Petrograd City Duma on the threshold of the Civil war in late October–early November 1917: perception and legitimization of violence

About the author:

Mikhail A. Kondratyev, Researcher, Department of History, European University at St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia; mkondratyev@eu.spb.ru, https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7989-2789

Abstract:

Through the prism of Petrograd self-government, this article studies the escalation of the civil conflict and its gradual development into a civil war. In many studies on the October Uprising and the first weeks the upcoming Soviet power, little attention is paid to local self-government’s influence on the transformation of the revolutionary political culture. Meanwhile, local governments became representatives of the citizens’ interests, important resource centers for political actors, and institutions claiming political subjectivity. The central source for the study is the transcripts of the Petrograd City Duma meetings during the October Bolshevik Uprising. The Petrograd self-government made their first attempt to determine the Duma role and functions on October 24, but at numerous meetings, up to the early November, the speakers could not determine the place of the City Duma in a rapidly changing political situation. There was also no conventional view of the Bolshevik uprising, and, consequently, no idea of the legitimate authority and legitimacy of violence. During the discussions, the division into several conditional camps was revealed, going beyond the typical binary oppositions of the Cadets, part of the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks on the one hand, and radical Socialists on the other. Cases of political and accidental violence on the streets of Petrograd and Moscow were perceived by most of the speakers as acts requiring moral condemnation, but in the conditions of the revolutionary crisis of power, their perception quickly became routine. Condemnation of excessive violence has become common. A number of speakers, regardless of party affiliation, began to interpret the events as a civil war on October 25, which pushed them to choose one of the opposing sides. However, it was only on October 28 that the Duma issued a proclamation pointing to the fratricidal war, directly accusing the Bolsheviks of unleashing it.

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