The battle for spaces and places in Russia's civil war: revolutionary tribunals and state power, 1917–22

Abstract

After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks needed to battle to control Russia’s urban and rural spaces to win the war, exert state power and transform mentalities. This article argues that revolutionary tribunals played an important role by organizing travelling sessions to reach beyond abstract spaces into the familiar places central to people’s everyday lives. They held trials in public squares, workers’ clubs, passenger waiting halls, and other similar places, transforming them into the official vision of the revolution. As political courts focusing on counter-revolutionary crimes, tribunals projected the concerns of the central state more effectively than local courts. This helped the Bolsheviks to exert state power across Russia, thereby contributing to the end of the civil war.