A people's tragedy

Winter Palace, St Petersburg, 3, 4, 65, 122, 138, 144, 173, 176, 178, 191, 192, 213, 219, 251, 270, 277, 328, 340, 345, 348, 437, 438, 446, 450, 451, 455, 456, 457, 478, 479, 481, 482, 484, 485, 493, 530, 739; assault and seizure of (October 1917), 468–9, 491–2, 494, 498; opening of State Duma in (1906), 213–14

Witte, Count Sergei, 8, 17, 21, 22, 23, 35, 41, 68, 82, 113, 175, 178n, 179, 186, 191–2, 194–5, 197, 201, 214, 217, 220, 242

Women, 181, 299–300, 308, 368, 647, 740–2; in peasant society, 85, 96–7, 109, 362

Women’s Battalion of Death, 413, 419, 486, 488

Women’s Union for Equality, 181

Workers, 88, 110–21, 173 passim, 205, 297–8, 300, 301, 308–9, 311, 319, 358–9, 367–71, 396, 457, 461, 493–4, 496, 590, 610, 648, 674, 723, 724, 735, 736, 740, 744; class-and self-identity, 112, 114, 115-17, 118, 301, 523; conditions of, 43, 111–12, 112–13, 113–14, 605; and Marxism, 119-21, 147–8; in 1905 Revolution, 180, 186, 187–8, 189–90, 199–200; strikes and protests, 114–15, 232, 275, 297, 300–1, 302, 367–8, 371, 448, 462, 580–1, 624, 626, 631, 666–7, 730–1, 758–60, 767; study circles and reading of, 117–19; ties with the village, 110–11, 610–11

Workers’ Control, Decree on, 461n

Workers’ Opposition, 731, 750, 764–5, 767, 771, 793, 794, 795

World Literature (Gorky’s publishing house), 606, 737, 783–4

Woytinsky, V. S., 429

Wrangel, General Baron Peter, 293n, 564, 660, 661, 662, 663, 664, 666, 675, 679–80, 681, 698, 702, 716–20, 751, 753, 817

Yagoda, G. G., 822

Yakovlev, Vasilii, 637–8 and n

Yalta, 213, 527

Yamburg, 672

Yanushkevich, General Nikolai, 259, 269

Yaroslavl’, 5, 147 and n, 642 and n

Yenisei, 658

Yermolenko, Lieutenant D., 432–3

Yoffe, Adolf, 460, 540, 542, 548, 695–6

Young Pioneers, 748

Yudenich, General Nikolai, 663, 671–5, 681

Yurovsky, Yakov, 640

Yusupov, Prince Felix, 32, 289–90

Yuzovka, 665

Zaichnevsky, Petr, Young Russia, 131–2

Zamyatin, Yevgeny, 606, 785; The Cave, 603–4; We, 744, 745

Zangezur, 713

Zarudny, A. A., 205n

Zasulich, Vera, 132–3, 137–8, 150, 152

Zavoiko, Vasilii, 445, 446, 559

Zemgor, 336, 779

Zemskii sobor, 187

Zemstvo Union, 270, 271, 272, 274, 354

Zemstvos, 39, 47, 50, 51–3, 54, 159, 161, 164–5, 228, 573, 579, 580, 718; National Zemstvo Assembly, 171–3, 181; Third Element, 52, 164

Zenzinov, Viktor, 324, 329–30, 498, 578, 585, 586

Zhelezniakov, A. G., 516, 535

Zhenotdel, 741

Zhordania, Noi, 714

Zhukov, Marshal Georgi, 264, 670

Zimmerwald Conference (1915), 294–5

Zinoviev, Grigorii, 141n, 297, 391, 392, 396, 397, 425, 427, 434, 544, 548, 593, 628, 639, 648, 673, 682, 683, 684, 699, 701, 704, 727, 731, 760, 767, 768, 770, 795, 802n; enmity between Gorky and, 783; insurrection opposed by, 471, 472 and n, 476, 477, 800; opposition to Stalin (1926), 818; resigns from Central Committee, 499, 511; show trial (1936), 822; sides with Stalin against Trotsky, 795, 800, 804

Zinoviev, Lilina, 743

Zoshchenko, Mikhail, 606

Zubatov, S. V., 174

Zurich, 323, 385

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Copyright © Orlando Figes, 2017, 2014, 1996

Orlando Figes has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Jonathan Cape

Published in 1997 by Pimlico

First published by The Bodley Head in 2014

This anniversary edition published by The Bodley Head in 2017

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Maps by James Sinclair

Chapter 1

fn1 Bertrand Russell used a similar idea when, in an attempt to explain the Russian Revolution to Lady Ottoline Morrell, he remarked that, terrible though Bolshevik despotism was, it seemed the right sort of government for Russia: ‘If you ask yourself how Dostoevsky’s characters should be governed, you will understand.’

fn2 After more than fifty years in storage the statue was returned to the city’s streets in 1994. Ironically, the horse now stands in front of the former Lenin Museum, where it has taken the place of the armoured car which, in April 1917, brought Lenin from the Finland Station.

fn3 There used to be a nice Soviet joke that the Supreme Soviet had decided to award the Order of the Red Banner to Nicholas II posthumously ‘for his services to the revolution’. The last Tsar’s achievement, it was said, was to have brought about a revolutionary situation.