A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: The Autobiography of Semen Ivanovich Kanatchikov

by Semen Ivanovich Kanatchikov, Reginald E. Zelnik (Translator)

Semën Kanatchikov, born in a central Russian village in 1879, was one of the thousands of peasants who made the transition from traditional village life to the life of an urban factory worker in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the last years of the nineteenth century. Unlike the others, however, he recorded his personal and political experiences (up to the even of the 1905 Revolution) in an autobiography. First published in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, this memoir gives us the richest and most thoughtful firsthand account we have of life among the urban lower classes in Imperial Russia. We follow this shy but determined peasant youth's painful metamorphosis into a self-educated, skilled patternmaker, his politicization in the factories and workers' circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and his close but troubled relations with members of the liberal and radical intelligentsia. Kanatchikov was an exceptionally sensitive and honest observer, and we learn much from his memoirs about the day-to-day life of villagers and urban workers, including such personal matters as religious beliefs, family tensions, and male-female relationships. We also learn about conditions in the Russian prisons, exile life in the Russian Far North, and the Bolshevik-Menshevik split as seen from the workers' point of view.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Russia, School, Read For School

512 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1986

Reviews

[Ensiform · Rating 2 out of 5]

Translated and laboriously edited (70 pages of footnotes), with an introduction and informative postscript, by Reginald E. Zelnick.

As an historical document and an example of propagandistic revisionism, this long memoir is interesting. Kanatchnikov was a die-hard Bolshevik, and Zelnick's comments show how often he bent the truth in defaming his enemies or overstating his faction's importance. It's also a useful book in showing how a man with little education from a peasant village could rise to minor prominence in the Communist Party, and become comfortable with intellectuals and statesmen; Kanatchnikov knows how remarkable this is, and a little arrogance shows through from time to time.

As a work of literature, it is less than minor. Because of his revisionist tendencies, Kanatchnikov cannot show his intellectual growth into a Bolshevik, but shows himself basically the same throughout. There are many chapters where serve little or no purpose except as mildly interesting anecdotes. And finally, the memoirs end abruptly, without reaching any sort of climax in his life: he merely goes out "to face the revolutionary storm". It left me dissatisfied and feeling as though I'd wasted a lot of time reading it to the end.

[Jacq · Rating 5 out of 5]

opened my mind to autobiographies - written in a clearly biased light - an easy first foray into the political climate of immediately pre-revolutionary russia, on the side of the SDs. i liked reading it.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting look into the life of a worker who was also a political revolutionary replete with details of working class Russian life during the era. Also despite Kanatchikov literally describing a life spent propagandising, I found myself pulled into his confidence and perspective.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting...written not for his personal benefit, but for his memoir to be taught in schools as a political novel advocating worker's rights.

[Manny Diaz]

it was good