Weathering the revolution: Patronage as a strategy of survival

This paper deals with the role of patronage networks, which served as safety nets in the period of revolution. These informal hierarchical associations were eventually incorporated into the new networks that appeared in the process of the establishment of post-revolutionary institutions, and became integrated into the new Soviet hierarchies, thus mitigating the social rupture caused by the upheaval of 1917. Documentary sources reveal that personal relations of various kinds extended across 1917, providing relief and support in the course of the revolutionary turmoil and playing an extremely important role for those who identified themselves with the old regime. As a result of the revolution they became byvshie; for them to live through the revolution meant to survive, physically and mentally, while trying to sustain an old identity and to develop-or accept-new ones. A recent sociological study has determined a number of patterns of response to the revolution among the old elite: protest and emigration; migration inside the country; allegiance to the new authorities in the hope of an improvement in the situation; and, finally, apathy. The article argues that personal networks, including patronage connections that stemmed from professional and occupational ties, played a significant role in choosing a particular path of behaviour. The article focuses on one distinctive case-study, namely the relationships among three historians: Sergei Fedorovich Platonov, Nikolai Dmitrievich Chechulin and Sergei Dmitrievich Sheremetev. The relations among them are examined here as an example of the flexible patronage relationships that functioned successfully in the estate-based, but intensively modernising social order of Imperial Russia, became vital during the revolutionary period and were effectively incorporated into early Soviet Russia's social fabric.