Susan K. Morrissey. Heralds of Revolution: Russian Students and the Mythologies of Radicalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. 288.

Using the complex method of discourse analysis, Susan K. Morrissey (University of London) explores the story of consciousness—"fundamentally a story of the heroic feat" (p. 227)—among Russian students as well as the substance, forms, and implications of student radicalism in the last decades of Imperial Russia.

What did students reveal about themselves in their leaflets, diaries, resolutions of students’ meetings, and memoirs? How did they perceive and communicate their corporate identity and their mission? In search of the ethos of the student corporation (or studenchestvo), Morrissey borrows from Benedict Anderson the concept of an "imagined community" of identity. According to Morrissey, student identity is not created by shared experiences or personal relationships but by a conscious identification with an abstract concept that bonded together all of Russia’s students over sixty years in dedication to the achievement of "broad social and political change" (p. 25)—essentially, the struggle for the dignity and freedom of all Russians. In other words, the aim of a student’s education was not the mere acquisition of skills for a professional career, but, instead, the full development of a self-conscious individuality committed to the overthrow of the enemy, the authoritarian tsarist regime.

This slow rise of student consciousness peaked triumphantly in 1905 when culture and science were liberated from the oppressive state and when, through the organization of political lectures and meetings for private citizens, the universities were transformed into "revolutionary tribunals" (p. 100). The tsarist state, it seemed, was tottering on the brink of collapse. The fall of 1905 brought together the popular masses and educated society, providing many students with a golden opportunity to repay the people for its investment in their education by saving Russia—in a nutshell, a case of self-sacrifice for the good of the people. Unfortunately, this moment of grace—the heady days of 1905—did not last. The tsarist regime recovered its strength and authority, crushing the opposition. The collapse of the 1908 and 1911 student strikes and the near epidemic of student suicides in the wake of the Revolution of 1905 reflect the less heroic and more protracted decline and fall of the ideal of studenchestvo. Indeed, though the year 1910 witnessed the beginning of a new wave of protest, Morrissey concludes that "the absence of a collective story stamps the student movement in the years leading up to 1917" (p. 207). The end for student corporate activism came after the civil war (1918-1920) when the Communists established their control over higher education.

Throughout her book, Morrissey shows great subtlety, imagination, and perception in her description of students’ aspirations, thoughts, and behaviours. This sensibility is especially noticeable in chapter six, "The Promise of Education: Women Students in the Public Eye." In this chapter Morrissey discusses women students, a segregated minority in Russia who often participated in radical activism and challenged male discourse on femininity and gender issues. For example, although their ideology acknowledged women’s equality, in reality male students tended to treat women disrespectfully: witness their drunken revelries and their use of prostitutes, clearly contradicting their much-vaunted concept of "honour."

But how convincing is Morrissey’s thesis? Undoubtedly, a distinct student outlook and ethos did emerge and it did have some influence on the Revolution of 1905. Nevertheless, the idea of using 1905 as the turning point in the history of the student movement will not convince everybody. Indeed, is there not something a bit simplistic in the division between a pre-1905 idealistic studenchestvo and a post-1905 disappointed, decadent, corrupted, and lost student body? Sexual debauchery and alcohol were phenomena not exactly unknown to students before 1905. True, selfish and conservative careerism (which gives priority to studies), an interest in sports, and the political diversity of the Duma system undermined the previous feelings of coherence and solidarity, but did not student protest revive between 1911 and 1914 under the impact of the Beilis case and the Lena goldfields massacre? The same remark applies to Morrissey’s treatment of student suicides: before 1905, they are seen "as a martyrdom at the hands of a despotic state" (p. 179); after 1905, they are deprived of a clear political message and suicides suddenly become the result of poverty, hunger, and despair at the hollowness, vulgarity (poshlost’), and philistinism of Russian society. But is suicide always the proof of the fall from consciousness? Can it not be instead the act of supreme consciousness? Have not the glorious ideals of fraternity, loyalty, and solidarity been, at least to some extent, a perennial component of the student ethos at the university level since the creation of institutions of higher learning? Don’t we still have, in our classrooms, self-proclaimed carriers of eternal principles? And finally, are we not, somehow, instrumental in the development of our students’ political consciousness?

Based on extensive archival research and rich memoir literature, with the city of St. Petersburg—central to Russia’s radical culture in the late tsarist period—the focal locality of her investigation, and crisply and lucidly written, this ambitious, somewhat iconoclastic, imaginative, and sophisticated study of the consciousness myth that evolved within the radical university student community—the best work since Samuel D. Kassow published his Students, Professors, and the State in Tsarist Russia (University of California Press, 1989)—is essential reading for historians in the Russian field.

J.-Guy Lalande
St. Francis Xavier University