Periods and People

So much has happened in Russia since the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 that the first need is to set it in some sort of order, to divide the history into periods. It is not a good idea to use people for these periods in the way we use our kings and queens, because, too much has happened in a single lifetime, or, in other cases, life has been too short. For instance, the list of Presidents of the U.S.S.R. is:

1917-19	Sverdlov, son of a Jewish master-craftsman, was a political organizer who had spent most of his adult life in prison and exile, and who died at the age of thirty-three in the great European influenza epidemic of 1918-19;
1919-46	Kalinin, a Leningrad metal-worker of Russian peasant stock, was selected to represent, in the public eye, the peasant interest in the new state; his presidency covers the civil wars, the “new economic policy”, industrialization and collectivization and the Second World War;
1946-53	Shvernik, a Leningrad worker of working-class stock; head of the trade union movement;
1953-	Voroshilov, Ukrainian son of a regular soldier; served his time as mechanic; Marshal of the Red Army; represents the generation of the 1905 and 1917 revolutions in a government now mostly composed of men of the next generation.