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Narratives of Inequality under Communism
: Voices from below in the Soviet Case
Socialist ideology in general and the October Revolution in particular were heavily
saturated with the notions of equality and social justice. Indeed, the Bolsheviks were well
aware that their revolution was “more than a revolution in the ordinary meaning of the
word.” Instead, it addressed the ultimate questions of mankind regarding a “just” society.
As a result, attempts were made to nurture “the archetype of humanity” (Fueloep-Miller
1965 4-5). In this sense, the October Revolution represented “revelation, an eschatological
moment in human experience that announces the New Order, the New World, the New
Life” (Stites 1989 10). The bedrock of this new vision – or fantasy from the viewpoints of
its skeptics – was the notion of “equality.” As a result, throughout the 1920s anything that
represented a real or symbolic obstacle to their ideals was denounced. It was under such
circumstances that various revolutionary practices against inequality – sometimes bizarre
ones indeed – made sense, including the removal of the conductor as a symbol of
authoritarianism in persimfans (a conductor-less orchestra); the revolutionary etiquette of
addressing everyone with “vy” [respectful ‘you’] instead of the power-laden term “ty;” the
seating of “a simple peasant” next to Trotsky in the Brest-Litovsk peace talk; the ascetic
tradition of the “Party maximum” that caused the Commissar of Food Supply to faint from
hunger; and so on. Indeed, it was the notion of equality and justice that weaved various
revolutionary practices of the Bolsheviks in their model workshop for the future.
1
By the early 1930s, however, there was a change in the air. During the industrialization
drive (1928-1932), Stalin attacked the earlier tradition of revolutionary egalitarianism as
“equality-mongering (uravnilovka),” even equating it with “reactionary petty-bourgeois
nonsense worthy of some sort of primitive ascetic sect” (Stites 1989 232-233). In this
process, Stalin was not acting alone because newly rising elites called vydvizhentsy
2
formed
1. While traveling around Russia during the first decade of Soviet power, Rene Fueloep-Miller wrote a
book about the early revolutionary ideals and experiments of the Bolsheviks in a sympathetic tone. See Rene
Fueloep-Miller, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965). It is, however,
Richard Stites who wrote the most authoritative book on this subject using extensive archival sources. For his
memorable work, see Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
2. It was the pioneering work of Sheila Fitzpatrick which made western scholars aware of vydvizhentsy.
See Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921~1934 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1979). Also refer to her other groundbreaking works on similar subjects: Sheila
Fitzpatrick, Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977) and
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1992).
Convention