{"id":452,"date":"2016-10-18T15:20:10","date_gmt":"2016-10-18T19:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/?p=452"},"modified":"2016-10-18T15:20:10","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T19:20:10","slug":"a-whirlwind-of-dispossession-in-the-morning-after-the-russian-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/2016\/10\/18\/a-whirlwind-of-dispossession-in-the-morning-after-the-russian-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"A Whirlwind of Dispossession in the Morning After the Russian Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"e3t52b2fe39c044e_1024\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dispossessed Peasants in Prison, 1918<\/p>\n

https:\/\/russiainphoto.ru\/<\/p>\n

By Adam Rodger<\/p>\n

The Havighurst Center hosted Dr. Anne O\u2019Donnell, a historian who studies the transformation of state institutions throughout the Russian Revolution, on 10 October 2016. Dr. O\u2019Donnell gave a lecture on the shifting attitudes toward property in the early Soviet Union, and its connection to the ideology of the revolution. She discussed what she termed the \u201cwhirlwind of dispossession,\u201d wherein property was confiscated from countless people, and argued that this haphazardly-executed policy of seizure was intended as a means of rebuilding the population into proper \u201cSoviet\u201d citizens. The lecture was attended by the Havighurst Colloquium, as well as Havighurst Center faculty and various other students.<\/p>\n

In what Dr. O\u2019Donnell calls the \u201cMorning After\u201d the revolution, a phrase that refers to the confusion experienced by citizens immediately after a revolution such as the October 1917 seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party in Russia. Her lecture focused on the story of one \u201ccitizeness Tikhobrazova,\u201d a woman from Petrograd who was forced to flee to southern Russia with her son during the civil war, leaving all of her property in a warehouse. When she returned, she discovered that all the property had been confiscated and, as far as the law was concerned, no longer belonged to her. She petitioned several state institutions, including the court, but even those that ruled in her favor were either unwilling or unable to deliver to Tikhobrazova her things. In the end, while she \u201cmanaged to beg a sympathetic employee for her photo album,\u201d the record shows no sign that she ever regained anything else.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Donnell used this story to illustrate several points about the nature of life after the revolution. One of these was the way in which Soviet ideas on property influenced the lives of citizens. \u201cThe seizure of goods,\u201d O\u2019Donnell argued, \u201cis a step toward dehumanizing a population.\u201d The dehumanization, however, was not the goal of dispossession in the Soviet case. Instead, the goal was the reforging of Russian people into real \u201cSoviet\u201d citizens, and part of this transformation required a change in how the people understood property. When Tikhobrazova was refused her things, such as a table, chairs, and other personal property, the warehouse management and the so-called troika agreed that she should not be sent away empty-handed; they decided she would receive a table, chairs, and other goods, but they would not be her originals. She was allowed \u201call that was necessary for two people according to the norm from the general fund.\u201d In O\u2019Donnell\u2019s words, it was a way \u201cto restore objects in a way that does not legitimize possession.\u201d This was the new understanding of property; nothing in the Soviet house belonged to those who lived there, but instead it belonged to the state.<\/p>\n

The dispossession suffered by Tikhobrazova was not unique; O\u2019Donnell suggested that most Soviet citizens had similar experiences. Possessions were taken without justification, sometimes by bandits, sometimes by state organizations like the Cheka (the first Soviet secret police), and sometimes it was unclear who the dispossessors were. This was not even restricted to the bottom levels of Soviet society; a few people were able to avoid significant dispossession (O\u2019Donnell mentioned that Lenin\u2019s dentist was among those spared), but the experience of dispossession was so widespread, and so close to the revolution, that to some extent it became a part of the revolutionary experience. People who had not had the experience of dispossession were more easily characterized as class enemies, because they had not \u201csuffered for the revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another point illustrated by Tikhobrazova\u2019s story refers to the \u201cinstitutional cacophony\u201d evident in Soviet bureaucracy. The abundance of overlapping state administrative agencies led to intense confusion over jurisdiction, and, therefore, over authority. In the case of Tikhobrazova, even an agent of the court was incapable of convincing the warehouse management to relinquish her property. This level of disarray was a common theme throughout the lifetime of the Soviet Union, to one degree or another, but it was particularly chaotic in the \u201cMorning After\u201d the revolution.<\/p>\n

Adam Rodger is a second-year M.A. student in History at Miami.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dispossessed Peasants in Prison, 1918 https:\/\/russiainphoto.ru\/ By Adam Rodger The Havighurst Center hosted Dr. Anne O\u2019Donnell, a historian who studies the transformation of state institutions throughout the Russian Revolution, on 10 October 2016. Dr. O\u2019Donnell gave a lecture on the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-lecture_reviews","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":456,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions\/456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}