Canadian Slavonic Papers

W. H. Roobol. Tsereteli -A Democrat in the Russian Revolution: A Political Biography by W.H. Roobol; Philip Hyams; Lynne RichardsReview by: R. C. ElwoodCanadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 23, No. 1 (March 1981), pp. 91-92Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40867838 .

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Book Reviews | 91

W. H. Roobol. Tsereteli - A Democrat in the Russian Revolution: A Political Biography. Translated from the Dutch by Philip Hyams and Lynne Richards. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976. xi, 273 pp. 80 guil- ders.

Three questions about the career of Irakli Tsereteli are of interest to any student of the Russian revolutionary movement. First, how did a relatively obscure Men- shevik rise to become leader of the Social Democratic fraction in the Second Duma at the age of 25? His previous career had been modest: after joining the Social Democratic Party in 1902, he was active briefly in the student movement in Moscow and later helped edit Kvali in his native Georgia. Because of forced emigration to Berlin and illness, however, he played no role in the Revolution of 1905. Secondly, how does one explain his leading role in the Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government from March to August 19 17? Outside of three months in the Second Duma, he had spent the entire decade between 1907 and 1917 either in jail or in Siberian exile. Prior to the revolution he contributed virtually nothing to the organizational structure or to the theoretical precepts of the Menshevik movement. Finally, to what extent should Tsereteli share the blame for the failure of the Mensheviks and the Provisional Government during 1917? Was his curious absence from Petrograd during October of that year a contributing factor to the Bolsheviks' seizure of power?

One of the shortcomings of W. H. Roobol's otherwise competent biography is that it fails to raise much less to answer the first two of these questions. From evidence presented, it is evident that Tsereteli was an able orator and a skilled parliamentarian who was equally at home in the Duma and in the chambers of the Soviet. Unlike many of his colleagues, he was a consummate politician who knew how to compromise, to cajole, and to organize support within a parliamentary setting. Mr. Roobol also implies that Tsereteli's personal qualities - his honesty, his energy, his humaneness, and his lack of personal ambition - made him an attractive leader. And yet, these scattered answers seem unconvincing and incom- plete. One suspects there was more to Tsereteli (and perhaps less to some of his Menshevik colleagues) that helps explain his sudden rise to prominence in 1907 and 1917.

Mr. Roobol is more convincing when dealing with the question of Tsereteli's role during 1917; indeed, he devotes forty per cent of his book to the months between February and October. Using Tsereteli's own memoirs to good advantage, as well as those of his friend V. S. Voitinskii and his critic N. N. Sukhanov, the author portrays his transition from a Siberian Zimmerwaldist to a revolutionary defencist; his gradual acceptance of the need for a coalition government; and his continual fear of civil war and violence. His assessment is objective: he recognizes that Tsereteli was too much of a Western democrat for the times, that he was not aware enough of the mood of the masses and of the need for peace. He concludes that Tsereteli's absence from Petrograd in October probably made no difference. By then he had lost much of his earlier influence in the Soviet and of course was no longer a member of Alexander Kerensky's government. The policies he would have

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92 I Canadian Slavonic Papers

advocated were little different from the ineffectual ones pursued in his absence. Tsereteli's decline from the pinnacle of power was equally rapid. While he

participated in the Georgian Menshevik Republic, he never felt at ease with the more nationalistic and less cultured Georgian leaders. His efforts to influence the Paris peace deliberations on Georgia's behalf were unsuccessful and his endeavours within the Second International during the 1920s led only to a rupture of relations first with his former Georgian colleagues and then with the Menshevik leaders in emigration. He spent his last three decades in France and the United States in dis- illusionment and without influence or direction. Had he devoted these years before his death in 1959 to writing apologia as. did Kerensky (whose rise and fall from power Tsereteli's career parallels so closely), his biographer's task would be consid- erably easier. Tsereteli, however, found writing difficult. He left little in the way of personal reminiscences or revelations with the result that his early years and personal life in particular remain hidden. Under these circumstances, Mr. Roobol is to be commended for his diligent use of the archives found in Amsterdam's International Institute of Social History and in the Hoover Institution. His bio- graphy, while not answering all the questions or illuminating all the obscurities, fills a notable gap in party history and allows us to appreciate the humane qualities of one of the few dedicated "democrats in the Russian revolution."

[R. C. Elwood, Carleton University]

Dina Rome Spechler. Domestic Influences on Soviet Foreign Policy. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1978. iii, 95 pp. $6.50.

Despite its title, this essay is of very limited scope, as may be guessed from the number of pages it contains. The author's intention is "to study elite opinions on Soviet policy in the Middle East during the period of the October 1973 [Arab- Israeli] war" (p. 7). This is carried out by examining the coverage of the conflict in six leading Soviet newspapers. Each of the six is presumed to be the voice of a distinct leadership faction or "opinion group." The opinion groups, she finds, cluster around one of four images of the United States: (1) Brezhnev and the Communist party apparatchiki, and their mouthpiece Pravda, cleave to the "ad- verse partner" image; (2) Kosygin, the managers, and ¡zvestiia, to the "realistic competitor" mode; (3) the military, ideologists, and trade unionists see America as an "unalterable antagonist;" and (4) the Russian nationalists, speaking through Sovetskaia Rossiia, subscribe to the "mitigable opponent" view. The most signifi- cant finding is that there is a basic division of opinion, as expressed in the sources examined, over the policy of detente with the United States which thus makes future Soviet policy on the Middle East uncertain, dependent as it is on the ever-imminent succession.

From the point of view of offering readers reliable knowledge, the author has, as she herself admits, ventured into very uncertain terrain. It is plausible, but not certain, that the central newspapers in the USSR articulate the policy outlooks of their associated bureaucracies' leaders. Alternative hypotheses can be, and in this

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