Suchergebnisse

This article examines the elements of regional identity and civil war in nine western provinces of the Russian Empire during the Revolution of 1905-1907. Unlike the inner Russian provinces, the western provinces were multinational and polyconfessional, despite the fact that Russian nationalists considered them to be native Russian lands. On the territory of the western provinces, mass protest movements took place, combining ethnic, religious and social conflicts, often leading to outbreaks of terrorism. The lands that were part of the Commonwealth in the historical past were perceived as a kind of transit zone between Russia and the Kingdom of Poland (Vistula provinces), and their integration into the Russian Empire was not completed. Numerous revolutionary, anti-revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements with the participation of many political parties and movements of various kinds had a strong influence on the socio-political development of nine provinces. Attempts by the central and local authorities to suppress conflicts by various methods and the scale of manifestations of violence were inherent in the outskirts of the Empire during the revolution, as a result of which features of originality appeared in the western provinces. In addition, historical parallels can be drawn with regional outbreaks of violence during the French Revolution. The author offers the opportunity to compare the western provinces as the "Black Hundred Vendee" of the period of the revolution of 19051907. on the types of conflicts and the level of violence with the south of France (Midi) of the French Revolution and compare the social, ethnic and religious conflicts of the western provinces of the period of the revolution of 1905-1907. with the events in the Austrian Empire during the revolutionary period of 1848-1849.

The western French department of the Vendee occupies a special place among the regional counterrevolutionary and antirevolutionary movements in the history of European revolutions. The Vendee peasant royalist rebellion, between 1793-1796, under the leadership of the nobility and Catholic clergy, has made the region a synonym for mass lower-class counterrevolutions. This article examines several aspects of the Vendee rebellion in the history of the French Revolution. The accusations of certain scholars about a policy of genocide by the Jacobin government of the region's population arouses heated debates among contemporary historians. Many historians do recognize the massiveness of the repressions but they object to use of the term genocide. The Vendee rebellion has elements of similarity with many other regional counterrevolutionary and anti-revolutionary movements emerging already in the first months after the taking of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 and with the many revolutionary «federalist» movements of the departments in 1793 against Parisian and local Jacobins. All these movements contained elements of civil war between different groupings of the population, especially between opponents and supporters of the revolution. A deeper study of the Vendee rebellion helps us more objectively understand the questions of regional identities, the consolidation of the French political nation, civil wars within revolutions, the dynamics of antirevolutionary and counterrevolutionary movements, and the diversities of mass violence.

The western French department of the Vendee has acquired a certain regional identity in the politics of historical memory not only of the French Revolution but also of the Russian Revolution of 1917-1922. The royalist rebellion of the Vendee peasants between 1793-1796 has become a synonym for a region of mass lower-class counter-revolution. Not surprisingly, both supporters and opponents of the Bolsheviks tried to find parallels with the French Revolution to explain the massiveness of anti-Bolshevik opposition in certain regions of the former Russian Empire. Often both Reds and Whites called the Cossack lands, especially the Don, the Vendee of the Russian Revolution. However, it is impossible to place an equal sign between the Vendee peasants, fighting for king and church, and anti-Bolshevik Cossacks and peasants because the Cossacks and peasants were not fighting for the restoration of the monarchy. One can find a Russian equivalent to the Vendee regional concept of mass counter-revolution in the nine western provinces of the Russian Empire in the Revolution of 1905-1907. These provinces, along with six other provinces, comprised the Jewish Pale of Settlement and became bastions of the Union of the Russian People and other Black Hundred organizations. Unlike the interior Russian regions, the western provinces were multiethnic and multireligious. The western provinces had mass protest movements and outbreaks of terrorism where ethnic, religious and social factors intersected. The amorphous populist Black Hundred ideology could attract mass support in the western provinces from all those seeing themselves as victims of all different variations of exploitation and injustices from the hands of different establishments.