Urbanization and Deurbanization in the Russian Revolution and Civil War*

Given the obvious social dislocations indicated by the drastic decline of Russia’s urban population, the question who stayed and who departed becomes important in identifying the nature of the available constituency for Soviet power during its early period of rule. This chapter addresses the question of the nature of the deurbanization of Russia and the relationship between this deurbanization, the “declassing” of the proletariat lamented by the Communist party, and the formation of a new and possibly different set of attitudes among workers-working-class consciousness. It is important to evaluate the nature of the change in the social composition of Moscow during the civil war years, and especially to suggest something about the fate of the politically active urban workers who helped make the revolution in 1917. Moscow workers all had a great deal of time off work, which they might have used for culture, political activity, and organization.