Former people (Russian: Бывшие люди, romanized: byvshiye lyudi) is a term in Russian language and culture referring to individuals who lost their high social status, particularly following the October Revolution of 1917. The expression entered wide circulation in the Russian Empire after the 1897 short story Byvshiye lyudi by Maxim Gorky, translated into English as Creatures That Once Were Men, which depicted people who had fallen from prosperity into destitution. In Gorky's original usage, "former people" were objects of pity and compassion. After the establishment of Soviet power, the term acquired a new, pejorative meaning and became a designation for targets of state persecution.
Origin and Evolution
The phrase was popularized by Maxim Gorky's 1897 short story about individuals who had descended from wealth into poverty. At the end of the 19th century, the term carried connotations of sympathy for the down-and-out.
Following the October Revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik government repurposed the expression to refer to those who had lost their social standing under the new order. This category included the aristocracy (dvoryans), imperial military officers, tsarist bureaucrats, clergy, landed gentry (pomeshchiks), merchants, industrialists, and others associated with the pre-revolutionary ruling class.
"Former People" in Soviet Russia
From the earliest days of Soviet power, "former people" became targets of systematic persecution. They were subjected to property confiscation, eviction from homes, forced labor (such as shoveling snow or digging graves in exchange for minimal rations), denial of voting rights, restrictions on residence, and various forms of discrimination.
Operation "Former People" (1935)
In March 1935, following the assassination of Leningrad party leader Sergey Kirov, the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) carried out a specific operation codenamed "Former People." According to NKVD Directive No. 29 of February 27, 1935, "On the eviction of a counter-revolutionary element from Leningrad and suburban areas to remote areas of the country," approximately 11,000 "former people" were arrested or deported from Leningrad. This group included 67 former princes, 44 counts, 106 barons, 1,177 former officers of the Imperial and White Army, and 218 priests.
In April 1935, NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda expanded the operation to cleanse the border region of Leningrad Oblast and the Karelian ASSR, resulting in the deportation of an additional 22,000 "formers." A further 8,000 were deported during subsequent "passport operations."
Legal Definition
The 1939 NKVD Order No. 001223, which established bureaucratic procedures for tracking "anti-Soviet and socially alien elements," formally defined the category of "former people" as: "former tsarist and White Army administration, former dvoryans [Russian nobility], pomeshchiks (noble landowners), merchants and petty merchants, those who employ hired labor, industrialists, and others."
Scale
The number of people classified as "former people" reached into the millions. According to various estimates, in 1913 there were between 22 and 35 million relatively wealthy individuals in Russia, counting both urban and rural populations. During the Great Purge (1937–1938), hundreds of thousands of people categorized as "former people" or "marginals" were executed or sent to the Gulag.
In Literature and Scholarship
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Douglas Smith (2012): Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy traces the fate of two prominent aristocratic families, the Golitsyns and the Sheremetevs, through the Bolshevik Revolution and Stalin's purges. The book won the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize in 2013.
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Amor Towles (2016): The novel A Gentleman in Moscow features a protagonist, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, who is designated a "former person" and placed under indefinite house arrest in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow.
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Vladimir Markovchin (2013): Бывшие люди (Former People), a Russian-language study of the phenomenon.
Broader Usage
The term has also been applied in other contexts. In contemporary discourse about China, some commentators have used "former people" to describe dissidents, intellectuals, and others who have been purged or marginalized by the Chinese Communist Party, drawing a parallel to the Soviet usage.
