Abstract

The history of and the background of the creation of Saint Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, which was formed in October 1905 and became the centre of the mass “Soviet” movement in Russia, undoubtedly demand further study. The subject of the present article is the analysis of G.S. Khrustalev-Nossar’s activities in the period prior to his chairmanship in the Saint Petersburg Soviet. The study seeks to investigate his role in the workers’ movement, putting it into the context of the preconditions for the creation of the Soviet. Unprecedentedly, the problem has been examined on the basis of not only the previously published accounts left by G.S. Khrustalev-Nossar and his contemporaries, but also archival documents (records of the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), memoirs of the parties involved in the events (particularly Social Democrats V. Perazich, P.D. Kolokol’nikov). The comparative analysis of the data from the afore-mentioned sources enables one to reconstruct, step by step, Khrustalev-Nossar’s work among the workers, his communication with representatives of various socio-political movements, to perceive whether he was, as he claimed, the maker of “the first Soviet” and elucidate his role in the workers’ organizational movement, in the forming of the idea to create the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies in Saint Petersburg in 1905. The article examines in detail Khrustalev-Nossar’s participation in the events following the Bloody Sunday, in the elections to Senator N.V. Shidlovsky’s Commission, in the holding of workers’ meetings at Udelnaya railway station in Saint Petersburg, in the activities of the Printing Workers’ Union. On the one hand, the research shows why, in October 1905, Khrustalev-Nossar was elected chairman of the fledgling Saint Petersburg Soviet, and, on the other hand, explains why he eventually became one of the “forgotten” figures of the period of the first Russian Revolution, 1905–1907, and has never received due attention in the academic and nonfiction literature. In this case, the pioneering contribution is a study and new assessment of the role of the individual in the course of the 1905 revolutionary events.