Stites, Richard

Stites, Richard, Revolutionary Dreams Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York Oxford University Press, 1989). 

Strong historical echoes of Leninist high modernism can thus be found in what Richard Stites calls the administrative utopianism" of the Russian czars and their advisers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This administrative utopianism found expression in a succession of schemes to organize the population (serfs, soldiers, workers,... 

Lenin, quoted in Averich, Kronstadt, 1921, p. 160.1 believe that Lenin is consciously copying Luxemburg here, although I have no direct proof. One can find a precedent for this in Lenin s momentary euphoria about the 1905 revolution "Revolutions are the festival of the oppressed and the exploited. At no other time are the masses of the people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order as at the time of revolution. At such times, the people are capable of performing miracles (from Two Tactics of Social Democracy, quoted by Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution [New York Oxford University Press, 1989], p. 42). 

The best source for a discussion about Soviet high modernism is probably Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York Oxford University Press, 1989). Its generous bibliography appears to cover most of the available sources. 

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See also in sourсe #XX -- [ , , , ]

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