevik Power

Illusions of Peace

Land and Bread as Metaphors of Hope

Nationalization from Below, Refinancing Production from Above, Repudiating Debt

"Still Starving" Workers and Increasingly Hungry Peasants

Dictatorship as the Primary Task of Soviet Power

14. "Our Lives Have Become Unbearable!": Dictatorships in the "Fight against Hunger"

Extreme Need as Counterrevolution

Once Again, "the Revolution Is in Danger!"

Once Again, Mobilizing "Solutions"

Scarcity and the Anti-Bolshevik Dictatorships

The Bolsheviks' "Fight against Hunger"

The Normalization of Concealment

Losing the "Hunger War"

15. Violence, Loss, and the Collapse of War Communism

"Vectors of Social Violence"

Scarcity, Loss, and the Trauma Question.

Losing Great Russia: Paramilitary Violence and the Defeat of the Whites

The Fight against Desertion

Rabkrin and the Obligation to Work

"All for Transport!" Tsektran and the Labor Armies

The Collapse of War Communism: "Bolshevism without the Bolsheviks!"

Epilogue: Scarcity, Loss, and Soviet History

Soviet Russia's Long Civil War

Stalin's Assaults and Soviet "Redemption"

Loss and Scarcity after the "Great Patriotic Struggle"

Challenges and Adaptations: Reform, Stability, and Stagnation

Archiving the Soviet Great Story

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2023.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on August 31, 2023).

Other Format:

Print version: Rosenberg, William G. States of Anxiety

ISBN:

0-19-761018-8

0-19-761017-X

0-19-761016-1

OCLC:

1395918608