Thomas Stevens1; 1 University of Pennsylvania, United States
Discussion
The fates of Tambov’s peasant rebels have rarely been studied beyond the violent demise of the rebellion in 1921-1922. This paper explores amnesties and petitions for voting rights as paths to rehabilitation for rebels and their supporters. The Soviet Union’s hierarchical notion of citizenship barred class enemies and other undesirables from voting and, increasingly, from material benefits, while privileging others such as proletarians and Red Army veterans. Yet official categories did not map neatly onto individual life stories. Red Army veterans were sometimes also former rebels; some engaged in ideologically taboo activities such as trade; and even former rebels could plead their case by echoing official narratives of a “dark” peasantry manipulated by class enemies. Taking former anti-Soviet combatants alongside their Red counterparts (and the shades in between) reveals the difficulties authorities faced in imposing Manichean ideological categories onto the chaotic realities of civil war and social upheaval. As officials heard voting rights petitions, they evaluated complex personal histories and were engaged in both shaping the memory of war and drawing the dividing lines of a new society. They did so not only as the agents of a revolutionary regime imposing its agenda, but in local contexts defined by specific experiences of civil war. The paper explores ongoing dynamics of rehabilitation, retribution, paranoia, and intracommunal strife in the aftermath of rebellion.
