The Apparel of Innocence: Toward a Moral Economy of Terrorism in Late Imperial Russia

37 Pages·2012·0.18 MB·English

The “Apparel of Innocence”: Toward a Moral Economy of Terrorism in Late Imperial Russia
Author(s): Susan K. Morrissey
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 84, No. 3 (September 2012), pp. 607-642
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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The “Apparel of Innocence”: Toward a Moral Economy
of Terrorism in Late Imperial Russia*
Susan K. Morrissey
UniversityCollegeLondon
Onthedaywhencrimeputsontheapparelofinnocence,through
acuriousreversalpeculiartoourage,itisinnocencethatiscalled
ontojustifyitself.(ALBERTCAMUS,TheRebel1)
On February 2, 1905, Ivan Kaliaev did not throw a bomb. He and his fellow
members of the Combat Organization of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary
(cid:1)SR(cid:2) Party had been tracking their target, the Grand Duke Sergei Aleksan-
drovich, for months, but Kaliaev aborted the mission at the last moment
because he had glimpsed a woman and two children sitting with him in the
carriage.Twodayslater,however,hedidthrowit,killingtheGrandDukeand
hisdriver.HangedinMay1905,KaliaevbecameamythicfigurefortheLeft,
aselflessherowhomurderedandsacrificedhislifefortherevolutionandyet
who had also refused to kill innocent children. On August 12, 1906, in
contrast,threemembersofanSRsplintergroup,theMaximalists,droveupto
the summer residence of Prime Minister Petr Stolypin intending to detonate
their bombs during his reception hours, a time when members of the public
wouldbepresentinadditiontoStolypin’sfamily.WhentheMaximalistswere
challenged, they blew themselves up, killing two dozen people outright and
seriously wounding many others, including two of Stolypin’s children; a
further six people would die of their injuries. Had the Maximalists made it
inside the building, the number of casualties would have been still higher.
Stolypin himself was unharmed.
Thesetwoacts,whichmarkedpivotalmomentsinthewaveofviolencethat
engulfedRussiaattheturnofthetwentiethcentury,representdifferentmodels
ofterrorism:thefirstbelongstoatraditionofpoliticalassassinationinwhich
linesweredrawnbetweencombatantsandnoncombatants—theguiltyandthe
*IwouldliketothanktheBritishAcademyforitsgenerousfundingofmyresearch
project on political violence in late imperial Russia. I also thank the people who
commented on or otherwise contributed to this article: Daniel Beer, Polly Jones,
MartinMiller,AlexandraOberländer,AlesyaObodova,andthejournal’sanonymous
readers.
1Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, trans. Anthony Bower
(cid:1)1951;London,2000(cid:2),12.
TheJournalofModernHistory84(September2012):607–642
©2012byTheUniversityofChicago.0022-2801/2012/8403-0003$10.00
Allrightsreserved.
608 Morrissey
innocent; the second blurs, perhaps even erases, such distinctions, accepting,
perhaps even desiring, large numbers of casualties.2 Analogous events were
occurringinWesternEuropeandtheUnitedStates,3aswellasinRussia,4for
terrorismhadbecomeatacticemployedagainstpoliticallyoppressiveregimes
and the capitalist economic system.5 Decades later, in 1950, Albert Camus
would rediscover Ivan Kaliaev’s two-act performance of February 1905,
placing it at the center of his own project to assess the origins and ethics of
modern political violence more generally. “We shall be capable of nothing,”
2In the history of modern terrorism, the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries are typically termed the “age of assassinations.” The literature is large.
SeeWalterLaqueur,TheAgeofTerrorism(cid:1)Boston,1987(cid:2);WolfgangJ.Mommsen
and Gerhard Hirschfeld, eds., Social Protest, Violence, and Terror in Nineteenth-
andTwentieth-CenturyEurope(cid:1)LondonandBasingstoke,1982(cid:2);andGérardChaliand
andArnaudBlin,eds.,TheHistoryofTerrorismfromAntiquitytoAlQaeda(cid:1)Berkeley,
2007(cid:2).
3Scholars have recently devoted attention to the second model. John Merriman
arguesthatthebombingofaParisiancafébyEmileHenryin1894wasthefirstmodern
terrorist act due its targeting of the anonymous crowd, the “bourgeoisie”; as Henry
laterstated,“Therearenoinnocents.”SeeJohnMerriman,TheDynamiteClub:How
aBombinginFin-de-SiècleParisIgnitedtheAgeofModernTerror(cid:1)London,2009(cid:2);
andJamesJoll,TheAnarchists(cid:1)1964;repr.,London,1979(cid:2),118.Inaddition,Beverly
Gage analyzes the bombing in 1920 of the J. P. Morgan Bank in New York, which
killedthirty-eightpeople,mostlybystandersandlow-levelemployees,andwhichwas
thelargestterroristattackintheUnitedStatesbeforetheOklahomaCitybombingof
1995.SeeBeverlyGage,TheDayWallStreetExploded:AStoryofAmericainItsFirst
AgeofTerror(cid:1)NewYork,2009(cid:2).
4Russia’sinitialencounterwithterrorism(cid:1)spanningthelate1860stothe1880sbut
primarily1877–81(cid:2)wasdominatedbythemodeloftargetedassassination.Oneofthe
firstexamplesofthesecondmodelwasthebombingbyanarchistsinDecember1905
oftheCaféLibmaninOdessa,aspotsupposedlyfrequentedbythe“bourgeoisie.”See
Anke Hilbrenner, “Der Bombenanschlag auf das Café Libman in Odessa am 17.
Dezember 1905: Terrorismus als Gewaltgeschichte,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Os-
teuropas 58, no. 2 (cid:1)2010(cid:2): 210–31. The literature on the earlier period is large. The
most recent contributions include Claudia Verhoeven, The Odd Man Karakozov:
Imperial Russia, Modernity, and the Birth of Terrorism (cid:1)Ithaca, NY, 2009(cid:2); Philip
Pomper,Lenin’sBrother:TheOriginsoftheOctoberRevolution(cid:1)NewYork,2010(cid:2);
and Ana Siljak, Angel of Vengeance: The “Girl Assassin,” the Governor of St.
Petersburg,andRussia’sRevolutionaryWorld(cid:1)NewYork,2008(cid:2).Foradiscussionof
recenthistoriography,seeSusanK.Morrissey,“Terrorism,Modernity,andtheQues-
tion of Origins,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, no. 1
(cid:1)Winter2011(cid:2):213–26.
5Russian proponents of terrorism typically blamed the autocratic political system
for making the tactic necessary, and the People’s Will criticized the assassination of
USPresidentGarfield,assertingthatdemocracymadesuchmethodsillegitimate.See
http://www.hrono.info/dokum/1800dok/18810910.html. Although this remained SR
policyinthetwentiethcentury,somepartymembersdisagreed,expressingsympathy
for French and Spanish anarchists and their attacks on the representatives of capital.
SeeBorisSavinkov,Vospominaniiaterrorista(cid:1)1917;repr.,Leningrad,1990(cid:2),75–77.
Moral Economy of Terrorism in Late Imperial Russia 609
Camuswroteinhisintroduction,“untilweknowwhetherwehavetherightto
killourfellow-men,ortherighttoletthembekilled.”Indeed,inhisview,the
specterofinnocencehoveredovertheruinsofmodernity:“Itisaquestionof
finding out whether innocence, the moment it begins to act, can avoid com-
mitting murder.”6 In his influential contribution to just-war theory, the polit-
icaltheoristMichaelWalzercitedCamus’sreadingoftheKaliaevcaseinhis
ownexplorationofthesequestions,arguingthatmodernterrorism,“inastrict
sense,”emergedonly afterWorld WarII, whenitmade“therandom murder
of innocent people” into its object.7 Distinguishing between “aiming at par-
ticular people because of things they have done or are doing, and aiming at
whole groups of people, indiscriminately, because of who they are,” he
emphasized the importance of “the moral distinction, drawn by [some] ‘ter-
rorists’, between people who can and people who cannot be killed.”8 As
Walzer would readily grant, however, this “political code” has a long and
thorny history.
Drawing its inspiration from Camus and Walzer, this article explores the
shiftingmeaningsandfunctionsof“innocence”withinRussianrevolutionary
terrorism of the early twentieth century, apivotalmomentwhentheterrorists’
“aim” became a fraught political issue. Concepts of innocence underpinned the
political conventions, ethical norms, and legitimizing strategies with which ter-
rorists conceived the permissibility, goals, and limits of their violence—what I
callits“moraleconomy.”9Assessmentsofinnocenceandguilthadbeenintegral
tothejustificationofrevolutionaryassassinationinRussiasincethe1870s:the
targeting of prominent officials who were judged guilty, in contemporary
6Camus, The Rebel, 12, and, on Kaliaev, 133–43. For Camus’s theatrical repre-
sentation of Kaliaev’s feat, in which he likewise articulates the perspective of those
whodeniedtheneedformorallimits,seeAlbertCamus,TheJust,trans.HenryJones,
in“Caligula”andOtherPlays(cid:1)London,2006(cid:2).
7MichaelWalzer,JustandUnjustWars:AMoralArgumentwithHistoricalIllus-
trations,4thed.(cid:1)1977;NewYork,2006(cid:2),198.
8Ibid.,200,199.Walzeranalyzeshistoricalcasesinwhichamoraldistinctionwas
drawn between those who “can be killed,” especially the officials who devise and
implement the policies of an allegedly oppressive political regime, and those who
“cannot be killed,” namely, people uninvolved in “political harming.” Walzer likens
thisviolencetovigilantejusticeanddiscernsthevariouslayersofitsmoralrelativism,
butherightlynotesthatourresponsetoanassassinoftendependsonthevictim:we
mightevenpraisetheassassinationofa“Hitler-like”figure.Seeibid.,198–200.
9Walzer considers the “political code” (cid:1)the implicit rules governing terrorist ac-
tions(cid:2)tobealessdevelopedanaloguetothemilitaryconvention.Seeibid.,199–200.
I prefer “moral economy” due to its connotations of a moral system as well as its
historiographical prominence since it was first developed by E. P. Thompson. It
maintainsthatcollectiveactions(cid:1)suchasbreadriots(cid:2)areshapedbyacommonsetof
attitudes,conventions,andnorms,especiallyaboutjustice.Inapplyingtheterm“moral
economy”toRussianterrorism,Iamarguingthattherewasavaluesystemunderpin-
ningterrorists’activitybutnotthatthissystemwasunified,hegemonic,orunchanging.
610 Morrissey
rhetoric, of specific or general crimes against the people, their lives forfeit.10
Thispersonalizedvengeance-cum-justicecombinedmoralandjuridicalratio-
nales into a broader political statement in which these officials were often
understood as representatives and defenders of the sociopolitical order. Yet
theinherentdualismofinnocence,whichconnotesitscounterpartofguilt(cid:1)and
viceversa(cid:2),requiresethicaljudgments:Whowas“guilty,”andofwhatkinds
of “crimes”? Who had the right to pass this judgment? What “price” (cid:1)in
“innocent”life(cid:2)wasacceptableinhittingthetarget?Thesewerequestionsthat
Russia’s terrorists, as individuals and groups, had to answer, sometimes
confrontingthemdirectlyandoftenelidingthem,lettingtheirdeedsspeakin
their place.
As the revolution unfolded over the course of 1905–6, several discrete, if
connected, developments occurred that suggest important shifts in concep-
tions of guilt and innocence within the underground. As the number of
terrorist groups rose, especially on the local level, many were widening their
aim from top government officials (cid:1)ministers, governors(cid:2) to low-profile em-
ployees (cid:1)such as police officers(cid:2), economic figures (cid:1)factory owners, manag-
ers(cid:2), and even anonymous people whose “guilt” adhered to their identity
rather than to specific actions (cid:1)the “bourgeoisie”(cid:2). In addition, the extent of
what today is often called “collateral damage” was increasing. Terrorist
actions had long claimed the lives of some innocents, of course, especially
servantsanddrivers,andthiswasapricethatterroristshadtypicallydeemed
unavoidableinpractice,ifundesirableinprinciple.However,theearlytwen-
tiethcenturywitnessedanoutrightdisregardamongsomeactivists,including
theMaximalists,forthelossof“innocent”life,whichonlyencouragedmore
audaciousattacks.Thesedevelopmentssuggestthattheperceivedrighttokill
inthenameofrevolutionarytransformationwasexpanding,bothdiminishing
thespacefor“innocence”or“neutrality”andblurringtheboundariesbetween
combatants and noncombatants.11
Yetinnocencealsopossessedanadditionalrangeofmeaningsinthemoral
economy of terrorism, not as the inverse of guilt but as the embodiment of
10My emphasis on the early twentieth century in no way denies the important
continuities with earlier periods: the theoretical underpinnings, rhetorical flourishes,
and “hagiographies” of the twentieth century built upon historical precedent and
revolutionary myths. My purpose, however, is to focus closely on one historical
moment,nottoexplorethesebroadercontinuitiesanddifferences.Foranoverviewof
the entire period, see Norman M. Naimark, “Terrorism and the Fall of Imperial
Russia,”TerrorismandPoliticalViolence2,no.2(cid:1)Summer1990(cid:2):171–92.Seealso
Norman M. Naimark, Terrorists and Social Democrats: The Russian Revolutionary
MovementunderAlexanderIII(cid:1)Cambridge,MA,1983(cid:2).
11Paralleldevelopmentsoccurredwithincolonialviolenceandmodernwarfare,as
HannahArendtfirstexplicated;seeherbookTheOriginsofTotalitarianism,newed.
withaddedprefaces(cid:1)NewYork,1973(cid:2).
Moral Economy of Terrorism in Late Imperial Russia 611
purity and cleanliness. As Sally Boniece has shown in her analysis of the
celebratedcaseofMariiaSpiridonovafromearly1906,thiskindofinnocence
adhered to many terrorists themselves, coalescing into a coherent mythology
aboutthepurityoftheirmotivesandcharactersthatwaspromotednotjustby
undergroundpartiesbutalsotheliberalpress.12Claimingtoactinthenameof
freedom, justice, and human rights, they justified violence in the name of
nonviolence,physicalharmunderthebannerofthedignityandintegrityofthe
human being. Indeed, the supposed moral purity of the terrorists, which was
symbolically enacted in their willingness to die, lent their murders and
martyrdomsasacralforce.Evenviolenceitselfcouldtherebyacquireanaura
of innocence, becoming the means to cleanse and purify the world for the
dawnofanewage.An“apparelofinnocence”hadalsobeenintegraltoearlier
mythsoftheterrorist-martyr(cid:1)withmodelsdatingbacktothelate1870s(cid:2),13but
the widening field of revolutionary struggle in and after 1905 threatened to
dirty it, a threat that was fully realized by 1908–9 in the mass exposure of
personal and collective corruption—in the form of police spies—at the heart
of Russia’s oppositional movement.14 Just as the three discursive threads of
innocence—guiltlessness, purity, and purification—were closely entwined in
the moral economy of Russian revolutionary terrorism, so too were their
(cid:1)presumed(cid:2) opposites—guilt, corruption, and degradation.
12MariiaSpiridonova,atwenty-one-year-oldmemberoftheTambovSRs,shotand
killedanofficialwhohadledabrutalpacificationcampaignagainstlocalpeasants;she
wasarrestedand—accordingtorumor—rapedbyherguards(cid:1)whoweresubsequently
assassinated(cid:2).Inthespringof1906,Spiridonovabecameanationalcelebritythrough
a campaign orchestrated by herself, the SRs, and liberal newspapers, in which she
cametosymbolizethepurityofRussiaviolatedbytheviolenceofthestate.SeeSally
A. Boniece, “The Spiridonova Case, 1906: Terror, Myth, and Martyrdom,” Kritika:
ExplorationsinRussianandEurasianHistory4,no.3(cid:1)Summer,2003(cid:2):571–606.See
alsoAlexandraOberländer,“‘DieProvokationgingaufdemNevskijspazieren’:Die
WahrnehmungsexuellerGewaltimausgehendenZarenreich,1880–1914”(cid:1)PhDdiss.,
HumboldtUniversity[Berlin],2010).
13Theearlyprototypes,suchasVeraZasulichandSofiiaPerovskaia,wereoften
female, although models of male virtue were also common. The key text propa-
gating terrorist mythologies was Sergei Stepniak-Kravchinskii’s Underground
Russia (cid:1)1881(cid:2). See Lynn Ellen Patyk, “Remembering ‘The Terrorism’: Sergei
Stepniak-Kravchinskii’s Underground Russia,” Slavic Review 68, no. 4 (cid:1)Winter
2009(cid:2): 759–81, and “Dressed to Kill and Die: Russian Revolutionary Terrorism,
Gender,andDress,”JahrbücherfürGeschichteOsteuropas58,no.2(cid:1)2010(cid:2):192–209.
14Numeroushistorianshaveanalyzedpoliceprovocation,especiallythemostinfa-
mous case, involving Evno Azef, the leader of the Combat Organization. See Nurit
Schleifman, Undercover Agents in the Russian Revolutionary Movement: The SR
Party,1902–1914(cid:1)Basingstoke,1988(cid:2);AnnaGeifman,EntangledinTerror:TheAzef
Affair and the Russian Revolution (cid:1)Wilmington, DE, 2000(cid:2); and L. G. Praisman,
Terroristyirevoliutsionery,okhrannikiiprovokatory(cid:1)Moscow,2001(cid:2).
612 Morrissey
Inlightofthedimensionsanddiversityofterroristviolenceinlateimperial
Russia,thisarticleisselectiveratherthancomprehensive,focusingprimarily
onthewordsanddeedsofterroristsandtheirsupporters(cid:1)asfoundinleaflets,
speeches, letters, pamphlets, newspapers, court records, and memoirs(cid:2),15 not
on government policy or broader public attitudes.16 It focuses further on two
particulareventsinordertoanalyzethemoraleconomyofterrorismasitwas
practicedandpropagandizedontheground,notjustabstractlytheorized.The
heirtoahandfulofotherrecentSRterrorist-heroes(cid:1)andaforerunnerofthose
like Spiridonova(cid:2), Kaliaev was the prototypical “fastidious assassin,” in Ca-
mus’s words—the iconic figure who stood at the threshold of a new, less
fastidious age, an age when a prime minister’s summer home, filled with
members of the public, could be bombed. Although they represent divergent
models of the revolutionary terrorism practiced during this period, these two
events possessed a common organizational and political-intellectual heritage
intheneopopulistmovement,withtheMaximalistssplittingofffromtheSRs
in1906,evolvingtheirowndistinctiveapproachtoviolenceintheprocess.17
Indeed, the Maximalists’ attack was often judged and interpreted at the time
15MyfocusisbroadlyonwhatMarinaMogil’nerterms“UndergroundRussia,”the
revolutionary“microcosm”datingbacktothenineteenthcenturythatopposeditselfto
“legalRussia.”Employingasemioticmethod,Mogil’nerexploresthesharedmental-
ities, values, and attitudes of this “semiosphere” but tends to homogenize it by
emphasizing its internal coherence (cid:1)at least until its self-destruction sometime after
1905(cid:2).SeeMarinaMogil’ner,Mifologiia“podpol’nogocheloveka”:Radikal’nyimik-
rokosm v Rossii nachala XX veka kak predmet semioticheskogo analiza (cid:1)Moscow,
1999(cid:2). Boniece follows her lead, showing Spiridonova “conforming to an existing
behavioraltext.”Boniece,“TheSpiridonovaCase,”573.
16Terrorism had strong public support in Russia during much of this period,
certainly well into 1906, and the public image of individuals such as Kaliaev (cid:1)and,
later, Spiridonova(cid:2) often adhered to the positive terms of revolutionary hagiography,
allofwhichsuggeststhatthemoraleconomyIamanalyzingresonatedwellbeyondSR
circles.Supportultimatelydeclined,leadingtosignificantopposition,butthedynamics
of this process have not yet been well documented. Although public opinion is a
relevantissue,whichIamconsideringinmymonograph,Ilargelyexcludeitheredue
to the limits of space and the need for analytic coherence. On public support, see
Boniece,“TheSpiridonovaCase.”
17Camususestheterm“fastidiousassassins”asthetitleofchapter2ofTheRebel.
See The Rebel, 133–42. Focusing on this neopopulist wing of the revolutionary
underground allows me to consider different approaches to violence among people
with many shared political beliefs; the programs of the SRs and Maximalists are
discussed in more detail below. Although there was significant overlap in goals,
rhetoric, and personnel between them and other groups employing terrorist methods,
includingtheanarchistsandvariousleftistnationalparties,acomparisonislessfruitful
due to differing political traditions and national contexts. See Manfred Hildermeier,
The Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party before the First World War (cid:1)New York,
2000(cid:2); and Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists (cid:1)Princeton, NJ, 1967(cid:2), esp. chap. 2,
and his Anarchist Portraits (cid:1)Princeton, NJ, 1988(cid:2). On right-wing violence, including
Moral Economy of Terrorism in Late Imperial Russia 613
with reference to Kaliaev’s, partly due to these shared traditions (cid:1)and over-
lappingmemberships(cid:2)andpartlyduetothesymbolicsignificanceofchildren,
the ultimate embodiment of innocence. At issue in this dialogue were funda-
mental questions about the morality of political violence. While numerous
factors—from tactical considerations to the broader political context—
contributedtoageneralescalationofviolenceintheeighteen-monthinterval
between these two events, this article considers how terrorists themselves
represented the political landscape and justified their actions.18 It asserts,
thereby, the importance of individual agency, political ethics, and collective
judgments,evenasitlocatesthemintothebroaderdiscursivefieldsofamoral
economy. To excavate such “moral systems” is not to claim that they were
actually moral, nor is it to make broader arguments about the moral permis-
sibility of violence; it is, rather, to illuminate the norms themselves—how
they both enabled and constrained the practice of violence—and, in the end,
the inherent fragility of the limits they articulated.
CONTEXT
Afterahiatusofsometwodecades,terrorismhadreappearedinRussiainthe
early twentieth century, taking, most prominently, the lives of two interior
ministers, Dmitrii Sipiagin in 1902 and Viacheslav von Plehve in 1904.19
Spearheaded nationally by the newly formed SR Party and its Combat Orga-
nization, joined by individuals and groups at the local level, this turn to
violence was relatively limited in scale until 1905, when it accelerated to
unprecedentedlevels.Followingthemassacreofhundredsofunarmedwork-
ers and members of their families by soldiers on Bloody Sunday (cid:1)January 9,
1905(cid:2), protests spread across the country as revolutionary organizations ex-
panded in size and ambition. At this time, the number of terrorist acts grew
some terrorism, see Don C. Rawson, Russian Rightists and the Revolution of 1905
(cid:1)Cambridge,1995(cid:2),127–41.
18Aspiralofstateandnonstateviolencepromotedanescalationofoverallviolence,
asdiscussedbelow,butexplanationsrelyingonthisabstractprocessora“brutalization
effect” can obscure human agency: the actual choices that people made, including
attempts to set or to deny moral limits in violence, that were shaped by what I am
calling a “moral economy.” Furthermore, it is worth noting that violence can also
produce fear, pessimism, political passivity, and a rejection of violence (cid:1)including
pacifism(cid:2),allofwhichwerelikewiseevidentinRussiaduringthisperiod.
19StepanBalmashovandEgorSazonov—theassassinsofSipiaginandvonPlehve,
respectively—were important precursors to Kaliaev and were celebrated in parallel
terms,butKaliaev’scaseisinterestingduetohisinitialrefusaltothrowthebomb,the
subsequentdebatesaboutthis,anditsoveralltiming.
614 Morrissey
markedly.20TheSRsclaimedresponsibilityforsixattacksfrom1902to1904,
but then fifty-one in 1905 (cid:1)forty-nine of which occurred after Kaliaev’s(cid:2),
seventy-eight in 1906, and sixty-two in 1907, until the number fell again to
just three in 1908.21 As one archival source makes explicit, however, the
dimensions of the phenomenon were much greater: between January 1 and
August 20, 1906, for example, 1,782 terrorist acts—134 involving bombs—
killedorwounded1,363people,including497privateindividuals.22Compare
these figures to some thirty-five assassinations, including that of the tsar, in
Russia’s previous and better-known terrorist moment of 1877–81.23 Mass
terrorism—intheformofassassinations,publicbombingsandgunfights,and
expropriations(cid:1)armedrobberies(cid:2)—wouldreachitsheightfromthesummerof
1906into1907,thoughthecentralterroroftheSRshadbeenlargelydisplaced
bylocalgroupswithoftenamorphouspoliticalaffiliations,includingregional
SR“fightingsquads,”anarchists,andsuccessivegenerationsoftheMaximal-
ists. This was a period of “excess,” when violence broke through the con-
straints usually placed upon it and became pervasive.24 The subsequent de-
clinehadmanycauses,includingstaterepression,awaningofpublicsupport,
andaninternalcrisisoftheLeft(cid:1)caused,interalia,bythefailuretotopplethe
regime, the extreme levels of violence, and the serial exposure of agents
provocateurs(cid:2).ThelastprominentvictimwouldbeStolypinhimself,shotand
killedinSeptember1911byamanwithashadypast,bothterroristandpolice
agent.
20Thehighestestimateissome17,000peoplekilledorwoundedinterroriststrikes
through1916,althoughmanyactsthatareincludedinthatestimatecouldbecatego-
rized as criminal. See Anna Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in
Russia, 1894–1917 (cid:1)Princeton, NJ, 1993(cid:2), chap. 1. The lines between revolutionary
activity and criminal activity were blurred, with criminals often calling themselves
anarchists, and newspapers likewise using this term liberally. The field courts (cid:1)of
1906–7(cid:2) did not consider the political or criminal basis of its cases, and one official
contended that the vast majority were criminal, not political. See Gosudarstvennyi
arkhivrossiisskoifederatsii,Moscow(cid:1)henceforthGARF;StateArchiveoftheRussian
Federation(cid:2),f,102(cid:1)DP7(cid:2),op.203(cid:1)1906(cid:2),d.8t.4lit.A,l.168.
21Thenumberwaslikelyhigher,aslocalcommitteesoftenoperatedwithsignificant
autonomy. See M. Ivich, “Statistika terroristicheskikh aktov,” Pamiatnaia knizhka
sotsialista-revoliutsionera,no.2(cid:1)n.p.,1914(cid:2),6.
22The data, compiled from reports from provincial authorities, are broken down
accordingtowhethervictimswereprivateindividualsorinstateservice,and,forthe
latter,byofficeheld,includingbothhighandlowranks.SeeGARF,f.102(cid:1)DPOO(cid:2),
op.236(cid:1)1906(cid:2),d.808t.1,ll.3–4,6.
23Naimark,TerroristsandSocialDemocrats,174.
24In a perceptive discussion of political violence, Michael Geyer uses the term
“excess”withreferencetotheTimeofTroublesintheearlyseventeenthcentury,but
it likewise suits the early twentieth century. Michael Geyer, “Some Hesitant Obser-
vations concerning ‘Political Violence,’” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eur-
asianHistory4,no.3(cid:1)Summer2003(cid:2):695–708.
Moral Economy of Terrorism in Late Imperial Russia 615
Studies of Russian revolutionary terrorism in this period have charted its
numerical dimensions, theoretical justifications, organizational forms, and
widegeographicalscope;theyhavefurtherdemonstratedthepassive—and,at
times, active—endorsement of the tactic by political groups not formally
associated with it, including Social Democrats and liberals. In describing its
spread in and after 1905, they generally refer to a “degradation” or “degen-
eration,”suggestingabreakbetweentheorganizedactsofestablishedparties
andthe“massterror”fromthe“lowerdepths.”25AnnaGeifmanhastakenthis
approachthefurthest,linkingtheextremeviolenceofthepost-1905periodto
the emergence of a new kind of terrorist, unschooled in ideology (cid:1)and often
barely literate(cid:2), socially marginal, and psychologically unstable; in the pro-
cess, she effectively subsumes the “new” terrorism into a framework of
irrationality, criminality, and insanity.26 Yet politics and political agency
shouldnotbesoquicklydismissed.Asthelatestgenerationofscholarsisnow
demonstrating,aterroristactisanassertionofpoliticalsubjectivityaswellas
aculturallyconstructed,oftenorchestratedpublicevent(cid:1)inwhich“madness”
itself could become part of the performance(cid:2).27
The main contextual factor for the escalation of terrorism in the early
twentieth century was the broader eruption of political violence.28 Since the
late 1880s, the socioeconomic transformations of rapid industrialization to-
getherwithpoliticalrepressionandrussificationhadheightenedsocial,ethnic,
religious,andnationaltensions.This,inturn,fedthepoliticalorganizationof
Russian society, including the formation of underground parties as well as
armed self-defense units and terrorist groups on the left and the right. Ter-
25The most comprehensive overviews are those in Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill; and
OlegBudnitskii,Terrorizmvrossiiskomosvoboditel’nomdvizhenii:Ideologiia,etika,
psikhologiia(cid:1)vtoraiapolovinaXIX-nachaloXXv(cid:2)(cid:1)Moscow,2000(cid:2).SeealsoMaureen
Perrie, “Political and Economic Terror in the Tactics of the Russian Socialist Revo-
lutionary Party before 1914,” in Mommsen and Hirschfeld, Social Protest, Violence,
and Terror; and Manfred Hildermeier, “The Terrorist Strategies of the Socialist-
RevolutionaryPartyinRussia,1900–1914,”inibid.
26ThestrengthsofGeifman’sstudylieelsewhere,especiallyinheranalysisofthe
regional and imperial dimensions of terrorism as well as the ambivalent views of it
among liberals and Marxists. See Geifman, Thou Shalt Kill, esp. chaps. 3, 6, and 7.
Criticisms of her approach have been made by other scholars, including Budnitskii,
Terrorizm,24–27;andBoniece,“TheSpiridonovaCase,”605.
27SeeBoniece,“TheSpiridonovaCase”;andVerhoeven,TheOddManKarakozov;
see also the five articles in Anke Hilbrenner and Frithjof B. Schenk, eds., “Modern
Times?TerrorisminLateImperialRussia,”specialissue,JahrbücherfürGeschichte
Osteuropas, no. 2 (cid:1)2010(cid:2); and Lynn Patyk, “The Double-Edged Sword of Word and
Deed: Revolutionary Terrorism and Russian Literary Culture” (cid:1)PhD diss., Stanford
University,2005(cid:2).
28Thebestoverviewofthisperiod,includingitsviolence,remainsAbrahamAscher,
TheRevolutionof1905,2vols.(cid:1)Stanford,CA,1988–92(cid:2).