The confessions of Semen Kanatchikov: A Bolshevik memoir as spiritual autobiography

Russian Review

Volumn 60, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 13-35

  Hernandez, Richard L ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 56249093383     PISSN: 00360341     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0036-0341.00155     Document Type: Article

References (97)

1. As Stephen Kotkin argues, the revolutionary process and all its rhetorical categories have largely been treated in such a way as to ignore their actual career within the everyday experience of Russia's population. This is especially true with regard to the Revolution's religious aspects. See Kotkin, "1991 and the Russian Revolution: Sources, Conceptual Categories, Analytical Frameworks," Journal of Modern History 70 (June 1998): 387, 403
2. Nicholas Berdyaev, The Russian Revolution: Two Essays on its Implications in Religion and Psychology (London, 1931), 60
3. and Christel Lane, The Rites of Rulers: Ritual in Industrial Society - the Soviet Case (Cambridge, England, 1981)
4. For treatments of religious language among radical workers both before and after the Revolution see Jay Bergman, "The Image of Jesus in the Russian Revolutionary Movement," International Review of Social History 35 (1990): 220-48
5. Reginald Zelnik, "'To the Unaccustomed Eye': Religion and Irreligion in the Experience of St. Petersburg Workers in the 1870s," Russian History 16 (1989): 297-326
6. and Mark D. Steinberg, "Workers on the Cross: Religious Imagination in the Writings of Russian Workers, 1910-1924," Russian Review 53 (April 1994): 213-39
7. See also Mark D. Steinberg, "Worker-authors and the Cult of the Person," in Cultures in Flux: Lower-class Values, Practices, and Resistance in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Stephen P. Frank and Mark D. Steinberg (Princeton, 1994), 168-84
8. and idem, "The Injured and Insurgent Self: The Moral Imagination of Russia's Lower-class Writers," in Workers and Intelligentsia in Late Imperial Russia: Realities, Representations, Reflections, ed. Reginald E. Zelnik (Berkeley, 1999), 309-29
9. Reginald Zelnik, ed., trans., A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: The Autobiography of Semen Ivanovich Kanatchikov (Stanford, 1986), xviii-xx
10. Kanatchikov's translator/biographer describes well the struggles that urbanized peasants underwent during the "great industrial upsurge of the 1890s." All citations with Roman numerals are from Zelnik's extensive introduction to the autobiography. Zelnik first introduced Kanatchikov's autobiography as an important object of historical study in Reginald E. Zelnik "Russian Bebels: An Introduction to the Memoirs of Semen Kanatchikov and Matvei Fisher," Russian Review 35 (July 1976): 249-89, and (October 1976): 417-47
11. Steinberg, "Workers on the Cross," 219
12. See also Steinberg, "Worker-authors," 170-71, for more on this unique group of writers "well before the official promotion by the Bolshevik state of 'proletarian literature.'"
13. By the time of its publication, Kanatchikov had risen to significant positions of party leadership - regional functionary, educator, journalist - all of which were remarkable achievements given his mere five years of formal education (Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 389 [editor's postscript to the autobiography])
14. See also Zelnik, The Fate of a Russian Bebel, 4-11, for a summary of Kanatchikov's life from 1905 to his death in 1940
15. "There had been a feeling among Communists and Komsomols of lost momentum and lack of direction - a suspicion that the leadership no longer had the dynamism to undertake radical social and economic change. The Five-Year Plan restored the Communist sense of purpose and released a considerable charge of energy and enthusiasm for its accomplishment" (Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 [Bloomington, 1984], 3)
16. See also Anne E. Gorsuch, "NEP Be Damned! Young Militants in the 1920s and the Culture of Civil War," Russian Review 56 (October 1997): 564-80
17. I prefer to label the ethos of the "Great Turn" as apocalyptic, although there is some confusion in the literature about how apocalypticism differs from millennialism and messianism. Bernard McGinn suggests that while millennialism carries connotations of social and political revolt against the present state of affairs, apocalypticism also implies the constructive support for some earthly authority over another - in this case the Bolshevik party and working class over the bourgeoisie. Messianism, on the other hand, implies a more strictly optimistic stance visà-vis the prophesied future, with less emphasis on the violent destruction that accompanies salvation as is the case with apocalypticism. See Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York, 1979), 28-30. I will return to apocalypticism later in the paper in a discussion of Bolshevik eschatology
18. Steinberg, "Workers on the Cross," 236
19. Zelnik links Kanatchikov with Zinoviev's and Kamenev's opposition to policies that, in their view, overestimated the peasantry's class reliability and underestimated the proletariat's revolutionary capacity. Elsewhere, Zelnik offers Kanatchikov's several editorial and writing assignments, which included several short propaganda works celebrating the Potemkin mutiny, collectivization, and "our chief kolkhoznik" and "glorious leader comrade Stalin," as further evidence of Kanatchikov's good standing in the party during the "Great Turn" ("Russian Bebels," 447)
20. I used S. Kanatchikov, Istoriia moego bytiia: Kniga vtoraia (Moscow, 1934), for the second half of the text and indicate this with "2" in the citations
21. Indeed, as we shall see, Kanatchikov's new-found "self- awareness" would simultaneously spur his dedication to and identity with the suffering proletariat. For an insightful discussion of "self- awareness" in worker-writer literature and its paradoxical importance vis-à-vis class "formation" - that is, the "spread [of] enlightenment and 'consciousness' among other workers" - see Steinberg, "Worker-authors," 169-71
22. I owe my insights into Augustine's Confessions
23. to Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley, 1969)
24. In "Workers on the Cross," Steinberg discusses several other worker-writers whose narratives, like Kanatchikov's, utilize religious language
25. Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 79 [1:133]
26. See also Laura L. Phillips, "Message in a Bottle: Working-Class Culture and the Struggle for Revolutionary Legitimacy, 1900-1929," Russian Review 56 (January 1997): 25-43
27. Steinberg, "Workers on the Cross," 232, 231
28. For a more detailed treatment see also Zelnik, "To the Unaccustomed Eye," 297-326
29. The terms "thin" and "thick description" are discussed at length in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), 3-30
30. Steinberg, "Workers on the Cross," 237
31. Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures, 90
32. Again the comparison with Augustine should be obvious, as his Confessions "are, quite succinctly, the story of Augustine's 'heart,' or his 'feelings' - his affectus" (Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 169)
33. Steinberg has performed a great service to the field by shedding much light on this long-neglected subject. However, I wish to take his treatment further by exploring questions of how or why emotions can be "of consequence."
34. Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 65 [1:109]
35. Steinberg, "Workers on the Cross," 222-23, 234
36. I owe the following insights to Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 158-60, 180
37. As quoted in Zelnik's introduction (A Radical Worker, xxx)
38. See also Luke 8:21: "My mother and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice."
39. I am grateful to Brad Gregory for bringing to my attention this comparison as well as the passage from the Gospel of Matthew in the preceding footnote
40. See also Zelnik, "To the Unaccustomed Eye," 313-23, for an extended discussion of prerevolutionary workers' circles and their relation to religious belief and practice
41. Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 103 [1:163-64]
42. Steinberg argues well that writing itself "implicitly challenged [workers'] ascription as lower class" and therefore constituted, "if only half-consciously, a subversive gesture" ("Worker-authors," 174)
43. See Steinberg, "The Injured and Insurgent Self," 322, for a brief discussion of the use of heroes in worker-writer literature
44. Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 101 [1:161]
45. See Steinberg, "Worker-authors," 181-82, for a provocative discussion of the heroic "metanarrative" of worker-writer literature - that is, the casting of the author himself as hero
46. Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 67 [1:114]
47. The religious sects known as trezvenniki [the "teetotalers"] and brattsy [the "brethren"], both popular among prerevolutionary workers, advocated strict moral norms also championed by socialist groups (Steinberg, "Workers on the Cross," 217-19, 224-27)
48. See also W. Arthur McKee, "Sobering Up the Soul of the People: The Politics of Popular Temperance in Late Imperial Russia," Russian Review 58 (April 1999): 212-33
49. See also Steinberg, "Worker-authors," 179-80, for a discussion of the pervasive self-criticism found in worker-writer literature, especially regarding drunkenness and other moral pitfalls
50. For some examples see Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 66, 100, 115, 152 [1:110, 159-60, 182-84, 234]. I will return to this preoccupation with suffering later in the paper
51. Bergman, "The Image of Jesus," 248
52. In Zelnik's variation of this argument, Kanatchikov's "consciousness is shaped by the shadows of his rural ancestors," leaving him with an amalgam social identity made up of "traditional and modern elements." According to Zelnik, the modern elements eventually win out but only partially (A Radical Worker, xix)
53. See, for example, Kanatchikov's repudiation of the SR matriarch mentioned earlier because of her ambiguous use of religious language: "I never liked to hear any talk about the marriage of Christianity with Socialism" (Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 278 [2:122])
54. Erich Voegelin, Political Religions, trans. T. J. DiNapoli and E. S. Easterly III (Lewiston, NY, 1986)
55. Several scholars have subsequently utilized the concept of political religion while also blunting the spiritual point of Voegelin's analysis. D. Apter, "Political Religion in the New Nations," in Old Nations and New States, ed. C. Geertz (New York, 1963), likens modernization and nation-building in Africa to the construction of political religions, but mostly on the basis of the charismatic or personalized nature of political power and its ritual enactment
56. Voegelin, Political Religions, 13
57. For a treatment of Marxist-Leninist apocalypticism see Arthur P. Mendel, Vision and Violence (Ann Arbor, 1992)
58. These terms represent my reformulation of Voegelin's four "symbols" upon which political religion is constructed: "Hierarchy," "Ekklesia," "Spiritual and Temporal," and "Apocalypse" (Political Religions, 29-46)
59. Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 6 [1:14]
60. Priests, along with policemen, were among the most hated people among "conscious" proletarians (Steinberg, "Workers on the Cross," 224-25)
61. See, for example, Kanatchikov's indignation at an Orthodox priest whom he manages to characterize, in just a few lines, as ignorant, insolent, obtuse and a "professional fraud" (Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 172-73 [1:260-61])
62. Zelnik comments that books "sometimes handed by teacher to pupil as a gift with all the gravity of a sacred ritual... could assume the inspirational character of holy scriptures" ("To the Unaccustomed Eye," 316)
63. Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 33-34 [1:58-59]
64. The term "gnosticism" is applied to modern ideologies by Gerhart Niemeyer, Between Nothingness and Paradise (Baton Rouge, 1971)
65. and Erich Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Chicago, 1968)
66. The approval that Lenin's presence implied was especially remarkable in light of his longstanding struggle against what he saw as the religious corruption of Marxism. For a treatment of Lenin's dispute with the "Godbuilders" within the Bolshevik party see Robert C. Williams, The Other Bolsheviks: Lenin and His Critics, 1904-1914 (Bloomington, 1986), 81-104
67. See also Jutta Scherrer, "La Crise de l'intelligentsia marxiste avant 1914: A. V. Lunačarskij et le bogostroitel'stvo," Revue des Études slaves 51 (1979): 207-15
68. idem, "Culture prolétarienne et religion socialiste entre deux révolutions: les 'Bolcheviks de gauche'," Europa 2 (Spring 1979): 67-90
69. and Mikhail Agursky, "Maksim Gorky and the Decline of Bolshevik Theomachy," in Christianity and Russian Culture in Soviet Society, ed. Nicolai N. Petro (Boulder, 1990)
70. The latter briefly applies Voegelin's conception of political religion or gnosticism to Gorky's "Promethean Theomachy." For information regarding the associations between worker-writers and the Godbuilding movement see Steinberg, "Workers on the Cross," 215-16 and 237-39
71. Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 129 [1:204]
72. Because of this critique's vehement and absolute disaffection, political philosopher Gerhart Niemeyer goes so far as to call it "total" or "ontological" (Between Nothingness and Paradise, 96-97, 140-42)
73. Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 58-59 [1:98]
74. See also Jacques Ranciere, The Nights of Labor: The Workers' Dream in Nineteenth-Century France (Philadelphia, 1989), for similar religious themes, albeit from an earlier era, among workers in France
75. See also Steinberg, "Workers on the Cross," 228-29, 231
76. Voegelin, Political Religions, 45-46, 61
77. See also Niemeyer, Between Nothingness and Paradise, 98-102, for a more specific discussion of Marx's ideologized historical science
78. The phrase is Steinberg's from "Workers on the Cross," 235
79. In this regard Steinberg points us to the paradox of workers' simultaneous belief in "mystery and miracle" and in "scientific socialism." Here Voegelin helps us to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable by scrutinizing claims to scientific knowledge as either "naive" (the result of actual belief in science's miraculous power) or dishonest (the manipulation of the symbol of science to serve politico-religious ends) (Political Religions, 61-64)
80. For a detailed discussion of this belief and its relation to the mummification of Lenin's corpse see Bergman, "The Image of Jesus," 239-45
81. Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 69-70 [1:118]
82. Niemeyer develops this argument in great detail in his chapter on Lenin's "totalitarian activism" and "totalitarian ethics" (Between Nothingness and Paradise, 103-38)
83. See also, Mendel, Vision and Violence, 137-93
84. Zelnik, A Radical Worker, 75-76 [1:125-26] (emphasis added)
85. Voegelin, Political Religions, 60, 64, 70
86. Mendel highlights the relationship among violence, collective suffering and salvation: "As in all such sacred cruelty, the executioners view themselves as the purest of the pure, selfless martyrs bearing the heaviest of burdens for the salvation of others" ( Vision and Violence, 179)
87. Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991 (New York, 1994), 39
88. See footnote 75 above for references to the close identification of Christ's mission as suffering deity with that of the proletariat. See also Malia, Soviet Tragedy, 526n.1, for a list of works addressing the "connections between the socialist idea and religion."
89. Malia cites Karl Löwith, Meaning in History (Chicago, 1949), as among the earliest to make such connections explicit
90. For Löwith's discussion of the proletariat as the redeemer class see Meaning in History, 33-42
91. Although Malia acknowledges the broad influence of Leszek Kolakowski on his analysis of Marxism, he also notes that the latter put forth a different argument regarding Marxism's lineage wherein "the protagonist ... is not religion but philosophy in the form of neo-Platonism." See Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism (Oxford, 1978), 414, for his disassociation from what he calls the "popular analogy between Marx's soteriology and that of Christianity."
92. From a poem by Vladimir Kirillov entitled "Gorodu" in Griadushchee (May 1918): 6
93. as quoted in Steinberg, "Workers on the Cross," 234
94. Steinberg notes that "the most widely known literary portrayal of the proletarian savior" was Kirillov's poem "Zheleznyi messiia" [Iron Messiah] published in Griadushchee (June 1918): 3
95. See Matt. 10:34. Needless to say, this interpretation of proletarian suffering constitutes an important strand of Bolshevik apocalypticism
96. Voegelin argues that this theological collapse took centuries to accomplish within European political language, while the actual "politico-religious" terminology has hardly changed since the seventeenth century (ibid., 57)
97. Niemeyer, echoing Voegelin, argues that this ideological constellation represents a new type of Gnosticism (Between Nothingness and Paradise, 142)