Weinberg, Robert

International Labor and Working-Class History

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Robert Weinberg

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Reginald E. Zelnik, ed., Workers and Intelligentsia in Late Imperial Russia: Realities, Representations, Reflections. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. ix +349 pp. $24.50 paper.

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Swarthmore College Works History Faculty Works History Fall 2000 Review Of "Workers And Intelligentsia In Late Imperial Russia: Realities, Representations, Reflections" Edited By R.E. Zelnik Robert Weinberg Swarthmore College, rweinbe1@swarthmore.edu This work is brought to you for free and open access by . It has been accepted for inclusion in History Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-history  Part of the History Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits you  Recommended Citation Robert Weinberg. (2000). "Review Of "Workers And Intelligentsia In Late Imperial Russia: Realities, Representations, Reflections" Edited By R.E. Zelnik". International Labor And Working Class History. Volume 58, 355-356. DOI: 10.1017/s0147547900283804 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-history/94 International Labor and Working-Class, Inc.Workers and Intelligentsia in Late Imperial Russia: Realities, Representations, Reflections byReginald E. ZelnikReview by: Robert WeinbergInternational Labor and Working-Class History, No. 58, Wartime Economies and theMobilization of Labor (Fall, 2000), pp. 355-356Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Labor and Working-Class, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27672700 .Accessed: 08/09/2014 11:28Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp .JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. .Cambridge University Press and International Labor and Working-Class, Inc. are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to International Labor and Working-Class History.http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 130.58.65.11 on Mon, 8 Sep 2014 11:28:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsReports and Correspondence 355 ber of their family) and, despite their limitations and recent contractions, wel fare state schemes provide poor families with a safety net that did not exist dur ing the 1890s. Themis Chronopoulos Brown University Reginald E. Zelnik, ed., Workers and Intelligentsia in Late Imperial Russia: Realities, Representations, Reflections. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. ix +349 pp. $24.50 paper. It is fitting that this volume of fourteen essays is dedicated to Allan Wildman and edited by Reginald Zelnik, two historians whose seminal books a generation ago helped to define the parameters within which all future explorations of the com plex relationship between Russian workers and their would-be labor organizers and political leaders would take place. This collection of essays stems from a con ference held in St. Petersburg in 1995, the full proceedings of which were pub lished two years later in a Russian-language edition. Now an English-language audience can sample articles written by the American, British, French, German, and Russian participants. I must admit that I approached this volume with some degree of skepticism since I wondered how much more we could cull from extant materials on worker intelligentsia relations. But the contributions amply demonstrate that there is still much to learn. Not only have archives in the former Soviet Union opened up more broadly than before, but there is a willingness to ask new questions of old materials, to apply novel approaches and methodologies, and to examine what would have once been considered marginal and even unusual topics. Con sequently, the contributors have invigorated the study of Russian workers dur ing the final years of tsarist rule. Indeed, it is a treat to return to issues that I first encountered as a graduate student many years ago and that stimulated my initial interest in the history of the Russian labor movement. The essays assembled run the gamut from the interaction among workers, radical students, and revolutionaries in the 1870s (selections by Reginald Zelnik and Deborah Pearl) to the organized activities of St. Petersburg workers just be fore and during the 1905 revolution (contributions by Sergei Potolov and Ger ald Surh), from the social and political identities of workers (essays by Iurii Kir'ianov, Leopold Haimson, and Steve Smith) to the relationships among work ers and Socialist Revolutionaries, workers and liberals, and workers and Com munist party schools in Capri and Bologna (articles by Manfred Hildermeier, William Rosenberg, and Jutta Scherrer), and finally from theaters run and op erated by workers and stories and poems written by literary workers (selections by E. Anthony Swift and Mark Steinberg) to the social and political attitudes and values expressed by workers in court cases and during the First World War (Joan Neuberger and Hubertus Jahn). In all instances, the authors draw con This content downloaded from 130.58.65.11 on Mon, 8 Sep 2014 11:28:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions356 ILWCH, 58, Fall 2000 elusions buttressing the view that worker-intelligentsia relations embodied many of the same social, cultural, and political fractures and fissures that made late imperial Russian society fragile and ripe for revolution. While this line of anal ysis is hardly novel or surprising, the essays add dimensions of depth and breadth and, in some instances, force a rethinking of certain phenomena such as economism. In particular, the majority of the volume's authors engage in analyses of the language (written and oral) employed by workers and intelligentsia. Exploration of linguistic discourse enables the authors to enter the minds of their subjects, thereby giving them the opportunity to uncover workers' and intelligentsia's per ceptions of each other. The essays reveal the complexity of social identities and class relationships, underscoring the mistrust that animated interactions be tween workers and intelligentsia who came from the educated and privileged strata of society. In particular, many authors find that the patronizing attitude of the intelligentsia toward workers helps to explain the strained relations between them. In sum, Workers and Intelligentsia in Late Imperial Russia offers new in sights into the study of the Russian revolutionary movement. The richness of the research and the subtleties of analysis make reading the individual chapters a re warding experience that I recommend to all those interested in labor history in general and the Russian Revolution in particular. Finally, Zelnik has done an outstanding job of editing and has provided a compelling introductory essay that highlights the major themes and demonstrates the scholarly contributions of the volume as a whole. Now I must excuse myself while I run to the library and bor row the writings of Russian Marxists such as Georgii Plekhanov, Pavel Ak sel'rod, and Fedor Dan. I am convinced that revisiting their works will bring me a deeper understanding of the dynamics of social, cultural, and political conflict in Russia on the eve of 1917. Robert Weinberg Swarthmore College This content downloaded from 130.58.65.11 on Mon, 8 Sep 2014 11:28:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Review Of  Workers And Intelligentsia In Late Imperial Russia: Realities, Representations, Reflections  Edited By R.E. Zelnik

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Review Of Workers And Intelligentsia In Late Imperial Russia: Realities, Representations, Reflections Edited By R.E. Zelnik

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