The social portrait of the anarchist regional elite in Russia in the early 20th century

The purpose of the study was to identify sociometric indicators of the anarchic regional elite of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. The objectives of the research included identifying representatives of the anarchist provincial political elite, determining the factors that influenced the collective socioportrait of elite regional anarchists, analyzing the social composition of members of the provincial elite of Russian anarchism, and recreating the image of the anarchist regional political elite against the background of the collective portrait of participants in the anarchist movement in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century as a whole. Joining the leadership of anarchist groups, executive committees of regional councils, and committees in 1917 was accepted as criteria for elitism. The primary source of the study is the electronic prosoprographic database “The Party and political elite of provincial Russia (1890–1920)”, which contains personal data for each representative of the elite: gender, age, social origin, etc. The methodological basis of the research was the principles of science, historicism, and objectivity. As a result of the study, various factors influencing the collective portrait of an elite group (youthful maximalism, national restrictions, social conditions) were identified. The author came to the conclusion that the representatives of the regional elite of the anarchist movement in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century were mostly Jewish men aged 25–45, who entered politics at the age of 20 at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, who came from and belonged to the lower strata of Russian society, and received a low level of education. A comparative analysis was made of the appearance of the elite group with the social composition of anarchist organizations in general, which is available in historiography. Against the background of the generalized portrait of the Russian anarchist, the representatives of the elite looked older, more educated, and had more political experience. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time in historical science, a socioportrait of the anarchist provincial elite was created on the basis of an electronic database at the beginning of the 20th century at the all-Russian level.