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Theories of Russia
How are we to understand Russian society, its pattern of development since 1917, its present situation and its future? This question has been a matter of endless dispute, in Russia, in the West, among both academic and political figures. It is – despite the fact that at times some of the arguments seem to be akin to the medieval arguments about the numbers of angels that could dance on the end of a pin – of theoretical and practical significance.
Some years ago, Daniel Bell published an essay, Ten Theories in Search of Soviet Reality. [1] And that essay left out quite a few of the possible theories ...
In this discussion, I shall focus closely only an a few of the totality of theories proposed, in particular on some of the accounts which have been given by oppositional Marxists. The ideas in these theories are by no means particular to Marxists. For example, David Lane follows the arguments of Trotsky and Mandel quite closely [2]; Alec Nove’s discussion is very relevant to themes in Marxist writings, etc. [3]
First, though, I shall consider a few broad alternatives to the Marxist approaches. I shall discuss these very briefly and schematically.
These exist in both Western and Russian variants.
The Western variants look to the psychology of the Russian people. They seek to explain the emergence of a totalitarian system in Russia in terms of various factors in the individual psychology of the Russian citizen. Thus, for example, the Russian method of swaddling babies up very tight is taken to explain the willingness of adults to accept political repression ... In similar ways, troubled relations between sons and fathers, a Russian fascination with death, a fear of homosexuality and the like are taken to explain political developments in Russia. Even Daniel Bell, who discusses these accounts with a modicum of sympathy, admits they are not too helpful. [4]
The Russian authorities have developed their own variant of this kind of theory, in that they attempt to explain the Stalin period in terms of the individual psychology of one man, Joseph Stalin. This theory was launched by Nikita Kruschev, in his 1956 ‘secret speech’. [5] In this speech, Kruschev denounced the arbitrary terror associated with the Stalin period, and explained in terms of the ‘cult of the personality’. There is no doubt, of course, that there was a cult of Stalin’s personality – as there was of Mao’s [6] in China, of Castro’s in Cuba, etc. Similarly with Hitler, etc. But the very existence of such a ‘cult requires to be explained, and not merely described. What are the structural preconditions for the emergence of a cult, by which a living human being is treated as semi-divine by his subordinates? Why should such a massive concentration of power in the hands of one man occur? Why were his praises sung, in the most exaggerated language, by thousand of hack poets, journalists, novelists, painters, etc? Why were dissident voices stilled so abruptly by a massive apparatus of repression? Why, indeed, were loyal voices stilled too? To these questions, Kruschev and similar official Russian commentators have provided no answers – as they could hardly do, as they have themselves been deeply implicated in these circumstances; to probe these questions too deeply would be to question the roots of the present set – up in Russia and her East European satellites. Today, it is worth noting, criticism of Stalin has again been muted.
Here I refer to those theories which explain Russia – particularly Russia under Stalin – as in some way of another ‘totalitarian’, by contrast with the ‘democratic’ or ‘pluralist’ West. There are Marxist variants of this kind of theory, to which I shall return later. [7]
What characterises these accounts is their focus on the political structure of Russian society (and, since 1945, on the politca1 structure of East European countries as well). The focus falls on the dominant hierarchical relations, the prevailing terroristic control of dissent, the permanent search for ideological uniformity, the absence of any institutions not subject to control by the highly centralised state. (In the field of literature, such accounts are matched by works like George Orwell’s 1984.)
Accounts of this kind often provide very useful descriptive material on social and political relations in Russia. In terms of explanation, however, they tend to be rather thin. Too often, also, they are structured around a rather idealised contrast between the ‘totalitarian’ East and the ‘democratic’ West.
Being chiefly descriptive, these accounts tend to be very static and lacking in a sense of historical development. They tend not to probe the social, economic and political contradictions of these societies except at a very formal level, and prove not easily capable of handling such matters as the uneasy shift towards ‘liberalisation’ in post-Stalinist Russia and Eastern Europe, the various popular revolts in Eastern Europe, or indeed the pattern of day-to-day conflicts within the Russian sphere. Partly, their static quality arises from their lack of adequate accounts of the lives of the ordinary citizens of Russia – the workers, peasants, etc. – lives whose practical political significance is currently being demonstrated in Poland.
Essentially, what is missing from these ‘political’ accounts of Russia is any account of the mainsprings of social organisation and social action. Why does the state and the party act as it does? Why is it organised as it is? To what ends is ‘totalitarian power’ actually exercised? If reasons are provided, they tend to be in psychologistical-reductionist terms like a ‘desire for power’. Thus these theories have a tendency to present form without content.
Here, Russian developments are explained in terms of the ‘strains’ of economic growth.
Involved in this kind of theory is a rather crude kind of economic determinism, which – as suggested in an earlier lecture – is a recurrent feature of ‘industrial society’ theorising. Barrington Moore’s work provides a couple of examples of this kind of thinking, in two variants.
In an article, Strategy in Social Science [8], Moore criticises his own earlier work, Soviet Politics: The Dilemma of Power. In that earlier work he suggests, he thought he had ‘proved’ that Russian experience showed the need for inequalities of income, prestige, authority in any kind of industrial society. Thus, essentially, in this earlier work he had fallen into the trap of a good deal of functionalist theory, in a sense justifying Russian society by reference to the alleged ‘needs’ of industrial society. In his self-critique, however, he rejects this earlier argument. All that Russian experience ‘proved’, he now suggests, was ‘the necessity for such inequalities at a particular stage of industrial and technological growth’.
Unfortunately, this still hedges the key questions. Was this ‘stage’ of industrial and technological growth itself ‘necessary’? Why and how was this ‘stage’ reached? Were there no alternatives? The odour of economic determinism still seems to hang heavy. [9]
1. Daniel Bell, Ten Theories in Search of Soviet Reality in The End of Ideology.
2. David Lane, The End of Inequality?; The Socialist Industrial State; Politics and Society in the USSR.
3. Alec Nove, Is There a Ruling Class in the USSR? in Political Economy and Soviet Socialism.
4. Daniel Bell, op. cit.
5. Kruschev’s ‘secret speech’ to the 20th Party Congress, February 1956, has been extensively published in the West, e.g. in Henry N. Christman, ed., Communism in Action: A Documentary History, Bantam, 1969.
6. The cult of Mao Tse-tung is described in Ygael Gluckstein, Mao’s China. In the period of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese press reported that the ageing Party Chairman swam nearly 15 kilometres in the Yangtse river in just over an hour. This feat led the President of the World Professional Marathon Swimming Federation. Señor Carlos Larriera, to invite Mao to participate in two ten-mile swimming races in Canada, since his reported time was almost four times as fast as the then world record for 10 miles ...
7. See the later discussion on ‘new class’ theories, below, pp.
8. Barrington Moore Jr, Strategy in Social Science in Political Power and Social Theory.
9. There is a useful critical discussion of ‘modernisation’ theories as applied to Russia in Mary McAuley, Politics and the Soviet Union, esp. pp. 112–3.
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Last updated: 11 February 2019