Sergei Kirov and the Struggle for Soviet Power in the Terek Region, 1917-1918
King, Richard Douglas
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/70486
Description
Title
Sergei Kirov and the Struggle for Soviet Power in the Terek Region, 1917-1918
Author(s)
King, Richard Douglas
Issue Date
1983
Department of Study
History
Discipline
History
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
History, European
Abstract
Western historiography of the Russian Revolution of 1917 contains few monographic studies of the outlying provinces of the Russian Empire. This dissertation examines revolutionary politics in the multi-national Terek Region, in the Northern Caucasus, from the February Revolution to the establishment there of a Soviet government in March 1918. The presence of Sergei Kirov, who subsequently became an important supporter of Stalin and a member of the ruling Politburo, lends additional interest to the course of the revolution in the Terek Region.
After the February Revolution, the leaders of the Terek Cossack Host and the League of the United Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus sought to overcome the longstanding hostility between their respective communities. The League's policy was challenged by Islamic militants and by mountaineer radicals who saw cooperation with the Cossacks as an impediment to a fundamental land redistribution. Cooperation with the mountaineers was likewise unpopular among the Cossacks. When the endemic ethnic conflict escalated into civil war in December 1917, there was a widespread Cossack revolt against the government of the Host. The rebellious Cossacks wanted an alliance with the third element of the Terek Region's population, the Russian immigrants (particularly with the urban soviets), in order to inflict a decisive military defeat on the mountaineers.
While some Terek Bolsheviks favored cooperation with the rebellious Cossacks, Kirov preferred an alignment with the mountaineers. After the February Revolution, Kirov had supported unification with the Mensheviks and cooperation with the local organs of the Provisional Government to secure the gains of the revolution. Although he was subsequently obliged to abandon this strategy, the outbreak of civil war in late 1917 created conditions in which his willingness to cooperate with sympathetic non-Bolsheviks could thrive again. Kirov was able to build a broad coalition of socialist parties and radical, but non-Bolshevik, mountaineer factions, with whom he had long been interested in cultivating ties. By compromising with the mountaineers, Kirov helped bring the mountaineers and the Russians together over the issue of redistributing Cossack lands. Kirov's flexibility in dealing with non-Bolshevik groups was instrumental in establishing Soviet power in the Terek Region.
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