The first Soviet political trial: Countess Sofia Panina before the Petrograd Revolutionary Tribunal

Russian Review

Volumn 60, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 505-525

  Lindenmeyr, Adele ^a  

^a VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949142108     PISSN: 00360341     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0036-0341.00188     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. For example, William Henry Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 1917-1918, vol. 1 (1935; reprint ed. Princeton, 1987), 362
2. William Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution: The Constitutional Democratic Party, 1917-1921 (Princeton, 1974), 278-81
3. N. G. Dumova, Kadetskaia kontrrevoliutsiia i ee razgrom (oktiabr' 1917-1920 gg.) (Moscow, 1982), 64-66
4. There are a number of other interesting parallels between Zasulich and Panina, but contemporary accounts never mention the earlier trial; Panina herself would have rejected any resemblance to the act of a terrorist. See Jay Bergman, Vera Zasulich: A Biography (Stanford, 1983), chap. 2
5. James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920 (Berkeley, 1993)
6. Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York, 1989)
7. Richard L. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1995, 2000)
8. Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917 (New Haven, 1999), esp. chap. 3
9. Julie A. Cassiday, The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen (DeKalb, IL, 2000), introduction and chap. 1
10. Richard Stites, "Trial as Theatre in the Russian Revolution," Theatre Research International 23, no. 1:8
11. For example, Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago, 1969)
12. See Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, 2000), 74, for an application of the concept of liminality to the Soviet press
13. Panina, "Such Is Life," Columbia University, Bakhmetev Archive, Panina Papers (hereafter BAR Panina), Box 14, folder "Panina's Arrest, 1917 (1)," 5. This speech was delivered in English to an American audience in 1939
14. S. V. Panina, "Na Peterburgskoi okraine," Novyi zhurnal, bk. 49 (1957): 192
15. Kniaz' V. A. Obolenskii, "Moia zhizn' i moi sovremenniki. Vospominaniia," 1938, pt. II, GARF, f. 5881, op. 2, d. 541, ll. 143-46
16. I. I. Mil'chik, "Petrogradskaia Tsentral'naia Gorodskaia Duma v fevrale-oktiabre 1917 g.," Krasnaia letopis', 1927, no. 2:191
17. Vestnik Partii narodnoi svobody (VPNS) (7 September 1917): 11
18. Zhurnal Petrogradskoi Gorodskoi Dumy, no. 93 (session of 25 October 1917): 3
19. VPNS (18 May 1917): 11
20. Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution, 132
21. S. Gogel', "Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennogo Prizreniia," Prizrenie i blagotvoritel'nost' v Rossii, 1917, no. 6-7:481
22. Natal'ia Dumova, Konchilos 'vashe vremia (Moscow, 1990), 201
23. Women received the right to vote in piecemeal legislation beginning in the spring, when the Provisional Government granted women the vote in municipal elections, and culminating on 20 July 1917, when they received equal rights in the elections to the Constituent Assembly. See Richard Stites, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930 (Princeton, 1990), 293
24. Panina, "Na Peterburgskoi okraine," 192
25. On the Little Council's activities see A. Dem'ianov, "Zapiski o podpol'nom Vremennom Pravitel'stve," Arkhiv Russkoi Revoliutsii, vol. 7 (Berlin, 1922), 34-52
26. and M. Fleer, "Vremennoe Pravitel'stvo posle Oktiabria," Krasnyi arkhiv, 1924, no. 6:195-221
27. Dumova, Kadetskaia kontrrevoliutsiia, 25-27
28. Credit - or blame - for initiating the strike and concealment of funds has been attributed to several different groups. According to the chairman of the Little Council, civil servants themselves organized the methods and forms of their resistance, sending a delegation to the Little Council with their program of action (Dem'ianov, "Zapiski o podpol'nom Vremennom Pravitel'stve," 35, 38-39)
29. L. Kin, "Sud nad gr. S. V. Paninoi," Vechernyi zvon, 11 December 1917
30. See Rex A. Wade, ed., Documents of Soviet History, vol. 1, The Triumph of Bolshevism, 1917-1919 (Gulf Breeze, FL, 1991), 52-53, 62-64, 73-75
31. and D. S. Karev, Sudoustroistvo (Moscow, 1948), 107-8, 115-16. The first decree is dated 22 November in Wade, but 24 November in Karev
32. Other Kadets were less sanguine. See N. Astrov, "Proobraz russkoi tragedii," Poslednie novosti, 18 January 1925, 2
33. Documents of Soviet History, 54-55 (for Lenin's accusations against the Kadets)
34. Izvestiia, 28 November 1917
35. Panina, "Arrest," 3-4; Kn. Pavel Dmitrievich Dolgorukov, Velikaia razrukha (Madrid, 1964) 57-59
36. Panina, "Arrest," 2, 4
37. Although the decree states that it is effective from the "moment of its signing," in fact it was applied retroactively to Dolgorukov, Kokoshkin, and Shingarev, arrested hours earlier. Dumova implies that the three were arrested as a result of the Sovnarkom decree (Kadetskaia kontrrevoliutsiia, 57)
38. Excerpted in VPNS (28 December 1917): 10
39. Ia. Ia. Gurevich, "Delo grafini S. V. Paninoi v revoliutsionnom tribunale," Russkoe bogatstvo, 1917, no. 11-12:286
40. The Central Executive Committee's debate on 1 December about the Sovnarkom's actions against the Kadets and the Constituent Assembly is in Documents of Soviet History 1:54-58 (by 150 votes to 98, the CEC upheld the Sovnarkom)
41. and "Na Peterburgskoi okraine" in 1948
42. "Delo Paninoi. Protokol Zasedaniia Revoliutsionnogo Tribunala, 10 dekabria 1917 goda," GARF, f. R-1074, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 20-22
43. "Sud bolshevikov nad gr. S. V. Paninoi," Novaia Petrogradskaia gazeta, 12 December 1917
44. Kin, "Sud"
45. Gurevich, "Delo grafini S. V. Paninoi." Although Vechernyi zvon was anti-Bolshevik and its report is sympathetic to the defendant, it nevertheless gives the most detailed and balanced account of all the newspapers
46. I. Zhukov, "Revoliutsionnyi tribunal (vospominaniia pervogo predsedatelia Tribunala)," Rabochii sud, 1927, no. 22:1755-56
47. There is a photograph of the tribunal in Louise Bryant, Six Red Months in Russia: An Observer's Account of Russia Before and During the Proletarian Dictatorship (New York, 1918), facing page 196
48. Bessie Beatty, The Red Heart of Russia (New York, 1918), 295
49. Beatty, Red Heart of Russia, 296
50. Kin, "Sud." Of course, disruption was the intention of the civil servants' boycott
51. According to one newspaper, before the trial Ivanov presented the court with a note stating his desire to speak ("Sud bol'shevikov," Novaia Petrogradskaia gazeta, 12 December 1917)
52. It is possible, of course, that Ivanov's speech was not spontaneous but arranged in advance by Panina's supporters. As he himself mentions, he had been a frequent visitor to the LND, and his words do echo the rhetoric of cultural uplift so characteristic of the Russian intelligentsia. One spectator, journalist F. R. Railian, states that the speech left the "impression of a staged defense, concocted behind the scenes by his party," though which party that would be, Railian does not say. See F. R. Railian, "Intelligentsiia pered sudom 'Tribunala' (Vpechatleniia i Nabroski v zale suda)," Novaia Petrogradskaia gazeta, 12 December 1917. No other contemporary or historical account of the trial suggests this possibility, however, and Ivanov's words seem to have taken everyone by surprise
53. and Izvestiia, which devoted almost one third of its report of the trial to it, and only one sentence to Ivanov's ("Zasedanie Revoliutsionnogo Tribunala. Delo gr. Paninoi," Izvestiia, 12 December 1917)
54. According to Gurevich, of all the newspaper accounts only Izvestiia's version of Naumov's speech, though "not entirely exact, with some literary reworking," preserved his basic points ("Delo grafini S. V. Paninoi," 292-93)
55. Panina, "Na Peterburgskoi okraine," 198. Other sources do not mention Stuchka meeting with the court after it retired
56. Panina, "Such Is Life," 7
57. P. Gerasimov, "Voprosy partiinoi zhizni. III. Na skam'e podsudimykh," VPNS (28 December 1917): 1, 3-4
58. A. Tyrkova, "Kogo sudili?" in ibid., 4-6
59. "Sud nad bol'shevikami," Vechernyi zvon, 11 December 1917
60. Panina, "Such Is Life," 6. In this account she describes the trial as a "semi-tragic and semi-comic situation."
61. He devotes only one sentence to the actual trial (Zhukov, "Revoliutsionnyi tribunal," 1756-57, 1759). Zhukov rose quickly to occupy important positions first in the Cheka, then in various economic commissariats, becoming Commissar of Local Industry in the RSFSR until he was arrested and shot in 1937
62. See E. V. Ershova, "Pervyi protsess Petrogradskogo Revtribunala v 1917 godu," in Neizvestnye stranitsii istorii Verkhnevol'zhia: Sbornik nauchnykh trudov (Tver', 1994), 96n
63. John Reed, "How the Russian Revolution Works," The Liberator 1 (August 1918): 16-17
64. Bryant, Six Red Months in Russia, 194-96
65. Albert Rhys Williams, Journey Into Revolution, Petrograd 1917-1918, ed. Lucita Williams (Chicago, 1969), 163-65
66. D. L. Golinkov, Krushenie antisovetskogo podpol'ia v SSSR, 2 vols., 3d ed. (Moscow, 1980), 1:77-79
67. E. Finn, "Pervyi Revoliutsionnyi Tribunal," Sovetskaia iustitsiia (April 1977): 16-18
68. and K. I. Kozlova and V. S. Orlov, "Pervoe zasedanie narodnogo revtribunala," Voprosy istorii, 1977, no. 10:211-15
69. William H. Sewell, Jr., analyzes the power of a single event to determine subsequent meanings ascribed to a revolution in "Historical Events as Transformations of Structures: Inventing Revolution at the Bastille," Theory and Society 25 (December 1996): 841-81. I am grateful to Michael Hickey for this reference
70. See Mary McAuley, Bread and Justice: State and Society in Petrograd, 1917-1922 (Oxford, 1991)
71. Cassiday, The Enemy on Trial, 38-39
72. Zhukov, "Revoliutsionnyi tribunal," 1757-59
73. Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917-1929 (Cambridge, England, 1985), introduction
74. Marc Jensen, A Show Trial Under Lenin: The Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Moscow 1922, trans. Jean Sanders (The Hague, 1982)
75. See Lindenmeyr, "Public Life, Private Virtues: Women in Russian Charity, 1762-1914," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 18 (Spring 1993): 562-91
76. On the Kadet party and propaganda see Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution, 69