Transcript Document 7376283

Why Russia?
2 PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNISM
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Communism as a global systemic phenomenon –
a product of, and a challenge to,
global capitalism
Communism as a regional and civilizational
phenomenon a phase in the historical development of some
countries, starting with Russia
Global System Perspective
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Internationale.
International socialist anthem
Words by Eugène Pottier (1871) music by Pierre Degeyter (1888)
State anthem of the Soviet Union (1918-1943)
Capitalism
A social system based on private ownership of the means of production,
in which the main goal of economic activity is the maximization of profit
The main mechanism of social coordination is the market
Guided by the “unseen hand” of the market, individuals buy and sell
labour, land, goods, services, stocks, information
The capitalist system began to form about 500 years ago when the
following developments converged:
Formation of the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie - literally, the word
means “the city dwellers”): first, merchants and bankers, later,
industrialists – people whose main source of power is money derived
from the workings of the market economy
Creation of nation-states
Expansion of international trade and conquest of colonies
New technologies made human labour more productive
The rise of new ideas – social change, progress, democracy
The notion of “revolution”
With or without command
4 basic methods of social control and coordination in any society*:
1. Directed coordination, or authority (somebody plans for the group,
gives commands, others obey)
2. Mutual adjustment, or exchange (everyone does his/her thing,
nobody plans, nobody commands, coordination takes place through
the web of interactions between gain-seeking individuals)
Capitalism expands the realm of mutual adjustment – the rise of the
market system, the power of self-interest
But directed coordination – exercise of authority, the power of command –
does not disappear. Quite the opposite: it becomes more effective
No society can rely only on market-type interactions
Many important social tasks can only be performed through the use of
authority
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*See, for instance, Charles Lindblom, The Market System, Yale University
Press, 2002, also Charles Lindblom, Politics and Markets, Yale university
Press, 1976
Control through the mind
The 2 other methods have to do with what we think and believe:
3. Persuasion: Getting people to act (or no to act) by persuading them that
they need it, that it is in their own interests, etc.
4. Moral codes: The power of belief, tradition, and ethics
In actual human practice, all these methods interact in a lot of complex
ways
Every social system is based on a specific combination of these (and
probably other) methods
Some combinations are more effective than others
Authority structures under capitalism
The family
The workplace (obey the boss, be disciplined, work hard)
The state (whether democratic or authoritarian)
Liberal democracy is a way of combining the power of command with the
power of self-interest, putting a strong emphasis on self-interest.
The state derives its authority to command from a market-type deal
between the citizen and the politician:
I’ll give you my vote and my taxes, if you work to deliver the public goods I
need (for example, “peace, order, good government”)
Liberal democracy can be regarded as the perfect political form for
capitalism
It accommodates the constant process of change that capitalism fosters
Including social change
Yet, at the same time, democracy and capitalism
are in conflict
In the market economy, people are formally equal free agents, each after
his/her own interests
But in reality, they have vastly different amounts of social power
The market system, in and by itself, does not reduce those differences.
On the contrary, it increases existing inequalities – both within societies
and between societies.
The inequality of social power and the control over means of production
through the institution of private ownership gives the bourgeoisie
power over the workers
Capitalism as a revolutionary system
How capitalism undermines its own foundations
1. Market forces, not subject to effective control by society, can turn
against man:
-- inadequacy of the profit motive to meet many human needs
-- the destructive power of the market (creative or not)
2. Capitalism, through increasing inequality of social power, creates its
own enemies in society – the dispossessed, the exploited, which
become breeding grounds for movements for radical change
3. Liberal democracy enables radicals to struggle for power. Whether the
radical impulses can be tamed through reforms is always an open
question
The rise of socialism (19th-20th centuries)
Follow the link: The Socialist International
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Socialist movements accompany the development of capitalism
They follow on the steps of capitalist development
Most socialists start out as radical democrats, disappointed with the
failures and limitations of liberal democracy
The socialist movement emerges as a product of the age of liberal
revolutions, triggered off by the American War of Independence and
the Great French Revolution of 1789-93
1848: After an unsuccessful wave of democratic revolutions swept
through Europe, a group of German radical democrats led by journalist
Karl Marx and industrialist Friedrich Engels founded “The League of
Communists”
Their founding document was “The Communist Manifesto”
THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
Marx and
Engels in
London,
1867
Regional-civilizational perspective
Europe’s East and West
The stereotype: the West is advanced, the East is backward.
It hasn’t always been this way.
The divisions of Europe
1. East vs. West (the Greek-Persian wars, Alexander’s synthesis)
2. South vs. North (Rome vs. Barbarians)
3. East vs. West (2 parts of the Roman Empire)
4. East vs. West (Orthodox Christianity vs. Roman Catholicism)
5. East vs. West (nomadic invasions of Europe)
6. West vs. East (Western modernization, Eastern stagnation)
7. East vs. West (the Communist challenge from Russia and China)
8. East vs. West (“new Europe” vs. “old Europe”)
Europe’s Eastern frontier
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The belt between the Baltic and the Adriatic
East European state-forming nations:
 Greeks
 Germans
 Slavs
• Eastern: Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians
• Western: Poles, Czechs, Slovaks
• Southern: Serbs, Croatians, Slovenians, Macedonians,
Montenegrins, Bosniaks, Bulgarians
 Hungarians (Magyars)
 Finns
 Balts (Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians)
 Romanians (19th-century name)
 Albanians
 Turks
 Tatars
ALL, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF FINNS, GREEKS AND TURKS,
LIVED UNDER COMMUNIST REGIMES IN THE 20TH CENTURY
EVOLUTION OF THE EUROPEAN STATE SYSTEM
EUROPE 0001
EUROPE 1000
EUROPE 1600
EUROPE 1900
EUROPE 1914
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A 3-way conflict of civilizations for control of Eastern
Europe. Objects of the struggle:
Resources
 Trade routes
 Security
THE CONTINENTAL EMPIRES:
 Western Christian (German) – “successors” to the Western
Roman Empire and “Holy Roman Empire”: the Habsburg
Empire (Austria-Hungary) and the Hohenzollern Empire
(Germany)
 Orthodox Christian (Russian) – “successor” to Eastern
Roman Empire (The Romanov Empire)
 Muslim (Turkish) – “successor” to the Arab Caliphate (The
Ottoman Empire)
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How the East fell behind the West
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Western Europe begins modernization (16th –17th centuries)
Eastern Europe as the West’s defence barrier
Eastern Europe as the West’s agricultural base
The West:
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Industrializing
Global trade
Capitalism
Nation-state
The East:
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Farming (with pockets of industry)
Regional trade
Feudalism
Empire
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MODERNIZATION CHALLENGES
TO EASTERN EUROPE
Political Independence: building modern nation-states
Industrialization
The agrarian question: turning peasants into farmers,
developing modern agriculture
Social development
Building civil societies
POLITICAL OPTIONS
Western liberalism
Socialism of various types
Conservative nationalism or (later) fascism
19th century in Eastern Europe: turmoil
 National liberation struggles against empires
(Turkish, Russian, Habsburg) –
A few nations become independent
 Democratic revolutions, led by middle classes –
Unsuccessful
 The rise of socialist movements, led by
intellectuals, supported by workers and peasants Suppressed
 Reforms from above Inadequate
 Repression (including foreign intervention) –
Breeding new discontent and radicalization
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As a result of World War I, all four empires
which had dominated Eastern Europe –
Russian,
 Turkish,
 Austro-Hungarian,
 and German –
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DISINTEGRATED
The region was up for massive upheavals, violent
struggles for power, attempts at radical change
Russia
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Russia is 1,200 years old
It has existed in 6 historical forms:
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Kiev Rus (9th-13th centuries)
Domain of the Tatar-Mongol empire (13th-15th
centuries)
Moscovy (15th-17th centuries)
The Russian Empire (18th century-1917)
The Soviet Union (1917-1991)
The Russian Federation (1991- today)
Each stage was a product of interactions
between European and Asian influences
Kiev Rus
before
1054
The empire of Chengiz Khan and
his successors
Chengiz
Khan
The rise of the Moscow state
Tsar Peter the Great,
Founder of the
Russian Empire
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In the Modern Age, Russia expanded to take
control of most of the Eurasian Heartland
Gradually, it filled much of the space first integrated
by the Mongols
Expansion was driven by:
Struggle for independence and security
 Struggle for control of resources and trade routes
 Human settlement
 Imperial inertia
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Coat-ofarms of
the
Russian
Empire
The State Emblem of the Russian Federation
Moscow Kremlin
Moscow Kremlin
The Church of Ivan the Great,
Moscow Kremlin
Tsar Peter the Great,
Founder of the
Russian Empire
Monument to Peter the Great, St. Petersburg
The Winter Palace of Russian Emperors,
St. Petersburg
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The question of civilization
Where does Russia belong?
“A civilization … is the highest cultural grouping of people
and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short
of that which distinguishes humans from other species. It is
defined both by common objective elements, such as
language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the
subjective self-identification of people. People have levels
of identity: a resident of Rome may define himself with
varying degrees of intensity as a Roman, an Italian, a
Catholic, a Christian, a European, a Westerner. The
civilization to which he belongs is the broadest level of
identification with which he strongly identifies. Civilizations
are the biggest “we” within which we feel culturally at home
as distinguished from all the other “thems” out there.”*
*Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order. Touchstone Books, 1997, p.43
“A civilization… is neither a given economy nor a given society, but
something which can persist through a series of economies and
societies, barely susceptible to gradual change. A civilization can be
approached, therefore, only in the long term, taking hold of a constantly
unwinding thread – something that a group of people have conserved
and passed on as their most precious heritage from generation to
generation, throughout and despite the storms and tumults of history.”
Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, translated by Richard
Mayne. Pengui Books, 1993, p.35
Civilizations emerge in the course of history under the combined impact of
various factors:*
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Geographic – different types of interactions between man and the
natural environment
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Sociological – different types of societies (rural or urban, degrees of
inequality, etc.)
 Economic – what technologies are used, how productive is human
labour, how wealth is distributed, etc.
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Mental – different ways of thought and belief
*See Braudel, pp.9-23
Braudel again:
“In every period, a certain view of the world, a collective
mentality, dominates the whole mass of society. Dictating a
society’s attitudes, guiding its choices, confirming its
prejudices and directing its actions, this is very much a fact
of civilization. Far more than the accidents or the historical
and social circumstances of a period, it derives from the
distant past, from ancient beliefs, fears and anxieties which
are almost unconscious – an immense contamination
whose germs are lost to memory but transmitted from
generation to generation. A society’s reactions to the events
of the day, to the pressure upon it, to the decisions it must
face, are less a matter of logic or even self-interest than the
response to and unexpressed and often unexpressible
compulsion arising from the collective unconscious…
These basic values, these psychological structures, are assuredly the
features that civilizations can least easily communicate one to another.
They are what isolate and differentiate them most sharply. And such
habits of mind survive the passage of time. They change little, and
change slowly, after a long incubation which itself is largely
unconscious, too.
Here religion is the strongest feature of civilizations, at the heart of
both their present and their past. And in the first place, of course, in
civilizations outside Europe.” *
*Braudel, p.22
The Russian Civilization
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Geographic
Harsh climate
 Insularity
 Forests, rivers and steppe (grasslands)
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Sociological
Peasant
 Communitarian
 Egalitarian
 State-society relations:
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 The
state as an alien force vs.
 The state’s “battle order”
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Economic
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Low productivity
Underdeveloped market economy
Property relations
The dominance of the state
The state is both a retarding factor and an engine of
progress
Mental
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Religion
Justice
Morality and law
Universalism and messianism
Patience and rebelliousness
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The Russian civilization emerged at the crossroads of civilizations
Civilizations interact in many ways
Axes of interaction, tension and conflict
 West-Islam (otherness)
 West-Russia (otherness of a different kind)
HISTORY
Russia appears on world stage as a European country (9th-13th
centuries)
Then it falls under Asian control (13th century)
 Which changes it profoundly
Then it fights to:
 Regain its independence, own role and place
 Catch up with the West (for development and security)
But the West has gone its own way already
And Russia discovers that it is different
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It creates an empire which embraces:
 The original Slavic lands
 The steppe which was always a key challenge
 Siberia and the Far East
 Caucasus and Central Asia
KEY STRUGGLE:
Balkans and the Black Sea
The empire as a superstate
 Requires a huge army, a centralized bureaucracy, an ideology, etc.
THE LOGIC OF A STATE
The empire as a living organism
 Mass base, popular support, integration of diverse societies
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The issue of identity
What is Russia?
RUSSKIE and ROSSIYANE
The state of the ethnic Russians?
Or the state built on the basis of the Russian nationality,
which integrated other nationalities, too?
Nation-state or empire?
Depends on the ability of Russians to act as the magnet,
integrate, build a larger and more inclusive state
In which other nationalities may be better off than on their
own
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So, Russia’s quest has always been twofold:
 Assert its own identity as a Russian state which includes a chunk
of Asia and a lot of non-Russians
 Assert its affinity with the West
Can it do both?
VERY DIFFICULT, BUT NECESSARY
A STRUGGLE WITHIN THE RUSSIAN MIND, NOT BETWEEN
RUSSIA AND THE WEST
Slavophiles and Westernizers
 Eurasianists
What about interactions with others?
China, India, Japan, Islam?
Always a sense of otherness
Which makes for a simpler mode of relations (without the
complicating impact of culture)
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When did the conflict reach its apexes?
1. The West’s offensives
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Germans (since 13th century)
Poles (17th century)
Swedes (18th century)
Napoleon (19th century)
Germans (WWI and II)
2. The West containing Russia
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The Crimean War (1844-46), Russo-Turkish War (1877-88)
WWI
WWII
Cold War
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In each case, the West was divided
Cases of Russia’s triumph:
1721
1815
1945
In both cases, Russia affirmed its Westernness
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Russian historian I.B.Orlova on the contrast between
Western and Eurasian civilizations)
Western
The classical heritage
Western Christianity
Roman and German language families
Division between spiritual and secular authorities
Rule of law
Social and political pluralism and civil society
Representative government
Individualism and rationalism
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Eurasian Civilization
The Byzantian heritage: a Eurasian Orthodox state
Ethnic tolerance
Religious tolerance
Spirituality, dominance of:
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Heart over mind
Contemplation over analysis
Conscience over pragmatism
Free will over compulsion
Collectivism
The Russian language
The Russian base
THE RUSSIAN SYSTEM:
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The state was huge, costly, militarized
Society (especially the peasantry) was heavily exploited
and tightly controlled by the state
The political system was autocratic-patrimonial, with the
monarch being the sole source of sovereignty
The church was subservient to the state
Individual rights and liberties were severely curbed
Market economy had very limited potential for development
When reforms became overdue, the state acted as the
main agent of change, usually with limited effect
Society had no legal means of influencing government
policies – the people had an impact on the state either by
obedience to it or by resistance to it (passive or active)
What kept the system going was its
“battle order”:
NO CITIZENS – JUST SOLDIERS, OFFICERS,
AND WORKERS WHO FED THE ARMY
The system was designed primarily for war.
Successful wars kept it going.
Failed wars undermined it.
Grain production in Russia, late 19th century*:
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1/3 of the German level
1/7 of the British level
½ of the French and Austrian levels
*Richard Pipes, Russia Under the old Regime. Penquin Books, 1974, p.8
The issue of the surplus.
The costs of security and development
RUSSIA’S DECEPTIVE APPEARANCE
The image of stability vs.
The potential for revolution
Lenin’s conversation with a police investigator:
“Yes, it is a wall, but it is all rotten: just push it, and it will fall
down”
RUSSIA’S REBELS
 Cossack uprisings of 17th and 18th centuries
 (Razin, Bolotnikov, Pugachev)
19th century:
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The Decembrists (Ryleev, Pestel)
The Revolutionary Democrats (Chernyshevsky, Herzen)
The Populists (Herzen, Bakunin, Lavrov)
The Anarchists (Kropotkin, Bakunin)
The Social Democrats (Plekhanov, Lenin)
Russia’s 19th century:
 The apex of expansion – and the lag behind the West
 The pressures for change
 The reforms of Alexander II
 Development of capitalism
vs.
 Political modernization
Capitalism was creating new classes, new issues, new
conflicts – and the state was expected to evolve to be
able to deal with them.
But the Russian state was not up to the task.
It was not part of the solution, it was the source of
additional problems
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By the end of the 19th century, the flaws of the
Russian system become manifest
The gap between Europe and Russia widens fast,
the Russian system is too inefficient, too rigid,
resistant to reform
The 1904-05 war with Japan and then World War I
exhaust the Russian state and expose its flaws
1905-1917: 12 YEARS OF UPHEAVAL WHICH
DESTROYED THE RUSSIAN AUTOCRACY AND
EMPIRE