This book addresses how living in western Europe for decades shaped Russian radicals and the revolution of October 1917. Hillis argues convincingly that living in exile was a double-edged sword: the intensity and intimacy of emigration led to social experimentation, encouraging democratic structures and inclusivity, but the close living quarters of enclaves rendered ideological conflicts more explosive than in the homeland. The relative freedom radicals enjoyed in the absence of the tsarist police led to significantly greater interaction, assisted as well by their tendency to live in the same neighborhoods and cities. Émigré institutions such as libraries were run democratically. Socialists and nationalists sparred, but learned from each other. Most interestingly, radicals from the Russian empire coalesced regardless of nationality. Ambitiously, she not only tackles the contact between Russian radicals, Bundists, and Zionists, but also how Yiddish-speaking Russian-Jewish radicals reached out to Russian-Jewish workers who had fled Russia's pogroms. The evolution of the emigration's attitudes towards Jews is especially important given its commitment to inclusivity, although the particularism of Jewish organizations, just like movements devoted to women's issues, increasingly came under fire. Yet because of their shared space, the Bund assisted the young Russian social democratic party. Shared space also led to interaction between western intellectuals and Russian radicals, and refreshingly, Hillis includes a discussion of how the Russians affected their hosts, particularly in regards to feminism. But the debates that ensued between Russian exiles often led over time to physical altercations, and when Vladimir Lenin arrived in 1900 he was so disgusted by the chaos of émigré politics that Hillis contends he altered his dogma. Iosif Stalin, who only visited the colonies, was their fiercest critic: Hillis ends with a new interpretation of the purges of the 1930s as an attack on emigres who just happened to be Old Bolsheviks. Time abroad also explains the paradox of how the Bolsheviks could be committed to international revolution and suspicious toward the outside world.
Hillis makes some interesting observations about diaspora: that it is by its nature utopian, prone to fissures, and functions as a family. Since she does not theorize her use of the term, it is not clear whether she conceives of diaspora strictly in terms of the specific exiles she examined. A diaspora's politics, she seems to be arguing, are naturally abstract, and thus utopian, given isolation from the realities of life in the homeland. Her thesis would have been strengthened if she had situated the pre-revolutionary Russian diaspora comparatively: have other revolutionary movements been similarly affected by their members’ years in exile? The specific nature of a diaspora's relationship to the homeland—how connected or isolated it is—seem to matter a lot is terms of how abstract or utopian it is.
Certainly living in western Europe affected Russian radicals, but so did their years in Russia and developments in the homeland. Many of the ideas that Hillis attributes to life in exile, such as preoccupation with women's equality or class inequality, were rooted in earlier populist movements in Russia although, as she persuasively demonstrates, they were bolstered by higher educational opportunities for women abroad and exiles living among the poor. At other times she can only make suppositions in lieu of sources (and the book is so meticulously researched that there is no doubt she found all existing documentation). She argues, for example, that the populist “to the people” movement originated in radicals’ years abroad. Her conclusion that democratic France and England would not have been able to become allies of tsarist Russia if European public opinion had not turned against Russian radicals after their terrorist acts in Europe in 1890 is another example, as is her statement that the rhetorical violence that occurred during many interactions in exile led to unprecedented violence immediately after 1917. She is more convincing when discussing the turn to Marxism as partly influenced by the colonies.
Overstatement, in the absence of evidence, is especially problematic when it comes to Lenin. Would the Russian revolution of October 1917 and the violence it unleased have happened differently if he had not spent time in Europe? Hillis's attention to Lenin is most welcome: he has been overshadowed by historians’ attention to Stalin. We learn new details about his life, a life he did not document in diaries or reflective personal correspondence. The contrast between Julius Martov staying up late at night arguing with opponents in cafes while Lenin holed up writing alone in his isolated compound is a striking metaphor for the differences between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. Likewise we learn that Lenin spent time with Indian nationalists in London when he was writing On Imperialism. But what evidence is there to argue that Lenin saw himself as a persecuted subaltern abroad, shaped by the anguish and alienation he experienced in exile? Were not the conditions he lived under in Russia worse? I agree that Russian intellectuals often chose or switched political allegiances for personal reasons (and not only abroad, but at home), but given what we know about Lenin's personality, I do not see him swayed by the personal and I still see his dogma driven mainly by Marxist ideology and not by his lived experience abroad.
Despite its shortcomings, which every book has, readers should not be dissuaded from reading this provocative work. The book is also entirely accessible to non-Russianists; Hillis provides background on all the events and movements she discusses.
