Chapter 6
1905

By the end of August 1905 the autocracy seemed to have recovered its political balance. The Portsmouth treaty ended the war, and the rescript on the Bulygin Duma divided the liberal opposition. Popular unrest still worried the authorities on the periphery—especially in Poland and the Caucasus. But riots in Lodz or Baku could not threaten the existence of the regime as long as the revolution did not spread to the vital nerve centers of Saint Petersburg and Moscow or to the restive peasantry of the central Russian provinces, and the capitals seemed relatively stable.

By the middle of October, however, the autocracy was facing a serious crisis. A general strike had paralyzed the country and forced the tsar to issue—very grudgingly—a manifesto promising fundamental civil liberties and what seemed to be the beginnings of a constitutional monarchy.

The reopening of the universities and other VUZy played a key role in unleashing the chain of events that would culminate in the October general strike. Both Witte and Lenin emphasized the importance of the 27 August Temporary Rules in transforming the political situation. Witte saw the rules as a "first breach through which the revolution, having matured underground, emerged into the broad light of day."^[1] In oddly similar language, Lenin concluded that "new revolutionary waves flowed into this breach with unexpected force. This miserable

[1] Quoted in John L. H. Keep, The Rise of Social Democracy in Russia (Oxford, 1963), p. 217.

concession . . . actually resulted in a tremendous intensification of the struggle."^[2] Under the new rules, Russia's VUZy reopened at the beginning of September. But they would not even finish out the semester; by the end of October the nation's system of higher education was once again paralyzed.

This chapter will show how the universities were drawn into the maelstrom of the revolution and will analyze how the student movement, the professoriate, and the junior faculty faced the issue of what role universities should play during a period of intense political crisis. All three groups acted in a dual capacity, as members of the general society and as participants in an internal conflict concerning the future nature and course of Russia's system of higher education. The students had to reconcile their own interests with those of the surging labor movement. As the revolution turned the universities into open meeting halls, the senior faculty saw itself as the beleaguered guardian of a fragile national institution, engaged in a desperate struggle for autonomy and even survival against both the forces of order and the revolutionary crowds. Meanwhile, the revolution intensified the internal conflict between the professors, the student movement, and the younger faculty. At issue were two major questions. The first was the extent to which the university as such should join the liberation movement. The second issue was whether "democracy" should be extended to the universities themselves, with the professoriate sharing its newly won power with both the students and the younger faculty.

"Autonomy": A Cautious Welcome

The professoriate gave the new rules a cautious welcome. Leading academic spokesmen were quick to spot some of the legal ambiguities of the new decree and raised questions that were to complicate the professors' relations with the state right up to the beginning of World War I. Were the rules intended merely to turn the professors into effective policemen of unruly students? Or did they signal the government's final abandonment of the 1884 Statute and the beginning of a new era of academic autonomy in Russia? These two questions were to constitute the nub of the so-called university question as it emerged during and after the Revolution of 1905.

[2] V. I. Lenin, "Uroki Moskovskikh sobytii," in his Sochineniia, 3d ed. (Moscow, 1936), vol. 8, p. 313.

Soon after the rules appeared, Ivan Grevs, the major spokesman for the Academic Union, warned his colleagues that they had won at best only a tactical victory, a victory that could well turn into a trap. The rub was that the professors would find themselves saddled with the onus of keeping the students in line while lacking the powers and prerogatives crucial to achieving real academic autonomy. After all, the minister of education still retained veto power over the elected rectors and deacons. Furthermore, no one could say for sure whether the ministry had given up its authority to approve all teaching appointments.^[3] The faculty council of Saint Petersburg University also showed its misgivings by issuing a collective statement warning that without wider political reforms the new government initiative would have little value.^[4]

Some leading curators also attacked the new rules for being too liberal. S. F. Speshkov, the influential curator of the Kazan Educational District, blasted the rules for turning the universities over to the "illegal Academic Union." They were untimely, he complained, and ran counter to the government's real interests. A. N. Schwartz, curator of the Warsaw Educational District (who would later earn a reputation as a notoriously reactionary minister of education), complained that the professors tended to interpret the new rules according to the time-tested principle of "squatters' rights" (zakhvatnoe pravo ). The professoriate confused autonomy with "extraterritoriality" and served the ends of the revolutionary movement by trying to turn the universities into a "state within a state."^[5]

The early September elections to university rectorships were the first test of the new rules—and the liberal press hailed the results as marking a clear defeat for the autocracy and the conservative professors. With the exception of the rector of Tomsk University, who was relatively liberal, all the government-appointed incumbents were defeated.^[6] Newly elected rectors included I. I. Borgman at Saint Petersburg University, S. N. Trubetskoi at Moscow, N. M. Tsitovich at Kiev, A. V. Reinhart at Kharkov, I. M. Zanchevskii at Odessa, N. M. Liubimov at Kazan, Ia. F. Karskii at Warsaw, and E. V. Passek at Iur'ev.

[3] "Vremennye pravila 27ovo avgusta," Pravo, no. 36 (1905).

[4] Imperatorskii Sankt-Peterburgskii Universitet, Zhurnaly zasedanii soveta za 1905g . (Saint Petersburg, 1906), p. 64.

[5] On Speshkov, see A. E. Ivanov, "Universitety Rossii v 1905om godu," Istoricheskie Zapiski, no. 88 (1971): 130; on Schwartz, TsGIA, f. 733, op. 226, d. 137, l. 13. Schwartz's comments are taken from a memorandum written after he was appointed minister of education in 1908.

[6] Nasha Zhizn', 4 September 1905.

In his widely reported maiden speech to the Moscow University Faculty Council, rector Trubetskoi euphorically announced that the "university has gained a great moral victory. What have we to fear now? In one stroke we have received all that we could have wished. We have conquered the forces of reaction."^[7] Trubetskoi expressed the hope that the students would now obey the professors and stop disrupting the universities. Within one week events would shatter Trubetskoi's optimism.

The results of the new elections raised hopes in the provincial universities as well. The fourth-year juridical students at Kiev University sent a delegation to Professor Tsitovich to tell him that they considered his election as rector to be a victory for progressive ideals. Professor Shchepkin, a prominent member of the Academic Union in Odessa and a close associate of the new rector, Zanchevskii, implied that the professoriate now had a mandate to initiate far-reaching reforms of the curriculum.^[8]

The faculty councils now faced the frustrating task of discovering—or guessing—the actual extent of their new powers under the Temporary Rules. Initially there was intense public pressure on the faculty councils to abolish restrictions on the admission of women and Jews. But most of the councils concluded that unilateral action was illegal. As rector Tsitovich explained in his first lecture at Kiev on 22 September, "The public thinks that the professoriate has received very broad new powers. In reality its powers are quite limited. For example, it is erroneous to think that the professors have the right to admit all who wish to enter the universities."^[9]

The essence of the problem was whether the new rules implied the abolition of the key provisions of the 1884 Statute and subsequent legislation affecting the universities. The professors' quandary emerged quite clearly in the debate that took place in the Saint Petersburg University Faculty Council on 13 September. Rector Borgman told the council that thirty-seven Jewish applicants, the 3 percent allowed by law, had been accepted for admission to the university. This left eighty-four Jews who

[7] Russkie Vedomosti, 3 September 1905.

[8] Shchepkin complained in a 13 September newspaper interview that "our history faculties lack geography and economics . . . our law students study the history of law without grounding in proper historical method . . . there is no place for sociology . . . If a student wants to master a particular subject he must still spend two-thirds of his time satisfying compulsory requirements. . . . An economics student must maneuver between Roman and Canon law . . . a historian must spend two years studying classical and Russian philology" (Odesskie Novosti, 16 September 1905).

[9] Odesskii Listok, 25 September 1905.

had not been accepted. The problem was very clear. In rejecting the eighty-four Jewish students, Borgman was complying with the Statutes of the Committee of Ministers of 5 December 1886 and 26 June 1887. But Borgman also declared that the faculty council should no longer be expected to enforce this discriminatory legislation. Therefore he proposed that the faculty council authorize him to petition the minister of education to admit the remaining Jewish applicants. Two professors, A. A. Markov and V. M. Shimkevich, vigorously protested. Markov insisted that the faculty council should admit the Jewish students on its own authority. When the council decided to petition the ministry, Markov resigned his seat on the newly established "commission" which was supposed to serve as the executive arm of the council.^[10] In an interview with Syn Otechestva Markov explained his resignation by remarking that "the 'new course' is very little different from the old one."^[11]

Faculty councils at other universities also balked at unilaterally abrogating the numerus clausus . Some rectors drew a distinction between overriding circulars of the Ministry of Education and ignoring statutes of the Committee of Ministers. Thus rector Zanchevskii told a meeting of Odessa students on 24 September that the faculty would on its own authority admit Jews as auditors, since restrictions in this area were established by circular, not statute. For the same reason, Zanchevskii explained, the faculty council would abolish the restrictions on the admission to the university of students from other educational districts, as well as readmit students previously expelled by administrative action.^[12] The Moscow University Faculty Council also remained within "the law." On 20 September rector Trubetskoi petitioned the minister of education to allow the council to admit sixty-two Jews who were residents of the Moscow Educational District.^[13] Caught between their distaste for discrimination in university admissions and their unwillingness to violate established legal procedures, the liberal professoriate experienced a preview in miniature of the problems that would beset the universities in the next month.

The faculty councils also had to face another problem: demands from junior faculty for more power in university governance. After all, why call for democratic suffrage in the country and deny the same prin-

[10] Imperatorskii Sankt-Peterburgskii Universitet, Zhurnaly zasedanii soveta za 1905g., p. 87 (meeting of 13 September 1905).

[11] Syn Otechestva, 17 September 1905.

[12] Odesskie Novosti, 25 September 1905.

[13] Russkie Vedomosti, 20 September 1905.

ciple in the university? After the reopening of the universities, junior faculty members intensified their calls for a greater voice in university governance. A major source of junior-faculty strength in September was the Academic Union, where faculty members had equal voting rights irrespective of rank. This in turn led to a growing divergence of interest between the union and otherwise liberal senior faculty who could not accept the principle of equal representation on faculty councils.

On 8 September a meeting of the Saint Petersburg University junior faculty hailed the Temporary Rules as "the first victory of the Academic Union" but warned that this only "Increased the union's obligation to strive for further political concessions from the government." What the universities had won was not enough. They should not be willing to become an "oasis . . . in a desert of arbitrariness." The Saint Petersburg junior faculty specified three major goals now facing the Academic Union: the struggle for a democratic Russia with a representative government and an administration accountable to the parliament, equal rights for junior faculty in university governance, and the democratization of university admissions.^[14]

On 24 September this same group met to consider a model university statute drawn up by the Saint Petersburg branch of the Academic Union. The draft statute gave junior faculty the right to elect representatives with voting rights to the faculty councils. On 21 September, a general meeting of the junior faculty of Saint Petersburg University asked the faculty council to accept junior faculty delegates with voting rights in meetings both of the faculty council and of individual departments. The junior faculty told the faculty council that this was a "necessary development of the concept of an autonomous university and therefore can neither be rejected nor postponed without a basic contradiction . . . of the idea of autonomy."^[15] The junior faculty's demands were relatively modest. A general assembly of junior faculty would elect four delegates with voting rights to participate in the meetings of the individual faculties. These same delegates, along with the president and two vice-presidents of the junior faculty assembly, would participate in the meetings of the faculty council. In its meeting of 31 October the faculty council accepted, by a vote of 36 to 1 with 6 abstentions, "in principle,"

[14] Russkie Vedomosti, 10 September 1905.

[15] Imperatorskii Sankt-Peterburgskii Universitet, Zhurnaly zasedanii soveta za 1905g., pp. 172–178.

junior-faculty representation in individual department meetings, but narrowly rejected such participation in the meetings of the faculty council.^[16]

Such tensions were even worse in some of the provincial universities. The Kazan junior faculty demanded legally guaranteed entry into the professors' corporation (uchenaia korporatsiia ). Professors would no longer be in a position to blight promising careers out of personal pique. The junior faculty also demanded that both department and faculty council meetings be open to the public, or at least to zemstvo and municipal council representatives.^[17]

The controversy made clear the lack of consensus within the academic community regarding the meaning of autonomy . Senior faculty warned that university governance was not the same as "pure democracy." Professors who supported democratic and universal suffrage in national politics argued that in the universities it was essential to preserve the rule that only merit and proven scholarly achievement should be the major determinants of power and position. According to Professor Evgenii Trubetskoi, the "university has always been and will continue to be the sanctum of a spiritual aristocracy: otherwise it will cease to exist." Far from contradicting the idea of democracy, this conception of the university was a sine qua non for a successful democratic society. "Only a university based on this principle," he warned, "can serve the interests of the people. . . . The nation and the people need a university that will get its job done."^[18]

But even more than the junior-faculty issue, the vexing question of professor-student relations brought the revolution into the universities and accelerated the polarization of the academic community. In September, just before the students returned, the faculty councils were cautiously optimistic that they would be able to "control" the students. In most universities the councils elected special commissions to apply the 27 August Rules and deal directly with student organizations in the regulation of student affairs and discussion of student grievances. These commissions, as will be seen, quickly brought the university inspectorate under faculty control and removed many of the most irksome restrictions of the 1884 Statute. Some of the commissions would go to

[16] Ibid.

[17] M. K. Korbut, Kazanskii gosudarstvennyi universitet (Kazan, 1930), vol. 2, p. 218.

[18] "K nachalu uchebnovo goda," Moskovskii Ezhenedel'nik, no. 34 (1907).

great lengths to consult with the students about the specific role the universities should play during the growing political crisis.^[19] But on one important issue, students and faculty would find it hard to reach a compromise: the issue of using the universities as a base for meetings and political agitation.

The Students and the Revolution

What would the students do? The February skhodki that proclaimed the student strike had all stipulated that the studenchestvo would consider its future course of action in September. During the summer, an article in the Menshevik Iskra appealed to the students to end the strike and return to the universities. Theodore Dan, the author of the article, argued that the strike was a passive weapon that had outlived its usefulness. The students should "seize" the universities and turn them into centers of revolutionary agitation. Iskra called on the students to "systematically violate the . . . rules, drive out inspectors and spies of every type, open the doors of the auditoriums to all citizens who wish to enter them, and transform the universities into centers for popular assembly and political meetings."^[20]

The Mensheviks, moreover, openly recognized the debt Russian Social Democracy owed to the student movement. A year before, Paul Axelrod had written in Iskra:

History did not wait for the moment when the proletariat, under the direct prod of its natural antagonism to the employers, would enter into the struggle with the autocracy on its own account. . . . Completely unexpectedly, history pushed the workers and the Social Democrats themselves into this struggle and for this purpose used not the labor movement but the student movement. The student disorders . . . [of 1899 and 1901] were the direct trigger of an outburst of massive political discontent. . . . Far from being the initiators of the struggle, the Social Democrats were drawn into it.^[21]

P. A. Garvi, who was in Moscow at the time, recalls that the Iskra article provoked heated debate among the returning students.^[22] But

[19] This included, at least in the cases of Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Odessa universities, joint meetings with elected student organizations.

[20] Iskra, 29 July 1905.

[21] Quoted in G. Engel', "1905g. i studencheskoe dvizhenie v Peterburge," Krasnaia Letopis', no. 2 (1925).

[22] P. A. Garvi, Vospominaniia sotsial-demokrata (New York, 1946), p. 530.

this was more a function of many students' natural impatience with prolonged inactivity than it was a sign of Menshevik influence in the universities.

On the initiative of the Central University Organ of Moscow University and the coalition council of Saint Petersburg University, a fourth all-Russian student congress met in Vyborg, Finland, on 1 September 1905 to discuss the students' options.^[23] Representatives of twenty-three student organizations participated in the congress; only six had an affiliation with any of the revolutionary parties. On the first day the congress debated the advisability of organizing a single bureau to direct a unified student movement but rejected the idea of central control and instead issued a vague call to students to collaborate with "the revolutionary parties." The appeal asked students to end the academic strike and turn the universities into centers of anti-government agitation. In addition, it asked students to prepare for an eventual armed uprising against the govertiment.^[24]

Although the Vyborg congress did manage to attract student delegates from all over Russia, it was clear that a centrally organized student movement was out of the question. The events of the previous academic year showed just how hard it was to control and channel student unrest during a period of political tension. The heady rhetoric regarding armed uprisings and preparation for revolution masked a complete lack of any specific plan outlining how the universities would help bring this about. But despite the absence of an organized center, the studenchestvo quickly evolved a largely uncoordinated but surprisingly uniform response to the new issues facing the universities—the issue of ending the strike, the question of turning the universities into sanctuaries for public political meetings, as well as the questions regarding relations with the professoriate, curricular reform, and increased student participation in university governance. The pattern of events in the major central universities was strikingly similar to the process in the provinces. In all the universities, there was the same complex interplay of academic and political concerns, the same complicated relationship between student organizations and the general student body.

In Saint Petersburg University, the major student organization at the

[23] Rafael Vydrin, Osnovnye momenty studencheskovo dvizheniia v Rossii (Moscow, 1908), p. 59; cf. TsGAOR, f. 102, op. 5, ed. kh. 00, 3ch. 25/1905, l. 11.

[24] The communiqué of this congress can be found in Krasnyi Arkhiv, no. 74 (1935): 197.

beginning of the academic year was the coalition council. The council had helped convene the Vyborg congress and, because of its location, was obviously one of the most important of the country's student organizations. Yet the coalition council was a surprisingly casual and loosely organized group at the beginning of September. It obviously had not recovered from the reverses of the previous year.

Vladimir Voitinskii's memoirs provide a valuable glimpse into the evolution and workings of the coalition council during the fall of 1905 and show the important interconnection between outside pressures and student corporate interests. When Voitinskii returned to the university at the end of August, he decided to join the Social Democratic student faction, which dominated the coalition council. He asked Boris Brazol', the secretary of Sviatlovskii's political-economy study group, to enroll him in the Social Democratic student group. Brazol' took Voitinskii to A. Ia. Kaplan (whom Voitinskii called the "gnome"), a former leader of the Partisans of Struggle group who was now a member of the coalition council and a leader of the student Bolshevik faction.

The gnome did not waste words but bluntly asked me, "You want to join the RSDRP?" These letters meant nothing to me, but he explained that they stood for the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party. When I said yes, he asked whether I was a Bolshevik or a Menshevik. I confessed my ignorance about the difference between the two factions. "That is simple," he replied. "The Bolsheviks are for the revolution while the Mensheviks seek a compromise with tsarism and are ready to betray the workers." Obviously the gnome was a Bolshevik. Since I had no intention of betraying the workers I told him that according to his definition I was a Bolshevik!"^[25]

Kaplan told Voitinskii to read some of Lenin's pamphlets. Although Voitinskii confessed some doubts about the relevance of Lenin's ideas to the current situation, the student Bolsheviks invited him to join their faction. A few days later they told Voitinskii to represent the Bolshevik student faction at the forthcoming general student skhodka which would decide the crucial question of whether to continue or cancel the student strike in force since the previous February.

The committee brushed aside my objection that I was unfamiliar with the party's views. Obviously I was picked up as a figurehead because of my reputation among students who did not belong to any organization. When I asked whether I was to represent the entire party or only its Bolshevik faction, I was told that "we have a common line—to open the university in the

[25] Vladimir Voitinskii, Gody pobed i porazhenii (Berlin, 1923), p. 37.

interests of the revolution and to keep it under control. You will represent both factions. The fight is between us and the Social Revolutionaries."^[26]

Within two weeks, Voitinskii, who had had little idea of the difference between a Bolshevik and a Menshevik, became a leading representative of the coalition council and its Bolshevik faction. Obviously ideological fanaticism counted for little in student politics. Even if one accepts his explanation of why he received such major responsibilities so quickly, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the student movement at the beginning of September was a highly casual affair. The most important point, as will be shown below, was that the coalition council, dominated by the Social Democratic students, knew that it could maintain its position of leadership in the university only to the extent to which it served the needs and answered the demands of the vast majority of students who saw themselves as part of the studenchestvo, not as members of any particular revolutionary party. This pattern was generally true of other VUZy as well.

The first important issue the students had to decide was whether to end the strike. The Social Democrats, both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, wanted the universities to open. The Social Revolutionaries wanted them to stay closed. On 13 September more than two thousand students jammed the main auditorium of Saint Petersburg University to decide the issue. A student named Norskii argued the position of the Social Revolutionaries by calling on the students to continue the academic strike and to go into the villages in order to radicalize the peasantry. The factors that had impelled the studenchestvo to strike in Feburary still held: the autocracy was still in power and the revolution had not yet been won.

After Norskii had finished, Voitinskii strode to the rostrum and replied for the Social Democrats. In arguing for a reopening of the university, Voitinskii made two fundamental points. The first was that the social gulf between the studenchestvo and the peasantry was so wide that few students would make successful agitators in the countryside. The second argument disputed the Social Revolutionary contention that little had changed since February. Voitinskii reminded the student audience that the announcement of the Bulygin Duma had destroyed the fragile coalition between the liberals and the labor movement. The workers were now alone and needed help. Furthermore, the revolution

[26] Ibid.

would be decided in the cities, not in the villages. Although the students, unlike other groups in the political arena, were not a clearly defined socioeconomic class, their concentration in the major urban centers gave them a vital role to play in the revolution. The immediate task, Voitinskii continued, was to consolidate the student movement and give it a sense of direction. This could be achieved only if the universities stayed open.^[27]

Just after Voitinskii finished his speech, a young worker named Peter Starostin unexpectedly asked for permission to address the meeting. Starostin appealed to the students to cooperate with the working class and reminded them that if they reopened the universities, they could play an important role in the future course of the political struggle. Notwithstanding years of past rhetoric about student-worker cooperation, this was the first time that most of the students present had been addressed by a real worker, and Starostin's speech made a vivid impression.^[28]

The students voted 1,702 to 243 for the Social Democratic resolution favoring the reopening of the university. The resolution stipulated that the strike would be adjourned until such time as it "became useful from the point of view of revolutionary tactics." The university would be opened to prepare for the "forthcoming decisive struggle. . . . May our open university be more dangerous for the autocracy than it was when it was on strike!" The resolution also called for the convening of a constituent assembly after the successful conclusion of an armed uprising against the government.^[29]

Other VUZy voted similar resolutions. In Moscow University a general student meeting convened on 7 September. It attracted more than four thousand students. The crowd was so large that the Central University Organ directed the students into four different meeting halls. There were four resolutions on the agenda. The first called for the reopening of the university "solely for revolutionary agitation among the masses," thus ruling out the continuation of normal academic work. The third resolution called for a continuation of the strike, and the fourth advocated the opening of the university "for academic work and political education." But 1,202 of the 1,719 students who stayed until the final vote opted for the so-called second resolution, which advocated reopening the university as a "revolutionary base" (ochag ), with the auditoriums to be used for the purposes of political education. The second

[27] D. [A. Diakonov], 1905 i 1906gg. v Peterburgskom Universitete (Saint Petersburg, 1907), pp. 23–24.

[28] Voitinskii, Gody pobed i porazhenii, pp. 55–57.

[29] Diakonov, 1905 i 1906gg., pp. 23–24.

resolution emphasized that "there is room in the university for those who wish to study."^[30] In fact there was little difference between the second and the fourth resolutions except for one crucial point—the psychological impact of justifying the decision to end the strike in revolutionary rather than liberal rhetoric.

The victorious resolution came to be known as the Second Moscow Resolution and served as a model for students in such provincial universities as Odessa, where a student skhodka approved the platform in its entirety after discussing all the alternative Moscow resolutions.^[31] At Kazan University the students passed a similar motion.^[32] Political demands featured the rejection of the Bulygin Duma and the convening of a constituent assembly. There were some exceptions: the institute of communications, for instance, rejected a motion allowing nonstudents to attend meetings.

The students' decision to end the strike helped trigger a chain reaction of events that exploded into the great general strike of mid-October. By the end of September the universities would become huge public meeting halls, wherein the working class could discover its revolutionary potential and forge new links to the liberal and radical intelligentsia. But did either the students or the revolutionary parties act with a blueprint detailing how the universities would radicalize the working class?

The reopening of the universities was to give the Social Democrats a badly needed opportunity to improve links with the Russian working class, which had until autumn shown little inclination to lend them consistent support. The November 1904 street demonstrations had mainly attracted radical students, not workers. Bloody Sunday had ignited a massive series of strikes but failed to consolidate the position of the revolutionary parties in the factories. Social Democratic calls for May Day demonstrations had met a disappointing response in the central Russian cities; the Potemkin uprising failed to spark larger protest. In the non-Russian areas, the government had a harder time. Jewish and Polish workers built barricades in the streets of Lodz, and a general

[30] POA, XIIIc(2), folder 6C.

[31] Odesskie Novosti, 4 October 1905.

[32] Odesskii Listok, 6 October 1905. The Soviet historian A. E. Ivanov, tabulating the voting results from eleven VUZy (including seven universities), shows that 8,660 students (75.4 percent) favored ending the strike. Slightly over 40 percent of the total student body voted, a high figure considering the unsettled conditions in mid-September. (See "Demokraticheskoe studenchestvo v revoliutsii 1905–07gg.," Istoricheskie Zapiski, no. 107 [1982]: 184.)

strike broke out in Tiflis. In the central Russian cities, the spring and summer of 1905 saw significant organizational activity on the part of the workers but relatively little political confrontation, especially compared with the non-Russian areas.^[33]

The end of the summer saw the Marxist left in general disarray. A September conference called by the Bund and attended by representatives of the major Social Democratic factions agreed on a strategy of boycotting the elections to the Bulygin Duma, a boycott which, it was hoped, would spark a general strike.^[34] There seems to have been no specific discussion of using the universities to galvanize the working class, nor does it appear that there were representatives of student organizations at the conference.

Soviet historians assert that the students ended the strike in response to a Bolshevik appeal.^[35] Years later Leonid Martov held that the strike ended because of the Mensheviks' Iskra article. But Garvi and Voitinskii, both of whom were to join the Mensheviks, admit that Martov exaggerated the impact of the Iskra article.^[36] And Nikolai Rozhkov, a celebrated Soviet historian who was a privat-dozent in Moscow University in 1905 and had close links to the Bolshevik party, insisted in his memoirs that at the beginning of September, most students were unwilling to make an active commitment to the revolutionary parties.^[37]

The Second Moscow Resolution, therefore, was not part of a coordinated political plan. The students, always sensitive to the issue of police brutality and conscious of the political traditions of the intelligentsia,

[33] On the labor movement, see Victoria E. Bonnell, Roots of Rebellion: Workers' Politics and Organizations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1900–1914 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), esp. pp. 106–192. Bonnell notes that "the pace of unionization in 1905 was directly correlated with political conditions. In contrast to party circles, which could be conducted clandestinely by a small number of people, trade unions, to be effective, required a mass membership and opportunities for open assembly and freedom of speech and the press. A modicum of civil liberties was the indispensable precondition for an organized labor movement in Russia. Prior to September, however, workers were seldom able to obtain permission for public meetings, and clandestine gatherings were vulnerable to police and the fearsome Cossack troops" (p. 124).

[34] Sidney Harcave, The Russian Revolution of 1905 (London, 1964), p. 168.

[35] This view is advanced by P. S. Gusiatnikov (Revoliutsionnoe studencheskoe dvizhenie, p. 159), A. E. Ivanov ("Universitety Rossii"), and T. P. Bondarevskaia ("Bolshevistkaia organizatsiia universiteta v revoliutsii 1905–07gg.," in Peterburgskii Universitet i revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Rossii [Leningrad, 1979], pp. 67–81). These historians of course ignore the Iskra article and the fact that the Mensheviks were the first to propagandize the political advantages of open universities.

[36] Garvi, Vospominaniia sotsial-demokrata, p. 530; Voitinskii, Gody pobed i porazhenii, p. 55. The Bolshevik appeal to the students, "Ko vsei uchashchelsia molodëzhi," appeared in mid-September: TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 173, 1. 421.

[37] N. A. Rozhkov, 1905 god: Istoricheskii ocberk (Moscow, 1926), pp. 75–76.

wanted to make some sort of oppositional gesture. The nature of this gesture was determined by the inherent conflict between the self-interest of the students as a group and their principal protest tactic, the strike. The strike was the weapon wielded most easily by the studenchestvo, but it was a weapon that caused the government little immediate harm, dispersed the students, and nullified the universities as a political force. Furthermore, continuing the strike would have meant the loss of more study time and, for many, the chance of earning a degree.

How could Russia's students return to the classroom without giving the impression that they were "surrendering"? (Many had doubtless just had long discussions with their parents about accepting the Bulygin Duma.) The Second Moscow Resolution, and similar resolutions passed at other universities, solved this problem by linking the decision to end the strike with an overt commitment to radical, not liberal, politics. This was especially clear in the political resolutions calling for the convening of a constituent assembly along with preparation for an armed uprising. To be sure, the commitment was rhetorical. Rozhkov was right: few students were willing to take the risks of active involvement in the revolutionary movement. The same students who enthusiastically called for turning the universities into "bases of the revolution" were surprised to see thousands of workers actually take over the lecture halls. But the decision to embrace radical resolutions provides valuable insight into the psychology of the studenchestvo . And events would soon show how important the gesture was.

In voting for the Second Moscow Resolution the students were rejecting the liberal position of a university "above politics." Liberal resolutions calling for using the universities as centers of political education provided that academic activities continued unhindered were too bland for most students' tastes. One reason for this rejection of the liberal position was that the studenchestvo believed liberal politics connoted cowardice and surrender, as epitomized by the professors' willingness to work under the 1884 Statute. Furthermore, the liberals did not seem to recognize the students as being a group with specific economic, social, and even academic needs. The second congress of the Academic Union had shown that the professors were still hoping for a European university where they would govern and the students would study. If Russia attained political freedom, the student movement would presumably melt away. The professors did not realize, at least in their public statements, that student unrest had a social as well as a political dimension. Many students felt that this liberal conception of the university, which

posited a paternalistic relationship between faculty and students, was more suited to countries where universities drew an entrenched economic and social elite and were in a less ambiguous position.

The appeals that several leading professors addressed to the studenchestvo at the beginning of September to safeguard the universities and end the strike were clearly based on the supposition that the studenchestvo, like the professoriate, had a vested interest in seeing an early end to political uncertainty and confrontation politics; they hoped the focus would shift away from the streets and toward the forthcoming Duma.^[38] Meanwhile, leading professors argued, the universities would help develop political freedom in two ways. First, they would nurture Russian science and train an educated class, thus laying a secure foundation for freedom and progress. A second liberal argument emerged at the second congress of the Academic Union and in a September Pravo article by Ivan Grevs.^[39] Grevs contended that merely by resuming their normal functions, the universities would expand the parameters of political freedom in the nation by constantly probing for chinks in the government's armor. For example, the universities would sponsor public lectures and thereby achieve a de facto victory in the struggle to guarantee freedom of speech. Professors would be bolder in their lectures and thereby win more academic freedom. "We should take what we have," Grevs urged, "and fight for more." But these appeals went largely unheeded in September, as the studenchestvo made demands and took positions that threatened the professors' position within the university and endorsed the direct involvement of the universities in the revolution.

In voting for the Second Moscow Resolution, the students had rejected not only the views preferred by their professors but also those put forward by the Social Revolutionary party to carry the revolution to the villages. On the face of it, the Social Revolutionaries certainly had a respectable case. In the summer of 1905 there was a marked upsurge of peasant unrest in European Russia.^[40] As the academic year started, the countryside was beginning to emerge as a political force. Student opposition to the Social Revolutionary position largely derived from the fact that the Social Revolutionaries were calling on the students to sacrifice their university education in favor of revolutionary action.

[38] See the public appeals to the students by Professors Gol'tsev and Kovalevskii, published in Russkie Vedomosti, 4 and 8 September 1905. On 7 September, Russkie Vedomosti published a stern lead editorial warning the studenchestvo to remember their responsibilities to the nation and to refrain from actions that would endanger the universities.

[39] "Vremennye pravila 27ovo Avgusta," Pravo, no. 36 (1905).

[40] Harcave, Russian Revolution, p. 171.

Thus the students returned to the universities with no clear sense of what they wanted or what kind of situation they would face. At the same time they had rejected both the liberal position of the professoriate and the total commitment of the Social Revolutionaries.

The Political Meetings

Sometime in mid-September, a worker appeared at a student meeting at Saint Petersburg University and scolded the students for discussing their own problems when a revolution was going on. At first singly, then in groups, curious workers began to enter the "free university." The coalition council did not know what to do with them and decided to entrust Voitinskii with the job of organizing evening meetings for the workers. At first he tried to arrange lectures on the history of the labor movement. The idea failed because Voitinskii could not find enough student lecturers who could hold the attention of their audiences. But the workers continued to come, and soon the coalition council opened all the larger classrooms as well as the main hall of the university to accommodate the crowds at the evening meetings.^[41]

Describing the first large workers' meeting at the university, Voitinskii recalled:

We had neither agenda nor speakers. I began with a few words of welcome, suggested that we discuss the current political situation, and turned the meeting over to the floor. The ensuing discussion was utterly chaotic. Some of the volunteer speakers were wholly inarticulate. The next day we arranged to have a dozen speakers from various leftist organizations on whom we called intermittently, with volunteers from the floor.^[42]

News of the meetings in the universities and other VUZy rapidly spread through the factories; workers would tell their comrades that the police were not interfering. So the crowds grew steadily larger. Why did the workers come? In mid-September, at least, the major reason was curiosity. The workers had little patience for hearing arguments between the various revolutionary parties, but they showed avid interest in using the meetings for education and self-expression. It was not unusual for workers to ask for the floor in order to read their own poetry. Soon whole factories would turn up at the university without notice. Harried representatives of the coalition council would scurry to find a large enough

[41] Voitinskii, Gody pobed i porazhenii, p. 57.

[42] Ibid.

room, and the task became steadily more difficult. On the evening of 11 October, for example, ten thousand railroad workers streamed into Saint Petersburg University, and the faculty council worried that the buildings would collapse under the weight of the throng. Even drozhki drivers, the age-old scourge of Saint Petersburg students, asked the coalition council to give them a place to meet.

In the universities, the various groups of Russian urban society, previously isolated from one another, met on equal terms. Whether lawyer or worker, the participant at the university meetings was experiencing a sense of personal political freedom for the first time. In a confidential memorandum to Witte written in November 1905, a highly placed government official made the telling point that the meetings in the universities wrought profound psychological changes in the Russian working class. By day rudely treated and deprived of respect, the Russian workers became, as soon as they crossed the threshold of the university, people who were treated with consideration and even deference.^[43] The contrast with the routine of the factories became more jarring.

One account, quite typical, portrays the atmosphere of these meetings:

The people . . . come from varied backgrounds . . . university students, high school students, thousands of workers, soldiers, sailors, and officers, the very poor, and even drifters [bosiaki ]. The thousands of workers assembled at the meeting show a great sense of decorum and restraint! One would think that we have had a free political life for a long time! The hall is packed, the people stand on window sills. The crowd listens with rapt attention. It does not stir for hours at a time. A bad speaker provokes grumbling, noise, and protests. But there are good orators, the revolution has spawned them, and the crowd hears them with exalted expressions and fervent gazes. After the speech: cries of applause, the sound of the president's bell, quiet. A new orator grasps the attention of the audience. After the end of the meeting, after having sung the "Marseillaise" and the "Varshavianka" . . . the throng is in a holiday mood. It leaves in smaller groups, agitatedly discussing what it heard and promising to call new comrades to the next meeting.^[44]

[43] Materialy k istorii russkoi kontrrevoliutsii (Saint Petersburg, 1908), p. 60. This memorandum, written by someone who had extensive access to confidential police files, from which he quoted at length, gives an interesting account of why the government lost control in 1905. He sees the issuance of the 27 August Rules as being a major turning point in the development of the revolution.

[44] "Narodnye mitingi v Peterburge," Proletarii, no. 25 (1905). Trotsky commented: "Here the orators of the Revolution reigned unchallenged. Here Social Democracy bound together with an indissoluble living political bond the countless atoms that comprised the people and translated the mighty social passions of the masses into the refined language of revolutionary slogans." According to John Keep, Trotsky wrote with "pardonable exaggeration." (Quoted in Keep, Rise of Social Democracy, p. 218.)

One Menshevik recalled that "for the first time in the history of the liberation movement the barriers separating the university from the factory and the educated strata from the masses of the workers began to crumble by themselves."^[45] New possibilities opened up before the revolutionary parties. They now had broader opportunities for contact with the workers, and from the middle of September onward, as one observer noted, a dynamic relationship developed between the VUZy and the outlying workers' districts: the meetings would radicalize the workers, who in turn would return to the VUZy in even greater numbers and radicalize the meetings. The barriers that had separated the revolutionary parties from the mass of the workers did not disappear completely. But, in the words of Evgenii Maevskii, a Menshevik historian of the Revolution of 1905, they began to weaken. Before September, the average worker was only dimly aware of the "secret and strange 'committees.' Now he saw their orators face to face."^[46]

Perhaps nowhere was the revolutionary impact of the meetings in the universities felt more than in Moscow. At the beginning of 1905 the Moscow working class was even more conservative than its Saint Petersburg counterpart; in July, workers in one of the largest textile mills in the city had refused even to listen to agitators advocating an eight-hour day. But in the latter part of September it was the Moscow working class that touched off the central Russian strike movement.^[47] The strike wave spread to Saint Petersburg and other Russian cities by the beginning of October. When the all-important Union of Railway Workers paralyzed the nation's transport, the tsar wavered, considered the possibility of establishing a military dictatorship, and then split the liberation movement by issuing the manifesto of 17 October.

Although the universities played an important role in the politici-

[45] Garvi, Vospominaniia sotsial-demokrata, p. 532.

[46] For an assessment of the student movement and the meetings from a Menshevik point of view, see E. Maevskii, "Obshchaia kartina dvizheniia," in L. Martov, ed., Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii, (Saint Petersburg, 1910), vol. 2, part 1, pp. 73–76.

[47] A fine work on the Moscow working class is Laura Engelstein's Moscow 1905 (Stanford, 1982). She notes that although the September strike movement began peacefully, over work-related issues, it soon changed. "There were two specific reasons for this: first the concentration of workers in the downtown areas; and second, the state of political agitation that had seized the Moscow University student body in the wake of the August 27 autonomy decree. As a result of this geographic coincidence, politics moved into the open, under the very nose of the anxious and watchful authorities. It was not long before persons of all social classes found themselves shoulder to shoulder in public places, before the hostile eye of the police, who attempted, unsuccessfully, to send them home. This was the incendiary mix that the government perceived as most threatening to its own political safety" (p. 87).

zation of the major Russian urban centers, the police and the military respected the 27 August Rules and did not stop the meetings inside the VUZy . But the principle of holding political meetings in the universities sharply divided the professoriate from the studenchestvo and the organized junior faculty. If the professors acquiesced in the use of academic premises as mass meeting halls, they risked government closing of the universities. Nor did they like turning the universities over to the urban crowds. This violated their notion of the proper relationship between university and society. Both students and professors realized, however, that stopping the meetings would cripple the labor movement, which would thus lose its physical base at a crucial time. In the ensuing confrontation over the issue of meetings, the professoriate would find itself isolated from the rest of the academic community, and the universities would close for another year.

Student Politics

The student movement in the fall of 1905 presents a striking example of the close interrelationship between academic and general politics. The radical student leaders began to see that the universities were playing an important part in the developing revolutionary situation; they wanted to make sure that they would stay open. But they also knew that their ability to control the situation in the universities depended in large part on their relationship to the mass of the student body. Most students embraced the rhetoric of the revolutionary movement, but they also had their own corporate interests, chief among which were reform of the system of higher education, continuation of their studies, more financial aid, and a greater voice in university governance. The radical activists had to concern themselves with these corporate aspirations in order to ensure that the studenchestvo would support them in a confrontation with the government or the professoriate over the question of meetings.

At Saint Petersburg University, Vladimir Voitinskii continued to work as a liaison between the coalition council and the student body. "Probably the students did not need the representatives of the leftist parties to handle their academic affairs," he recalls. "But as long as we did our academic job properly in the morning we were sure of our grip on the masses of students and could keep our hands on the university after dusk [when the workers came for meetings]."^[48]

In order to consolidate its authority in the student body, the coalition

[48] Voitinskii, Gody pobed i porazhenii, p. 56.

council called a mass meeting for 15 September to discuss academic affairs. The agenda included the issues of major concern to the students: more electives, abolition of the uniform, changes in university disciplinary procedures, a possible boycott of certain "reactionary" professors, and, most important, the questions of university admissions and financial aid.^[49]

Almost as soon as it began the meeting erupted in turmoil. The Zionist student group demanded a resumption of the strike until the government abolished the numerus clausus, and they wanted an explanation as to how the studenchestvo could have rallied so impressively in 1899 and then failed to strike after the 1903 Kishinev pogrom. Now, the Zionists insisted, the studenchestvo had a pressing moral obligation to help Jewish youth. The president of the meeting, Engel', interrupted the Zionist speakers. There was no such thing as a separate Jewish question, he insisted. The fight against religious and national discrimination had to be part of a general struggle against political repression. The chair rejected the Zionist demand and the meeting broke up in chaos.^[50]

It resumed on 19 September. The previous incident did not cool the enthusiasm of the student body; the main hall of the university was packed. This time the Zionists proposed a motion of no confidence in the coalition council, but the students rejected this overwhelmingly. The agenda then turned to the issue of university admissions. A schoolteacher appealed to the meeting to help those who were barred from the universities because they lacked the required gymnasium diploma. The students also heard a representative of a workers' aid society, who asked them to help the workers get a higher education. Other speakers warned the students against allowing themselves to become co-opted by a "system" that needed the universities to serve its own ends. The meeting passed a series of resolutions that called for important changes in the structure of Russian higher education. The most important demand was for the removal of all existing restrictions on the admission of Jews and women. The students also called for courses in European constitutional law, and for history courses dealing with the nineteenth century. In addition, they passed a motion advocating university extension courses, a return to a curriculum based primarily on elective courses, and open admissions to graduates of all secondary schools.^[51]

[49] Diakonov, 1905 i 1906gg., pp. 24–27.

[50] Ibid., pp. 20–29.

[51] Ibid.

The meeting also called for a boycott of seven professors branded as "reactionaries" by the coalition council.^[52] The faculty council, which had been looking the other way during the evening meetings at the university, told the studenchestvo that it would not tolerate the boycott, which it saw as a serious threat to its position in the university as well as to the doctrine of academic freedom. The faculty council demanded a showdown with the coalition council on the boycott issue. At a tense meeting, Professor L. I. Petrazhitskii, a legal authority who won the respect even of the radical students, told the representatives of the coalition council that if they did not rescind the boycott, the professors would close the university immediately. Petrazhitskii also appealed to the students' sense of justice; none of the accused professors had received a "fair trial." As for the student demand that the university appoint such "progressive" figures as Struve or Miliukov, Petrazhitskii replied that faculty appointments were the concern of the professors, not the students.^[53]

Aside from the issue of the boycott, where the faculty zealously defended the principle of student noninterference in faculty affairs, the faculty council gave the student proposals a positive if cautious response. The council agreed in principle to the demands for the end of admissions restrictions and for fundamental curricular reform, but warned of the legal obstacles that had to be negotiated. The council told the student delegates that henceforth student representatives would participate in financial-aid decisions. Furthermore, the managing board of the university dining hall would include six students, three representatives of the senior faculty, and three from the junior faculty.^[54]

On 27 September the coalition council called off the boycott and admitted that it had not accorded the seven professors fair treatment.^[55] The incident underscored the fact that the student movement could not be judged solely on the basis of its radical rhetoric. Obviously the students, including the radical organizations, were still open to the influence of the professoriate, especially when the latter appealed to their sense of fairness and seemed to be meeting major student corporate demands. Furthermore, the coalition council had demanded that the proscribed professors be replaced not by noted revolutionaries but, rather, by such pillars of Russian liberalism as Struve, Miliukov, and Kovalev-

[52] Ibid.

[53] Voitinskii, Gody pobed i porazhenii, pp. 79–83.

[54] Ibid.

[55] Diakonov, 1905 i 1906gg., pp. 40–41.

skii. Obviously there were limits to the students' readiness to accept the call by the revolutionary parties to wrest control of the universities from the professoriate.

The coalition council was in a vulnerable position. It had to direct academic politics, to keep the university open for meetings, and to supervise the increasing numbers of citizens who were flocking to the evening rallies. As the political tension grew, there were signs of increasing polarization within the student body. On 27 September a group of dissident left-wing students demanded a halt to all discussion of academic matters and the complete mobilization of the university for political purposes. This was a serious attack on the coalition council and its recognition of the importance of academic politics. The council sent to the meeting a speaker who implored the leftists not to jeopardize the unity of the student body. The speaker emphasized that the political consciousness and unity of the studenchestvo drew on dissatisfaction not only with the general regime but also with the students' place in the universities. Concentration on specific political issues to the exclusion of corporate concerns would fracture this unity. The skhodka rejected the leftist position.^[56]

That same day the council announced upcoming elections for a new student government to direct academic affairs; henceforth the council would devote most of its attention to organizing the meetings and other political issues. Practical reasons motivated the decision: the burden of directing the student meetings, negotiating with the professors, and supervising the allocation of rooms for the evening meetings was becoming too heavy.

The new student government was to be headed by a Council of Student Elders, elected by the whole student body and consisting of one delegate for every 250 students. This Council of Elders would answer to the general skhodka .^[57]

The resulting election campaign showed that some basic currents of the student movement retained their importance: a deep mistrust of liberal slogans, verbal support of Social Democracy, and a strong sense of corporate identity and interest. Four major political groupings competed for support in the election: the Academists, the Kadets, the Social Democrats, and the Social Revolutionaries.

The Academists, whom the students generally associated with the po-

[56] Ibid.

[57] Ibid., p. 43.

litical right, campaigned on a platform calling for the complete separation of the universities and politics. They had opposed the strike at the beginning of the year and now demanded a halt to public meetings in the university. In addition they wanted the abolition of the traditional skhodka, arguing that it was dominated by left-wing students and did not reflect the true sentiments of the student body as a whole. But they carefully avoided formulating any specific political platform.^[58]

On 24 September, representatives of various Academist organizations met in Moscow to draft a statement of principles. The meeting issued the following appeal to Russia's students:

In this very difficult period it behooves the Russian studenchestvo and each individual student, who is also a citizen of his country, to demonstrate a serious . . . sense of reality. The nation needs cadres of well-educated people who are prepared for self-sacrifice. The universities must remain open in order to guarantee the future supply of these cadres. Anyone wishing to serve the nation or engage in public life must possess a solid educational foundation. Academic life must not be jeopardized. If it is, the possibility of an open university becomes unthinkable; so does any possibility of students coming together to discuss their own interests, whatever they may be. There is no doubt that the present unstable situation in the universities will lead to their closing.^[59]

This statement was noteworthy for its seeming moderation and toleration of all political activity that did not directly threaten the existence of the universities. Furthermore, the Academists recognized and appealed to the students' sense of corporate self-interest and tried to use this as a way of detaching the students from their rhetorical allegiance to the revolutionary parties. But when the Academists at Saint Petersburg University called a campaign meeting on 4 October, only sixty students came. Nevertheless, the speakers put on a brave front. They told the audience that the majority of the student body was hostile to the "dictatorship" of the coalition council but was too unorganized to do anything about it: hence the need for a real alternative in the university. But even the small audience turned hostile. The Academists lost control over their own meeting and left in disarray. The major reason for the cool reception was widespread feeling that they had acted as informers for the inspectorate and belonged to the right. The student body did not accept the protestations of the Academist speakers that their group had

[58] For a sympathetic discussion of Academism in the fall of 1905, see A. S. Budilovich, Nauka i politika (Saint Petersburg, 1905).

[59] Ibid., p. 133.

nothing in common with the old Dennitsa, a reactionary, anti-Semitic student organization which had received strong government support in the 1903–1904 academic year.^[60]

The newly formed Constitutional Democratic or Kadet student group offered yet another alternative to the revolutionary student parties. On 11 October, Veselovskii, the group's representative, outlined its platform before five hundred students of the juridical faculty. The political section of the platform featured four points: support of basic civil liberties, a parliamentary government with legislative control over the Council of Ministers and the budget, a constituent assembly to be called by the Duma, and free, equal, secret, and direct suffrage. The Kadets' academic platform offered clear alternatives to both the revolutionary factions and the Academists. In a major challenge to the revolutionary student groups, the Kadets denied the future usefulness of the traditional skhodka . This issue of the skhodka was to become a major dividing line between liberal and leftist student politics. In calling for a student parliament based on proportional representation to replace the skhodka, the Kadets rejected the traditional idea that student affairs could be settled on the basis of direct democracy. But the difference between the Kadets and the revolutionary parties over the skhodka really spoke to a more fundamental issue, that of the continued survival of the notion of the studenchestvo in a time of political and social change. The Kadet rejection of the skhodka proceeded from the assumption that the Russian universities would come to resemble their European counterparts as the country continued its course of political liberalization and social development. And like European students, Russian students would come to dissociate the university from their political activities. To be sure, a student government would still be needed to deal with academic issues, but the old ties that bound the Russian students to the traditions of the studenchestvo would erode and disappear, victims of the growing political and social differentiation of the student body.

At the same time the Kadet speakers rejected the Academist call for a complete separation of the universities from politics. In a direct reference to the Academist platform, one Kadet speaker warned that "cadres of well-educated people" had no business staying in the classroom while the political battle deciding the nation's fate raged around them. The universities should further the political education of the nation, a goal to be accomplished without disturbing their purely academic activities.^[61]

[60] Diakonov, 1905 i 1906gg., p. 52.

[61] Ibid., pp. 58–59.

The Kadets challenged the right of the Social Democrats to speak for the majority of students. Recent massive votes in favor of Social Democratic resolutions, they argued, were only superficial guides to the real mood of the students. Veselovskii warned that "the ideals of Social Democracy have not fully penetrated the consciousness of the majority of the students. If a decisive moment comes, this majority will either abstain from political action and fade away, or it will serve merely as cannon fodder for others."^[62] If they stopped to think about it, the Kadets told the students, they would realize that they did not have as much in common with the Social Democrats as they seemed to believe.

Replying for the Social Democrats (and for the coalition council), Voitinskii defended the Marxist cause and reminded the students of the differences between the liberals and the Social Democrats. He appealed to the students' deep-seated suspicions of liberalism. Unlike the Social Democrats, Voitinskii argued, liberals were ready to make a "deal" with the autocracy and abandon the fight for the final victory of the revolution. Moreover, Voitinskii challenged the Kadet assertion that the real interests of the studenchestvo were bound up with liberalism and that because of differences in psychological temperament and social position there was no real basis for an alliance between the students and the revolutionary camp. Voitinskii told the meeting that

Social Democracy aims for a unified movement of the proletariat where there is room for all those who share its views, regardless of whether one is a member of the intelligentsia or a worker. The determining factor is not merely an arbitrary label; it is psychological awareness. This awareness can be attained by the intelligentsia as well as by the workers. . . . Once a person has reached this political consciousness he has no choice but to join the ranks of the proletarian masses. . . . The studenchestvo, which is also striving for the liberation of the people, should not be tempted by the blandishments of parties like the Kadets.^[63]

The Social Revolutionary speaker made a bristling speech calling on the students to involve themselves more directly in the revolutionary struggle. The speaker also explained that his faction's decision to participate in the student elections did not conflict with its view that the studenchestvo should place politics ahead of corporate interests. The Social Revolutionary representative explained that the "Council of Student Elders is a political as well as an academic organization. We will

[62] Ibid., p. 59.

[63] Ibid., p. 60.

participate in the consideration of academic matters since we look at them from the political point of view." He promised that they had "no intention of obstructing academic life." The faction's political platform featured a democratic republic, a constituent assembly, self-determination for non-Russians, and socialization of the land.^[64]

The elections ended in clear victories for the Social Democrats. The students of the juridical faculty gave the Social Democrats 478 votes, the Social Revolutionaries 85, the Kadets 105, and a nonaligned "wild" faction 98 votes.^[65] The Social Democratic leadership of the coalition council also served on the Council of Student Elders. Despite the fact that it had proposed the bifurcation of the student government into a coalition council and the Council of Student Elders, the Social Democratic students obviously did not want to surrender their key position in the regulation of academic affairs.

Thus despite the Kadets' sweeping political demands and the Social Revolutionaries' promise to respect the academic functions of the university, one month after the end of the strike the students still threw their support to the Social Democrats. The Social Democrats clearly understood the mood of the students—rhetorical radicalism, suspicion of liberalism, and a strong desire to keep studying even during the general political crisis. By its skillful handling of September's student meetings, the coalition council demonstrated its recognition of the necessity not only of protecting the university's role as the center of the city's political life but also of safeguarding and advancing the students' corporate interests.

Moscow

Student politics at Moscow and other universities demonstrated marked similarities to the pattern shown in Saint Petersburg.^[66] In sharp contrast to the behavior of the Saint Petersburg Faculty Council, however, who had decided to accept the meetings in the university and avoid confrontation with the students and junior faculty, the Moscow pro-

[64] Ibid.

[65] The Social Democrats received 60 percent of the vote among the natural sciences faculty.

[66] On events at Kazan University, see Korbut, Kazanskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, vol. 2, pp. 219–226; for Tomsk University, M. I. Matveev, Studenty Sibiri v revoliutsionnom dvizhenii (Tomsk, 1966), pp. 157–162. There is a useful survey in A. E. Ivanov, "Universitety rossii."

fessors tried to stop them and thereby stumbled into a bitter fight with both groups. In the process, the professors' attempt to split liberal from leftist students ended in dismal failure.

When Moscow University's students returned to classes, the Central University Organ, which had been constituted during the 1904–1905 academic year, called a general student meeting on 12 September for the purpose of forming a student government. The basic proposals of the CUO strongly resembled those which the coalition council of Saint Petersburg University would advance two weeks later. The CUO suggested two organizations: a coalition council, and a new Central University Organ.^[67] The coalition council would consist of two representatives from each of the three student revolutionary factions: Bolshevik, Menshevik, and Social Revolutionary. They were to "direct the revolutionary movement" in the university, coordinate student political action with the labor and peasant movements, call political meetings in the university, and, if the necessity arose, convene purely student-based meetings. The council's decisions were not to be binding on any of the three constituent groups. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the proposed council was that it was not to be subject to the directives of the skhodka . The politically committed students obviously distrusted the revolutionary fervor of the student masses and wanted to enjoy a maximum degree of freedom of action in the event of a crisis.

The Central University Organ would "regulate student life within the university." It was to consist of twenty-six delegates, one from each faculty course (first-year juridical students, second-year medical students, and so on) who were to be elected by secret suffrage. Unlike the coalition council, the Central University Organ was to be directly responsible to the skhodka . Basic duties of the CUO included "liaison between students, professors, and junior faculty . . . the organization of a student court, the compiling of data on police repression of students, etc."^[68]

In a series of meetings in September, the student body elected twenty-six delegates to the new Central University Organ. The new CUO soon split into two groups: a majority of eighteen and a moderate minority of eight delegates who called themselves the Delegate Council.^[69] Like the Kadet student faction at Saint Petersburg University, the Delegate Council made the role of the traditional skhodka one of the major issues, calling into question the skhodka 's continued legitimacy as a source of

[67] TsGAOR, f. 102, 3ch. 32/1905, l. 36.

[68] Ibid.

[69] Russkie Vedomosti, 8 October 1905.

authority in student affairs. Nonetheless, while the Delegate Council disputed the binding authority of skhodka resolutions, it refused to accept the Academist call for a university "above politics." In its published platform the Delegate Council explained that the universities had a dual character: they were academic institutions which also occupied an important place in Russian public life.^[70] Neither academic nor political functions could be sacrificed without fundamentally compromising the function and mission of the university. The group called for the establishment of a "cohesive academic community," a student government independent of political parties, the speedy implementation of an elective curriculum, reorganization of academic departments, and the removal of sexual, national, and religious restrictions on university admissions.

In short, two interrelated processes marked student politics in the fall of 1905. First, the students began to see that their resolutions of early September actually had made an impact, and therefore they felt a strong obligation to keep the universities open. Second, they began to use the revolutionary process to assert their own demands for changes within the higher-education structure. Both processes had unsettling implications for a senior faculty which had hoped that the 27 August Rules had finally given it the chance to govern the universities.

The Professors in the Middle

The Delegate Council's hopes for a cohesive academic community quickly foundered on the issue of on-going political meetings in the university. The faculty council alternately pleaded with and warned the students that the meetings were intolerable and that, if they continued, the professors would close the university. The faculty council clearly hoped that the majority of students would listen and join the call for a halt to the meetings. Speaking in a faculty council meeting, rector Trubetskoi told his colleagues: "We can save the university if we stick together . . . the faculty council is now the boss [khoziain ]."^[71]

Trubetskoi's optimism was somewhat premature. With some exceptions, the increasing tempo of public meetings in the university did not interfere with normal academic life. As a matter of principle, however,

[70] Ibid.

[71] The minutes of the Moscow University Faculty Council are an especially valuable source for following the dilemmas of the professoriate in the fall of 1905. On Trubetskoi's statement, see TsGIAM, f. 418, op. 249, ed. kh. 95 (meeting of 2 September 1905).

the faculty council would not tolerate the university's new role as a popular meeting hall, especially after the outside crowds sharply increased as a result of the 19 September printers' strike. As the university became the focal point of Moscow's political life, the faculty council, unlike its Saint Petersburg counterpart, decided to take a firm stand.

On 22 September the council voted to close the university. Explaining the action to the students, assistant rector Manuilov warned that "the university will function as a university or it will not function at all. . . . [The Second Moscow Resolution] is in fact unworkable." At the same time Manuilov took pains to reassure the students that their professors had not become reactionaries. "We are all," he said, "fighters for political freedom. We may differ . . . about the tactics necessary to achieve it . . . but we all want it. Let us all work together to save the university for our common purpose." Trubetskoi also pleaded with the students to cooperate with the professoriate and accept the faculty's jurisdiction. He announced that the "university is not the place for political meetings. It cannot and should not be a public square, and by the same token a public square cannot be a university. Any attempt to turn the university into a popular meeting place will destroy it."^[72] Both Trubetskoi and Manuilov were shaken by the warning they had just received from the Moscow chief of police: if any meeting spilled out into the streets surrounding the university, troops would fire on the crowds.^[73]

Trubetskoi and Manuilov sought to rally a solid majority of students to their side by closing the university. They hoped that the moderates would put pressure on the leftists of the coalition council to stop the meetings. Instead, the faculty's action backfired. The professors had misread the students' mood, as they admitted at a gloomy faculty meeting hastily convened on the evening of 22 September.

For years the professoriate had been telling the government that giving it control of the universities would be a major step in solving the problem of student unrest. Now, three short weeks after the announcement of the 27 August Rules, Moscow University was closed, not by order of the minister of education or because of a student strike, but at the insistence of the professors themselves.

The Moscow professors agonized over their future course of action. They knew that, whether they liked it or not, the university had become a major factor in the developing political situation. They recognized

[72] Russkie Vedomosti, 19 September 1905.

[73] TsGIAM, f. 418, op. 249, ed. kh. 95, l. 252.

that their decisions had more than academic significance, and most were uncomfortable at the growing rapport between the students and the onrushing labor movement. At the 22 September meeting of the faculty council, Professor M. A. Menzbir mused aloud that "somehow we have to separate the student movement from the labor movement."^[74] B. K. Mlodzievskii and others bemoaned the apparent weakness of the moderate students.

The consensus of the 22 September faculty council debate was that the majority of students would support the faculty position on meetings if only they could be allowed to submit the Second Moscow Resolution to a new vote, this time to be conducted by secret ballot and by student course. In other words, the professors hoped that resolutions approved by the skhodka did not represent the true sentiment of the student body.

The new student elections, held on 24 September, convincingly rebutted liberal illusions about the student movement. The level of participation was extremely high: out of 4,700 students in the university, 4,300 voted. The major question on the ballot was the Second Moscow Resolution. Every course in the university reiterated its support of the earlier resolution.^[75] Considering that students in eight out of the twenty-six courses in the university had elected moderate representatives in the earlier elections to the Central University Organ, the 24 September results demonstrate an impressive degree of agreement concerning the political obligations of the studenchestvo in a time of political crisis.

The faculty council met on the evening of 24 September in an atmosphere of obvious disappointment with the results of the student vote. The rector recommended that the university remain closed "until the workers quiet down."^[76] But Professor Vernadskii argued that such a step would put the professors in an impossible position. They had to make some sort of political gesture "toward satisfying the demands of the public." Only then could they announce steps to exclude nonstudents from meetings. Vernadskii recommended that the faculty council solve its problem by publicly petitioning the government to allow freedom of assembly. If that were granted, the universities might be spared further direct involvement in the political struggle.

The 24 September faculty meeting underscored the difficult position faced by the professoriate at a very delicate juncture of the escalating political crisis. The Moscow professors were worried about the very sur-

[74] TsGIAM, f. 418, op. 249, ed. kh. 95, l. 255.

[75] TsGAOR, f. 102, 3ch. 32/1905, l. 60.

[76] TsGIAM, f. 418, op. 249, ed. kh. 95, l. 262.

vival of the university. I hey did not know how long the local authorities would continue to refrain from direct intervention to stop the meetings. Such intervention would probably have two important and immediate consequences: violent clashes between the students and the police, and a forcible closing of the universities by the government. Such a closing, barely one month after the proclamation of the 27 August Rules, could deal a death blow to any hopes of lasting academic autonomy in Russia. The professors also feared longer-term implications. Reactionaries would cite the September 1905 experience as furnishing conclusive proof that the professoriate was incapable of running the universities.^[77] There was also the real fear that the government would decide to abolish the university altogether as an institutional form of higher education. The professors could not hide their own fears of the street. Trubetskoi echoed the sentiments of many of his colleagues when he voiced the hope that the labor movement would "quiet down."

In the third week of September the labor movement was beginning to emerge as a serious factor in central Russia. In closing the university the Moscow professors (as well as their colleagues in Kazan, who did the same thing) seriously jeopardized the workers' position, by depriving them of a sanctuary and making it harder for them to meet without risking police repression. After the faculty council decision, street violence escalated sharply. The fact that the professoriate, not only in Moscow but in other cities as well, petitioned the government to allow freedom of assembly only confirmed the suspicions, shared by many opponents of the regime, that the professors' fear of confrontation politics and their determination not to depart from established legal norms showed political naiveté and even an innate hostility to the liberation movement.

Lenin's 4 October article on the Moscow professoriate, sharply attacking the professors' closing of the university, reflected sentiments held not just by Bolsheviks but by wide segments of the student body and the junior faculty as well. Lenin called the professors the "best elements of liberalism and the Constitutional Democratic party; they are the most idealistic, the most disinterested in material gain." But how did these professors use the powers given to them by the 27 August Rules? They closed the university and tried to cripple the labor movement. The

[77] At the 22 September faculty meeting, Professor Th. I. Sinitsyn somewhat sarcastically asked his colleagues whether they were happy with the autonomy they had wanted for so long. Trubetskoi replied that the universities may indeed have gotten autonomy too late, but with a revolutionary movement raging in the country, the professors had to think about saving the university rather than indulging in useless recriminations.

professors, Lenin taunted, "are already afraid of the revolution, they fear a sharpening and intensification of the popular movement, they are already putting out the fire and trying to calm things down." But these "philistines of bourgeois science" made a major miscalculation when they decided to close the university.

They closed the university in Moscow because they feared a bloodbath [boinia ] there. But by their action they caused a far greater bloodbath in the streets. They wanted to extinguish the revolution in the university, but they ignited the revolution in the streets. These professors have stumbled into a real vise, along with Messrs. Trepov and Romanov, whom they are now trying to convince to grant freedom of assembly. If you close the university you get fighting in the streets. If you open the university you also open a tribune for the popular revolutionary meetings which prepares new and more determined fighters for freedom.^[78]

At about the same time that Lenin was writing his article, D. F. Trepov was telling the tsar, in similar terms, that the popular meetings in the nation's VUZy, rare at first, had become more and more frequent, with the professors unable to influence the students to stop them. "The moment is not far off," Trepov warned, "when under the pressure of the revolutionaries who now control the universities, the disorders there will spill into the street."^[79]

In a last-ditch attempt to restore order in the university, Trubetskoi went to Saint Petersburg on 28 September. Acting on the mandate of the Moscow University Faculty Council, he went to plead with the government to allow freedom of assembly. The next evening he suffered a heart attack, and he died shortly thereafter. Trubetskoi's last mission was the defense of the Russian universities, a goal to which he had dedicated much of his life. Only a month before, he had radiated optimism that a better era had finally dawned for Russian higher education. When he died, his own university was closed; a few days later, his funeral was to become the scene of a major outbreak of street violence.

Trubetskoi's funeral turned into a major demonstration of the liberation movement's growing strength. On 3 October, a crowd of students, professors, and members of the public met the coffin at the Nikolaevskii station and accompanied it to the university chapel. The procession then marched back toward the university. On the way, mounted Cos-

[78] V. I. Lenin, "Politicheskaia stachka i ulichnaia bor'ba v Moskve," in his Sochineniia, vol. 8, p. 294.

[79] P. Gorin, Ocherki po istorii Sovetov rabochikh deputatov v 1905g . (Moscow, 1925), p. 14.

sacks attacked the crowd and arrested several marchers. The attack infuriated the public and further isolated the government.^[80]

September had indeed been a cruel month for the Russian professoriate. Conflicts on the issue of meetings put a growing strain on the Academic Union and on relations between senior and junior faculty. In Moscow the junior faculty members of the Academic Union endorsed the principle of political meetings in the universities, as did the Saint Petersburg branch of the Academic Union, which was increasingly dominated by the junior faculty.^[81]

As the professors struggled to keep control of the universities, the Ministry of Education continued to live in its dream world. In late September, Glazov, relying on a 1902 circular, reminded professors that they were to allow student meetings only if they were convened by faculty course. He also warned the faculty councils that they were stretching the 27 August Rules in admitting Jews and women as auditors. On 8 October, as huge crowds were already swamping the universities, Glazov outdid himself, scolding the faculty councils for communicating with him directly. After all, the 1884 Statute stipulated that all messages between the faculty councils and the minister of education had to pass through the curators.^[82]

That same day, events overtook the illusions of the minister of education. Moscow's railroad workers struck. The railroad strike was especially dangerous to the government because the Central Bureau of the Union of Railway Workers made political as well as economic demands. The strike spread to other railroads and by 13 October had turned into a general strike that paralyzed the country. The government's back was to the wall. On 12 October, it rather lamely allowed limited freedom of assembly, but there were so many strings attached that this concession was totally ignored.

The general strike pushed even greater crowds into the universities. The crowds now seemed to overshadow all else. One member of the coalition council of Saint Petersburg University wrote on 13 October:

For the last few days, the "autonomous" university has been transformed into an awesome, turbulent political tribune. Thousands of workers flock either to general meetings or meet separately, according to occupation, to

[80] Engelstein, Moscow 1905, pp. 95–96.

[81] Russkie Vedomosti, 9 October 1905. The senior faculty felt differently. A citywide caucus of the Moscow Academic Union voted 129 to 61 (with 13 abstentions) that meetings in the universities were undesirable.

[82] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 153, d. 173, l. 35.

discuss the question of professional organization. During this period the studenchestvo has disappeared as an independent entity. It has submerged into the huge masses of workers, helping the proletariat in word and deed, by organizing and propagandizing.^[83]

Pogroms

The numerous members of Russia's petty bourgeoisie whose livelihoods were directly and adversely affected by the general strike viewed the situation from a radically different perspective. The studenchestvo, far from disappearing, was considered to be, along with the Jews, a chief source of their problems. Like the Jews, the student symbolized a strange outside force that threatened the traditional world of large sections of Russia's urban strata. As the revolution reached a crescendo during the week of the general strike, the universities became not only centers for huge revolutionary meetings but also lightning rods attracting the fury of counter-revolutionary mobs. In Odessa, Kazan, Kiev, and Kharkov, rightist crowds attacked the universities, forcing the students and workers inside to erect barricades.^[84] The Odessa chief of police, D. B. Neidhart, neatly summed up the situation in a talk with rector Zanchevskii: "The lecture halls might belong to you, but the streets belong to us. There will be no pity there. Blood will flow."^[85]

It was now dangerous to walk the streets in student uniform, and professors appealed for donations of "civilian" clothing to enable students to avoid vicious beatings by roaming gangs of the Black Hundred thugs. In Moscow, a horde of butchers and milkmen, thrown out of work by the general strike and historically antagonistic to the students, besieged the university on 15 October after viciously beating everyone they saw whom they suspected of being a student. An eyewitness who mingled with the mob reported that they blamed the students for the general strike and "wanted to teach them a lesson."^[86] The mob prepared to attack the university buildings and the students inside prepared to defend themselves. But Professor Manuilov, who had taken Trubetskoi's place as rector of the university, saved the students from the impending

[83] Diakonov, 1905 i 1906gg., p. 67.

[84] Odesskii Universitet za 75 let (1865–1940) (Odessa, 1940), pp. 60–61; Korbut, Kazanskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, vol. 2, pp. 221–222; A. Cherevanin (pseud. of F. A. Lipkin), Das Proletariat und die russische Revolution (Stuttgart, 1908), pp. 50–64; Matveev, Studenty Sibiri, pp. 162–164; Khar'kovskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet imeni A. M. Gor'kovo za 150 let (Kharkov, 1955), pp. 176–177.

[85] Die Judenpogrome in Russland (Cologne, 1910), vol. 2, p. 113.

[86] Russkie Vedomosti, 16 October 1905.

danger by intervening with the military authorities who escorted the students out of the university the following day.^[87] In Kharkov, a last-minute intervention by the faculty persuaded the chief of police to call off a planned attack on the students entrenched inside the university. These students were also allowed to leave unharmed and were then escorted to safety.^[88] But the growing counter-revolutionary backlash among artisans, shopkeepers, and certain groups of unskilled workers created ominous problems for the universities.

On 13 October, a special meeting of government ministers finally decided to end the hands-off policy toward the universities. The government ordered the faculty councils either to keep nonstudents out of academic buildings or to close the universities altogether.^[89] This was a direct challenge to the professoriate just when the authority of the government was tottering under the impact of the growing general strike. The Saint Petersburg branch of the Academic Union voted to ignore the order and resolved that the "meetings are vital to the nation."^[90] A group of Saint Petersburg University professors, including E. D. Grimm, M. I. Rostovtsev, I. A. Pokrovskii, V. M. Shimkevich, and A. A. Markov, urged the faculty council to protest the new measure by submitting a collective resignation. Before the Saint Petersburg professors could decide what to do, D. F. Trepov, the governor-general of Saint Petersburg, surrounded all the VUZy with troops and halted the meetings going on there. The last meeting at Saint Petersburg University took place on 15 October, the same day that Black Hundred mobs besieged Moscow University. Few suspected then that these universities, as well as most of Russia's other VUZy, would not reopen until September 1906.

The government's decision to close the universities came too late to halt either the revolution or the general strike. On 15 October, a beleaguered tsar called his close advisors to Peterhof. In a tense and somber atmosphere the tsar had to make a fundamental choice: political concessions or military dictatorship. Witte urged major political concessions and Trepov warned that brute force alone could not restore the government's authority. Finally on the evening of 17 October, Tsar Nicholas signed the imperial manifesto that promised to

[87] Russkie Vedomosti, 1 November 1905.

[88] V. Buzeskul, "Dni barrikad v Khar'kove v Oktiabre 1905g.," Golos Minuvshevo, nos. 7–8 (July—August 1917).

[89] TsGAOR, f. 102, 3ch. 32/1905, l. 51.

[90] Imperatorskii Sankt-Peterburgskii Universitet, Zhurnaly zasedanii soveta za 1905g., p. 133 (14 October 1905).

grant the people the unshakeable foundations of civic freedom on the basis of genuine personal inviolability, freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association; to admit immediately to participation in the State Duma, without suspending the scheduled elections and insofar as it is feasible in the brief period remaining before the convening of the Duma, those classes of the population that are now completely deprived of electoral rights, leaving the further development of the principle of universal suffrage to the new legislative order.^[91]

The 17 October manifesto held out the promise of a constitutional monarchy. But the news of the manifesto led to an orgy of bloodshed which served as a chilling reminder that Russia was not England. The nation had already been dislocated by the week-long general strike. Local officials were frightened and confused; contact with the capital was halted by the strike. In many areas there had already been bitter confrontations between the urban lower-middle classes and workers, students, and Jews. So the manifesto was proclaimed in an atmosphere of confusion and suspicion. Rumors spread among the loyalist elements of the urban population that Jews and/or students were holding the tsar hostage, forcing him to sign the manifesto. Triumphant demonstrations by liberals and leftists exacerbated the tension in dozens of Russian cities. These street parades of marchers carrying the red flag attracted the "progressive" elements of urban Russian society—professionals, high school and university students, Jews, and zemstvo or municipal council employees.

But what of the small merchants, petty artisans, day laborers, and others whose economic interests had been sorely threatened by the general strike and the revolution? Their world was the other side of urban Russia, a world virtually untouched by the labor movement and the spread of secondary and higher education. It was not difficult to mobilize these strata against the "progressive" demonstrations. Fear of economic ruin, anti-Semitism, anti-intellectualism, and fear of the unknown all combined to set off a bloody conflagration. The week following the October manifesto was supposed to be the Week of Freedom. It turned into a week of pogroms.

Some historians assert that the pogroms were probably prepared and organized by the government. This claim requires serious modification. There is no evidence that the central government structured the pogroms;

[91] Harcave, Russian Revolution, p. 196.

indeed, in the middle of October it was too disorganized and frightened to be able to do so even if it had wanted to. It is more probable that certain local officials played a role, as did the local police. After all, the police wielded considerable power over urban shopkeepers and artisans through, for example, their authority to issue and revoke licenses.

The pogroms were essentially counter-revolutionary riots by urban crowds who both feared rapid political and social change and were too disorganized to participate in such regular political activity as the formation of parties or strong pressure groups.^[92] Overall, Jews suffered more than any other group, but some of the worst pogroms broke out in cities with a relatively small Jewish population. In Tver, for example, a mob burned down a building where zemstvo employees were meeting.

There were several types of pogroms. For example, there were "military" pogroms, instigated and executed by the local garrisons. Such pogroms occurred in Sebastopol, Minsk, Belostok, and Tiflis. In the last three of these cities, the urban population was mainly non-Russian and was less likely to participate willingly in "patriotic" demonstrations. The targets of these pogroms were mainly Jews but included high school students as well. A second type was the "intelligentsia" pogrom. These riots were aimed mainly against students, professionals, and zemstvo employees and occurred in towns with a small non-Russian population. Students walking the streets in uniform risked severe beatings and even death. In Tomsk these two forms combined; the pogrom began against the intelligentsia and ended in an anti-Semitic orgy. A mob surrounded the railroad administration building and killed employees who tried to flee; local troops also participated. There were "mixed" pogroms, intentionally aimed at both Jews and intellectuals. Finally, there were the "Jewish" pogroms, which were especially common in the Ukraine. In Odessa over five hundred Jews were to die in a wave of violence and terror, a horror depicted in Isaac Babel's "The Story of My Dovecoat."^[93]

While much of a terrified Jewish population hid in cellars, Odessa University students joined Jewish workers in forming a self-defense or-

[92] The best analysis of the pogroms is Die Judenpogrome in Russland . This study was published by the Zionist Central Bureau in Germany. For a sociological discussion, see vol. 1, pp. 328–404. See also Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, Antisemitismus und reaktionäre Utopie: Russischer Konservatismus im Kampf Gegen den Wandel von Staat und Gesellschaft, 1890–1917 (Hamburg, 1978), pp. 87–98.

[93] Die Judenpogrome in Russland, vol. 1, pp. 187–223. See also Robert Weinberg's excellent article "Workers, Pogroms, and the 1905 Revolution in Odessa" (Russian Review, no. 1 [1987]).

ganization to fight the mobs. It had some initial successes, but then was smashed by the military.^[94]

The wave of pogroms had important consequences for the Russian universities. Even before the proclamation of the manifesto, many of the major universities had found themselves besieged. The pogroms reemphasized the ominous fact that wide sections of Russia's urban population viewed the academic community and especially the studenchestvo as representative of a hostile social force, interlopers from an alien world. The liberal professoriate had been hoping to remove the universities from direct involvement in the political fray, but the pogroms were a bitter reminder of the tremendous obstacles faced by the professoriate in its struggle to Europeanize Russia's universities.

Reopen the Universities?

After the proclamation of the manifesto and the wave of pogroms, the chasm separating the senior faculty from the junior faculty and the students widened even further. Junior faculty and students wanted to reopen the universities; senior faculty wanted to keep them closed. The political situation created by the proclamation of the manifesto was a major factor fanning dissension over this issue. The revolution was far from over, especially in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, where the workers continued to struggle for economic as well as political rights under the leadership of the newly formed Soviets.

The senior faculty had to reckon with the likelihood that if it reopened the universities, workers would renew their meetings there, thus increasing the danger of police or military intervention. Nor could the senior faculty forget that the political situation was likely to generate new challenges to its control of the universities from the students and the junior faculty. Finally, there was the constant threat from rightist mobs.

On 24 October, a meeting of the rectors of the various institutions of higher education in Saint Petersburg agreed that "this was not the right time to petition for the reopening of the institutions of higher education."^[95] Both the junior faculty and the coalition council of Saint Peters-

[94] Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 109–132.

[95] Imperatorskii Sankt-Peterburgskii Universitet, Zhurnaly zasedanii soveta za 1905g., p. 162 (meeting of 24 October 1905).

burg University asked the faculty council to reopen the university on its own authority, but the latter endorsed the rectors' decision. (Responding to an appeal from the coalition council for money to buy arms for student defense against rightist mobs, the faculty council decided to hand out old clothes instead.)

In Moscow University tensions were even sharper, as the Central University Organ engaged in bitter recriminations with the faculty council over its closing of the university on 15 October. On that day, the Central University Organ had seized control of the university and erected barricades in order to provide at least one secure refuge from roving rightist thugs who were attacking students on the streets.^[96] Five days later, Cossacks attacked a crowd of workers and students returning from the funeral of Nicholas Bauman, touching off an outbreak of massive violence on the city streets. In order to provide a sanctuary for students and "progressives," the CUO seized the university again and reerected the barricades. It also organized first aid for the wounded and collected civilian clothing so that students could walk the streets unrecognized by the Black Hundreds.

Replying to the professors' request that the CUO leave the university, the CUO said that it would do so only if the faculty council acceded to four demands. First, the CUO wanted the faculty council to allow a general student skhodka on 29 October so that the CUO could "consult with its electorate" about reopening the university and discuss the general political position of the studenchestvo . Second, the CUO wanted the faculty council to guarantee it a secure meeting place. Third, the faculty had to promise that it would reopen the university soon. The last demand, which must have been especially irksome to the professors, called on the faculty to meet with the students in order to "work out a detailed constitution for the governance of the university." An informal delegation of professors met with the CUO to discuss the demands but reached no formal agreement. That same day, 28 October, the CUO bowed to the threats of the Moscow military governor and left the university.

On 1 November the Central University Organ bitterly attacked the professors' conduct in an "Open Letter to the Faculty Council." The "Open Letter" reviewed the events of the past months and discussed the problem of faculty-student relations. It reiterated the student lead-

[96] Russkie Vedomosti, 1 November 1905; TsGIAM, f. 418, op. 249. ed. kh. 95, 11. 305–307.

ers' determination that the revolution should transform not only the nation at large but the universities as well. The CUO declared: "For the past month the university has been seeing a repetition in miniature of what has been going on in the country at large. . . . The old ways which until now have bound [our] life do not satisfy the demands of young Russia, which is surging forward and throwing off the chains of slavery. And it is precisely these narrow customs, which have outlived their usefulness, which have been jolted [narusheny ] in Moscow University."^[97]

The CUO used the "Open Letter" to question the professors' sincerity. "You professors," the letter stated, "who so many times have advertised yourselves as the defenders of an autonomous university, sold out this autonomy in the interests of your own security. . . . You delivered the university and those found within it into the hands of the [local authorities]." The faculty council had been protesting that it had closed the university to protect the students from the Black Hundreds. The CUO rejected this explanation. "The university has served and still could serve as a powerful base, where [progressive] Moscow and the studenchestvo in particular could find constant support and protection; in addition the organized studenchestvo would have a center." The CUO concluded the "Open Letter" with a defiant query to the faculty council. "Who gave you the right to protect us?" it asked. "It is time for you to abandon forever this outmoded system of chaperonage!"

The CUO received direct support from the junior faculty and the moderate Delegate Council for its demand that the faculty council reopen the university immediately. In addition to voicing this demand, the junior members of the mathematics faculty renewed their call for the professors to open faculty council meetings to delegates from the junior faculty and the student body. They also asked the council to create a new governing body to decide important matters affecting the university. The junior members of the medical faculty sent the faculty council a message declaring that its decision to close the university contradicted "the demands of the present political situation as well as the country's educational needs." The message told the professors that junior faculty, as well as students, should participate in decisions concerning the opening and closing of the university.^[98]

On 5 November, the faculty council met to consider reopening the university. The professors were in an apprehensive mood fostered both

[97] Russkie Vedomosti, 1 November 1905.

[98] Russkie Vedomosti, 3 November 1905.

by the political situation and by the militant demands of the students and the junior faculty. Russkie Vedomosti, Moscow's leading liberal daily, had just run a lead editorial supporting the professors' right to control the university, but the assembled professors feared the worst. P. E. Sokolovskii warned his colleagues that "sooner or later the students, represented by the CUO, will present us with the bill; they will demand participation in the administration of university affairs, since they have taken an active part in the political movement and sacrificed themselves . . . while we professors were drawing our salaries."^[99]

Manuilov, the rector, asked the rest of the faculty council to stand firm, to keep the university closed and to resist the pressures coming from the students and the junior faculty. Manuilov rejected the idea of negotiating with the CUO, declaring that "it is impossible to entertain the thought that the university should be run by anybody except by the faculty council. . . . If we reopen the university now it will be seized by the revolutionary crowd. The only way out of the present situation is to firmly uphold the idea that . . . the university should serve only academic purposes."^[100] Vernadskii warned his colleagues that if the faculty council decided to keep the university closed, it had better issue a good explanation, since such a step would be widely seen as "being directed against the liberation movement."

On 7 November, the faculty council voted 61 to 5 to keep the university closed until 15 January and issued a public statement explaining its actions. The major reason the university would stay closed, the council explained, was that it had turned into "an arena and weapon of political battle." The council declared:

The participation of the university as such in the political fray . . . is impermissible. . . . The very nature of political activity is incompatible with the essence, purposes, and spirit of the academy. . . . The university should unite people on the basis of scientific and educational interests and direct them to the service of science and enlightenment. . . . But such a union is possible only on the basis of academic interests . . . it would collapse immediately as soon as politics were introduced into the university. Neither the teaching staff nor the studenchestvo is a homogeneous group from the political point of view, so any attempt to unite the academic community on the basis of a common political platform is doomed to failure. . . . The university can and should, while not forgetting its primary purpose, serve the cause of freedom. By struggling for the freedom of science and teaching and for the principle of

[99] TsGIAM, f. 418, op. 249, ed. kh. 95, l. 318.

[100] ibid.

academic autonomy . . . and by defending the free development and spread of knowledge, the university itself serves the cause of freedom and progress.^[101]

The controversy in Moscow University over whether to reopen classes was repeated, with very minor differences, in the other institutions of higher education in the country.^[102] Students and junior faculty wanted the universities to reopen after the proclamation of the manifesto; senior faculty wanted them to remain closed. With a few exceptions, Russia's institutions of higher education closed after the proclamation of the manifesto and remained closed until September 1906.^[103]

The VUZY In 1905: An Overview

Several conclusions can be drawn from the turbulent experiences of September and October. More by default than through legal sanctions, the senior faculty enjoyed the academic autonomy for which it had so long clamored; the government was too preoccupied to interfere in academic affairs. But events showed that the students and the junior faculty would not accept the professors' claim that autonomy meant senior-faculty predominance in university governance. At this time when various groups in Russian society were joining to demand political and economic reforms, the universities were not immune—nor could they be—from internal dissension. Various social groups used the revolution to advance specific corporate as well as general political demands. Even the senior faculty acted in this manner in March 1905, when the various faculty councils passed resolutions refusing to renew classes. Once the professors had received major concessions from the government—in particular, the 27 August Rules—they stood determined to defend their own conception of what the universities should be.^[104]

[101] Russkie Vedomosti, 8 November 1905.

[102] A useful overview of this issue is the speech given by Professor A. Brandt to the third congress of the Academic Union in January 1906. See "Polozhenie vysshikh uchebnykh zavedenii v sviazi s voprosom o mitingakh," Tretii delegatskii s"ezd akade-micheskovo soiuza (Saint Petersburg, 1906), pp. 15–19.

[103] On 19 October the Council of Ministers ordered the closing of almost all the nation's VUZy . There were brief attempts to reopen some universities and institutes in the spring semester, but they were largely unsuccessful.

[104] A clear example is the report of the commission appointed by the Moscow University Faculty Council in the fall of 1905 to study the demands of junior faculty for a larger role in university governance. The commission warned that allowing junior faculty to have permanent representation on the faculty council would lead to a "new type of university" that would soon result in "the total collapse of academic life" (TsGIAM, f. 418, op. 249, ed. kh. 97 ["Doklad sovetskol komissii po voprosu o polozhenii v universitete mladshikh prepodavatelei"]).

Thus a collision between senior faculty and the rest of the academic community was inevitable, although the intensity of the clash varied depending on local circumstances. As has been indicated above, the professors found it difficult to define their specific role in the Russian liberation movement. When they did decide on specific actions, the Academic Union was more restrained and moderate in its political demands than other professional unions. For example, at no time did the Academic Union demand a constituent assembly.

The events of September and October indicate that one explanation for the moderate behavior of the professors, and especially their opposition to political meetings, was a real fear for the future of the university as a form of higher education in Russia. Even the faculties of the technical institutes looked to the universities for scientific leadership, and the professors feared that the existence of the university was endangered on all sides. The government seemed indifferent to threats to its existence and was, the professors suspected, quite capable of replacing it with specialized institutes. The students were always too ready to put their immediate demands ahead of the ultimate welfare of the universities, thus exposing the latter to reprisals from the government as well as from right-wing crowds. Moreover, other professional groups in Russian society, such as the medical and legal professions, were apt to overlook the long-range interests of the universities in their drive for immediate political reform. Junior faculty would not accept the idea that political democracy did not necessarily mean democracy in the academy. Finally, there was a long tradition of town-gown strife in Russian cities. The professors clung to the vision of the universities as apolitical institutions, but they could not ignore the fact that the backward strata of Russian urban society associated the universities with the evil of revolution and the threat of social change. When the government began to lose control in September and October, the universities became lightning rods attracting both left-wing and rightist crowds. The former used the universities as organizational havens and as meeting places that served as an indispensable educational and propaganda resource. For the right, the universities were the symbols for the new, foreign, and little-understood forces threatening to change traditional Russian life irrevocably. The Black Hundreds had hardly more tolerance for the students than they had for the Jews.

These factors all contributed to the senior faculties' fear of confrontation politics and their determination to act within the framework of established law. This fear separated the professors from the rest of the academic community, leading to a growing polarization within the Academic Union and preventing the professoriate as a group from engaging in direct political action.

The professors felt that they had little to gain from a continuation of the revolution after the issuance of the Bulygin rescript and the 27 August Rules. It is true that most would have preferred a more democratic electoral law, and the second congress of the Academic Union resolved to press on with the cause of winning freedom of speech and assembly. As a whole the professoriate sincerely wanted these freedoms, just as it sympathized with many of the most important demands of the student movement. The experience at Saint Petersburg and other universities shows that the professors were willing to endorse calls for breaking down religious, national, and sexual barriers to university admissions, changes in the student disciplinary system, student participation in the distribution of financial aid, curricular reform, and a lowering of admissions barriers for the graduates of nonclassical secondary schools. But in September 1905 the professors were determined not to break the law. Rather than force change, the faculty councils preferred to petition the Ministry of Education.

The professors feared the street. Street violence threatened the interests of the professoriate more directly than it did those of other sections of the Russian "bourgeoisie" —with the conspicuous exception of the industrialists. The political situation as it appeared at the time must be recalled. The war was over; the universities seemed launched on the road to autonomy; above all, the government had promised the Bulygin Duma. Before the first week of October, few foresaw the probability of a general strike. The major issue facing the liberal and the leftist opposition was whether to "boycott" the elections to the forthcoming Bulygin Duma. The liberal camp, as we have seen, split over this issue. The Union of Liberation recommended using the Duma as a base from which to demand more reforms, a position endorsed by the Academic Union, whereas the Union of Unions joined the revolutionary parties in demanding a boycott. When the students returned in the fall, most of their resolutions endorsed the boycott and demanded a constituent assembly. The beginning of the academic year, then, found the students and professors in opposite political camps.

These differences are seen as vital when we remember that, until the

middle of October, developments in the universities were widely considered to be a crucial test of whether the Bulygin Duma itself held out any promise of real political and social reform. There was a clear parallel in public opinion between the 6 August rescript and the 27 August Rules.

Vladimir Lenin, for example, interpreted the situation in the universities as proving that Russian liberalism, having received a few concessions from the government, would "sell out" the working class. Referring to the behavior of the Moscow professors, he warned that their example is "instructive . . . for an assessment of our State Duma. Doesn't the experience of the institutions of higher education make it clear that the liberals and Kadets will worry as much for the 'fate of the Duma' as these pathetic cavaliers of exalted science fret about the 'fate of the universities'? Isn't it now clear that the liberals and Kadets will only be able to utilize the Duma as an even larger and more putrid platform for the propagation of peaceful, legal freedom?"^[105]

The experience of the universities in the fall of 1905 is one important test case of the ability of Russian liberalism to face and solve important political problems. There is little doubt that Russian liberalism, which placed so much faith in such institutions as the zemstvos, universities, and the press, must be judged and studied not only by the performance of the political parties that arose in 1905 but also by its ability to maintain a position in local government and the institutions of higher education.

As the experiences of September and October 1905 show, one major factor frustrating the liberal faculty was the opposition of the student movement. The student political organizations did not return to the universities with a clear plan for using them as political forums, despite the wording of the various September resolutions voted by the studenchestvo . The decision to end the strike, like the original decision to strike after Bloody Sunday, reflected the feelings of the majority of the studenchestvo and was not dictated from outside the universities by any revolutionary group. By September the majority of students wanted to return to their studies, if they could do so without seeming to renege on the revolutionary resolutions passed in January and February.

On the surface the student movement appeared to be a revolutionary force. Certainly there is seemingly convincing evidence to support this contention. The students voted overwhelmingly for the Social Democrats in all the major Russian VUZy . The coalition councils, Central

[105] Lenin, "Politicheskaia stachka," p. 294.

University Organs, and other student bodies helped organize workers' meetings, erected barricades against the Black Hundreds, and helped defend Jews during the Odessa and Kiev pogroms. Indeed, several writers and historians see the fall of 1905 as the apogee of the Russian student movement.

Nonetheless, in reviewing the turbulent events of September and October, it is easy to overlook other important aspects of the student movement. First, it became clear that the political student groups could not entirely manipulate the studenchestvo . They could keep control of the student government only so long as they addressed themselves to and were able to express the corporate demands of the student majority. Like other groups in the Revolution of 1905, the students acted as much from corporate identification as from loyalty to a particular political platform. In other words, they did not suddenly abandon the familiar terrain of corporate identity for the novel and untested notion of behavior determined by political party. Nor should the large voting margins won by the Social Democrats lead us to the conclusion that the studenchestvo was on the brink of taking to the streets in a mass effort to topple the government. As we have seen above, the Social Democrats were the only group calling for an end to the university strike that did not break with the oppositional and anti-liberal attitudes of the studenchestvo, attitudes that had been steadily growing since the fall of 1901.

An essential aspect of the students' corporate identity was the aura of being an oppositional group. This aura of opposition was an integral part of a student subculture that heightened the students' self-esteem, made it easier for them to adapt to the various economic and social difficulties of student life, and served to register the students' preliminary protests at the prospect of becoming acquiescent civil servants or professionals in a repressive and arbitrary system. As long as the government enforced admissions barriers, tampered with the university curriculum, or harassed the studenchestvo in petty ways, the Russian student would reject as dishonorable the liberal ideas that the university was an institution standing above the political maelstrom or that repression should be met by petitions rather than by strikes or defiant resolutions. For the Russian students, the events of 1905 reaffirmed the close relationship between political and corporate issues. If the senior faculty minimized the urgency of finding adequate solutions and recommended patience and restraint, then they would reject that leadership. The same held true for the students' relationship to the revolutionary parties or to their own student organizations. The students would follow them only

as long as they believed that they were not being used as pawns and that their own interests were not being disregarded.

This suspicion of outside manipulation surfaced after the proclamation of the manifesto, when various student government organizations had to answer charges of usurpation of authority. In September, and especially after the outbreak of riots and pogroms in October, student organizations in a number of towns showed resourcefulness and even heroism under very difficult circumstances. The Moscow Central University Organ had seized and barricaded the university on 15 October; the Odessa and Kharkov coalition councils had played an important part in defending students and Jews during the pogrom. Because of the widespread violence, these bodies had to make immediate decisions without having the opportunity of convening a skhodka to consult with the student body. As a result these student organizations had to answer charges that they had exceeded their authority: the tradition of the skhodka was as strong as ever.

At the beginning of November the Moscow Central University Organ and the coalition council of Odessa University, for example, called skhodki to answer these charges and submit to a vote of confidence from the students. They received votes of confidence, but accounts of the discussions showed that many students complained of being manipulated to serve the purposes of the revolutionary parties or other groups outside the university. The Odessa coalition council had to reiterate that it considered itself to be a purely student organization whose authority came from the skhodka, not from outside political groups.^[106] At a jammed skhodka on 7 November, which was closed to nonstudents, the coalition council explained its difficult position during the pogrom and why it was unable to convene a skhodka . It emphasized that it was not acting as the tool of any political party.

In Moscow the Central University Organ delivered its report and got a vote of confidence on 1 November. It had to face the same charge made against the Odessa coalition council: usurpation of authority. A major issue at this meeting was the feasibility of consultation with the student body during periods of intense political crisis and street violence.^[107]

These meetings show that the hold of traditional student politics was still tenacious. Underneath the tumult of the revolution, the Russian student movement maintained very strong links to its past. The change

[106] Odesskii Listok, 9 November 1905, printed the full text of the report that the coalition council of Odessa University delivered to the student skhodka .

[107] Russkie Vedomosti, 4 November 1905.

was in the emergence of new and more important social groups on the political scene, as well as the beginning of organized political parties and new opportunities for political expression afforded by the institution of the state Duma. Would the student movement lose its political significance and ralson d'être now that the country was entering a new phase of political development? This was a major question confronting the students when they finally returned to the classroom in September 1906.