raznochintsy of the 1850s and 1860s. Denying traditional values of the hypocritical society, they were very intolerant of the contrary opinions and created their own system of restrictions and limitations. Some historians explain the radicalism of raznochintsy by their social origins: many of them were the sons of provincial priests and former seminarians, and they were idealists and dreamt about creation of an ideal and fair state. Due to their radicalism, raznochintsy played a central role at the crucial moment in the formation of the revolutionary intelligentsia. By the 1870s nihilism as a social phenomenon almost disappeared and gradually raznochintsy transformed into part of the Russian intelligentsia. See also: INTELLIGENTSIA; NIHILISM AND NIHILISTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Becker, Christopher. (1959). “Raznochintsy: The Development of the Word and the Concept,” American Slavic and E. European Review, 18: 63-74. Pomper, Philip. (1970). The Russian Revolutionary Intelligentsia. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, Inc. Wirtschafter, Elise K. (1994). Structures of Society: Imperial Russia’s “Peoples of Various Ranks.” DeKalb: Northern University Press.
One of Alexander II’s reforms was the emancipation of twenty million serfs in 1861. The Russian government paid former serf-holders for land that was then issued in allotments to the newly freed serfs. The peasants, however, were obligated to pay the government back for this land (plus interest) through what were called redemption payments. Each peasant household generally got less land (and less desirable land) in the emancipation settlement than it had tilled before emancipation, and the redemption payments were often in excess of the rental cost of the allotment.
The traditional peasant commune (mir or ob-shchina) was given the responsibility of assuring that its members would pay their redemption debt. The communes accomplished this by limiting the
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rights of peasants to leave the commune prior to paying off their debt, and by redistributing land between households in the commune. This method of periodic redistribution ensured that each household had the resources to make its redemption payments, but continued a pattern of a peasants holding many small strips of land rather than one contiguous field. It further required that all peasants retain the primitive three-field system of crop rotation, and discouraged individual peasants from improving their holdings.
Peasants never accepted the redemption debt as legitimate, and many communes accumulated large arrears, which periodically were written off and then accumulated again. By 1905 the government realized that the payments were more of an irritation to the peasantry than they were worth as a source of income, and on November 3 of that year an imperial decree abolished them, partly as a vain attempt to forestall growing peasant unrest that led to the 1905 revolution. See also: ENSERFMENT; EMANCIPATION ACT; GREAT REFORMS; MIR; OBSHCHINA; PEASANTRY; SERFDOM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lincoln, W. Bruce. (1990). The Great Reforms. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Robinson, Geroid T. (1967). Rural Russia under the Old Regime. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Red Guards (also called Workers’ Militia) were volunteer armed bands formed by industrial workers in the cities during the Russian Revolution of 1917. They played an important role in the turmoil of 1917, in the Bolshevik seizure of power, and in securing the new Soviet government. The term Red Guard originated in Finland during the Revolution of 1905 and reemerged in 1917, especially after April, to signify the more politically militant armed workers.
Volunteer armed workers’ bands were formed during and after the February Revolution by industrial workers at factories to protect and advance the interests of the industrial workers during the revolution, to maintain public safety, and to guard against counterrevolution. They were loosely organized (mostly self-organized), chose their own leaders, and were independent of all political parties and the new Provisional Government. They attracted the more militant members of the working class and gravitated politically toward the radical end of the spectrum (thus the tendency in later writing to associate them with the Bolsheviks, even though Socialist Revolutionaries [SRs], anarchists, and even Mensheviks participated, along with non-party elements). Indeed, they were a symbol of the most emphatic worker self-organization and self-assertion. Their organizational base was the factory, and their loyalty was to it and to the factory committees and the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, in Petrograd (the capital) and other cities. The government and more moderate socialists were suspicious of them but unable to suppress them.
The Red Guard grew in size and militancy during the summer and early fall as political tensions increased, the economic situation worsened, and workers sensed that the gains they had made after February were slipping away. Industrial workers increasingly saw the Red Guards as essential to protecting their economic and political interests. By the October Revolution, Red Guard detachments totaled about 150,000 to 175,000 men across the country, about 25,000 to 30,000 of them in Petrograd. The Red Guards and the Bolsheviks found common ground in the slogan “All Power to the Soviets” and the call for radical social reforms and an end to the war. As a result, a close working relationship developed between them.
The Red Guards played an important role in the October Revolution and the first few months of the new Bolshevik regime. In Petrograd they joined with soldiers to secure the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the proclamation of “Soviet power”-the new Bolshevik government. Red Guard bands played a similar role in the transfer of power in Moscow and provincial cities. They fought the initial armed efforts to overthrow the Bolsheviks and provided the new government with much-needed armed coercion. The Red Guards were an important part of expeditionary forces sent from Petrograd and Moscow in late 1917 and early 1918 to secure control over outlying regions. Some Red Guard detachments were incorporated into the new Red Army in 1918, others withered away, and the Soviet government formally abolished the Red Guard in April 1918. The essential features of the Red Guard and workers’ militias-self-organization, local orientation, and elected leaders-were not suited to the demands of civil war or the new Communist era.
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See also: BOLSHEVISM; FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; OCTOBER REVOLUTION; WORKERS
Wade, Rex A. (1984). Red Guards and Workers’ Militias in the Russian Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Red Square, like the Moscow Kremlin on which it borders, is one of the best known locales of modern world culture. Associated with military parades, aggressive rhetoric, and the Lenin mausoleum, Red Square came to symbolize Soviet power from 1918 until the demise of the Soviet Union. The term “red” in fact derives not from political sources but from a former meaning of the Russian word krasnaia: “beautiful.”
From the earliest days of Moscow’s existence in the twelfth century, some form of trading area probably existed to the east of the fortified center (kremlin) of the settlement. By the second half of the fourteenth century, evidence suggests that there was a more clearly defined area devoted to trade and located near the main, east towers of the Kremlin, whose log walls were at that time being rebuilt in limestone by Prince Dmitry Ivanovich. This space was enlarged for defensive purposes by the decree of Ivan III after the great fire of 1493, which destroyed many ramshackle trading booths.
The sixteenth century witnessed dramatic changes in the form and meaning of Red Square. Between 1508 and 1516, Basil III ordered that a large moat be dug along the east wall of the Kremlin, which had been rebuilt of strong brick under the supervision of Italian engineers. The highest sections of the wall faced Red Square, which had no natural defensive barrier, whereas the Moscow and Neglinnaia Rivers flowed along the other two sides of
