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.