Columbia Library columns (v.2(1952Nov-1953May))

(New York :  Friends of the Columbia Libraries.  )

Tools


 

Jump to page:

Table of Contents

  v.2,no.2(1953:Feb): Page 18  



18                                 Philip E. Mosely

farming practices. Naturally, the zemstvos were promptly sup¬
pressed by the Bolsheviks, who established a highly centralized
rule of their own, and the zernstvo movement is seldom mentioned
in Soviet versions of Russian history. Thanks to an extensive col¬
lection of memoirs which the Archive has received from numerous
surviving leaders of the zemstvos, Columbia now offers scholars
an opportunity for the detailed study of this significant Russian
movement toward self-government.

Many students of Russian affairs, then and since, have felt that
the assassination in 1911 of Prime Minister Stolypin marked the
end of a promising attempt to reconstruct Russian society from
above and thus to avert the outbreak of revolution from below.
No comprehensive account has ever been written of Stolypin's
aims and policies, and Russian archives have long since been closed
to objective students. Thanks, however, to collections of docu¬
ments and memoirs which have been deposited with the Archive
by Stolypin's close relatives and co-workers, much new light can
now be shed on his concept of a peaceful reconstruction and
modernization of Russian life from above.

While the name of Lenin first became widely known in 1917,
he had elaborated his program and methods of revolutionary action
over the preceding twenty-five years of political struggle against
the Tsarist regime and against competing political groups. The
Columbia Archive is unusually rich in its collection of unpub¬
lished letters and other documents from Lenin's pen, particularly
for the period 1906-1917. Here the visitor finds a remarkable
correspondence in which Lenin discussed with followers and rivals
the nature of the future revolution and the best means of bringing
his party to power. The ways in which the great writer, Maxim
Gorky, gathered money for the revolutionaries through contribu¬
tions solicited from Russian merchants and manufacturers dissatis¬
fied with the old regime, and repulsion which Gorky also felt for
Lenin's disregard of ordinary human sufferings, are illustrated in
unpublished correspondence.

After Lenin's party had seized power, his rule was opposed by
  v.2,no.2(1953:Feb): Page 18